QAnon influencer Juan O. Savin, who is involved in a coalition to recruit and elect election denier secretary of state candidates, has falsely claimed that the September 11 terrorist attacks were a false flag operation carried out by a United States “shadow government” agency to “manipulate the American people.”

The America First Secretary of State Coalition is led by Nevada Republican secretary of state nominee Jim Marchant and boasts other GOP candidates, including Arizona secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem, Michigan secretary of state candidate Kristina Karamo, and Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano. The coalition aims to elect Republican candidates who have made false claims of widespread voter fraud to positions influencing election administration. 

In 2021, Marchant appeared at a QAnon conference in Las Vegas and said that Wayne Willott — a QAnon influencer known online as “Juan O. Savin” — helped create the coalition and recruit him to run for secretary of state. Other candidates who had been tied to the coalition have since confirmed Savin’s involvement, and Savin has openly discussed in online interviews his involvement with the coalition and its members, such as claiming to have consulted with Karamo.

While Savin has been involved with the coalition and its members — who, if elected, could play a role in the 2024 presidential election — he has recently promoted the false claim that the September 11 terrorist attacks were an inside job caused by the United States federal government.

During recent interviews, Savin pointed to the September 11 attacks as evidence to claim that President Joe Biden would seek to delay the midterm elections with an announcement in late October, possibly by declaring martial law. 

In one interview posted online on September 18, Savin claimed his “buddy Bill Cooper” — referring to a deceased militia member and influential conspiracy theorist — predicted an attack on the World Trade Center months before the September 11 attacks, allegedly saying that the government was “going to try and pin something on Osama bin Laden.” Savin added that “Osama bin Laden didn’t have shit to do with 9/11,” and claimed that it “was somebody’s way of conning you to get you ready so you’d accept what they wanted to do.”

Savin repeated these baseless claims in multiple interviews. In an interview posted online that same day, Savin said that Cooper was “right,” that the September 11 attacks were “staged,” and that then-Vice President Dick Cheney secretly led a part of the federal “shadow government” that was involved in creating “false flags” to “manipulate the American people,” including the “9/11 stuff.”

In another interview posted online two days later, Savin went even further, falsely claiming Cheney led a “shadow government” agency that carried out “false flag” operations, including the 9/11 terrorist attacks, in order to “create a threat” to “manage the American people and world opinion so that they can help move us” toward “global control.” Savin cited a CIA contractor who supposedly said he went into World Trade Center Building 7 to hide “all the explosives so that they could bring Building 7 down” in a “controlled demolition.” (Savin in the interview also seemed to invoke a baseless conspiracy theory that the 1969 moon landing was staged by the late film director Stanley Kubrick.)

Savin’s 9/11 Trutherism — which is widespread within the QAnon community — comes as he has also threatened “civil war” if people “move past” false claims of voter fraud in 2020. Savin’s influence has also extended outside of the coalition to include traveling with and claiming to have hired far-right figure Lara Logan for “election integrity” events and collaborating with election denial funder Patrick Byrne.