Kimberly Lowe, a fringe candidate running against Rep. H. Morgan Griffith in Virginia’s 9th Congressional District Republican primary, hadn’t come to the National Butterfly Center to see the butterflies.
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She had come to investigate illegal immigration, according to the center’s executive director, Marianna Trevino Wright.
Trevino Wright had seen this before. The National Butterfly Center had been targeted for years by right-wing figures falsely claiming that human smuggling and child sex-trafficking took place on the center’s property, located near the Rio Grande in Mission, Tex. And when Trevino Wright asked Lowe and her friend to leave, telling them their agenda was “not welcome here,” Lowe told her, “I’m sorry you’re okay with children being raped and murdered,” according to audio of the Jan. 21 incident provided to The Washington Post.
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The incident, which culminated in Trevino Wright calling the police, was one of several at the National Butterfly Center in recent days that ultimately led the center to decide to close indefinitely.
National Butterfly Center closes after repeated threats stemming from false sex-trafficking claims
“The safety of our staff and visitors is our primary concern,” Jeffrey Glassberg, president and founder of the North American Butterfly Association, wrote in a newsletter announcing the closure, which linked to two articles about the incident involving Lowe. “We look forward to reopening, soon, when the authorities and professionals who are helping us navigate this situation give us the green light.”
The National Butterfly Center became a right-wing target after it filed a lawsuit seeking to block the Trump administration from building the border wall — but the harassment escalated after Brian Kolfage, founder of the crowdfunding endeavor “We Build the Wall,” baselessly accused the center of engaging in child sex-trafficking.
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Lowe’s visit preceded a three-day “We Stand America” border-security rally, during which some participants showed up at the butterfly center and repeated false claims about smuggling on the property, pushing the center over the edge as staff members feared for their safety at work. The event, which featured former Trump administration officials Thomas Homan and Michael Flynn, was billed as focusing on “Border Law Enforcement and the direct connection to Election Integrity from a Biblical worldview.”
The butterfly center closed for the event’s duration before deciding to extend the closure Wednesday.
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The harassment, Trevino Wright said, has made it difficult for her and her staff to focus on their work as butterfly scientists. She has been so stressed, she said, that she went to the emergency room for an electrocardiogram earlier this week.
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“It’s been horrible, and that’s probably putting it mildly,” Trevino Wright said in an interview.
Lowe is running a long-shot congressional bid against Griffith, after abandoning a challenge to Rep. Bob Good (R) in Virginia’s 5th District. Her most recent campaign finance report shows one donor besides herself.
She claimed that the organizers of the “We Stand America” rally “canceled” her and barred her from accessing a $2,500 VIP tour of the border with Flynn after news broke of the altercation she was involved in at the butterfly center. “When I get canceled on the left and the right, that tells me I’m walking on the right path — to be canceled by your own people,” she said in a Facebook video. The organizers of the event did not respond to a request for comment.
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The day before she showed up at the butterfly center, Lowe’s Facebook videos show her seeking to investigate drug smuggling and child sex-trafficking by following what she identifies as a government bus and suggesting that the government is facilitating child sex-trafficking. Such baseless claims echo the extremist ideology of QAnon, a sprawling set of falsehoods that have at times incited real-world violence, such as when a gunman showed up at Washington’s Comet Ping Pong in 2016 seeking to investigate false claims of child sex-trafficking.
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Lowe claimed in a five-page statement to The Post that she showed up at the butterfly center because a person told her it was the best way to access the Rio Grande to watch what was happening at the border, and that she had no idea the National Butterfly Center had been targeted in the past because of harmful misinformation.
Yet when Trevino Wright asked Lowe and her friend to leave, Lowe and the other woman proceeded to heckle Trevino Wright, according to the audio, accusing her of being indifferent to child sex-trafficking.
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“So we’re here with a woman who is not a very nice person, who’s okay with children —” Lowe can be heard saying, before being cut off, on the audio provided to The Post, which was previously reported by the Daily Beast. That’s when the altercation began.
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Trevino Wright tried to block Lowe from filming her. In an affidavit filed with the Mission Police Department and provided to The Post, Trevino Wright said she either knocked Lowe’s phone away or took it, panicking because of her past experiences with right-wing harassment.
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Lowe grabbed her phone and retreated to the car. But Trevino Wright said the altercation then continued with Lowe’s friend Michelle, who had claimed to be a Secret Service agent, and Trevino Wright ended up on the ground. A voice can be heard on the audio yelling, “Get the f--- down, b----!”
After Michelle returned to the car and Lowe started to leave, Trevino Wright’s son was standing in the driveway and trying to close the front gate, believing in the chaos that the women had taken his mother’s phone. “Get … out of my way!” Lowe yells. She claimed in the statement that she “safely drove around him,” but Trevino Wright said her son feared Lowe was going to run over him.
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Lowe denied Trevino Wright’s allegations about the incident, claiming that in fact she was the victim of assault, though she declined to pursue charges. She also said she would be suing news organizations for publishing what she described as false stories about her.
A spokesman for the Mission Police Department said no charges had so far been filed against Lowe, but that the incident remained under investigation and police were reviewing video footage.
“When you’re subject to this kind of disparagement and the activity that it brings about,” Trevino Wright said, “it’s practically impossible to focus on your mission and get about your regular business.”