How two MIGOP dirty tricksters took credit for Mike Rogers' Senate loss
My suggestion that the state party would be wise to "dropkick" Kristen Meghan Kelly from any delegate role has gone viral in Michigan.
In a tight political season where control of the Senate was on the line, Michigan's Republican Party needed unity, discipline, and voter turnout. Instead, it got Kristen Meghan Kelly and Shane Trejo—two far-right influencers with long histories of conspiratorial politics and open disdain for GOP leadership. Now, they’re openly boasting about helping to take down the party’s most viable Senate contender, Mike Rogers.
Both Kelly and Trejo are self-described libertarians and precinct delegates in Michigan. In recent weeks, they’ve taken public victory laps, claiming they were instrumental in Rogers' defeat. Their confessions aren’t just political theater—they're a warning sign of the growing influence of extremist operatives inside local GOP power structures.
Kristen Meghan Kelly: “Veterans United”—With Stewart Rhodes?
Kelly, a vocal precinct delegate and longtime member of the libertarian-right ecosystem, posted on April 5 about her deep friendship with Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, who is currently serving an 18-year sentence for seditious conspiracy. “I have been friends with Stewart Rhodes since 2011,” Kelly wrote. “He was improperly charged... the Oath Keepers would be on standby to maintain peace and security.”
Rhodes did admit to having a massive armory in a hotel just outside DC on J6 and the following day he reportedly said that his only regret was that there was not more actual violence the day before.
According to Kelly, she’ll be traveling to Texas to celebrate Rhodes’ 60th birthday. That’s the same Stewart Rhodes whose role in the January 6 Capitol breach has been central to the DOJ’s case against violent extremism in the United States.
Kelly’s name also appears on Clay Clark’s infamous “Trump influence map” linking key ReAwaken Tour personalities and influencers in the Flynn political orbit. Her trajectory—anti-government libertarian turned precinct-level disrupter—mirrors a broader trend of Flynn-aligned operatives infiltrating local GOP positions.
Kelly has made it personal. In multiple recent Facebook posts, she launched an unhinged series of attacks against GOP Senate candidate and former congressman Mike Rogers, whom she referred to as “the worst candidate for the Senate seat,” and “an oath-violating anti-constitutional ambassador.”
Here she was in November, after Trump’s win, running a destabilization op while admitting that she campaigned against him after the primary election.
“There’s a reason why Trump won Michigan, but Rogers lost by 20,000 votes: people like me, who are very anti-establishment and helped secure the libertarian crossover vote, would never vote for this fraud,” Kelly wrote on April 14.
Her efforts were not in vain. Rogers lost by roughly 20,000 votes—short enough that hyperlocalized interference may have played a pivotal role.
Shane Trejo: The “Alt-Right” Operative in Plain Sight
Then there’s Shane Trejo, the Michigan political consultant with deep ties to Roger Stone. Trejo proudly announced on a messaging board: “Enough people listened to me for Rogers to lose.” This was not a one-off. Trejo has long operated within the darker fringes of the GOP, often aligning with alt-right or white nationalist-adjacent causes.
Screenshots from chat forums show Trejo defending Richard Spencer—the white nationalist best known for leading the infamous “Heil Trump” Nazi salute in 2016. When other contributors distanced themselves from Spencer and the alt-right movement, Trejo responded with, “I think they’ll do just fine without ya.”
Trejo also appears to have bragged about manipulating the state’s conservative vote through his PAC and online operations. Meanwhile, his employment with Roger Stone—a man infamous for dirty tricks and political sabotage—adds another layer to the intrigue.
I’ve reported at length about Roger Stone and his involvement in the leadup to January 6th as well as his work with Flynn on his 2024 “contingency” presidential campaign “in case something happened to Trump.” Of course, something did happen to Trump - he was shot in the face two days before the 2024 RNC. I reported at length in the weeks preceding that how Flynn and The America Project had positioned themselves and were even running delegate training sessions on how to take over the convention from the delegate floor on prime time TV.
Now, we have a director for The America Project as MIGOP Co-chair in Bernadette Smith.
The Bigger Picture
The coordinated interference by Kelly and Trejo isn't just an isolated incident. It’s part of a broader pattern where Flynn-network influencers use libertarian or populist rhetoric to fracture Republican coalitions. Their influence doesn’t come from popularity—it comes from disruption. Whether it’s January 6, the precinct strategy, or targeted Senate sabotage, the game is always the same: chaos as strategy.
What happened in Michigan should serve as a red flag. When fringe actors with documented ties to seditionists and white nationalists can take credit for sabotaging critical GOP campaigns—and remain in leadership roles within the party structure—something is fundamentally broken.
The question isn’t whether Mike Rogers was the perfect candidate. The question is whether victory for Republicans is possible with chaos agents who want Republicans to lose filling the volunteer delegates roles and even working for campaigns.
The Karamo/Flynn faction in the party had great success in 2022 running a radical candidate for statewide race who, I have argued, appeared to deliberately lose and even sink the entire GOP ticket that year. Will we run other Christian Nationalist radicals like Patrick Colbeck and Alexandria Taylor or will delegates wisely choose candidates for those races that will successfully run big tent campaigns and help lift the whole ticket?
I used to think that Scott just got lost in the rabbit hole and just went with whatever would fit within his narrative.
But it seems increasingly likely he's a shill for the party establishment. Because nothing else explains otherwise pointless hit pieces like this.
I was disappointed with Bernadette being chosen as MIGOP Vice-Chair and believe it was a sop thrown to the Karamo faction. She preached Unity at the recent state committee meeting in Hillsdale and I hope she follows through.