Believe it or Not: McAfee Anti-Virus Founder in U.S. Presidential Run
John Mcfee, who founded the eponymous anti-virus software provider in the late 1980s but hasn’t been affiliated with it since 1994, is running for president.
The eccentric, controversial and one-time person of interest in a murder investigation in Belize, filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission to run for president as a member of an as-yet undisclosed political party, according to a report in The Hill, a website covering politics, policy and elections.
The report said Kyle Sandler, a McAfee campaign director, confirmed the filing, which lists an Alabama address.
Questions about McAfee’s eccentricity have been raised at times since he disassociated himself with the company he founded, which Intel subsequently acquired in 2010 for some $7.6 billion. Last January, Intel removed McAfee’s name from its security division, reportedly worried that his erratic behavior and antics could negatively impact consumers’ perception of the brand.
McAfee responded by telling the BBC that he is “now everlastingly grateful to Intel for freeing me from this terrible association with the worst software on the planet. These are not my words, but the words of millions of irate users. My elation at Intel’s decision is beyond words.”
Despite being born in the U.K., McAfee is eligible to run for president because at the time of his birth his father was a U.S. serviceman serving on a U.S. Army base there.
On his Twitter page, McAfee calls himself an “eccentric millionaire & still alive.” He told Wired last week that his advisers were “pressing” him to run and that he’d gotten “thousands” of emails of encouragement, The Hill reported.
“It’s not something I would just choose to do on my own,” he reportedly said.
In the Wired interview, McAfee described the federal government as “illiterate” on key technology issues such as smartphones, military hardware and communications.
Earlier this year, McAfee told CNNMoney that he’d lost his reported $100 million fortune, some of which he squandered in the 2008 stock market crash and some he left behind when he fled Belize in 2012 to avoid a murder investigation.
McAfee was said to be living in an apartment in Montreal, Canada and getting by on consulting work. A subsequent report said that he’d settled in Tennessee and sporadically spoke at technology conferences.
