Congressman Fires Aide for Calling Florida School Shooting Survivors ‘Actors’

An aide to a Florida state congressman was fired Tuesday after claiming that survivors of the Parkland mass shooting were “actors” who did not attend Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

Benjamin Kelly, who served as district secretary to GOP Rep. Shawn Harrison, prompted outrage after he told a Tampa Bay Times reporter that two students who appeared in television interviews following the shooting were “actors” who “travel to various crisis when they happen.”

“Both kids in the picture are not students,” Kelly wrote to a reporter in an email from his official account.

When reporter Alex Leary asked for more information to back up his claims, Kelly linked to a debunked conspiracy theory video claiming the students were paid to tout an anti-gun agenda and bash President Donald Trump.

The students Kelly mentioned were Emma Gonzalez and David Hogg, two teens who survived the brutal attack on their high school last Wednesday. During the shooting by a former student, 17 people were killed as 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz fired rounds from an AR-15 assault rifle.

Gonzalez and Hogg were outspoken about the need for tighter gun restrictions and school safety measures following the tragedy, leading alt-right theorists to slam them as “crisis actors.”

Kelly’s shocking email was made public by reporter Leary and sparked outrage as it made the rounds on social media.

Among the backlash was a tweet from Jaclyn Corin, the 11th-grade class president at Stoneman Douglas. “We are KIDS — not actors. We are KIDS that have grown up in Parkland all of our lives. We are KIDS who feared for our lives while someone shot up our school. We are KIDS working to prevent this from happening again. WE ARE KIDS,” she wrote of the theories.

Congressman Harrison issued a statement soon after to rebuke the staffer’s comments as “insensitive and inappropriate.” Less than an hour later, Kelly announced that he has been fired.

“I made a mistake whereas I tried to inform a reporter of information relating to his story regarding a school shooting,” Kelly tweeted before deleting his account. “This was not my responsibility. I meant no disrespect to the students or parents of Parkland.”

In a second statement, Harrison reiterated his stance on the falsehoods Kelly spread in the wake of the mass shooting, which is now considered the deadliest school shooting in Florida’s history.

“I am appalled at and strongly denounce his comments about the Parkland students,” Harrison said. “I am again sorry for any pain this has caused the grieving families of this tragedy.”

Hogg, one of the students Kelly and others have branded as a “crisis actor,” appeared on CNN and other news programs to denounce theories that he is not a student at Stoneman Douglas or that his father, a retired FBI agent, coached him to share messages against Trump.

“I am speaking from my heart,” he said Tuesday to CBS Los Angeles, who caught up with the student while he was in California for various media appearances. In earlier footage, theorists used footage of Hogg being interviewed in California in August as “proof” he has an actor, but CBS claims he was visiting friends at the time.

Photo credit: Twitter / @benakelly