Failed GOP congressional candidate and 2020 election conspiracy theorist Ryan Dark White has admitted that he made up a story about child sex traffickers in an attempt to boost his campaign, The Daily Beast reported.
White, who sometimes referred to himself as the “Patriot Whistleblower,” claimed he witnessed child abuse while he was working at an adult book store. His stories about child sex trafficking even led to him accusing Mike Pence and Chief Supreme Court Justice John Roberts of trafficking children after Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss.
But this Thursday, the Harford County Sheriff’s Office announced that after being charged with making a false report, White “issued a full apology and admission to fabricating a child trafficking story for his political benefit.”
“On April 9th, 2022, I went to work at The Mistress,” White wrote in a public apology, released by police on Thursday. “When I arrived at work, I noticed a young girl and elderly male in the store near the ATM. I immediately recognized this as an opportunity to potentially obtain traction for my political career as I was running for US Senate.”
White’s apology goes on to say that he distributed the photo of a young girl who he saw at the book store, falsely claiming she was being trafficked. He also falsely claimed to have seen her being subjected to graphic abuse.
White was charged last July with filing a false police report in the case. He claimed at the time that the charges were part of a deep-state conspiracy to sabotage his congressional campaign.
From The Daily Beast:
White’s claims of being an undercover porn store investigator came more than a year after he’d positioned himself as a whistleblower in conspiracy circles. In Jan. 2021, he gave a deposition to pro-Trump lawyer Lin Wood, claiming without evidence that former Vice President Mike Pence and Chief Justice John Roberts had been involved in child sex trafficking.
Soon after the deposition, Wood appeared to refer to it in court filings (in which Wood argued that he should not be punished for social media posts implying Roberts was a trafficker). “My posts are protected speech and I have credible whistleblower evidence to support the truth of my statements,” Wood wrote in a Feb. 2021 court filing.
Maryland Sheriff Jeff Gahler said that “when such serious allegations are levied and a tremendous amount of law enforcement man hours are put into investigating the allegations, protests were organized against the business and many members of our community were and sheriff’s office were professionally and personally attacked and demeaned, it was imperative that Mr. White be held responsible for his purposeful actions and his wildly false claims and accusations.”
