CONVICT CAPTAIN?

Trumpy Senate Hopeful Hit With Fresh Staff Scandal

Several of Mike Collins’ grassroots campaign leaders have criminal records.

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Several people with prominent roles in a Trump-endorsed Senate candidate’s campaign have criminal histories, including one who pleaded guilty to sexual battery in an incident involving his stepdaughter, the Daily Beast has learned.

Court records the Daily Beast reviewed show that several of Rep. Mike Collins’s appointed “convoy captains”—grassroots organizers he has credited with his “successful” campaign—have criminal backgrounds, casting doubt on the tough-on-crime stance he has promoted in his campaign to unseat Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff.

“Mike will always be tough on crime, and as your next senator, he’ll vote for strong borders, lower taxes, a booming economy in the greatest military anywhere in the world,” President Donald Trump said of Collins last month in a recorded Oval Office endorsement.’

Brett Benny Langham, one of Rep. Mike Collins’ campaign leaders, pleaded guilty to felony cruelty to children, sexual battery, and family violence simple battery in 2014, according to court documents reviewed by the Daily Beast. The charges stemmed from an incident involving Langham’s stepdaughter, who was younger than 16. Langham did not respond to questions from the Daily Beast and was sentenced to 30 days in prison and 10 years of probation.

Langham, who also serves as a district representative for the Richmond County Republican Party, is one of Collins’ “convoy captains”—campaign-appointed leaders tasked with grassroots organizing in their counties.

Joey Jackson, the convoy captain for Jenkins County, was charged last year with cruelty to children and failure to report child abuse after he failed to pull over a school bus while a 7-year-old passenger was beaten by seven other students, according to authorities. Jackson, then a school bus driver, was subsequently fired, according to a statement from the Bulloch County Sheriff’s Department. He did not respond to questions from the Daily Beast.

And Gordon Austin, a convoy captain in Carroll County, pleaded guilty in 2009 to six misdemeanor fraud counts, according to court documents. The court sentenced him to five years of probation, and his dentist’s license was later revoked.

Eventually, Austin, who served as a delegate at the Republican National Convention, was exonerated under Georgia’s First Offender Act, though the court denied his request to seal his case.

Collins has often praised his campaign captains, including at a political event in Morrow last month. “Y’all, we’ve got so many convoy captains across the state,” he said. “It is amazing because we do run a huge grassroots organization, it’s one of the reasons we’ve been so successful.”

In a statement to the Daily Beast, Meyer Siegfried, Collins’ spokesperson, said the campaign was unaware of the captains’ criminal backgrounds, emphasizing that they are unpaid volunteers.

“Their conduct does not represent Mike Collins or the more than 800 Georgians who volunteered because they want Mike Collins to deliver a more prosperous, safer, and more affordable Georgia,” Siegfried said.

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The revelations regarding Collins’ campaign associates come after the Daily Beast found several people involved with Collins’ Senate campaign have ties to a group founded by a former Ku Klux Klan leader. Joshua Mote and Michael Boggus, who are also convoy captains, have ties to American Patriots USA, a far-right group founded by Chester Doles, a former Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi National Alliance leader.

In August, racist online posts from Preston Parra, 24, who interned for Collins in 2024 before working for the lawmaker’s PAC until late May 2025, were unearthed, including images depicting himself as a KKK member and sharing swastikas. Parra defended his posts to The Washington Post as “satirical” and intentionally provocative.

In a debate against Ossoff on Tuesday evening, one panelist asked Collins point blank if he was a white nationalist. He asserted that he condemned “any sort of hate speech, antisemitism, hate of any kind.”

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Laura EspositoBreaking News Reporter

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