There’s more than one wealthy eccentric in the 2016 presidential race now.
John McAfee, who made his fortune on his eponymous anti-virus software, filed paperwork with the Federal Election Committee on Tuesday to run for President as an unaffiliated candidate.
It remains to be seen whether a McAfee 2016 campaign can suck any oxygen away from Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump, who has a much higher net worth but, compared to McAfee, a far less interesting personal history. For anyone who has even a passing familiarity with Trump, that’s really saying something.
Here are a few points on McAfee’s colorful past that could potentially complicate a presidential campaign, from prior arrests to his dual citizenship. His campaign did not immediately return TPM’s request for comment.
Tennessee DUI arrest
McAfee most recently made headlines when he was arrested in early August by Tennessee Highway Patrol officers for DUI and possession of a handgun under the influence.
The anti-virus software guru initially said in a Facebook post addressing the incident he’d been in a shootout with police. “When I ran out of ammunition, I surrendered quietly and the officers and my self had a cigarette together and joked about my bad aim,” he wrote.
He later told CNBC that what he wrote about a shootout was a joke, adding that he always carries a weapon. McAfee explained to the news outlet that an officer pulled him over after he swerved his vehicle while reaching for a phone he’d dropped. He also said he’d just taken Xanax, which he was prescribed for stress, for the first time.
“I was impaired, I must admit,” he told CNBC.
The Belize murder case
McAfee was drawn to the jungles of Belize in 2008, after losing part of the fortune he made with his anti-virus software company during the financial crisis and selling off much of his property in the U.S.
McAfee founded the security software firm in 1987 and departed with about $100 million in 1994, although the company carried his name until Intel, which bought the firm in 2010, decided to rebrand it.
But paradise didn’t last. Things got hairy for the millionaire in 2012 when his neighbor, a 52-year-old American named Gregory Faull, was found shot dead in his home on Belize’s Ambergis Caye. The shooting took place a couple days after McAfee’s dogs, which Faull had complained about, were poisoned. Police wanted to question McAfee as a person of interest in the case, but he said he was innocent and chose to flee the country instead.
A mysterious laboratory
Even before Faull’s killing, McAfee was visited by authorities in Belize in connection with a mysterious laboratory he maintained at his jungle compound. According to a 2012 Wired profile, McAfee took a shine to the idea of researching natural antibiotics and hired a microbiologist to relocate to his compound from Boston and work in the lab he built.
Eventually, though, the microbiologist, Allison Adonizio, left Belize when she became uncomfortable at McAfee’s compound. Adonizio told Wired that she thought McAfee had “turned into a very scary person” and was concerned about the armed men he had surrounding the property.
Then came the raid. The head of Belize’s Gang Suppression Unit told Wired that the agency visited McAfee’s compound in April 2012 after receiving “information to suggest that there may have been a meth laboratory at his location.” The agency didn’t find any illicit drugs, but did confiscate what it said were two unlicensed firearms and bottles of chemicals that they couldn’t identify, according to the magazine.
Dual citizenship
McAfee was born in the United Kingdom to an American father and a British mother who met during World War II, according to the BBC. The family moved to Virginia when McAfee was young.
The software whiz has said he retains dual U.S.-British citizenship, which is notable given the small band of fringe, self-styled “strict constitutionalists” who argue that several Republican presidential candidates running in 2016 are ineligible to hold the nation’s highest office.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who was also born abroad to one American and one foreign parent, officially renounced his Canadian citizenship last summer ahead of launching his own presidential bid.
Faking a heart attack to avoid deportation
A few weeks after he went underground to flee authorities in Belize who wanted to question him in his neighbor’s murder, McAfee emerged across the border in Guatemala, where he was arrested for entering the country illegally. One of the more bizarre incidents in what was already a bizarre story — and an international media spectacle — happened hours after Guatemalan authorities rejected McAfee’s request for asylum and ordered him to be deported back to Belize.
The software guru was rushed to a hospital in the Guatemalan capital, but his associates offered different explanations to the media as to what was going on with his health. McAfee’s legal team initially said doctors were treating him for heart problems, but his chief attorney, Telesforo Guerra, a former attorney general in Guatemala, said his client suffered a nervous breakdown.
Once he was safely back on American soil, McAfee told reporters that he faked having a heart attack in order to buy time for his legal team to arrange his deportation to the U.S. rather than Belize.
This clown doesn’t have a chance to even THINK he has a chance.
Wasted money.
True… but he’s a new shiny thing which will instantly draw the media’s attention. And that’s something Trump simply cannot abide. He must be the center of attention… or his house of cards kind of falls apart.
So it will be interesting to see how Trump plays it out.
Plus, I find this incredibly entertaining to think about: “Trump vs McAfee: Which one will out-egomaniac and/or out-paranoid the other? Stay tuned to find out!”
Welcome to the future of Citizens United.
The cockroaches are crawling out of the woodwork.
With a few plot adjustments, you’ve got the material for 2-night miniseries event. You start with the mild mannered nerd running a virus software company. One of his low-level employees stumbles an odd new class of virus, and after say 20-minutes of CSI plot-twisting, his secret reverse trace yields information about a mass-mind-bending chemical like soma that can be given to part or all of the population to modify their belief systems. However, since control is held by the billionaire class (e.g. Robert De Niro’s character in the film Limitless), the hero has to create his own formula while throwing public officials and his real enemies, the Illuminati-esque bad guys, off the scent. After convincing the world that he is a craven sociopath running a meth lab in the jungle, he stuns the political system by getting on the ballot and begins acting like the reincarnation of Lincoln . He loses the hair dye, finds love with a dedicated younger woman who, too, believes in America, wins the election, and gets shot (but not really that bad, think Teddy Roosevelt, who gave a long speech in Milwaukee while bleeding out). Though wounded, he sucks it up and delivers a workmanlike Howard Beale speech that snaps the country out of its zombie trance, making both the old formula and new formula of the mind-drug ineffective. With American democracy restored and a sober, engaged electorate, he hands the president job to his VP running mate (casting?!) and promises his new wife that he never wants to spend time anywhere else than between her legs. Drugs, hot women, money, evil conspiracy, unobtainium, fighting the Man, predictable plot twist at the end… Am I missing anything here?
He’s a nut, he’s a weirdo, he talks about having group sex with underage girls and very proud of it, his software doesn’t work, confessed drug addict, associated with murder, why is his latest maniac play newsworthy?
He has precisely no qualifications to be President except that he has money. Trump has personality, ideas, is media savvy, can talk on his feet and sure he may not be qualified. This is different.