SEATTLE — Nick Shirley, the conservative social media influencer who has been feted at the White House, has retracted viral videos he posted last month in which he accused Lam’s Seafood Asian Market, a small Seattle grocery store, of committing food stamp fraud.

Shirley’s videos have been viewed millions of times on social media and management at Lam’s said they caused a huge amount of backlash for the grocery store, with customers and strangers calling to scream at employees and “saying all kinds of nasty things.”

“I have not uncovered any evidence that Lam’s itself engaged in EBT fraud,” Shirley says in a brief video posted to social media Wednesday night, more than a month after his original accusations. “It was never my intention to make incorrect claims that Lam’s engaged or has engaged in EBT fraud.”

Shirley said he was taking down his previous videos.

The retraction comes after Lam’s hired an attorney and sent Shirley a cease and desist letter and said they would file a lawsuit if necessary, Lam’s operations manager Teizi Mersai said.

Washington defamation law gives a person 30 days to issue a correction after they’ve been notified of an error, which can mitigate defamation claims.

Mersai said Shirley’s retraction video was posted 30 days after the lawyer first contacted him.

Shirley’s influence exploded earlier this year after he posted a video claiming to expose fraud at Somali-run daycare centers in Minnesota, just as the Trump administration was sending a flood of immigration enforcement into Minneapolis.

President Donald Trump, at an Oval Office ceremony last month, gave Shirley a $10,000 check for “stopping taxpayers from getting ripped off.”

“I’d give him a big hug today, he’s done an amazing job, Nick Shirley,” Trump said.

Lam’s, in the immediate aftermath of Shirley’s videos, posted explanations to social media. Shirley’s video had shown someone who appeared to be trying to buy one can of lunch meat and one deli item, with an EBT (or food stamp) card, for $120. The implication, Shirley said, was that Lam’s was charging a ridiculous price, collecting money from the federal government, and then paying a kickback to the woman.

But the sale that Shirley filmed was never completed. And in its own video to push back against Shirley’s accusations, Lam’s said the woman had actually asked, in Vietnamese, for a case of lunch meat, not a single can.

Still, for a month, Shirley declined to back down.

“Lam’s seafood coming at me was a bad mistake,” he wrote after Lam’s posted its explainer video.

“When will the mainstream media realize there is nothing ‘right wing’ or ‘far-right’ about exposing fraud,” he wrote after local media covered the dust-up. “The media is an enemy to the legal law abiding taxpaying citizen. I am not, that’s why they hate me.”

Shirley called for Lam’s to be shut down and raided. He was echoed by other local conservative media and activists.

“If the feds aren’t raiding that store tomorrow, I would be shocked,” Brandi Kruse, a local conservative commentator, wrote on X.

“Was Lam’s Seafood lying?” Jonathan Choe, a Discovery Institute fellow who helped Shirley make his initial videos, wrote Wednesday night just before Shirley made his retraction. “Once again @nickshirleyy plays for keeps.”

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