A Bay Area yoga studio has fired a instructor for not cutting ties with the man whose organization is responsible for recently distributing antisemitic flyers in the region and across the country.
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Jeff Renfro, owner of Berkeley's Hella Yoga, Funky Door Yoga and Petaluma's Yoga Hell, confirmed to KCBS Radio in a phone interview on Wednesday that he fired Kelly Johnson, the co-founder of Hella Yoga and an instructor at Yoga Hell, last weekend because of her relationship with Jon Minadeo Jr., her boyfriend and the leader of a white supremacist group.
The group, known as the Goyim Defense League, runs an antisemitic video platform called Goyim TV, and has distributed flyers throughout the Bay Area and around the U.S. promoting it and falsely claiming the American COVID-19 response is a Jewish conspiracy. The Anti-Defamation League said they were responsible for at least 74 incidents involving antisemtic propaganda last year.
J. The Jewish News of California first reported Johnson’s firing on Saturday.
The decision was months in the making, Renfro said.
Renfro, who is Jewish but said he isn't particularly religious, told KCBS Radio that Johnson complained in a conversation late last year of sitting next to "two smelly Jews" on a flight.
"You don’t forget a comment like that," he said.
Renfro then looked up Minadeo online. He said he knew Minadeo for years but didn’t know the extent of his "extreme" views, thinking Johnson’s partner "was into QAnon." For two days, Renfro watched and listened to hours of podcasts with antisemitic, racist and homophobic content on Goyim TV, which Minadeo recorded under the name "Handsome Truth."
On Dec. 16, Renfro said he found a folder on a shared work computer named for Minadeo. That folder, according to Renfro, included paperwork registering Goyim TV as an LLC in California.
Five days later, Minadeo last appeared in a video on the platform, according to the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat. Renfro said that's because Minadeo, who didn't want his wife’s name attached to his views, ultimately agreed to stop podcasting after Renfro said he would "expose" Johnson's ties to the GDL leader.
Johnson "didn’t really say much" during a "heart to heart," according to Renfro. He also said Johnson "never apologized" for her partner's views, and he ultimately bought back his share of Hella Yoga from Johnson last month after selling it to her months before the pandemic.
"She's known for months now that, if John didn’t change his behavior, her actions and behavior would come out," Renfro said of Johnson. "She'd known that."
Minadeo stopped podcasting, but Renfro said the GDL started distributing the antisemitic flyers soon after their conversation. The group’s propaganda appeared across the Bay Area beginning in late January, starting in San Francisco's Pacific Heights before spreading to Danville, Marin County, Berkeley, Palo Alto and Napa last month.
When the Press-Democrat reported on the extent of Minadeo's involvement with the group on Saturday after their flyers were disseminated near a Napa synagogue, Renfro said he decided to fire her knowing that it wouldn't take long for people to connect Johnson to Minadeo.
Johnson told the San Francisco Chronicle that Renfro's claims are "all lies." Minadeo, who told the paper and Berkeleyside that he produced but didn't distribute the flyers, told the Chronicle that Renfro's actions were "the most slanderous, lying, evilest thing I have ever seen someone do to anyone else."
Both Johnson and Minadeo said she doesn’t share her boyfriend's views, with Johnson saying of her partner that she wasn't "responsible for someone else’s beliefs and what they do."
"I am really hurt that they have gone this far to lie about me and say these things about me that are untrue," Johnson told the paper. "I am a very loving person and have relationships and friendships with all kinds of people. It’s really hard to read this."
Renfro told KCBS Radio it was also "a little hard to read" Johnson's comments, as he had hoped her firing would be the impetus for her to leave Minadeo.
Instead, Renfro said "it made me realize I'll probably be getting a letter from a lawyer" after Johnson and Minadeo told the Chronicle they had sought legal advice.
"She never told me she disagreed with him, and she never told me that it was wrong," Renfro said of Johnson, a woman he told KCBS Radio "was like my sister." "She was very concerned that her name would get dragged down with him."
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