Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) distanced himself from antisemitic influencer Ian Carroll after the congressman posted to social media an excerpt from a YouTube documentary that featured separate clips of himself and Carroll.

Carroll, described in the documentary as a researcher, is an antisemitic conspiracy theorist who has engaged in Holocaust distortion. He has claimed that Israel and Jewish people are involved in a malign global conspiracy, control the U.S. government and were responsible for the 9/11 attacks. He has also asserted that pedophile and financier Jeffrey Epstein was a “clearly a Jewish organization working on behalf of Israel and other groups.”

In the excerpt shared by Khanna alongside his own comments, Carroll stated that recipients of pro-Israel support are “operat[ing] our government on behalf of someone else,” referring to AIPAC and Israel. Khanna himself discussed his concerns about interest group spending in U.S. elections.

“This was a documentary made by Tommy G who interviewed me. I did not speak to or meet Ian Carroll. I stand by my words and should be judged by them,” Khanna said in a statement to Jewish Insider. “I vehemently disagree and reject any views blaming Israel for 9/11, denying the Holocaust, or conspiracies about a Jewish syndicate exerting control.”

In the documentary, Khanna described the U.S. as “complicit” in the destruction in Gaza and stated that Israel has committed war crimes in the enclave and that the International Court of Justice should examine and adjudicate the issue.

“The Hamas terrorist attack was awful, and I said that people who committed those crimes had to be brought to justice and the hostages had to be released,” Khanna said. “But that happened months in. Netanyahu has been bombing for 2 years.”

“Who says, ‘We’re going to starve the people so much that they suffer that we’re going to force the surrender?’ It’s sick, and your tax dollars, my tax dollars, are funding them,” Khanna added.

The documentary itself, posted by a YouTube videomaker with the handle Tommy G, is filled with antisemitic tropes. The thumbnail for the video frames Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a puppetmaster with strings controlling several men in suits, posed in front of the White House, flanked by Israeli and AIPAC flags. There are also several dollar bills superimposed over the image.

The documentary highlights anti-Israel arguments — including some conspiracy theories — and repeatedly brushes off or attempts to rebut arguments from pro-Israel voices featured in it. Anti-Israel voices receive the majority of the screen time in the video.

The narrator, Tommy G, opens the documentary by highlighting claims of a coverup or Israeli foreknowledge of the Oct. 7 attack, and plays up alleged Israeli abuses in Gaza.

While condemning Hamas’ actions, he suggests that the terrorist group’s actions could be seen as reasonable or provoked by Israel’s own actions, framing the group — as well as the Taliban in Afghanistan — as “freedom fighters” and “resistance movements.”

Tommy G also makes passing mention of — and does not interrogate — baseless claims that Israel may have been involved in the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

The documentarian describes Carroll as “one of the internet’s top conspiracy analysts,” who critics “label an antisemite … but to others he is a fearless journalist that speaks on what some perceive as an extremely strong Zionist pressure on our government.”

He also suggests that it is inherently suspicious that many lawmakers have traveled to Israel.

And he concludes the documentary by stating, “A lot of us feel deep in our gut something is off here, something is wrong here and I will not be intimidated into not asking questions.”

Carroll himself suggests in the documentary a connection between the pro-Israel cause and the John F. Kennedy assassination, that Israel had foreknowledge of the 9/11 attack and that Israel dispatched Jeffrey Epstein to cultivate relationships with U.S. leaders and blackmail them.

Another anti-Israel voice in the documentary is Anthony Aguilar, a former Gaza Humanitarian Foundation contractor whose key claim of Israeli and GHF abuses has been disproven.

Aguilar states in the documentary that American politicians aren’t allowed to talk about Israel and that shows “who controls you.”

Other featured guests include Sens. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Reps. Nancy Mace (R-SC) and Hank Johnson (R-GA), as well as Code Pink leader Medea Benjamin, an IDF reservist and a U.S. doctor who volunteered in Gaza. 

Mace, Johnson and the IDF reservist all spoke in defense of Israel. 

The video includes a clip of Norman Finkelstein, an antisemitic scholar who has voiced support for Hezbollah and accused Jews of exploiting the Holocaust.

In the documentary, Paul suggests, falsely, that the U.S. has created “easier” rules around lobbying disclosures for countries the U.S. considers to be allies and that many pro-Israel activists are dual-citizens, part of a segment of the documentary that attempts to interrogate why AIPAC is not registered as a foreign lobbying group.

The group’s members and leaders are American citizens who act on their own recognizance, rather than at the instruction of the Israeli government.

Khanna, pushing back on the narrative framing AIPAC supporters as foreign agents, states in the documentary, “They’re American citizens. If you’re an American citizen and you’re articulating a point of view, that’s your right. … They’re American citizens. They’re lobbying for their interests. They’re lobbying for the Netanyahu government’s interests because they think that’s what benefits America. And they’re paying millions of dollars, which under Citizens United is legal.”

Khanna argues in the documentary that spending from outside super PACs on behalf of favored candidates should be outlawed.

The California congressman, rumored as a potential 2028 presidential candidate, has also recently faced scrutiny for his appearance at ArabCon, where other speakers defended Hamas and laughed off the idea of condemning its Oct. 7 attacks.