The head of Trump’s antisemitism task force just re-posted two antisemitic X accounts
Leo Terrell, the Department of Justice lawyer who heads the Federal Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, has made multiple appearances on the network and other conservative outlets to unapologetically press the Trump administration’s case for deporting Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil and for yanking federal funding from the university.
A media-savvy former Fox News contributor, Terrell also uses his X account, which has 2.5 million followers, to help promote Trump’s agenda. But while showcasing his media appearances and sharing other pro-Trump viewpoints on X, Terrell also re-posted two accounts with a history of promoting antisemitism earlier this week.
First, on Wednesday, Terrell re-posted a comment by Patrick Casey, the former leader of the now-defunct white nationalist group Identity Evropa, whose members chanted, “Jews will not replace us,” during the violent 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va.
Casey’s post nested a video of President Trump calling Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) “a Palestinian.” Trump’s comment has drawn condemnation from both Muslim and Jewish groups for using the word “Palestinian” as a racial slur.
“Trump has the ability to revoke someone’s Jew card,” Casey added in the post shared by Terrell.
Whether or not he is familiar with Casey’s background, in a January 2020 appearance on Fox News, Terrell mentioned “white nationalists” in Charlottesville “chant[ing] hateful [anti-] Jewish comments.”
Terrell directly followed the Casey re-post on Wednesday by sharing a post by the Hodgetwins podcast. Keith and Kevin Hodges, the podcast hosts, have been called out by the group Stop Antisemitism for being “purveyors of blatant antisemitism, regularly platforming and promoting hateful rhetoric.”
Inquiries to the Department of Justice by Raw Story seeking comment from Terrell for this story went unreturned.
Despite Terrell amplifying a podcast that Stop Antisemitism finds objectionable, the DOJ lawyer and the pro-Israel group are otherwise closely aligned.
Last month, Terrell posted a link on X to a news article that quoted a letter from Stop Antisemitism Executive Director Liora Rez. The letter addressed Terrell while requesting that the Trump administration revoke the visas of pro-Palestinian protesters and deport them. That’s precisely what the State Department and Immigration & Customs Enforcement did two weeks later in Khalil’s case.
Stop Antisemitism re-shared Terrell’s Feb. 28 post, adding that the group “stands ready to support the Justice Department’s Task Force to Combat Antisemitism.” They added, “American Jews appreciate the ongoing efforts to crush this violent hate at its root,” tagging Terrell at the end of the post.
Terrell regularly reshares posts by Stop Antisemitism, including doxes of pro-Palestinian activists that target students who are potentially subject to visa revocations, as well as professionals whom they seek to get fired from their jobs.
But Stop Antisemitism has remained silent on Terrell’s amplification of the Hodgetwins and Casey on X. The group could not be reached for comment for this story.
From MAGA critic to Trump loyalist
A former Democrat, Terrell came to prominence in Los Angeles in the 1990s as an O.J. Simpson supporter and talk-radio host. In 2020, Terrell switched support to Trump and later secured a spot as a Fox News contributor.
During a January 2020 debate with commentator Candace Owens, before his conservative rebranding as “Leo 2.0,” Terrell savaged his future boss.
“White supremacists are comfortable with Trump,” he said. “That’s why they endorsed him. That’s why they like him. He provides them cover.” (Since the time of the debate with Terrell, Owens has taken a hard turn towards antisemitism.)
In January, Trump announced Terrell as senior counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Department of Justice. The Civil Rights Division is responsible for enforcing statutes prohibiting discrimination based on race, color, sex, disability, religion, familial status, military status and national origin.
In addition to amplifying Casey and the Hodgetwins on his X account on Wednesday, Terrell has also re-shared X posts by Brigitte Gabriel — whose group Act for America is designated an anti-Muslim hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, or SPLC — at least twice in the past week.
As a basis for the designation, the watchdog group says that Act for America “pushes wild anti-Muslim conspiracy theories, denigrates American Muslims, and sows fear about Islam in the United States.”
Gabriel wrote in her 2008 book, They Must Be Stopped, that “the portent behind the terrorist attacks is the purest form of what the Prophet Mohammed created,” adding that the ideology behind Islamic extremism is “not radical Islam; it’s what Islam is at its core.”
Around the same time, according to the SPLC, Gabriel said during a presentation at the Department of Defense’s Joint Forces Staff College that a “practicing Muslim who believes the word of the Koran to be the word of Allah… who goes to mosque and prays every Friday, who prays five times a day — this practicing Muslim, who believes in the teachings of the Koran, cannot be a loyal citizen of the United States.”
Meanwhile, the Hodgetwins have hosted several white supremacist guests, including former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, Nick Fuentes and Stew Peters.
One of their guests, businessman and social media influencer Dan Blizerian, told the brothers in an interview that it is currently one of the “trending episodes” on their website: “I didn’t just wake up and hate Jews one day.”
One of the brothers recounted watching a YouTube video of one of Adolf Hitler’s speeches, adding, “Holy s—, he didn’t sound like a racist to me.”
“Well, it’s not just that,” Blizerian added, “but you listen to what he’s talking about, and, it’s like, f—, this sounds like the problems we’re having today.” Blizerian went on to rattle off a series of antisemitic tropes about Jews’ supposed control of “the cinema” and “the banking system, and “perverting” children.
While amplifying the Hodgetwins, and by extension the overt antisemitism on their podcast, Terrell has had little to say about why he believes the conduct by the pro-Palestinian protesters subject to deportation is specifically antisemitic.
“We have to get these agitators, these professional agitators off the campus,” Terrell said on Thursday during an appearance on “The Cat & Cosby Show” on 77 WABC in New York City.
Terrell went on to disparage Khalil, who was arrested by U.S. Immigration Customs & Enforcement while his green card was revoked based on a State Department finding that his activities in the country “would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”
“If this guy, when he was applying for a green card or visa […] said, ‘I support Hamas, I want to disrupt Columbia University, and I’m going to make it impossible for Jewish Americans to get an education at Columbia, this guy would have never gotten a green card or student visa,” Terrell said. “He’s an undesirable.”
The Trump administration has accused Khalil of supporting Hamas, which the State Department designates as a terror group. Still, his lawyers have reportedly responded that there is no evidence he provided support to any terror group.
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