A public relations consultant with the conservative Steamboat Institute is among the people and institutions in Colorado with ties to the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which some say would provide a right-wing guide to a possible second Trump presidency.

Alexei Woltornist is listed as a “communications consultant” on the “Our Team” page of the Steamboat Institute website, which is based in Steamboat Springs and, among other projects, sponsors an annual conference and campus speakers. Woltornist is identified as a co-founder of Athosa public relations firm and as assistant secretary for public affairs for the Department of Homeland Security during the Trump administration, where he oversaw about 800 public affairs staff in the giant department that was created after 9-11. He is now a priest at St. Joseph’s Melkite Catholic Church in Lansing, Michigan.

Woltornist is featured in a Project 2025 video about communications in a conservative administration. ProPublica acquired 14 hours of videos, including Woltornist’s, explaining how PR staff in an incoming conservative administration can best serve the president.

He advises that the only way to “reach” people who “vote for a conservative presidential administration” is through the “conservative media.”

“The American people who vote for a conservative presidential administration are not reading New York Times, they don’t read Washington Post,” Woltornist says in the Project 2025 video. “On the contrary, if those outlets publish something, they’ll assume it’s fake. So the only way to reach them with any credible voice is to work with conservative media outlets.”

Other Colorado connections to Project 2025 can be found on “advisory board” section. of the Project 2025 website. It lists Family Policy Alliance and the James Dobson Family Institute in Colorado Springs—as well as the Centennial Institute, which is the public policy arm of Colorado Christian University in Lakewood. There is also the Family Research Council — one of the Dobson’s Focus on the Family spin-offs. Neither Woltornist nor any of those entities returned calls seeking comment.

Focus on the Steamboat Institute

Some speakers at previous Steamboat Institute Freedom Conferences have veered in the same far right direction as Project 2025.

Former conference loudspeaker such as John Eastman, Ginnie Thomas, Charlie Kirk and Michael Flynn were sometimes respectable figures at the conference, but later proved to be hip in efforts to deny Joe Biden a 2020 presidential win, as well as mob attack on Congress on January 6, 2021, spurred by then-President Trump.

RELATED: Will the Steamboat Institute continue to provide a platform for extremists and conspiracists?

Last year, Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, was a featured speaker at the Freedom Conference. His speech did not mention Christian nationalism or Project 2025’s plan to remake the federal government if a conservative Republican were elected president. But the speech predicted many of the elements of those conservative movements/projects that have become so prominent in the 2024 political campaigns for president and Congress.

Roberts’ speech, “Unhyphenated Conservatism,” can be viewed on Youtube or read on the Heritage Foundation website. He decries the divisions in the conservative community and offers 10 unifying ideas or themes, many of which can be found in the 900 pages of Project 2025.

Two former Steamboat Institute conference speakers — Stephen Moore and Ben Carson — helped author sections of Project 2025. Moore was one of three authors for the Treasury Department section, while Carson served Trump as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and authored the 2025 Project on HUD Reform. Carson is currently the national trust chair of Trump’s 2024 campaign.

A investigation by New York Times in the authors and collaborators of Project 2025 show numerous connections to those who worked in the Trump administration 2016-2020.