OPINION: Conspiracy theorists keep popping up in Sarasota County

It's now become a game of conspiracy theorist whack-a-mole in Sarasota County. Bop one over the head with the rubber hammer of reality and another pops up, crazier than the last.

Maria Zack is the latest mole of misinformation tied to our area. She still thinks the 2020 presidential election was rigged, and wait until you hear this doozy of a reason how: She is convinced that foreign powers used a military satellite in Italy to change votes from Donald Trump to Joe Biden on election night.

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You laugh, but Trump grew so desperate that former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows repeatedly pestered the Department of Justice to investigate Zack's claim, according to emails released by the House Oversight Committee.

Zack, who in 2016 formed a Super Pac backing Ted Cruz and discarded Trump as incompetent, has claimed she presented her “ItalyGate” satellite evidence to Trump in person as he ate dinner on Christmas Eve at Mar-a-Lago.

And, of course, she's tied to Sarasota County, which has somehow become America's Mecca of Misinformation. According to state records, Zack is president of a company called Nations in Action, which lists a P.O Box at a UPS store on Clark Road as its address.

Nations in Action sent out a press release the day before the Capitol riot claiming the Italy “bombshell” based on Zack's fearless “investigation,” the results of which she continues to stand by in recent internet interviews.

The filing for Nations in Action with the state of Florida in September 2020 contains another curious revelation. It lists a man named Hans von Spakovsky as an officer, his address also listed as the P.O. Box on Clark Road.

Von Spakovsky, a loud national voice that voter fraud is rampant, is an attorney and staff member of the Heritage Foundation, a powerful conservative think tank. He served in the George W. Bush administration and was a member of Trump’s commission on voter fraud in 2017. Many of his claims have been debunked.

As an aside to this, American Oversight, a government watchdog group, has been seeking any correspondences between Florida Senator and state GOP leader Joe Gruters, von Spakovsky, and/or Cleta Mitchell.

Mitchell, a former Trump attorney who was in on the infamous call between Trump and Georgia election officials to “find votes,” helped funnel $1 million from an escrow account to three subcontractors of Cyber Ninjas, the Sarasota-based computer security company leading the Arizona “audit,” according to the Arizona Republic.

What's odd is that von Spakovsky did not last long with Zack's Sarasota group, Nations in Action. On May 7, he was still listed on the state filing, though it was around that same time he was among two people named in an ethics complaint in Iowa for illegal lobbying pertaining to an elections law that passed.

Von Spakovsky’s name was gone when Nations in Action filed an amended report with the state of Florida on July 1.

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Somewhere along the way, sunny and sandy Sarasota County has become a conspiratorial Death Star, full of people intent on damaging democracy with claims that are just not reality-based.

It began with the Cyber Ninjas, the unfit crew from Sarasota hired for $150,000 by Republicans in the Arizona State Senate to conduct an “audit” of 2.1 million presidential ballots cast in Maricopa County.

The company, which had no prior experience of conducting an audit of this scope and needed a PPP loan of $98,322 for payroll last year, according to records, is led by Doug Logan.

Logan and his wife purchased a home in Sarasota County in 2017 for $422,750 and the mortgage, according to county records, was satisfied on Jan. 26, about two months before Cyber Ninjas entered into a contract in Arizona.

Then came the revelation that groups tied to Gen. Michael Flynn and former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne gave Cyber Ninjas over $4 million for their work in Arizona. Both men have spoken at rallies around the country together, adamant that voter fraud took place.

Flynn owns two homes in Englewood worth over $1 million total, including one with his brother Joseph, and is involved with two entities run from a P.O. Box in Ellenton, one of which gave substantial money to the Ninjas.

Byrne, meanwhile, recently purchased over $10 million worth of property in Sarasota County through a company called Manatee Investments. He bought three houses and a condominium in the Oaks in Nokomis and a medical building on Venice Avenue. He made a strong effort to be anonymous, but a recently filed voter registration form tied him to the properties.

Throw in Zack and von Spakovsky (we haven’t even touched on Longboat Key resident Charlie Kirk yet), and the game of conspiracy theorist whack-a-mole continues in Sarasota County.

Bop one over the head with the rubber hammer of reality, and another pops up, crazier than the last.

Contact columnist Chris Anderson at chris.anderson@herald-tribune.com. Please support local journalism by purchasing a digital subscription.