https://www.businessinsider.com/jared-kushner-trump-campaign-shell-company-family-ammc-lara-2020-12■ Jared Kushner approved the creation of a shell company that spent almost half of the Trump campaign's $1.26 billion war chest, a person familiar with the operation told Insider exclusively.
■ Kushner directed Lara Trump, Vice President Mike Pence's nephew John Pence, and Trump campaign Chief Financial Officer Sean Dollman to serve on the shell company's board, the person told Insider.
■ Despite its $617 million spending through AMMC, the Trump campaign publicly disclosed little information about the company, including how it used the money.
"President" Donald Trump's most powerful advisor, 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.
The operation acted almost like a campaign within a campaign. It paid some of Trump's top advisors and family members, while shielding financial and operational details from public scrutiny.
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, the person who spoke on the condition of anonymity said.
Insider independently verified details of this person's account with other people close to the Trump campaign.
The shell company — incorporated as American Made Media Consultants Corp. and American Made Media Consultants LLC — allowed Trump's campaign to skirt federally mandated disclosures. The tactic could attract scrutiny from federal election regulators.
Campaign-finance records showed Trump's reelection effort and its affiliated committee with the Republican National Committee spent more than $600 million through American Made Consultants since its formation.
For months, some of Trump's own top advisors and campaign staff have told Insider they had no idea how the shell company functioned, casting an air of mystery around the operation.
Trump's campaign leaders even launched an internal audit of the shell company and operations 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 and Lara Trump's involvement until Insider contacted them for this story.
But throughout, the mystery hid in plain sight: Kushner, Lara Trump, John Pence, and Dollman, were often just feet away in the Trump campaign's headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, a Washington suburb.
"They like to say they don't know, but that's not true," the person familiar with AMMC said. "What they wanted was excuses so they could blame other people. If they thought that, why did they keep using it?"
✦ Trump campaign spent $617M through AMMC
From January 2019 through the middle of November 2020, the Trump campaign and an affiliated political committee together spent $617 million through American Made Media Consultants.
It was almost half of everything they spent in the failed effort to reelect Trump, according to an Insider review of Federal Election Commission records and analysis provided by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.
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 actually spent the bulk of the money at AMMC — $415 million — after Trump fired Parscale as campaign manager on July 15.
A spokesman for Kushner did not return a request for comment from Insider.
Dollman would not provide comment when Insider reached him by phone
"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.
Parscale declined to comment when reached by Insider on Friday.
Campaign law experts have long accused the Trump team of using a corporate pass-through to hide payments.
The nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, led by former Republican FEC 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 "by laundering the funds" through AMMC, in large part.
Brendan Fischer, the Campaign Legal Center's director of federal reform said the payments to AMMC are a "scheme to evade telling voters even the basics on where its money is really going" and a "shield to disguise the ultimate recipients of its spending." said Brendan Fischer, the Campaign Legal Center's director of federal reform.
As a civil law enforcer, the FEC can issue fines to political committees it determines have broken election laws.
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.
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.
Some of Trump's own campaign leaders even seemed stumped by the AMMC arrangement. Generally, they knew that AMMC was being used to buy pro-Trump TV, radio, and digital advertising and pay for other media.
But they couldn't discern precisely how much each AMMC vendor was keeping for themselves.
The person familiar with AMMC said the rates its vendors charged the Trump campaign were often cheaper than what an outside political firm would have demanded. Using the shell company also allowed Parscale to keep Lara Trump and Kimberly Guilfoyle — the girlfriend of first son Donald Trump Jr. — on his payroll, the person familiar said.
The revelations come as Trump's top current and former advisors are trading blame for the president's loss to Democrat Joe Biden after a wild — and historically expensive — election cycle.
Supporters of the current campaign team, led by campaign manager Bill Stepien, say that Parscale's lavish spending forced them to cut budgets during the final weeks leading up to Election Day, just when Trump needed money most.
Allies of the Parscale campaign team argue the reelection operation was flush with cash, buoyed by millions of small-dollar donations from hardcore Trump supporters. If Stepien had kept up that pace of spending, they contend, Trump would have defeated Biden.
The Trump campaign ultimately ran a net $7 million surplus, campaign finance records show: As of late November, it reported $18.4 million cash on hand versus $11.3 million in debt.
One Republican close to the White House suggested Stepien and his team may have kept themselves in the dark on purpose, so as not to get on Kushner's bad side.
But a former advisor to Trump's 2016 campaign said it was also possible that Kushner simply withheld information from Stepien's new campaign team.
"Nothing was done without Jared's approval," the former Trump campaign advisor said. "What Stepien doesn't know is because Jared doesn't want him to know."
✦ Parscale's strategies
American Made Media Consultants was born out of a different scandal: rampant accusations that Parscale had been enriching himself off of Trump's reelection bid.
In February 2018, Trump and Kushner elevated Parscale, the digital communication mastermind of Trump's 2016 election victory, to campaign manager.
One month later, a small team of campaign staff met with Trump's coterie of lawyers at the Jones Day law firm, the person familiar with the founding of AMMC said. The Jones Day lawyers, some of whom had worked on Mitt Romney's 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns, said they had an idea for Parscale.
Romney had relied on a pass-through company, American Rambler, to make the most expensive purchases of his campaign: TV ads.
Ben Ginsberg — a Republican superlawyer who recently retired from Jones Day, the Trump campaign's preferred law firm — suggested Parscale and his team try the same. One month later, Kushner signed off on a plan to have Trump's family and campaign staff run the shell company, the person familiar with AMMC's operations said. American Made Media Consultants was formally incorporated on April 18, 2018, according to Delaware incorporations records.
In an email Thursday, Ginsberg declined to comment. "Can't help you with this," he said. In recent weeks, Ginsberg has sharply criticized Trump.
Delaware has long been one of the best places in the United States to hide secret corporate arrangements.
That could change, however, as Congress earlier this month passed a corporate transparency measure aimed at combating financial crimes, both domestic and foreign.
The measure is part of the veto-proof National Defense Authorization Act and would require anonymous shell companies — including limited liability companies such as American Made Media Consultants — to disclose their real owners to the US Treasury Department.
On the afternoon of January 20, 2021, the Treasury Department will fall under Biden's control.
By Tom LoBianco, Dave Levinthal
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