Yesterday in suburban Phoenix, J.T. Ready, the most well-known neo-Nazi in the state of Arizona, massacred four members of his family including a 15-month old baby girl, then killed himself.

Now anti-immigrant Arizona Republican leader Russell Pearce is desperately trying to distance himself from J.T. Ready.

As Russell Pearce’s power in Arizona politics grew over the years, so too did questions about his past friendship with a man who went on to become the most vocal neo Nazi in the state.

So when that neo Nazi reportedly massacred four people in a suburban Phoenix home before turning the gun on himself on Wednesday, reporters naturally turned to the former state Senate president and primary sponsor of Arizona’s tough immigration law to comment on the killings.

After resisting for hours, Pearce relented late in the day and released a lengthy statement detailing how he came to know JT Ready and what eventually led to their falling out. Multiple media outlets in Arizona posted the statement in whole.

Pearce said he, like others in the Phoenix suburb of Mesa, got to know Ready for his interest in Republican politics.

“When we first met JT he was fresh out of the Marine Corp and seemed like a decent person,” Pearce wrote. “He worked as a telephone fundraiser for Christian and pro-life groups, he dated the daughter of one of our District 18 members, and his attitudes and spoken opinions were good and decent.”

According to the Phoenix New Times, Pearce became a mentor to Ready. The powerful lawmaker helped the young man convert to the Mormon religion and he was there for Ready’s first baptism.

But J.T. Ready’s long history of associations with Republicans, right wing political activism, organization of a border militia, and involvement with the Tea Party means nothing to the Internet’s dumbest (and possibly most dishonest) man, Jim Hoft.

Hoft is busy trying to tie J.T. Ready to … wait for it … the Occupy movement.

Horror!… Neo-Nazi #Occupy Phoenix Protester Goes on Shooting Rampage - 5 Dead | the Gateway Pundit

Back in October we reported that Neo-Nazi Jason Todd Ready was patrolling the #Occupy Phoenix camp with AR-15′s.

Neo-Nazi Jason Todd (J.T.) Ready pictured on left patrolling the Occupy Phoenix protest and on right at Southern Poverty Law Center website.

Of course, since this was not a tea party rally the story was never picked up by the liberal media.

Good grief. This must be the most desperate and dishonest attempt at spinning away a killer’s right wing connections I’ve seen yet.

Hoft updates the post in his inimitable fashion:

More… It looks like poor unhinged Charles Johnson jumped the gun on this one. JT wasn’t a rightwinger after all, huh Chuck? Hopefully Mr. Johnson will be honest enough to post an update with corrections.

To say that J.T. Ready “wasn’t a right winger” is absolutely ludicrous — and Jim Hoft knows that. Ready spent his entire adult life involved in right wing causes and Republican activism. He was a fundraiser for Christian and pro-life groups, and was a Maricopa County GOP precinct committeeman until being expelled for handing out antisemitic and racist literature at an event in 2008.

He showed up at one Occupy rally to grab some publicity for his extreme right wing border militia group. And in one of his last acts, Ready ran for sheriff as a Democrat because he had been shunned by the Republican Party (he was an overt neo-Nazi, after all), and because (in his own words) he liked the old-style racist Democratic Party of the Jim Crow days.

This is definitely not anyone’s idea of a “left wing Occupy supporter.”

Hoft isn’t trying to be honest or accurate, he’s just lying outright.