The Silicon Valley billionaire divorcée who was RFK Jr.‘s running mate has revealed a new twist in her life: she has become a “Jew for Jesus.”
Nicole Shanahan, whose wealth is thanks to her divorce from Google co-founder Sergey Brin, posted a long essay on X which disclosed that she had been baptized in her backyard swimming pool in the Bay Area by a part-time prison chaplain recommended to her by her “Mayan-Mexican” masseuse when she asked about finding someone to perform an “exorcism.”
The disclosure is the latest chapter in the 39-year-old one-time Catholic schoolgirl’s journey through modern American life which has seen her convert to Judaism; marry one of the world’s richest men; flirt with Druidism; run for the nation’s second-highest office; and, lately, volunteer her wealth to oppose people who voted against her former running mate’s confirmation; while also suggesting contrails from planes are part of a sinister conspiracy.
Shanahan said that she had become Jewish in 2014 when she was engaged to a Jewish man (Jeremy Kranz, whom she married that year, weeks after starting an affair with Brin; the couple divorced the next year) but that last September, “our family suffered a heart-wrenching loss,” which she did not provide details of, leading to her Christian conversion.
The roots of the conversion lay with her masseuse, “Ade,” a “Mayan-Mexican immigrant” whom, she said, would “whisper prayers for me while he worked.” She claimed that after her five-year marriage to Brin ended in 2023, she was “fragile, totally worn down, and in anguish” but realized that Ade’s prayers “were doing more to heal” than his massages.
“As we were wrapping a session, I asked, ‘Hey Ade, do you know anyone who can help keep ‘bad energy’ away from people? Basically an exorcism.' Ade looked at me, paused, and simply said, “‘Yes—when you are ready.‘"
That woman, she disclosed, was Bishop Diane Robinson, who with her husband Apostle Peter Robinson, run an evangelical church in Union City, California, and are contracted to be chaplains to Alameda County’s prisons after beating out the local Catholic diocese for the contract. After the undisclosed “loss” in September (the month after her and Kennedy’s White House bid flamed out and they pledged fealty to Donald Trump), she asked Ade to connect her to the person who could conduct an “exorcism.”
Robinson texted her in January saying “I want to talk with you about getting baptized” and days later Shanahan took the plunge, literally, along with her new partner, crypto entrepreneur Jacob Strumwasser. The two are not married but had a “Druidic” hand-fasting ceremony in 2023; Strumwasser, she disclosed in her post was raised Jewish.
When Robinson arrived at Shanahan’s home on Jan. 19, the day before Trump was sworn in, the preacher opened her Bible, Shanahan wrote.
“Diane looked at me and said with absolute certainty that Jesus could save me—that His blood is able to wash away sins and defeat the darkness that haunts the innocent," she wrote. “I think it took the pain of that moment, the desperate need for hope, and the unwavering intensity in Diane’s eyes to finally break through the last, most stubborn skeptic in me. When Diane asked if I wanted to be baptized, I didn’t hesitate—I said yes."
Both she and her partner are now “Jews for Jesus,” she added and also said, “now, my prayers are directed toward Jesus. He is the bridge between us and heaven—our Intercessor before the Divine Creator."
It is unclear why Shanahan chose Tuesday to announce her new denomination. But since Trump’s inauguration she has been an outspoken backer of his administration, particularly attacking opponents of her former running mate and saying she is willing to fund primaries or partisan campaigns against them.
An anti-vaxxer, she has also flirted with other wilder claims. On Sunday, she posted a video from a beach pointing at clouds and suggesting they were evidence of “geoengineering,” a reference to a conspiracy theory which posits that contrails left by planes are actually being used to leave chemical and biological agents in the sky.
And on Tuesday she went on a podcast with Russell Brand, the British comedian who was accused of rape last year and shortly after announced his conversion to Christianity, but the two discussed not her faith but her changed views on police racism as a former backer of Black Lives Matters. She did, however, toy with the crucifix on her necklace, a sign of her new faith.
