Just hours after a ProPublica and PBS’ “Frontline” report linked last summer’s violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, to a major defense contractor employee with a federal security clearance, the modern-day Nazi is unemployed.
In an email, company spokesman Tim Paynter told ProPublica and “Frontline” that Miselis “is no longer an employee of Northrop Grumman.” Paynter did not say whether Miselis was fired or resigned from his position.
Since “as early as mid-May,” Northrop Grumman has known about Michael Miselis’ connection to the Rise Above Movement, a SoCal hate group that travels around spewing hate and inciting violence; unsurprisingly, it took widespread public outcry for the aerospace giant to take action.
The Washington Post reports that Northrop Grumman’s slow-moving leadership was vague about their actions, but focused on keeping things as quiet as possible.
On Friday morning Northrop Grumman chief executive Wes Bush told employees in an internal email that the company would “take the appropriate actions to make sure that our foundation remains strong well into the future,” without saying which specific actions the company would take.
The email was forwarded to The Washington Post by a Northrop Grumman employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the employee feared retaliation. “They would end up firing me and not the white supremacist” for forwarding Bush’s email to a reporter, the person said.
ProPublica reports that Miselis, 29, is denying his white nationalist affiliations.
When approached by reporters, Miselis said he didn’t know anything about the events in Charlottesville, and when asked about his affiliation with RAM said, “I think you got the wrong guy.”
Today, in a status message to Northrop’s internal IM system posted by Miselis and reviewed by ProPublica and Frontline, Miselis wrote, “Believe none of what you hear and half of what you see.”
Well, here’s a video, all cued up to Miselis pounding the hell out of an African-American protester. He’s the dude in the Adidas pants and the red hat, beating a black guy.
Even if you only believe half of that, it’s enough.