Pennsylvania mom Libby Leonard had been dead for a year and a half when her Facebook page began attacking another mother.
“EVERYONE...Say Hi to a real DUMB worst word you can call a woman (because she earned it),” the March 14 post begins. “Can’t wait for her to meet her KARMA...It’s already beginning, but until then I think a taste of her own medicine is amusing. However, I will be sharing legally and EVERYWHERE.”
Of course Libby didn’t write this. She was stabbed to death by her children’s babysitter in 2021. Instead, the post appears to have been authored by Nicole Prussman, a local leader of the right-wing group “Moms for Liberty” who had inserted herself in Libby’s life and marriage before her tragic demise.
The rant’s target was a New York mother who opposed Moms for Liberty’s efforts to intimidate teachers and remove certain books from classrooms. Now that mother has filed a complaint with police, who issued a harassment citation for Prussman, a 42-year-old mom and self-styled “educational consultant” who has yet to enter a plea in the case. (On Wednesday, a summary trial was scheduled for May 4 and the name of Prussman’s attorney was entered into the record. He could not be reached by press time.)
She’s one of multiple people to accuse Prussman of bad behavior, ranging from allegedly opening unauthorized credit cards in a foe’s name, to calling people the n-word and saying they should hang from a noose, to catfishing.
Moms for Liberty—founded in 2021 and generously funded by allies on the right—has emerged on the front lines of efforts to ban school books relating to race, gender, and LGBT rights. Last July, the group featured Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis as the keynote speaker for its national summit in Tampa, and DeSantis recently appointed Moms for Liberty co-founder Bridget Ziegler to a board overseeing Disney theme parks in Orlando. This week, the group made national headlines after a Florida chapter chair got a graphic novel based on the diary of Anne Frank removed from a local high school’s library.
Prussman is just one participant in these nationwide battles, which have led to attacks on school board officials and teachers alike. In Sarasota County, Florida, one woman linked to Moms for Liberty suggested a gay school board member was a groomer at a public meeting. Another school board member in Brevard County said followers of one chapter were “following me to my car screaming at me” after she triumphed over their candidate in the 2020 election. “I had private investigators following me around, sending death threats to me,” she said.
To some community members—especially those working to fight Moms for Liberty’s efforts in Pennsylvania—Prussman has become a notorious instigator who hosted meetings instructing people on how to report teachers to the state and who left nasty voicemails for opponents.
According to Pennsylvania State Police, Prussman fired off messages to the rival mom, despite the woman asking her “various times to stop contacting them.” The public information release report didn’t disclose many other particulars, but screenshots of messages reviewed by The Daily Beast reveal that Prussman unleashed a flurry of aggressive texts on the 45-year-old alleged victim, who reported Prussman to cops on March 15.
“Our children’s education is a very serious topic and your abusive actions are atrociously childish and dangerous,” Prussman wrote on Facebook Messenger to the alleged victim, who is a member of a Facebook group called “Pennsylvania Stop Moms for Liberty.”
“Please stop contacting me,” the accuser replied. “This is harassment.”
“Nope. It’s social media and I am asking questions regarding 32 posts, made by you, on this platform,” said Prussman, who until very recently was listed on the Moms for Liberty website as Monroe County’s chapter leader. “What is harassment is the use of my name. Threats to my organization and calls of violence against to [sic] my people.”
But while Prussman blasted the woman for “use of my name,” the Moms for Liberty leader was also allegedly using Libby’s account to send the rival mom aggressive messages, multiple people said. “You’re a fucking coward and shameful example of a human. You’re a fucking piss ant and I will laugh as your family suffers,” Libby’s account wrote, before suggesting she would distribute an unflattering flyer of the victim and her children: “Real great image of you and the girls.” She added, “Threats, Calls to violence….See you in court WHORE.”
“We are having a party tonight and your family has been the mock of the night,” the account continued in another message. “So a response tonight would be great.”
It’s unclear why Prussman claimed her chapter was facing “calls of violence.” The alleged victim had shared a Facebook post asking people to spread awareness about what she called Moms for Liberty’s attempts “to defund the public school system and introduce extremism.”
The accuser declined to comment outside of a statement to The Daily Beast. “It is never okay to threaten and frighten someone and their family,” she said. “Despite the harassment and intimidation I have faced, I will continue to speak up to protect our schools and students.”
“Schools should be places where students feel safe to learn and where students have the freedom to be themselves,” she added. “Anyone who is fighting to dismantle public education needs to stop pretending they care about children.”
Prussman also offered a comment, via a Moms for Liberty spokesperson.
“I am exercising my First Amendment right to advocate for young public school students - many with IEPs and 504s [referring to students with disabilities]- who are being harmed by being exposed to sexual and sexually violent curriculum at school,” Prussman said via email. “Those who disagree with my perspective think they can make complaints to silence me and stop me from helping other parents who have been targeted for expressing their concerns, but I am working to protect the children who cannot speak up for themselves.”
She did not answer specific questions. Moms for Liberty declined to comment outside of Prussman’s statement.
Prussman’s alleged history of aggressive phone calls and wild claims dates back to before her leadership role with Moms for Liberty. Friends and family of Libby Leonard say Prussman harassed them before and after Libby’s death.
Prussman and Libby met several years ago, when Libby began babysitting Prussman’s children, Libby’s estranged husband Justin told The Daily Beast. “That was the downfall of our marriage,” Justin said. “She’s like a vulture and she just latched onto Libby.”
Courtney Ronko, one of Libby’s closest friends, offered a similar account. “Nicole was kind of like the catalyst to all the crap that went on between them [Libby and Justin] with the allegations and the court and the fighting and everything,” Ronko told The Daily Beast. “I felt like I was in an HBO special. I couldn’t really believe all of this was going on. When Nicole was at Libby’s house, I would just listen to them go back and forth. It was so hard to listen to. Nicole likes to throw court laws out, like she’s a defense attorney.”
The Leonards’ split was bitter. Libby accused Justin of felony strangulation. He pleaded no contest, though he maintains he never committed the act.
Amid the couple’s separation, Justin began receiving flirtatious messages from a Facebook user named “Natalia Peters.” Peters used a stock photo of a blonde woman as her profile picture and, despite telling Justin she was single, had described herself as married in a glowing review for one of Prussman’s companies, College Coaching Pro’s [sic]. When Justin accused her of catfishing, “Peters” said he was stalking and threatening her, and that she would call the police.
“Peters” also contacted Libby, sharing an unflattering infographic she’d made of Justin. Libby shared Peters’ profile with a friend, who voiced skepticism. “Is that even a real Facebook page?” the friend asked. “Like have you met that person? No friends to show, no posts really, no photos of her but 1.” Libby said she hadn’t met Peters, but was grateful for the account’s support.
During the Leonards’ child custody case, Justin began receiving invoices from a school in which Libby had enrolled their two children. The school, which was open during COVID-19 shutdowns, was called NEPA Day Camp. One such invoice, reviewed by The Daily Beast, charged Justin $1,120 for 16 days of school.
But NEPA Day Camp does not appear to exist. Neither Justin nor his attorneys were able to locate information about the camp. No facility of its name or similar in its town is listed in public Pennsylvania child care registries. The Pennsylvania Department of Human Services, which licenses child care centers, told The Daily Beast that it has “no record of application for licensure by or any prior complaints about a facility operating under this name.”
When Justin and his attorneys contacted the supposed day care, Prussman answered. In emails reviewed by The Daily Beast, Prussman declined to state whether her facility was licensed, and instead heaped personal insults on Justin and his legal team, calling them mentally disabled and claiming to have reported Justin to various authorities.
“At the end, I want to know what you ALL think and WHAT you are going to do to STOP this deceit, mockery of the Monroe County PA court system, and criminally offensive behavior,” Prussman wrote (stylization hers). “I WIL NOT STAND FOR THIS IN MY COMMUNITY! I WILL NOT HAVE MY CHARACTER AND BUSINESS ATTACKED BY A DOMESTIC OFFENDING DRUG ADDICT, WHO IS LIKELY ARMED AND ALREADY CLEARLY DANGEROUS.”
That was March 2021. In October of that year, 26-year-old Lavrius Watson called 911 from Libby’s house. “Somebody got killed,” Watson told operators, crying.
Watson, who had reportedly known Libby for seven years, had been hired to babysit her children. He and Libby shared a marijuana cookie (Libby had a legal medical marijuana card, friends said), after which Watson claimed to have suffered an adverse reaction. He stabbed Libby repeatedly in the stomach, killing her. “Why did I do that?” Watson asked police when they arrived on the scene.
The senseless slaying made national news. But when it came to cleaning out Libby’s home, Prussman was one of the first on the scene, according to friends and family. While in the home, multiple people said, she took some of Libby’s belongings, including her laptop. Prussman appeared to admit to taking the laptop in a recording shared with The Daily Beast.
“There was just shit piled there, with her laptop. I took it as garbage, so I picked it up,” Prussman told one of Libby’s acquaintances in the recording. Asked whether the act was legally troubling, Prussman responded, “I think I’m alright. I’m kind of asking around for confirmation.”
The laptop was still logged into Libby’s Facebook account—a fact Libby’s friends discovered when the account’s “active” light went green. Libby’s friend Ashley Zibaie was one of several people to message Libby post-mortem.
“Libby, I’m so sad,” Zibaie wrote on October 18, 2021. Three days later, she received a response.
“My name is Nicole Prussman. I am part of Libby’s protection team,” the response began, going on to request information on Libby’s death and to state that “moving forward I will be the public point person. All communications outside the protection team will go through me.”
Behind the scenes, however, Prussman was at odds with Libby’s family—and had even been estranged from Libby at the time of her death, multiple people said.
Ronko, who said she spoke to Libby most days, said Libby and Prussman had fallen out months earlier over an argument about a birthday party. “Libby was supposed to bring hot dogs or something and she was running late,” she said. “Nicole completely flipped out on her when she got there, called her a piece of shit, all this stuff.”
Nevertheless, after Libby’s death, Prussman launched a GoFundMe account, ostensibly to benefit Libby’s kids. The fundraiser was unauthorized, said Libby’s family, which was running its own fundraiser for the children. Screenshots reveal Prussman’s fundraiser raised at least $2,000 of its $15,000 goal before it was shut down. Libby’s family members said they do not know what became of the money. The fight over the illegitimate fundraiser led Prussman to demand a public statement from the grieving family, even going so far as to demand Libby’s sister “sign and notarize an apology” to her. And soon she went further.
Before her death, Libby had placed Ronko and Prussman in charge of a life insurance plan that would benefit her children. After Libby was murdered, Ronko says Prussman began hounding her to sign over the policy to her. Ronko refused, and eventually stopped answering.
“Once I stopped communicating with her, she started to constantly text me,” Ronko said. “She had other people call me. She threatened to come to my business. I basically just filed a police report to let them know I had somebody threatening to come here. I didn’t know what the hell she was going to do. I wasn’t going to fill out any paperwork because I didn’t want her to get this money when it’s for the kids.”
Shortly after Libby’s death, Justin received a Google security alert informing him that someone had tried to log into one of his accounts from the town where Prussman lived. Then he received an alert from his credit-monitoring company. Someone had opened two credit cards in his name, apparently using his social security number. Then came the text messages.
“Fucked your credit [...] Enjoy those credit cards man with a cunt as a mama,” boasted a text to Justin from a Pennsylvania area code. The texts, reviewed by The Daily Beast went on to threaten “we’re watching you mother fucker. How many cocks have you had in your ass high as fuck you tramp stamped cock sucking n****r” (redaction by The Daily Beast).
The messages continued from a second phone number, which shared a version of an anti-Justin infographic similar to one “Natalia Peters” had sent Libby. The texts called for hanging Justin and his mother “from noose” and repeatedly invoked the insult “fucktard.”
Even during Libby’s life, the Natalia Peters account had used the insult “fucktard” in messages to Justin’s family. In May 2020, Peters messaged one of Justin’s cousins, demanding to know whether he “supported” Justin, and threatening an “investigation” at the bar where the cousin worked. When the cousin asked Peters “not to reach out to me,” she accused him of “threatening” her and went on to repeat insults like “fucktard” “#trampstampman” and “#mamascunt.”
After Libby’s murder, Zibaie and other friends grew uncomfortable with Prussman’s apparent use of their dead friend’s account, especially after Prussman launched her dubious fundraiser. The Libby and Peters accounts attacked the women, calling them “cows,” and “douche bags” who made “nasty, inappropriate, tacky, poorly placed disgustingly timed comments” and “piss poor choices.” (In one post attacking Zibaie, Prussman included a screenshot of Zibaie’s page. The screenshot inadvertently also showed Prussman logged into Peters’ account.)
“You ladies all seriously need to be legal smacked,” the Peters account told Libby’s friends in another message. “I can not wait to share all of this [screenshots of arguments] and I surely hope non [sic] of you have family at risk for which you choice would make you look poorly.”
The tactics were especially troubling for Libby’s friends, who knew her from a domestic violence support group. “It was re-traumatizing,” Zibaie said. “At the root of domestic violence is coercive control. That’s essentially what Nicole was doing with all of these coercive tactics: the threats, the intimidation, the stalking.”
After Prussman’s recent harassment charge, Justin’s brother messaged Libby’s account, asking about Prussman’s mugshot. “Never be as good as your BROTHER’S. you dumb fuckin’ monkey,” came the response from Libby’s account. “N**ga is what n**ga does and the Leonard know N****RS”
Libby’s Facebook profile, where her photographs and writing still lived, was deleted in late March, after Prussman’s citation for harassment made local news.
Prussman became chair of the Monroe County Moms for Liberty chapter sometime in late 2022 or early 2023. At the time of her harassment citation, the Moms for Liberty website listed her as the chapter chair, but it removed that listing in late March. The page currently does not display any members’ names.
She was involved with the chapter earlier, giving a talk for the group in June. Footage from the event shows her boasting of having reported area librarians en masse. “As a parent, as a taxpayer, I have reported every librarian in Monroe County,” Prussman told the group, to applause.
She also described her past work as a teacher in the New York City school system, explaining that teachers can search students for contraband if the student agrees. “It’s actually the number one way I used to get my kids arrested,” she said. “I always knew they had drugs. They all had pot. If I needed a kid removed, I would just ask the question and 90 percent of the time, they’d say something stupid and that was enough to remove them from my classroom.”
She claimed to have worked in city schools until around 2012, when she was placed on leave (in the “rubber room,” a limbo destination for NYC teachers awaiting misconduct rulings).
“I started teaching in 2005. I left education in 2012 after getting sent to the rubber room for racist allegations,” Prussman said in the video. “And I stayed there for 14 months, because if any of you know me, I don’t agree. You know I do not comply, and no I will not sign your piece of paper, I don’t care where it puts me.” (The NYC Department of Education did not return requests for comment, although public records indicate that Prussman was on the payroll during that period.)
In her remarks, Prussman also derided the majority-Black and Latino school district she was zoned into, stating that she would not send her child there because it was “ghetto.”
“I did not do 10 years in the south Bronx and east Harlem so I could send my child to ghetto Pocono schools,” she said. “Sorry. Not why I moved here. NOT WHY I MOVED HERE, COMMUTING FOR FIVE YEARS TO NEW YORK CITY SO MY KID COULD GO TO SCHOOL IN THE SOUTH BRONX OF MOUNT POCONO!”
Most of Prussman’s crusade against Pennsylvania teachers and education officials has occurred online and over the phone.
“You have been sexually abusing students in your classroom with age-inappropriate texts, and you are violating eighth-grade standards, according to the Pennsylvania state,” Prussman accused a teacher in a voicemail reviewed by The Daily Beast. The teacher’s supposed offense: assigning the acclaimed young-adult novel Speak, which depicts a teenager overcoming the trauma of sexual assault. In the voicemail, Prussman said she was organizing a town hall meeting about the teacher, who needed to change her “wicked ways.”
A source with knowledge of the situation said that in March, the teacher filed a complaint with police about Prussman’s calls to her personal cellphone. (According to a voicemail reviewed by the Daily Beast, an officer informed the teacher that he spoke with Prussman and “advised her that she’s no longer to have any contact with you whatsoever” and that “any subsequent contact will result in filing a harassment citation.” Prussman’s calls apparently stopped after that.)
The trouble began when another district employee didn’t want her son to read Speak and went to the teacher’s principal to complain. The woman had claimed her child and others stayed after class and confronted the teacher about how uncomfortable they were with the book—an allegation the teacher denies ever happened. “She started a witch hunt and started getting other parents, who also had kids in the class, to call and complain,” the source said.
Around the same time, one local mom, Leilani Prieto, lashed out in a Facebook post about the book, announced that a group would complain at an upcoming school board meeting, and tagged Monroe County’s Moms for Liberty chapter. Prieto shared a link for a “#SaveStroudsburg” town hall that Prussman hosted in March. “Join with out [sic] worries as your attendance online is kept confidential,” Prieto wrote.
Krista Paolucci—a onetime Republican candidate for state office, vice chair for Moms for Liberty, and self-described “homeschooler”—also commented on the post and suggested people file complaints with Moms for Liberty’s online “School Incident Report Form.”
Prussman, the source told The Daily Beast, held a gathering to discuss Speak and instruct people on filing complaints against the teacher.
“The book is about hope and encouraging kids to speak out,” the person said, adding that Moms for Liberty and its supporters “haven’t even read the book. They have no idea what the book is about or the message that it sends to kids.”
At Stroudsburg school board meetings in February and March, parents working with or inspired by Moms for Liberty used the public comments session to lambast the novel. One local mom told the board that Speak’s depiction of sexual assault could corrupt young men. “They have just begun to enter puberty,” she said. “Do you think that rape should be their first introduction [to sex], something they could possibly be getting aroused by?”
But one high school senior, Jessica Brady, took a jab at Prussman’s group: “For an organization with the word liberty in your name, you are working incredibly hard towards enacting censorship.” She later added, “If you believe that your sons will be aroused by a telling of sexual assault, you are the problem.”
At the start of the proceeding, a man named George Yuhas, who refused to state whether he was a resident of Stroudsburg, demanded hard copies of agendas and other records and insisted officials stop the meeting to print them out. Yuhas’ lengthy disruption led to the board calling police, as other districts have done in response to him, news reports reveal.
When the board turned off Yuhas’ microphone, Prussman too began making demands over Zoom. “Your public has an absolute right to hear this meeting,” declared Prussman, who also doesn’t live in the district. “You are to immediately return the sound.”
“As a public tax-paying citizen,” Prussman shouted, “I have a right to hear what is happening in a governmental meeting. Return the mic to the online!”
Prussman’s antics extend beyond public meetings.
She left Democratic state Rep. Tarah Probst multiple intimidating voicemails just before her election in November.
“I am going live today with 290 families from Stroudsburg Area School District,” Prussman fumed, adding, “I will be telling these people that I’m doing the presentation for that I left you seven messages... You have been lying about educational data.”
“I’d love if you could put your big girl pants on, pick up a phone and actually return a call,” Prussman continued. “But let’s be serious, Tarah, you’re subpar and substandard and that’s what I’m going to tell your constituency today.”
Before hanging up, Prussman mocked Probst for having attended public schools as a kid and seethed, “Have a wonderful day. I’m sorry you’re subpar, and I look forward to outing you to the world.”
Probst, who was then mayor of Stroudsburg, told The Daily Beast that Moms for Liberty has only created “chaos and false narratives” at public forums.
“They’re out for the demise of public education,” Probst said, “and I can tell you that my county will not stand for it.”
Erin DeRosa, a school board member who works as Probst’s district office director, said she’s also had several run-ins with Prussman, who began leaving her voicemails last fall when she worked for another state legislator, Maureen Madden. “We all share the same story,” DeRosa said. “That woman is relentless, and frightening. She has gone down some sort of rabbit hole.”
Elected officials weren’t Prussman’s only targets; people who supported candidates online also found themselves tangling with the Moms for Liberty chair.
Linda Zak told The Daily Beast that she began receiving voicemails from Prussman in October, after she posted on Facebook that Krista Paolucci, a Republican running for state representative, seemed to be afraid to debate Madden, the Democratic incumbent. Prussman, a Paolucci supporter, first left a voicemail with an invitation to do an “interview”; in another message, Prussman warned Zak, “I’m going to call your neighbors and see what they have to say about you.”
“They were silky, sickly, sweetly threatening,” Zak recalled of the voicemails.
Eventually, a neighbor called Zak and said she “got a weird phone call” from a woman who claimed to be writing an article about her. The woman, believed to be Prussman, asked what the neighbor thought of Zak’s “integrity and moral character.”
“She was oblivious to the sinister implications,” Zak said of the neighbor, “but if this woman called any other neighbors who don’t know me well, it would have made them wonder what I’d done that needed ‘investigation.’”
Zak said that by this point, Prussman was well-known to the area activists.
“This woman just went berserk, but apparently was going berserk on everybody.”
Prussman isn’t the only Moms for Liberty ally parents are watching, and the group’s name is surfacing at school board meetings and debates.
Maggie Hartmann, who this year is running for the Pocono Mountain School Board, said the “parental rights” posse is targeting all four school districts in Monroe County and attends public meetings in groups. “That’s why we started going on teams,” she said of the effort to counteract Moms for Liberty’s growth in Northeastern Pennsylvania.
Hartmann told The Daily Beast that initially, she wasn’t anti-Moms for Liberty but instead “pro-reading.” But she soon grew concerned about how members of the group seemed to parrot the same talking points, “like a broken record,” about COVID masks and the state’s Sunshine Act. “I’m using my platform to say to both parties, ‘Look, this is a toxic group of people in our community, and we have to stop them together,’” she said. “And I’m getting feedback from both parties saying, ‘OK, what do I need to do?’”
In February, some community members of “Pennsylvania Stop Moms for Liberty” encouraged people to contact a local rock-climbing business to warn them about the chapter, which was circulating a flier for their event at the venue. The business apparently canceled Moms for Liberty’s booking as a result.
On March 1, Moms for Liberty organizer Jessica Granzen complained at a Pocono Mountain School Board meeting that the opposition Facebook group was “threatening” area businesses that hosted her chapter’s parent resource events.
“They are calling for other members of the group to call, harass, threaten, protest, and picket any business that hosts Moms for Liberty members,” Granzen griped, according to a video of the meeting. She added that “Members of the Monroe County Moms for Liberty have received death threats and hate mail in response to this Stop Moms for Liberty page.”
Since Prussman’s harassment charge, people who previously identified as Moms for Liberty leaders appeared to be backing away from the group.
In late March, Monroe County’s NAACP branch held a candidates forum for the Pleasant Valley School Board, and the moderator asked contenders to “self-identify” as Moms for Liberty members. “Something came to my attention today and I am compelled to ask,” NAACP chapter president Christa Caceres told the room, adding, “It’s my understanding that there are several candidates in this room who are members of Moms for Liberty.”
None of the candidates came forward. Caceres told the room she didn’t enjoy putting the spotlight on people but that it was “an organization in this county that is now getting some press and publicity.”
“These women have made it clear that they intend to change the school boards, they intend to prioritize certain things over other things, and I’m simply saying we’re all adults in this room, let’s be honest, let’s be transparent, and let’s have a discussion.”
The school board hopefuls then passed around the microphone, denying involvement with Moms for Liberty one by one. “I am not a member of the Moms for Liberty,” one candidate stood up and said. The next grabbed the mic and chimed in, “I’m not a member of the Moms for Liberty either.”
Known Moms for Liberty boosters, however, were in attendance.
Leia Leuthardt, who identified herself as the Monroe County chapter co-founder, claimed she is “no longer affiliated” with the group.
“When we started it was to hold school boards accountable for the funds that they were not spending on our children,” said Leuthardt, who was seated next to other chapter members. “I am no longer affiliated with Moms for Liberty. Most of us in this room who have shown up tonight are not affiliated with Moms for Liberty, because of some of the turns that took.”
When Caceres asked her to elaborate, Leuthardt said, “You can read the news.”
It’s unclear whether Leuthardt was referring to the “news” about Prussman’s police report. She didn’t return messages left by The Daily Beast.
“I really don’t want to get into it,” Leuthardt continued, “because you all… automatically assume that we are terrorists and that we show up to degrade people, and we don’t.”
Days after the forum, the Monroe County chapter’s vice chair, Krista Paolucci, shared some guidance on the group’s private Facebook page.
“As the world escalates, we must lead the way by being Joyful Warriors!” she wrote. “Be thoughtful. Be Strategic. Be smart. It is looking like things are going to get worse before they are going to get better. It is NOT time to cower but it is time to fortify.”
Paolucci’s post included an image with the Moms for Liberty logo and a header reading, “When attacked in person or online….” with an enumerated list.
The graphic instructed members to “Be calm, but steadfast,” and “If confronted, walk away.”
“If someone says ‘Do not contact me’ (even if they contact you) Do NOT respond,” the code of conduct continues. “Remember your kids are watching.”