The answer somehow makes it even worse.

The chief of staff for Rep. Mike Collins, the front-runner to be Republicans’ Senate nominee in Georgia, said he used his congressional position to attempt to free a Holocaust denier from prison.

Kip Talley, Collins’ current chief of staff, detailed his efforts in a group chat that included prominent white nationalists, among them Nick Fuentes and Richard Spencer. Slate has reviewed the chats.

Talley actively intervened on behalf of Charles Johnson—a notorious internet troll, Holocaust denier, and racist—while Johnson was incarcerated from November 2025 to February 2026, according to messages Talley sent to the group chat in December 2025. (Talley was, at that point, Collins’ deputy chief of staff, before being promoted to chief of staff in January.)

Johnson has previously made statements about the Holocaust such as: “I do not and never have believed the six million figure. I think the Red Cross numbers of 250,000 dead in the camps from typhus are more realistic,” and suggested that “Auschwitz and the gas chambers” were “not real.” Johnson appeared in 2016 on a white nationalist podcast to discuss his belief in “race realism,” and shared an article that claimed Black Americans had a “violence gene.” He has insisted he only repeatedly used the N-word on Twitter “to study the site’s algorithms.”

Talley told the group chat: “I’m going to try and use the levers of the legislative branch to check into his detention.”

In the chat, Talley claimed he was exercising “oversight” in repeatedly checking with officials at the jail and the U.S. Marshals Service on Johnson’s behalf, scheduling a phone call with Johnson, as well as making sure there was money provided on his behalf in the prison commissary.

Talley also said that he had been in contact with federal law enforcement agencies on Johnson’s behalf. “I’m reaching out to my people at FBI and DOJ. Trying to get him out,” he texted the group.

The group chat, titled “Research Group—Johnson ‘28?,” was organized by Johnson, and its name was a joking reference to the right-wing conspiracy theorist pursuing a presidential bid in the 2028 election. Included among the roughly 30 people in the group chat are Spencer and Fuentes, the latter of whom has commented favorably about his fellow Holocaust denier on his regular livestream and posted a supportive message in his public Telegram group.

In a statement to Slate, Talley said: “I acted solely in my personal capacity after hearing concerns that an acquaintance I have known for years was being mistreated in custody and denied basic medical care. I was simply trying to help a suffering inmate connect with counsel. I did not act at the direction of Rep. Collins, use official resources, or coordinate with anyone else in the group chat.”

Collins’ office declined to comment on the record.

Johnson was a prominent right-wing media personality in the mid-2010s, when he produced a string of controversial news stories, many of which were later debunked. He also was among the first prominent users banned from Twitter in 2015, after he asked his followers to help him “take out” Black Lives Matter activist DeRay Mckesson.

Johnson has since retreated from the media, although he met with Cabinet officials and members of Congress during Donald Trump’s first term. He has since been involved in litigation over a facial-recognition company that he played a role in founding. In text messages with J.D. Vance sent during and after Vance’s election to the U.S. Senate, Johnson described himself as a federal informant. (Johnson turned over the messages to the Washington Post after Vance was announced as Trump’s running mate.)

Johnson was imprisoned late last year for contempt of court after being found civilly liable for $71 million in damages in a civil racketeering case. The initial litigation stemmed from allegations that Johnson was “running a fraud and extortion scheme” in which he claimed to be a U.S. intelligence agent. He would target companies seeking business with the federal government, specifically in the defense or intelligence sectors, and would make “demands for equity or favorable investment terms.” If the company didn’t comply, he would then “threaten to sabotage the companies’ contracts or funding.”

After losing the suit, Johnson did not cooperate with efforts to track down his claimed assets and was found in contempt of court. (Johnson also stole a mug and boasted about it on social media.) He was eventually released in February, despite not complying with the federal judge’s order to fully cooperate with the receiver appointed to track down his assets to satisfy the judgment against him.

On the group chat, Talley also reassured members that he had “read a bunch of your messages” to Johnson and that he had established “a relationship with the officer and the U.S. Marshal so I should be able to call once a week now.”

Talley left the group chat on May 2.

Talley’s boss, Mike Collins, is the leading contender to take on Democrat Jon Ossoff in November’s Senate midterm elections. Collins got 40 percent of the vote, ahead of former football coach Derek Dooley. The two will square off in the Peach State’s Senate runoff on June 16. The congressman is backed by conservative groups like Club for Growth in the Senate race. In contrast, Dooley, a former University of Tennessee football coach who has spent much of his life outside Georgia (his father was the longtime coach of the University of Georgia Bulldogs), is backed by Gov. Brian Kemp, who was a childhood friend. Trump has not endorsed anyone in the race.

A two-term congressman whose father served for 10 years on Capitol Hill, Collins has been a lightning rod for controversy since arriving in Washington. As a backbencher who has been an ardent Trump loyalist but has avoided any troublesome dissents with congressional leadership, he has become a highly active user of social media who billed himself as the “memer of the House.” Collins’ online posts have at times delved into antisemitic and racist tropes.

Collins is also no stranger to personnel issues.

Last week, Collins fired his top political aide, Brandon Phillips, after Phillips used the campaign Twitter account to mock the wife of a strategist for a pro-Dooley super PAC for being an alleged rape victim.

Phillips, who was Talley’s predecessor as Collins’ chief of staff, is currently under investigation by the House Ethics Committee over allegations that he hired his girlfriend for a no-show job and otherwise misused official funds. Phillips has a long history of controversy, including allegations of animal cruelty, as well as a 2008 guilty plea for criminal trespassing and battery.

Further, William Paul, who served as Collins’ digital director in his congressional office in 2025, recently accosted Rep. Mike Lawler, a Republican from New York, at a Capitol Hill bar and launched a barrage of antisemitic insults at him. Lawler is not Jewish.