Roy Kapeniak

Roy Kapeniak is a former classmate of Michael Kern at Williams College.

Unlike Kern who went into politics, eventually completely abandoning his worldview and becoming a Senator from Colorado, Kapeniak remained devoted to fringe theories and ideas outside of the American mainstream. Now maintaining a blog titled The Truth and Only the Truth: The Blog and Mind of Roy Kapeniak that features topics such as pharmaceutical mind control, Federal Reserve's currency debasement, and the theory that JFK was killed by his own limo driver, Kapeniak lives in a Massachusetts trailer park with his stripper girlfriend. When Doug Stamper told Frank Underwood about Kapeniak and his connection to Kern, they decided to use him to take down Kern who was awaiting confirmation after recently being named Secretary of State.

Before even becoming aware of Kapeniak, Underwood unearthed a 1978 unsigned editorial from the The Williams College Register, a college paper edited at the time by Kern. Written just after the September 1978 Camp David Accords, the editorial labels the Israeli presence in Gaza Strip and West Bank "an illegal occupation since 1967". Though it was entirely unclear at this point whether Kern actually wrote the editorial, Underwood knew what an unpopular and undesirable point of view this is for a prospective State Department official to be connected to. Underwood thus decided to exploit the circumstance of there not existing a clear piece of evidence that Kern didn't write the editorial as the basis to start an orchestrated smear campaign via leaking the story to Zoe Barnes who despite some reservations due to lack of an explicit link with Kern penned an article that appeared on the front page of The Washington Herald with the title "Secretary of State Nominee Michael Kern Approved Anti-Isreal Editorial". As the story got traction with unprepared Kern getting asked about it by George Stephanopoulos during an appearance on This Week, the senator completely fumbled his response, leading to a chorus of criticism from various powerful Israeli groups on the Capitol Hill including the Anti-Defamation League president calling him an anti-Semite.

After Stamper discovered Kapeniak, Underwood decided to use him as the final blow for the on-the-ropes Kern. Rather than meeting Kapeniak themselves, Underwood and Stamper agreed to send their "errand boy" Rep. Peter Russo with clear instructions to get Kapeniak to incrimnate Kern. Despite discoverng that Kapeniak actually wrote the editorial himself, Russo convinced him to go on the record with the Herald's Zoe Barnes, telling her that Kern wrote it. This new information caused another storm of controversy and Kern lost his nomination.