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Firm Tied to Kristi Noem Secretly Got Money From $220 Million DHS Ad Contracts
The company is run by the husband of Noem’s chief DHS spokesperson and has personal and business ties to Noem and her aides. DHS invoked the “emergency” at the border to skirt competitive bidding rules for the taxpayer-funded campaign.

by Justin Elliott, Joshua Kaplan and Alex Mierjeski

November 14, 2025,

IFrame Content

On Oct. 2, the second day of the government shutdown, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem arrived at Mount Rushmore to shoot a television ad. Sitting on horseback in chaps and a cowboy hat, Noem addressed the camera with a stern message for immigrants: “Break our laws, we’ll punish you.” [BUFFALO?]

Noem has hailed the more than $200 million, taxpayer-funded ad campaign as a crucial tool to stem illegal immigration. Her agency invoked the “national emergency” at the border as it awarded contracts for the campaign, bypassing the normal competitive bidding process designed to prevent waste and corruption.

The Department of Homeland Security has kept at least one beneficiary of the nine-figure ad deal a secret, records and interviews show: a Republican consulting firm with long-standing personal and business ties to Noem and her senior aides at DHS. The company running the Mount Rushmore shoot, called the Strategy Group, does not appear on public documents about the contract. The main recipient listed on the contracts is a mysterious Delaware company, which was created days before the deal was finalized.

No firm has closer ties to Noem’s political operation than the Strategy Group. It played a central role in her 2022 South Dakota gubernatorial campaign. Corey Lewandowski, her top adviser at DHS, has worked extensively with the firm. And the company’s CEO is married to Noem’s chief spokesperson at DHS, Tricia McLaughlin.

The Strategy Group’s ad work is the first known example of money flowing from Noem’s agency to businesses controlled by her allies and friends.

Government contracting experts said the depth of the ties between DHS leadership and the Strategy Group suggested major potential violations of ethics rules.

“It’s corrupt, is the word,” said Charles Tiefer, a leading authority on federal contract law and former member of the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan. He said that the Strategy Group’s role should prompt investigations by both the DHS inspector general and the House Oversight Committee.

“Hiding your friends as subcontractors is like playing hide the salami with the taxpayer,” Tiefer added.

Federal regulations forbid conflicts of interest in contracting and require that the process be conducted “with complete impartiality and with preferential treatment for none.”

“It’s worthy of an investigation to ferret out how these decisions were made, and whether they were made legally and without bias,” said Scott Amey, a contracting expert and general counsel at the watchdog group Project on Government Oversight.

The revelations come as the amount of money at Noem’s disposal has skyrocketed. The so-called Big Beautiful Bill granted DHS more than $150 billion, and Noem has given herself an unusual degree of control over how that money is spent. This summer, she began requiring that she personally approve any payment over $100,000.

Asked about the Strategy Group’s work for DHS, McLaughlin, the agency spokesperson, said in an interview, “We don’t have visibility into why they were chosen.”

“I don’t know who they’re a subcontractor with, but I don’t work with them because I have a conflict of interest and I fully recused myself,” she said. “My marriage is one thing and work is another. I don’t combine them.” Her husband, Strategy Group CEO Ben Yoho, didn’t respond to questions.

“My marriage is one thing and work is another. I don’t combine them,” said DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin, who is married to Strategy Group CEO Ben Yoho. Tricia McLaughlin via Instagram

In a written statement, DHS said, “DHS has no involvement with the selection of subcontractors.” They added that the Strategy Group does not have a direct contract with the agency, saying “DHS cannot and does not determine, control, or weigh in on who contractors hire.”

Contracting experts said that agencies can and do sometimes require that subcontractors be approved by officials. It’s not clear how much the Strategy Group has been paid.

This is not the first time that the Strategy Group has gotten public money through a Noem contract. As governor of South Dakota in 2023, her administration set off a scandal by hiring the Ohio-based company to do a different ad campaign, paying it $8.5 million in state funds. While the state said the contract was done by the book, a former Noem administration official told ProPublica that Noem quietly intervened to ensure the Strategy Group got the deal. ProPublica granted some people anonymity to discuss the deals because of their sensitivity.

The firm also paid up to $25,000 to one of Noem’s closest advisers in South Dakota, previously unreported records show. (The adviser, 28-year-old Madison Sheahan, now serves at DHS as the second-in-command of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Sheahan didn’t respond to questions about why she was paid.)

The DHS ad that the company filmed at Mount Rushmore has aired during “Fox & Friends” in recent days. Executives from the Strategy Group traveled to the shoot and hired subcontractors to fill out the film crew, according to records and a person involved in the campaign. The ad’s aesthetic sits somewhere between a political campaign ad and a Jeep commercial as Noem tells would-be immigrants to “come here the right way.”

“From the cowboys who tamed the West to the titans who built our cities,” Noem says, as images of Trump Tower in Chicago and Trump raising his fist after the assassination attempt last year flash on the screen, “America has always rewarded vision and grit.” Noem continues: “You cross the border illegally, we’ll find you.”

Watch the DHS Ad Filmed at Mount Rushmore

Obtained by ProPublica

The ad is the latest in a campaign that Noem debuted in February, just a few weeks after she took charge of DHS. “Any delay in providing these critical communications to the public will increase the spread of misinformation, especially misinformation by smugglers,” the agency wrote, explaining why it was skipping the competitive bidding process normally required for government contracts. The initial ads featured Noem thanking Trump for securing the border.

The contracts total $220 million so far, leading the DHS ad budget to triple in the most recent fiscal year, according to Bloomberg. The lion’s share of ad contracts is typically used to buy TV airtime or spots on social media. Advertising firms make money by taking an often-hefty commission. Federal records show the contracts have gone to two firms. One is a Republican ad company in Louisiana called People Who Think, which has been awarded $77 million.

But the majority of the money — $143 million — has gone to a mysterious LLC in Delaware. The company was created just days before it was awarded the deal.

Little is known about the Delaware company, which is called Safe America Media and lists its address as the Virginia home of a veteran Republican operative, Michael McElwain. McElwain has long had his own advertising company (separate from the Delaware one), but there’s little evidence that firm could handle a nine-figure federal contract on its own: It reported just five employees when it received COVID-19 relief money a few years ago.

How, where and to whom Safe America Media doled out the $143 million is unknown. Any subcontractors hired to do work on the DHS ads are not disclosed in federal contracting databases.

The office funding the ad contracts is listed as the DHS Office of Public Affairs, which is run by McLaughlin, contract records show. McLaughlin married Yoho, the Strategy Group CEO, earlier this year.

In its statement, DHS said the agency does its contracting “by the book” and the process is run by career officials. “It is very sad that Pro Publica would seek to defame these public servants,” DHS added.

Asked about why the agency chose Safe America Media, DHS said, “The results speak for themselves: the most secure border in American history and over 2 million illegal aliens exiting the United States.” McElwain and People Who Think didn’t respond to questions.

Yoho was still in college when he first served as campaign manager for a U.S. congressman. Now, at 38 years old, he’s a national player in the cutthroat industry of political advertising. Federal election records show tens of millions in payments to his firm during the 2024 election cycle, coming from dozens of Republican congressional candidates. And Noem has proved a particularly lucrative client.

Lewandowski brought Yoho into Noem’s inner circle back in South Dakota, according to two people familiar with the matter, putting the young consultant in charge of the ad side of her 2022 gubernatorial reelection campaign. Noem had a more than $5 million advertising budget for the race, records show. After she won in a landslide, Yoho, who has called Noem a friend, came to South Dakota to attend her inauguration ceremony. He sat off to the side of the stage, next to Lewandowski. (Lewandowski didn’t respond to a request for comment.)

Yoho shared a photo of himself with Noem and her husband, Bryon, at Noem’s 2023 inauguration in South Dakota. Benjamin Yoho via X

By then, Yoho’s next big project with Noem was already in the works. In late 2022, Noem was quietly preparing to launch another sprawling ad campaign — only this time, the money would come from state coffers. The stated goal was to encourage workers to move to South Dakota. The upcoming contract opportunity wasn’t public yet, but Yoho was already involved in planning the campaign, according to records first reported by Sioux Falls Live.

Then on Jan. 12, 2023, Yoho’s company registered to do business in South Dakota under the name Go West Media. The next day, the contract opportunity went live.

Seven companies submitted proposals for the project. Then the pressure from above set in, according to a former Noem administration official involved in the process.

The former official said a top Noem aide told them the governor would be angry if Yoho’s company didn’t win the contract. “He was very direct: ‘She wants to do it,’” they said. Contemporaneous text messages reviewed by ProPublica corroborate that senior Noem administration officials pushed for Yoho to get the contract. Eventually, he did. (In its statement, DHS denied that Noem influenced the process.)

Noem starred in Yoho’s ads herself,, and as she touted her state’s growing economy. Exactly how much Yoho and the Strategy Group made off the $8.5 million deal is unclear. Some of the money was used to purchase spots on Fox News, including one during a Republican presidential debate. Some of the money appears to have gone back to South Dakota — into the bank account of another of Noem’s top advisers.

Noem in costume in ads she starred in that were produced by the Strategy Group, funded with public money in South Dakota. South Dakota Governor’s Office of Economic Development via YouTube

Sheahan, now the second-in-command at ICE, was paid up to $25,000 by Go West in 2023 for “consulting,” according to a financial disclosure document Sheahan later filed. At the time, Sheahan was serving as both the operations director for Noem as governor and the political director for Noem’s campaign work, according to a copy of her 2023 resume obtained by ProPublica. Her responsibilities included coordinating “daily logistics and operations” for Noem and her team, the resume said. She also managed the “relationship with high level donors” to American Resolve, Noem’s network of outside political groups.

As his firm received millions from the South Dakota state government, Yoho separately continued to work for Noem in other capacities. He worked under Lewandowski on the publicity campaign for Noem’s 2024 memoir, according to a person familiar with the matter. (The book became famous for including an anecdote about Noem shooting her dog.)

The Strategy Group also received a stream of payments for social media consulting and media production work over the last few years from Noem’s American Resolve PAC. Federal election records show the PAC made its last payment to Yoho’s company this February, a couple weeks after Noem took her post as the head of DHS.

Corrections

{Do you have any information we should know about Kristi Noem or DHS contracts? Justin Elliott can be reached by email atjustin@propublica.organd by Signal or WhatsApp at 774-826-6240. Josh Kaplan can be reached by email atjoshua.kaplan@propublica.organd by Signal or WhatsApp at 734-834-9383.*}:

Jeff Ernsthausen contributed research.

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26 min in shell offshore why allow secret $?

mayfair london uberrich shell corps own houses

putin dep mayor stole $ smuggled abroad w help of banksters in west; applebaum

https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/376-how-democracies-fail

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grassrootsbeer...Koch-Controlled Organizations Spent More Than $1.1 Billion During the 2020 Election Cycle

Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) series,Part 1 of 4!

Connor Gibson

Sep 7

I recently wrote a four-part barrage of articles on Charles Koch’s advocacy network for the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD). I’m crossposting them here, with CMD’s permission: see part 2.

Part 1: Koch-Controlled Organizations Spent More Than $1.1 Billion During the 2020 Election Cycle

In the 2020 election cycle, 28 organizations controlled by Charles Koch, his family, and Koch Industries executives spent a combined $1.1 billion, primarily to influence public policy and politics in the U.S., and had net revenues of $2.7 billion.

By the end of 2020, the combined assets of these nonprofits totaled $2.8 billion, an increase of $1.5 billion from the beginning of the year.

Other comparably large conservative financiers such as the Bradley, Scaife and Searle foundations show significantly less in net revenue, expenditures, and assets.

Click image to open the interactive table!

These latest figures eclipse the political spending disclosed by Koch Industries, the company that serves as the engine for all Koch-controlled nonprofits. In comparison, Koch Industries spent only $22.4 million on federal lobbying and campaign contributions in the 2020 election cycle.

But Charles Koch's organizations regularly spend over half a billion dollars annually, with a total of $607.9 million in expenses in 2019, and $638.6 million in 2020.

In 2020 alone, Koch-controlled organizations raised over $2.2 billion dollars—more than four times what they collectively raised the previous year. Before 2020, the combined revenue of Koch-controlled nonprofit organizations never reached the $1-billion threshold, with $501.1 million in net revenue in 2019, and approximately $650 million in 2018.

In order to avoid any double-counting, these net revenue and net expense totals account for all grants and expenses exchanged between Koch-controlled organizations. Those payments can be viewed here:

Click image to open interactive table!

These calculations likely fail to account for the total policy and political spending overseen by Charles Koch since Koch Industries and a fleet of Koch-controlled limited liability companies (LLCs) do not disclose similar finances. In rare instances of disclosure, Koch Industries and members of the Koch family have been known to invest millions more in policy-influencing organizations.

Charles Koch's Return on Political Investments

Despite waning news coverage, Charles Koch’s donor network remains unique in terms of its size and its top-down control by executives of a single company.

Unlike large donor-advised funds that finance a wide array of charities and nonpolitical causes, the bulk of Koch's "Stand Together" cluster of groups has coordinated around election and policy priorities.

Charles Koch's political fleet played a significant role in steering the policy priorities of the Trump administration, due in part to its influence in staffing the former president's cabinet.Even though Koch told reporters he was so displeased with Trump that he might even support Democrats—a rhetorical trick he pulls every few years—the tens of millions of dollars his organizations invested in U.S. Senate and House races went almost exclusively to Republicans.

In addition to showing obvious partisan preferences, Koch has financed groups involved in extremist activity, including the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. In 2022, Koch Industries is still financing many politicians who worked to invalidate the results of the 2020 presidential election, despite signaling to Politico that it would discontinue such support.

This political spending continues to pay off during the Biden presidency. Last year Koch exploited the Democrats' weak majority by undermining the comprehensive climate and infrastructure legislative package known as Build Back Better. The Koch machine also spent heavily to tank the voting and election reform policy known as the For the People Act, despite knowing full well that doing so went against popular sentiment across the political spectrum. 

Each of these counterattacks fed into another major priority for Koch: installing radical judges to the U.S. Supreme Court who are willing to do the bidding of the wealthiest people and corporations in the country. His astroturf organization Americans for Prosperity (AFP) spent "seven figures" on efforts to support the confirmations of Trump nominees Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney-Barrett—for a total price tag of between $3 and $10 million. 

This corporate-captured Supreme Court is already delivering victories to the Koch network. The Court supported an attack on IRS donor disclosure rules advanced by the AFP Foundation—the sister group of the organization that supported the confirmations of Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Coney-Barrett. Most recently, at the behest of a number of Koch-controlled or Koch-funded organizations and attorneys general, the Court struck down key aspects of the Environmental Protection Agency's climate change mitigation regulations.

The next two articles in this series will explore more about the rapid growth and evolution of Charles Koch's powerful political machine.

Methodology notes:

The figures reported here are drawn from the financials of 25 nonprofits regulated by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and three super PACs regulated by the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

Our calculations include money raised and spent by three Koch-controlled super PACs: AFP Action, Stand Together PAC, and Freedom Partners Action Fund, even though two of these (Stand Together PAC and Freedom Partners Action Fund) have been terminated. Asset totals for these FEC-regulated organizations were sourced from each super PAC’s reported cash on hand at the end of each year, based on year-end reports or termination reports filed with the FEC.

For the purposes of this article, "Koch-controlled" specifically means organizations under direct operational control of Charles Koch, his family members, or his fellow executives at Koch Industries. Most of these groups were founded by the Koch family.

Noteworthy groups heavily financed by Koch Industries or governed in part by Koch executives were excluded if they are not operated at the ultimate discretion of Charles Koch, his family, or his company. Among the many groups excluded are the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the Cato Institute, the Kansas Policy Institute, the Independent Women's Forum, and the American Institute for Economic Research.

Our calculations exclude numerous Koch-controlled LLCs that are part of the network's overall political operations, such as i360 and Stand Together Communications (formerly, In Pursuit Of). Many expenditures to these LLCs are disclosed in the IRS 990 filings of Koch-controlled organizations and super PACs, but given that the revenue and expenditures of the LLCs themselves are undisclosed, those figures have been excluded.

While most of these organizations exist primarily to influence matters of policy or politics, groups such as the Koch Cultural Trust and others are involved in philanthropic activity. Some spending by the Koch Family Foundation (formerly known as the Fred C. and Mary R. Koch Foundation) relates to student scholarships for dependents of Koch company employees. The Stand Together Foundation finances many charities that are not inherently political, but are generally tied to Koch's ideology of limited government and unregulated markets. The Stand Together Foundation was born out of a crisis communications push following Koch’s poor public relations in the 2010s, a topic that will be examined in part three of this series.

connor g emil CMD

pt 1 https://substack.com/redirect/4dc75e64-2da4-4533-a381-7a9ba81848d5?r=1n6e6

...a previously unreported 501(c)(4) “social welfare” political nonprofit called CCKC4 received a giant cash injection of $1.2 billion in 2020, making it a potentially formidable political player.

CCKC4 is controlled by Charles Koch’s son, Chase Koch. Chase Koch is the president of Koch Disruptive Technologies (KDT), the venture capital subsidiary of Koch Industries.

The cash transfer increased CCKC4’s assets from $37 million in 2019 to $1.3 billion at the close of 2020, significantly exceeding the value of the other largest Koch-controlled nonprofits like the Charles Koch Foundation ($462 million) and Charles Koch Institute ($364 million).

The $1.2 billion received by CCKC4 represents over half of the $2.7 billion in combined net revenue received by 28 Koch-controlled nonprofit organizations from 2019-2020. Most of the organization’s massive cash injection appears to have been invested as a basis for the organization’s endowment.

CCKC4 presumably stands for “Charles Chase Koch 501(c)(4).” It has no website nor public presence. CCKC4 filed IRS 990s in 2018 and 2019, and received its determination letter confirming its tax-exempt status in May of 2020.

The group lists its purpose simply as “grant-making,” but it has only made two grants since coming into existence. In 2019, CCKC4 gave $10 million to the Charles Koch Foundation, of which Chase is a board member.

Unlike the majority of Koch-controlled 501(c)(3) nonprofits that cannot primarily engage in political activity, CCKC4 is a dark money 501(c)(4) “social welfare” organization that can legally funnel up to half of its spending into political races. This indicates Chase Koch’s continued interest in political influence, contradicting his public relations push as he took on a prominent role at Koch Industries.

The group’s IRS tax filings list the $1.2 billion infusion as unspecified payments from individuals, $953 million of which was in the form of stock and other securities.

“The $1.2 billion funding of CCKC4 makes it one of the largest section 501(c)(4) social welfare organizations and a potential major player in political and policy circles,” said Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer in an email to the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD). Mayer is a law professor at the University of Notre Dame Law School.

The scale of the organization is unusual for a 501(c)(4) organization, but not unprecedented. Professor Mayer compared the organization’s sizable assets to $3.4 billion reported by Fund for Policy Reform in 2019. The Fund is one of many organizations linked to the liberal political financier George Soros.

“The decision by the Koch family and these other billionaires to fund 501(c)(4)s at this level demonstrates the important role that 501(c)(4)s serve as philanthropic and policy vehicles that are not subject to the limits on political activity faced by 501(c)(3) charities,” said Mayer, whose research expertise relates to politically active nonprofit organizations.

“It also demonstrates the importance of an obscure tax law change in 2015 that exempted gifts to 501(c)(4)s from the federal gift tax. Before that statutory change, it was uncertain whether the gift tax applied to such gifts,” Mayer said. “Gifts that exceed the annual gift tax exclusion ($16,000 per recipient as of 2022) generally count toward the exemption amount, and most very wealthy individuals use up the lifetime exemption through gifts to their children and other family members.”

CMD contacted a Koch Industries executive who serves as director of several Koch-controlled nonprofits for comment, but received no response.

CCKC4 routed $125 million to a Koch-owned LLC

IRS disclosures show that Chase Koch’s nonprofit circulates substantial amounts of dark money between limited liability companies (LLC) controlled by the Koch family.

CCKC4 paid $125 million to the Non-Profit 1888 Feeder Fund, LLC in 2020.

Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings indicate the Non-Profit 1888 Feeder-Fund has gross assets exceeding $2.1 billion as of May 2022. It is an asset allocation fund that manages diversified portfolios of investments, registered to operate in the states of Colorado, Delaware, and Kansas.

Professor Mayer noted the possibility that the $125 million sent from CCKC4 to the Nonprofit 1888 Feeder Fund could reflect the value of a specific investment the LLC is managing for CCKC4. “It is common for large investors to make their investments through LLCs that pool funds from multiple investors,” Mayer said.

The Non-Profit 1888 Feeder-Fund is one of several subsidiaries of 1888 Investments, LLC, which reported several key facts in recent SEC filings:

Both 1888 Investments and the Non-Profit 1888 Feeder-Fund are subsidiaries of 1888 Management Fund.

1888 is the year that Charles Koch’s grandfather, Harry Koch, immigrated to the United States.Bloomberg was first to report on the company in 2016:

With little fanfare, the Kochs are building an operation called 1888 Management LLC to manage part of their personal wealth. Initially tucked inside the private Koch Industries Inc.,1888 has been quietly scouting for personal investments for the Kochs, whose money and influence have helped shape the modern conservative movement in the U.S.

The ultimate size of the parent LLC, 1888 Management, is unclear. Bloomberg reported that someone familiar with 1888 Management claimed it was managing over $2 billion in investments.

CCKC4 received $30 million from another Koch-controlled LLC, EFPRP Investments, LLC. The purpose of this transaction is not clear, and little public information exists regarding EFPRP Investments.

The arrangement between nonprofits and LLC’s allows donors to skirt nonprofit disclosure laws and spend more dark money on political causes, both domestic and international. The Koch-funded Philanthropy Roundtable advocates this strategy:

LLCs are not subject to annual distribution requirements; they give donors the latitude to invest in domestic and foreign for-profit ventures; they can be used to fund ballot initiatives, direct lobbying, political campaigns, and individual candidates; and they can be used to support foreign charities without the requirement imposed on private foundations to determine that prospective foreign grantees are the equivalents of Section 501c3 public charities.

The next article in this series will examine one large grant that CCKC4 made to an independent donor advised fund, which the Koch network appears to be using to further obscure its spending.

DAF $ c3 c4 shuffle?

FTM$

The favorite DAF sponsor of the Right is DonorsTrust. Used heavily by Charles Koch,**Robert Mercer**, and Adolph Coors, it pours money into a network of right-wing charities and social welfare nonprofits. DonorsTrust gave more than $8.4 million to Project Veritas from 2014-18, or nearly one-third of the group’s contribution revenue. DonorsTrust’s yearly contribution rose from $607,000 in 2014 to a high of $2.4 million in 2017. Several members and staff of DonorsTrust have close ties to Koch-backed operations. The related Donors Capital Fund gave $20,000 to Project Veritas from 2014-15.

Project Veritas has a 501(c)(4)political arm, Project Veritas Action Fund, to which the billionaire, Trump-supporting Mercer family has steered funds. In 2018, a nonprofit called Making America Great, chaired by Rebekah Mercer, the daughter of former Renaissance Technologies co-CEO and Breitbart News funder Robert Mercer, donated $750,000 to the action fund. The Mercer Family Foundation has not donated directly to Project Veritas in recent years, but it’s possible it has used DonorsTrust to do so. From 2014-18, the foundation gave $10.9 million to DonorsTrust, including nearly $8.2 million in 2018, a big increase from previous years. By shifting more of its charitable dollars through DonorsTrust, the family is effectively hiding its donations from the public. In 2012, Robert Mercer donated $25,000 to Project Veritas through his LLC Gravitas Maximus.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/hes-back-trumps-former-campaign-manager-resurfaces-at-the-heart-of-ukraine-inquiry

...

Let’s also remember where Manafort carried out the crimes that landed him in prison: Ukraine. According to the Washington Post, as part of a plea deal, “Manafort acknowledged that he made more than $60 million in Ukraine, laundering more than $30 million of it through foreign companies and bank accounts to hide it from the IRS and cheating the government out of $15 million in taxes. He also agreed that he had lobbied in the United States on behalf of Ukrainian officials without registering and that he conspired to tamper with witnesses in his case.”

And where do we find ourselves today? Right back in Ukraine. This time it’s Manafort’s former boss, Donald Trump himself, who has been personally managing the campaign to get the Ukrainian government to help his re-election efforts. In fact, it was this week that we learned from George Kent, deputy assistant secretary of state in charge of Ukraine, how Trump wanted Zelensky to announce an investigation into Biden and the 2016 election. Kent told House impeachment investigators that Trump “wanted nothing less than President Zelensky to go to a microphone and say investigations, Biden and Clinton,” according to the Washington Post.

Even the minor characters are similar. In 2016, we had low-lifes like Kilimnik and “Professor” Joseph Mifsud running around on the fringes of Russia’s efforts to penetrate the Trump campaign and influence the presidential election. For 2020, we’ve got a couple of real jewels by the names of Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, both born in the former Soviet Union, and you guessed it! Both are currently under indictment on federal campaign finance charges. In 2016, the connections to Trump were made through Manafort and campaign advisers like George Papadopoulos. This time, it’s Giuliani who is Trump’s cut-out to these foreign-born scam artists. And what was Giuliani using Parnas and Furman for? According to The New York Times, beginning in January of this year, “Mr. Giuliani had enlisted Mr. Parnas and Mr. Furman to collect information and make connections in Ukraine that could be used to damage Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic presidential contender, and to undermine the special counsel’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.”

Even the way they have been moving funny money around was reminiscent of 2016. Back then, Manafort had pulled in millions from his work for former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, which he laundered through shell companies and bank accounts in Cyprus. This year, Parnas and his buddies used a company called Fraud Guarantee, that apparently had no employees and no customers, to funnel money to Giuliani through a complicated deal with a Long Island lawyer and a shell company in Belize

...

Parnas and Fruman were tapped out, having recently made the illegal $325,000 contribution to America First Action, a super PAC supporting Donald Trump, for which they are now under indictment. But they wanted a connection to Giuliani they could use back in Ukraine to drum up business deals, and apparently the way you get connected to Giuliani is to give him money. So they got a Long Island lawyer named Charles Gucciardo, who was a Trump supporter and large-money donor, to invest in their company, and then used the good offices of Fraud Guarantee to funnel $500,000 to Giuliani.

...

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