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The founder of a student group supporting former President Donald Trump was arrested and charged with assaulting his girlfriend with a gun in North Carolina before Thanksgiving.
According to reports, right-wing activist Ryan Fournier is facing misdemeanor charges handed down by a magistrate after being arrested in Johnston County, North Carolina last Tuesday(November 21). The information was disclosed through state public records. Fournier is accused of “grabbing her right arm and striking her in the forehead” with a 9mm Sauer handgun. It was reported that she suffered a minor injury after the incident. He would waive his right to a lawyer and post bond, being released later that evening. Fournier is slated to appear in court on December 18 and didn’t respond to requests for comment from the press.
Fournier, who currently resides in Salem, rose to prominence as a founder of Students For Trump along with John Lambert while attending Campbell University in 2016, a Christian institution in Bules Creek, North Carolina. The group factored significantly in the support for Trump during his run for president that year after his campaign asked them to help. At its height, Students For Trump had 250 chapters across the nation and a membership of over 5,000 volunteers. Fournier is currently the executive of Radical Alert, a conservative group claiming that “Radicals have taken over American college campuses,” with a following of one million on X, formerly Twitter.
The 27-year-old would be named as a conspirator in a scheme that Lambert perpetrated where he posed as a lawyer from a firm in Manhattan, New York. Lambert was charged with dispensing information he wasn’t licensed to share between 2016 and 2018, receiving $47,000 in exchange. He would be arrested in 2019, and sentenced to 13 months in prison in 2021. During a hearing in the trial, it was revealed that Fournier was cooperating with prosecutors.