Jared Kushner helped build a Shell company that secretly paid President Donald Trump’s family members and spent nearly half of his 2020 campaign funds.
The president’s son-in-law and senior adviser to the White House directed his sister-in-law Lara Trump, Vice President Mike Pence’s nephew John Pence, and Trump campaign CFO Sean Dollman to sit on the board of directors of the Shell company, one shared with the Operation familiar source with business insider.
The company, founded as American Made Media Consultants Corporation and American Made Media Consultants LLC, spent $ 617 million of the campaign’s $ 1.26 billion war chest, according to campaign financial reports.
Trump’s top advisors and campaign staff told insiders they didn’t know how the Shell company works, and campaign officials even conducted an internal review of its operations under former campaign manager Brad Parscale, but never reported on those results, and next campaign manager Bill Stepien had little involvement with AMMC.
“Nothing was done without Jared’s approval,” said a former Trump 2016 campaign advisor. “What Stepien doesn’t know is that Jared doesn’t want him to know.”
The Legal Center for Impartial Campaigns filed a civil complaint with the Bundestag Electoral Commission in July accusing the campaign of camouflaging around $ 170 million in spending “by laundering the funds” by AMMC.
“[It’s a] Scheme for not even telling voters the basics of where their money is really going [and a] Protective shield to disguise the ultimate recipients of its spending, ”said Brendan Fischer, director of the Center for Federal Reform.
The Department of Justice can open a criminal investigation if the government suspects that the payments are a “knowing and willful” violation of electoral law.
Several sources from the Justice Department and the FEC told Insiders that investigators may already be investigating the campaign’s activities.
“Lara Trump and John Pence resigned from the AMMC board in October 2019 to focus solely on their campaign activities. However, there has never been an ethical or legal reason why they could not be on the board at all,” said Tim Murtaugh . the campaign communications director. “AMMC did not compensate John and Lara for serving on the board.”
Image: DoD photo by Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Dominique A. Pineiro via Flickr
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