Canvasser for Vance, Trump, Ohio Republican Party has neo-Nazi ties and plans to kill “enemies of the white race”
As Vance calls ICE protesters terrorists, a former volunteer connected to the group that firebombed a progressive church seeks his help.
By Owen Brown
When a federal ICE agent shot Renee Good in the head in January as she slowly tried to drive away on a Minneapolis street, Vice President J.D. Vance approved of the killing. The mother with no criminal record, he said, was using “domestic terrorism techniques” as part of a “broader left-wing network.”
When federal ICE agents pounced on and gunned down Alex Pretti for attempting to help a woman agents had shoved, Vance shared his colleague Stephen Miller’s claims that the Veterans Affairs nurse with no criminal record was a “would-be assassin” who “tried to murder federal law enforcement,” and those upset about the homicide are terrorist supporters.
It appears Vance may not be able to tell what a domestic terrorist is—even if the vice president posed for pictures with a zealous supporter of his who has connections to multiple neo-Nazi groups and desires for mass killings.
While the vice president smeared victims of and opponents to extrajudicial killings, The Rooster discovered that an armed man who sent text messages to his mom that “we will kill any enemies of the 5he white race” (sic) “Without hesitation” “Or remorse ever” had publicly boasted of being a paid Ohio Republican Party coordinator and campaigner for Vance’s 2022 senate race and Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential run.
FBI records detail that Daniel Kovacic, a 35-year-old Wickliffe resident and grandson of a former Cleveland police chief, allegedly sent the text messages in August 2023 shortly before police say he stepped outside his suburban Cleveland condominium and pulled the trigger on his illegally-possessed gun.
He had just gotten fired from his landscaping sales job amid, court records allege, cocaine and anabolic steroid abuse and a descent into paranoia when he told his mom of plans to kill “enemies of the white race.”
“MAY THE ZIONEST AND KALERGI PLAN FOLLOWERS DIES THE MOST MISERABLE HORRIBLE DEATH IMAGINABLE,” (sic) Kovacic followed up in that text thread in the lead up to the shooting.
“IN THE NAME OF JESUS CHRIST OUR LORD AND SAVIOR AND GOD. ST MICHAEL THE ARCHANGLE DEFEND ME IN BATTLE.”
Kovacic would later claim his phone was hacked—the FBI, examining his phone, said it found no evidence of any hack, but did find other evidence indicating he sent the texts—and that the police response to several of his neighbors reporting gunshots at his house was set up by the Biden-era FBI intent on gang stalking and punishing conservatives.
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The zealous Vance and Trump supporter was barred from owning guns because he was previously convicted of multiple felonies and imprisoned for nearly a decade. He punched a police officer and stabbed another man in separate incidents in 2009 and was eventually released from prison in 2020, just in time to campaign for Trump’s reelection and, later, Vance’s senate race.
Responding to reports of a shooting at his condo that afternoon in 2023, a local SWAT team and other Wickliffe officers staked out his home and, apparently unable to wake him up after he fell asleep after the reported shooting, arrested him hours later that night when he finally walked outside.
Two and a half years later, the fact that a SWAT team showed up continues to enrage him and he sued, unsuccessfully, the police department and every local news outlet that reported on the incident. He appears not to understand the circumstances of his arrest or that it was illegal for him to possess a gun.
“Calling all Patriots,” Twitter account DKframedbytheFBI posted in October.
“In Summer of 2023 Dan Kovacic absurdly designated a Level One National and Local Threat by the Biden FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force. Dan hasn’t been told why this occurred—but he had not been engaged in any criminal activity whatsoever to justify > this.”
In the wake of the shooting reported at his home, court records obtained by The Rooster detail law enforcement reported Kovacic had Nazi memorabilia in his home that day, ties to at least two white supremacist groups, white supremacist content on his phone, a loaded illegal Sig Sauer pistol wedged in his couch, and bullets strewn around the floor.
The Rooster also discovered multiple allegations of violence against women by Kovacic prior to the August 2023 incident at his home.
In March 2022, a woman with a swollen face showed up to the Wickliffe Police Department to report Kovacic beat her up and stole her phone during an argument at his home. In a April 2023, a woman reported to the Eastlake Police Department that her windshield was bashed in outside of her home, and that prior to discovering it, Kovacic texted her that he was coming over. He later texted her a picture of his bloody hand. Police found blood on the woman’s windshield and then blood on the door handle of Kovacic’s car.
Now in federal prison on an illegal gun charge after the August 2023 incident at his Wickliffe home —the FBI got wind of the incident and took the case federal (more on that later)—Kovacic is appealing to the two politicians he campaigned for, who have since taken the White House.
Kovacic has been trying to get the Trump and Vance Administration to spring him free, claiming on a far-right radio show last summer that he was framed by “Biden’s FBI,” targeting him simply because he’s a “traditional Catholic” opposed to abortion and drag shows.
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Back in 2023, when records show an anti-terrorism FBI special agent and an assistant federal prosecutor got wind of Kovacic’s local arrest on the illegal gun charge days after the incident, the Wickliffe Police Department handed the case over to the feds, who detained him as he showed up to the Willoughby Municipal Court weeks later (Kovacic posted a $50,000 bond a day after his arrest).
He was prosecuted in federal court and eventually pleaded guilty after a series of apparent courtroom outbursts throughout his case.
There may be a reason why Kovacic was on the radar of the anti-terrorism FBI agent and federal prosecutor: Signs point to Kovacic’s connection to an organized and violent neo-Nazi movement in Northeast Ohio.
In March 2023, months before the FBI agent and federal prosecutor swooped in on Kovacic’s gun charge, that same FBI agent busted a member of a White Lives Matter group for trying to firebomb a local progressive church with a Molotov Cocktail for hosting a drag show.
The federal prosecutor who would take up the Kovacic case successfully prosecuted the neo-Nazi firebomber, Aimenn Penny, who was also caught behind bars attempting to orchestrate a future bombing of the Akron Civic Theatre for hosting a drag show.
Penny’s arson and religious interference prosecution was ongoing during the time that FBI agent and federal prosecutors also set their sights on Kovacic just a few months after the violent response to the local drag shows.
The feds got the Kovacic on a single charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm (the feds, like they can with many state law crimes they feel like prosecuting, found a nexus to take his case federal: Kovacic’s Sig Sauer handgun and the bullets were manufactured out of state, meaning that at some point, they were shipped and transported across state lines, triggering interstate commerce laws).
In public pleas from a series of recorded phone calls from inside federal prison to far-right radio host Pastor Ernie Sanders last summer, Kovacic ranted about “Biden’s FBI” targeting “political dissidents” in general and him specifically for being a politically conservative churchgoing Catholic who campaigned for Trump in 2020 and Vance’s senate campaign in 2022.
He said he found out that between May and September 2023—in the immediate aftermath of the church firebombing—the Department of Justice designated him at the highest domestic terrorism threat level possible.
“I believe the reason I was targeted was I was active protesting in person – I did silent right to life rallies, I was at several drag shows for children, drag queen story hours that I was strongly against, I’m still strongly against, and I’ve protested in person and I believe that’s around when I started being targeted,” Kovacic said in a clip broadcasted on air.
The Community Church of Chesterland is 10 miles from Kovacic’s home in Wickliffe. Chardon, the site of another coordinated neo-Nazi rally against drag shows that spring, is 15 miles away.
White Lives Matter also held anti-drag show rallies and recruitment efforts earlier that month in Berea, 30 miles away, and Wadsworth, 52 miles from Kovacic’s home. Kovacic also referenced being active on Telegram, where court records detail White Lives Matter recruited members and coordinated their activities.
A footnote in the FBI’s affidavit for a warrant to search Kovacic’s cell phone in the weeks after his arrest by Wickliffe police is succinct: “While police were executing a search warrant at Kovacic’s residence, they observed Nazi memorabilia inside and the FBI has identified Kovacic as being connected to two white supremacist groups.”
Kovacic, from behind bars, has been campaigning hard to get released. A Twitter account called DKframedbytheFBI is active ranting against the left, slobbering over right-wing figures like Elon Musk and Trump administration officials, and begging right-wing media figures to pay attention to his plight.
And now that the guys he previously campaigned for are in office, he’s begging for them to return the favor. He petitioned for a commutation of his sentence last year:
“No one in the federal system has done more for Trump than Dan. No one in the federal system has a more bogus case than Dan. He was stalked, hacked and harassed by the intel community for his politics and was almost murdered when he was falsely accused of being in a barricaded standoff for 5 hours. Please help get his case to the attention of the Trump administration and Pardon czar”
Like in his clemency petition, Kovacic has long claimed to be stalked and harassed by Biden-era FBI spies prior to the August 2023 incident and he said the local police department’s dismissiveness of his reports indicates they were in on framing him, too. The Rooster got ahold of those police reports.
“Kovacic’s sister called the WPD to report a male that was stalking her brother, was outside of his condo and Kovacic was afraid to go outside,” one WPD report states from that July, in the months between the neo-Nazi firebombing and Kovacic’s gun charge. The male, the report indicates, was an acquaintance Kovacic had invited over so he could sell him a battery pack.
A week and a half later, Kovacic told police a neighbor was drilling holes into his wall and filing it with tin foil and hacking also “hacking into his wifi and sending messages through his laptop.
“Daniel advised that he has videos and photos of the holes in the wall on his phone,” the officer wrote. “When I asked to look at the photos Daniel told me no that he couldn’t show me. I asked Daniel if I could go inside to look at the holes in the wall and Daniel stated ‘no’. Daniel appeared to be very skittish and paranoid. Daniel did not want me to speak to the neighbor and only wanted the incident documented. Daniel stated multiple times that he needed the FBI involved.”
Kovacic’s political persecution clemency plea to the Trump administration is pending.
The Daniel Kovacic Files
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