A Republican activist who has been a reliable donor to Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — despite a racist tweet that put him on the outs with DeSantis’ predecessor, Rick Scott — shot a woman and then himself in the parking lot of a Palm Beach County restaurant, according to sheriff’s deputies.

The activist, 72-year-old Steve Alembik, died. The woman, wounded in the back and arm, survived when she ran into the restaurant bleeding and was rushed to the hospital.

The shooting happened at a Burgerfi outlet in Delray Beach a week ago Monday, although Alembik’s identity wasn’t revealed until last Friday in the Boca Raton News. The wounded victim was believed to be his wife.

Over the past 20 years, Alembik, gave more than $200,000 in political contributions, mainly to Republicans, including thousands of dollars to both DeSantis and Donald Trump. The founder of a Boca Raton digital marketing company, the Democrat-turned-Republican earned notoriety in 2018 by referring to former President Barack Obama as a “f******* Muslim n*****” in a post on the social media platform X, then known as Twitter.

  • HuddaBudda@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Alembik, who describes DeSantis as one of his “close friends” in a post on LinkedIn, first attracted attention in the wake of Trump’s comments following a 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia that left a counter-protester dead. After Trump insisted their were “many fine people” on both sides of the issue, mainstream charities pulled events from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club.

    Alembik, however, decided to move a charity gala for his newly formed pro-Israel nonprofit group, Truth About Israel, to Mar-a-Lago to help fill the void.

    His non-profit, looks like a website dedicated to claiming that Israel is not an Apartheid state. Beware, it looks like the site has been neglected for some time.

    That being said, it also looks like he didn’t really do anything with the charity outside of a quick youtube channel. Like nothing. I can’t find public records on what he used the money on, or donations, or Even pictures of projects he did.

    It is a charity in name only.

      • HuddaBudda@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Well if points drew a line, then the dots are arranging themselves in a way where people who thought they were donating to Jewish culture preservation actually partially funded Trump’s legal depute with Stormy Daniels at the end of the money trail.

        Lord, I do hope I am wrong.