Legal YouTuber Nick Rekieta and his wife Kayla were arrested last Thursday on charges of drug possession, firearm possession, and child endangerment.
According to a search warrant filed by the detective who searched the couple’s home, the police built their drug case based on a review of videos and streams Rekieta posted of himself showing him deteriorating over January to May.
“In videos from [that time period] … Nicholas appears to have lost weight, appears tired, and overall appears ‘strung out,’ common with controlled substances users,” wrote the Kandiyohi County Sheriff’s Office detective who filed the warrant, which was posted to social media yesterday. The Kandiyohi County Sheriff’s Office confirmed to the Daily Dot in an email that the search warrant was a true and accurate copy.
According to the warrant, the investigation was triggered by a report of child neglect and controlled substance use on May 16, 2024. The initial reporter told the sheriff’s office that four other people from their church had flagged the couple to them, including a church preschool teacher. According to that teacher, some of the couple’s children had complained about being hungry, not being fed, and wearing the same clothes for three to four days until they started to smell. The reporter also claimed that Nick was “lethargic and appeared high or drugged,” that he walked out of church sermons at random times, and appeared to have lost a lot of weight recently. According to the report, the entire home was in disarray, and a couple, Aaron and April Imholte, had moved in with the Rekietas. According to the search warrant, the Rekietas have five kids from the ages of 6 to 16.
“I immediately noted that Nicholas’s appearance in recent months has changed,” the search warrant stated, observing his YouTube channel. It also said that in a since-deleted stream by Rekieta, he leaves the frame and comes back about four minutes later with “an excited look and has a white powdery substance on his nose.”
“Nicholas is so under the influence of a substance to the point he has to close one eye to read his screen, rambles, and slurs his speech,” the search warrant added. “Nicholas would obviously not be able to care for his children in this state of intoxication.”
Rekieta, a Minnesota lawyer, racked up nearly half a million subscribers and pulled in six figures on YouTube with legal commentary on high-profile cases like the Amber Heard-Johnny Depp trial as well as the Kyle Rittenhouse and Derek Chauvin cases.
His recent trouble with the law appears to have stemmed from an alleged months-long decline into substance abuse which fans and anti-fans followed for months online with worry and glee.
According to the warrant, Rekieta was known on his streams “to drink alcoholic beverages excessively.”
The search warrant was filed on suspicion of methamphetamine and cocaine also being in the house. An evidence sheet filed after the search found Ziploc bags with “multiple small baggies [of] white powder,” a “black vial white substance,” as well as other paraphernalia like a digital scale and glass containers.
Rekieta’s entanglement with the Imholtes also appears to have been part of what has him facing the current charges. According to the search warrant, Aaron Imholte, who’s the host of the Steel Toe Morning Show, insinuated in a clip from the show that Rekieta was doing drugs.
Imholte’s channel Steel Toe Morning Show is a YouTube talk-radio style show that focuses on drama and entertainment, largely to do with Imholte’s personal life, which started as a Minnesota radio broadcast.
The two couples were apparently friends at one point, but recently had a falling out. In a video from Aaron Imholte’s show reacting to the search warrant, he says that they were frequently over at the Rekieta residence and aware of the state of the house.
It was one of Imholte’s videos, the search warrant claimed, that tipped off the detective about the stream where it appeared to him that Rekieta was ingesting a white powdery substance.
Rekieta didn’t respond to questions for the Daily Dot. But according to a screenshot posted by legal YouTuber Legal Mindset, Rekieta is sowing doubt about the charges.
“The amount of people accepting a government narrative is both surprising and unsurprising,” Rekieta says in a post in the screenshot. “But it is what it is.”
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