Sam Mealey: You've got some 'splainin to do

Rather than investigate apparent links between a white supremacist social media account and its executive director, Pathways Pregnancy Care Center attacked my motives and credibility.

Following my story last week linking white supremacist messages from an anonymous social media account to the executive director for Pathways Pregnancy Care Center in Littleton, the organization issued a statement attacking my motives and credibility, even as they acknowledged that they “recognize several similarities that would lead someone like Mr. Tucker … to believe it is one and the same person.”

In response, I offer this detailed account of my interactions with Pathways Executive Director Samuel Mealey and related activity by a white supremacist using the name ConcernedFrogNH on Gab, a social media platform widely described as a haven for racists, antisemites, and neo-Nazis. This timeline raises serious questions about Mealey’s actions and the organization’s response.

The Pathways statement, printed in full in the Caledonian Record, began by acknowledging that I contacted Mealey for comment before I published the story and he declined, adding that he was “unaware that Mr. Tucker intended to share his beliefs in an article…” (Pro tip: when a reporter contacts you seeking comment for a story, don’t be surprised when a story follows.)

That email exchange took place on Monday afternoon, June 17, and, as I wrote in the story, he volunteered that he rejects the use of the term “hate speech” (a phrase I did not use in my message to him) and believes it is protected by the First Amendment.

Despite saying that he had no comment, Mealey went on to deny possessing a Gab account “associated” with his name — a classic non-denial denial. He also added this detail: “I am aware that [Gab] has a large presence of NH residents, many of whom are conservatives … and so I am not surprised that Pathways was recommended on said site.”

Mealey appeared to be referencing the May 12 Gab message in which ConcernedFrogNH recommended the Littleton pregnancy care center, saying its executive director “is very pro-white, but keeps it mostly on the down-low.” Here’s the thing. In my email to Mealey, I did not provide the name of the ConcernedFrogNH user, nor did I offer specific details about the content posted by the user.

Later that afternoon, I discovered that the May 12 message referencing the pregnancy center had disappeared from Gab, along with two messages I subsequently included in my story that identified ConcernedFrogNH as a 26-year-old. In fact, snapshots I took of the account before and after my email to Mealey indicate that 15 ConcernedFrogNH messages (“Gabs”) were deleted that afternoon.

Mealey requested that I not contact him again, and we had no further contact until after I published the story on Thursday morning. As the Pathways statement noted, Mealey emailed me after the story was live. In that message, which I received late Thursday afternoon, Mealey complained that the article was based on “more-than-flimsy evidence” (I can only assume he meant “less-than-flimsy evidence”) and demanded that I delete it, but he pointedly did not deny that he was the owner of the account, nor did he offer the claim, which he made the next day, that he had identified and spoken with ConcernedFrogNH.

At about that same time, the ConcernedFrogNH account was locked down and public access was restricted; approximately 38 more ConcernedFrogNH messages were deleted; and the public profile was sanitized. “Devout Calvinist Christian White man and National Socialist” became “Devout Calvinist Christian man,” and language describing the user as a public school teacher and self-sustaining farmer was removed.

I responded to Mealey’s message early Friday morning, offering him another chance to comment for the story, which I agreed to update, and to identify any errors, which I would work to correct.

Mealey responded with another demand to delete the story, complaining that I was “making claims with no merit,” but he still did not explicitly deny that he was the owner of the ConcernedFrogNH account, nor did he offer the claim that he had identified and spoken with ConcernedFrogNH.

Mealey also accused me of acting in bad faith, making the unfounded claim that my story was in response to his campaign for state representative — which he curiously called “an election I have no intention of winning, only placing my name in as a favor to Matthew Simon.” For the record, I began working on this story well before the first day of the state election filing period, and I only learned of his bid for state representative after publishing the story.

The unsigned statement from Pathways was released later that day. I was not notified and did not receive a copy. I did receive another email from Mealey that afternoon notifying me that he “was able to communicate with the account holder and he/she kindly removed anything that may have led to confusion as to a shared identity between us.”

The Pathways statement noted Mealey spoke with the account owner after “looking over the content of the Gab.com account in question” and implies this review took place after the story was published, though it does not say how he identified the account owner, how they communicated, or when this conversation took place.

The Pathways statement noted that Mealey asked ConcernedFrogNH to “take down the content that appeared to identify them with Mr. Mealey.” Snapshots of the account I took before my initial contact with Mealey and after publishing the story indicate that at least 53 posts and comments were deleted from the account in two separate instances. That’s a lot of messages that “may have led to confusion as to a shared identity” between Mealey and the ConcernedFrogNH account owner.

Let’s review a few of the deleted messages. Many of them contained personal vignettes, including two posts in which ConcernedFrogNH discussed his mom cutting his hair (“She’s done it for me, my brother, and my dad and still offers to [to] this day”); a story about a bear that killed 10 of his chickens earlier this month (“we were shocked to learn the bear had actually turned the knob on the coop and jumped right in.”); and one in which he confessed that he had not been studying his Greek but was still able to “mangle his way through” a translation.

In other deleted messages, ConcernedFrogNH ridiculed a woman’s health concerns during the pandemic (“I vividly remember watching this absolutely terrified woman basically vacuum seal herself to the shelf behind her as I walked past her in a supermarket”); announced his Irish, Scottish, and French roots (“I’ve got it all!”); and discussed his use of copper rods in planting beds (“Tried it last year for the first time, with mixed results”).

Some of the deleted messages highlighted ConcernedFrogNH’s hate and extremism, including his antisemitism (“People need to move on from accepting that the Jews are behind these things and start talking about how they’re going to respond.”), his racism (“I want a White ethnostate that recognizes the importance of maintaining that exclusionary rule and fights to keep their racial identity.”), and his admiration for Adolf Hitler (“I’ve finally reached the point where I am looking into reading Mein Kampf to really search things out for myself.”).

When the account was unlocked on Friday afternoon, ConcernedFrogNH had posted a casual message suggesting he didn’t know Mealey (despite having praised him back in May): “Someone reached out to me and said I was being mistaken for some guy running for office in my state.” The Pathways statement returned the favor, benignly referring to the owner of the account that spews hateful rhetoric as “understanding of the situation, and a supporter of our efforts at Pathways.”

Mealey denies that he is the white supremacist behind ConcernedFrogNH. The timeline established by his responses, the Pathways statement, and electronic evidence raises serious questions about his actions and his explanation that remain unanswered. Pathways Pregnancy Care Center is a nonprofit that receives public funding from area towns. The community deserves a full and transparent review and a thoughtful response by the board of directors who manage the organization.