An Account Using the Same Name as Trump’s BLS Pick Posted Red-Pilled Conspiracy Theories

In the months leading up to the January 6 Capitol riot, a now deleted Twitter account bearing the full name of E. J. Antoni, President Donald Trump’s pick to run the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), betrayed a seeming obsession with promoting election denial conspiracy theories while talking about violent threats to those who stood in Trump’s way.

The account, which used “Dr. Erwin J. Antoni III” as its screen name for a time, was linked by the conservative Heartland Institute think tank when referring to Antoni in a 2020 post on Twitter promoting one of its own YouTube videos in which he appeared. A WIRED review of an archive of the account’s posts shows that in the months leading up to the attack on the Capitol, it spread baseless conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and shared content from The Donald, a virulently pro-Trump message board that was used to organize the events of Jan 6, 2021.

One of the final posts on the now deleted account used violent religious rhetoric in the hours before the assault on the Capitol began.

“Samson has his arms around the temple pillars, and though he may not survive, he will bring it all down on his enemies,” the account posted late on January 5, 2021, in response to a Twitter post from Trump calling on Republicans to “FIGHT.“

Last week, an NBC investigation uncovered video footage showing Antoni near the Capitol on January 6, 2021. The White House confirmed to NBC that it was Antoni, adding that he was merely a “bystander” who was in Washington, DC, for meetings and had wandered over after seeing coverage of the incident on the news.

The White House declined to answer WIRED’s questions about the account and its relationship to Antoni. When asked to comment on the account’s postings, Antoni did not respond.

Antoni was nominated for the role of BLS commissioner after Trump fired Erika McEntarfer on August 1, claiming without evidence that she had purportedly “rigged” an updated jobs report that suggested the US economy was not as hot as Trump has repeatedly claimed.

His main qualification for the job appears to be that he is the chief economist for the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank behind Project 2025, a policy blueprint that Antoni contributed to. But his nomination has been widely criticized by Antoni’s fellow economists, who cite his lack of relevant experience and what they allege to be errors in his public comments on economic data.

“I've been on several programs with him at this point and have been impressed by two things: his inability to understand basic economics and the speed with which he's gone MAGA,” Dave Herbert, an economist at the conservative American Institute for Economic Research, wrote on X.

While Antoni’s current X account—which is almost exclusively filled with economic data and analysis—shows little sign of MAGA credentials, the now-deleted Twitter account bearing his name is filled with deeply red-pilled content.

The account was active at least between September 2019 and January 2021, and had the username @PhDofbombsaway. It used several different screen names, including “Dr. Erwin J. Antoni III” and “Dr. Curtis LeMay,” an apparent reference to the US Air Force general who oversaw a campaign of firebombing Japan in World War II, promoted the use of nuclear weapons, and ran for the vice presidency alongside segregationist George Wallace in 1968. The account’s profile picture was a stock image of a fiery mushroom cloud.

The account’s persona was that of a deeply loyal Trump supporter engaging in conspiracy theories ranging from Covid denialism to attacks on Black Lives Matter, and even ones related to the death of Jeffrey Epstein. The posting, which was infused with a deeply hard-line Catholic worldview, at times displayed misogyny and a knowledge of Nazi military techniques.

The account posted a mixture of conspiracy theories and pro-Trump MAGA content, sharing a veritable who’s who of right-wing influencer accounts, including Jack Posobiec, Mark Dice, James O’Keefe, Scott Adams, Cassandra MacDonald, Steven Crowder, James Woods and Robby Starbuck.

Throughout 2020, the account shared Covid conspiracy theories, especially focusing on the claims that China had purposely manufactured the virus to destroy its enemies.

In February 2020, responding to a posting asking how many nuclear bombs America should drop on China if it turns out the country was responsible for Covid-19, the account—which was using the “Dr. Curtis LeMay” screen name, according to captures from the Internet Archive—wrote “All the bombs—trust me, I’m kind of the expert on this.”

The account posted a wide variety of conspiratorial content, as well as misogynistic content. In November 2019, for example, the person controlling the account claimed that Jeffrey Epstein “didn’t kill himself.” That same month, in response to a post about then presidential candidate Kamala Harris, they wrote, “She does her best work when life brings her to her knees.”

But the account was most consistently vocal in its embrace of the conspiracy theory that Joe Biden stole the 2020 presidential election.

In the days after the November 3, 2020, election, the account posted hundreds of times as it fully embraced numerous conspiracy theories about how the vote had been rigged.

While citing dozens of different GOP lawmakers, Trump himself, and far-right influencers like Phillip Buchanan, the right-wing internet troll known as Catturd, the account most frequently shared claims of election conspiracies from an account called Election Wizard.

That account was run by Travis Vernier, a former Oklahoma City police officer who had no experience in assessing election data. Despite this, Election Wizard became one of the most influential voices in the Stop the Steal movement, to the point that Vernier was even invited to Mar-a-Lago for Trump’s 2022 announcement that he was running for president again.

As well as sharing conspiracy theories, the account bearing Antoni’s name repeatedly used violent rhetoric to declare how far it was willing to go to ensure Trump secured a second term in office.

“One side has over 1 trillion rounds of ammunition and the other side can’t figure out which bathroom to use,” the account wrote in response to a post from QAnon promoter Tracy Beanz. “I’ll take those odds.”

When Christina Bobb, a far-right television personality who became a primary promoter of election conspiracy theories, wrote on Twitter that the right should take “no prisoners” in defending Trump, the account wrote: “We give no quarter.”

The posts made by the account bearing Antoni’s name are sprinkled with hard-line Catholic content, including multiple interactions with Michael Voris, the founder of the hard-line Catholic group Church Militant. The account also frequently shared comments from ultra-conservative Catholic archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the former nuncio to the United States who was excommunicated in 2024 after having repeatedly repudiated and criticized then-Pope Francis, as well as challenging the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. Antoni attended Lansdale Catholic High School, where his mother was the STEM coordinator, and then St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in the Philadelphia suburbs.

It’s unclear if the person controlling the account deleted it or if it was included in a broad purge of Twitter accounts in response to January 6. As of Trump’s nominating Antoni as the top BLS official, he tweets from an account that is almost exclusively dedicated to sharing economic data.

While Antoni's social media presence is largely single-subject focused, there are still signs of similarity between his interests and those of the account previously bearing his name.

On multiple occasions, for example, Antoni has made media and podcast appearances in a room with a large painting of a battleship behind him. During one 2023 podcast appearance, Antoni confirms to the host that the ship in question is from the fleet of Nazi Germany.

“The Bismarck, yep, in all his glory,” Antoni said.

The Twitter account also referenced Nazi Germany. In 2019, in response to a Twitter user writing, “We definitely need AR-15s” next to a video of a Boston Dynamics robot, the account using Antoni’s name wrote: “We need panzerschrecks.“

A Panzerschreck was a reusable anti-tank rocket launcher developed by Nazi Germany during World War II.

WIRED initially contacted the White House last week after it received a direct message on X purporting to be from Antoni’s real account that seemingly confirmed @PhDofbombsaway was his. The White House noted that the DM actually came from a fake Antoni account and declined to answer further questions.