Everett Wilkinson: Tea Party Extremist, Media Darling

But that tenacity got him noticed. In October 2009, Wilkinson materialized on MSNBC's Hardball With Chris Matthews. Next came CNN, and soon Wilkinson had launched a Twitter handle: @teapartyczar.

"He's established some kind of celebrity status with the national programs," Kilcullen says. "Charlatans do that. He's just power-hungry. So absolutely power-hungry."

Everett Wilkinson: "So absolutely power-hungry."

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More About

• Everett Wilkinson
• Sid Dinerstein
• Barack Obama
• World Politics
• U.S. Politics

In January 2010, Wilkinson filed a federal lawsuit, which was later dropped, against the Florida TEA (Taxed Enough Already) Party, alleging it had misappropriated the name tea. Its chairman, Doug Guetzloe, then sued Wilkinson in state court for defamation; those claims too were dropped. In separate litigation, Wilkinson was sued in 2011 for breach of contract and paid a woman named Susan Smith of Palm Beach County $1,251 after she accused him of "lies" and "procrastination" that impeded her fundraising efforts, according to Sunshine State News.

That same year, Wilkinson organized a local rally for Donald Trump in Boca Raton but came up short $6,000 in security fees, and Trump had to cover the event's expenses. (Wilkinson says he hadn't expected so high a bill.)

Even today, money problems seem to bedevil Wilkinson. On a recent Tuesday, he said he makes "very little" through activism. He declined to reveal how much he pays to rent his office — a small, sterile side room in a three-story building in downtown West Palm Beach.

And it's likely, for all his national clout, he doesn't have much of a following. Wilkinson told New Times last November that he has as many as 40,000 followers, but Pam Wohlschlegel, the former Palm Beach County Tea Party chairwoman, said she doesn't know anyone anywhere who takes Wilkinson seriously.

Nick Egoroff, a Tea Party activist in Orlando, called Wilkinson a "has-been." Five prominent party activists interviewed by New Times all agreed: Wilkinson is pure bluster.

But what separates Wilkinson from others like him is how many reporters quote him — and repeatedly — without checking him out.

On the homepage of his website, liberty.com, there's a disturbing video depicting a group of Nazis confiscating a gun from a "Constitution fanatic," accusing him of "resisting social progress," and executing him.

Another "news" article published on February 15 says that "Supreme Leader Barack Hussein Obama" called for an "ultimate gun ban" in his recent State of the Union address to "communize" the country and establish his "anti-white, pro-radical Muslim, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, pro-gay, socialist government and eliminate what few liberties we have left."

One lengthy piece, "It's Obvious They Want Civil War!," says Obama "staged or encouraged" the mass shootings that occurred in Aurora, Colorado, and Newtown, Connecticut.

When New Times contacted the National Journal's Reinhard to ask whether she knew about any of this, she hurried to get off the phone. "I don't know him that well," she said. "I don't want to participate in a story like this... I just like doing my stories."