As President Donald Trump’s campaign turns its attention to the 2020 general election, top Republican allies continue to spend heavily on a political fundraising firm that’s been linked to money laundering and illegal campaign contributions abroad.
Trump Victory, a joint fundraising committee between the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee, and the RNC itself, have paid the Pluvious Group, a GOP consultancy in Los Angeles, nearly $2 million since Trump became the nominee in 2016, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission covering expenditures through the end of March 2020. In the first quarter of this year, Trump Victory paid the firm more than $200,000.
In addition to the pro-Trump groups, the filings reveal that groups aligned with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), as well as Sens. Cory Gardner (R-CO), Tom Cotton (R-AR), John Thune (R-SD), and Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) have used Pluvious in recent months.
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Neither campaigns nor Pluvious Group returned requests for comment. Reached by The Daily Beast, the RNC did not provide comment.
The Daily Beast and other outlets previously reported that Pluvious helped organize a breakfast at Trump’s hotel in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 18, 2017 that became part of a federal criminal investigation in late 2018 into “whether foreigners contributed money to the Trump inaugural fund and PAC by possibly using American intermediaries.” In 2016, the Sacramento Bee reported that Pluvious was part of a money laundering scheme in California that allowed donors to hide their identities in filings to work around contribution limits, according to the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission.
