An elected official from Vermont just joined Vladimir Putin’s army, specifically Akhmat Spetsnaz, a Chechen-linked Russian special forces unit.
This elected official is linked to another local elected official (who is running in Tuesday’s midterm elections). Both have documented links to two of the state’s most high-profile supporters of the Middle East’s terror axis. The media have mostly gone missing.
It sounds like something out of a spy movie.
First in the cast is Chris Helali, high bailiff of Orange County, Vermont. Helali is on the left; on the right is Apti Alaudinov, a Russian lieutenant general and commander of Akhmat Spetsnaz.
Just joining the Russian military would be bad enough. The truly scary part is what he has left behind in America: The circle of people he worked alongside, and news outlets that never bother to challenge and expose extremism.
After all, Helali openly supports (deep breath for list): Hamas, Hezbollah, the Iranian regime, Vladimir Putin, the Houthis, and seemingly, the assassination of the President of the United States.
To add further oddity to this insanity, it was Helali himself who broke the news. As John Walters at the Vermont Political Observer pointed out, Helali’s public announcement has to rank as “the weirdest press release of the year.”
Loud and Proud
Usually, you see people in America trying to hide records of supporting terrorism. Helali flaunts it and has been doing so for years. He hasn’t just left a trail of breadcrumbs for everyone to follow; he’s left fully stocked bakeries.
In these images, posted by Helali himself, we can see Helali at Ayatollah Khamenei’s funeral in July 2026: In one, he is alongside banners calling for the assassination of the President of the United States; in the other, a missile is visible in the background.
Over a year earlier, in February 2025, he also attended Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s funeral, describing it as “a moment of profound loss and unwavering resistance.”
The images below show Helali standing at the spot where Nasrallah was killed (left) and with Jackson Hinkle and their fellow party member, Haz Al-Din, at Nasrallah’s funeral in Beirut (right):
When these images were taken, Helali held the role of International Secretary of the American Communist Party. He left the role in 2026 and was replaced by Jackson Hinkle.
Just two more for good measure. Below on the left, we see Helali with Hinkle again in March 2025 at a Houthi showcase event in Yemen. In the image on the right from August 2024, Helali is standing alongside senior Hamas officials Dr. Basem Naim and Osama Hamdan in Qatar.
The Vermont Vipers’ Nest
Helali is just one of several extremists operating out of Vermont.
Previous investigations on this website have examined Wafic Faour, a key face behind regional boycott campaigns and a leading activist in New England’s Apartheid Free Communities campaign. Another investigative focus is Columbia student Mohsen Mahdawi, a prominent figure in the nationwide campus protest movement that made university campuses hostile environments for Jewish students.
Faour publicly celebrated the October 7 attacks, Mahdawi has a long history of support for terrorist groups, and Helali aligns freely with pro-terrorist outfits.
Vermont: One tiny state, three people with a history of supporting terrorism, all driving anti-Western activity.
And we can now reveal that all three have been working together.
The Red-Green Alliance in the Green Mountains
The relationship goes back several years. In 2020, Chris Helali ran for Congress, and Faour’s Vermonters for Justice in Palestine (VtJP) supported his candidacy. Around the same time, Helali also co-signed letters from VtJP about Israeli “apartheid.”
Mahdawi was also involved with the group, as can be seen in this image from May 2021, standing outside Burlington City Hall:
Taken in February 2020, the photograph below shows Wafic Faour, Chris Helali and CAIR activist Asma Elhuni alongside Dartmouth academic activists like Daisy Goodman and members of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) such as Liz Blum. Progressive credentials apparently pose no obstacle to keeping company with terrorist supporters. Jewish Voice for Peace? These really are turkeys voting for Thanksgiving.
It gets more interesting. In April 2025, when Mahdawi was arrested, Helali was with him capturing the entire event on film. The viral footage of Mahdawi walking to the car is Helali’s. It turns out that Mahdawi suspected he was going to be detained, had told Helali a week in advance, and it seems as if they travelled to the hearing together.
But they were not alone.
The State Senator and the Extremists
Someone else was filming outside the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Colchester that day – State Senator Becca White (D-Windsor). In fact, White livestreamed from the site on her official Instagram channel and was part of a team that had come to support Mahdawi. From her footage, we know the team were covering different entrances to ensure he could not be removed from the building out of sight.
In the second video White uploaded, after Mahdawi had been taken away, she conversed with someone off camera. From the discussion, which includes mention of the footage Helali had taken, we know it is none other than Chris Helali.
Whether White is a knowing accomplice or a useful patsy is unclear, but White did manage to call Mahdawi her “friend” 27 times in the original 13-minute video. White capitalised on her role in Mahdawi’s case. She appeared alongside Wafic Faour in demonstrations outside the Burlington courthouse advocating for Mahdawi.
On April 30 2025, she danced for joy at the courthouse when Mahdawi was released.
“Mohsen is free,” she wrote.
In this celebratory video, the man seen jumping behind White is Wafic Faour:
The alliance did not end with Mahdawi’s arrest.
From posting self-congratulatory photos to appearing alongside him at press conferences, White continues to publicly align with Mahdawi even in a campaign capacity.
The Senator and the Private Support Group
While all this was going on we also had access to a private “Mohsen Support” group, leaving before anyone noticed. The admin of the group is Wafic Faour, the October 7 admirer. Both Helali and White are members. The screenshot below shows an exchange between them.
White, Faour and Helali – all gathered together to support Mahdawi.
White is currently campaigning for re-election:
Perhaps her constituents will let her know what they think of her alliances at the ballot box.
A Small State, a Long Reach
Vermont is punching well above its weight when it comes to spreading antisemitism and antizionism.
Chris Helali is now a member of the Russian military. In a video posted in Arabic to ‘friends only’ on Facebook, Mahdawi took credit for spreading the campus encampments around the world. Faour has worked at the national level with JVP and the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). He has helped build and export AFSC’s Apartheid-Free Communities Campaign from Vermont to both Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and has been at the forefront of attempts to force Vermonters into boycotting Israel:
With all three helping to demonise the Jewish state, their extremism should provide easy headlines for journalists covering Vermont’s communities.
Mahdawi: Created a fictitious backstory, called for the annihilation of Jews, and openly supported terrorist factions.
Faour: Used his social media account to spread antisemitism and antizionism. Celebrated the October 7 atrocities. Hides the fact he has successful family members living freely in Israel. He has also fabricated parts of his backstory; a locally written village history explicitly records that his family origins were in Syria, not “Palestine.”
Helali: Visited Iran, Qatar, Yemen and Lebanon, supporting numerous terrorist organisations along the way while reaching out to almost every anti-Western regime he can.
This is about more than just what adults are expected to know; it is about what children are hearing. Mahdawi has spent over a decade on campuses as a student promoting his version of “resistance.” Faour has been associated with numerous state-wide education initiatives. Helali was a social studies teacher at Hanover High School.
Quite a lot for the media to focus on.
The Missing Fourth Estate
On April 15, 2025, in an AP report published by PBS, journalists Patrick Whittle and Holly Ramer covered Mahdawi’s arrest. The piece is overtly sympathetic, presenting Mahdawi as an innocent, peace-seeking demonstrator. Its principal character witness was none other than Chris Helali, introduced simply as “a friend of Mahdawi who lives near him in Vermont.”
AP used an open supporter of terrorist organisations, who had recently attended Nasrallah’s funeral, to vouch for Mahdawi – a man with his own history of antisemitism and support for terrorism.
The AP and PBS are well-funded newsrooms with fact checkers and researchers. How is it excusable journalism that extremist figures are being presented to the public simply as benign characters?
They are not alone in their lack of journalistic integrity.
CBS’ 60 Minutes presented Mahdawi as a hero standing up against antisemitism long before his arrest, while The New York Times described him as a “human rights advocate.”
And this professional negligence reaches the local level.
Jim Kenyon at the Valley News wrote a two-part puff piece about Mahdawi in December 2020. Kenyon repeated Mahdawi’s backstory without any apparent attempt to verify it. Mahdawi, who had glorified Hamas terrorists, was presented as someone Vermonters should aspire to emulate.
David Goodman at VTDigger paints Mahdawi as a brave hero “fighting for justice.” Colin Flanders at Seven Days says he was “grateful” to witness Mahdawi’s release. Sabine Poux at Vermont Public wrote a gushing piece about “just Mohsen” and how friends “fall in love with him” after speaking with him “for just twenty minutes.”
Wafic Faour has fared almost as well. Vermont Public labelled Faour an “advocate for racial and social justice.” WCAX painted him as a peace-loving man who fights for “ethnic and social equity in schools.” VTDigger featured Faour in a David Goodman podcast, presenting him as a man who “opposed any kind of violence” – this six weeks after Faour had posted images celebrating the October 7 attacks.
It gets even more absurd. In November 2025, after Chris Helali had been supporting the Iranian regime, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis for years, Ethan Weinstein at VTDigger wrote a benign piece about Chris Helali and his purchase of an Epstein address book. A simple scan of Helali’s X account would have exposed the extremism fuelling his Epstein fixation.
Perhaps the clearest evidence we have is this. In 2021, Vermont Public published a piece on Helali as part of its 9/11 remembrance project. It portrayed him and his family sympathetically, as victims of post-9/11 prejudice.
The journalists – Melody Bodette and Marlon Hyde – produced a sanitised portrait of him.
How do we know? Because Helali himself described what was missing. In an X post, Helali ridiculed the article, saying he had spoken to them for an hour, promoting conspiracy theories, including claims about US involvement in 9/11, and discussing imperialism and the evils of the CIA:
It does not get much clearer than this. Helali even gave them his extremism on a plate. The public were never told. Instead he was presented as a victim.
These extremists have lied to the community, promoted extremism, and supported terrorist organisations. Yet the Fourth Estate has failed in its duty to act as an independent watchdog – even when State Senator Becca White stood alongside them.
Instead, these media outlets have acted as their mouthpiece.
All the vital context readers, educators, parents, and voters need to make informed decisions is being airbrushed out of the story.
Isn’t it about time someone told the people of Vermont the truth?
(co-authored and crossposted with Rachel Feldman)
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