“I gave up my Russian passport years ago, can’t return without risking my freedom, and have publicly opposed the Putin regime,” she wrote. Yet sleuths on X have found evidence that those statements may not be true. Reporting by Russian-British investigative journalist Maria Pevchikh shows Bucher speaking at a pro-Putin event in 2019, years after she claimed to have disavowed him. According to records obtained by Pevchikh, she still holds a valid Russian passport, though she told the Washington Post in 2022, “I deeply regret ever joining Nashi and supporting Putin and his government.”

Kip Mock, a fellow member of Wilson’s Idaho church and a co-founder of Taylor’s auto repair shop, is now Valar’s head of operations. Another church member, Elijah Froh, serves as Valar’s director of business operations. (A story last year by the Utah Investigative Journalism Project revealed that Mock accidentally set Froh on fire in 2021 when he poured old diesel into a wood-burning stove and caused an explosion.)