Politics has begun coloring virtually every facet of the coronavirus pandemic. And when NASCAR officially restarts this week, becoming the first major U.S. sports league to return from a pandemic-induced hiatus, it will be no different.
Appearing in a race next week in Charlotte will be a team whose objective seems, at once, to be about capturing the checkered flag and boosting President Donald Trump’s re-election chances. And though the slogan on the side of the car seems relatively benign—Trump 2020—the finances behind the operation may not be.
The company behind the effort, Race Fans For Trump 2020 LLC, is run by a Florida commercial pilot named Hank Foley, who’s teamed up with NASCAR driver Tim Viens to blare the president’s name and a call for his reelection. And in anticipation of the Charlotte race, Viens and Foley are also making the rounds in conservative media to hype their team, NASCAR’s return, and Donald Trump’s reelection campaign.
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“Thank you. Trump 2020!” a grinning Foley said, signing off after a segment last weekend on former White House press secretary Sean Spicer’s new show on Newsmax TV.
Race Fans for Trump has received prominent billing in Trump-friendly media organs since the effort rolled out earlier this year. It appears to be as much a political advertising campaign as an athletic sponsorship one, and indeed, the money used to emblazon Trump’s name across their cars came by way of a new PAC founded by Foley earlier this year.
A more in-depth look at the finances behind the effort reveals a murky trail of funds that, campaign finance experts say, suggest a possible illicit “straw donor” scheme to funnel money from a shell company through the PAC and onto the raceway.
The amounts of money at issue are relatively small by the standards of contemporary electioneering. But Foley has also indicated that he plans to expand his political activities from simple race car sponsorship to more active pro-Trump activities, such as setting up voter registration tents at NASCAR races.
They won’t be able to do that immediately. Though NASCAR races are scheduled to resume, no fans will be in attendance at the races in Charlotte next week. But with Foley and his team back on the airwaves, and an apparently revamped campaign finance infrastructure supporting his efforts, new scrutiny could force them to divulge more about the flows of money that landed Trump’s name on the side of their souped up Chevrolets.
Neither Race Fans for Trump nor its PAC’s election compliance attorney responded to requests for comment on this story.
Race Fans for Trump LLC was officially formed in November, according to corporate records in Florida, and listed Viens and Alpha 1 Management, Foley’s company, as officers. Just a couple months later, though, it filed termination paperwork with state corporate regulators and officially folded.
On the same day, January 30, 2020, Viens and Foley formed a new company, Race Fans for Trump 2020 LLC. The next day, they submitted a new statement of organization with the Federal Election Commission for an affiliated political group, Patriots PAC of America, listing prominent Republican election compliance attorney Dan Backer as its treasurer.
Then the money began to flow. On February 3 and 4, Race Fans for Trump 2020 donated $27,000 to Patriots PAC of America. A day after its second contribution, Patriots PAC reported paying $25,000 to sponsor a car driven by NASCAR driver Joe Nemechek. It reported spending another $25,000 on a racing deposit for Veins later that month, but later told the FEC that the expenditure had not been made as planned.
Because the cars would be branded with Trump 2020 logos, those payments were reported as political independent expenditures in support of the president’s reelection effort. And both Foley and Viens billed their effort as explicitly political.
NASCAR fans “all love the president,” Foley told Breitbart News in an early March interview. “About 80 percent support the president, but the problem is almost 20 percent aren’t registered to vote.”
“If we tapped into 1 percent of that, that could make a huge difference in the battleground states,” Viens chimed in. “What we’re trying to do is get Donald J. Trump reelected for another four years by focusing these cars on the battleground states and signing up registered voters.”
On the same day that they gave that interview, March 2, Patriots PAC of America filed its first and only periodic financial disclosure report with the FEC. It disclosed the contributions from Race Fans for Trump 2020 and the IEs to Veins’ and Nemechek’s racing teams, and just two other expenditures: an $1,800 payment to Backer’s law firm, and a $200 donation to the group Bikers for the President PAC.
And with that, Patriots PAC of America closed shop. Its sole report to the FEC included a termination notice. As it happens, Race Fans for Trump 2020 had also shuttered days earlier. On February 20, it filed a notice of dissolution in Florida after less than a month in existence, during which its only documented business activity were its donations to the PAC.
That raised red flags for campaign finance watchdogs, who see such accounting maneuvers as attempts to make it difficult to know the precise sources of money being spent on political advertising.
“This Race Fans for Trump 2020 LLC has all of the characteristics of a straw donor: it was created one week, gave money to a super PAC the next week, and then folded,” said Brendan Fischer, the director of federal and FEC reforms at the Campaign Legal Center.
It’s illegal to make political donations in another person’s name, and shell companies set up to funnel money into a political group—without conducting any actual bona fide business—are an increasingly common means to do so.
“There are some apparent legal violations here,” Fischer said. “It seems apparent that the $27,000 came from a source other than the LLC, which does not appear to have any legitimate business or investment revenue.”
While Patriots PAC of America has shuttered, Viens and Foley appear to be moving ahead with their Trump branding as NASCAR returns.
On April 14, Backer submitted FEC paperwork for another political group, Patriots of America PAC, affiliated with the two Race Fans for Trump proprietors. Its only disclosed contributions to date came from Foley and his company, and it hasn’t yet reported any independent expenditures.
But Viens and Foley have hit the conservative media circuit hard ahead of Charlotte. In addition to Spicer’s show, they’ve been booked on talk radio shows hosted by conservative pundits Andrew Wilkow and Lars Larson. And they’re still selling paraphernalia to fans, though who benefits from the proceeds—a PAC, a company, or an individual—isn’t entirely clear.
Among the slogans they’re hawking on hats and t-shirts: “Keep America Fast.”
