Ron DeSantis’ 2024 presidential campaign and the Super PAC that supports it, Never Back Down, are allegedly in kahoots and violating federal law that says PACs and candidates must remain separate, according to a complaint filed by the nonprofit watchdog group Campaign Legal Center on Monday.
The complaint said that the PAC had “for months coordinated its activities with and made in-kind contributions to DeSantis and his campaign committee, contravening the explicit legal requirement that super PACs must remain ‘independent’ of—i.e., not coordinate with or make contributions to—federal candidates or their campaigns.”
DeSantis and his team have dismissed the claims. Spokesperson Andrew Romeo called the complaint “baseless” in a statement to NBC News and an example of “how the Left is terrified of Ron DeSantis and will stoop to anything to stop him.
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“The FEC has made clear they won’t take action based upon unverified rumors and innuendo, and that’s the false information this politically motivated complaint is based on,” he added. “The Left has tried to stop DeSantis in the past and failed, and they will fail again this time.”
Never Back Down did not respond to requests for comment from NBC.
Never Back Down lost its chief operative, Jeff Roe in a fiery scandal over the weekend after The Washington Post reported about tensions between the PAC and DeSantis.
“I cannot in good conscience stay affiliated with Never Back Down given the statements in the Washington Post today,” Roe wrote in a statement on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. He called the claims “untrue” and an “unwanted distraction at a critical time for Governor DeSantis.”
