The Daily Beast: “At least two of Collins’ campaign-appointed leaders […] have ties to American Patriots USA, a far-right group founded by Chester Doles, a former Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi National Alliance leader.”

Atlanta, Ga. — New Daily Beast reporting exposes GOP U.S. Senate candidate Mike Collins for his elevation of “campaign-appointed leaders” with leadership roles in “a far-right group founded by […] a former Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi National Alliance leader.” The group has been “classified as a white nationalist hate group.”

Sen. Jon Ossoff released the following statement in response to Collins’ latest scandal and extensive close ties to white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and Klan associates:

“Another week, another scandal for Mike Collins, who is surrounded at work, at home, and now at his campaign by white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and Klan associates. Tomorrow night on the debate stage the bigot congressman will finally have to answer for his extensive and disqualifying ties to white nationalism.”

The Daily Beast: Trump Pick’s Campaign Hit With Explosive Staff Revelations
By Laura Esposito | October 7th, 2026

KEY EXCERPTS

• Several people involved with Trump-endorsed Rep. Mike Collins’ Senate campaign have ties to a group founded by a former Ku Klux Klan leader, the Daily Beast has learned.

• At least two of Collins’ campaign-appointed leaders, Joshua Mote and Michael Boggus, have ties to American Patriots USA, a far-right group founded by Chester Doles, a former Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi National Alliance leader.
  
• Doles has touted being a fifth-generation member of the Ku Klux Klan, and was jailed after he was convicted of beating a Black man in Maryland in 1993. And despite recent claims that he has left white supremacy behind, the hate group leader has still been front and center at events featuring white supremacists, including the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville in 2017.

• Boggus, a convoy captain who represented Banks County, served as “state director” of the group, which is classified as a white nationalist hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

• He has campaigned for office alongside Doles during his first congressional campaign in 2020. Boggus did not respond to questions from the Daily Beast, but has stated publicly that his opinion of Doles shifted after a private conversation.

• “He’s proven to me that he’s walked away from that lifestyle. Because I cannot stand the Klan,” Boggus said at the time, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

• Mote, a Collins’ convoy captain in Hall County, has served under Doles as a vice president of APUSA.

• “I’m super excited to announce that my friend, Mike Collins, has made his announcement that he is running to be our next United States senator,” Mote said in a video he shared on Facebook in July 2025, on which Collins commented: “Thank you! We’re gonna put the hammer down!!!”

• In a statement to the Daily Beast, Mote said the Collins’ campaign asked him to serve as a convoy captain in February, but he stepped away from the role in April following the death of his 2-year-old son.

• Mote denied being a racist and asserted APUSA was “never a hate group” during his time there, which he claimed was eight months.

• “When we learned who [Doles] was, and that he was not the reformed Christian he claimed to be, we left immediately,” Mote said.

• Before he was a convoy captain, Mote was listed as the manager of Cody Cantrell’s campaign for sheriff in White County, Georgia, on the “White Information Network.” Photographs later circulated of Cantrell allegedly giving a Klan salute, and no official paperwork for his candidacy was ever filed.

• Before he enlisted APUSA affiliates to aid his campaign, Collins himself had denounced the group as a “hate organization,” after Doles listed him as an “invited speaker” for a pro-Trump demonstration in 2019, the AJC reported.

• “White supremacy and white nationalism have no place in our country, and I will continue to denounce any and all forms of hate,” Collins said at the time.

• Since the start of his Senate campaign, Collins has touted his “convoy captains” initiative—appointing campaign organizers in each county across the state to coordinate grassroots efforts in his bid to defeat Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff.
  
• “Y’all…we’ve got so many convoy captains across the state,” Collins said at a campaign event in Morrow last month, where he lavished praise on his organizers. “It is amazing because we do run a huge grassroots organization; it’s one of the reasons we’ve been so successful.” Collins did not respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast.

• The ties are the latest in a series of controversies surrounding Collins and his campaign, several of which have involved white nationalist figures or groups—even within his own family. […]
  
• “If you went to a laboratory and tried to create the worst general election candidate for this state and environment possible, you couldn’t do better than Mike Collins,” a GOP strategist told MS Now in June.

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