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QAnon promoter David Trent has spent the last four years telling his tens of thousands of followers that the Democrats are pedophiles working as part of a global child sex trafficking ring run by the world’s elite.
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What he didn’t tell them was that he was the real pedophile: In 1999, he was found guilty of coercing an 8-year-old boy into sexual acts three years earlier, and spent almost five years in prison.
Trent’s followers remained oblivious, because he was convicted under his real name, David Todeschini.
The link between Todeschini, 70, and his alias was first uncovered by an investigation by extremist tracking website Right Wing Watch, a project of People for the American Way, a liberal advocacy group based in Washington, D.C.
Todeschini confirmed that he used the alias David Trent in a phone interview with VICE News on Thursday morning.
Todeschini said he was planning on suing Right Wing Watch for publishing the investigation, but when asked what was inaccurate about the account, he failed to respond.
Todeschini instead made outrageous claims about his conviction, saying it was a “deep state” plot to take him down. He compared himself to disgraced former national security adviser Michael Flynn, now a prominent figure in the QAnon universe, claiming that he, too, admitted to a crime he didn’t commit.
“I am an enemy of the deep state. And I did what General Flynn did,” Todeschini said. “He pled guilty to a crime that he didn’t commit.”
Todeschini was convicted in 1999 and is listed on New York’s sex offender registry as a “sexually violent offender,” meaning he is at “high risk of repeat offense and a threat to public safety exists.”
He moved to North Carolina 18 months ago and has been listed on the state’s sex offender registry since 2020, but the name David Trent is not listed among the known aliases for Todeschini there. When VICE News raised this with Todeschini, he said he’d registered the alias with the state and said, “I don’t give a fuck what the website says.”
Todeschini operates a channel called Net4TruthUSA on Bitchute, a YouTube alternative that’s popular with QAnon supporters and other extremists. He currently has over 21,000 followers and some of his videos have over 100,000 views.
Some of his most recent videos include several where he called President Joe Biden a “cho-mo”—prison slang for pedophile—and in a bizarre video posted earlier this month, Todeschini hosted a 13-year-old boy known as “Mini Mike Lindell.”
Todeschini, who said in a video published this week that he is living in southern North Carolina and managing a trailer park, lists various ways his followers can support him financially on his Bitchute page, including links to PayPal and Cash App. A GoFundMe page Todeschini was operating was shut down when Right Wing Watch flagged it to the company.
Followers can also buy an autographed hardcover copy of his book—entitled “Land of Childhood Fears”—for $100 on eBay, a listing that’s under his real name rather than his alias.
The 512-page book appears to be part memoir, according to the blurb on eBay: “I tell my readers of all of the things I witnessed during my tour in Vietnam, including CIA drug-running, the bombing of civilian children in an orphanage in Cambodia.”
But it also discusses conspiracy theories about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the September 11 attacks, and “the ‘seeds’ of what is now been discovered and actively suppressed by Stasi-style Corporate Media.” The book also includes some of Todeschini’s poetry.
Right Wing Watch reported that he previously had thousands of followers on numerous YouTube channels, but these were banned by the company as part of a purge of QAnon-related accounts in the wake of the Jan. 6 riots. Todeschini told VICE News that he had 30 accounts banned, blaming a nameless “troll” for getting him kicked off the platform.
Like many QAnon supporters, Todeschini was in Washington for the Jan. 6 rally in support of then-President Donald Trump, but it is unclear if he was among those who breached the Capitol.
Todeschini claimed in a video posted Wednesday night, hours after the Right Wing Watch investigation was published, that he is among the most censored voices in America, a popular cry among QAnon promoters.
In the video, Todeschini failed to address the Right Wing Watch investigation, but continued to spew disinformation about COVID-19 vaccines, and boosted the baseless claim that President Joe Biden doesn’t actually live in the White House but broadcasts his addresses from a film set made to look like the White House.
During the phone call with VICE News, Todeschini managed to boost numerous other conspiracies, including Frazzledrip—which claims there’s a video showing Hillary Clinton torturing a young girl, cutting off her face, and drinking her blood. He said he had absolute proof it’s true.
“This is proven beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty with physical, undeniable, irrefutable evidence,” Todeschini said.
When asked to produce that evidence, Todeschini could not.
