MAGA nominee Kimberly Lowe caught on ice Threatening Butterfly Sanctuary at Texas border

Marianne Wright was in the middle of a meeting on January 21 when she received an incredible text from her son.

The two women are on their property and are asking her son to open the gate so they can go see “illegals crossing the raft.” The women, Wright later testified in an affidavit, said they were a congressional candidate and a Secret Service agent.

“Right away, we knew what it was,” Wright told The Daily Beast on Thursday. “It’s an echo and reiterates the lies that Steve Bannon’s ‘We Build The Wall’ campaign has been publicizing and promoting against us for years.”

Wright is the chief executive officer of National Butterfly Center, a private nature reserve in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley. The center is a sanctuary for hundreds of species of butterflies — and a frequent target of conspiracy theorists after Wright and her colleagues protested against plans to build a border wall between the government’s housing Trump authority.

But after last week’s bizarre confrontation with longtime congressional candidate Kimberly Lowe, the National Butterfly Center will be closed from January 28 to January 30, to avoid a far-right convention that promises to… engage supporters (including Lowe) on a field trip to the frontier.

Although the National Butterfly Center is located in Texas, Donald Trump’s proposed wall would run two miles north of the US-Mexico border, bisecting the protected land. In 2019, the center filed a restraining order against construction project. The court filing has made the center a permanent place for the right.

One Trumpist group, the Bannon-backed “We Build the Wall” campaign, has targeted the center with conspiracy theories. Brian Kolfage, a leader of the group, has repeatedly tweeted that the National Butterfly Center is harboring the illegal sex trade and corpses.

“The only butterflies we saw were swarming with a decomposing carcass surrounded by tons of rotting trash left by illegals,” he tweeted in 2019. Kolfage was hardly is a neutral party. His “We Build the Wall” raised more than $25 million by announcing it would build Trump’s border wall. (The Feds said the scheme was illegal. Kolfage and his business partners have since been charged with conspiracy to commit electronic fraud and conspiracy to launder money.)

In late 2019, conspiracy theorists circulated memes falsely accusing the National Butterfly Center of being a front for sex traffickers. Wright and colleagues have faced direct threats from members of militia groups such as the Oath Keepers and Three Percent, as well as threatening phone calls and emails from a man revealed to be a Texas police officer.

So when Wright’s son Nicholas called her about two women trespassing on National Butterfly Center property on January 21, Wright guessed they had something to do with conspiracy theories.

Nicholas “indicated that one of the women announced that she would run for Congress and the other claimed to be working for the Secret Service,” Wright wrote in an affidavit, reviewed by The Daily Beast. “I asked him to take their names. He turned around to tell me I could look her up at ‘Kimberly Lowe for Congress’ on Facebook. I kept looking for her and the first thing on her Facebook feed was a Facebook Live video of two women, broadcasting themselves with kids in a car, driving down Scheurbach, south of Military, on the official street is ‘Butterfly Park Dr. ‘”

Although Lowe, a longtime congressional candidate from Virginia, has deleted several Facebook videos of her trip to the butterfly center, one video remains showing her driving near the center and making announcements plan to go through a portal. In a video, from early May 21, Lowe and her colleague “Michelle” watch Border Patrol agents detain migrants, while Lowe describes himself as armed.

She said in a video: “I got my 9mm right here.

In her affidavit, Wright said she approached Lowe and Michelle and informed them that they were trespassing on private property. An audio recording, shared with The Daily Beast, reveals several confrontations.

“You are here to promote your agenda, and your agenda is not welcome here,” Wright said in the recording.

“You are not to prevent illegal things?” Michelle counter.

“So you are not to help all the poor in humanitarian crisis?” Lowe added. “You’re okay with children being trafficked, raped and murdered.”

When Wright asked the couple to leave, Michelle claimed that the Border Patrol had told them they could enter the property and that, “I’m federal—I work for the Secret Service, so no nothing is off limits for me.”

As Wright laughed at Michelle’s statement, Lowe seemed to begin narrating a video. “So we’re here with a woman who’s not a very nice person, kids OK—”

The sound is cut off when Wright hits or takes Lowe’s phone. Lowe said: “You didn’t take my phone.

In his affidavit, Wright said, “Lowe snatched her phone and appeared to be filming me. With Bannon, Kolfage, Neo-Nazi, Hardy Lloyd, and their various outlets publishing and broadcasting pictures of me, along with threats to the center, me and my children, I panicked. be afraid. I stopped her from doing this, either by smashing or taking away her phone and retreating inside the building to wait for the police.”

According to Wright’s testimony and the recording, someone shoved her to the ground. “Get down, bitch,” one of the visiting women is heard shouting. An altercation ensued after which Wright accused the women of taking her phone and refusing to return it. The women left when another Butterfly Center employee told them to call 911.

In Lowe’s now-deleted Facebook Live video, reviewed by The Daily Beast, Lowe and Michelle return to their car, where Michelle claims to have Wright’s phone. In her affidavit, Wright said her son went to close the central gate to prevent the pair from driving with the device. She said Lowe nearly hit her son while speeding towards the gate.

In her deleted video, Lowe appears to be driving towards someone, presumably Wright’s son.

“Stay away from me,” the congressional candidate said. “Get out of my damn way. Stay away from me. Oh my God. ”

Reached for comment, Lowe declined Wright’s account of the events.

“In short, this woman who attacked us verbally and physically,” Lowe wrote in the email, “stealed my phones, kidnapped us, and tried to stop us from leaving. when she filed a fake police report which the police found to be untrue and When she couldn’t do anything to me because this was purely a political attack she now fabricated More stories say I tried to hit her son when he ran to the gate to lock us in and block the exit with his hand. I’m not trying to hit him! ”

Lowe offered to send The Daily Beast her footage of the incident, but later said she was unable to do so, citing the excessive file size.

When asked about Michelle’s claims of being a Secret Service agent, Lowe wrote that “I think the woman [Wright] said not Michelle. ” (Michelle speaks with a Southern accent, distinct from Wright’s. On the recording, Wright can be heard calling Michelle’s statement “hilarious”).

Lowe also accused Wright of manipulating her social media followers about her. But although Wright alluded to the incident in a recent news release in which she announced the temporary closure of the Butterfly Center, she did not name Lowe or provide any identifying details about her.

Instead, the Butterfly Center attributed the impending closure to the three-day “We Stand America” ​​rally, which Lowe promoted on Twitter. That event, which will take place in nearby McAllen, Texas, will feature far-right speakers like former National Security Adviser Mike Flynn. The protest lasted from Friday to Sunday, culminating in a “caravan to the border,” where attendees will stage a four-hour rally.

Wright said the event brings the Butterfly Center into the ranks.

She said she consulted with a friend, who was involved in local Republican politics and who warned her to “always arm yourself, or better get out of the way.” town; that we shouldn’t even be at the center because they planned caravans to the border. “

The National Butterfly Center will be closed for the weekend. But Wright said the temporary closures are part of a long-term toll from a facility that should focus on protecting wildlife.

“It is very difficult to focus on our environmental education and conservation efforts,” she said.