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The Head of a New RFK-Backing Group Promoted 9/11
Conspiracy Theories and the Protocols of the
Elders of Zion
Leland Lehrman is a key figure in the MAHA world,
despite decades of pushing extremist ideas.

Anna Merlan
Senior ReporterBio

A photo collage that centers a middle-aged,
bearded Leland Lehrman in black and white. On the
left, behind Lehrman is a color photo of Robert
Kennedy Jr. On the right is a color photo of the
burning towers of the World Trade Center on Sept.
11. Lehrman's image is set against a red
background with rows of type that read "Make
America Healthy Again" in a wavy warp.
Mother Jones illustration
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Before May, most people in Health and Human
Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. s so-
called Make America Healthy Again movement likely
werent familiar with Leland Lehrman, a self-styled
media entrepreneur, anti-vaccine activist, and
former teahouse owner who once unsuccessfully ran
for the US Senate in New Mexico.

Lehrman claimed Israel is a leading candidate for
architect of the 9/11 attacks.

Last month, however, Lehrman was named executive
director of the MAHA Institute, a new advocacy
organization that aims to amplify MAHA wins for
President Trump, Secretary Kennedy, and the
Cabinet, advise elected officials on the movements
agenda, and find and attract allies to work in
government. The group shares key leaders with MAHA
PAC, the new name of American Values 2024, a
fundraising vehicle that raised $50 million in
support of Kennedys presidential candidacy. While
the MAHA Institute only launched in May, its ties
to RFK Jr. are close enough that at its founding
conference Lehrman was the first to reveal that
the secretary would announce the government would
stop recommending COVID vaccines for pregnant
people and children.
But even less well-known is Lehrmans long history
of promoting antisemitic and extreme conspiracy
theories, as detailed in a new report from the
Institute for Research & Education on Human
Rights, an organization which studies extremism
and the far right. The IREHR found that in the mid
2000s, Lehrman spread conspiracies about the
September 11 attacks and extensively touted the
Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an outrageous
antisemitic forgery that purports to document a
secret meeting where Jews plotted world domination
and which has been debunked for over 100 years.
Lehrman wrote multiple articles outlining his
belief in the Protocols on the website of Jeff
Rense, a far-right radio host whos often given
airtime to Nazis, racists, and assorted
antisemites. In 2005, Lehrman sat down for a long
interview with Rense in which he described high-
level Jewish Illuminists, or Lucifer worshipers
who have most certainly collaborated with the
Lucifer worshipers in all the other sects like
Nazism, like high-level Freemasonry. They have
most certainly collaborated in the development of
this New World Order plan.
The reason why the Protocols of Zion is important
is because it is a terrifically well-elucidated
encapsulation of all the methods and techniques
that have been used to bring about the New World
Order, Lehrman added.
According to the IREHRs report, Lehrman is the
great-grandson of the founder of the Rite-Aid
corporation. His father, the investment banker
Lewis E. Lehrman, is from a Jewish family,
although he publicly converted to Catholicism four
decades ago. His mother is Episcopalian. In his
first piece for Renses site in 2005, Lehrman
described himself as an American citizen of Jewish
heritage concerned about the methods and doctrines
that the criminal leadership of the Jewish and
Zionist hierarchy have promoted worldwide.
Lehrman acknowledged receiving a request for
comment from Mother Jones, but he did not answer
questions about his past writings and statements
before publication. He did not say whether he
still holds such views.
Mark Gorton (the millionaire creator of LimeWire)
and Tony Lyons (the founder of Skyhorse
Publishing, which releases conspiratorial and
anti-vaccine books, including some written by
Kennedy) are the cofounders of MAHA PAC, and are
also the co-presidents of the MAHA Institute.

Lehrman has claimed high-level Jewish... Lucifer
worshipers helped develop a New World Order plan.

When asked about Lehrmans past statements, Lyons
replied with a brief statement. Were being asked
to comment on an accusation of anti-semitism, he
wrote. Five of the six most senior people at The
MAHA Institute are Jewish, but that shouldnt get
in the way of a good hit piece. Lyons did not
respond to followup questions about whether hed
read Lehrmans writings on the Protocols, or
whether he was counting Lehrman among the
institutes senior Jewish staff.
HHS did not respond to requests for comment, but
on his LinkedIn page, Lehrman details a series of
roles that have drawn him nearer to Kennedy and
his inner circle. He says he began volunteering
for RFKs presidential run in 2023, before being
hired to do research and provide ideas for Bobby
and the campaign on policy issues, news briefs,
and tweets.
For the last eight months, according to his
LinkedIn, hes worked as a volunteer and then as a
consultant for MAHA Action, a separate group led
until recently by anti-vaccine activist Del
Bigtree, the former communications director of
RFKs 2024 campaign. I assisted Stefanie Spear,
Chief of Staff to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. I engaged
with Bobbys policy correspondence... I worked with
the team to advance both MAHA policies and our
candidates for government positions, Lehrman
wrote. The page also says he began a position in
March as the executive director of the obscure
Freedom for America Fund, whose website claims it
will source healthy, high-integrity Americans to
work in the Trump administration to promote health
and freedom. The organization lists no contact
information, and it is unclear if Lehrman still
holds that position.
In Lehrmans first article on Renses site, he
argued that the Protocols were legitimatea notion
debunked not long after they first appeared around
1903. In the article, Lehrman claimed he was not
denigrating all Jews, explaining that those Jews
who play the world domination game are in effect
no longer Jewish by religion in that their
strategy is in direct contradiction with the Ten
Commandments, the real pillar of the Hebrew
religion.
Lehrman also promoted 9/11 conspiracy theories,
writing that during Dennis Kucinichs 2004
Democratic presidential campaignwhich Lehrman said
he ran in Santa Fehe met a former Captain in US
Army Intelligence who was able to substantially
add to my understanding of the 9/11 Inside Job.
Very substantially. He also baselessly tied the
assault to Israel, writing in July 2005 for a
defunct site called Progressive Convergence that
Mossad, the countrys intelligence service, was a
leading candidate for architect of the 9/11
attacks.

Lehrman has praised extremist texts as recently as
April.

During his unsuccessful attempt to become New
Mexico Democrats 2008 Senate nominee, Lehrman made
reopening a commission on September 11 a major
priority, as he continued to promote conspiracy
theories about the attacks, now claiming that
then-vice president Dick Cheney was responsible.
Its only because Americans are so terrified and so
easily propagandized that this unbelievably bad
conspiracy theory that the government has put
forward about 19 hijackers and the guy in a cave
in Afghanistan even warrants mention, he told the
Santa Fe Reporter in December 2007.
After leaving New Mexico, Lehrman settled with his
family in upstate New York, where he participated
in anti-vaccine activism before, with the
emergence of Covid, becoming intensely suspicious
of lockdown measures and vaccines that target the
virus. In his Substack bio, Lehrman presents
himself as having decided to stay out of politics
and writing until, as he put it in a nod to
Orwell, the COVERT-1984 Plandemonium started, and
he knew it was time to begin again in earnest.
As the IREHR report points out, Lehrman has
praised extremist texts within the last several
months. In April, he attended a conference hosted
by the Brownstone Institute, which was founded to
promote anti-Covid lockdown ideas. In an interview
during the event, he hailed the 1955 book Pawns in
the Game by Canadian antisemite and conspiracy
theorist William Guy Carr as a very, very
controversial book, but its also an important one,
praising it for how it uncovered the thread of
Free Masonic activity. According to extremist
researcher Chip Berlet, Carr claimed an age-old
Jewish Illuminati banking conspiracy used radio-
transmitted mind control on behalf of Lucifer to
construct a one world government.
So far, the MAHA Institute has done little public-
facing work besides its May 15 launch event, which
was meant to preview the MAHA Commission Report, a
Trump administration document which turned out to
cite nonexistent studies. The speakers that day
included Calley Means, a special government
employee and Kennedy advisor who previously worked
on his presidential campaign, and Sara Brenner, an
FDA official who recently served as the agencys
acting commissioner. Shortly after the event, the
organization, which says it is collecting resumes
for MAHA-friendly candidates to work in the Trump
administration, posted to X about battling unnamed
enemies within the government.
Right now, tens of thousands of D. C. bureaucrats
are working to subvert the MAHA Agenda, a May 22
post declared. That ends now.
Lyons statement gave no indication that Lehrmans
writings and claims will affect his standing at
the MAHA Institute, but antisemitism has not been
a barrier to serving within the Trump
administration itself. And while Kennedys HHS is
part of a joint federal task force which claims to
investigate antisemitism in universities, Kennedy
himself once claimed that COVID was a bioweapon
designed to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese
people, and multiple Trump cabinet members have
ties to antisemitic and far-right extremists.
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