Timothy Hale-Cusanelli Photo by Department of Justice

By Jacob Kornbluh September 12, 2024

Former President Donald Trump is under fire for allowing his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, to host several events organized by a Nazi sympathizer who was sentenced to four years in prison for participating in the Jan. 6 Capitol riots.

Timothy Hale-Cusanelli, has been described by the Department of Justice as a committed Nazi sympathizer and white supremacist who would show up to work at a naval weapons station with a “Hitler mustache” and tell coworkers that “Hitler should have finished the job.”

At a recent fundraiser at Bedminster for the Patriot Freedom Project, a nonprofit created to support Capitol riot defendants, Trump praised the attendees as “amazing patriots” in a video message, according to an NPR report published Thursday. The group was founded by Cynthia Hughes, Hale-Cusanelli’s adoptive aunt. The Patriot Freedom Project also hosted a fundraiser at Bedminster in August 2023. 

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Hale-Cusanelli has a history of trafficking in antisemitism. In 2020, he posted an online video railing against what he called a “Hasidic Jewish invasion” of Lakewood, New Jersey, and compared the Orthodox community there to a “plague of locusts.” He also harassed a Jewish man online in Ocean County, New Jersey, before Jan. 6 and threatened to visit his home on Shabbat. No charges were filed in that incident. 

Keith Krivitzky, the managing director of the Jewish Federation of Ocean County, told NPR that Trump should have been aware of the group before permitting it to host their event at Bedminster. “We believe that those who promote antisemitism — or prejudice or racism or bigotry in any form — should not be given a platform and encouraged to share their views,” Krivitzky said. A spokesperson for the Anti-Defamation League called on the Trump campaign to “disavow this individual and his antisemitic views.”  

Trump has hosted many fundraising events at Bedminster. Recently, he spoke at an event hosted by the GOP-aligned Stop Antisemitism advocacy group. In his speech to the group he repeated his criticism of Jewish Americans who vote for Democrats and called Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, the highest-ranking elected Jewish official in the U.S., a “Palestinian.” 

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