Nancy Mace, the South Carolina Republican congresswoman, often tells her staff that she’s a self-taught coder—just one aspect of how Mace presents her tech expertise, as befits her role in shaping the GOP’s policies on technology and work as chair of the House subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Information Technology, and Government Innovation.
“I would say [it was] at least a weekly comment, if not daily,” says one of several former Mace staffers who spoke with WIRED. Another found her high regard for her skills somewhat at odds with her demonstrated ability. (Like all the staffers WIRED spoke with, they requested anonymity because they fear reprisal from their former boss.)
A principal—and unusual—use to which Mace put her skills, according to former staffers, was setting up burner accounts on a variety of social media platforms to monitor what people were saying about her and bolster her image. They also claim she requested that staffers make their own burner accounts to defend her online.
“We had to make multiple accounts, burner accounts, and go and reply to comments, saying things that weren’t true—even Reddit forums,” a former staffer says. “We were congressional staff, and there were actual things we could be doing to help the constituents.”
“It would be a slap in the face to taxpayers across the country for me to spent [sic] time on their dime commenting on my bosses [sic] personal life,” Sydney Long, Mace’s communications director, writes in an email to WIRED. “The only relationship the Congresswoman cares about is her one with South Carolina. She is married to her job and that is all the media should care about.” Mace’s office did not answer a detailed list of questions on the programming languages in which she is proficient and what types of devices she uses for coding.
Mace, who staff said once identified as a “never Trumper,” has become one of the president’s staunchest allies on Capitol Hill. She’s willing to go to more extreme lengths than many of her colleagues to attack Trump’s enemies and gain ample attention online in the process, like introducing a resolution to stop transgender people from using bathrooms in federal buildings that align with their gender identity rather than biological sex. (This legislation, Mace confirmed, purposefully targeted Representative Sarah McBride from Delaware, the first openly transgender member of Congress.) She also has a guiding hand on technology policy; earlier this year, for example, she reintroduced a bill she previously cosponsored in 2023, the Modernizing Government Technology Reform Act, which, if passed and signed into law, would require a sweeping audit of legacy federal IT systems.
Recently, Mace showed a “naked silhouette” of herself during a House subcommittee hearing on surveillance as part of a running string of allegations she has made against her ex-fiancé, South Carolina businessman Patrick Bryant, whom she accused of physically assaulting her and of possessing images of “underage girls” in an explosive floor speech in February. During the speech, she alleged three other men had committed various other crimes, including sexual abuse, sex trafficking, and taking videos of sexual acts without their consent. Bryant and the three other men have denied Mace’s accusations and did not respond to requests for comment from WIRED. (Because Mace’s comments were made on the House floor, she may be sheltered by the Constitution’s speech and debate clause, which protects lawmakers from lawsuits related to their legislative actions.)
In late 2023, before Mace’s house speech, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division began an investigation into Mace’s “allegations of assault, harassment, and voyeurism.” In an unrelated deposition, which was conducted by Bryant’s lawyers, the congresswoman’s passion for technology and alleged use of “Twitter burner accounts” came up at length.
The terms hack and hacking appear a combined 13 times during the deposition given by Wesley Donehue, whose firm did consulting work for Mace’s 2022 and 2024 reelection campaigns before he says he fired her as a client.
“You need to know that Nancy Mace is quite the—when I use the word ‘nerd’ or ‘geek,’ it’s always favorable, but a computer nerd or a computer geek,” Donehue said in the deposition, first reported by FITSNews, a conservative-leaning South Carolina outlet. “She programs her own bots. She sets up Twitter burner accounts. This is kind of a thing she does. She sits all night on the couch and programs bots, because she’s very, very computer savvy. She controls her own voter database, she programs a lot of her own website, she programs Facebook bots and Instagram bots and Twitter bots. It’s what she does for fun.”
In a post on X, Donehue claimed he stopped working with Mace because, he said, “I don’t have time for her constant egotistical bullshit and drama in my life.” Donehue did not return a request for comment.
At another point in the deposition, Donehue alleged that Mace tried to get into Bryant’s phone because she found out he was using an unspecified dating app. “And because she found that,” Donehue explained, “she started thinking that he was cheating on her, so she got into his phone. And then when she got back from the Caribbean, she hacked into other apps—and I don’t know what those other apps are—and seemingly found hundreds of photos and videos.” (In her February House speech, Mace alleged that Bryant “put my thumbprint on his phone” and then gave her “legal access” to his phone. During the speech, she also said, “Patrick Bryant must have forgotten that in my younger days, in my youth, I used to be a computer programmer … know enough about technology.”)
Mace’s staffers shared a similar assessment to that of what Donehue alleged: The congresswoman was often using rudimentary tools available for anyone with a professional account on social media sites, such as automating comments on her Facebook page for anyone thanking her.
“I never saw her coding shit. Ever,” the first former staffer said. “But, I mean, she’d talk about tech a lot.”
