The Federal Elections Commission receives an 81-page complaint against the Trump Campaign for laundering $170 million to friends and family through Brad Parscale and other associates.
The Campaign Legal Center says “the Trump campaign and Trump Make America Great Again Committee disguised nearly $170 million of campaign spending by laundering the funds through firms.”
The companies that the campaign is accused of laundering money through are owned by past campaign manager Brad Parscale and Donald Trump’s lawyers.
According to the report, the campaign paid millions of dollars to these companies without reporting the spending. American Made Media Consultants (AMMC), a shell company set up with approval from Parscale and Jared Kushner, received at least $106 million that was not reported by the Trump campaign.
The campaign has been using AMMC as a middle man for exchanging funds from the campaign to other people without having to identify where the money goes when it leaves AMMC.
“By failing to report payments to the campaign’s true vendors and employees, the Trump campaign and Trump Make America Great Again Committee have violated, and continue to violate, federal law’s transparency requirements,” the complaint asserts, adding that such activities “undermine the vital public information role that reporting is intended to serve.”
Forbes
AMMC claims to be solely responsible for advertising and other media buys on behalf of the campaign, but the watchdog group’s investigation found that the company takes campaign dollars to pay other companies for the actual work, along with payments to Trump family members.
Brad Parscale was hired as Donald Trump’s campaign manager in 2018 and was demoted earlier this month to “senior campaign adviser for data and digital operations.” His company Parscale Strategy along with AMMC received 80% of the Trump Campaign’s entire spending in June.
It is still unclear which parties are receiving campaign funds through AMMC and Parscale Strategy, but reporting in March called out Eric and Don Jr.’s partners as recipients:
Parscale Strategy has also been used to make payments out of public view to Lara Trump, the wife of the president’s son Eric, and Kimberly Guilfoyle, the girlfriend of Donald Trump Jr., who have been surrogates on the stump and also taken on broader advisory roles. Their presence makes for an odd dynamic between a campaign manager and a candidate’s family.
The New York Times
According to a May report by HuffPost, Parsale has bought a Ferarri, a Range Rover, a $400,000 boat, two million dollar condos and a $2.4 million waterfront house in Florida since joining the campaign in 2018.
Trevor Potter, the owner of the watchdog group that made the complaint, is a Republican who has worked with George H.W. Bush and John McCain previously.
Sources
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/z3ewny/trump-campaign-laundering-campaign-finance-money-election-watchdog-says
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/09/us/trump-campaign-brad-parscale.html
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-consultants-rich-reelection-money_n_5eb1dae5c5b62b850f93abb3
Photograph: Gage Skidmore