A pair of young MAGA influencers got arrested at one of Washington’s most prestigious clubs on Friday, Will Sommer wrote for The Bulwark — and the bizarre tale of how it happened underscores a “fake-it-till-you-make-it ethos” that has become fashionable under the Trump administration.
Ryan Fournier, one of the co-founders of Students for Trump, was arrested for violating a court order after he contacted his ex-girlfriend, against whom he faces domestic violence charges and was wearing an ankle monitor. But authorities had something more exotic on his friend, Jordan Daley.
“Days before, a tipster had warned them that Daley had, with Fournier’s help, been using a fake Secret Service badge to pose as an agent,” said the report. In fact, police were warned ahead of the arrest “that Daley was so committed to the ruse that he had boasted about a plan to bring guns into the Freedom250 Ultimate Fighting Championship event that would take place forty-eight hours later on the South Lawn of the White House.”
Fournier, for his part, now insists that he was acting as an informant to help bust Daley’s wrongdoing — but according to Sommer’s report, the two were using the fake Secret Service agent scheme to live large.
Two people close to Fournier and Daley “remember Daley using the badge to skip the line at a nightclub, and conspicuously putting the badge on a table at a restaurant to get faster service. One witness later told Secret Service investigators that Daley used the badge to get Uber drivers to run red lights,” said the report. One affidavit stated, “Daley would put the badge on the center console of the Uber’s vehicle and will say, ‘Run this red light right now,’ then the Uber would be ‘scared to death’ and do it.’”
“It became this ridiculous two-man act,” one of them said.
Daley now claims that Fournier introduced him as a Secret Service agent “all the time,” but Fournier denies this, telling Sommer, “I categorically deny ever stating, suggesting, or implying that Mr. Daley was an agent of the USSS.”
Students for Trump’s leadership has faced scandals like this in the past. The group’s other co-founder, John Lambert, was sentenced to 13 months in prison in 2021 for pretending to be a lawyer.
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