Ron Filipkowski | |
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Born | October 30, 1968 |
Children | 5 |
Ron Filipkowski (born October 30, 1968) [1] [2] is an American criminal defense attorney and former state and federal prosecutor who is known for sharing political clips and commentary on social media. [2] [3] He is the editor-in-chief of MeidasTouch Network, a liberal news website. [4]
Filipkowski grew up at Cape Cod [5] with his mother, a single parent. He worked to pay his college fees. [2]
Filipkowski served as a Marine from 1986 to 1990, and deployed to Okinawa in 1987. [6] In 2008, Filipkowski ran on the Republican ticket for public defender. He was elected president of the Republican Club of South Sarasota County in 2009 and 2010. [5] [2]
In December 2020, Filipkowski resigned from his judicial nominating committee appointment, citing Florida governor Ron DeSantis's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. His departure came a day after data analyst Rebekah Jones had her home raided by Florida's Department of Law Enforcement. [3] [2]
Prior to the 2020 election, Filipkowski started tracking far-right extremists on social media, working with two anonymous researchers to monitor livestreamed events, social media, podcasts and radio shows and post their findings on Twitter. [7] [5] In February 2022, Filipkowski said he and his team had turned over "hundreds of very obscure interviews and podcasts from the planners, leaders and participants" of the January 6 Capitol attack to the January 6 Committee. [8]
Filipkowski is the editor-in-chief of the liberal news website MeidasTouch Network. [2] He has written opinion pieces for The Daily Beast. [9] In 2024, he said, "The Meidas guys, as a team, said: We are going to do this to Trump. We are going to hit every gaffe, every mispronunciation, every slurred word, every mispronounced name, every time he mixes up a name. We're going to clip that and we're going to put it out and we're going to put it in montages. No one else was doing that." [10]
Filipkowski was a member of the Republican Party until January 2021, when he registered as a Democrat following the January 6 Capitol attack. [11] [2] He describes himself as a conservative Democrat. [5]
Filipkowski is critical of Donald Trump and DeSantis. [12] [2] During the 2020 election cycle, Filipkowski recorded a video consisting of reasons he thought the Republican Party should not re-elect Trump as part of an ad campaign by Republican Voters Against Trump, a group launched by Bill Kristol. [2]
In December 2020, Filipkowski criticized DeSantis's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic as "reckless and irresponsible". Following a raid on Rebekah Jones's home, he suggested that she was targeted for questioning DeSantis's approach to the pandemic. [3] [2] After Jones's accusations of being fired for not manipulating COVID-19 data were determined to be unfounded, Filipkowski has since criticized her as a "fraud" and a "grifter". [2]
Filipkowski is married. He and his wife have five children; their first son is named Ronald Reagan Filipkowski. [2] They live in Sarasota. [5]
Filipkowski has coached a Little League Baseball team, leading it to six state championships. He was named National Coach of the Year by the baseball publication Travel Ball Select. [2] In 2011, he published a manual for youth baseball coaches titled Travelball: How to Start and Manage a Successful Travel Baseball Team. [13] [2]
Filipkowski ran triathlons, competing in the national championship when he was 50. He later suffered nerve damage to his foot while running sprints, preventing him from running. [2]