VTDigger14%
He’s the high bailiff of Orange County, Vermont. Now, he’s in Iran — and saluting its ‘holy war’ with the US 34%
By Shaun Robinson45%
7/16/2026, 10:57:37 PM
Keywords: Chris Helali, Orange County, Vermont, Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Holy War, US, High Bailiff, Trump, Moscow, Russia, Jeffrey Epstein, Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, Yemen, Houthi, No Fly List
BS Summary: This article contains 24 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Appeal to Authority, and Appeal to Emotion, with Self-Serving Bias as the most egregious example at 11.5% saturation with 161 hits. Analysis detected 1,531 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,401 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 41.6% and a BS Rank of 34% (11,157 of 16,722 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 66.70% of the article peer group.
Chris Helali, the high bailiff of Orange County, said in a post on the social media platform X that he visited Iran to attend the state funeral of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
In Vermont, high bailiff is not a post that comes with many responsibilities.
Most people who hold the county office are never called upon to carry out its duties, which include taking over for the local sheriff in the event the sheriff goes to jail or is otherwise unable to do the job.
It’s an office that flies under the radar, something many voters only think about when they see a name on the ballot every two years.
But Christopher Helali, who’s been the high bailiff of Orange County since 2025, has been invoking what little authority the position does have in a way that’s far from orthodox.
And he’s doing it far away from the voters who elected him to serve in the role.
“The ELECTED High Bailiff of Orange County, VT, USA is in Qom, Iran to honor, salute, and pray for Imam Khamenei and his family,” Helali wrote on X last week , referring to the longtime Iranian supreme leader who was killed in a joint U.S.-Israeli airstrike in February .
The U.S. has waged an on-again, off-again war with Iran in the months since, and fighting escalated again this week centered on control of the Strait of Hormuz.
Attached to Helali’s X post was an image of him appearing to raise a fist in front of a large red banner reading, “Kill Trump.”
The ELECTED High Bailiff of Orange County, VT, USA is in Qom, Iran to honor, salute, and pray for Imam Khamenei and his family. pic.twitter.com/ZqHy1VWUV4
- Christopher Helali (@ChrisHelali) July 7, 2026
Helali, an academic and journalist who has lived in Vermont but currently lives in Moscow, Russia, said in an interview Thursday that he’s been in Iran since the first week of July to attend and report on Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s state funeral.
Massive crowds of mourners turned out in cities around the country for the proceedings, which have also been met with opposition by some Iranians who oppose their government over its brutal crackdown on dissent.
Helali, who won his election in 2024 on a write-in campaign with 446 votes , said Iranian officials told him he was the only U.S. public official in that country for the funeral.
VTDigger could not independently verify that claim or the authenticity of the images that he acknowledged posting on social media.
Helali said he is not planning to run for high bailiff again in this year’s election.
In a video posted July 4 , Helali described his attendance as part of the high bailiff’s “ceremonial duties,” which include supporting “the oppressed and the marginalized for as long as I live.”
He preferred to spend the holiday — the 250th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence — in Iran, he continued, because the U.S. government “has sadly been a force for tremendous evil, brutality and barbarism.”
“And in that way, I want people to understand that I’m here for the sole purpose of defending Iran, and for showing my solidarity and support for Iran, for the revolution and for our unity at this time against imperialism and against Zionism,” he said.
Helali also referred to his office in a post several days later, writing that, “I want my constituents to know that Iran is fighting a HOLY WAR against SATANISM,” and against people associated with Jeffrey Epstein, the late child sex offender and global financier.
In 2020, Helali obtained one of Epstein’s now-infamous “little black” address books , which he previously told VTDigger he planned to use for his reporting.
Helali said he was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, to Iranian and Greek parents.
He later attended Dartmouth College for a graduate program, after which he settled in Vershire and taught high school just across the state line in Hanover, New Hampshire.
In 2020, he ran for Vermont’s sole U.S.
House seat with support from a national communist political party, scoring 1% of the vote.
Helali was living in Vershire when he ran for high bailiff in 2024.
But he said he decided to move to Russia the next year after facing what he called “increased scrutiny and oppression” from the U.S. government and members of his local community.
He believes that stemmed at least partly from his decision to travel to Lebanon for the funeral of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah as well as to Yemen to speak at a conference about Palestine hosted by the country’s Houthi rebel government.
Helali said he was afraid of being the victim of political violence in the U.S. over his beliefs, which include support for the Iranian and Russian governments.
Asked how that squares with his decision to post a selfie in front of a banner calling for Trump’s killing, Helali said he was not explicitly endorsing the banner’s message but instead wanted to share it because it would be “provocative.”
He now considers Moscow his home, he said, though was adamant he still has connections to Vershire and the surrounding community.
He could not say when he would be in Vermont next.
‘Duke it out in court’
In the July 4 video, Helali told his 51,000 followers on X that “if anybody has a problem” with the fact he was in Iran while serving in a public office in Vermont, “I challenge them to duke it out in court with me.”
There is no legal requirement that Helali live in Orange County, or even in Vermont, to serve as the county’s high bailiff, according to Sean Sheehan, director of the elections division at the Vermont secretary of state’s office.
That is also the case for county sheriffs in Vermont — the office that Helali could, in theory, need to take over.
Sheehan confirmed Wednesday that Helali holds the office and that it would take a successful court challenge to remove him.
The secretary of state’s office has no say in determining someone’s qualifications for a given position, Sheehan said.
Helali said he was not aware of any time so far that he’s needed to fulfill any of the duties of high bailiff.
But he said he would be willing to return to Orange County for any of the office’s duties over the rest of his term, if he felt that he needed to.
That could be a challenge, he acknowledged, because he believes he is on the U.S.
Transportation Security Administration’s list of people prohibited from boarding flights that travel within, into or out of the country — commonly called the no-fly list.
As evidence, he described being denied boarding for a flight last month between China and Mexico that crossed over U.S. airspace.
Not everyone agrees that it’s acceptable for a county official to live outside the local area, much less on the other side of the world.
Claude Weyant, the high bailiff of neighboring Windsor County, found himself in the rare position earlier this year of taking over a sheriff’s duties.
That was after Sheriff Ryan Palmer was arrested on sex crime charges , to which Palmer has since pleaded not guilty.
Palmer is not running for reelection this year and transferred responsibility for managing the department to Weyant, who has worked in the office for decades.
Weyant said in an interview that he did not know any details about Helali but thinks living at least “in the general area” would be a good idea.
Weyant also said he was concerned by how Helali was invoking the title and thought it could be misleading.
The job “has no influence.
No authority on anything,” Weyant said.
Helali said he thinks that advocating for political causes is well within the confines of the high bailiff job, describing it as a role focused on upholding justice and advocating to protect people.
He is not the first person in Vermont to think of the office as primarily an advocacy post but agreed he might be the first to use it to advocate for such controversial views.
“If that’s the only thing I can use the role for, you better believe I’m going to use it that way — until somebody tells me otherwise,” he said.
Analysis
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