Elijah Schaffer, a 32-year-old MAGA influencer with nearly 900,000 Twitter followers, spiraled into a public meltdown this week — posting a series of erratic claims that his wife and children had been kidnapped, his car stolen, and the FBI was trying to destroy his life.

The posts arrived at the same time as revelations about an alleged five-month affair with a 21-year-old employee who built her brand on opposing premarital sex.

As reported by The Daily Mail, his wife, Kezia, had already left him in December with their two sons — ages two and 15 months — and filed for divorce. She's now living in a rented house in Frisco, Texas. Schaffer filed a competing separation petition in Florida.

The affair, the meltdown, and the divorce have peeled back a layer of the conservative media ecosystem that most people in the movement would rather not look at, but probably should.

The Meltdown

Schaffer's Twitter posts read like dispatches from a man at war with reality. On Monday, he claimed his family was missing:

"I do not know where my wife and kids are and I cannot get ahold of them. They are filed as missing persons. They have gone missing."

He escalated from there, claiming someone in his household had planted drugs and framed him, that the FBI was orchestrating his destruction, and that the Department of Homeland Security was involved. He posted a video of himself wandering a flooded hotel, saying:

"No one believes me that my life doesn't make any sense right now."

None of his claims about law enforcement involvement has been confirmed by any agency. No evidence has surfaced that Kezia or the children were ever in danger. By all accounts relayed through sources close to both parties, Kezia left voluntarily — fleeing a marriage defined by alleged verbal abuse, heavy drinking, and serial infidelity.

Milo Yiannopoulos, who posted screenshots of his private messages with Schaffer, didn't mince words:

"Your tweets have been so erratic and insane that people are asking if you killed your family."

Schaffer's response to that was to note he'd recovered his car. By Thursday night, the conspiratorial tone had given way to something more defiant — and stranger:

"I have a d**k and it works. Everyone can go cry about it. What's done in darkness will be shown in the light. I honestly gave my life to God a few months ago. We've all done things we know we shouldn't be doing. Publicly stone me. You won't make me hate myself for what I repented of."

That's not the language of a man being persecuted by federal agencies. That's damage control dressed up as spiritual warfare.

The Affair

Sarah Stock — now Sarah Setka — was a podcaster at Schaffer's media company, RiftTV. She was 21. She had built a following preaching sexual restraint and traditional values. Last July, she tweeted:

"Real Christian men want to get married because sex outside of marriage is a sin regardless of whether or not you've committed the sin before."

According to sources close to Schaffer, the two had sex the night they met at CPAC last February. The affair allegedly continued for five months, with Stock traveling to Florida under the guise of work trips. A source described Schaffer's behavior during the relationship in terms that would be pathetic if they weren't so predatory:

"He and Sarah met in NYC one time, he took her out for some fancy date to give her an example of 'how she should be treated' and also dropped a ton of cash on new clothes for her. Elijah would describe Sarah as 'the best he's ever had'."

Another source said Schaffer used his own toddler as cover:

"He'd get the kids to lie for him, like he'd get like the toddler to say, 'oh, we went to the office', but really he was taking them over to the apartment."

Stock also spoke about the incident during a recorded phone call with an unidentified man. She said that on the night they met, Schaffer gave her large amounts of alcohol along with Benadryl, which led to her losing consciousness.

According to Stock, Schaffer told her that his wife was unconcerned about his actions. She recalled him saying that his wife allowed him complete freedom because he provided well for her, and that she let him act as he pleased since he believed he fulfilled his responsibilities at home.

Stock posted a vague apology on Wednesday — acknowledging "mistakes/unwise decisions" — then deleted all her social media accounts hours later. She had married Will Setka, 28, in January, converted to Catholicism in April, and had her marriage blessed by Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican. Her engagement ring photo on Instagram was captioned: "I won."

What Kezia Endured

The picture of Kezia Schaffer's life that emerges from sources is grim. Originally from Tweed Heads, Australia, she met Schaffer on Instagram, moved to the United States, married him in 2019, and obtained a green card. She became a stay-at-home mother to two young boys while Schaffer — according to multiple sources — organized his professional life around his ability to drink.

"Elijah is an alcoholic and was black out drunk like 5-6 day a week when I was around him. He organized the company around a schedule where he could get drunk 24/7 and party."

Schaffer himself, in a secretly recorded conversation, admitted to a binge drinking problem:

"Do I drink sometimes, and too much? Absolutely. I consider myself having more of a binge problem, even if it is only a couple of times a week and I'll black out or whatever, and that is problematic."

The verbal abuse was also recorded. In one secretly captured rant directed at Kezia, Schaffer unleashed a stream of obscenities, calling her a "fake complainer [with] fake problems" and a "f**king stupid c**t," while also telling her to "shut the f**k up because I'm your husband."

A friend of Kezia's described the full scope of the situation:

"She's a stay at home mom, she didn't work or anything, and I think he liked it that way. Like, he kept her. She couldn't leave him because he was the breadwinner, she'd never had a job. She stayed home and raised his babies, and he just was gone all the time out at strip clubs, getting drunk, hooking up with people, and she's such a wonderful person who didn't deserve it."

After Kezia left, Schaffer allegedly cut off her bank accounts and took all their money. Sources say she is now focused solely on securing full custody and fears retaliation for anything that becomes public. Schaffer's own post-meltdown rhetoric hasn't exactly quelled those concerns. On his RiftTV show, he said about the custody dispute:

"I'm not going to go down without, you know, a few shots fired. Figuratively, of course, we're saying. But physically too, if needed."

A Pattern, Not an Incident

This didn't come from nowhere. Schaffer was fired from The Blaze in 2022 for "violating company policies and standards" after he was accused of groping fellow host Sara Gonzales while drunk at a film premiere. Australian YouTuber Sydney Watson filed a lawsuit claiming Schaffer created a sexually hostile work environment on their co-hosted podcast — The Blaze settled that suit in 2024.

In December 2022, Christian Walker publicly criticized him. Walker said he had met Schaffer’s wife, described her as very kind, and said it was disturbing to see how Schaffer treated her behind her back.

People close to Schaffer say the public fallout this week is only the latest sign of a much longer decline. According to those sources, Elijah has been struggling for months, and the events of this week represent the lowest point in an ongoing downward spiral rather than a single isolated episode.

Before the meltdown, Schaffer attended a birthday party at actor Kevin Sorbo's house, where a source said he was "obliterated and making an ass of himself, slurring his words, mixing alcohol with Xanax." He is also facing a $5 million defamation lawsuit filed by Alexis Wilkins — the girlfriend of FBI director Kash Patel — for repeatedly claiming she was an Israeli Mossad operative running a "honeypot" operation on Patel. Schaffer dismissed the suit on Twitter as "the legal equivalent of your romantic partner getting mad at you for cheating on her in her dream."

The Conservative Movement's Accountability Problem

There is a temptation to treat this story as tabloid noise — a personal collapse that doesn't reflect on the broader movement. That would be a mistake.

Schaffer built his brand on Christian values, traditional marriage, and moral clarity. Stock did the same. They monetized virtue. They built audiences of people who took those positions seriously — young conservatives trying to live countercultural lives in a world that mocks restraint and fidelity. Those audiences deserved better than a 32-year-old man allegedly using his toddler as an alibi for an affair with an employee half a decade his junior, and a young woman preaching virginity while allegedly sleeping with her married boss.

The conservative movement's strength is its insistence that standards matter — that character isn't relative, that actions have consequences, that the family is the bedrock of civilization. Those principles don't bend because the person violating them has the right politics or the right enemies. If anything, the betrayal cuts deeper precisely because it comes from inside the house.