Trump Hired Adviser He Pardoned for Campaign Finance Crimes
Former President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign is once again spitting on campaign finance laws, this time by hiring a strategist who was convicted of crimes related to a political bribery scheme—and who Trump later pardoned.
According to new disclosures filed over the weekend, Trump’s political operation has hired John Tate via his company, JFT Consulting, Inc. JFT received about $13,000 for “political strategy consulting” in June—a $2,903 installment on June 6, followed by a flat $10,000 at month’s end.
In 2016, a jury convicted Tate for campaign finance crimes related to a bribery scheme in support of the 2012 presidential campaign of then-Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX). Tate, a former top staffer to Paul, had worked the scheme alongside fellow Paul aides Jesse Benton and Dimitri Kesari, both of whom were also found guilty. Trump pardoned Tate and Benton in December 2020, but did not pardon Kesari.
The plot unfolded in late 2011, at the start of Paul’s second presidential bid. With the critical Iowa caucus nearing, the staffers arranged a $73,000 payoff to then-Iowa state Senator Kent Sorenson, the state chair for former Minnesota Rep. Michelle Bachmann’s campaign. In exchange, Sorenson quit Bachmann’s operation and threw his support behind Paul.
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The three staffers were eventually convicted on charges of conspiracy, obstruction, and making false statements to the Federal Election Commission. Of the three, however, only Kesari served prison time; Tate got six months’ house arrest and two years’ probation, as did Benton. Sorenson pleaded guilty two years before Tate’s conviction, admitting to falsifying campaign reports and obstructing justice. He was sentenced to 15 months in jail.
Tate and Benton—who had married one of Paul’s granddaughters—both received full pardons from Trump. Sorenson and Kesari, the two who went to prison, did not.
Notably, Tate’s campaign finance violation resembled a shell payment scheme that landed the Trump campaign in headlines at the time of the pardon.
Tate and his co-conspirators ran campaign money to Sorenson through a sub-vendor, thereby concealing the true recipient of the funds. Observers noted that the structure appeared similar to the Trump campaign’s use of American Made Media, a shell company that obscured hundreds of millions of dollars in 2020 campaign expenses. The pardons, in that view, appeared to send a “very specific message” about disclosure laws.
The pardons had the backing of Paul’s son, Trump ally Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), as well as a former chair of the FEC, Lee Goodman, who criticized the legal merit of the conviction, according to a White House statement.
“Both Mr. Tate and Mr. Benton were convicted based on indirect campaign payments to a state Senator,” the statement said. “According to Mr. Goodman, the reporting law violated was unclear and not well established at the time. Each individual received 6 months home confinement and 2 years’ probation.”
However, when Goodman’s FEC took up the case in 2016, the commissioners unanimously found that the Paul campaign had likely broken the law and ordered a full investigation, The Daily Beast reported last year. In 2022, however, with Goodman long gone and the pardons issued, the commissioners voted along partisan lines to dismiss the case.
Less than a year after his pardon, one of Tate’s co-conspirators, Jesse Benton, was indicted again for campaign finance crimes—funneling Russian money to Trump’s 2016 campaign. A jury convicted him last November. (Benton carried out that scheme while under indictment in the bribery case.)
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But Tate has dipped his toe back in the political arena. Over the last two years his company, JFT Consulting, has appeared in four expense reports, with the bulk of the money tied to Rand Paul’s operation. The June payments were the first the company had received from the Trump campaign.
A Trump spokesperson did not reply to The Daily Beast’s request for comment for this article.
Tate is far from the only consultant the Trump campaign is paying through a company. But at least Tate’s company is openly attached to his name. (Virginia business records show that JFT Consulting has been “inactive” since November for failure to file its annual report.)
The entire arrangement is notable because Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the events surrounding the Jan. 6 attack has focused on Trump’s practice of shell payments. In February, The New York Times reported that Smith’s team subpoenaed a “vast array” of Trump vendors, with questions that indicated they were interested in “whether some entities were used to mask who was being paid or if the payments were for genuine services rendered.”
According to the campaign’s latest filing, recent consulting fees have gone to at least 21 companies that obscure the name of the end recipient. Many of them have never appeared in FEC filings before working for Trump, and a few of them are untraceable altogether. In the interest of transparency, here’s what can be gleaned about those entities from business records and news reports.
Iowa-based High Ground Strategies takes in $15,000 a month from the campaign, with a total $208,000 haul from Trump political entities since he left office. But the company is hidden behind a corporate registrant. The firm’s name came up in a Jan. 6 select committee interview with 2020 Trump campaign attorney Sean Dollman, who told investigators that “I do know of them” but “I don’t know who runs them.”
Another $7,500 a month has gone to K Consulting, LLC, an untraceable company in the same state, which has never appeared in other FEC reports. Virginia company Concharty Advisors received $18,000 from the campaign in both April and June, but the company’s true owner cannot be traced via state business filings, and it does not appear in other FEC reports. Another newly registered but untraceable Wyoming company, Red Compass, LLC, has been banking $20,000 a month for political strategy consulting.
Another obscure entity, called Avenir Group, was paid a total of about $20,000 at a Washington, D.C., address, though that company hasn’t appeared in FEC filings previously.
A total of $25,000 has gone to Skyway Strategies, an entity that Florida records tie to a Nicholas Erickson in Lakewood Ranch and has never appeared in FEC statements previously. The campaign pays $15,000 a month to another Florida company called “KMP Direct, LLC,” which state records tie to communications professional Kelley Parker. Neither Erickson nor Parker can be directly tied to Trump campaign operations.
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Other firms are a bit more transparent. Indiana-based Veritas LLC racked up $5,000 for research consulting, and appears tied to former Heritage Foundation intern Isaac Bock in Indiana. Trump communications adviser Dylan Johnson gets $6,666 a month through his Missouri company, The Octavian Group. And the 1789 Project LLC, which filings with the state of Indiana link to conservative strategist Helaina Hirsch, has been receiving a steady $5,500 per month.
Some of Trump’s top staffers aren’t on the payroll, electing instead to take indirect payments through other entities they control.
Top spokesperson Steven Cheung got $130,000 this quarter, via his Delaware company, Solgence LLC. An entity called Rushmore Ventures—which Florida business records tie to Glenn Waldman, the father of Stephen Miller’s wife, Katie Miller—has been racking up $13,750 a month. Former White House advance associate Andrew Nixon took his $4,188 through his company, Searchlight Strategies.
The campaign also shells out a monthly $15,000 to Gabriel Strategies, a company registered to 2020 Trump speechwriter Robert Gabriel. According to the Jan. 6 committee, Gabriel specifically told speechwriters to “reinsert previously removed incendiary lines about Vice President Pence into the speech.” Since Trump left office, Gabriel Strategies has received about $265,000 in consulting fees and travel reimbursement, initially through Trump’s Save America leadership PAC.
Top campaign lawyer Boris Epshteyn is cashing a monthly $20,000 check for communications and legal consulting through his firm, Georgetown Advisory. Former White House aide William Russell, who was subpoenaed by Justice Department prosecutors last September in connection with the Jan. 6 attack, has taken $12,000 a month through his company, Magnolia Management, in addition to about $3,500 for work on the campaign’s advance team. And Andrew Surabian, a close adviser to Donald Trump Jr, has been getting $10,000 a month through his firm, Belmont Strategies.
Some of the biggest payouts went to Advancing Strategies, a company registered to senior campaign aide Chris LaCivita. The campaign reported paying that firm nearly $260,000 over the last three months.
New hires have also taken note. Stephan Stepanek, the former New Hampshire GOP state chair, has been paid $12,500 a month plus travel costs through his company, Liberty Tree, which does not appear in other FEC reports. And senior aide Susie Wiles racked up $125,000 through her firm, Right Coast Strategies, and doesn’t appear on the payroll.
While those aides aren’t double-dipping, Trump’s longtime social media manager Dan Scavino is. His firm, Hudson Digital LLC, continues to receive its $20,000 monthly installments in addition to Scavino’s $15,400 monthly paycheck.
Hudson Digital also drew a mention in the Jan. 6 committee’s final report, which noted that no information or mention of the company could be found online. FEC records show that no other political committee has ever paid that entity. It has received more than $525,000 since Trump left office, according to the FEC.
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