Vish Burra

Last updated

Viswanag (Vish) Burra (born 1991) is an American political operative. He was director of operations for US representative George Santos. Previously, he was a regular on right-wing podcasts and web broadcasts, and had a role in the Hunter Biden laptop saga. He has also worked closely with figures such as Steve Bannon and Republican Matt Gaetz, [1] and is currently the Executive Secretary of the New York Young Republican Club. [2]

Contents

Personal

Burra is the son of South Indian immigrants. He currently lives in the Rosebank, Staten Island, New York City with his parents. He has a brother. [3]

Early career

Burra sold illegal narcotics in his early career. In 2014 he was arrested and convicted of possessing 2.5 lb of marijuana and a certain amount of psychedelic mushrooms. He was sentenced to three years probation. [3]

He then obtained technical training and worked in IT. [3]

Political career

Burra became interested in politics during the 2016 presidential election. He was disillusioned with Hillary Clinton and liked what he was hearing from Donald Trump. [3]

Burra then joined the Staten Island Young Republicans club and became active in their main branch in Manhattan (i.e., New York Young Republican Club). This led to a job as an assistant for Steve Bannon, where he helped produce Bannon's War Room podcast and was involved in the handling of Hunter Biden's hard drive. [3] Bannon fired him for going to a Young Republicans party instead of working. [3]

After being fired by Bannon, Burra was hired by Matt Gaetz in 2021 to help rebuild his reputation following a Department of Justice investigation into his relationship with an underage girl. Burra helped Gaetz set up a podcast and organized public appearances to regain public support. [3]

Burra also worked for Carl Paladino, a Republican from western New York who praised Adolf Hitler. Burra was responsible for controlling Paladino's message and managing his public image. [3] [4]

Prior to Santos' resignation from the House in a cloud of fraud and multiple indictments, Burra worked for Representative George Santos as his "director of operations". He joined Santos's team after Santos was exposed as a fraud and was working on a strategy to turn Santos into a figurehead for the MAGA wing of the party. [3] In 2023, Burra targeted a Long Island reporter named Jacqueline Sweet on social media with a series of menacing tweets in response to her coverage of Santos' indictment. The tweets escalated from denials of the accusations to suggestions of sexual violence against the reporter. [5]

Related Research Articles

A big lie is a gross distortion or misrepresentation of the truth primarily used as a political propaganda technique. The German expression was first used by Adolf Hitler in his book Mein Kampf (1925) to describe how people could be induced to believe so colossal a lie because they would not believe that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously". Hitler claimed that the technique had been used by Jews to blame Germany's loss in World War I on German general Erich Ludendorff, who was a prominent nationalist political leader in the Weimar Republic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hunter Biden</span> American businessman and lobbyist (born 1970)

Robert Hunter Biden is an American attorney and businessman. Biden has also worked as a hedge fund principal and a venture capital and private equity fund investor. He formerly worked as a banker, a lobbyist, and a legal representative for lobbying firms.

Fascism has a long history in North America, with the earliest movements appearing shortly after the rise of fascism in Europe. Fascist movements in North America never gained power, unlike their counterparts in Europe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cleta Mitchell</span> American lawyer, politician and conservative activist (born 1950)

Cleta B. Deatherage Mitchell is an American lawyer, politician, and conservative activist. Elected in 1976, Mitchell served in the Oklahoma House of Representatives until 1984, representing District 44 as a member of the Democratic Party. In 1996, she registered as a Republican. Since then, she has worked as a Republican lawyer and conservative activist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Matt Gaetz</span> American lawyer and politician (born 1982)

Matthew Louis Gaetz II is an American lawyer and politician who has served as the U.S. representative for Florida's 1st congressional district since 2017. The district includes all of Escambia, Okaloosa, and Santa Rosa counties, and portions of Walton County. A member of the Republican Party, he is widely regarded as a staunch proponent of far-right politics as well as an ally of former president Donald Trump.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Steve Bannon</span> American media executive and political strategist (born 1953)

Stephen Kevin Bannon is an American media executive, political strategist, and former investment banker. He served as the White House's chief strategist for the first seven months of U.S. president Donald Trump's administration. He is a former executive chairman of Breitbart News and previously served on the board of the now-defunct data-analytics firm Cambridge Analytica.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elise Stefanik</span> American politician (born 1984)

Elise Marie Stefanik is an American politician serving as the U.S. representative for New York's 21st congressional district. As chair of the House Republican Conference since 2021, she is the fourth-ranking House Republican. Stefanik's district covers most of the North Country and the Adirondack Mountains, some of the outer suburbs of Utica and the Capital District in New York. In addition to being the first woman to occupy her House seat, Stefanik was 30 when first elected to the House in 2014, making her the youngest woman elected to Congress at the time.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2024 United States elections</span> U.S. political contexts

The 2024 United States elections are scheduled to be held on Tuesday, November 5, 2024. During this presidential election year, the president and vice president will be elected. In addition, all 435 seats in the United States House of Representatives and 34 of the 100 seats in the United States Senate will be contested to determine the membership of the 119th United States Congress. Thirteen state and territorial governorships and numerous other state and local elections will also be contested.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brian Kolfage</span> US Air Force veteran and political fundraiser

Brian Kolfage is an American far right political activist, former United States Air Force airman, and convicted fraudster. He co-founded We Build the Wall, a private organization that purportedly aimed to construct a privately funded barrier on the Mexico–United States border; he pleaded guilty in 2022 to federal fraud and tax crimes for defrauding donors to the group.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">New York Young Republican Club</span> American political youth organization

The New York Young Republican Club (NYYRC) is an organization for members of the Republican Party between the ages of 18 and 40 in Manhattan. The New York Young Republican Club is the oldest and largest chapter in the United States, founded in 1911 with predecessor organizations going back to 1856. The club is affiliated with and officially recognized by the New York State Young Republicans and the Young Republican National Federation, as well as the borough, state, and national Republican committees.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Citizens of the American Republic</span>

Citizens of the American Republic (COAR) was an American 501(c)(4) non-profit organization founded by Steve Bannon in 2017.

The Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory is a series of false allegations that Joe Biden, while he was vice president of the United States, improperly withheld a loan guarantee and took a bribe to pressure Ukraine into firing prosecutor general Viktor Shokin to prevent a corruption investigation of Ukrainian gas company Burisma and to protect his son, Hunter Biden, who was on the Burisma board. As part of efforts by Donald Trump and his campaign in the Trump–Ukraine scandal, which led to Trump's first impeachment, these falsehoods were spread in an attempt to damage Joe Biden's reputation and chances during the 2020 presidential campaign, and later in an effort to impeach him.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Santos</span> American politician (born 1988)

George Anthony Devolder Santos is an American politician. He served as the U.S. representative for New York's 3rd congressional district from January to December 2023, before he was expelled from Congress.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Republican reactions to Donald Trump's claims of 2020 election fraud</span>

Members of the United States Republican Party have reacted differently to Republican president Donald Trump's false claims about the 2020 United States presidential election, with many publicly supporting them, many remaining silent, and a few publicly denouncing them. Trump falsely claimed to have won the election, and made many false and unsubstantiated claims of election fraud. By December 11, 2020, 126 out of 196 Republican members of the House backed a lawsuit filed in the United States Supreme Court supported by nineteen Republican state attorneys general seeking to subvert the election and overturn the election results. The Trump campaign hired the Berkeley Research Group to investigate whether there had been voter fraud. The researchers found nothing, and the consultancy reported this to Trump and his chief of staff Mark Meadows on a conference call in the final days of the year, before the attack on the Capitol.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Donald Trump 2024 presidential campaign</span>

Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021, announced his campaign for a nonconsecutive second presidential term in the 2024 U.S. presidential election on November 15, 2022.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election</span> U.S. historical and political event

After Democratic nominee Joe Biden won the 2020 United States presidential election, Republican nominee and then-incumbent president Donald Trump pursued an unprecedented effort to overturn the election, with support and assistance from his campaign, proxies, political allies, and many of his supporters. These efforts culminated in the January 6 United States Capitol attack by Trump supporters, which was widely described as an attempted coup d'état. One week later, Trump was impeached for incitement of insurrection but was acquitted by the Senate by a vote of 57–43, 10 votes short of the 67 votes required to convict him.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hunter Biden laptop controversy</span> US political controversy

In October 2020, a controversy arose involving data from a laptop that belonged to Hunter Biden. The owner of a Delaware computer shop, John Paul Mac Isaac, said that the laptop had been left by a man who identified himself as Hunter Biden. Mac Isaac also stated that he is legally blind and could not be sure whether the man was actually Hunter Biden. Three weeks before the 2020 United States presidential election, the New York Post published a front-page story that presented emails from the laptop, alleging they showed corruption by Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee and Hunter Biden's father. According to the New York Post, the story was based on information provided to Rudy Giuliani, the personal attorney of incumbent president and candidate Donald Trump, by Mac Isaac. Forensic analysis later authenticated some of the emails from the laptop, including one of the two emails used by the Post in their initial reporting. Later assertions by Twitter owner Elon Musk and others that the government had ordered the company to suppress the Post story to favor Joe Biden in the weeks leading to the election were not supported by a Twitter Files examination authorized by Musk.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Battle for the Soul of the Nation speech</span> 2022 speech by US President Joe Biden

The Battle for the Soul of the Nation was a speech given by U.S. President Joe Biden on September 1, 2022, two months before the 2022 midterm elections. It was televised during prime time from the front of Philadelphia's Independence Hall. Biden was critical of Donald Trump and Republicans adhering to the Make America Great Again movement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2024 New York Republican presidential primary</span>

The 2024 New York Republican presidential primary was held on April 2, 2024, as part of the Republican Party primaries for the 2024 presidential election. 91 delegates to the 2024 Republican National Convention were allocated on a winner-take-most basis. The contest will be held alongside the primaries in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Queens County Republican Party</span> Affiliate of the Republican Party in New York City

The Queens County Republican Party also known as the Queens Republican Party, Queens GOP or simply as Queens Republicans, is a regional affiliate of the United States Republican Party for the borough of Queens in New York City, New York.

References

  1. ↑ Walker, Hunter (January 28, 2023). "Meet Vish Burra, The Chaos Agent Behind The Most Scandalous Member Of Congress". Talking Points Memo . Retrieved January 29, 2023.
  2. ↑ Bidgood, Jess (2024-04-15). "Donald Trump, the Defendant". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2024-04-16.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 McCreesh, Shawn (March 2, 2023). "George Santos, MAGA 'It' Girl". Intelligencer.
  4. ↑ Fandos, Nicholas (2022-06-09). "Paladino Draws Backlash for Calling Hitler 'the Kind of Leader We Need'". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2024-04-16.
  5. ↑ Rohrlich, Justin (May 12, 2023). "George Santos Staffer Faces Discipline for Menacing Sexual Comments to Reporter". The Daily Beast .
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.