Revealed: The Secret Money Trail Behind Kevin McCarthy’s MAGA Makeover

Andy Kroll

September 19, 2021·17 min read1 of 2

The Heart of the Swamp (McCarthy has a lot of skeletons)

Adav Noti, an election-law expert at the Campaign Legal Center, describes the flow of dark money that went to shore up McCarthy’s right flank as a “nesting¬-doll situation,” one that requires peeling back layer after layer to get closer to the source of the funds. The centerpiece of this scheme is a nonprofit group with the nothing-to-see-here name of CLA Inc.

In 2018, CLA gave $1.5 million — its largest grant of the year — to State Tea Party Express, which in turn spent almost that entire amount, $1.46 million, on political activity. The readily available evidence suggests that State Tea Party Express did not spend any money on ads or political work other than helping elect McCarthy the next GOP leader.

So what do we know about CLA Inc.? For starters, the group made it extremely hard to know anything about its operations in 2018. CREW president Noah Bookbinder said his group had to file a complaint with the IRS to force CLA to produce its 2018 tax return.

The principal officer listed onCLA Inc.’s tax documents is Marc Himmelstein. He’s the opposite of a tea-party activist: A former executive at the American Petroleum Institute, the Big Oil lobbying group, Himmelstein now works as a lobbyist at National Environmental Strategies, a D.C. lobbying firm he co-founded with Haley Barbour, the former Mississippi governor, prolific fundraiser, and good ol’ boy head of the Republican National Committee.

Don’t be fooled by the firm’s feel-good name: Himmelstein and his colleaguesrepresent multibillion-dollar energy companies including Dominion Energy and ¬Exelon, as well as large utilities like PG&E and DTE Energy. By all indications, Himmelstein’s decades-long career in the influence industry has proven lucrative: Lobbying records show payments to his firm totaling millions of dollars every year, and public records indicate he and his partner reportedly bought a ¬nearly $2.7 million home in 2017 once owned by the political talk-show host John McLaughlin. A previous home boasted a 6,000-bottle wine cellar, according to public-¬property listings. (Himmelstein did not respond to requests for comment and a detailed set of questions.)

The connection between National Environmental Strategies and CLA isn’t hard to find: They share the same address, according to tax records. Not only that, but the office listed for both outfits happens to be located at the Watergate complex, the site of the infamous 1972 break-in by Richard Nixon’s henchmen that unraveled a criminal conspiracy and led to Nixon’s downfall. Just the name Watergate conjures images of political skulduggery and Beltway elites.

Himmelstein’s services extend beyond inside-¬the-Beltway lobbying. One of his clients is First¬Energy, a scandal-plagued utility headquartered in Ohio. According to the Center for Public Integrity, CLA, Himmelstein’s dark-money group, spent thousands of dollars on ads in an Ohio congressional race attacking a state legislator who had refused to support a bailout of two of FirstEnergy’s nuclear power plants. “I didn’t budge when they came into my office to lobby me,” the candidate, state Rep. ¬Christina Hagan, told CPI about her meetings with First¬Energy ¬officials. “I became the target of the company and the members of our leadership team who wanted to get it done but couldn’t because I wasn’t going to be supportive.” In the end, Hagan lost. (In June, ¬federal prosecutors charged FirstEnergy with conspiracy to commit wire fraud related to the power-plant ¬bailout scheme. FirstEnergy agreed to pay $230 ¬million as part of a deferred-prosecution agreement in the case.)

As for State Tea Party Express, the other key link in this dark-money daisy chain, peel away the veneer of grassroots authenticity and you find a California political consultant named Sal Russo. A veteran of GOP politics, Russo has faced criticism in the past for operating tea-party-themed groups that raised millions from small-dollar donors and allegedly funneled a large percentage of that money back to Russo’s consulting firm. In 2009 and 2010, rival tea-party groups ripped Russo-backed organizations as phony front groups, calling them the “Astroturf Express” and a “Republican front organization.” More recently, Russo was sued by the California attorney general for allegedly defrauding donors who had ¬contributed to a charity that sent care packages to U.S. service members overseas. (Russo told the Los Angeles Times the lawsuit was politically motivated and the allegations were “bogus.”)…

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/revealed-secret-money-trail-behind-110006513.html

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Tax records and interviews with nonprofit experts reveal that State Tea Party Express has played fast and loose with even the meager requirements for a nonprofit. Only when Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the watchdog group, submitted a formal request did State Tea Party Express provide a 2018 tax return. There’s no record of the group having filed any tax return in any other year.

So to recap: The grassrootsy-named State Tea Party Express ran a bunch of ads to salvage Kevin McCarthy’s standing with the MAGA faithful just before McCarthy ran to become the new House GOP leader. Despite the name and branding, that tea-party group got most of its money from a D.C. outfit run by a veteran corporate lobbyist with extensive ties to massive power-utility companies and a taste for fine wine. And one of those firms just paid nearly a quarter¬billion dollars related to an alleged racketeering and bribery scheme using the same kind of dark-money groups that were used to boost McCarthy.

In the Shadows

Judging by Himmelstein’s client list and the few rare instances when dark-money groups have been forced to reveal their actual funders, it’s possible that the funds used to help McCarthy came from corporations or wealthy individuals, CREW’s Bookbinder says.

“In this instance, there are a number of indications based on what we know about the organization that put up the money that suggest strong ties to the energy industry,” he says. “It could well be that’s where the money is coming from.”

“Even amidst the constant flow of dark money that obscures who is influencing politics, this seems like a particularly stark case of misleading the public. It is not the way our political system is supposed to work.”

Even without knowing who the donors are for sure, tax and election-¬law experts who reviewed the filings and other documents for CLA and the State Tea Party Express found many reasons for alarm.

The problems start with the information State Tea Party Express willingly gave the IRS about its 2018 spending. State Tea Party Express calls itself a tax-¬exempt 501(c)(4) group.

Such groups can spend money on outright political activities, but those activities can’t be a group’s primary purpose; otherwise, those groups would be political action committees subject to limits on donations. However, in its filing, State Tea Party Express told the IRS that more than 95 percent of its total spending in 2018 went to electioneering.

Marc Owens, a tax lawyer and former director of the IRS unit that monitored 501(c)(4) groups, says the law is clear that State Tea Party Express can’t do what it admitted to doing with most of its money going to political work. “There’s no way to reconcile that filing with entitlement to tax-exempt status for a 501(c)(4),” Owens says. “They’re doing what Al Capone didn’t do, which is telling the truth to the IRS about what their group did with the money.” (State Tea Party Express treasurer Kelly Lawler said she wasn’t authorized to talk to the media. She said she forwarded Rolling Stone’s extensive list of questions to the group’s leaders, but they never responded.)

Adav Noti of the Campaign Legal Center says State Tea Party Express’ disclosure about its political spending would get the attention of the IRS if the agency had the resources and willpower to regulate 501(c)(4) groups. “If there were anybody policing these lines at the IRS or FEC, this would be a big deal,” Noti says. “But nobody is.” Years of underfunding and political pressure from conservatives in Congress have left the IRS unable or unwilling to crack down on dark-money groups. The IRS’ budget is 20 percent below its 2010 peak.

According to a Treasury Department inspector general’s report, the IRS audit rate for nonprofit groups was one of out every 742 groups that filed a tax return. That was five times less than the audit rate for businesses and three times less than for individuals. “The relatively low examination rate may embolden unscrupulous organizations to file returns with missing or erroneous information,” the inspector general concluded.

Without real enforcement, the ability of special interests to use dark-money groups to buy influence will only grow. “The real problem here is unfortunately we don’t have a good watchdog agency to ¬enforce against these bad actors,” says Beth Rotman of the clean-government group Common Cause.

“Unfortunately, what that means is when groups like this look to see whether they can get away with crossing the line like this, often the answer is yes.”

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/revealed-secret-money-trail-behind-110006513.html

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All the while, the policies that thrill the GOP’s ¬corporate-donor class keep coming. When Trump was in office, the message was MAGA, but the ¬policy wasn’t much different from the GOP of yore — tax cuts, deregulation, judges.

In the end, McCarthy’s dark-money makeover proved a winning proposition for all the worst people. McCarthy won his leadership race.

State Tea Party Express wielded influence without accountability. The actual donors, whoever they are, saw a return on their money in the form of a friendly Republican without even having to be named.

The losers are the voters, whose “representatives” are in the debt of people who remain in the shadows. The crux of the Supreme Court’s ¬majority opinion in Citizens United, the case that ushered in our big–money era back in 2010, was that unlimited spending was no threat to democracy so long as there was transparency and the public knew where the money came from. Instead, corporate interests, lobbyists, political operatives, and wealthy donors funnel ¬millions into dark-money nonprofit groups, big-money bazookas with silencers on them.

“Some special interests spent all this money to curry favor with extremely powerful officeholders, and we don’t know who,” Noti says. “That makes it very difficult to figure out what that donor got in exchange for their money. It makes it very difficult to find the corruption that’s often at the core of many of these transactions.”

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/revealed-secret-money-trail-behind-110006513.html

>>18091550

Kevin McCarthy’s Net worth – How much does he have in the bank?

McCarthy’s net worth is $95 million, which has made him one of the richest politicians in the United States. ????

He earns $1 Million as his monthly income

Kevin’s Personal life

Kevin McCarthy’s family

Kevin is married to his high sweetheart, Judy. Till now they live in their first house which they bought together. Their home was named his Bakersfield home. The couple has two children, one son, and one daughter. They both raised their two children named Connor McCarthy and Meghan McCarthy in the same house. McCarthy was in the limelight in October 2015 when he was accused of having anextra affair with Representative Renee Ellmers. He had suddenly dropped out of the race for Speaker of the House shortly before he was alleged of affair. Ellmers and Kevin, both had denied the allegations.

Kevin Mccarthy- Early Life

Kevin McCarthy (Kevin Owen McCarthy) was born on 26th January 1965 in Bakersfield, California. He was born to Robert Darlene and Owen McCarthy. His mother was a homemaker and his father was an assistant city fire chief. He is a fourth-generation resident of Kern County. His maternal grandfather was an Italian immigrant, and his paternal grandfather was Irish. His parents were members of the Democratic Party but he is the only one in his family who is from the Republican Party. Kevin completed his high school and college studies at California State University, Bakersfield. He graduated with a degree of Bachelor’s in science and also completed his master’s in Master of Business Administration from California State University, Bakersfield. He got a Bachelor of Science in marketing in 1989 and a Master of Business Administration in 1994 from California State University, Bakersfield. His nationality is American.

Kevin McCarthy LifeStyle

He lives a luxurious life as being one of the richest politicians in the United States. Kevin McCarthy lives in his 8,800-square-foot luxury mansion located in California. His property costs 21 Million dollars. His house is luxurious from the inside and has a wine cellar, tennis court, two indoor pools, 10 Bedrooms, and 12 Bathrooms.

If talks about cars he owns, he has recently bought a Jaguar XF for USD 120,000. He has a Lexus ES that cost USD 136,000. Lincoln Continental, Aston Martin DBX, BMW X6, and Toyota Vellfire are some other cars owned by Kevin McCarthy. His hobbies include Reading, Writing, Speaking, and Traveling.

McCarthy’s Career

From 1987 to 2002 McCarthy served on the staff of Congressman Bill Thomas. Young Republicans of America were chaired by him in 1995 and Young Republican National Federation was chaired by him from 1999 to 2001. Kevin was district director of Thomas from the late 1990s to 2000. McCarthy won his first election as a Kern Community College District trustee in 2000.

In 2002 McCarthy got elected to the California State Assembly. He became the Republican floor leader in 2003. In 2006 he got elected to the United States House of Representatives.

https://world-wire.com/kevin-mccarthys-net-worth/

>>18091520

11 Things About Kevin McCarthy You Need To Know, Or Might As Well Know

With Boehner out, you could be looking at the next House speaker.

By Ashley Alman and Ryan Grim

Sep 25, 2015, 11:22 AM EDT|Updated Sep 26, 2015

With Boehner out, there are already whispers that McCarthy will take over as speaker of the House – two sources in leadership circles tell the Huffington Post he's likely to get the gig. Since he may soon become the most powerful Republican in the House, you might as well get to know the guy a little better.

1. Actually, you know him already.

Well, you probably don't know him personally, but you know this guy. He's been on the move since he could crawl, and likely asked his kindergarten classmates for their votes. By the mid-'90s, he was chairman of the California Young Republicans and then moved up to be chairman of the Young Republican National Federation. Meanwhile, he became a Bakersfield district director for Rep. Bill Thomas, chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee. From there, he ran to become "Trustee to the Kern Community College District."

1. Nobody dislikes him.

There isn't much to dislike about McCarthy, unless you're annoyed with empty ambition. After his thankless stint on the community college board, he ran in 2002 for California General Assembly and won. He immediately was elected assembly Republican leader – a position that sounds important. So why'd they give it to a freshman? Assembly Democrats ran the floor with an iron fist and the job was as thankless as they come. Perfect for McCarthy. In 2006, he ran for Congress and won, where he's been running for internal positions since. He served as the whip, a brutally thankless job, from 2011 to 2014, before graduating to majority leader.

3.Nobody likes him.

McCarthy is a likeable guy. But nobody really likes him. What's striking about talking to Republicans about McCarthy is how few are actual supporters, rather than people who would rather he have a job than somebody they like less. It's been working for him his entire political career, though, and politicians have been known to back all the way into the Oval Office. Find us a rabid supporter of George H.W. Bush if you think we're wrong. Being liked is overrated.

1. But sometimes he does the “right thing.”

McCarthy published a column for conservative Breitbart News last year, but pulled his piece after the site posted Photoshopped images of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s head on Miley Cyrus’ body, which was on all-fours. Spokesman Matt Sparks said McCarthy “didn’t condone” the “inappropriate" images, saying the congressman felt he did “the right thing” by asking for the column to be removed.

1. McCarthy won the lottery, and opened a deli with his winnings.

Before he turned 21, McCarthy won $5,000 in the California state lottery. He invested the prize in a sandwich shop, Kevin O's Deli, which he built with his father in their garage. McCarthy sold the deli in 1987. His undergrad degree is in marketing and he got an MBA, both at California State University, Bakersfield.

6.Actor Kevin Spacey shadowed McCarthy for his role in the Netflix series “House of Cards.”

Spacey plays Francis Underwood, a Democratic representative who for a time served as House majority whip and resorts to murder and extortion to have his way in Washington. The actor shadowed McCarthy on the Hill to prepare for the role, later telling ABC News that McCarthy was “very generous” to him. The two have become friends, or at least that's the impression in Washington. After watching McCarthy “harangue 218 congressman,” Spacey said he didn’t envy the position. Underwood's office, before he graduated to the Oval Office, was modeled after McCarthy's.

1. He's from Bakersfield, California.

Bakersfield is basically West Texas, but it's just outside Los Angeles, by some accident of geography.

1. He won’t ever run for president, if he’s playing by his own rules.

McCarthy told MSNBC in November 2014 he didn’t think anyone should become president without serving as a governor first. If he stands by those comments, Sens. Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul shouldn’t expect his support, while New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie fits the bill.

1. He helped supermodel Kate Upton celebrate her 21st birthday.

You read that right. McCarthy joined fellow Republican Rep. Fred Upton in wishing the latter’s niece a happy birthday, posting a photo of the three of them to his Instagram….

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/kevin-mccarthy-boehner-resigns_n_56055982e4b0af3706dbe485

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In 16 years in Congress, Kevin McCarthy has done very little legislating

ByJosh Israel December 1, 2022 3:04 PM

The Republican nominee for House speaker haswritten only eight laws in his eight terms in office.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, the Republican caucus’ nominee to be House speaker in January, has been in Congress since 2007. During that time, he has authored just eight minor bills that have been signed into law.

After winning a narrow majority in the November midterm elections, House Republicans voted 188-31 on Nov. 15 to nominate McCarthy for speaker. He is currently struggling to convince his GOP detractors to support him when the full House votes in January.

On his House campaign site, McCarthy touts a “record of results,” claiming to be “A conservative with a rock-solid record of fighting for policies that will help build a productive economy, keep our country safe from foreign threats, protect families and the unborn, and get federal spending under control.”

But according to Congress.gov, that record includes authoring little significant legislation — even during his four-and-a-half years as House majority leader. Most of the legislation he wrote was inconsequential and did little to change public policy.

Two of his eight signed bills renamed post officesin his district in honor of country musicians, one for Buck Owens and one for Merle Haggard. Two more dealt with renaming a dam and NASA facilities. (That's all Bernie Sanders is known for, look it up, it's pathetic)

McCarthy sponsored the 2015 U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act, which expanded commercial space exploration and mining, and a minor 2016 bill relating to the regulation of commercial space launches.

He also wrote the 2018 Innovations in Mentoring, Training, and Apprenticeships Act, a bipartisan measure to establish federal grants for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics programs at junior and community colleges, and the 2017 TALENT Act, which made permanent President Barack Obama’s Presidential Innovation Fellows Program to bring successful business people into the government.

In addition to those eight signed bills, McCarthy sponsored two procedural joint resolutions that set the opening days for Congress in 2015 and 2016.

A McCarthy spokesperson did not immediately respond to an inquiry for this story about the impact of his legislation.

Meanwhile, both outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and incoming Democratic House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries of Louisiana have authored legislation with concrete benefits to the public. In 2008 Pelosi wrote the Housing and Economic Recovery Act to provide fixed-rate mortgages for people hurt by the subprime lending crisis and the Economic Stimulus Act to give taxpayers $300 relief checks. Jeffries sponsored the 2022 Consolidated Appropriations Act to fund the federal government’s operations.

https://americanindependent.com/kevin-mccarthy-legislative-record-house-speaker/

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An Ohio legislator defied FirstEnergy lobbyists. Then a ‘dark money’ group helped sink her bid for Congress

(Bannon and Vought said it's going to be hard to get the lobbyist out of the House, and Kevin's besty Himmelstein, plays dirty. Story of his revenge)

by Sarah Kleiner May 22, 2018

A “dark money” organization tied to a major electric company pumped significant cash into an Ohio congressional race in what a losing candidate describes as an act of retribution over a failed financial deal.

Christina Hagan, a state representative who was running in the Republican primary for Ohio’s 16th congressional district seat, said a group called the Conservative Leadership Alliance targeted her with a barrage of attack ads after she declined to support legislation Akron, Ohio-based electric company FirstEnergy had lobbied her to help pass.

The Conservative Leadership Alliance’s treasurer is Marc Himmelstein(Kevin McCarthy’s besty), who has worked for years as a FirstEnergy lobbyist in Washington, D.C. FirstEnergy has paid Himmelstein’s firm, National Environmental Strategies, $640,000 since 2010, according to congressional lobbying filings.

Hagan said she didn’t think the bill, which would have allowed FirstEnergy to collect an additional $300 million annually from customers to shore up its aging power plants, was fair to electric customers. House Bill 178 would have created “zero-emission credits” that would have raised customers’ monthly bills by about 5 percent.

“I didn’t budge when they came into my office to lobby me,” Hagan said of her meetings with FirstEnergy officials, which took place over a period of many months. “I became the target of the company and the members of our leadership team who wanted to get it done but couldn’t because I wasn’t going to be supportive. I’m sure they just wanted to make an example of me in my race for higher office that if you don’t play well, this is what will happen to you.”

Anthony Gonzalez, a former NFL player who is now running for the seat of representative for Ohio District 16 as a Republican. Anthony Gonzalez for Congress (via Facebook)

Hagan’s main opponent in the Ohio 16th district Republican primary was Anthony Gonzalez, a former Indianapolis Colts and Ohio State University wide receiver who won the race with 53 percent of the vote.

Hagan — an avowed supporter of President Donald Trump — placed second in the May 8 primary, with 41 percent.

Sarah Poggione, associate professor and chair of the department of political science at Ohio University, said establishment Republicans rallied behind Gonzalez, and they spent significant money to back him, because they saw Hagan as especially formidable.

“Both sides were seeing this as really competitive and the possibility that either one could potentially take it,” Poggione said.

Himmelstein did not return multiple messages left on his office phone, nor did he respond to emails to his address with National Environmental Strategies….

In an April hearing for House Bill 178 — which ultimately did not pass — FirstEnergy CEO Charles Jones told members of the House Public Utilities Committee that “Ohio cannot afford to continue heading down a path that could lead to less fuel-diverse and fewer homegrown energy resources, more energy imports, fewer jobs and less economic growth — not to mention more volatile electricity prices for our customers and your constituents,” according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

But the company has come under fire in the past for the high levels of pollution its plants pump into the atmosphere. A 2016 Center for Public Integrity analysis of two federal data sets from 2014 found that four of FirstEnergy’s plants were on the top 100 list of U.S. “super polluters.”

The company’s nuclear and coal-fired power plants have been struggling to remain profitable in recent years because natural gas prices have been so low. Executives have asked the federal government for emergency funds to help keep some its plants operating.

The Conservative Leadership Alliance, an entity that states it’s a 501(c)(4) “social welfare” nonprofit, spent $113,000 in the Ohio 16th district race. Such groups do not have to disclose their donors, and Conservative Leadership Alliance has not revealed who funds it. (Politico reported last week thatAmerican Action Network, a politically active nonprofit tied to House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., gave Conservative Leadership Alliance $200,000 sometime in 2016 or 2017.)

https://publicintegrity.org/politics/an-ohio-legislator-defied-firstenergy-lobbyists-then-a-dark-money-group-helped-sink-her-bid-for-congress/