Donald Trump’s Campaign Accused Of Using ‘Secretive Shell Company’ To Illegally Hide Spending
A Thursday Business Insider report highlighted a complaint filed by Campaign Legal Center with the Federal Election Commission that accuses Donald Trump’s campaign of using a “secretive shell company” to illegally hide how the team was spending its money.
As reported by Raw Story, the company — American Made Media Consultants — was approved by Jared Kushner and allegedly worked with a political firm owned by Trump’s former campaign manager, Brad Parscale.
“These schemes disguised which firms or individuals were working for Trump’s committees, how much and when they were being paid, and the purposes of those payments,” the report claimed.
The shell company previously has received scrutiny for its secrecy and links to Trump’s coalition. As reported by OpenSecrets, American Made Media Consultants was created by Trump aides and acted as a “clearing house for its spending.”
“The firm routed more than $759 million of the campaign and its joint fundraising committee’s spending, hiding information about the identities of some individuals being paid by the campaign, how much money changed hands and when those payments took place.”
Per Vanity Fair, Kushner approved the creation of the company in April 2018. Afterward, Lara Trump was named president, and Mike Pence’s nephew, John Pence, was named as vice president.
Brendan Fischer, the director of federal reform at the Campaign Legal Center, told OpenSecrets that the Trump team’s FEC reports do not provide a full picture of the individuals paid by the group — including how many people involved in the January 6 riots were funded by the former U.S. leader’s coalition.
“Using FEC reports to identify Trump campaign aides involved in the January 6 riot has its limits, because we don’t fully know who the campaign was paying.”
OpenSecrets noted campaign finance law imposes few restrictions on how much information must be disclosed on payments to secretive shell companies and firms. Nevertheless, the Campaign Legal Center is accusing the former president’s team of illegally concealing its spending in the recent complaint filed with the FEC.
As The Inquisitr reported, law professor and political columnist Seth Abramson previously pointed to Kushner’s alleged use of the company to pay members of the Trump family using funds raised for his presidential bid. According to Abramson, the purported scheme is the largest case of political wire fraud ever.
Still, Abramson predicted at the time that Kushner would not face federal charges due to a likely pardon from Trump. Although he did not publicly issue Kushner a pardon, disbarred lawyer Michael Cohen postulated that Trump issued his son-in-law one behind the scenes.
