Since the beginning of the Small Business Administration’s loan program during the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been stories about fraud, abuse, and notable individuals taking advantage of the program.
Now, it turns out, a super PAC might have helped itself to the government funds as well.
On Wednesday, the Federal Election Commission sent two notices to a Republican super PAC called “America Great PAC” inquiring about the circumstances surrounding repayments it made for a $16,500 SBA loan it received in June 2020 as part of the COVID relief program.
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One major problem, among others that The Daily Beast uncovered about the group, is that PACs aren’t allowed to take SBA loans. In 2021, the Justice Department sentenced a Nevada man to 46 months in prison for “fundraising for fake political action committees (PACs) that he created, and the other involving COVID-19 relief funds he sought and received through fraudulent applications.” This latest instance seems to be just as problematic.
The super PAC—with a name heavily suggestive of Trump’s trademark campaign slogan—appears to be a vehicle for a wide-ranging scam PAC network. The group’s website has a donation form with sample text listing an address and phone number tied directly to several identical scam PAC websites, all with different names, but operating under America Great super PAC.
Many of the sites use the names and images of Republican presidential candidates to raise money on their behalf—such as supportrondesantis.com, donatetrump2024.com, and donatevivek.com—with multiple sites for each candidate. The network also runs a political merch operation called “US Party Supply,” and the PAC’s operator—D.C. area resident Jason Pallante—is also tied to groups with names like “Republican National Committee Donor Support” and “Republican National Hispanic Assembly.”
The Daily Beast attempted to contact Pallante and PAC operators at numbers associated with them in FEC filings and public records, but those attempts were unsuccessful.
The PAC has raised more than $450,000 since it launched in May 2019, most of it during the 2020 election, FEC filings show. It has paid roughly $295,000 of that amount directly to Pallante, for administrative, fundraising, and other consulting and contracting services. It spent $17,000 on video equipment at Best Buy, about $14,000 with a drone company, and around $15,000 in domain website fees to GoDaddy—in about 120 separate transactions, likely reflecting the various misleading domains the PAC has established.
In 2020, the group reported $67,500 in contributions to federal committees that back Trump, including the America First super PAC, which last year was fined nearly $1 million in connection with a foreign donation. However, as a super PAC, the group is not allowed to make contributions to federal committees—which the FEC has reminded them about.
America Great PAC also clocked some major donations in 2020—one of them being a $100,000 gift from the CEO of an electrical contracting company, Carl Kasalek, who told The Daily Beast that he was scammed.
“I’m not surprised,” Kasalek said when The Daily Beast described the nature of the PAC. He said he donated because he wanted to support Trump in 2020, and he found the group because he had “looked online so I could give it directly” to the campaign, instead of going through a middleman.
Kalasek said his original check donation was returned “because of something with the address,” so he called the PAC operators and ended up sending a wire transfer. Asked whether the operators had represented themselves as the Trump campaign, Kalasek said, “Clearly, obviously, yes they did.”
The FEC appears to be onto the group, but it’s unclear why the PAC is still active. The agency has sent numerous notices—as recently as last month—which Pallante often answers with desultory explanations and excuses strewn with political propaganda. The PAC’s disbursements reveal $20,000 in administrative fines.
“AGPAC will always be completely transparent with our most generous donor’s hard-earned cash,” Pallante wrote in a response last February, adding that the group “takes great pride in its ability to connect and communicate with like-minded Freedom Loving Americans.”
“I apologize to anyone of my donor’s that might have questioned or gotten a false impression on how their money was spent or dealt with,” he continued. “Let me ensure you and the FEC that I work very hard to produce relevant content that matters to the people that matter to America First.”
