YouTube creator Nick Shirley has filmed himself interviewing Alex Jones outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, called street vendors in New York City “dangerous migrant scammers” and described a “Somali takeover” in Minnesota.
Shirley was also granted permission to accompany ICE agents during arrests in Chicago last year.
On Friday, Illinois Republicans will feature the far right influencer as a keynote speaker at their “Red Gala” fundraiser in Elk Grove Village.
The Illinois Democratic Party is calling Shirley’s inclusion proof that the Illinois Republican Party “has completed their transformation into an extremist MAGA organization that values bigoted culture wars over the issues their voters care about most.” State Republicans, on the other hand, are praising the 24-year-old YouTube star as “one of the fastest rising independent journalists in America, known for going where mainstream media won’t.”
Republican gubernatorial candidate Darren Bailey has also shown support for Shirley, writing on social media in April that Illinois should “deploy a brigade of Nick Shirleys to root out fraud in Medicaid, unemployment, and every pork barrel slush fund.”
Shirley is best known for capturing the attention of the Trump administration in December when he posted a 43-minute video in which he claimed to have uncovered $110 million in fraud at Somali-run day care centers in Minnesota. In some instances, Shirley declared there was fraud because he didn’t see any children, despite some of the sites appearing to be closed. The Minnesota Star Tribune visited the 10 facilities featured in Shirley’s video, and found children inside four of them when invited inside. Six other facilities were either closed or employees didn’t let them in.
Within two weeks of that video going viral, the Trump administration sent thousands of federal agents to Minnesota to crack down on illegal immigration — and also announced an effort to combat “the Somali-dominated scams that have bled taxpayers dry.” The administration also froze funding for child care subsidies in five Democratic states, and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz suspended his reelection, which Shirley took credit for. The CEO of Future Leaders Early Learning, a center featured in his video, was charged last month with wire fraud and conspiracy with for allegedly stealing over $4.6 million through false claims to federal nutrition and state childcare assistance programs.
While fraud investigations were already underway for years in Minnesota, Shirley was credited by the GOP for amplifying the problem — despite holes in his viral video.
The Illinois Republican Party has struggled to raise funds after the high profile departures of former Gov. Bruce Rauner and Ken Griffin — billionaires who both now live in Florida. They also have little political power in the blue state of Illinois, where they hold just three congressional seats out of the state’s 19-member federal legislative delegation. The party also replaced their chair Kathy Salvi last month — less than two years after she was elected to the post. Bob Grogan, a former DuPage County auditor who also serves as a Certified Fraud Examiner, is now leading the party.
The Illinois Democratic Party lambasted the Illinois GOP, including party leaders, elected officials and candidates for office, for inviting Shirley and “lending credibility to an individual who spreads dangerous and hateful misinformation.”
“Nick Shirley’s aim is to contaminate our politics with racism, xenophobia, and lies,” a spokesperson said. “By welcoming him to their event, the [Illinois GOP] is revealing just how extreme they’ve become. Illinois voters can see clearly that the party has abandoned working families in favor of serving Donald Trump and his MAGA allies.”
Grogan on Thursday responded to criticisms of Shirley, telling the Sun-Times “JB Pritzker and Illinois Democrats are terrified of Nick Shirley coming to Illinois after he exposed billions of dollars in fraud in Minnesota and California.”
“Illinois is next,” Grogan said.