Grifters R Us

Jared Kushner, approved the creation of a campaign shell company that secretly paid the president's family members and spent almost half of the campaign's $1.26 billion war chest, a person familiar with the operation told Insider.

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It paid some of Trump's top advisors and family members, while shielding financial and operational details from public scrutiny.

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From January 2019 through the middle of November, the Trump campaign and an affiliated political committee together spent $617 million through American Made Media Consultants.

  Business Insider

Will Biden's DoJ just let this slide?

When Kushner and others created the company in April 2018, they picked Trump's daughter-in-law Lara Trump to become its president, Vice President Mike Pence's nephew John Pence as its vice president, and Trump campaign Chief Financial Officer Sean Dollman as its treasurer and secretary.

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Some Trump advisors have long accused Parscale of trying to hide money from the now outgoing president, occasionally citing AMMC as an example of his obfuscation.

But the campaign spent the bulk of the money at AMMC — $415 million — after Trump fired Parscale as his campaign manager on July 15.

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For months, some of Trump's top advisors and campaign staff told Insider they had no idea how the shell company functioned, which cast an air of mystery around the operation.

Trump's campaign leaders even launched an internal audit of the shell company and operations that were conducted under former campaign manager Brad Parscale but never reported the results of that review.

Some of those same advisors said they didn't learn about John Pence's and Lara Trump's involvement until Insider contacted them for this story.

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"Lara Trump and John Pence resigned from the AMMC board in October 2019 to focus solely on their campaign activities, however, there was never any ethical or legal reason why they could not serve on the board in the first place. John and Lara were not compensated by AMMC for their service as board members," Trump campaign Communications Director Tim Murtaugh told Insider on Friday.

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Using the shell company also allowed [then campaign manager Brad] Parscale to keep Lara Trump and Kimberly Guilfoyle — the girlfriend of Donald Trump Jr. — on his payroll, the person familiar said.

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The nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, led by former Republican Federal Election Commission Chairman Trevor Potter, filed a civil complaint with the FEC in July accusing the Trump campaign of "disguising" about $170 million worth of campaign spending in large part "by laundering the funds" through AMMC.

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Insider independently verified details of this person's account with other people close to the Trump campaign.

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If the federal government suspects a "knowing and willful" violation of election law has occurred, the Department of Justice has the power to open a criminal investigation into a political actor.

But will they? I won't hold my breath.

While such investigations are relatively uncommon, several former Justice Department and FEC officials previously told Insider that Justice Department officials may already be discreetly investigating Trump's reelection activity.

We'll see.

I wonder how Brad Parscale feels about having taken the full public brunt for misusing campaign funds.

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