We have a new front-runner for weirdest press release of the year in the usually buttoned-up world of Vermont politics. It comes from Christopher Helali, the duly elected High Bailiff of Orange County. He won the post in 2024 via write-ins, because I guess nobody bothered to file for the low-profile, largely ceremonial position.
Helali was last seen hanging out in Iran takin’ selfies in front of anti-American protests. One picture shows him posing in front of a bright red banner that reads “Kill Trump.” In a post on XFormerlyKnownAsTwitter, he said he was in Iran “to honor, salute, and pray for Imam Khamenei and his family.” That would be the former Iranian supreme leader who was killed in a joint American-Israeli airstrike in February. Before that, Helali made the news when he went on EBay and bought what was purported to be an address book that belonged to international sex criminal (and friend of Donald Trump) Jeffrey Epstein. Gotta say, this dude gets around.
Well, now he has issued a press release boasting that he “has become the first ever elected US political official while in office to join a foreign military, in this case the Russian army.” Specifically, he is now a member of Axmat Spetsnaz, a highly-trained organization of elite fighters who have taken part in many of Vladimir Putin’s aggressive operations — including the war on Ukraine.
Yep, those guys at the top of this column.
You okay, Orange County?
In his press release, Helali offers gratitude to various Russian bigwigs and war criminals including Putin himself, and gives a shoutout to his instructors from the Wagner Group, a notorious private army known for doing the dirty deeds for which Putin needs plausible deniability.
Those with a taste for the bottom-dwellers of the Vermont ballot might recognize the name. Helali ran for Congress in 2020 under the banner of the Party of Communists USA, a splinter faction that thinks the plain old U.S. Communist Party has lost its fastball. His candidacy reached his high point in a fascinating profile piece by Seven Days scribe Kevin Kelley, who documented the twists and turns of Helali’s life to date. (He managed to garner 3,432 votes or 0.97% of the total in that election, good for a fifth-place finish.) If Helali was trying to corner the market on fringey politics, let’s call him a success. He seems to occupy the far left and far right simultaneously, or maybe he meanders back and forth. Since then he has bought a possibly authentic bit of Epsteiniana, become Orange County’s High Bailiff, apparently moved to Moscow, took a brief sojourn to Iran, and underwent an intensive military training regime to become one of Putin’s hard men.
Fortunately Helali is not seeking re-election, so he’ll be off the books in a matter of months. I suspect he’s essentially abandoned his office already, although with Putin’s private goon squads you never know. If anyone falls from an upper-story window in Randolph later this year, we might have a lead on who’s responsible.
Helali’s press release in full, for your reading enjoyment:
