Paid to keep quiet?

I've often wondered what became of Trump's bodyguard.  You know - the one who was at that Moscow hotel and said he turned back those prostitutes outside Trump's room, but then left his guard post a short while later.  The one who hand-delivered Comey his letter of termination. And, according to Trump's once personal doctor Harold Bornstein, raided the doctor's office and took Trump's medical records.  Turns out he's on the RNC payroll, but it's not clear what he's doing to earn his $15,000 a month.

A company owned by Keith Schiller, President Donald Trump's former longtime bodyguard, has received $225,000 from the Republican National Committee for security consulting since he left his job as White House director of Oval Office operations in September 2017, according to interviews and newly released campaign filings.

Schiller was originally hired by the RNC to help select a site for the 2020 convention. But once the city of Charlotte, North Carolina, was announced in July, Schiller's firm was kept on to "work on other security needs for the committee," a party official told CNBC, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

The official declined to go into detail about what the committee's security needs might be but confirmed that the work is ongoing.

  CNBC

High priced coffee boy

The official also took pains to emphasize that Schiller's $15,000 a month fee was not coming out of the same funds the party was using to help elect Republicans to office in the 2018 midterms. Instead, the official said, Schiller's firm was being paid out of a special fund set aside for convention expenses.

It is unclear whether Schiller has any other clients besides the RNC, and if so, what type of work he does for them. Likewise, details about KS Global Group are not readily available.

According to state records, KS Global Group was created in 2015 by an anonymous Delaware corporate agent, and it does not appear to have a website or any publicly available contact information.

So, you can't hire Schiller unless you know somebody who knows somebody.

As of 2017, the firm was registered at a virtual office address in Boca Raton, Florida, where Schiller lives. A filing with the Florida secretary of State's office lists Schiller as the principal of the company.

Attempts to reach Schiller were unsuccessful.

[...]

But the unique position that Schiller occupies in Trump's orbit could be seen in the RNC's careful effort last year to compartmentalize Schiller's relationship to the committee, even as it hired him just days after he left the White House, and paid him nearly a quarter of a million dollars in consulting fees over 15 months.

Pretty good pay for locating a convention site.

According to RNC records, Schiller's contract is all that remains of three unusual expenses the committee abruptly began paying in the fall of 2017, during a time in which it sought to help the Trump campaign defray the costs of the president's legal bills in special counsel Robert Mueller's probe.

[...]

The White House declined to comment on whether Trump still talks to his longtime bodyguard, or how often. But the president is known to spend hours in the White House residence calling friends and associates, often seeking their opinions on political and policy matters.

In late summer 2017, after eight months at the White House with Trump, Schiller was ready to move to Florida, make more money and get outside the Beltway, according to former White House aides. Inside the West Wing, Schiller also reportedly chafed under the newly imposed, top-down leadership style of then-chief of staff Gen. John Kelly.

At the same time, on Capitol Hill, the Republican National Committee was coming under pressure from Trump allies who wanted it to use its specially designated legal fund [originally created to pay for things like vote recounts] to help pay personal attorney fees for the president and his eldest son, Donald Jr., who were caught up in the early stages of the special counsel's Russia probe.

[...]

The RNC agreed to tap the fund. In August and September 2017, it spent more than $427,000 on lawyers for both men. But an uproar ensued when the RNC later reported the payments on its mandatory monthly campaign filings.

[...]

The last legal bill the committee paid for the Trumps was on Sept. 18, 2017, for Don Jr. Yet within days, the RNC quietly started paying three other Trump-related expenses, according to committee filings with the Federal Election Commission.

The first was a salary for John Pence, nephew of Vice President Mike Pence, who was earning around $12,000 a month from Trump's re-election campaign.

How very interesting.

Next came $37,500 a month in rent payable to the Trump Organization for office space in Trump Tower, which was used by the president's re-election campaign.

Pretty steep office rent. Could they maybe find a less expensive space?

On October 4, 2017, one week after the Trump Tower rent payments started, the RNC cut its first check for $15,000 to Schiller's KS Global Group for what it called "security services."

The expense was disclosed by the committee on its next campaign filing in October, as required by law. But it went unnoticed by reporters for another three months.

[...]

The RNC wasn't the only pro-Trump group helping Schiller to make ends meet, however. Also not yet reported at the time was the fact that Schiller's lawyers were being paid, at least in part, by the Trump campaign. Between January and April 2018, the campaign paid more than $94,500 to Schiller's attorney's law firm, according to campaign finance reports.

His lawyers. He did sit for an interview with the House Intelligence Committee under Nunes. I wonder if maybe the Nadler-headed Committee wil recall him.

As for the other two expenses, Pence's salary and the Trump Tower rent, which had been explicitly taken over from the campaign, they were both stopped within weeks of CNBC's first identifying them and questioning the committee about them in February. By mid-March 2018, the Trump campaign was back to paying its own rent and paying Pence's [nephew's] salary.

Of the three expenses the committee had begun paying during those last two weeks of September 2017, only Schiller remained on the books.

But now that the original task of selecting a convention site is complete, and Schiller is still on the payroll, the issue of what Trump's former bodyguard is being paid to do is not clear. When CNBC pressed the RNC official for details this week, the official would say only that Schiller was "working on other security needs for the committee."

[...]

CNBC asked the RNC on Monday whether Schiller is still being paid with convention funds, and the official did not respond.

[...]

Schiller is one of several former White House aides who left their government jobs and were quickly hired by Trump-allied political groups. In March 2018, Trump's personal aide Johnny McEntee was fired from the White House for online gaming. Trump's reelection campaign announced that it had hired McEntee as a senior adviser the very next day.

Is he getting $15,000 a month, too? Why, yes. Yes he is. At least he was as of August last year.

A number of former Trump aides – including two who served in sensitive positions in the White House – have been paid roughly $15,000 per month by either the Trump campaign, the Republican National Committee or America First PAC, a political action committee dedicated to Trump’s re-election for various services described only briefly in filings.

[...]

Campaign finance records show several former aides to President Donald Trump have received payments of roughly $15,000 per month from campaign or party accounts, bolstering part of former aide Omarosa Manigault Newman’s claim that she was offered the same amount to keep quiet about her time in the White House.

The Apprentice contestant turned White House aide Manigault Newman has alleged that multiple former Trump Administration aides have been taking money for their silence since leaving their posts, a hush money payment under the guise of a no-show job that she says she turned down.

"They were not offering me a real job," Manigault Newman told NBC on Sunday. “They didn't really care if I showed up. In fact, there are several former employees from the White House who actually signed this agreement, who are all being paid $15,000 for their silence.”

[...]

Campaign or party coffers made monthly payments to former director of Oval Office operations Keith Schiller for “security services,” former personal assistant to the president John McEntee for “payroll,” former digital media director of the Trump campaign Brad Parscale for “digital consulting [and] management consulting” and former director of advertising for the Trump campaign Gary Coby for “media services [and] consulting.”

  ABC

RNC must have a shitload of income. NRA? Russia? The Mercers? Sheldon Adelson? Corporations and billionaires? I wonder what Republican candidates for various positions think of where that money's going.

As an interesting bit of background on Schiller, who worked as Trump's bodyguard for almost twenty years, is before that, he worked for the NYPD as an undercover officer in the drug enforcement division and the Street Narcotics Enforcement Unit.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.