Missouri Rep. Sarah Unsicker, seen here in a video announcing her withdrawal from the state’s attorney general race, accused a former opponent of being an unregistered Israeli agent. Missouri’s secretary of state said there was “no evidence” to support the claim. Image by screenshot via Twitter/@ericgarland

By Louis Keene December 18, 2023

Missouri’s attorney general race is an unusually Jewish one: Will Scharf, a Republican former prosecutor trying to unseat incumbent Republican Andrew Bailey, wraps tefillin every day; Elad Gross, a Jewish former assistant attorney general on the other side of the ballot, is married to a founder of multiple local Jewish nonprofits.

These biographical details hardly figured in the race until this month, when a fourth candidate — Democratic Rep. Sarah Unsicker — floated a conspiracy theory developed by a known right-wing troll that Scharf and Gross were Israeli sleeper agents on a mission to destroy American democracy.

Democratic House leaders stripped Unsicker of her committee assignments over the controversy, and she announced Thursday that she was ending her campaign. But she has continued to press the accusation, for which the Missouri secretary of state said Monday there was “no evidence.”

And Unsicker, who said she will make an announcement about her political future in January, has left open the possibility that she could run as an independent or in a different state race.

Gross called Unsicker’s allegations antisemitic and said they have caused his family to take additional safety measures. But he, Scharf and others who have followed the story as it developed on social media have also been mystified by how a four-term state representative known for her work on health-care affordability and workers’ rights became a mouthpiece for conspiracy theories.

“They’re so far down the rabbit hole even the rabbits think they’re crazy,” Scharf said in an interview Thursday, referring to Unsicker and two associates who have propounded the falsehoods. “They’re playing with some dangerous tropes.”

Some, including Gross, are calling for her to resign her seat for trafficking in antisemitism. (Because of term limits, she is ineligible to run for that seat next year.)

“I do not think that she is currently fit to be in the House,” Gross said Friday in an interview. “And I worry about what other legislation these folks are influencing.”

Unsicker did not respond to a request for comment.

Bailey, appointed attorney general last year after his predecessor won a U.S. Senate seat, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The election in Missouri, a deep red state which last had a Democratic attorney general in 2017, will be held in November, with a primary in August.

Sour lemonade

The controversy began on Dec. 3, when Unsicker, a Democrat elected to the Missouri House in 2016, posted a selfie with Charles C. Johnson, a notorious right-wing activist widely shunned after publicly denying the Holocaust in 2017, and Eric Garland, a fringe political commentator known for spinning intricate conspiracy theories.

Captioning the photo, Unsicker wrote, “People here don’t like that I’m friends with @ericgarland. They REALLY don’t like that we meet [sic] with @JohnsonThought1 over basil lemonade in Webster Groves yesterday. I’m an adult and capable of choosing my friendships.”

Unsicker’s association with them was immediately questioned by her followers and in the press. Johnson said on a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” forum in 2017 that he did not believe 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust and that Auschwitz and the gas chambers weren’t real. (Johnson says he intentionally made false statements about the Holocaust in a sting operation to get the Reddit channel banned.)

Garland achieved social media notoriety with a widely derided 120-tweet-long Twitter thread developing a “game theory” of Russian interference in the 2016 election that tied in Edward Snowden, Bill Clinton and 9/11.

Gross said on X that Unsicker was “inviting Nazis over for a lemonade to influence our government.”

Days later, Missouri House Minority Leader Crystal Quade removed Unsicker from House committees assignments, saying Unsicker had used her social media “to promote individuals who espouse baseless conspiracies and racist and antisemitic ideologies.”

Watch this Space

Unsicker’s association with Johnson and Garland took a conspiratorial turn after she lost her committee assignments.

In a Dec. 7 X Space — a live conversation on the platform formerly known as Twitter in which she joined Johnson and Garland — Johnson claimed that Gross and Scharf were Israeli plants whose presence on the ballot deprived Missourians of authentic choice in the attorney general race.

To support his claim, Johnson read from the website of Ashreinu, a Jewish nonprofit founded by Gross’ wife, Tasha Kaminsky, that focuses on prayer and Jewish learning. Kaminsky’s Ashreinu bio — which has since been updated — noted that she works for the Anti-Defamation League, which Johnson alleged was an Israeli front group.

“All of this is designed to have a fake democracy in Missouri,” he said.

Unsicker replied by saying that while she was hesitant to call it a fake democracy, the trouble she got into over associating with Garland and Johnson seemed to indicate more sinister forces at work. “It’s hard to believe that there’s real candidates when I’m trying to be a real person here and get shut down,” she said.

But Johnson was mistaken about Kaminsky. She has not worked for the ADL since 2019, when she was development director of the Missouri/Southern Illinois regional office. (After Johnson was told by local media that Kaminsky no longer worked there, he continued attacking Kaminsky in X posts as a former employee of “an Israeli intel front.”)

He also tried to tie Scharf to nefarious Israeli backers. During the same Space conversation, Johnson said Scharf was hand-picked to run for attorney general by “a Chinese-Israeli oligarch” who wanted to derail Unsicker’s attempt to root out child trafficking.

Scharf, a former federal prosecutor, said in an interview that “their whole premise is absurd.”

“I’ve actually prosecuted violent criminals and put people in prison for exactly the sort of criminal activity that they’re alleging in the community,” Scharf said. “So the idea that I would be involved in some kind of criminal cover-up is offensive to me and, again, absurd on its face.”

When Unsicker was called out by an area Democrat for participating in the Space discussion while it was still ongoing — it lasted nearly two hours — she responded by rearticulating Johnson’s claims.

Gross posted a thread on X describing his disbelief at Unsicker’s credulous adoption of her associates’ conspiracy theories.

“I’ve worked with Sarah for years,” he wrote on X on Dec. 8, the first day of Hanukkah. “She’s come to me for help on many occasions. It is immensely painful to hear this hatred coming from her mouth, and I am furious that my family had to spend all last night while our candles were still burning and at least today talking security.”

Gross in an interview said he had had conversations with law enforcement about potential threats to his safety as a result of the conspiracy theory.

“I’m not so worried about these keyboard warrior types,” he said, referring to Johnson and Garland. “It’s more somebody who’s listening to them, gets activated, and then goes and says, ‘Oh, well, I’m going to protect democracy against these people.”

Garland did not respond to a request for comment.

In a Dec. 10 post on her Substack, Unsicker shared text messages Gross sent her in which he tried to prevail on her that Johnson was not to be trusted. She continued to defend him, insisting he was not a Holocaust denier, and eventually stopped responding.

She also included in the Substack post various pleas for her to change course — including from her own communications staffer — going unheeded. In a Dec. 11 thread on X defending her actions, Unsicker posted a screenshot from the Ashreinu website containing Kaminsky’s photo and bio, and wrote, “I am alleging something probable.”

The ADL did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Dropping out — but not backing down

Unsicker’s video announcement withdrawing from the race last week, originally posted by Garland, prompted more questions than it answered.

Standing in front of a fireplace decorated for Christmas, she again went on the offensive, alleging that Gross and members of his family were Israeli foreign agents and had failed to register as such. She referred to a “criminal complaint” in the matter but showed no evidence, yet said it necessitated that she drop out of the race.

“Because of the serious nature of this complaint, and the considerable conflict of interest these allegations present with my office,” Unsicker said, “I will not be running against Elad Gross in the Democratic primary for attorney general.” 

Then she called on Gross to drop out of the race “and from public life.”

The “complaint” she referred to appears to be a document written by Garland, who uploaded it to X on Thursday. It accuses Gross’ mother, Margalit Gur-Arie, who is Israeli-American, of being part of a plan to infiltrate American democracy.

Gross described the accusation as “basic, classic antisemitism” in an interview.

“This whole dual-loyalty story — it’s absolutely antisemitic,” he said.

Gur-Arie said in an email that “this entire episode is a monumental bunch of crock.”

In a message on X, Johnson defended himself. “It’s shameful but not surprising that Gross would conflate opposition to Israeli involvement in American elections to anti-Semitism but he has a long sordid history of dishonesty, which is disqualifying even for a politician.”

Asked to clarify his views on the Holocaust given his 2017 comments denying that 6 million Jews were killed, Johnson said, “It’s not something I have studied closely but I understand that’s the consensus view among historians.”

When Gross told the Riverfront Times, a St. Louis alt-weekly, on Thursday that he was not withdrawing from the race, he emphasized the outlandishness of the allegations against him and his family. “I’m pretty sure I’m not working for the Israeli government here,” he said.

Garland seized on the comment. “*Pretty sure?*” he wrote on X.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

$36 $500

$120 $180 Other amount