John Scott Johnson, a wealthy Fishers software engineer, organized and funded many of last year’s biggest anti-Trump protests in Indianapolis, including the first No Kings protest. His demonstrations drew thousands of people to the Statehouse and featured high-profile speakers such as state lawmakers and U.S. Rep. André Carson.
But behind the scenes, Johnson faced accusations of “Jim Jones”-style manipulation and coercive sex parties. Some of his former allies also reported him to the police, saying he had plans to use drones to drop explosives on public officials. Those accusations — which Johnson and his remaining allies staunchly deny — ultimately ripped apart one of Indiana’s most influential anti-Trump protest groups.
The turmoil within the movement has remained largely hidden from public view. Near the end of last summer, Johnson’s organization — Indiana 50501 — seemed to simply vanish. Johnson, who had emceed previous protests, often in an orange vest and an “UNPAID PROTESTER” T-shirt, disappeared from on-stage lineups.
Johnson’s sudden rise and fall shows how easily leadership and power can be amassed in a loosely organized protest movement. Money and free time can take you a long way.
Johnson had both.
From ‘politically disaffected’ to Indiana’s protest king
The first protest that Johnson said he attended came on Feb. 5, 2025. The rally at the Statehouse was part of a decentralized national day of protest organized largely on social media under the hashtag 50501, which stands for 50 protests in 50 states on one day.
Johnson saw the organizer handing out snacks to the couple of hundred people in attendance. Johnson handed him $200. “You shouldn’t do the work and pay for the snacks,” Johnson told him.For Johnson, a software developer with technology companies and startups, it was a major step into political protesting. Previously, his only advocacy work had been the creation of “Pizza for Ukraine,” where he and another developer built a website enabling donations of cash and pizza to people in war zones.
“I was politically disaffected my whole damn life,” he said at a protest last year.
But soon, the $200 in support would grow to at least $5,000, according to Christian Hess, who organized the protest.
“He was very clear, ‘Anything I can do, the sky’s the limit,'” Hess said. “And that kind of just floored me. I was like, ‘Wow, this is serendipitous.'”
Johnson, 58, quickly earned a reputation as the guy who spent afternoons demonstrating — often by himself — outside the Tesla showroom in Castleton. His signs featured images of Elon Musk with a Hitler mustache and the slogan, “Don’t buy a swasticar.”
Within a month of his first protest, Johnson became the fledgling protest group’s de facto No. 2. When Hess decided to step down, he tapped Johnson to take over.
“One of the biggest mistakes I’ve ever made,” Hess said, looking back.
Johnson spent thousands of dollars on tents, T-shirts, stickers, whistles, stages and sound systems. He applied for permits, built websites and often took to the microphone to kick off protests. He packed the events with speakers from various activist groups and Democratic politicians. At one rally, he said he spent 18 hours a day on organizing.
His efforts paid off. Capitalizing on growing discontent with Trump, Johnson and his group hosted a relentless barrage of protests. Attendance at the semi-monthly protests grew from a few hundred to more than 5,000.
But as Johnson’s prestige grew, so did questions about his leadership.
Phones in microwaves and tactical gear
Aric Maddux was a down-on-his-luck software developer driving for Uber to make ends meet when he met Johnson at a protest last year. Johnson took an interest in him.
Maddux said Johnson soon after hired him to develop software for a management tool for protest organizers. Maddux shared screenshots with IndyStar of daily $200 Cash App payments from Johnson.
Johnson told IndyStar that Maddux was a volunteer, not an employee. Instead, Johnson said he spotted him money for food, medicine and bills.
Eventually, Johnson, who had recently separated from his wife, invited Maddux and several other activists to move into his 5,000-square-foot Fishers home. The home sits on 3.4 acres. There’s a pond, swimming pool and multiple structures, including a pool house and a barn. It became both a communal living space and the makeshift headquarters for Indiana 50501.
Soon, though, Maddux and some of Johnson’s other associates began noticing some unsettling behaviors. Johnson grew increasingly paranoid, they said.
Johnson instructed organizers to put their phones in the microwave during meetings to obstruct government surveillance, two activists told IndyStar. Johnson insisted that members of the Proud Boys, a far-right group with a history of violent confrontations, were following him and watching his home. He began using a drone to monitor his property. His adult son and others were seen wearing tactical vests and carrying AR-15 rifles at Johnson’s home, according to police and activists.
Johnson said the Trump administration’s targeting of people on the left warranted such precautions.
“There was very much a feeling that we’re going to be targeted by the administration,” he said. “This was a valid fear. It’s only gotten worse.”
At one point, Johnson instructed Maddux to encrypt a number of files on password-protected flash drives, which they handed out to 50501 organizers in 3D printed easter eggs, according to Maddux. The files included the Anarchist Cookbook, resistance short stories, directions to rendezvous points and audio files such as Star Wars’ Imperial March, according to a digital folder Maddux provided to IndyStar. It also contained a document titled “Scott’s final speech,” in which Johnson writes as if the Trump administration kidnapped him.
“I have been deliberately fragrantly defiantly outspoken And there was a reason for that,” reads the speech’s exact text, including an apparent reference to flagrantly. “I was doing it so that when the administration comes for us, it was my belief that they would come for me And not for you.”
Johnson said he does not recall what was on the egg drive beyond organizers’ contact information. He said the drives were a response to fear that the Trump administration would shut off internet access.
Orgies, moonshine and ‘cult energy’
Members of Johnson’s inner circle say he also used his position as the group’s leader to manipulate them, creating an environment some described as cult-like.
Jacquelyn Montenaro manned the merchandise stand at protests, but she, too, lived at Johnson’s Fishers home. Johnson pressured her and others to participate in orgies, she said, and at the same time, he was supplying a significant amount of alcohol, including his own “Mr. 50501’s XXX Sweet Apple Pie Moonshine.”
“I never viewed anything as unwilling,” she said. “And then I left the cult and realized how brainwashed and dysregulated I was and how drunk he had kept me.”
Johnson denied manipulating participants. “People can do what they want to do,” he said. “I did not coerce anyone into anything.”
Johnson acknowledged at least one group sex event to a Fishers police officer.
According to a police report, Johnson and a group of protesters returned to his home after a May 25 protest. After dinner, “a few of the attendees began drinking alcohol.” By 9 p.m., “seven or eight participants engaged in consensual group sex.”
Johnson told police “everyone was of age and nothing illegal occurred,” according to the Aug. 4 report.
During the party, local activist DeOnyae-Dior Valentina secretly recorded the orgy, Johnson told police. A few weeks later, Valentina showed images to another organizer, Amy Guzman, who recognized Johnson and told him about the images, according to a July 15 affidavit from an IMPD detective.
Johnson ousted Valentina from the group, according to the affidavit. Valentina then threatened Guzman, calling her an “ugly (expletive) back stabbing (expletive)” and threatening her son, the affidavit says.
“Next time I see you, you will be smoked in the head,” Valentina texted, according to the charging documents.
Guzman filed a police report in late June stating that she feared for her life. Valentina was charged with felony intimidation. A trial is scheduled for May 6.
Guzman did not comment to IndyStar.
Johnson and his close ally, Taelar Christman, later sought to pursue charges, saying Valentina did not have their consent to record the group sex and distribute the materials, but no charges were brought.
Valentina declined to comment on the criminal case, but in a screenshot of a now-deleted social media post, she criticized Indiana 50501’s limited diversity and “cult energy, rainbow cosplay, or performative resistance theatre.” She said she left the group on her own.
“On May 25th, I was literally placed in the middle of what turned into an orgy at a so-called ‘leadership retreat,'” she wrote. “And when I voiced how uncomfortable I felt, instead of care, I was met with gaslighting, gossip, and public disrespect. I’m all for bodily autonomy, but consent also includes what spaces I didn’t agree to be part of and I never consented to being placed in that situation.”
Accusations of drone attacks and 3D printed weapons
Some grew alarmed when they say Johnson began planning acts of violence — a claim he emphatically rejects.
Although Johnson repeatedly emphasized non-violence from the stage during protests, several people who were close to him say he privately had different aspirations.
In August, Maddux told police that Johnson was growing increasingly dangerous, according to an Aug. 20 Fishers police report. Maddux said Johnson had asked him to program drones armed with thermite payloads to attack conservative U.S. senators’ homes “till they got the message.”
In a Sept. 10 email to an FBI task force officer, Maddux said one of the potential targets was Indiana Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith. “There was also talk between other members and John where John was proposing burning Micah beckwith’s House,” Maddux wrote.Two other activists — Montenaro and her ex-husband Scott Nieman — told IndyStar they were present when Johnson floated the idea of attacking Beckwith’s house.
Maddux also told police that Johnson had a 3D printing lab in the barn behind his Fishers home where he was manufacturing “guns, switches and drones.” “Switches” is short-hand for “Glock switches,” which are illegal devices that help semi-automatic weapons mimic automatic fire.
On the same day that Maddux made his report to police, Shelley Rebekah Johnson filed for divorce from Johnson to end their 20-year marriage. Three days later, she was in the lobby of the Fishers Police Department, telling officers that she didn’t feel safe. She said her husband planned “to drop explosives via drones” and “wreck the Indiana Government,” according to an Aug. 24 Fishers police report.
She feared the divorce would push him over the edge and that he “thinks he can do whatever he wants” because he has “upwards of 15 million dollars.”
Shelley Johnson did not provide further comment to IndyStar.
Johnson: ‘I’m not a violent person’
When asked by IndyStar about the accusations, Johnson laughed and called the claims “hilarious” and “lies.” Neither the report by Maddux nor Johnson’s wife resulted in him being charged with any crime.
Johnson acknowledged he owns multiple drones and about 15 to 20 3D printers, which he said he used for his wife’s business. His social media accounts show he printed whistles and fidget spinners for protests, too. Johnson said two of his drones were gifts from his wife, and he bought another to capture aerial footage of protests. He described himself as a hobbyist and said he never planned any acts of violence.
“I’ve never 3D printed a single weapon, nor would I ever do so,” he said. “I’m not a violent person.”
Johnson called the allegation about attacking Beckwith’s home “an amusing tale,” and said that the police would have taken action if it were credible.
He dismissed Shelley Johnson and Maddux as unreliable and accused them of trying to take him down. He said Shelley has reasons to tarnish his record amid their “acrimonious” and “high asset value” divorce proceedings, although it does not appear she ever introduced the allegations into the court record. Johnson said he believes Maddux’s police report was seen by law enforcement as the “ravings of a whack job.”
But Fishers police seem to have taken the allegations seriously. The department said in a statement to IndyStar that it referred them to the Indianapolis FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force.
IndyStar obtained emails that show an FBI task force officer was collecting information about Johnson as recently as last month.
Maddux also said he provided the FBI with the egg drive he created at Johnson’s request, which included posts Johnson made on GitHub, an internet repository often used by computer programmers.
In a series of posts from March 2025, which Johnson described as a “story project,” he wrote about how “an authoritarian government in America could be overthrown by its people without the classical use of arms.”
“Asymmetric warfare is the logical path forward,” he wrote, and “it is hard to envision a world where the needed tools aren’t available to us.”
Another of the project’s posts recounts Johnson’s entry into activism, then dives into a fictitious account of how “we took down the President” using drones, Molotov cocktails and 3D-printed daggers.
In yet a third post, Johnson discusses 3D-printed weapons that bypass metal detectors and the use of drones to drop grenades and pamphlets. He notes that such drone accessories are accessible to the public and links to a news story about how low-cost, Chinese drone add-ons could be used as weapons of war.
In his interview with IndyStar, Johnson described the posts as “no different from anything written by any different type of science fiction writer.” He said he wrote them as a way to process his feelings about current events, especially the war in Ukraine.
Johnson said his attorneys from the Banks & Brower law firm told him that the FBI’s investigation was closed. He said he never spoke with police or the FBI. An attorney for the law firm said he could not identify the firm’s clients or discuss their legal matters.
An FBI spokesperson said the bureau “does not confirm or deny the existence of federal investigations.”
Dirty dishes and ‘multiple residents with firearms’
Even before the accusations of cultish behavior, sexual coercion and planned violence, simmering tensions within the protest movement began spilling into public view.
During a protest at the Statehouse in April 2025 dubbed “Shred Project 2025,” Johnson lamented from the stage that “we are spending our time fighting each other, not fighting Trump.” In a YouTube video the next day, he invited organizers from across the state to a campfire to work out their differences.
But fractures continued to emerge.
Johnson butted heads with national organizers who wanted to promote only a single protest in May. “Our reaction on the team was a mixture of shock, dismay and absolute betrayal. Our honest reaction was: F that,” Johnson said in the video. “We honestly responded with absolute defiance.”
In the privacy of Johnson’s house, the upheaval went well beyond the typical in-fighting that occurs in any diverse, loosely organized group.
At a house meeting near the end of July, Maddux and Montenaro said they and other activists tried to confront Johnson about what they believed were his violent aspirations. They said a heated argument ensued, prompting several activist-residents to leave and stay in hotels.
Johnson characterized the meeting differently. He said he tried to address the mundane issue of dirty dishes and “everybody lost their g—— mind.”
A few days later, Maddux and Montenaro returned to Johnson’s home with Montenaro’s mom, longtime local activist Kim Saylor, to collect their belongings. Fearful of how Johnson might react, they called the police from the nearby parking lot of Fishers Spirits Wine & Beer and asked for an escort.
According to dispatch records, they told police that Johnson could be the “next Jim Jones.”
When police accompanied them to Johnson’s house, officers observed “multiple residents with firearms, tactical vests and a drone used to surveil the property,” according to a police report.
In the days following, in a letter posted to Facebook, Indiana 50501 activists using code names declared Johnson was no longer the group’s leader, citing “conflicts of interest, deeply unprofessional decisions made, and people hurt emotionally and financially.”
IndyStar spoke with 11 former leadership members and organizers who cut ties with Indiana 50501, citing concerns about Johnson.
Maddux claims Johnson still owes him money for work he performed. Others said Johnson hinted at potential payment for their design work, but never followed through.
The group’s social media accounts quickly devolved into confusion and personal attacks.
One former organizer, Tori McQueen, said she asked the national 50501 organization to intervene. National leaders said there wasn’t much they could do because there was no formal affiliation with the Indiana spinoff, McQueen said. They preferred the Indiana group rebrand without “50501” in its title, she said.
The national 50501 organization declined to comment for this story.
With the group in shambles, Johnson and other leaders stepped down in early August.
A blow to the movement
The protest movement Johnson helped build in Indiana sputtered.
Not until mid-October did a handful of other groups including Indivisible Central Indiana, the ACLU of Indiana and MADVoters Indiana organize a large Statehouse protest as part of a second national “No Kings” day of action. Johnson and Indiana 50501 were not involved.
Still, Johnson continued attending small protests and speaking with the media, raising alarms within progressive circles and causing further division.
Indivisible Central Indiana, a prominent liberal advocacy group, assembled an independent team to investigate “conduct within the Central Indiana activist community.” Several former 50501 activists told IndyStar they were interviewed as part of the investigation.
The result was a Jan. 25 letter from Indivisible promising to improve safety within the protest movement. The group said it would distance itself from organizations and people not aligned with its values, but did not specifically name Johnson or Indiana 50501.
In a statement to IndyStar, Indivisible said the letter was not in reaction to any specific outside group or incident.
Days later, Johnson took to social media and pledged to never again attend a protest in Indiana. “You now have what you want,” he said in a post on Facebook, where Johnson’s account features a header image of Luigi Mangione, the man accused of assassinating a health insurance CEO.
A speech bubble next to Mangione says: “They can’t prepare for a million of us.”
His legacy, however, still plagues the Indiana protest movement.
Monique Rust, a local activist, said the group’s implosion has left a level of suspicion about who to trust and which organizations are safe to partner with.
“This is maybe kind of the crux of a lot of the devastation: it is about community,” she said. “We need community to stay sane, just as people, but especially as activists.”
Many dedicated activists, including Maddux and Montenaro, have stopped protesting entirely.
Hess, the previous leader of Indiana 50501, said a lot of first-time protesters flooded the scene and wanted to get involved after Trump took office for a second term. He’s worried Johnson has done “unimaginable damage,” making the movement appear just as corrupt as the politics they were rallying against.
“He took something that had a lot of momentum and a lot of grassroots support,” Hess said, “and fundamentally just ruined its reputation.”
Scott Johnson’s next project: ‘We’re still in a quiet mode’
In his interview with IndyStar, Johnson was coy about his next steps.
In August, he was working on a project intended to capitalize on his experience as an organizer. He and two of his remaining allies poured their efforts into a new activism planning platform called Pollitify, according to Patreon and Substack posts. Aspiring activists could pay from $5 to $750 a month for memberships offering protest materials, grant opportunities, organizing tools and meetings with their team. Johnson said the project is no longer active.
The former website of Johnson’s group suggested as recently as mid-March that he and his remaining allies might have another project brewing in the ashes of Indiana 50501.
Visitors to the site were greeted with a fake 404 error message and a button to “Give up” or “Start Over.” Choosing the latter took users to a black webpage with green lines of code fluttering around behind it and a clock counting down to midnight April 22.
“This is how 2026 doesn’t become 1984,” the page said. “We change the rules; we kick over the board and we open source the next wave of tech; f— profits; f— market share; f— data collection; f— ’em all.”
When IndyStar asked Johnson what the clock was counting down to, one of his associates interjected to say it meant nothing and was a placeholder.
Johnson wouldn’t provide details on his new project, and after speaking with IndyStar, the website was taken down.
“We’re still in a quiet mode,” he said.
The USA TODAY Network – Indiana’s coverage of First Amendment issues is funded through a collaboration between the Freedom Forum and Journalism Funding Partners.
Have a story to tell? Reach Cate Charron by email at ccharron@indystar.com, on X at @CateCharron or Signal at @cate.charron.28.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Drones and sex parties: Behind the rift in Indiana’s protest movement
Reporting by Cate Charron, Indianapolis Star / Indianapolis Star
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
