Everyone has been wondering for some time about this secret company that has been paying Lara Trump and other close relatives big bucks throughout the campaign. It has always been suspicious and for good reason. It stinks to high heaven.
Jared Kushner approved the creation of a shell company that operated like a “campaign within a campaign” and secretly funneled millions of dollars in campaign cash to Trump family members, Business Insider reports. The company, American Made Media Consultants Corporation and American Made Media Consultants LLC, took more than half of the Trump campaign’s massive $1.26 billion war chest and was largely shielded from having to publicly report financial details. However, a source told Business Insider that Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump was the company’s president, Vice President Mike Pence’s nephew was its VP, and Trump campaign CFO Sean Dollman was treasurer and secretary.
The mysterious company caused consternation among other campaign staffers, who had no idea how it was spending money, and the Campaign Legal Center filed a civil complaint with the FEC in June accusing the Trump campaign of laundering $170 million largely through it.
Business Insider got the scoop. It’s a lot more than 170 million:
The Trump campaign spent $617 million through AMMC
From January 2019 through the middle of November, the Trump campaign and an affiliated political committee together spent $617 million through American Made Media Consultants. It was almost half of everything they spent in the failed effort to reelect Trump, according to an Insider review of Federal Election Commission records and analysis provided by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.
Some Trump advisors have long accused Parscale of trying to hide money from the now outgoing president, occasionally citing AMMC as an example of his obfuscation. But the campaign spent the bulk of the money at AMMC — $415 million — after Trump fired Parscale as his campaign manager on July 15.
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Campaign-law experts have long accused the Trump team of using a corporate pass-through to hide payments. The nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, led by former Republican Federal Election Commission Chairman Trevor Potter, filed a civil complaint with the FEC in July accusing the Trump campaign of “disguising” about $170 million worth of campaign spending in large part “by laundering the funds” through AMMC.Brendan Fischer, the Campaign Legal Center’s director of federal reform, said the payments to AMMC were a “scheme to evade telling voters even the basics on where its money is really going” and a “shield to disguise the ultimate recipients of its spending.”
As a civil-law enforcer, the FEC can issue fines to political committees it determines have broken election laws. If the federal government suspects a “knowing and willful” violation of election law has occurred, the Department of Justice has the power to open a criminal investigation into a political actor.While such investigations are relatively uncommon, several former Justice Department and FEC officials previously told Insider that Justice Department officials may already be discreetly investigating Trump’s reelection activity.
Some of Trump’s campaign leaders even seemed stumped by the AMMC arrangement. Generally, they knew that AMMC was being used to buy pro-Trump TV, radio, and digital advertising and pay for other media. But they couldn’t discern precisely how much each AMMC vendor was keeping for itself.
The person familiar with AMMC said the rates its vendors charged the Trump campaign were often cheaper than what an outside political firm would have demanded. Using the shell company also allowed Parscale to keep Lara Trump and Kimberly Guilfoyle — the girlfriend of Donald Trump Jr. — on his payroll, the person familiar said.
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Delaware has long been one of the best places in the US to hide corporate arrangements.But that could change, as Congress earlier this month passed a corporate-transparency measure directed at combating financial crimes, both domestic and foreign. The measure is part of the veto-proof National Defense Authorization Act and would require anonymous shell companies — including limited liability companies such as American Made Media Consultants — to disclose their real owners to the US Treasury Department.
On the afternoon of January 20, the Treasury Department will fall under Biden’s control.
There is no doubt in my mind that this was a grift. So is the “Stop the Steal” account that Trump has been flogging relentlessly (and which took in more than 200 million between the election and the first week in December.) This is a family of con-artists, led by the greatest flim-flam man in history. This was being used as a slush fund to reward the Trumps and affiliates.
This is just one more example of the unprecedented corruption of this criminal cabal the entire Republican establishment has defended, enabled and collaborated with every step of the way.
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