How the largest Trump PACs are spending money: big recipients include Red Curve Solutions run by PAC treasurer Bradley Crate and Campaign Inbox co-founded by an ex-Cambridge Analytica executive

With the 2024 election quickly approaching and now that the Republican Party’s presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump is a convicted felon, it’s more important than ever to follow-the-money that is supporting Trump.

I have been curious about whether vendors that supported Trump’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns are active again in the 2024 campaign. So I decided to review all of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) disbursement and expenditure records for the largest political action committees supporting the Trump campaign.

I analyzed the FEC filings for six political action committees, or PACs, that support Trump and spent over $10 million in disbursements or expenditures. And I focused on recipients that were paid $1 million or more in the most recent period from 2023 through April 2024.

Following are key highlights of the largest recipients of Trump PAC payments and various tables with more details on recipients paid $1 million or more by the six largest Trump PACs. This work highlights the firms and people making significant revenues from the Trump campaign and working to help put a convicted felon, adjudicated sexual predator and business fraudster into the White House again.

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Note: For this story I analyzed tens of thousands of records from the Federal Elections Commission database (such as this set of disbursements) and cross referenced recipients to get a fuller picture of what they were paid cumulatively by the largest PACs supporting Trump. Due to the large number of records analyzed there may be some errors in the data and as new records become available the year-to-date 2024 totals will change. This research is meant to highlight some key findings and areas that may be of interest to others to investigate further and the data may be updated periodically.

Campaign Inbox co-founded by an ex-Cambridge Analytica executive earned over $17 million

This story was prompted by a specific question related to my research on the 2016 campaign – are any former Cambridge Analytica executives actively involved in the 2024 campaign? It turns out that a firm called Campaign Inbox, which was co-founded by Matt Oczkowski, the former Head of Product at Cambridge Analytica, has earned over $17 million so far from two PACs that support Trump.

I have followed the staff of Cambridge Analytica and their parent SCL Group for many years and in this 2020 chart included several companies set up by Matt Oczkowski including Campaign Inbox, HuMn Behavior, and Data Propria which became part of Cloud Commerce which is part owned by Trump’s 2016 digital guru Brad Parscale.

Campaign Inbox was founded in 2017 by Matt Oczkowski, Parks Bennett and Jayson Manship.

The website has very little information about the company and does not list any staff names. The LinkedIn page for Parks Bennett’s shows that he is CEO of Campaign Inbox from 2017 to the present.

Last year Axios reported that Parks Bennett was leading the digital campaign for Trump.

Parscale and former digital director Gary Coby, who led Trump’s digital teams in 2016 and 2020, are not working for Trump’s 2024 campaign. Instead, Trump’s digital effort is being led by Parks Bennett, co-founder of the firm Campaign Inbox.

Matt Oczkowski’s LinkedIn page shows that he was Campaign Inbox Co-Founder through December 2022 and he is not reported to be working on the Trump campaign. It appears that he may no longer be affiliated with Campaign Inbox and may not be benefitting from the more than $17 million paid so far to the company.

However, a Florida company filing for Campaign Inbox dated January 27, 2023 lists Oczkowski as a manager along with Parks Bennett and there are no further filing updates so it is not clear if Oczkowski continues to be a company officer/manager.

Brad Parscale companies have earned over $2.2 million since 2023 and $5.6 million since 2021 from Trump PACs

In October 2023 I reported on Brad Parscale’s recent activities and his work with several companies linked to Texas billionaire Tim Dunn, including a company piloting technology to detect school shooters. Parscale, who helped propel Trump to victory in 2016, is also working on Trump’s 2024 campaign.

Based on the most recent FEC filings the following companies, run by Brad Parscale and/or located at the same address as his other companies, have earned $2.2 million from 2023 to April 2024. From 2021 to 2022 these companies earned $3.4 million, bringing Parscale’s total earnings to more than $5.6 million since 2021.

While Brad Parscale’s earnings heading into the 2024 presidential election are far lower than the tens of millions of dollars he earned from the 2016 campaign, it’s clear that he is still highly active and making significant earnings for work supporting Trump.

My research was initially spurred by interest in former Cambridge Analytica executives, Brad Parscale and some other vendors supporting Trump in 2016 and 2020. I expanded the analysis to get a fuller picture of the largest PACs supporting Trump and who they are paying now.

The six largest Political Action Committees supporting Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign

Following are six of the largest Political Actions Committees, known as PACs, that support Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. As noted in the table below, there are different types of PACs described as presidential, qualified and nonqualified, authorized and unauthorized, etc.

The FEC has a handy guide here to some of the different PAC committee types. For example the description of ‘PACs – nonqualified’ says “PACS that have not yet been in existence for six months and received contributions from 50 people and made contributions to five federal candidates. These committees have lower limits for their contributions to candidates.“

To analyze the data I grouped the expenditures and disbursements for these PACs together to look at the largest recipients. The table below shows all disbursements and expenditures and a separate column for the subset that earned over $1 million.

Other Trump PACs

In addition to the six PACs above, a new Trump PAC was launched in April.

Politico recently reported on a letter sent out by Trump for President co-campaign managers, Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, that was paid for by the Trump National Committee JFC, Inc.

JFC is an acronym for joint fundraising committee. OpenSecrets described how joint fundraising committees “allow campaigns or other political organizations to band together and raise money from big donors more efficiently” and how the number of JFCs has been increasing since 2004. The Trump National Committee JFC is a joint committee for Donald J. Trump for President 2024, Inc. and the Republican National Committee.

The letter was sent to digital vendors and asked down-ballot candidates who use Trump’s name, image and likeness to fundraise to give at least 5% of the proceeds to the campaign.

The Trump National Committee JFC, Inc., set up by Treasurer Bradley Crate who runs the PACs in the table above, has not yet reported any activity.

A recent story in Politico announced that casino billionaire and republican megadonor Miriam Adelson is planning to fund the Preserve America super PAC for Trump.

How much Adelson will donate to the super PAC is not clear, though the person familiar with her plans said the group was expecting to spend more than it did four years ago when Adelson and her late husband, Sheldon, donated $90 million to Preserve America. Their funds accounted for about 85 percent of what the organization raised in total.

The Preserve America PAC will be run by Republican strategist Dave Carney who told Reuters “our goal is to raise more than we did last time, which was about $100 million.” 

All of the recipients paid $1 million or more by Trump PACs from 2023 to April 2024 by category

For the six largest PACs that support Trump, following are some highlights of the payments (both disbursements and independent expenditures) based on FEC records from 2023 through April 2024.

The table has three groups 1) PAC and RNC, 2) Media, Advertising, Fundraising, Other, and 3) Legal. I created these groupings by reviewing and summarizing the ‘description’ information on the FEC filings. These descriptions and groupings are my own and were created to see some summary highlights.

In total, there were almost 2,000 recipients that were paid approximately $485 million by the six largest Trump PACs from 2023 through April 2024. The table below lists only those recipients that received $1 million or more. Key highlights include:

• There are 46 recipients that received $1 million or more.

• These 46 recipients were paid over $425 million from 2023 through April 2024.

• The 46 recipients account for 88% of the PAC spending.

• Almost half of the payments were made from one Trump PAC to another PAC and the RNC.

• More than 13% of the payments were related to legal costs.

• Approximately 40% of the payments were for media, advertising, direct mail, merchandising, events, polling, payroll and other expenses.

If the PAC and RNC payments are removed and the $225,567,805 of payments to other recipients of $1 million or more, the legal payments are approximately 24% of the total, or a quarter of the spending.

Several vendors included in the ‘Media, Advertising, Fundraising, Other’ section did work that has been reported to be for legal purposes. Notably the RNC, which has legal expense descriptions, is not part of the legal category, and Red Curve Solutions and 2M Document Management and Imaging, which are covered further on in this article, overlap with, but are not counted in the legal category section.

While I did not include 2021 to 2022, there was almost $280 million in disbursements or expenditures for that earlier period for payees that received $1 million or more.

Expert witness Eli Bartov was paid almost $1.2 million for testimony in the New York Attorney General fraud trial

The legal costs that were paid by the PACs include payments to cover Trump’s legal fees and to pay for expert witnesses and legal fees for family members, staff and co-conspirators. The bulk of the legal payments were made by the Save America PAC.

An example of these costs are the payments made to Eli Bartov, an accountant who testified as an expert witness in the fraud case brought by the New York Attorney General. Bartov testified last December that he found “no evidence of concealment” in the Trump Organization financial statements. At the time Bartov was reported to have been paid almost $900,000 by the Trump Organization and the Save America PAC.

According to the FEC records through April 2024, Bartov was paid almost $1.2 million by the Save America PAC alone.

Despite the efforts of Bartov and other witnesses, Trump lost that case and was ordered to pay over $450 million including interest and is now appealing the case.

Legal payments for Trump co-conspirators

Some of the legal payments were to cover legal costs for Trump co-conspirators.

NBC News reported that Yuscil Taveras, the director of information technology at Mar-a-Lago, had been a key witness in the Trump classified documents case brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith.

Taveras had originally been represented by a lawyer paid by the Save America PAC.

After Taveras switched to a public defender who was not paid by a Trump PAC, Taveras flipped and changed his testimony, which led to a superseding indictment against Trump and two co-defendants. 

2M Document and Imaging appears to have been paid millions for work unrelated to elections

2M Document Management and Imaging, LLC was paid $3.6 million from 2023 to April 2024 and more than $6 million from 2021 to 2022, for a total of over $9.6 million, making them one of the highest paid vendors.

The description of their services was ‘Research Consulting’ and ‘Recount Research Consulting’ until October 2022 and then changed to ‘Document Hosting and Consulting.’

Campaign Legal Center reported on payments made to 2M and highlighted that while they were paid by PACs, much of their work does not appear to be related to elections or recounts.

Trump’s campaign — later reorganized as MAGA PAC — used recount funds to pay a vendor called “2M Document Management and Imaging LLC” for costs associated with responding to subpoenas from the January 6th Committee and the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis.

From March 2021 to September 2022, Trump’s campaign paid 2M Document Management and Imaging LLC over $4.6 million from its recount fund, reporting all of these disbursements as “Recount: Research Consulting.” In other words, Trump was using his campaign’s recount fund to shoulder legal expenses that had absolutely nothing to do with recounts or election contests.  

The largest Trump PACs were set up by treasurer Bradley Crate who runs one of the highest paid vendors Red Curve Solutions

Red Curve Solutions has been paid $17,116,557 from 2023 through April 2024. Red Curve is run by Bradley Crate who is the treasurer for five of the six largest Trump PACs. According to Campaign Legal Center, Crate is also the treasurer for over 200 other federal campaigns and committees.

Of the six large Trump PACs, the only one that does not list Bradley Crate as treasurer is the Make America Great Again Inc. PAC that lists Charles Gantt c/o Bulldog Compliance as the treasurer.

A researcher, who goes by MountainsStars on X (aka Twitter), brought to my attention that Bulldog Compliance is a division of Red Curve Solutions. Bradley Crate is running all six of Trump’s largest PACs and his firm is one of the highest paid vendors.

Last month The Daily Beast reported that $8 million had been funneled through Red Curve Solutions to cover Trump’s legal expenses.

Trump is using a GOP compliance firm as a go-between to pay lawyers, allowing him to hide who he’s actually paying. Experts have real questions whether he can do that.

Campaign Legal Center filed a complaint with the FEC alleging that illegal payments were set up to pay Trump’s legal fees through Red Curve Solutions and four Trump-affiliated political committees.

The $8 million for Red Curve Solutions is not included in the Legal section in the table above, and if added in would bring the legal payments from 13% up to 15% of all payments to vendors that received $1 million or more from 2023 to April 2024, or over a quarter of payments after the PAC and RNC are removed from the total.

The top 10 PAC recipients received over $300 million or 63% of all PAC spending

Below is a list of the top 10 recipients that each received over $10 million from 2023 to April 2024.

Of the top 10, three are PACs that received money from other PACs, and one is the RNC which is now co-chaired by Eric Trump’s wife Lara Trump and is being run like another arm of the Trump campaign.

That leaves six vendors making significant profits off their work for the Trump campaign, including Campaign Inbox and Red Curve Solutions, described earlier in this article.

Recipients paid over $1 million from 2023 to April 2024 broken out by PAC

Below is a list that provides a more detailed view of the largest Trump PACs and the vendors paid more than $1 million.

The Make America Great Again Inc. PAC has payments in two separate categories, disbursements and independent expenditures which are shown in two separate columns. Some recipients, such as Electoral Communications Group LLC, received payments under both categories.

This table adds more insight into which PACs transferred money to other PACs and to the RNC, and shows recipients that were paid by multiple PACs.

Trump PAC payments from 2021 to April 2024

I focused on the period 2023 through April 2024 in order to capture spending on the 2024 presidential election as opposed to earlier 2021 to 2022 spending that may have been related to candidates Trump supported during the midterms, or spending on his earlier legal expenses, etc.

For the period from 2021 through April 2024, the six Trump PACs paid approximately 3,000 recipients slightly over $800 million. Of this amount almost $311 million, or 40%, was transfers of money from one PAC to another. Moving large amounts from one PAC to another could inflate the overall total by double counting money raised by the PACs.

There were several vendors that were paid well over $1 million from 2021 through April 2024, but fell under this threshold in 2023 to April 2024 and are not included in the tables in this article. A few examples including Tatango, Inc. paid $15.5 million 2021-2022, Google paid $10.4 million, Conservative Connector paid $8.9 million, OPN Sesame paid $8.8 million and Red Spark Strategy paid $6.6 million.

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Note that the reporting in this article does not indicate any wrongdoing or illegal behavior.

As the 2024 election approaches it is important to continue investigating and exposing the network around Trump including the key people and vendors working on his behalf.

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Thanks to researcher MountainsStars who contributed to this article.

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