(Ken Silva, Headline USA) The polls were still open for the Ohio 2024 primaries as of the publication of this article, but a man vying to become the GOP’s candidate to represent Ohio’s 2nd congressional district had already published a concession speech Tuesday.
The candidate, self-purported FBI informant Derek Myers, who helped the feds target former GOP Rep. George Santos, attempted to retract the concession, which he apparently released by accident.
However, his message had already proliferated throughout the internet.
tfw you publish the prewrite pic.twitter.com/aZYnva8akx
— Nicholas Wu (@nicholaswu12) March 19, 2024
“Tonight did not go as we had hoped, but as we know, this race is decided in the primary. I want to give my congratulations to the Congressman-Elect. I’m looking forward to uniting behind him and working with him to get President Trump re-elected to the White House and evicting Joe Biden,” said Myers, who claimed that he gave his speech “from a private watch party in Chillicothe, surrounded by 100 of his close friends and supporters.”
“Listen, I’m in my thirties and as I’ve told everyone on this campaign trail, ‘if I don’t win this race, that’s okay! I’ve got thirty-or-fifty more years left — and that’s if I live a good life. I’m looking forward to staying in the arena of Ohio politics and working with all Republicans to make Ohio great again!” Myers’s concession statement read.
Eight minutes after blasting out his concession, a second email asked recipients to disregard it, blaming a “technical issue.”
The campaign sent out a more detailed account a half-hour later, explaining in Yoda-esque syntax to cap off its exasperating day, “Accidentally, the ‘send now’ button we clicked instead of ‘draft.'”
If it was a last-minute ploy to get his name in headlines across the country, Myers succeeded. However, he remained near the bottom of the pack in a field of 11 as returns in Ohio’s 2nd Congressional District, spaning much of the southern portion of the state, showed businessman David Taylor with the early lead to fill the seat of retiring Rep. Brad Wenstrup.
Myers’s seemingly inadvertent concession is the latest bizarre move for the recently minted Republican.
Myers ran for office in 2022 as a Democrat. He’s also the same person who claimed to have been recruited by the FBI to target former GOP Rep. George Santos.
Myers was a staffer for Santos, and said he left his role with the congressman and filed a sexual-harassment complaint against him last February. Myers told NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo last May that the FBI had approached him to inform against Santos while he was still working for the congressman.
“When I was working for the congressman as a legislative aide, I was approached by the FBI about infiltrating the congressman,” Myers said at the time. “The FBI was actively looking for someone close to the congressman so they could infiltrate him and try to get information from within his inner circle.”
To top it off, Myers purported to come out as an “FBI whistleblower.” Last month, he released a video in which he claimed to have been recruited by the FBI to infiltrate the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol Hill protest.
“I can tell you 100% definitively that there were indeed undercover human assets and plainclothes FBI agents inside the crowd on January 6, 2021,” said the candidate, Derek Myers, who claimed to have documents to prove his assertions.
“I know this because I was the member of a program and recruited by the FBI to take part in such events. I was recruited in 2017 to be a part of the FBI’s program—known as confidential human assets, or what we call field operatives.”
Santos, who was expelled from Congress last December and who faces federal fraud charges, has warned Ohio voters about Myers’s past.
“During my time in office he stalked me and my staff, offered bribes and much more… he’s a physical danger to all of the people who cross him, and was in my list of priorities with Capitol Police,” Santos said last month on Twitter.
“I urge you all to protect yourself and your staff as he is unhinged and unstable.”
Santos had a chuckle at Myers’s early demise on Tuesday.
“For those wondering what video is in the trash! LOL,” he said in a Twitter video sharing Myers’s speech.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
Headline USA’s Ben Sellers contributed to this report.
