AJC: “U.S. Rep. Mike Collins keeps trying to pivot away from the controversies surrounding people in his political orbit. And each time he tries, another one seems to surface.”

Atlanta, Ga. — New reporting from the AJC highlights how GOP U.S. Senate candidate Mike Collins continues to be under fire for refusing to answer questions about his ties to white nationalists. The AJC’s coverage comes in the wake of alarming new Washington Post reporting on a  former Collins staffer uplifting Nazi imagery and depicting himself in a costume of the Ku Klux Klan. 

Yesterday, Senator Jon Ossoff held a press conference in Macon to demand that his Republican opponent Collins hold a press conference to answer questions on his ties to white nationalists. During the press conference, Sen. Ossoff demanded that Collins release every email, every text message, every Signal message, and every other communication between Collins’ office and notorious white supremacists. Collins’ office previously briefed Nick Fuentes and Richard Spencer, some of the most notorious white supremacists in America who attended the Unite the Right hate rally in Charlottesville, on its efforts to free a Holocaust denier from jail. 

According to yesterday’s Washington Post reporting, the former Collins staffer promoted swastika imagery and depicted himself in Ku Klux Klan robes as recently as June and July. He also told the Post, “I do think that the white race contributes more to the world.” Despite this, the Post reported, Collins “did not respond to a question about whether he stood by” his previous endorsement of Parra’s work.

Collins’ U.S. Senate campaign has so far been plagued by a number of controversies that Collins continues trying to outrun. However, as the AJC notes, “each time he tries, another one seems to surface,” including a federal investigation by the House Ethics Committee into Collins for allowing his former chief of staff, who had been convicted of criminal battery, to illegally funnel thousands of federal tax dollars to a girlfriend who did no work for the office. The bipartisan Office of Congressional Conduct report detailed how “Collins refused to cooperate,” before formally recommending that the Committee on Ethics subpoena the congressman. 

AJC Politically Georgia: Mike Collins struggles to outrun his aides’ problematic posts
By Greg Bluestein, Tia Mitchell, Patricia Murphy and Adam Beam | August 28, 2026

KEY EXCERPTS:

• U.S. Rep. Mike Collins keeps trying to pivot away from the controversies surrounding people in his political orbit. And each time he tries, another one seems to surface.
  
• This time, it’s a Washington Post report detailing how the Republican U.S. Senate nominee’s former fundraising consultant posted Ku Klux Klan and Nazi imagery — including a picture of himself wearing a KKK robe.
  
• That followed AJC reporting that Collins’ son-in-law, who praised Hitler and posted racist and hate-filled remarks, is now arguing that women should not have the right to vote.
  
• One former Collins chief of staff tried to secure the release of a Holocaust denier from prison. Another is at the center of a pending House Ethics Committee investigation into whether his office misused taxpayer dollars.
  
• And Collins himself has a history of social media posts his critics describe as hate-filled and xenophobic, including tweeting “Never was a second thought” to an antisemitic account that attacked a Jewish journalist.
  
• U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff has seized on all of it to portray Collins as a “bigoted” MAGA loyalist unfit for office. On Thursday, he called the latest report “disgraceful and disqualifying.” […]
  
• Now Republicans are bracing for the next damaging revelation. Ossoff’s research teams say they have already uncovered plenty of material that Collins’ GOP rivals never did. At his latest rally, Ossoff warned that Collins’ problems were only beginning.
  
• “If you think what’s come out so far about Mike is bad,” he said, “there’s more and worse on the way.”

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