Brad Parscale is Paul Manafort’s successor as Donald Trump’s campaign manager. In case you were wondering how he compares to the convicted felon, I would say there’s not much daylight between them when it comes to ethics—but with Parscale, you can add in a healthy dose of virulent racism. After all, he’s the one responsible for an ad so racist that Fox News wouldn’t air it. He’s also behind the new Trump-Pence logo for 2020, which was taken directly from a white supremacist group.
Parscale was previously Trump’s social media guy, but Trump loved his brand of bigotry so much that he got a promotion. He gets a nice salary of $15,000 a month; however, a few media outlets, such as the Daily Mail, started asking questions about his recent lavish spending that someone getting $180K a year could ill afford.
When I say lavish, I’m talking:
- A $2.4 million waterfront mansion in Fort Lauderdale. According to the Daily Mail, it was paid for in cash.
- A $78,300 BMW
- A $146,000 Range Rover
- Two condos worth $2 million
The mansion alone has property taxes worth about a quarter of his stated salary. Not too shabby for a guy whose family business was lost to bankruptcy just a few years ago. Clearly, he’s getting other income.
Well, indeed he is.
According to what is described as a “highly unusual arrangement,” Washington insiders told the Daily Mail that Parscale’s companies and their subsidiaries get a percentage of most of the contributions to the Trump 2020 campaign, which now top $56.8 million. In total, according to the AP, Parscale is on the payroll of five companies with ties to the campaign.
Both the RNC and the Trump campaign have utilized Parscale’s companies, mostly Parscale Digital and Parscale Strategy, for millions of dollars worth of service.
Wow. I loved President Obama, but if David Axelrod was enriching himself with a percentage of contributions, I’m pretty sure I’d want my money going somewhere else.
But we’re not through yet. As with most Trump people, it gets even swampier.
A company owned by the wife of Parscale [...] has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the President’s flagship political action committee, which is barred from coordinating with the campaign.
Parscale lashed out on social media, trying to say his wife is a “member,” not an “owner.” (Legal sidenote: Owners of an LLC are called “members.” Nice try.) Yet there’s a MUCH bigger problem here.
You heard that right. Coordination between PACs and campaigns is illegal, but taking money from both? Leave it to the Trump people to get next-level corruption.
This would normally be something serious for the FEC to investigate, but the FEC is now completely defunct. There aren’t enough members to even hold a quorum, and Trump and Mitch McConnell have no intention of filling the vacancies. They are both depending on election shenanigans to win.
To be fair to Parscale and his wife, they aren’t doing anything that’s unexpected from the Trump campaign. Hush money payments, campaign violations, money laundering, obstruction, lying to investigators—the Trump people don’t even bother to hide illegal activities anymore. And as long as we allow Trump and McConnell to reshape the judiciary in their image, they won’t ever need to.
Feel free to share this with anyone who donated to Trump 2020. I did.