A group of rogue Trump loyalists has expanded their fundraising ambitions with a new dark-money group that can accept unlimited cash from secret donors “to litigate cases of importance to the American republic.”
The founding members of the group—a 501(c)(4) nonprofit called Defending the Republic Inc—include Joe Flynn, the QAnon-happy brother of former national security adviser Mike Flynn, and Emily Newman, the White House liaison turned renegade election litigator. A sister super PAC by the same name, sharing the same mailbox, was created around the same time.
The group was founded the day after MyPillow CEO and MAGA diehard Mike Lindell was hit with a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit. Incorporation documents list Lindell as one of the original board members, but he told The Daily Beast that he was “too busy” and resigned “a couple weeks ago.” The pillow mogul said he still advises “the group, as well as as other PACs, where I think there are relevant needs.” Asked specifically on Thursday afternoon about the newly-launched Defending the Republic super PAC, Lindell replied, “I have no involvement with that one at this time. I didn’t know anything about it, and I haven’t researched it yet.”
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The groups also have ties with former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell. Like Lindell, she faces a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit for her lies about voting machine manufacturer Dominion’s alleged role in an outlandish nationwide election fraud conspiracy. She was hit with a second billion-dollar suit from election technology company Smartmatic in February.
The new fundraising machine makes for an awfully convenient tool. Together, the groups can raise money from secret donors in unlimited amounts to fuel any political or social agenda they choose. Those causes may run from overturning the election to covering costs of litigation, according to legal experts, though the nonprofit cannot engage primarily in political activity. Defending the Republic Inc says in its incorporation documents that it plans to conduct unspecified “advocacy and grassroots organization for constitutional freedoms,” and that one of its activities will be “to litigate cases of importance to the American republic.” Lindell has recently promised to file a new brief with the Supreme Court.
Caleb Burns, a nonprofit law specialist with Wiley Rein, told The Daily Beast that the new organization has a wide berth to operate, including support for private legal efforts.
“The mission may not be so narrow that the primary beneficiary is a single private individual or discrete group. But a 501(c)(4) can advance its broader social welfare mission by engaging in activities that also benefit private parties,” Burns said. “Casework by a group supporting the indigent is a good example.”
The nonprofit can also pass anonymous funds to purely political super PACs, says Brett Kappel, campaign law expert at Harmon Curran. “The Super PAC will only have to disclose the contribution it received from the social welfare organization—not the identity of the individual donors whose funds were aggregated to make that contribution,” he said.
Brendan Fischer, director of federal reform at the Campaign Legal Center, says it is “not uncommon” for super PACs to pair with a sister dark money group, and that they often coordinate and even share office space. The Trump-backing America First Policies, for instance, is the dark money twin of super PAC America First Action. As for whether a nonprofit engages in too much political activity, Fischer said that “the lines are blurry and rarely policed.”
Defending the Republic PAC officially filed with the Federal Election Commission on March 1, but had registered as a Florida company three weeks prior. The nonprofit Defending the Republic Inc registered in Florida on Feb. 23, the day after Dominion sued Lindell for his allegedly defamatory claims about the role he says that the company played in rigging the election against Trump. (There is no evidence that the election was rigged or that Dominion committed any wrongdoing, something it vehemently denies.)
Both groups share the same UPS dropbox in West Palm Beach, Florida. That mailbox appears connected only to one other entity: Powell’s Restore the Republic super PAC, which she claimed in a January press statement involved Joe Flynn and Lindell.
The paperwork for all of these organizations, however, is a mess, indicating an uneven process for getting them off of the ground and possible overlap between them.
Powell, the conspiracy-minded “Kraken” lawyer, has another money machine, though it’s unclear whether it can legally function. For months she has solicited donations to her legal fund on a website called, confusingly enough, DefendingTheRepublic.org—the same name that Lindell and friends later used for their nonprofit and super PAC. Indeed, Powell created her own, separate Defending the Republic Inc nonprofit with the state of Texas on Dec. 1, The Daily Beast previously reported. That group features fellow election conspiracy theorist Lin Wood and former Trump campaign lawyer Jesse Binnall, who later helped Powell create her Restore the Republic super PAC.
However, the bank listed in that PAC’s filing with the Federal Election Commission—Arkansas-based Bank of the Ozarks—later said that they had “determined this entity has no account at Bank OZK, has no account pending, and has never had an account here,” and that it is “not eligible for an account,” per company policy. Powell also appears to have attempted to register the PAC as a for-profit business in Florida at the end of January, but the secretary of state rejected the application for unknown reasons.
While Restore the Republic has not yet received a federal notice to update its banking information, its website redirects traffic to DefendingTheRepublic.org—Powell’s fund. Internet archives show that the site appears to have stripped Powell’s name amid an overhaul sometime in January, though it still takes donations and promises a new website “coming soon!!” It also includes a note, assuring “Dear Patriots” that “We are STILL working on your behalf” while the site is “getting organized.”
“Thank you for trusting us. We must simply work harder now,” the note concludes.
The Defending the Republic nonprofit’s board of directors is a who’s who of fringe conspiracy theorists, all of whom pitched in at one point or another to try to overturn President Joe Biden’s election victory.
Board member and QAnon fan Joe Flynn successfully lobbied Trump to pardon his brother and maligned the election in a speech alongside Reps. Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-GA) and Lauren Boebert (R-CO) at the Jan. 6 protest before the Capitol riot.
The Flynn brothers appeared at a Dec. 12 rally in Washington, D.C., where Mike Flynn gave a speech and which later flowed into a bloody brawl in the streets of the nation’s capital. Joe had hired a security team to flank his brother that day, a group that appears to have included Oath Keeper Roberto Minuta, a Roger Stone body man who was recently booked on charges connected to his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection. In a previous email exchange with The Daily Beast, Joe denied knowingly hiring Minuta on Dec. 12, claiming that “We don’t know him never met him or even any Oath Keepers at least that we are aware of.”
The third person on Defend the Republic’s nonprofit registration, Emily Newman, teamed up with Powell and attorney Lin Wood in their rogue legal efforts to prosecute Biden’s victory. She also accompanied Powell and Mike Flynn last December at a secretive White House meeting with Trump. Newman joined the Department of Homeland Security in January 2017, and bounced around the administration, getting reassigned in 2018 to White House liaison for the Department of Health and Human Services, and later to the U.S. Agency for Global Media in a staff shakeup last September.
The treasurer for the Defending the Republic PAC, Peter Haller, acted as a volunteer attorney for the Trump campaign’s post-election challenges. Haller, who in the 2000s conducted an off-the-books lobbying campaign as a vice president at Goldman Sachs, changed his last name from Simonyi when he left the financial giant in 2011 to join Rep. Darrell Issa’s (R-CA) congressional staff. His Twitter bio claims that he is a “BIG D*CK BAMF.”
None of the members of these groups responded to a request for comment.
In a March 8 interview on conservative personality Charlie Kirk’s AM radio show, Lindell demonstrated his trademark swagger in the face of unrelenting ridicule, offering to help the “criminals” who allegedly rigged the election avoid hard prison time.
“I will tell everyone out there right now if you want to reach out to me, you probably should, if you’re one of the criminals, because maybe you can work out a deal, so you don’t [get] the longest sentences,” he said. “It’s kinda like back to the old mafia days.”
“This is going to be so broad, and just explode,” he said.
