A new mystery firm enters Trump's orbit, rekindling criticism of his presidential campaign spending

WASHINGTON — Launchpad Strategies was incorporated less than a year ago and has since received $15 million from Donald Trump’s election fundraising machine.

For what is mostly a mystery. Campaign finance records indicate the limited liability company was hired to provide online advertising, digital consulting and fundraising. On its website, the firm boasts it is a “full-service Republican digital agency run by expert strategists.”

Yet, those expert strategists aren't identified. An online contact form does not appear to work. And business registration records in Delaware provide no clues as to who owns or runs the firm. The campaign’s checks are sent to a P.O. Box in North Carolina.

Campaign finance experts said Launchpad Strategies was built for anonymity and is the latest example of how the Trump campaign has used secretive businesses to obscure its spending from the public.

“The Trump campaigns sort of exhibit a lot of the patterns of behavior that we’ve become accustomed to with Trump and his associates,” said Michael Kang, a law professor at Northwestern University. “There does seem to be some kind of self-dealing in a lot of what they do when it comes to their financial matters.”

Launchpad is not alone

An Associated Press review of Federal Election Commission records shows that more than $876 million moved through Trump’s campaigns and pro-Trump fundraising committees over the past nine years to six limited liability companies, including Launchpad Strategies. The filings meet the minimum disclosure requirements, yet the final recipients of the cash are unknown.

The $15 million paid to Launchpad Strategies is a fraction of the huge sums spent during presidential elections. But the lack of transparency makes it impossible to know if money donated by Trump’s supporters was spent wisely or could be personally benefiting the former president’s aides and allies.

The AP was not able to identify a representative for Launchpad Strategies from whom to seek comment. The Trump campaign did not respond to questions about Launchpad Strategies or the other such companies it has paid. But its attorneys have argued previously in a federal filing that campaigns and fundraising committees are rarely required to itemize the “ultimate payees” of a contractor’s expenses.

While other political campaigns have relied on vendors with hazy origins, Trump’s operation has set its “own standard in terms of doing it far more than anyone else,” said Saurav Ghosh of the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, which advocates rigorous enforcement of campaign finance law.

The payments to Launchpad Strategies have evoked earlier allegations the Trump campaign subverted federal rules designed to prevent candidates from concealing how they spend donor dollars.

FEC not likely to take action

But the government agency that enforces federal campaign finance laws is unlikely to do much about it.

A deep ideological divide among the FEC’s commissioners has stymied almost 30 investigations recommended by agency lawyers of accusations Trump’s campaign broke the rules. One closed complaint alleged two of the limited liability companies were used to mask millions of dollars in payments to Trump family members or vendors controlled by campaign staff.

The FEC’s evenly divided structure and a polarized political environment have paralyzed the agency at a time when presidential and congressional elections are awash in money. The Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling opened the floodgates of election spending and raised the potential for misconduct. Yet no more than three of the FEC's six commissioners can be from the same political party, leading to frequent gridlock.

FEC attorneys, for example, have advised commissioners to investigate 29 of the 59 complaints against the Trump campaign or his fundraising committees, according to a tally maintained by FEC Commissioner Ellen Weintraub, a Democrat. The agency pursued none of them.

The dysfunction, according to campaign finance experts, has given political campaigns the green light to ignore the transparency voters need to make informed decisions.

“It’s hard to know if a secretive group like Launchpad is doing anything improper, and it’s unlikely that the current Republican FEC commissioners would approve an investigation to find out,” said Michelle Kuppersmith, executive director of the Campaign for Accountability, a government watchdog group. "By repeatedly stonewalling merited complaints, they’ve made it clear that they have no interest in taking a closer look at any campaign activity tied to Donald Trump.”

The Trump campaign is not the only one to employ opaque firms. President Joe Biden’s presidential campaigns paid $522 million to a Georgia company called Media Buying & Analytics LLC. Its current address is a UPS mailbox at an Atlanta strip mall. Vice President Kamala Harris took over Biden’s campaign account when he dropped out of the race in July.

Unlike Launchpad Strategies, however, Media Buying & Analytics left digital fingerprints. A Federal Communications Commission form linked the company to Canal Partners Media, an established firm aligned with the Democratic Party.

Bobby Kahn, president of Canal Partners Media, acknowledged CPM owns Media Buying & Analytics and said the company was formed to handle the heavy accounting and paperwork load of a presidential campaign. Both companies are independent of their clients, he said.

Documents shed light on how one opaque company operated

Before Launchpad Strategies’ stealthy entry into Trump’s orbit, FEC records and a congressional transcript provide insights into how two of these limited liability companies operated.

Former 2020 Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale, assisted by campaign attorneys, established American Made Media Consultants in Delaware just after his appointment to the post to relieve him of time-consuming political advertising duties. He picked a campaign finance official named Sean Dollman to run the company, according to an interview Dollman had with House Jan. 6 committee investigators.

The campaign would at times tell him which subcontractors to hire, Dollman said. One of them was Phunware, a financially troubled Texas cellphone app developer that had built ties to Parscale.

The Trump campaign promoted Dollman to chief financial officer in early 2020 while he was still in charge of American Made Media. His salary would grow to $40,000 a month as more money flowed to the company for advertising-related work. Dollman did not respond to messages seeking comment.

FEC filings show Trump’s campaign paid American Made Media $782 million.

The Campaign Legal Center lodged a complaint with the FEC in July 2020 alleging American Made Media functioned as a “conduit” to conceal transactions with people “under the direction and control of the campaign.”

The center also accused the Trump campaign and the Make America Great Again fundraising committee of “routing campaign staff salary payments” through Parscale’s political consulting firm, Parscale Strategy. Two of the recipients were Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law, and Kimberly Guilfoyle, a lawyer who was dating Donald Trump Jr.

The Trump campaign derided the complaint as a “headline-seeking publicity stunt,” according to its response to the FEC.

But FEC attorneys determined the allegations had merit. In April 2022, they recommended the FEC’s commissioners approve a formal investigation based on a “reason to believe” campaign finance law may have been violated.

Votes from at least four of the six commissioners are required to move ahead with an investigation. They split, 3-3, killing the probe.