Pentagon deputy press secretary Kingsley Wilson in September 2024, when she was working at the Center for Renewing America. Photo: Screenshot

The new deputy press secretary for the US Department of Defense has come under heavy fire for peddling antisemitic conspiracy theories on social media.

In August 2024, Kinsley Wilson lambasted the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) for commemorating the death of hate-mob victim Leo Frank, arguing that Frank raped a teenager and attempted to pin the crime on a black man. 

“Leo Frank raped & murdered a 13-year-old girl. He also tried to frame a Black man for his crime. The ADL turned off the comments because they want to gaslight you,” Wilson posted on X/Twitter. 

Leo Frank raped & murdered a 13-year-old girl.

He also tried to frame a Black man for his crime.

The ADL turned off the comments because they want to gaslight you. https://t.co/u9Gn3wsb3D

— Kingsley Wilson (@KingsleyCortes) August 17, 2024

Frank, a Jewish factory manager, was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death by hanging for the rumored rape and the murder of 13-year-old Mary Phagan in Atlanta in 1913. Phagan was found dead in the basement of the factory in which Frank worked.

The 31-year-old’s sentence was later commuted to life in prison. However, an armed mob, infuriated by the decision to downgrade the sentence, abducted Frank from his jail cell and lynched him.

Frank was officially pardoned in 1986, and historians largely believe that he was wrongly convicted. Historians also believe that Frank’s trial and subsequent conviction were colored by antisemitism. During his court proceedings, thousands of spectators gathered and bellowed chants such as “hang the Jew.”

Many high-profile public figures have used Frank’s personal story to advance anti-Jewish tropes. For example, Candace Owens, a podcaster with an extensive history of antisemitic commentary, falsely claimed that Frank’s family believed in pedophilia and incest “as the sacramental rites and they would commit these acts, things that would normally be termed blood libel were actually happening.” Far-right social media personality Keith Woods also asserted that Frank was guilty, questioning why jurors in the Jim Crow-era south would elect to “lynch a wealthy and connected businessman?”

Wilson has also come under fire for a series of insensitive social media posts following the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.

On Oct. 12, 2023, in reference to the Israeli babies killed by Hamas during the onslaught, Wilson wrote “The images of the babies murdered by Hamas are horrific. I wish images of aborted babies evoked a similar global outcry.”

Five days later, Wilson suggested that the US distance itself from the Jewish state, writing that America should not “get involved in foreign ethnic conflicts.” There was no serious debate at the time, or since, about US troops fighting in the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

However, Wilson also expressed opposition to the US even providing support to Israel. In October 2024, Wilson lambasted the White House for giving aid to Israel, saying that the war between the Jewish state and Hamas is “none of our business.”

The newly minted Pentagon official has also previously complained about the US providing assistance to help Israel thwart direct Iranian missile attacks, asking why the US military is “defending Israel [and] Ukraine’s border but not our own.” She also bemoaned the Biden administration’s decision to “spend $95 billion on border defense for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan,” an apparent reference to a bipartisan foreign aid package passed by the US Congress last year, while not allocating money to complete the construction of a wall on the US-Mexico border.

Wilson has also posted support for the antisemitic “great replacement theory” — which posits that Jewish people are systemically importing masses of minorities into Western countries to erase white people. Wilson wrote that the conspiracy theory is a “regime-approved plan of action” to “displace citizens [and] alter our electorate.”

“The Great Replacement isn’t a right-wing conspiracy theory … it’s reality” Wilson wrote. 

Wilson’s comments have sparked backlash from both Democratic and Republican US lawmakers. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told Politico that Wilson’s remarks were “completely off-script” with President Donald Trump’s foreign policy agenda.

“I’m not gonna tell them who to hire, but I do know that Trump doesn’t believe any of the things she’s talking about, and I’ll leave it up to them to determine if they think she’s the right spokesperson,” Graham said.

Sen. Deb Fischer (R-NE) repudiated Wilson’s online commentary as “horrible.”

“Sometimes people think they’re anonymous when they’re on social media, that they can comment or post on whatever may be their attitude at the time, and then they later regret it,” she added.

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) issued a statement calling on Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to fire Wilson over her commentary.

“Doing a basic search through her social media history, it is clear that her record is a minefield of antisemitic rhetoric, white nationalist conspiracies,” Torres wrote.