QAnon influencer “Juan O. Savin” — who is connected to Nevada Republican secretary of state candidate Jim Marchant — falsely suggested in an online interview that the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas that killed at least 58 people was “manufactured” and that the victims’ deaths did not happen.
While at a QAnon conference in Las Vegas in 2021, Marchant revealed that Savin, whose real name is Wayne Willott, played a role in recruiting him to run for secretary of state. The two also helped form what is now known as the America First Secretary of State Coalition — a group that Marchant leads with the aim of electing Republican candidates who have made false claims of widespread voter fraud to positions that influence election administration. It includes other GOP candidates, such as Arizona secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem, Michigan secretary of state candidate Kristina Karamo, and Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano. 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.
In an interview posted online on September 28, a fellow QAnon figure claimed that there would be “an illusion of a nuclear attack” with “little toys” like “CGI and all the kind of stuff they did on 9/11.” In response, Savin said that “some of the deaths are real, some of it is manufactured.” He then pointed to the Las Vegas shooting, suggesting it did not “happen the way that we were told it happened.” He then falsely claimed that “there was no spike in emergency room admissions after the Las Vegas shooting.”
Savin’s implication that the Las Vegas shooting’s death count was faked comes as he has repeatedly pushed 9/11 Trutherism and threatened “civil war” if people “move past” false claims of voter fraud in 2020.