On the first night of Hanukkah, Tasha Kaminsky got a rude awakening to the state of Missouri politics.
Kaminsky is married to Elad Gross, a Democratic candidate for attorney general. Gross had been watching with concerned interest as his opponent in the primary, state Representative Sarah Unsicker (D-Shrewsbury), boasted about sharing “basil lemonade” with an alt-right troll who has denied the Holocaust and advanced troubling racial theories. That night, Unsicker joined a Twitter Spaces group chat hosted by the same guy — and Gross was listening as they brought up his wife.
“They were basically saying I work for the Anti-Defamation League, therefore I’m an Israeli foreign operative,” Kaminsky says. “And that those operatives are meddling in the campaign to stop [Unsicker] from investigating human trafficking.”
Learning that she’d become a topic in the race was shocking, and then infuriating, to Kaminsky. The allegations made about her only added to her anger.
Kaminsky worked for the Anti-Defamation League of Missouri for less than two years more than five years ago — and far from schmoozing with foreign governments, she was simply a development employee tasked with raising money. She continues to work as a fundraiser, currently for a theater nonprofit.
Beyond that, far from being an agent of the Israeli government, she’s an outspoken critic of Israel’s actions in Gaza, to the point that she founded an organization, Henini, in support of a ceasefire. The group’s efforts have been chronicled on St. Louis on the Air, and it has advocated for Palestinians living in Gaza in an open letter published in the St. Louis Jewish Light.
“[A]s many in the Jewish community call out ‘Never Again’ to attempt to justify Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 attack, we too call out ‘Never Again’ and call on our communities to extend that cry to the lives of Palestinians, as well,” the group wrote.
Kaminsky believed there was only one reason anyone could conclude she was working for the Israeli government: her Jewish heritage. As someone who holds a master’s in near Eastern and Judaic studies, it’s a trope she knows well.
“I understand these conspiracy theories and how they work and the way they manifest,” she says. “I never expected to be a target of one.” She notes she’s a third-generation American whose grandfather fought for the U.S. in World War II and whose father also served in the Army (and later died from complications from his service).
“The dual loyalty trope suggests Jews are inherently untrustworthy, that we’re not who we say we are,” she says. “It is deeply wounding and deeply offensive.”
Indeed, the conspiracy advanced on Twitter Spaces last week involves two of Unsicker's three opponents in the race for Missouri Attorney General — and the one (and perhaps only thing) thing Democrat Elad Gross and Republican Will Scharf have in common is that they’re Jewish. Incumbent Andrew Bailey, a Republican who is not Jewish, does not feature in the supposed plot.
That plot is convoluted and difficult to describe. However, as Kaminsky notes, it supposedly involves various Jews working against Unsicker’s bid for Missouri attorney general in order to protect organized crime and child traffickers, apparently at the behest of the Israeli government and various front groups.
As Unsicker’s alt-right friend, Charles Johnson, explained in the Twitter Spaces chat, “So when you have Elad Gross, whose wife works for works for the ADL, which is an Israeli front group, who is feeding information to to the media, a media that is tied in with organized crime and the media that is not calling people for quotes, not using comments that people give, you have a real problem of misinformed citizens. And this makes having a democratic system of government not very possible.
“And, of course, on the other side of it, on the Republican side, we have a candidate in the form of Will Scharf, who worked for, literally, Leonard Leo. Leonard Leo, of course, is the one who worked for the Federalist Society and effectively picked a lot of the federal judges in Trump world, as well as a number of the attorneys. And of course he was given I think it was like $1.6, $1.7 billion by Barre Seid, a pro-Israel Jewish billionaire out of the Chicago area who's very, very, very prominent. So it seems to me that what's happening here is, either way, whoever the candidate is on the Democratic side or the Republican side, that there's a kind of effort to deny Missourians a choice in the government and, and this is, of course, going to allow a lot of these protection rackets and a lot of other criminal activity to take place in Missouri.”
During the Twitter Space chat, Unsicker did not attempt to push back or dispute any of the claims.
Reached for comment, Scharf notes that, until recently, he was an assistant U.S. attorney fighting criminal activity. “As a former federal prosecutor, appointed under President Trump, who locked up violent criminals and worked to keep our community safe, I find the idea that I would turn a blind eye to criminal activity deeply offensive,” he says.
He adds, “Johnson and Unsicker are so deep down the rabbit hole that even the rabbits think they’re crazy.”
Kaminsky’s husband, Gross, is angrier. “It’s not a coincidence,” he says, that both he and Scharf feature in the same conspiracy. “He’s a Jew. I’m a Jew. They’re talking about every Jew they can find. These people hate Jews.”
House Minority Leader Crystal Quade stripped Unsicker of her committee assignments even before the Twitter Spaces conversation, which led to speculation in the online group chat that Quade “may have gotten misinformation” or “been deliberately misled by people with ties to basically an Israeli front group.”
Quade, Gross notes, is never accused of being part of the conspiracy — and Quade is also not Jewish.
Asked to respond to allegations that he hated Jews, Johnson wrote, “I am about to go to a holiday party which my Jewish mentor is hosting. I am donor [sic] to Yad Vashem and a supporter of all people’s right to dignity and due process.”
Asked whether the fact that Kaminsky no longer works for the Anti-Defamation League made any difference in his theory, Johnson first insisted it was not a theory, and then made clear it did not (“it would be functionally equivalent to me saying that someone was 'ex-CIA' — a contradiction”). He also suggested a “federal lawsuit involving foreign interference” would further explore what he sees as Gross’ “connections to the ADL through his wife and to Israeli interests through his mother.”
We reached out to Unsicker yesterday to ask if she believes that Gross and Scharf are both connected to the Israeli government. We also explained that Kaminsky does not work for the Anti-Defamation League and actually opposes the current Israeli government, and asked if knowing that information changed Unsicker's opinion of what’s happening in the race for Missouri attorney general.
She initially asked for more information, and when we provided it, said she would issue a statement.
A few hours after our deadline, we got a press release from Unsicker’s office.
“My office has received credible allegations recently regarding foreign interference in elections in Missouri,” it read. “I take these allegations extremely seriously. I hope the information I have received is incorrect. I will be sending documentation as I receive it to the Missouri Secretary of State’s Office, and I hope he addresses such information with proper concern.
“I am also working with all of the appropriate Federal agencies. I very much hope that my political colleagues have not been involved in the allegations that I have heard in recent days.”
Update at 4 p.m. on December 14: Unsicker says she is withdrawing from the race for attorney general — and calls on Elad Gross to do the same.
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