Shortly after setting a giant cross on fire with dozens of other members of various white nationalist groups in Georgia on Saturday, Will Quigg, a Grand Dragon in a California branch of the KKK, sat down with Vocativ—which was there for a larger reporting trip about the modern state of the hate group—to talk about the 2016 election. According to Quigg, “For the KKK, Clinton is our choice.”
“She is friends with the Klan,” Quigg said. “A lot of people don’t realize that. She’s friends with Senator Byrd. He’s been an Exulted Cyclops in the Klan. He’s been King Kleagle.” (King Kleagle is another KKK title for the leader of an entire “realm,” or state. Quigg is the King Kleagle for California.) Quigg was referring to the late U.S. senator Robert Byrd from West Virginia, who organized and served as the leader of a West Virginia Klan chapter in the 1940s. In 2005, Byrd publicly disavowed the Klan and called his involvement “wrong.” Upon the senator’s death in 2010, Hillary Clinton called Byrd a “friend and mentor.”
Quigg said that he and other Klan members have raised more than $20,000 for the Clinton campaign and donated it anonymously.
“In the Bible, it says when you pray, pray in a closed, dark place by yourself,” Quigg said. “Do not pray on the street corners where people can see you … that’s why I got $20,000 together and sent it to Hillary Clinton’s campaign anonymously.”
Former Klan leader David Duke previously endorsed Trump in the 2016 presidential campaign—an endorsement Trump didn’t immediately disavow. Duke, however, does not speak for the Klan, according to Quigg.
As for Clinton, “All the stuff she’s saying now, she’s saying so she can get into office, okay? She doesn’t care about illegal immigrants—she’s acting like she does so she can get into office. Once she’s in office, then she’ll implement her policies. She’s a Democrat. The Klan has always been a Democratic organization,” Quigg said.
