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      Ron DeSantis’s Use of Private Jets From Wealthy, Sometimes Secret Donors

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      As the Florida governor hopscotched the country preparing to run for president, a Michigan nonprofit paid the bills. It won’t say where it got the money.For Ron DeSantis, Sunday, Feb. 19, was the start of another busy week of not officially running for president.That night, he left Tallahassee on a Florida hotelier’s private jet, heading to Newark before a meet-and-greet with police officers on Staten Island on Monday morning. Next, he boarded a twin-jet Bombardier to get to a speech in the Philadelphia suburbs, before flying to a Knights of Columbus hall outside Chicago, and then home to his day job as governor of Florida.The tour and others like it were made possible by the convenience of private air travel — and by the largess of wealthy and in some cases secret donors footing the bill.Ahead of an expected White House bid, Mr. DeSantis has relied heavily on his rich allies to ferry him around the country to test his message and raise his profile. Many of these donors are familiar boosters from Florida, some with business interests before the state, according to a New York Times review of Mr. DeSantis’s travel. Others have been shielded from the public by a new nonprofit, The Times found, in an arrangement that drew criticism from ethics experts.Mr. DeSantis, who is expected to formally announce his candidacy next week, is hardly the first politician to take advantage of the speed and comfort of a Gulfstream jet. Candidates and officeholders in both parties have long accepted the benefits of a donor’s plane as worth the political risk of appearing indebted to special interests or out of touch with voters.But ethics experts said the travel — and specifically the role of the nonprofit — shows how Mr. DeSantis’s prolonged candidate-in-limbo status has allowed him to work around rules intended to keep donors from wielding secret influence. As a declared federal candidate, he would face far stricter requirements for accepting and reporting such donations.Mr. DeSantis has been traveling the country testing his message. He and his wife, Casey DeSantis, met this month with local Republicans in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times“Voters deserve this information because they have a right to know who is trying to influence their elected officials and whether their leaders are prioritizing public good over the interests of their big-money benefactors,” said Trevor Potter, the president of Campaign Legal Center and a Republican who led the Federal Election Commission. “Governor DeSantis, whether he intends to run for president or not, should be clearly and fully disclosing who is providing support to his political efforts.”Representatives for the governor’s office and for Mr. DeSantis’s political operation declined to comment or provide details about who has arranged and paid for his flights.Mr. DeSantis has aggressively navigated his state’s ethics and campaign finance laws to avoid flying commercial. And he has gone to new lengths to prevent transparency: Last week, he signed a bill making travel records held by law enforcement, dating back to the beginning of his term, exempt from public records requests.Mr. DeSantis is still required to report contributions and expenses in his campaign finance records, but the new law probably prevents law enforcement agencies from releasing more details, such as itineraries, flight information or even lists of visitors to the governor’s mansion. (Mr. DeSantis says he is trying to address a security concern.)In February, Mr. DeSantis traveled to Newark on a jet owned by Jeffrey Soffer, a prominent hotel owner who, according to several lawmakers and lobbyists, has sought a change in state law that would allow him to expand gambling to his Miami Beach resort.The February trip and others were arranged by And To The Republic, a Michigan-based nonprofit, according to Tori Sachs, its executive director. The nonprofit formed in late January as Mr. DeSantis was beginning to test the national waters and quickly became a critical part of his warm-up campaign. It organized nearly a dozen speaking events featuring the governor in at least eight states.Ms. Sachs would not say how much was spent on the flights or who paid for them.Navigating the LoopholesIt is unclear how Mr. DeSantis will account for the trips arranged by the nonprofit without running afoul of state ethics laws. Florida generally bars officeholders from accepting gifts from lobbyists or people, like Mr. Soffer, whose companies employ lobbyists — unless those gifts are considered political contributions.But both Ms. Sachs and a person involved in Mr. DeSantis’s recent travel said they did not consider the trips political contributions or gifts. The person was not authorized to discuss the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity. The group’s practice “is to provide transportation for special guests,” Ms. Sachs said, “in full compliance with the law.”Florida ethics rules, however, give politicians plenty of loopholes. In some circumstances, for example, officeholders can accept paid travel to give speeches as part of their official duties. The state ethics commission has also allowed officeholders to accept gifts from lobbyists if they are channeled through third-party groups.Since taking office in 2019, Mr. DeSantis, who has worked in public service his entire career and reported a net worth of $319,000 last year, has steadily leaned on others to pick up the tab for private flights.His political committee has accepted private air travel from roughly 55 wealthy, mostly Florida-based contributors and companies associated with them, including the heads of oil and gas companies, developers and homebuilders, and health care and insurance executives, a Times analysis of campaign finance records shows.Additional travel donations were routed to the Republican Party of Florida, which Mr. DeSantis often used as a third-party pass-through.A half dozen lobbyists and donors who spoke with The Times said they became accustomed to calls from the governor’s political aides asking for planes — in at least one case, for a last-minute trip home from out of state and, more recently, for a flight to Japan.The Japan trip, which was part of an overseas tour that gave Mr. DeSantis a chance to show off his foreign policy chops, was considered part of the governor’s official duties and was organized in part by Enterprise Florida, a public-private business development group. But Mr. DeSantis’s office would not disclose how it was paid for or how he traveled. Enterprise Florida did not respond to requests for comment.DeSantis supporters at his election-night event last year, as he coasted to re-election.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesMr. DeSantis’s office rarely releases information about nonofficial events. (In February, when he traveled to four states in one day, his public schedule simply read, “No scheduled events.”) And Mr. DeSantis has brushed off past criticism of his travel. In 2019, The South Florida Sun Sentinel revealed a previous flight to New York on a plane owned by Mr. Soffer. Mr. DeSantis said he had followed proper procedures.“It’s all legal, ethical, no issues there,” he told reporters.A spokeswoman for Mr. Soffer declined to comment.The Warm-Up CampaignSoon after winning re-election in November, the governor turned to building his national profile. He began traveling the country to visit with Republican activists, dine with donors, speak at events and promote a new book, “The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival.”Some of his travel was paid for by Friends of Ron DeSantis, a Florida political committee that supported his campaign for governor and reports its donors. The committee had more than $80 million on hand as recently as last month — money that is expected to be transferred to a federal super PAC supporting his presidential run.Since November, that committee has received 17 contributions for political travel from nine donors. They include Maximo Alvarez, an oil and gas distributor, and Morteza Hosseini, a Florida homebuilder who has frequently lent his plane to the governor and has become a close ally.But trips paid for by the nonprofit group, And To The Republic, do not appear in state records.The group is registered as a social welfare organization under Section 501(c)(4) of the federal tax code, meaning its primary activity cannot be related to political campaigns. Other prospective and official presidential candidates also have relationships to similar organizations, often called dark money groups because they are not required to disclose their donors.The nonprofit’s founder, Ms. Sachs, said it was formed to promote “state policy solutions that are setting the agenda for the country” and described Mr. DeSantis as one of the first elected officials to “partner” with the group. Another of those officials, Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa, has appeared at the group’s events in her home state — alongside Mr. DeSantis.And To The Republic has hosted Mr. DeSantis at events in South Carolina, Nevada and Iowa, all key early primary states. Some of those events were promoted as “The Florida Blueprint,” borrowing from Mr. DeSantis’s book title.The arrangement has made tracking Mr. DeSantis’s travel — and its costs — difficult. The Times and other news outlets used public flight trackers to verify the governor’s use of Mr. Soffer’s plane, which was first reported by Politico.Other trips arranged by the group include the Feb. 20 stops outside Philadelphia and Chicago and the return trip to Tallahassee, on which Mr. DeSantis flew on a plane registered to a company run by Charles Whittall, an Orlando developer. Mr. Whittall, who gave $25,000 to Mr. DeSantis’s political committee in 2021, said that he uses a leasing company to rent out his aircraft, and that he did not provide it as a political contribution.In March, he traveled to Cobb County, Ga., on a plane owned by an entity connected to Waffle House, the Georgia-based restaurant chain. The company did not respond to a request for comment.Other potential DeSantis rivals have made headlines for their use of private jets. Both as South Carolina governor and as ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley faced criticism for flying on private planes owned by wealthy South Carolinians.In 2020, The Associated Press reported that donors gave hundreds of thousands of dollars in private air travel to Donald J. Trump’s fund-raising committee. The donors included Ben Pogue, a Texas businessman whose father later received a presidential pardon.Still, Mr. Trump — who owns his own plane — has repeatedly sought to draw attention to Mr. DeSantis’s travel, claiming the private planes were effectively campaign contributions and “Ron DeSantis is a full-time candidate for president.”Shane Goldmacher More

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      Why the Supreme Court Is Blind to Its Own Corruption

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      The scandal surrounding Justice Clarence Thomas has further eroded the already record-low public confidence in the Supreme Court. If Chief Justice John Roberts wonders how such a thing could have happened, he might start looking for answers within the cloistered walls of his own courtroom.Over more than two decades, the Supreme Court has gutted laws aimed at fighting corruption and at limiting the ability of the powerful to enrich public officials in a position to advance their interests. As a result, today wealthy individuals and corporations may buy political access and influence with little fear of legal consequences, either for them or for the beneficiaries of their largess.No wonder Justice Thomas apparently thought his behavior was no big deal.He has been under fire for secretly accepting, from the Republican megadonor Harlan Crow, luxury vacations worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, a real estate deal (involving the home where his mother was living) and the payment of private school tuition for a grandnephew the justice was raising. Meanwhile, over the years, conservative groups with which Mr. Crow was affiliated filed amicus briefs in several matters before the Supreme Court.That sounds like the very definition of corruption. But over the years, many justices — and not just conservatives — have championed a different definition.The landmark case is the court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. A five-justice majority — including Justice Thomas — struck down decades-old restrictions on independent campaign expenditures by corporations, holding that they violated the companies’ free speech rights. It rejected the argument that such laws were necessary to prevent the damage to democracy that results from unbridled corporate spending and the undue influence it can create.The government’s legitimate interest in fighting corruption, the court held, is limited to direct quid pro quo deals, in which a public official makes a specific commitment to act in exchange for something of value. The appearance of potentially improper influence or access is not enough.In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens accused the majority of adopting a “crabbed view of corruption” that the court itself had rejected in an earlier case. He argued that Congress has a legitimate interest in limiting the effects of corporate money on politics: “Corruption operates along a spectrum, and the majority’s apparent belief that quid pro quo arrangements can be neatly demarcated from other improper influences does not accord with the theory or reality of politics.”Citizens United opened the floodgates to unlimited corporate spending on behalf of political candidates and to the influence that spending necessarily provides. But the decision didn’t come out of nowhere: The court has often been unanimous in its zeal for curtailing criminal corruption laws.In the 1999 case of United States v. Sun-Diamond Growers of California, the court unanimously held, in effect, that it is not a violation of the federal gratuities statute for an individual or corporation to have a public official on private retainer. The court rejected a theory known as a “status gratuity,” where a donor showers a public official with gifts over time based on the official’s position (that is in contrast with a more common gratuity, given as a thank you for a particular act by the official). The quite reasonable rationale behind that theory was that when matters of interest to the donor arose, the past gifts (and hope for future ones) might lead the official to favor his or her benefactor.That actually sounds a lot like the Crow-Thomas relationship. But the court held that such an arrangement is not unlawful. The gratuities law, the court ruled, requires that a particular gift be linked to a particular official act. Without such a direct link, a series of gifts to a public official over time does not violate the statute, even if the goal is to curry favor with an official who could act to benefit the gift giver.In the wake of Sun-Diamond, federal prosecutors increasingly turned to a more expansive legal theory known as honest services fraud. But in Skilling v. United States, the court ruled that theory is limited to cases of bribes and kickbacks — once again, direct quid pro quo deals. Three justices, including Justice Thomas, wanted to go even further and declare the statute that prohibits honest services fraud unconstitutional.The court proceeded to limit its “crabbed view of corruption” even further. In the 2016 case McDonnell v. United States, the court held that selling government access is not unlawful. Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia and his wife, Maureen, accepted about $175,000 in secret gifts from the businessman Jonnie Williams, who wanted Virginia’s public universities to perform research studies on his company’s dietary supplement to assist with its F.D.A. approval. In exchange, Mr. McDonnell asked subordinates to meet with Mr. Williams about such studies and hosted a luncheon at the governor’s mansion to connect him with university health researchers.A jury convicted the McDonnells on several counts of corruption. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit — hardly known as a bastion of liberalism — unanimously affirmed the convictions. But the Supreme Court unanimously reversed, holding that the things Mr. McDonnell did for Mr. Williams did not qualify as “official acts” under federal bribery law. Selling official access may be tawdry, the court held, but it is not a crime.Those who think Justice Thomas may be guilty of corruption may not realize just how difficult the court itself has made it to prove such a case. Now only the most ham-handed officials, clumsy enough to engage in a direct quid pro quo, risk prosecution.Viewed in light of this history, the Thomas scandal becomes less surprising. Its own rulings would indicate that the Supreme Court doesn’t believe what he did is corrupt. A powerful conservative with interests before the court who regularly provides a justice with vacations worth more than his annual salary is, as the court said in Citizens United, merely the “appearance” of potential corruption. In the court’s view, the public has no reason to be concerned.But the public clearly is, and should be, concerned over the ability of the rich and powerful to purchase access and influence unavailable to most citizens. Unfortunately, Citizens United is here to stay without a constitutional amendment or an overruling by the court, neither of which is very likely.But it’s still possible for the rest of the country to move past the court’s naïve and inadequate view of corruption. Congress could amend criminal corruption laws to expand their scope and overturn the results in Sun-Diamond, Skilling and McDonnell. It could increase funding for enforcement of the Ethics in Government Act and increase the penalties for filing a false financial disclosure form (or failing to file one at all). Beefed up disclosure regulations could make it more difficult for officials to hide financial interests and could make it clear there are no disclosure exceptions for enormous gifts of “personal hospitality,” contrary to what Justice Thomas claims he believed. And Congress could pass legislation like the proposed Disclose Act, to require transparency regarding who is behind political donations and spending.Congress so far has shown little interest in passing such reforms. But that’s where the remedy lies. It’s time for Congress to act.In his Citizens United dissent, Justice Stevens observed, “A democracy cannot function effectively when its constituent members believe laws are being bought and sold.” That’s exactly how it now appears to the public — and that applies to Supreme Court justices as well as to politicians.Randall D. Eliason is the former chief of the fraud and public corruption section at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia and teaches white-collar criminal law at George Washington University Law School. He blogs at Sidebarsblog.com.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Lies, Charges and Questions Remaining in the George Santos Scandal

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      Representative George Santos of New York was indicted this week by federal prosecutors on 13 felony counts largely tied to financial fraud. Almost immediately after his election in November, The New York Times began scrutinizing his background. Mr. Santos has misled, exaggerated to or lied to voters about much of his life, including his education; […] More

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      Biden’s Slow Start Worries Democrats. Aides Insist All Is Well.

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      Some Democrats fear that the campaign’s early sluggishness shows a lack of urgency ahead of a possible rematch against Donald Trump. His aides say they know what they’re doing.Two weeks after President Biden unveiled his re-election bid, his campaign manager has yet to start the job, his seven co-chairs have not had a group discussion and his team has made little outreach to allies in Congress.For all the attention on Mr. Biden’s gauzy announcement video and the symbolism his campaign attributed to the day he entered the race — precisely four years after he began his 2020 bid and with the same message of saving the nation’s very soul — there is little evidence of the typical preparation for a national political campaign.Mr. Biden’s top advisers insist the limited-release nature of his 2024 campaign is boring by design. They say they are holding down costs by outsourcing as much as possible to the Democratic National Committee while the president’s senior staff members remain ensconced in top White House roles that allow them to engage in campaign strategy.“All of the pieces that should and need to fall into place will,” Jeffrey Katzenberg, the Hollywood mogul and Democratic megadonor and one of the Biden campaign co-chairs, said in an interview.But for an incumbent president in full control of his own re-election timeline, the decision to begin with such a skeletal operation has left even supporters confused. Democratic allies worry, some in public and more in private, that Mr. Biden and his political team — whose successes have come chiefly by running against Donald J. Trump rather than through organic liberal enthusiasm — are not displaying the necessary urgency for the coming battle.“Part of me is troubled that people are more enthusiastic about doing the often unglamorous work of government policymaking when there’s an extremely important political campaign that is staring us in the face,” said John Del Cecato, a strategist on Barack Obama’s 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns. “I don’t know if that speaks to a belief that this will be a joyless campaign re-election effort or if it’s something else.”In the coming weeks and months, Mr. Biden will face two of the thorniest political issues of his presidency: an expected upturn of migrants at the Mexican border as a pandemic-era restriction on asylum requests expires this week and a looming debt limit crisis that threatens the American economy.A Trump-era immigration policy that led to the swift expulsion of many migrants at the southern border will lift on Thursday. Officials are bracing for an increase in migrants at the border.Ivan Pierre Aguirre for The New York TimesOn Wednesday, Mr. Biden is headed to a suburb of New York, where he will discuss the debt limit in the district of one of the 18 House Republicans who represent areas that the president carried. Then he will head to Manhattan for two fund-raisers.Representative Mike Lawler, the freshman Republican who represents the district, said that the president’s trip was not intimidating and that he had been invited and planned to attend.“I guess he’s trying to exert pressure in a district he won by 10 points,” Mr. Lawler said. “It speaks volumes that that same district elected me to represent it. And I ran on serving as a check and balance on the Biden agenda.”Money, Biden advisers say, was a driving factor in entering the race. The campaign has already entered into a joint finance agreement with 47 of the 50 state Democratic Parties, which will allow it to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars at a time from individual donors.Top Biden officials dismiss the early concerns from inside the party as sideline sniping. In their view, they rightfully ignored naysayers to keep Mr. Biden in his Delaware basement during the early months of the pandemic, disregarded calls to knock on doors in the fall of 2020 and highlighted threats to democracy in the midterm elections last year despite pleas from many Democrats to focus on the inflation-racked economy.That string of victories has given Biden aides supreme confidence in their stay-the-course instincts, an ethos shared by Mr. Biden and top White House advisers including Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, Mike Donilon and Anita Dunn.“We are meeting all of the goals and metrics we’ve set for ourselves to assemble another winning coalition in 2024,” said Kevin Munoz, a campaign spokesman.Jim Messina, who served as Mr. Obama’s campaign manager in 2012, said the Biden team had some advantages that Mr. Obama did not, including a fully operational Democratic National Committee, which Mr. Obama had allowed to fall into a state of disrepair.“They’re staffed in the one place they need to be staffed,” Mr. Messina said of the party and its fund-raising operation, which is organizing the New York events.Polls show that a majority of Democrats want the party to nominate someone other than Mr. Biden. A gloomy Washington Post/ABC News survey released over the weekend found that 58 percent of Democratic-leaning adults felt this way.When it comes to raising money online, this lack of excitement has been a worry for Biden advisers, especially those who recall his 2019 struggles in that arena against his leading liberal rivals.Mr. Munoz declined to say how much money the campaign had raised in its first 24 hours, but ActBlue, the online portal for contributions to Democratic candidates, reported $6.1 million in donations in the first 24 hours after Mr. Biden announced his candidacy. That is about the same as the amounts that Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and former Representative Beto O’Rourke of Texas raised in the first day of their 2020 presidential campaigns.But not all of those ActBlue donations went to Mr. Biden; they make up the total given to every Democrat in the country that day.Mr. Biden is facing a looming showdown over the nation’s debt limit with Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his fractious Republican caucus. Al Drago for The New York TimesThe campaign is preparing to lean heavily on major donors in the first months of the race, and invited top bundlers to Washington on the first weekend of the campaign for a private briefing. Mr. Katzenberg said the campaign’s fund-raising would rely equally on Mr. Biden’s popularity among Democratic donors and a liberal fear that Mr. Trump could return to the White House.“The difference between passion and anxiety is not discernible,” Mr. Katzenberg said. “Whether somebody is doing this out of their passion and belief in the president — fantastic. If they’re doing it out of anxiety of what the alternative is — fantastic. The color of the green is the same.”Last week, Reid Hoffman, the billionaire LinkedIn co-founder and one of the party’s most important financiers, organized a donor briefing at the Rosewood hotel in San Francisco, pulling in several dozen donors for the pro-Biden super PAC American Bridge, according to two attendees.Notably, the early television ads that the Biden campaign has announced were paid for by the Democratic National Committee, which had $28.7 million on hand at the beginning of April. For now, senior Biden officials are planning to push as many costs as they legally can to the party, which can raise far larger sums. The campaign does not have a physical headquarters yet; for now, aides are working out of the D.N.C.’s building in Washington.Mr. Biden’s New York trip will include two small fund-raisers that are being pulled together relatively hastily. Tony James, a former top executive at the private equity giant Blackstone, is hosting one event, where tickets begin at $25,000, according to invitations. Donors were told that Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary, would also attend, and the goal for the two events was to bring in $3 million, according to a person briefed on the plans.For now, the White House seems happy to cede the national stage to the Republican primary race. Mr. Biden’s first television interview after his announcement, on MSNBC, was buried at 10 p.m. last Friday.“It would be unfortunate if they let the Republican nominee govern the conversation on a day-to-day basis,” said Faiz Shakir, the campaign manager for Mr. Sanders’s 2020 bid. “It feels like too much of a wild card to sit back. You’ve got to figure out a way to excite and energize people about your own conversation and to drive Donald Trump into that one.”Representative Jasmine Crockett, a Texas Democrat, said she had yet to hear any outreach about the president’s re-election bid from Biden campaign aides or the campaign’s co-chairs. She said she had seen little excitement about Mr. Biden in her Dallas-area district and had told worried constituents to get behind the president’s re-election.“The stakes are too high for us to play chicken with this,” she said. “We all know that we’ve got issues with our family. But at the end of the day, I would not trade my family in for the alternative.”Mitchell Berger, a South Florida campaign bundler who has been involved in Democratic politics for decades, said the onus should not be on the Biden campaign to generate excitement. He said comparisons to Mr. Obama were not helpful.“President Biden is an exceptional political actor and he does very well with people, but, you know, the excitement generated by the Obamas is a once-in-a-generation kind of thing,” said Mr. Berger, who attended the campaign’s donor gathering in Washington last month.Mr. Katzenberg said Mr. Biden’s campaign had made a deliberate choice to begin without a full staff in place. The campaign manager, Julie Chávez Rodríguez, remains in her White House job until next week, and other critical roles, including a finance director and a communications director, remain unfilled.“It’s not a question of whether it could or couldn’t have been done, it just wasn’t a priority,” Mr. Katzenberg said. “It’s simply not material, let alone essential, that it get done before.” More

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      Top Republicans Balk at WinRed’s Plan to Charge More for Online Donations

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      Republican Party leaders are opposed to a proposed price increase by the online donation-processing company, WinRed, stirring debate about the company’s future.A battle over a threatened price increase has exposed growing tensions between top Republican Party officials and the company with a virtual monopoly on processing Republican campaign contributions online.Party leaders have risen up in opposition to the plan to raise prices, which would siphon millions of dollars from G.O.P. campaigns less than 20 months after the company, WinRed, had said its finances were robust enough to forego an extra fee on every transaction.In a series of private meetings in recent weeks, Gerrit Lansing, the president of WinRed, has told the leaders of the Republican National Committee, the House and Senate campaign arms and former President Donald J. Trump’s campaign that WinRed’s prices needed to go up.The Republican officials all objected.Mr. Lansing’s company, a private for-profit firm responsible for processing almost all online Republican political donations, charges 3.94 percent of almost every donation made online. But he said it wasn’t enough, citing an unforeseen slowdown in online G.O.P. giving last year and also plans to broaden WinRed’s suite of services. He moved to impose a 30-cent transaction fee on each of the tens of millions of coming contributions in the 2024 race, according to several people directly involved in or briefed on the conversations.The plan to raise prices appears to have stalled over fierce G.O.P. objections, according to people involved in the talks. But the episode has accelerated conversations at the party’s highest levels about the decision four years ago to clear the way for WinRed to dominate the online donation-processing field, and about whether the for-profit company’s model needs to be reassessed. Democrats process most online donations through ActBlue, which, unlike WinRed, is an independent nonprofit. ActBlue charges a flat rate of 3.95 percent per donation and does not charge an additional per-transaction fee.“WinRed is constantly evaluating what it takes to compete against and leapfrog ActBlue, combat the Democrats’ campaign to attack us by all means available, and still make the necessary investments to provide our customers with the features they need to win,” WinRed said in a statement. “At this time, WinRed has no announcements to make regarding pricing.”Representatives for the party committees declined to comment.Gerrit Lansing, the president of WinRed, has told officials about a plan to charge an extra fee on every transaction.Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call, Getty ImagesMr. Lansing’s pursuit of outside investors to expand WinRed’s digital footprint and offerings — including talks with advisers to Paul Singer, a major Republican financier — has spurred further discussions about the company’s ownership structure.The obscure industry of processing donations online is deeply consequential for Republicans because the party has faced a persistent digital fund-raising deficit against Democrats. WinRed has been held up as the linchpin of the party’s plans to help close that gap.Huge sums are involved. There were nearly 31.2 million donations made on WinRed during the 2022 federal elections, worth nearly $1.2 billion. The upcoming presidential cycle could easily double that.The creation of WinRed in 2019 was supposed to be one of Mr. Trump’s enduring legacies within the Republican infrastructure, a bold bid to unify the party around a single platform to help shrink the G.O.P. fund-raising gap with ActBlue. Mr. Trump, his son-in-law Jared Kushner and Mr. Trump’s campaign manager at the time, Brad Parscale, were all personally involved.The site has largely been a success, achieving near-universal adoption among G.O.P. campaigns. WinRed originally had charged 3.8 percent of contributions with an additional 30-cent transaction fee. That amounted to an especially steep share of smaller contributions — 68 cents, or nearly 7 percent, of a $10 donation, for instance.A Trump rally in Waco, Texas, in March. As president, Donald J. Trump was among those personally involved in the creation of WinRed in 2019.Christopher Lee for The New York TimesIn late 2021, Mr. Lansing trumpeted the removal of the 30-cent transaction fee, saying the company had been able to “achieve and maintain scale.” But the decision by credit card companies to raise their own fees not long afterward made WinRed’s move unsustainable, according to a person close to the company, as most of its processing fees are quickly spent on credit card costs.In recent weeks, Mr. Lansing told party officials that WinRed had suffered financially in 2022 as a result of diminished Republican giving and that he needed to reimpose a per-transaction fee ahead of 2024 to continue broader investments in technology. Because WinRed is a private firm, its executive compensation and the state of its finances remain mostly hidden from public view. Records show that federal candidates and committees paid WinRed at least $64 million in the 2022 election cycle; those funds were not all from processing fees but also included significant vendor fees, according to a person close to WinRed.Its Democratic counterpart, ActBlue, has faced a financial pinch too, announcing in early April plans to lay off 17 percent of its work force. ActBlue discloses more of its finances than its counterpart does, including the amount of donors who volunteered to add “tips” on top of their donations. Those tips go directly to ActBlue and have built a $68.7 million balance in ActBlue’s federal account as of the end of 2022. Mr. Lansing has begun discussing adding the option to make tips to the Republican site as well, according to people involved in the conversations.WinRed faces other unique pressures, including an investigation by multiple state attorneys general into the firm’s use of prechecked boxes that automatically signed up donors to make recurring donations unless they opted out. A New York Times investigation in 2021 revealed how the extensive use of those boxes — known internally as “money bombs” for withdrawing more than one donation at a time — spurred an enormous wave of demands for refunds and complaints of fraud to credit card companies at the end of the 2020 campaign.WinRed sued to block subpoenas but lost a key legal battle in February when the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the investigation could proceed in Minnesota. In New York, a December filing from the state attorney general, Letitia James, that demanded compliance with a subpoena gave a glimpse into the internal documents her office has already obtained. The filing cited an internal WinRed memo as saying that, at one point in June 2020, donors who were opted into multiple donations through pre-checked boxes had caused a surge of phone calls and “a 10,000 message deep queue over one weekend.” Recurring donations were dropping over time, the memo theorized, because “as donors get used to or go through the process they become more savvy.”One Republican candidate who saw a surge of refund requests from people who were unwittingly opted into recurring donations was Kelly Loeffler, a senator who lost her runoff in Georgia in January 2021 and who found the experience of working with WinRed jarring.“It absolutely was a red flag,” Ms. Loeffler said in an interview, referring to the deluge of refund requests. Ms. Loeffler, a former co-owner of the Women’s National Basketball Association team in Atlanta, has since bought donation-processing technology from a Republican firm that stopped its business after the creation of WinRed. She has rebranded the technology and now uses it in running RallyRight, another company that processes online donations.“We have seen a need for a competitor in this market,” Ms. Loeffler said.So far, she is undercutting WinRed on price — charging 3.5 percent of donations — and ensuring that “no campaign can automatically check a recurring payments box.” She declined to name specific Republican groups that she has spoken with but said the price could go even lower — down to 3 percent — with “the scale of some of the organizations we are talking to.”Ms. Loeffler said that she was in the business not for personal profit but to direct more money to campaigns. “It’s absolutely not about me making millions of dollars,” she said. “I’ve done that.” More

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      Fugees Rapper Pras Michel Found Guilty in Illegal Foreign Influence Scheme

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      Mr. Michel took orders, and millions of dollars, from a Malaysian financier who sought to gain political influence in the U.S., prosecutors said.A founding member of the hip-hop group the Fugees was found guilty in federal court on Wednesday of orchestrating a sprawling international conspiracy that used millions of dollars worth of foreign money for illegal lobbying and campaign contributions, the Justice Department said.The rapper Prakazrel Michel, known as Pras, had been accused of accepting $865,000 from Low Taek Jho, a Malaysian financier, and giving that money to a network of straw donors who used it to make campaign contributions to former President Barack Obama in 2012.Mr. Michel was also accused by prosecutors of trying to convince the Trump administration and the Justice Department to drop federal investigations into Mr. Low related to embezzlement, as well as assisting China in its efforts to have a Chinese dissident brought back to China, according to the Justice Department.Mr. Michel, who received millions of dollars for his part in the schemes, was convicted of 10 criminal counts including money laundering, illegal lobbying, witness tampering and campaign finance violations, according to court records. He faces a maximum possible sentence of 20 years in prison.“Today’s verdict demonstrates that anyone who engages in unlawful foreign-sponsored efforts to influence American officials, our elections, or the criminal justice system will be brought to justice,” Kenneth A. Polite, Jr., an assistant attorney general with the Justice Department, said in a statement.Mr. Michel’s lawyer, David E. Kenner, did not immediately respond to a call seeking comment on Wednesday evening.Mr. Michel’s conviction in U.S. District Court in Washington followed an extensive trial that included testimony from several big names in entertainment and political circles, including Leonardo DiCaprio and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, according to The Associated Press and Politico.Mr. DiCaprio testified that Mr. Low seemed to be a legitimate businessman years ago when he said he wanted to donate to the Obama campaign, and Mr. Sessions testified about his knowledge of the Chinese extradition efforts.Prosecutors argued that Mr. Low essentially used Mr. Michel for back-channel dealings in the U.S., and that Mr. Michel was a subservient accomplice.Mr. Low, also known as Jho Low, is a fugitive and has been wanted by law enforcement in the United States and Malaysia for his role in the theft of $4.5 billion from a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund, according to the Justice Department. That case contributed to the electoral defeat and eventual indictment of that country’s former prime minister, Najib Razak.Mr. Michel, 50, of Coconut Creek, Fla., conspired with Mr. Low to funnel millions of dollars of Mr. Low’s money into the 2012 U.S. presidential election “as purportedly legitimate campaign contributions, all while concealing the true source of the money,” prosecutors said.Mr. Michel would receive Mr. Low’s money and contribute to Mr. Obama’s campaign personally and through about 20 straw donors, court records state. The men’s goals were to “gain access to, and potential influence with” Mr. Obama’s administration, according to prosecutors.The indictment accused Mr. Michel and Mr. Low of concealing the scheme from the Obama administration and from federal regulators.Federal officials learned of their activity in 2017. Mr. Michel was charged in 2019.Harry A. Lidsk, a special agent with the Justice Department, said in a statement that Mr. Michel “played a central role in a wide-ranging conspiracy to improperly influence top government officials.”In 2017, Mr. Michel also began to “engage in undisclosed lobbying campaigns” at the orders of Mr. Low and a Chinese government official, prosecutors said. Mr. Low wanted to have his embezzlement investigation dropped, and the Chinese official asked Mr. Low to help them get a Chinese dissident extradited, the Justice Department said.Mr. Michel did not manage to sway U.S. officials on either matter, court records show.Glenn Thrush More

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      Major G.O.P. Donor’s Commitment to DeSantis Is Murkier Than Thought

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      The hedge fund billionaire Kenneth Griffin, who seemed set to be a powerful financial backer of the Florida governor, is said to still be evaluating the Republican primary race.Nearly six months ago, Kenneth Griffin, the Republican megadonor and hedge fund executive, seemed poised to be a powerful financial backer of Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida in his anticipated run for president.Mr. Griffin had given $5 million to Mr. DeSantis’s re-election effort, and he told Politico that while Mr. DeSantis was not yet a White House candidate, “he has a tremendous record as governor of Florida, and our country would be well served by him as president.”These days, Mr. Griffin is keeping his cards closer to the vest, and his intentions are harder to discern. A person familiar with his thinking, noting that Mr. DeSantis had not yet made his run official, said Mr. Griffin was still evaluating the Republican primary race as it unfolded.The financier and Mr. DeSantis met in Florida in the last two weeks, according to two people with knowledge of the meeting, which came as Mr. Griffin has taken issue in private conversations with some of Mr. DeSantis’s policy moves and pronouncements. In particular, the two people said, Mr. Griffin was deeply troubled by Mr. DeSantis’s statements that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was a “territorial dispute” — a remark he later tried to clarify — and that the war was not a vital U.S. interest.Mr. Griffin, who has made clear that he wants to move on from former President Donald J. Trump, was also disconcerted by a six-week abortion ban in Florida that Mr. DeSantis recently signed, according to the people familiar with Mr. Griffin’s thinking, who insisted on anonymity to discuss private conversations. Last year, Mr. Griffin moved his hedge fund, Citadel, to Miami from Chicago, citing crime concerns.The meeting between the governor and Mr. Griffin was, for the most part, one on one, without staff members, one of the people briefed on it said, and it was one of their few direct interactions. Reading Mr. Griffin’s intentions after the meeting has been difficult for some people close to him.One person predicted the financier was still likely to donate to Mr. DeSantis once he made his candidacy official, which could happen as early as next month. But the person said Mr. Griffin might also give to other candidates who seemed able to defeat Mr. Trump.In a statement, Zia Ahmed, a spokesman for Mr. Griffin, ticked off Mr. DeSantis’s “many accomplishments” and mentioned job creation, “increasing the number of quality school options, and prioritizing the safety of our communities.”He went on, “Ken may not agree with all of the governor’s policies, but he appreciates all that the governor has done to make Florida one of the most attractive states to live and work in America.”Kenneth Griffin has made clear that he would like the Republican Party to move beyond former President Donald J. Trump.Mike Blake/ReutersBut Mr. Ahmed declined to address what Mr. Griffin thought about the presidential race. A spokesman for Mr. DeSantis declined to comment.What Mr. Griffin does is being closely watched, after word spread of his unhappiness about how Mr. DeSantis had comported himself early this year.Mr. DeSantis’s supporters say there is still a broad appetite — in the donor community and among prospective voters — for a viable Republican alternative to Mr. Trump.“The money has walked,” said Roy Bailey, a Dallas businessman and longtime Republican fund-raiser for Mr. Trump. “From my conversations with a lot of people from around the country, it has moved to DeSantis. It is a cold, hard fact.”Mr. Bailey disputed the idea that momentum had shifted away from Mr. DeSantis recently.In the first two weeks of May, Mr. DeSantis is set to host a series of small dinners with major donors and supporters from across the country at the governor’s mansion in Tallahassee, according to two people with knowledge of his plans.If Mr. DeSantis enters the presidential race as expected, he will be armed with a well-funded super PAC, Never Back Down, which said this month that it had raised $30 million in its first few weeks of fund-raising.Two-thirds of that money, $20 million, came from a single donor, the Nevada hotel magnate Robert Bigelow, Time magazine reported.In private conversations, Mr. DeSantis’s associates have indicated that they have $100 million in commitments to the super PAC, along with roughly $82 million in a Florida committee that will probably be transferred to Never Back Down.Still, some donors who had hoped Mr. DeSantis could stop Mr. Trump have cooled their enthusiasm.Thomas Peterffy, a prominent conservative donor, also cited Florida’s abortion law in explaining why he was withholding support from Mr. DeSantis for now. Mr. Peterffy had supported Mr. DeSantis in his state campaigns, and according to one person familiar with the event, hosted Mr. DeSantis at his house early in his first term as governor. But Mr. Peterffy told The Financial Times this month he was holding still, as were some friends.Some donors have also expressed concern about Mr. DeSantis’s pre-campaign strategy. When his allies made clear this year that he would not enter the race before the end of the legislative session in Florida, Mr. DeSantis effectively gave Mr. Trump three months to define him — and taunt him — before becoming a candidate. More

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      Trump Endorsed by Senator Daines of Montana, a Key Republican Fund-Raiser

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      Steve Daines of Montana, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, cited the former president’s accomplishments on issues like immigration.Former President Donald J. Trump has secured one of his most important Capitol Hill endorsements for a 2024 presidential bid: Senator Steve Daines of Montana, the chairman of the Senate Republicans’ campaign arm.While top Republicans in the Senate have been lukewarm about the prospects of another election cycle dominated by Mr. Trump, the endorsement gives him a foothold with a key party fund-raiser.“I’m proud to endorse Donald J. Trump for president of the United States,” Mr. Daines said during a Monday night appearance on “Triggered,” the podcast of Donald Trump Jr., the former president’s eldest son and an occasional hunting buddy for Mr. Daines.He added that the “best four years” he’d had in the Senate was when Mr. Trump was president. And Mr. Daines ticked off a list of accomplishments that he said Mr. Trump had recorded, on issues like immigration.“That’s absolutely awesome,” Mr. Trump Jr. replied.Mr. Trump has notched a string of congressional endorsements, but Mr. Daines, the chairman of the Senate campaign arm, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, has outsize influence. Mr. Daines is in constant contact with the wealthiest donors in Republican politics, who have been reluctant to support Mr. Trump, even as he asserts himself as the clear front-runner less than a year out from the primaries. If Mr. Daines vouches for the former president as he works the donor circuit, it may bolster what has been until now fairly lackluster fund-raising from the Trump campaign.Mr. Trump and Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, are not on speaking terms, and his supporter in the Senate with the most seniority was Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.Yet for Mr. Daines, the decision was a relatively safe move. With a closer relationship, Mr. Trump could support the Senate candidates backed by Mr. Daines’s committee — or at least avoid attacking the committee’s preferred candidates. Mr. Daines’s relationship with Mr. Trump Jr. is also seen as an important conduit between the Senate and the Trump operation.Mr. Daines and Mr. Trump Jr. began the interview bantering about their past hunting trips but Mr. Daines eventually spoke of how Republicans have a “once a decade” opportunity to pick up seats with a favorable map in 2024. If Republicans failed, he warned, they could remain in the minority “for the rest of the decade.” Before he endorsed Mr. Trump, during the interview, Mr. Daines talked about the power that strength at the top of the ticket could mean in the Senate races.Mr. Trump’s chief rival for the nomination, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, has faced some difficulty connecting with potential supporters as he works toward making his candidacy official. Both hopefuls have pushed for endorsements in Congress. While Mr. Trump has collected dozens, Mr. DeSantis, a former congressman, has secured just a handful. The people endorsing Mr. Trump have been quick to praise his personal touch.In the 2022 cycle, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, under the chairmanship of Senator Rick Scott, took a largely hands-off approach to the primaries. Mr. McConnell lamented the “candidate quality” of those who had emerged from primaries, and several Republicans aligned with Mr. Trump went on to lose key battlegrounds in November, including Don Bolduc in New Hampshire and Blake Masters in Arizona, both of whom party strategists had predicted would be weak nominees.Mr. Daines has taken a different approach. He has endorsed Representative Jim Banks for an open Senate seat in Indiana and has courted other candidates, including David McCormick, the former hedge fund executive who lost a Senate primary in Pennsylvania last year, to run again.Still, Senate Republicans are facing a gantlet of potential 2024 primaries, and the party leadership is worried that weak potential candidates could yet again hinder Republicans in November, including in Mr. Daines’s home state, Montana.In West Virginia, for instance, national Republicans have wooed Gov. Jim Justice, a billionaire former governor, to run against Senator Joe Manchin III, a Democrat who faces a tough re-election fight in a state that Mr. Trump won overwhelmingly in 2020. Mr. Justice is expected to enter the race on Thursday, but Representative Alex X. Mooney, who won a fierce Republican primary in 2022 with Mr. Trump’s endorsement, has already entered the contest.Other states that may feature thorny Republican primaries include Arizona, where the former television newscaster Kari Lake, who lost her 2022 bid for governor, may run for Senate in 2024, and Pennsylvania, where Doug Mastriano, who badly lost a 2022 governor’s race, is looking at a Senate run.“The primary is ours to walk away with,” Mr. Mastriano said in an interview on Monday with the conservative radio host John Fredericks. “We have the base. We are the base.”Mr. Mastriano is the type of nominee Mr. Daines is seeking to avoid. “His last race demonstrated he can’t win a general,” Mr. Daines said last month. More