New leader in RFK Jr.’s MAHA movement is really into the Protocols of the Elders of Zion
Leland Lehrman endorsed explicitly antisemitic conspiracy theories for years
New MAHA Institute leader Leland Lehrman hates vaccines — and endorses a whole lot of other conspiracy theories. Image by Getty/Mira Fox
By Mira Fox June 10, 2025
The MAHA Institute — a rebrand of the super PAC that was supporting Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign — launched in May, alongside a splashy MAHA (“make America healthy again”) report from the Trump administration that cited numerous studies that turned out not to exist.
While RFK Jr. is not directly involved with the MAHA Institute, its leaders are in the health secretary’s inner circle, privy to policies before they are publicly announced. Now, it has named its executive director: Leland Lehrman, an unsuccessful U.S. Senate candidate from New Mexico. And, according to a new report from the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, which researches extremism, Lehrman is also a prolific antisemite.
Conspiracy theories are common among RFK Jr.’s followers; vaccine skepticism is the norm in the MAHA world, along with false “plandemic” theories that the coronavirus pandemic was part of a plan. But adherents differ on who they blame for the supposed planning of the pandemic. Lehrman, however, who also subscribes to all of the COVID-19 conspiracies, seems to have a clear answer of who to blame: Jews.
Lehrman actually has Jewish heritage: His father, an investment banker and the grandson of the founder of Rite Aid, came from a Jewish family, though he converted to Catholicism. But that has not kept the newly appointed MAHA leader from espousing antisemitic conspiracy theories of all kinds, including repeatedly speaking and blogging about the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a long-since debunked 1903 antisemitic pamphlet purporting to detail the notes of a cabal of Jews plotting their global takeover.
The Protocols blogs were published on the website of far-right radio host Jeff Rense, who has also hosted David Duke, among other neo-Nazis; in 2005, Lehrman was interviewed on Rense’s show, in which he discussed “high-level Jewish Illuminists, or Lucifer worshipers” and argued that Jews directly communicate with and work for the devil.
The IREHR report speculates that Lehrman was introduced to antisemitic conspiracies when he became interested in 9/11 conspiracies; at times, he has brought both together, such as when he wrote, in a post on a 9/11 truther site, that it was highly likely that Mossad, Israel’s spy agency, was the architect of the attacks. He also promoted these ideas on a radio show he ran called Mother Media in Santa Fe; after the Anti-Defamation League warned the show’s advertisers of its antisemitic content, Lehrman lashed out at the ADL as being part of the Jewish cabal laid out in The Protocols.
Though much of Lehrman’s more outspoken antisemitism is from decades ago, he still references conspiratorial beliefs. The IREHR report details an interview this April with the Brownstone Institute, in which Lehrman recommended Pawns in the Game, a 1955 book by noted antisemite William Guy Carr; in the book, Carr asserts that a Jewish cabal in service of Lucifer was using radio mind control to take over the world. Lehrman called the book “controversial” but “important.”
In addition to his antisemitic conspiracy theories, Lehrman also said that the coronavirus was part of a government eugenics project and that “germ theory” was a lie meant to help governments manipulate and control their citizens.
Mother Jones, which reported on the allegations, reached out to Lehrman to ask whether he still holds these beliefs, but he did not respond. Tony Lyons, one of the cofounders of the MAHA PAC, however, did respond to Mother Jones addressing the antisemitism allegations, saying that, “Five of the six most senior people at the MAHA Institute are Jewish.” He did not reference Lehrman’s history of antisemitism.
