Any time a politician seems to single-handedly change how things work, it’s almost guaranteed that they did so thanks in large part to a robust team working from behind the scenes.
Although leaders can vary in how hands-on their approach is, it’s simply true that running a country or even running the campaign for leadership of a country is too big a job for just one person to do.
On one hand, the work of those behind the scenes staffers may seem thankless as any ideas they had or challenges they overcame are often credited to their leader.
On the other hand, reports on the dealings of Donald Trump’s campaign manager for his re-election do a lot to illustrate how much room to maneuver someone can have when the public eye isn’t focused on them.
I many ways, our story begins all the way back in 2012.
As The New York Times reported , Mitt Romney’s loss in the 2012 Presidential Election had the Republican Party rethinking their strategy.
Although the issues with this campaign as covered in a 100-page report were multi-faceted, one takeaway that President Donald Trump’s strategists clearly had was that the party had fallen behind on digital campaigning efforts and data collection.
This prompted the creation of Data Trust, a data collection firm that would pool all of the party’s campaign and voter information into one place.
As this was a private enterprise, it didn’t need to adhere to party fundraising limits in pursuit of this mission.
After Data Trust was established, the man who has since become Trump’s re-election campaign manager, Brad Parscale, was able to launch a campaign of targeted Facebook ads with the approval of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
After Trump was elected in 2016, Parscale and political consultant Katie Walsh Shields were able to parlay their technological arms into a position where they could hold the Republican Party’s digital playbook.
Through this position, Parscale and his allies could now oversee not only data management efforts, but also create super PACs, a news app, and a fundraising platform called WinRed that’s supposed to compete with the small-donor idea behind the Democrats’ ActBlue platform.
Although WinRed has to disclose individual donors, the fact that most of the efforts Parscale’s team are spearheading are being conducted through private companies have allowed for millions of dollars to move between these systems without the need to worry about campaign finance laws.
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It is through this framework that the various businesses involved have found themselves in a position to bill the Trump Campaign and the RNC for about $75 million since 2017.
According to The New York Times , about $35 million of that money has gone directly to Parscale’s firm, Parscale Strategy.
Allegedly, Parscale hasn’t just been able to enrich himself with this offloading of political funds and strategy to a private network.
As two anonymous sources told The New York Times , Parscale’s firm has also allowed him to hide payments made to Lara Trump, who is married to the president’s son Eric, and Kimberly Guilfoyle, who is dating Donald Trump Jr.
The witnesses to these payments said Guilfoyle confronted Parscale about the fact that her checks were always late, to which he reportedly replied that payment issues would be handled by his wife, Candice. She apparently manages the books on many of his business interests.
President Trump himself has been linked to a similar means of mixing his campaign and his private enterprises.
As Forbes reported , Trump has opted to fund his re-election campaign through supporter donations.
However, he has also been charging his own campaign for rent and consulting expenses, which means that about $1.9 million of donated funds has found its way into his private businesses since January 20, 2017.
h/t: The New York Times
