Tag: campaign finance

Trump Unleashes $47M on Midterms After Months of GOP Doubt

President Donald Trump’s political operation has begun pouring money into the midterm elections, booking at least $47 million in television ads through a new super PAC tied to his roughly $400 million war chest.

The reservations, placed Tuesday and Wednesday by a group called No Going Back PAC Inc., mark the biggest midterm expenditure yet drawn from the stockpile Republicans spent months questioning whether Trump would ever deploy. The New York Times reported the group is financially backed by MAGA Inc., Trump’s main super PAC, according to two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose the private spending plans.

For most of the cycle, MAGA Inc. sat on the money without making a major expenditure on the party’s candidates, drawing open frustration from Republicans who feared the president would hold the cash for his own purposes.

“That’s the $400 million question. I don’t know,” one operative said in July of the group’s refusal to spend in a single race. “They have indicated they’re going to spend. But not where or when. And those are kind of big details.”

Trump’s team had insisted the money would move. James Blair, a coordinator of the president’s midterm effort, said Trump intends to spend heavily to protect the party’s narrow majorities.

“The president is going to expend substantial resources to win the midterms,” Blair said. “He cares deeply about the party winning.”

The reservations target Senate contests in Michigan, Ohio, New Hampshire, Alaska, North Carolina, and Georgia, along with a Pennsylvania House race. According to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact, the largest commitments are $14.9 million in Michigan and $11.1 million in Ohio.

No Going Back PAC was incorporated on September 1, days before the Republican midterm convention in Dallas. Because it formed this month, the group will not have to disclose its donors until October 20.

The spending follows Trump’s $10 million buy backing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the operation’s first major fall investment. Republicans hold a 53-47 Senate majority.

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Florida Judge Resigns After Caught Making $30,000 in Donations to Left-Leaning Political Organizations and Candidates, Including Joe Biden

A local Florida judge resigned after she was caught making $30,000 in donations to left-leaning political organizations and candidates, including Joe Biden.

Diana Tennis served on the Ninth Circuit Court in Orange and Osceola Counties for more than a decade.

An investigation revealed that Diana Tennis broke the Florida Code of Judicial Conduct and made 900 donations to left-leaning candidates.

Judge Diana Tennis resigned four months before her term ended.

WESH 2 reported:

A local judge is resigning following an investigation that revealed she was making political contributions.

Diana Tennis has been serving the Ninth Circuit Court in Orange and Osceola counties since 2015. Tennis came under investigation last September.

The judicial qualifications commissioner found that she contributed nearly $30,000 in 900 donations to left-leaning political organizations and candidates, including Joe Biden and Sen. Bill Nelson, between 2016 and 2021.

In July, the state Supreme Court ordered a suspension, a fine and public reprimand.

Instead, Tennis resigned, meaning she won’t serve the remaining four months of her term.

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Another ActBlue Official Pleads Fifth In House Probe of Alleged Foreign Donations

Another senior figure at Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue invoked the Fifth Amendment during congressional testimony Tuesday as House Republicans investigate allegations of fraudulent and foreign political donations.

Kimberly Peeler-Allen, a member of ActBlue’s board of directors, invoked her constitutional right against self-incrimination while appearing before the House Administration, Judiciary and Oversight committees, according to sources familiar with her testimony.

Her decision follows similar moves by other ActBlue officials.

ActBlue co-founder Matt DeBergalis invoked the Fifth during a closed-door deposition Aug. 20, while CEO Regina Wallace-Jones asserted the same right during congressional questioning in June.

The House Administration Committee began investigating ActBlue in 2023 following concerns that the fundraising platform’s fraud-prevention procedures were inadequate to prevent illegal foreign donations.

Committee Chairman Bryan Steil, R-Wis., has focused in part on ActBlue’s previous practice of not requiring donors to provide credit card CVV security codes.

“We have an entity here with ActBlue, that has raised roughly $20 billion since its creation,” Steil told Fox News.

“We want to make sure that they have the fraud prevention protocols in place to make sure that foreign funds are not coming into U.S. elections.”

Steil acknowledged that witnesses have a constitutional right to invoke the Fifth Amendment but said their refusal to answer questions has frustrated lawmakers seeking information about ActBlue’s operations.

The investigation intensified after The New York Times reported in April that ActBlue’s attorneys had warned internally that Wallace-Jones may have provided Congress with a misleading description of the organization’s procedures for detecting foreign donations.

Wallace-Jones had described ActBlue’s screening system as “multilayered.” According to the Times, however, the organization’s attorneys warned that ActBlue did not always follow the procedures she described, creating what they characterized as “a substantial risk for ActBlue.”

Republicans have denied accusations that the investigation is politically motivated, arguing that foreign money entering American elections would present a serious threat regardless of which party benefits.

ActBlue has denied wrongdoing and has previously said it maintains safeguards against fraudulent and foreign contributions.

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Democrat Senate Hopeful Bankrolled by Same Donors Funding Neo-Nazi Candidate

Michigan Democrat Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed reportedly has some problematic donors.

The Washington Free Beacon published a report detailing over a dozen donors who donated to Florida neo-Nazi congressional candidate Dan Bilzerian and also to El-Sayed.

More than a dozen donors to the Hitler-praising, neo-Nazi congressional campaign of Dan Bilzerian have also contributed to Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed—in many cases spreading thousands of dollars between the two candidates, the Washington Free Beacon found.

Bilzerian, a far-right social media influencer with a trust fund, and El-Sayed, a far-left epidemiologist, have no policy overlap except strong opposition to AIPAC and Israel, but their donors include a man who has equated Zionism to Nazism and a Texas subprime auto loan entrepreneur who also threw his weight behind Israel-bashing Republicans like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie.

The overlapping donor list suggests that El-Sayed’s virulently anti-Israel rhetoric appeals to the kind of Muslim-American donors who also buy into Bilzerian’s hateful Jew-baiting and offensive trolling.

The most significant Bilzerian and El-Sayed donor is Ibrahim Awad, who has given more than $19,500 between both candidates, Federal Election Commission records show. That haul included a $12,651.88 jumbo gift to the Bilzerian Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee. The figure is above the legal limit and potentially a campaign finance violation if passed along to Bilzerian’s campaign committee.

Awad is a Georgia-based personal injury attorney—with a mixed record.

Awad has been an ardent critic of Israel’s efforts to eliminate Hamas in the Gaza Strip. In a post on X, he castigated attorneys who “blamed Hamas for Israel’s genocide—but never said a damn word about Palestinians executed in the West Bank, where Hamas doesn’t even exist.”

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AOC and Bernie Sanders Are Still Taking ActBlue Money After an 88-Year-Old Said She Donated $150,000 From a Trailer With No Computer

ActBlue’s own CEO sat before Congress in June and invoked the Fifth Amendment 22 times.

The platform – the financial backbone of every major Democrat campaign in America – just got caught with a new donor who says her name was used for more than 16,000 contributions she didn’t make.

And AOC, Bernie Sanders, and Ilhan Omar are still cashing the checks from ActBlue.

An 88-Year-Old Woman Living in a Trailer Has 16,000 Donations in Her Name

Elizabeth Waffle is 88 years old.

She lives in a trailer down a dirt road in Milan, Michigan, after her house burned down two years ago.

She has no computer.

She has spotty internet service.

Federal Election Commission records say she has made more than 16,000 political contributions totaling nearly $150,000 through ActBlue since 2020.

That’s eight donations a day, every day, for five years straight – averaging $9.18 a pop.

“One hundred and fifty thousand? Hell no, I don’t have that kind of money,” Waffle told reporter Charlie LeDuff of the Michigan Enjoyer in a now-viral video.

She acknowledged making small donations through ActBlue – she disputed the $150,000.

“I don’t see $150,000,” she said. “That’s very abnormal and I think it’s wrong. I think there’s something in there that’s off.”

ActBlue responded by saying it had “zero tolerance for fraud.”

Then it kept processing donations for AOC, Bernie Sanders, Ilhan Omar, and the Democratic National Committee.

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Billionaire heiress who backed Mamdani now shoveling cash to House Dems in hopes of party takeover

Billionaire heiress Elizabeth Simons is pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into the Democratic Party’s campaign to retake the House — even as she bankrolls the socialist causes and candidates that have Democrats’ establishment leaders increasingly on edge.

Simons, who previously cut a $250,000 check to a super PAC backing Mayor Zohran Mamdani, has donated $354,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee — the party’s chief House campaign arm — and thousands more to individual House candidates this election cycle.

The donations, ironically, put Simons behind the same Democratic leadership forces trying to prevent the party’s increasingly powerful progressive wing from taking over.

“I can see why a lot of the very woke left is lining up with Hakeem [Speaker Jeffries] because the goal is winning the House,” said one longtime Democratic fundraiser.

The DCCC is headed by Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.), a member of the party’s centrist New Democrat Coalition, which is the under guidance of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who is positioned to take power if Dems snatch back the House. Republicans rule by a narrow 218-212 majority.

Simons is hardly a conventional Democratic establishment donor — she has has poured millions into progressive education initiatives while backing candidates like Mamdani.

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Hamas-Tied CAIR Gave El-Sayed Over $100,000

The new Michigan Democrat Senate candidate received a large donation from a terrorist front group, which also endorsed him in the primary.

Abdul El-Sayed won the Democrat Senate primary and will face Republican Mike Rogers in a key race in the midterm election. More ominously, between employees and leaders of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), El-Sayed has raised over $115,000. But CAIR is little more than a front group for Islamic jihad, with close ties to Hamas.

Fox News reviewed evidence that resulted in the exposé on El-Sayed, who ironically has made “money out of politics” a rallying cry in his campaign. Then again, Democrats always lie, and Muslims believe lying to infidels for the sake of jihad is praiseworthy (taqiyya), so it is hardly surprising that El-Sayed is a hypocrite.

CAIR’s national Board Chair Manal Fakhoury, national Vice Chair Emad Sabbah, national Board Treasurer Eyas Abdeen, and CAIR-Michigan board member Jukaku Tayeb all donated to El-Sayed. And Tayeb also just happens to be El-Sayed’s father-in-law. Jihad is all the family, it seems.

Tayeb has been one of the largest financial backers of the super PAC supporting El-Sayed’s campaign and is also part of the founding committee of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), a group linked to Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood funding … One donor, CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad, listed in FEC records under the name Nehad Hammad, drew national condemnation after saying he was “happy” to see Hamas break out of Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023, and arguing Israel “does not have the right to self-defense” as an occupying power.

Fox News also found that members of CAIR chapters in Arizona, California, Texas, Georgia, Illinois, Washington, Minnesota, and Ohio donated to El-Sayed. CAIR publishes a list of candidates it wishes to see win their elections, and its voting guide for the Michigan primary listed El-Sayed as its very first endorsement.

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Establishment Democrats Wasted $63.9 Million Trying to Take Down Abdul El-Sayed

Establishment Democrats in Washington spent over $60 million in support of Rep. Haley Stevens’ bid for the Michigan U.S. Senate nomination. It wasn’t enough.

The messy primary pitting their pick, Stevens, against progressives Abdul El-Sayed and Mallory McMorrow (before she abandoned her bid) saw a record amount of outside spending. AdImpact, which tracks campaign advertising, called the 2026 race the most expensive on the Democrat side in history. 

“Stevens (MI-11) has seen a majority of ad support targeting the primary, at $63.9M. In total, 78% of all spending targeting the primary went towards supporting Haley Stevens. Her opponent, El-Sayed has seen $7.5M in ad support. Prior to dropping out, McMorrow saw $9.0M,” said the company in a summary of the race. 

The pro-Israel organization AIPAC spent the most of any group, backing Stevens with more than $30 million in spending over the past year. That funding came via United Democracy Project, doubling the amount it spent to defeat former Democrat Rep. Jamaal Bowman of New York in 2024. 

Stevens’ bid was heavily supported by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY). 

The New York Times wrote in June that Schumer asked party donors to support Stevens, calling her the “strongest candidate” in private conversations and spawned efforts giving her a sizeable edge from big-spending Democrats. 

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Money Issues, Paranoia, And A Hurled Phone: Blistering Reports Detail Ken Martin’s Collapsing DNC

The Democratic National Committee is running on fumes, and chairman Ken Martin is headed for a full-blown mental breakdown, according to a pair of blistering reports.

A New York Times report published Sunday revealed that the committee is $2 million in the hole and begging vendors to sit on their invoices until after the midterms.

The DNC quietly put the Southeast Washington building up as collateral last year to land a $15 million line of credit and bankroll off-year races, according to DC deed records not previously reported, according to NOTUS. The party has pawned the property, which it only partially owns, in past cycles. But going back to the well ahead of 2026 for the biggest off-year loan in committee history set off alarms among members who saw it as one more flashing red light.

“Ken gaslighting us about the DNC’s finances and not being transparent about the financial situation makes us doubt if he can oversee the DNC during the most important primary of our lifetime,” an unnamed DNC member told NOTUS.

The Republican National Committee is sitting on $128.5 million, and President Trump’s main super PAC, MAGA Inc., closed out June with roughly $400 million in the bank.

The DNC has downplayed the alarm. Roger Lau, the committee’s executive director, told the Times that the request for vendors to hold their invoices was “nothing more than standard negotiations with vendors over contracts and payment processes.”

Meanwhile, the pressure mounting on Martin is showing, according to the Times:

In a pique of frustration in early July, he threw his phone at the desk of a junior aide while upbraiding the person. The phone-tossing incident resulted in a formal complaint to the D.N.C.’s human resources department.

The fallout from the phone-throwing episode was described by half a dozen people familiar with the incident, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss internal party matters. None of them witnessed the encounter, and there was some dispute over how aggressively the phone was tossed. Mr. Martin was said to have thrown the phone at the desk, rather than at the aide.

Unsurprisingly, the DNC refused to comment on the incident.

To make matters worse, Martin has reportedly developed a “growing sense of paranoia” about a possible push to dump him and is “paralyzed by the idea of leaks.”

“It pisses me off when I see leaks out of this building,” Martin lamented during a meeting in May. “No more of that shit. No more.“

“My success is your success,” he added. “So the weaker I am, the weaker all of you are.”

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‘Not appropriate’: Blue-state attorney general paid $570 an hour to law firm that contributed to his campaign

Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown’s office agreed to pay $570 an hour to attorneys at an outside law firm that contributed to Brown’s campaign, records obtained by The Center Square show.

Four additional law firms that received contracts with the AG’s office donated to the campaign of Brown, a Democrat, records show. Together, the five firms and their affiliated political action committees contributed $30,250 to Brown’s campaign committee.

Brown’s office signed the contract with Ballard Spahr LLP of Philadelphia in November 2022. Two years earlier, the firm donated $2,500 to Friends of Anthony Brown, Brown’s campaign committee, according to state campaign finance records. Two months after the contract was signed, the law firm donated another $2,500. The contract also pays paralegals $295 an hour. If renewed, attorney rates increased to $595 an hour and paralegal rates to $315 an hour.

Brown’s office initially refused to release the hourly rates but reversed course Wednesday after The Center Square appealed to the Public Access Ombudsman, a voluntary, confidential mediator.

The Center Square requested the records for contracts with outside counsel since 2023, the year Brown, 61, took office. Brown’s office released two outside-counsel contracts and the names of 81 law firms, lawyers and legal nonprofits with which it entered into agreements.

The redaction was at odds with two recent rulings by the state’s Public Information Act Compliance Board, which held that another government agency should make similar payment information public.

Under the contract, Ballard Spahr may represent multiple state agencies, including the Maryland Department of Transportation and the Department of General Services. A Ballard Spahr spokesman did not respond to two requests for interview.

The office also declined to provide bidding documents or requests for proposals to show how the contracts were issued and the total amounts paid the firms.

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