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erik Prince, an ally to former President Donald Trump and the former CEO of a security firm previously named Blackwater, reportedly helped raise funding for an effort designed to surveil Democratic, progressive and anti-Trump Republican candidates head of the 2018 midterm elections.
On Tuesday, February 8, The New York Times released a report consisting of documents and interviews that detailed Prince's role in the surveillance effort. Prince reportedly conducted a meeting withBritish spy Richard Seddon as they allegedly worked to dig up incriminating information on opposing politicians across multiple states.
Since Seddon previously served as an unofficial advisor to Trump administration advisors, the report sheds light on the connection between the Trump administration and the spy effort.
The report also reveals Susan Gore, founder of the right-wing organization, Wyoming Liberty Group and heir to the Gore-Tex waterproof brand, had become the main financial supporter of the effort.
Per NY Times:
"Mr. Prince took on the role of celebrity pitchman, according to interviews and documents, raising money for Mr. Seddon’s spying operation, which was aimed at gathering dirt that could discredit politicians and activists in several states. After Mr. Prince and Mr. Seddon met in August 2018 with Susan Gore, a Wyoming heiress to the Gore-Tex fortune, Ms. Gore became the project’s main benefactor."
The group reportedly developed a plan to begin their efforts in Gore's home state of Wyoming and eventually expand to more states including Arizona and Colorado.
Former Wyoming lawmaker Marti Halverson also provided the group with a shortlist of specific targets that they'd planned to surveil. Those individuals include: Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon (R), who is referred to as a RINO; John Cox, who previously served as the director of Wyoming's Department of Workforce Service; and Scott Talbott, the former director of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.
Read the full report at the Times.
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former British spy and Republican mega-donor Erik Prince, a founder of the private military contractor Blackwater (now rebranded as "Academi) and brother to former U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, recruited a motley crew of home-grown American operatives from the conservative group Project Veritas and elsewhere to lead an initiative to infiltrate state-level Democratic party organizations and campaigns, according to a new report.
Prince, alongside the ex-MI6 officer he recruited to head the project, Richard Seddon, also targeted moderate Republican officials and those deemed as insufficiently dedicated to the hardline right-wing agenda favored by former President Donald Trump, The New York Times reported Friday.
The duo were bankrolled by the longtime conservative donor and heiress to the Gore-Tex fortune, Susan Gore, and trained their operatives on a remote Wyoming ranch in areas like the "basics of espionage" and "political sabotage," according to the newspaper.
It remains unclear what level of success they were able to accomplish, though the Times notes Seddon and Prince placed two spies — Beau Maier, the nephew of conservative commentator Glenn Beck, and Sofia LaRocca, deep into Democratic political organizations in Wyoming, Arizona, and Colorado.
But then, at some point, Democratic operatives became suspicious of the story LaRocca was claiming, according to The Times:
Her behavior raised some suspicion. Ms. LaRocca and Mr. Maier lived in Fort Collins, Colo., only about 45 miles from Cheyenne, Wyoming's capital, but their residence prompted some Democrats to ask how they planned to organize a grass-roots campaign to flip the state while living in Colorado. Ms. LaRocca told others she could not rent a home in Cheyenne because she had a dog, an implausible explanation.
Ms. LaRocca had also introduced herself to party officials as Cat Debreau. She eventually told a story about why she later went by the name Sofia LaRocca: She had been the victim of an online stalker, she said, but decided to once again use her original name because the police had told her that her stalker had reformed.
"Her story from the start rang very untrue," said Nina Hebert, who at the time was the digital director for the Wyoming Democratic Party. "The police don't call you and say, 'Hey, your stalker is better.'"
Neither Project Veritas nor its longtime head and frequent Fox News guest James O'Keefe returned a request for comment Friday.
One of the most prominent targets of the operation was Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon, a Republican who many in Trump's corner viewed as overly moderate and whose candidacy Gore had vigorously opposed.
Maier and LaRocca were also able to install themselves within the Wyoming-based progressive organization, Better Wyoming, which only discovered the plot months later, after they had been well integrated into Better Wyoming operations. Nate Martin, the group's head, told the Times he suspected the idea was to "dig up this information and you sit on it until you really can destroy somebody."
Maier and LaRocca were married last week in Wyoming, according to the report. Glenn Beck delivered a toast at the reception.
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New dark money group in Wyoming prompts call for campaign finance reform
NICK REYNOLDS 307-266-0634, Aug 15, 2018 UpdatedJun 25, 20190
Election Day
Some are calling for campaign finance reform in Wyoming after the appearance of a new dark money group.
File, Star-Tribune
NICK REYNOLDS 307-266-0634,
The registration of a new political action committee in Wyoming with dark money ties has one state legislator calling for a revival of a failed campaign finance reform bill in the coming session.
Rep. Dan Zwonitzer, R-Cheyenne – a chief architect of a failed financial reform bill put forth in the Legislature this past year – released a statement publicly condemning “dark money” political advertising in the 2018 gubernatorial race, specifically calling on all six Republican candidates as well as the state party to publicly condemn the various, anonymous mailers circulating this cycle.
On Monday, Zwonitzer, who serves as chairman of the Legislature’s Committee on Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions, claimed without specific evidence that “key Republican leaders in this state” have been behind numerous negative campaign mailings distributed throughout the state in the final weeks of the GOP gubernatorial race. His campaign finance bill, House Bill 67, will likely be revisited by his committee in the coming months, he said, and will be resubmitted in the upcoming legislative session.
“It’s only going to get worse from here,” he told the Star-Tribune. “We need to get some baseline laws in now.”
One group behind a set of mailers targeting Republican Mark Gordon, called Protecting Our Constitution, is neither listed with the Wyoming Secretary of State’s Office nor is it listed as an active political action committee with the Wyoming Board of Elections. The group shares an address and suite number with a Sheridan-based LLC called Advance LLC, which was incorporated anonymously in late March through a third-party corporate registry, according to documents filed with the secretary of state’s office.
PAC connections
But Zwonitzer’s chief concern lies with the latest PAC to appear on the state’s roster of political action committees, one which he said “set alarm bells” off in his head that a string of negative ad buys would be coming during the campaign’s final weeks.The group in question, called Jobs For Wyoming, bears eerie similarities to two other PACs involved in dark money-heavy races in Indiana and Tennessee, both of which were backed by GOP mega donor Joe Hollingsworth Jr., according to numerous media reports.
Jobs For Wyoming lists an anonymous P.O box in the Washington D.C. suburb of Herndon, Virginia, as its address and names two individuals – James McKay and Maria Wojchiechowski—as its chairman and treasurer. Registered with the state on Friday, it lists McKay’s phone number and Wojchiechowski’s email address on the form. That P.O. box, according to Federal Elections Commission records, has also been listed for the address of Convergence Media LLC, a D.C.-area media vendor that, most recently, has been utilized in races like that between Republican Rick Saccone and Conor Lamb in Pennsylvania. The firm is also a preferred vendor of the National Republican Congressional Committee and, on its website, touts its success in helping to elect Republican Karen Handel to victory in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District, a race that was described as “the most expensive congressional election ever run.”
It is unclear what groups or individuals are behind Convergence Media: its filings with the Virginia Secretary of State list Delaware as its jurisdiction of formation, which has some of the least restrictive corporate filing laws in the United States. Two separate filings for Convergence Media there were both registered through third-party corporate registrars.
A phone call and email to both McKay and Wojchiechowski from the Star-Tribune were not immediately returned.
Jobs For Wyoming shares its treasurer with a PAC called Tennessee Jobs Now, a PAC organized by Hollingsworth. Hollingsworth was also behind a similar PAC called Indiana Jobs Now, which he used to help elect his son, Trey Hollingsworth, to Congress. Hollingsworth has not spent any money in Wyoming, according to campaign finance disclosures.
Wojchiechowski, according to filings with the Federal Elections Commission, also served as treasurer for Donald Trump-supporting PAC called Future45, which committed nearly $25 million in opposition spending against Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race. That PAC, according to FEC filings, counts substantial financial support from billionaires Sheldon Adelson and TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts, who owns a ranch roughly 45 minutes outside of Jackson. Both he, along with gubernatorial candidate Foster Friess, were prime contributors to a Mitt Romney-supporting PAC, Restore Our Future, in 2012.
Coincidentally, Friess joined both the Koch brothers and GOP donor Paul Singer in donating to Ricketts’ son’s 2014 campaign for governor in Nebraska, with Friess personally contributing $20,000, according to filings with the Nebraska Accountability and Disclosure Commission. Ricketts’ son also received $25,000 in campaign contributions from Susan Gore, founder of the Wyoming Liberty Group, which has pushed against substantial expansion of Wyoming transparency law and whose presence, a pro-transparency group based in Cheyenne said, may have led to the failure of House Bill 67 back in the spring.
State lags in transparency
Campaign finance transparency here in Wyoming is among the worst in the nation, said Phoebe Stoner, executive director of the left leaning Equality State Policy Center. According to Stoner, the bill introduced into the House last spring took some “baby steps” in closing the state’s most gaping loopholes in line with similar reforms passed by 40 other states. However, she believes the bill was never heard largely because those on the House floor were given “slanted definitions” of campaign finance’s purposes.
“For me it’s really simple. It has nothing to do with the fact these folks are sending out mailers and exercising their First Amendment rights,” she said. “Where the rubber meets the road for us if I’m a voter, it is my right to be able to understand who is on the ballot, what they’re about and who’s behind them. The issue is not centered in the First Amendment, the issue is centered in those independent expenditures.”
According to Steve Klein, a campaign finance policy analyst with the Wyoming Liberty Group, campaign finance laws serve only to restrict free speech. Though he said he supports many aspects of House Bill 67, he said he has reservations around how much speech can or should be regulated by the state, adding the opinion that onerous regulations on top of hard to understand campaign finance laws is an affront to free speech on its own.
“I don’t see a compelling interest for donors in reporting themselves to the government or revealing what candidates they’re supporting,” he said.
Klein also noted that candidates and PACs in Wyoming are already required to disclose their contributions and expenditures, and said that improving the state’s financial disclosure system when other priorities – such as opening the state’s books around taxpayer spending — are still on the table.
Stoner believes that greater campaign finance transparency should be a priority.
“I think that sounds like a really terrible excuse,” she said in response to Klein. “It’s not OK to deny voters what they have the right to have because we claim we don’t have the resources. If we don’t have that, we need the money to make that possible.”
She noted several easy to fix loopholes, including the addition of something called rolling reporting, which can help address the fact that the state lacks a mechanism to report on last-minute contributions. Under the current system, where expenditures only have to be disclosed up to seven days prior to the election, massive expenditures can be made in the key final days of a race, she said.
Letting loopholes like that stand, she said, only gives Wyoming a reputation as a place where rules are not enforced.
Though Wyoming has campaign finance laws, Stoner said the existing reporting requirements “don’t have any teeth.” Improvements in the law, similar to those in place in other states, could fix the problem.
“We saw this as a problem, and we tried to find a solution knowing the 2018 election was around the corner, and we didn’t,” Stoner said. “That was really disappointing.”
Follow politics reporter Nick Reynolds on Twitter @IAmNickReynolds
Tags
Zwonitzer Campaign Finance Dark Money Foster Friess Susan Gore Wyoming Liberty Group State Policy Center