Soros Prosecutor’s Staffer, Dem Candidate In Violence-Tinged Group That Plotted Against Conservative Parents

Left-wing activists in Northern Virginia with close ties to its Democrat politicians plotted secretly to destroy conservatives and Christians, gleefully discussing their deaths and repeatedly scheming to get them fired, according to thousands of pages of 2022 online chat logs reviewed by The Daily Wire.

Calling themselves the “Loudoun Love Warriors,” the group chat included a campaign staffer for the county’s Soros-backed prosecutor, a consultant for its Democrat sheriff candidate, and the board members of a gay advocacy group. The activists were based in Loudoun County, an area just outside Washington, D.C.

“Someone gonna get hurt on their side and I hope I get to do it,” Derek Summers wrote. “I’m sooo ready to show up with guns lol,” added Summers, a rapper who offered firearms training to the group. On Facebook, he repeatedly posted pictures of himself with guns, with one adding the quote “all this love is waiting for you.”

Derek Summers / Facebook

Derek Summers / Facebook

The group chat administrators were Andrew Pihonak, a campaign staffer for county prosecutor Buta Biberaj, who was narrowly elected with the help of $850,000 from George Soros; Heather Gottlieb, who said she met weekly with Biberaj; Meredith Ray, a board member of Loudoun 4 All, a group that tried to stop the recall of school board members following the coverup of a rape by a skirt-wearing male student; and Tori Truesdale, an organizer for Students Demand Action, an anti-gun and Democrat voter drive group bankrolled by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

The Love Warriors spent weeks seeking to destroy the life of a 65-year old private citizen after falsely accusing him of saying he wanted to kill gays.

During the public comment portion of a meeting of the embattled Loudoun school board on December 13, 2022, Mark Winn read a scripture passage that cautions against adults failing children, quoting “If any man or woman causes one of these little ones to stumble, it would be better for a millstone to be put around your neck and thrown into the lake.”

The group convinced itself that Winn had threatened to kill gay people and that it needed to respond accordingly. Pihonak wrote “There is NO peace or reasoning with these people who [sic] getting people like me KILLED … Actively platforming voices speaking hate gets people like me killed on a regular basis.”

“At what point can we consider a gay person committing suicide due to bullying regarding their sexuality a hate crime. In my eyes, that’s essentially 2nd degree murder,” Pihonak wrote.

“He proposed DROWNING you,” Summers wrote. “Reciprocation is our only move. And I don’t care how that comes across. There is a HUGE push to bring violence to the LGBTQ community … SOMETHING has to happen to one of them.”

“If he had said that s*** about black kids or autistic kids I would shoot him,” Summers added. “People get ended for less than that … His life needs to be PERMANENTLY disassembled.”

“They know I don’t care about jail or lawsuits,” he wrote.

“If it’s a misdemeanor no one will prosecute me anyway, right?”

The group suggested that Biberaj’s soft-on-crime policies could work to their benefit. “It might be worth an assault charge to f***ing slap that guy next time I see him,” group member Janann Schroeder Mercker wrote.

“I don’t even think you go to jail the first time, just fine and community service. SO worth it,” Amanda Pettis replied.

On another occasion, Gottlieb wrote “I’ll leave a credit card at my house in case someone needs to come bail me out. If it’s a misdemeanor no one will prosecute me anyway, right?”

Gottlieb wrote that she spends time weekly with Biberaj as one of 20 participants in a “Justice Academy,” which is advertised as “citizens and the Commonwealth Attorney will have an opportunity to discuss matters related to safety and justice”

The pursuit of Winn continued even after a message was posted to the group explaining that he did not actually say gays should be thrown in a lake. “They can sue me all they please lol. I said what I said and I stand by it,” Pihonak said.

A real estate agent and former teacher, Kristine Condie, appeared to use her access to an industry database to share Winn’s address, and she and Pihonak wrote messages to his employer trying to get him fired. Pihonak told the employer that Winn said he believed “people in the LGTBTQ+ community are better off ‘with a millstone around their neck in the lake.’”

The group also included Puja Khanna, who is running for the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors. The Love Warriors attempted to recruit children. “Get HS kids involved. ‘Don’t decide our fate with your hate’ type of thing,” Pettis wrote.

Members of the group were routinely pictured on social media taking part in events with Democrat officeholders and candidates. Summers boasted that “I have direct relationships with most of them and they know me well.” He offered to serve as the liaison to the minority community for the overwhelmingly white-female group, and appeared close to Loudoun NAACP chair and statehouse candidate Michelle Thomas.

Derek Summers (at right, with Loudoun NAACP head Michelle Thomas) / Facebook

Derek Summers (at right, with Loudoun NAACP head Michelle Thomas) / Facebook

Brian Davison, who has spoken at school board meetings criticizing the board, told The Daily Wire that Summers’ antics were not limited to behind a keyboard. Summers confronted him at a protest and then began sending him messages online challenging him to a duel, and once sent a photo of a map pointing to Davison’s house, he said.

Phyllis Randall, the chair of the Loudoun Board of Supervisors — who like Summers is black — took Summers under her wing in 2016, telling the Washington Post, “You could just feel the anger radiating off him … I thought, ‘I need to talk to this young man,’ because that kind of anger can go in either direction.” He went on to become a prominent liberal activist and head of a domestic violence nonprofit. On social media, he was even pictured sitting in Randall’s chair on the boardroom dais.

Summers quit the Love Warriors on Dec. 26, 2022 after Gottlieb told him “while people appreciate your perspective and contributions to the group, not everyone is ok [with] violence. There are also people in the group already being sued and if anyone finds out about this chat it could included in a lawsuit. It could come across that when you call for violence and no one says anything, that we condone it.”

Loudoun 4 All told The Daily Wire that “its members never endorse violence. Both Meredith and Amanda [Bean, a fellow Loudoun 4 All board member] left the group in December 2022 after some comments were made that they felt were not appropriate.”

Summers’ departure left the group of left-wing radicals without any black people. Karen Jimmerson, a consultant for Democrat sheriff candidate Craig Buckley and a former town councilwoman who remained in the group, said “we really need to recruit minorities,” but Gottlieb said, “Do we even have any Black people in this chat?”

“We used to but they all left,” came the response.

Winn told The Daily Wire that during the period that the group began hounding him in December 2022, his bus-driver wife was diagnosed with cancer. He said that identity politics made for one-dimensional caricatures: Pinohak, Summers, and the others spent their lives in the wealthiest county in America, while Winn’s father died when he was 3 and he grew up in a shanty in West Virginia one of seven children, he said.

He said he has “concern for my safety and my wife’s safety,” particularly because it would be up to Biberaj whether to prosecute any crime. “If I had said that, there’d be someone at my door in minutes,” he said.

Biberaj told The Daily Wire that “One’s First Amendment rights are vital to democracy and our core principles of freedom and justice in America … However, if anyone makes threats which cross into being unlawful, I have faith that our local law enforcement is equipped to investigate the matters. If their investigation results in findings of violations of criminal law, then the legal process will be initiated and take its course.” She would not say whether Pitonak was still employed by her campaign.

The Loudoun County Democratic Committee told The Daily Wire it would respond on behalf of all of the many Loudoun officials tied to group members. “Those that use this kind of dangerous rhetoric should not be welcome in the public square. We have seen too many times how violent rhetoric ignites violent actions that hurt and kill people,” spokesman John Block said in a statement.

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