Who is David Hogg?

Who is David Hogg? He is the son of Kevin Hogg, a former agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Rebecca Boldrick, an anti-Trump teacher for Broward County Public Schools in Broward County, Florida. Hogg lives in one of those gated communities with his mother, Rebecca, his father, Kevin, and his younger sister, Lauren.
Before the shooting, Hogg was a student reporter with the Sun-Sentinel’s TeenLink, a program for high school journalists. He was head of the school student TV station. His Twitter feed says he's an activist, a filmmaker, a video editor and a student reporter. He’s due to graduate high school in a few months. Hogg says his family moved from California to Florida at the beginning of high school in 2016 so he could become a teen journalist after his father retired from the FBI. Rebecca says her husband retired from the FBI because he was diagnosed with early-onset Parkinson's disease which the family had kept private because Kevin Hogg was embarrassed.

David Hogg says he goes back to visit his friends in LA every summer. That's why he was filming on the beach in LA last summer when one of his videos went viral. His speaking polish comes from years of participation in the school debate program, Broward County Schools Superintendent Robert Runcie said.

Hogg was on campus in his AP environmental science class and told the teacher that the repeated "pop" sounds the class heard sounded like gunshots. Hogg and other students made an attempt to exit the building, but a janitor instructed the students to go back into the class. A culinary arts teacher pulled Hogg and others inside her classroom and they hid in a closet. Hogg checked social media and discovered that the shooting was occurring at their high school in real time. He used his cell phone to film the scene and to interview the other students hiding in the closet. Hogg's sister, who is a freshman at the high school, corresponded with her brother via text message and phone calls while the shooting was taking place. However, her mother and father said Lauren sent them a text during the shooting that said: “CODE RED. At school. I love you too.” and then Lauren's phone died and they didn't hear from her again. At one point, David Hogg telephoned his father. “Dad, there’s an active shooter at my school,” he remembers saying. “I love you.” “I‘m on the way now,” Kevin Hogg said. While in class, David tweeted updates and filmed students screaming, putting their hands up for SWAT, and marching out of the room. He also interviewed students outside the building. His footage was aired on CNN and numerous outlets, the only cell phone video recovered from some 3,000 students.

After about an hour, SWAT team police officers came into the classroom and escorted them out. Hogg reunited with his sister and father later that day. Lauren said four of the 17 that died in the shooting were her friends.

How did the rumor start about Hogg being a crisis actor? Two sources. One was from an email sent by a Florida lawmaker. Another was from a tweet sent out by a Florida teacher. An aide to Florida lawmaker Shawn Harrison, R-Tampa, Benjamin A. Kelly, was fired because of emails he sent from his official government email account to a Tampa Bay Times reporter; the emails claimed that Hogg and other students were crisis actors and included a link to a YouTube video that was later removed. He included a picture of David Hogg and Emma Gonzalez speaking on CNN with the assertion: "Both kids in the picture are not students here but actors that travel to various crisis when they happen." A message tweeted from the account of an Irving ISD educator accused David Hoff also of being a crisis actor. But the district official who owns the account, math coordinator Julie Merrill, denies writing the tweet and said she doesn't know who did it. She has since taken down her account.

How did the rumor start about Hogg's mom, Rebecca Boldrick, working for CNN? A photo she put on her Facebook page in March 2016 which she tagged “CNN World Headquarters, Newsroom.” The picture shows her children, David and Lauren Hogg, sitting behind a CNN anchor desk. It’s from a tour taken of CNN in Atlanta by her aspiring journalist children. Boldrick even labeled the series of photos on Facebook as a “Great VIP Tour.” Boldrick hasn’t been shy about sharing her political opinions. She’s not a fan of President Donald Trump, and she supports Planned Parenthood. As far as Trump goes, she’s been outspoken online ever since he won the election. About a year ago on Facebook she wrote: “I can’t be silent any more. I tried to be respectful during the elections. I can’t sit by and do nothing with what is going on currently in the USA. It’s horrifying. If you like what Trump is currently doing please unfriendly or block me because you won’t like what I am going to begin posting.”
How did the media confirm that David and his sister Lauren were actually students at MSD school? Broward County School Superintendent Runcie said he had been to MSD before and met them and knew they were students at MSD. Wow, out of 3,000 students at MSD, and dozens of schools under his purview, Muncie knew the two Hogg children, personally? Impressive memory.

Who is Hogg's father, Kevin Hogg? He is retired from the FBI supposedly because he was diagnosed with early-onset Parkinson’s disease. Before joining the FBI, Kevin, 51, was a Navy pilot and an elementary school teacher. Kevin Hogg was assigned to the FBI covering the Los Angeles International Airport before he retired in 2014. Hogg moved his family to Florida after that. Prior to this, Kevin Hogg never really was in the news except for an incident involving a Nigerian stowaway at LAX in 2011 who was arrested after he was found with an expired boarding pass that belonged to someone else.

David Hogg said as soon as he got home that day from the shooting, he biked the three miles back to campus to start reporting on what happened. He posted two tweets about being safe and pushing gun control within 30 minutes of the shooting on February 14. Those two tweets have since been removed from his Twitter feed. He traveled to Tallahassee for a massive anti-gun rally. He grilled politicians on their stance on gun control at a CNN town hall. Dozens of media appearances soon followed. In the past month, Hogg has appeared on countless networks like CNN, NBC, ABC, and MSNBC and countless talk show programs. He has amassed more than 450,000 followers on Twitter.

Right after the shooting, President Trump invited Hogg to the White House. Here's what he said: "They called me the day before the listening sessions and asked if we were going to come. I said I'm not coming because we expect President Trump to come to the CNN town hall. I said, ‘We don’t need to listen to President Trump. President Trump needs to listen to the screams of the children and the screams of this nation."