A Michigan lawmaker wore a pin of the American flag with a gold letter “Q” on it to a Tuesday rally outside the state Capitol in Lansing. When asked by a reporter for The Detroit News what the “Q” referenced, state Rep. Daire Rendon (R-Lake City) replied, “The ‘Q’ is the highest level of security in the federal government.” Her answer invoked a central tenet of the baseless, sprawling right-wing internet conspiracy theory QAnon. Mari Manoogian, a Michigan Democrat, claimed that this was not the first time Rendon has sported the button. “The first time I saw her wearing it on the floor of the House I was shocked,” she wrote on Twitter.

Rendon spoke at Tuesday’s rally, where protesters had gathered to demand another audit of state votes for the 2020 presidential election. “Now they’re telling us that there was nothing wrong with the election that we all saw,” Rendon said on the steps of the Capitol. “... Come on. We’re not that stupid! We know better! And now we’ve seen the evidence.” She added she’d seen “a lot of evidence,” without specifying what that “evidence” was. She said in an interview later that voting machines’ “logs” would prove that they had been hacked. “I haven't seen the logs or I'm not capable of reading them," Rendon said. “I’m not an I.T. expert.”