The Weekend Precinct Chair Scandal
You can't just have a drama-free weekend anymore.
Update: a VERY important update has been made related to this story. View it here:
Fake Screenshots Used To Attack GOP Candidate
Earlier this week, a Republican candidate for Precinct Chair in Nacogdoches County, Ryan Cook, was accused by people online of sending direct messages to underage boys. Tuesday night, it was revealed that SoCal Populist, the account considered credible in the Ryan Cook scandal by Texas Family Project and conservative media personality Sara Gonzales, had …
A small story only remains a small story until George Santos gets involved.
Ryan Cook, a candidate for Nacogdoches County Precinct Chair and semi-known TXLEGE X personality, is in hot water after direct messages and allegations surfaced of Cook chatting with multiple underage boys.
In a tweet originally made by Sara Gonzales of The Blaze and Texas Family Project/Pale Horse/West Fort Worth Management, Gonzales accuses Ryan Cook of grooming boys online and posts a screenshot of a conversation between Cook, who was 20 at the time, and a 16-year-old boy.
It was then quickly quote tweeted by Steve Deace of The Blaze where Deace gave the following message:
Former US Congressman George Santos then tweeted out his take on the scandal as well as his discussion with Ryan Cook:
We then decided to reach out to Ryan Cook for comment. Cook told us via Twitter that the claims were false and that he was contacting a lawyer. This contradicted his alleged conversation with Santos which Gonzales posted.
Santos also makes a claim about metadata in screenshots, but generally screenshots from a phone do not contain metadata.
Additional males came forward with claims of messages from Cook.
Traditionally, we wouldn’t make these conversations public since the individuals involved were allegedly underage at the time, but since they voluntarily posted their conversations on X, we are linking them here.
We also spoke to two other individuals who alleged inappropriate conversations with Cook.
Both claimed that although the messages from Cook felt unwelcome, they were not sexual in nature, nor did they ever feel threatened or that Cook had done anything illegal. Both just said they found him to be “weird” or “strange.”
One of the individuals we spoke to did express frustration that his conversation with Cook was posted publicly by others without his consent.
Additionally, there is a screenshot of a conversation between Cook and another individual where Cook allegedly sends a picture of his naked-bottom to someone. We spoke to this individual, and he confirmed he was 19 when the photo was sent to him by Cook. Reviewing the conversation shows that when Cook told the 19-year-old he was going to “send something stupid,” he replied, “just do it,” where then Cook allegedly sent the photo of his behind.
There were several others on X who claimed to have had conversations with Ryan Cook but did not respond to our DMs or replies on X.
Later, in an X Space where users can freely chat online, we had a public and open discussion with several of the people involved in the Ryan Cook scandal. Those involved stated that they did not feel that Cook was a pedophile or a criminal, or that he had done anything illegal. The consensus among those involved was that Cook was just an odd individual and that he needed to drop his run for office and get professional help.
We also spoke to several individuals, one being Kelly on X, who recalled they had given Cook advice on how to handle himself properly and professionally online, and that Cook seemingly ignored all advice and violated things like NDAs, confidentiality, and the privacy of those he spoke with. One user also claimed that Cook, in retaliation for some incident, got him fired from his job.
Many felt that Cook was terminally addicted to social media and “clout” and also repeatedly failed to follow advice given to him by professionals in the political sphere who genuinely wanted to help him. Additionally, the males who received messages from Cook stated to us over the phone that they did not feel Cook did anything illegal or sexual in nature and that they just felt the messages were unwanted.
Cook has told us that he has no intention of dropping out of his race for precinct chair. This is interesting considering his stance on the Bryan Slaton scandal from last year.
Which brings up an interesting thought we had…
Quite often this election cycle we have seen the situation where:
Guy I don’t like does something bad: We must immediately call it out and destroy him!
Guy I do like does something bad: We must avoid jumping to conclusions and protect him!
We specifically saw the above behavior from almost everyone in Texas grassroots politics.
During the Bryan Slaton scandal, many in the grassroots dismissed the claims against Slaton, some excused the behavior, and some flat out claimed it was a conspiracy theory.
The excuse to protect or avoid speaking out against Slaton when the incident was developing was that people needed to wait until a full investigation had been done and all sides of the story were heard. This is completely opposite of the way the Ryan Cook scandal developed yesterday.
Even weeks after the report from the investigation committee came out and Slaton’s own lawyers didn’t refute the claims, some have still continued to defend him.
Editors note: When we first broke the story on the Slaton scandal, someone in Slaton’s precinct demanded that Current Revolt apologize to both Slaton and the county GOP because they claimed our story was false. This person later apologized to us after they read the investigation committee report.
You’ve also had individuals completely ignore questionable behavior, simply because the person in question is on their political side.
We’d love to see people be more morally consistent with their views on individuals and incidents but that’s probably asking too much.
Ryan Cook made a notable amount of enemies on X from both his defense of specific politicians, constant posting of fake news and claims, and openly bragging about his involvement in getting Laura Loomer to attack Brent Money who is running for HD2. Those we’ve spoken to think Ryan Cook should take responsibility for his behavior, stop running for precinct chair, and instead seek professional help. Which, at the end of the day, is the human and Christian element in all of this, still wanting those we dislike to get the help they need.
Live by the Twitter, die by the Twitter.
Many Conservatives are not consistent in their values. As long as it's "their guy" doing the unethical stuff it's ok. They turn a blind eye. They aren't forward thinkers to wonder "What if he's not my guy in the future"?
Thanks for posting this. It needed to be exposed as do the fake conservatives. I have witnessed this many times and counting over the years while they belched out their bible quotes , said their 'amens' and defended the indefensible.