Democratic governor of Maryland Wes Moore often touts his connection to Jamaica and his pride in the country.

Wes Moore has been mentioned as a potential Democratic candidate for the US presidency in 2028, although he has denied any presidential aspirations to run at that time. 

Some pundits suggested Moore should have stepped forward when President Joe Biden decided not to face off against Donald Trump in 2024.

Moore, 47, has said that the Ku Klux Klan forced both his grandfather and great-grandfather to leave South Carolina and settle in Jamaica.

However, the Washington Free Beacon has unearthed historical records that reveal Reverend Josiah Johnson Thomas left Pineville, South Carolina, to replace a deceased pastor in Jamaica, which had nothing to do with the Ku Klux Klan.

Some Republicans and right-wing commentators have jumped on this and see this as Moore’s ‘Jessie Smollett’ moment and another case of woke leftists spinning narratives to suit their cause. They say this revelation taints Wes Moore’s credibility.

Wes Moore stands behind the story of his family’s history and, in an interview with CNN’s Katie Hunt, said: “There is no truth to what a right-wing blog writes about me. There is not. Because I know my family’s history.”

Rather than being run out of the US by the Ku Klux Klan, his great-grandfather took up a job in Jamaica in the 1920s. Katie Hunt put this to Wes Moore, who became indignant and rebuffed the assertion, standing by his story. 

Wes Moore maintains that when his grandfather was still a toddler, both he and his family were run out by the Ku Klux Klan and that they suffered vicious racism.

“If anyone wants to question my family’s history or the history of the Ku Klux Klan, they should really ask the Ku Klux Klan because they are the ones who should have the answers.”

In July 2023, Moore was conferred with an honorary Doctor of Laws degree by the University of the Commonwealth Caribbean (UCC) in Kingston.