The acting undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs has been revealed to be married to a Russian woman with links to the Kremlin, The Telegraph first reported on Tuesday.
Darren Beattie, who caused much consternation within the State Department due to his pro-Russian views, is married to Yulia Kirillova — whose uncle has direct ties to Moscow and once received a personal "thank you" message from Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Kirillova, who was educated in Canada and the U.S., according to her Facebook page, is the niece of Sergei Chernikov, a Russian businessman who owns a successful beverage conglomerate. Kirillova is said to have moved to Washington, D.C., in late January, just prior to Beattie accepting his position with President Donald Trump's administration.
Beattie was fired as a speechwriter during the first Trump administration in 2018 for attending and delivering a speech at the H.L. Mencken Conference, an event with a heavy white nationalist presence. In his writings, he has often praised both China and Russia as being a worthy counterweight to America's "woke ideology."
Beattie has also openly praised Putin as "brave and strong" and argued that Putin had "done more to advance conservative positions in the U.S. than any Republican. NATO is a much greater threat to American liberty than Putin ever was."
"A big part of American ruling class' hatred of Russia is that Russia is a major power that rejects the woke ideology at the core of American regime," Beattie wrote in 2021. "Now that [President Xi Jinping's] China is rejecting America's woke poison in key respects, interesting to see how this plays into cold war 2.0," he said. "The rise of non-woke (China) and anti-woke (Russia) geopolitical competitors to the Globalist American Empire is not a bad thing."
The author and political commentator played a key role in the dismantling of the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference hub, previously known as the Global Engagement Center. The agency was originally designed to work against foreign propaganda, but Republicans had argued it ended up pushing back against Americans with conservative views.
Beattie has been labeled a conspiracy theorist due to his writings on his Revolver News website which claimed the FBI played a heavy role in the Jan. 6 riots on Capitol Hill in 2021.
Beattie can only serve in the role as acting directing for 210 days and requires confirmation by the Senate to continue in his official capacity after that time.
James Morley III ✉
James Morley III is a writer with more than two decades of experience in entertainment, travel, technology, and science and nature.
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