‘Bundle of lies’: Duval School Board hopeful Carney decries video linking her to Jan. 6 riot

The partisan edge to the Duval County School Board’s nonpartisan District 2 race has sharpened with Democrats circulating a video linking candidate April Carney to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

“Rumors have been flying” about Carney’s presence at the Capitol, the Duval County Democratic Party’s Twitter account said last week while rolling out an online video that calls Carney dangerous. “Now we possibly have proof from April herself!”

The 54-second video spends 13 seconds displaying a Facebook post that refutes claims that leftist Antifa activists stormed the Capitol followed by a reply bearing Carney’s name and photo answering “WRONG. I was there.”

Carney’s campaign called the ad “an outrageous bundle of lies,” although Carney didn’t answer a reporter’s question about whether she was at the Capitol the day of the riot.

A political action committee's campaign mailer sent to many Beaches-area voters also hits on Carney's whereabouts Jan. 6, asking: "Why won't radical April Carney answer the question: Voters need to know!"

Carney is not among the roughly 800 people charged with committing crimes during the riot, when supporters of former President Donald Trump temporarily shut down a meeting of Congress that certified President Joe Biden’s election victory. Prosecutors have said more than 100 police officers were injured and the government incurred $2.7 million in “losses,” which included damage to the Capitol and costs incurred by Capitol police.

Carney, who has called herself “the conservative candidate” but is barred from using party affiliations, is running to unseat incumbent Elizabeth Andersen in the Aug. 23 election.

The race already had a partisan dimension, with Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis endorsing Carney and her campaign benefiting from exposure by right-wing media including former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast.

The video builds on that division by making repeated use of Bannon’s words from the interview, when he referred to the candidate tongue-in-cheek as a “domestic terrorist.” The phrase was used when Bannon asked Carney about groups like Moms for Liberty organizing people to talk at School Board meetings.

But the video suggests no irony when it shows Bannon referencing “domestic terrorist April Carney,” then intersperses scenes of Carney at public meetings and footage from the riot, including people confronting police and an image of a noose outside the Capitol.

“We know they’re dangerous,” a video narrator says. “They have a plan to push America backwards. You can’t reason with them or disagree with them. The people who are crazy enough to think they can stop progress will.”

The video plays with an image of the Facebook post, digitally reposting the “I was there” reply and Carney’s photo until it fills the screen. It then cuts to a text reading “too dangerous for our children” and “too dangerous for our schools.”

Emailed by a spokesman, a statement from Carney’s campaign said that “Duval Democrats resort to lying and smearing when an election isn’t going their way.”

The Facebook images, the campaign said, are “are completely fabricated. The date format and profile photos do not match Facebook conventions.”

Contacted by a reporter, the owner of the Facebook account represented in the video initially said by email that the posting was fake, but the following day said she had been mistaken and it was from her account.

Jacksonville resident Donna McQuade said she didn’t immediately remember the post, a link to a January 2021 NBC News story about an FBI official saying there wasn’t evidence of antifa involvement.

She said she couldn’t get to it on her cellphone when she was first asked, but checked her timeline later, when she was at a computer, and found it. She said she doesn’t know Carney and hadn’t thought about the posting.

The item was given new publicity last week by a blogger, Chris Guerrieri, who put a screen grab of the posting and apparent reply on Twitter Tuesday. Guerrieri, who first raised the subject of Jan. 6 and Carney in mid-July, said “a third party” sent him the image and he verified it with another person who had been part of a conversation thread that grew from the reply.

Guerrieri, who has raised the subject in social media since then, said had inquired through Carney’s website whether she had been at the Capitol riot, but had not received an answer.

Carney’s campaign said remarks attributed to her “were never made by Mrs. Carney” and the Facebook posts were phony.

“None of this passes the smell test because it is impossible to prove a lie,” the campaign statement said. “The voters see through this, and that will be apparent on Aug. 23rd.”

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Ad tying Duval School Board candidate to insurrection gets angry denial