Ryan Fournier, the co-founder of the national organization Students for Trump, was arrested in North Carolina in November 2023 on accusations that he struck a woman in the head with a handgun, according to police records in Johnston County, North Carolina.
The New York Post reported that, according to the Johnston County magistrate, Fournier allegedly grabbed the woman by her right arm and struck her on the forehead with a 9MM Sig Sauer P229 pistol.
Axios reported that the victim, who was identified as Fournier’s girlfriend, suffered a minor injury.
Fournier co-founded the Trump organization with his friend John Lambert during Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign when they were students at Campbell University.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/29/us/ryan-fournier-charged-assault-students-for-trump/index.html
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/05/09/trump-john-lambert-students-lawsuit-jail-226802/
Trump appeared to have a profound influence on Fournier and John Lambert, the co-founder of Students for Trump: They were far more interested in promoting themselves than in the Trump campaign, as the Trump campaign acknowledged in a cease-and-desist order.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/05/09/trump-john-lambert-students-lawsuit-jail-226802/
Politico reported that Fournier and Lambert exaggerated their connection with the Trump campaign.
“The Trump campaign did not coordinate or affiliate with Students for Trump in the 2016 campaign,” said Tim Murtaugh, the director of communications for Trump’s re-election campaign told Politico. “In fact, the campaign sent cease and desist letters . . . that specifically disavowed their deceptive activities and demanded that they stop presenting themselves as official representatives of the campaign.”
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/05/09/trump-john-lambert-students-lawsuit-jail-226802/
Lambert and Fournier may have quit their association with the Trump campaign, but they did not stop their “deceptive activities.”
Fournier and Lambert, using aliases, posed as attorneys and duped several people out of $50 thousand for legal services, prosecutors said. Neither man had a law license nor were they attending law school — nor had they ever been to a law school.
https://nypost.com/2021/05/11/students-for-trump-co-founder-sentenced-to-prison-for-fraud/
The Daily Beast reported that Fournier — who participated with Lambert in the fraudulent scheme — avoided prosecution by “ratting out his friend.”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/students-for-trump-founder-ryan-fournier-ratted-out-friend-to-feds
In May 2021, Lambert was sentenced to 13 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to a wire fraud conspiracy charge, the New York Post reported.
https://nypost.com/2021/05/11/students-for-trump-co-founder-sentenced-to-prison-for-fraud/
In October 2022, Fourier appeared in a Guilford County, North Carolina, courtroom in connection to a series of traffic offenses, including driving while impaired, aggressive driving, driving to endanger, and fleeing/eluding arrest with a motor vehicle, court records show.
The Daily Beast reported that he had been arrested the previous year after driving 101 miles an hour in a 45-mph zone, according to county records.
This came four months after he was charged with another DWI in the same county.
Fournier then co-founded Turning Point Action, the political arm of the Turning Point USA organization led by conservative media personality Charlie Kirk.
A TPUSA official told The Daily Beast that Fournier’s involvement with the organization fell after his first DWI charge in October, 2020.
Fournier now leads an organization called Radical Alert.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/29/us/ryan-fournier-charged-assault-students-for-trump/index.html
The organization, according to its website, “is watching and exposing” what it calls “radicals” who have “taken over American college campuses,” the organization’s website says.
“Radicals have taken over American college campuses. They suppress freedom of speech and spread hate. Radical Alert is watching and exposing them,” the website says.
If the organization can’t find any radicals who are spreading hate, Fournier said, well, then, I’ll just hit my girlfriend with a gun.
(He didn’t really say that.)
