The Koch Network and other Trump allies are quietly backing his biggest GOP critic: Representative Liz Cheney
Republican Representative Liz Cheney assembled a group of political consultants with ties to the former President. Donald Trump and Koch’s network expands as she prepares to run for the White House after losing the GOP primaries for her Wyoming House seat.
Cheney’s role as vice chairman of the committee investigating Trump’s actions in the January 6 attack on the US Capitol has displaced the third-most senior Republican in the US House of Representatives. position in the GOP and her seat in Congress. She lost the Republican nomination in a landslide last week to one of Trump’s picks, Wyoming attorney Harriet Hageman.
Cheney now considering She told NBC News and has quietly assembled a team of top GOP advisers to help her ensure that he never returns to the White House in 2024.
“I believe that Donald Trump continues to pose a very serious threat and risk to our republic. And I think defeating him will require a broad and united front of Republicans, Democrats and independents, and that’s what I plan to be a part of,” she said in an exclusive interview with Savannah Guthrie on NBC’s “TODAY” on Tuesday. last week.
Shortly after her death, she established a leadership political action committee called The Great Task, which would allow her to maintain her political aspirations while assuming the position of former president. Trump, whose home and private club Mar-a-Lago in Florida is assault of the FBI just days before the primaries, did not rule out the possibility of running for president again in two years.
Cheney is using some of Trump’s own advisers and allies, including those from the powerful Koch network, to try to prevent the former president from winning a second term in the White House. Some of them seem to have used limited liability companies to hide their identities from the public.
A GOP strategist close to Trump said when asked if the president and his associates still work with former Cheney advisers. Jeff Miller, a longtime lobbyist and ally of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., told vendors not to work with Cheney’s team, according to the report. The New York Times.
Miller and a Trump spokesman did not return requests for comment. A spokesperson for Cheney did not request comment.
Billionaire and conservative political advocate Charles Koch is helping Cheney through i360, a data and technology company owned by his Koch Industries conglomerate, according to financial database PitchBook and its filings. Federal Election Commission.
Records show that two PACs, the Conservatives for a Strong America and the Wyomingites Defending Freedom and Democracy, paid more than $300,000 to i360 to help deploy pro-Cheney ads via text message. Axios report that the leader of Wyomingites Defending Freedom and Democracy is former Trump White House aide Julia Griswold Dailer, who did not return a request for comment.
A nonprofit partly funded by Charles Koch, Americans for Prosperity, paid i360 $11 million for data services, according to the nonprofit’s 2020 tax disclosure.
Although Koch did not endorse Trump during the 2016 or 2020 campaigns, his political network worked with the Trump administration to support some of the former president’s key initiatives, including cutting reduce business regulations and cut taxes across the board.
Americans for Prosperity recently ran an ad campaign targeted Democratic lawmakers, including Moderate Sense Joe Manchin, DW.Va. and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., to protest the more than $400 billion Inflation Reduction Act President Joe Biden Signed into law this month.
FEC filings show that i360 also worked this election cycle with Dr. Mehmet Oz, Trump’s Trump supporter for Pennsylvania’s open Senate seat, as well as Representative Peter Meijer, R-Mich., who was voted to impeach the former president and lost. recent primary.
Representatives for the PACs supporting Cheney, Koch Industries, i360, and Americans for Prosperity did not return requests for comment.
Trump and the Koch family haven’t always been close, even after the former president passed long-anticipated tax cuts and the nominations of many conservative-leaning Supreme Court Justices. . Trump tore the Kochs in 2018, saying in a tweet that they are one “complete joke in real Republican circles, is against Strong Borders and Strong Commerce.” Koch . network no help Trump in failed bid in 2020 for re-election vs Biden.
People close to Trump told CNBC that the former president and those affiliated with him may move on to pausing future work with people who work on Cheney’s team.
FEC filings show that one of the top providers of the Cheney campaign during the 2022 election cycle was a company called Red Right Media. According to the FEC disclosure, that company was paid more than $1 million by Cheney for advertising and media services during her primary 2022 run, including more than $300,000 in July, according to the report. FEC disclosure.
Although it doesn’t appear to have a public website, Virginia’s business records state that Red Right Media is an alternative name for a company called X/Roads Communications. According to state business filings, X/Roads Communications is run by Mike Dubke, a veteran Republican strategist who worked in Trump’s White House as communications director. Dubke was a managing partner at X/Roads Communications before taking on the role with Trump in 2017, according to financial disclosures filed while leading the White House communications team.
Dubke resigned his White House communications position in 2017 after less than 100 days on the job. Since then, Red Right Media has been paid millions of dollars by Republican groups for consulting work, according to data from the nonpartisan campaign finance watchdog OpenSecrets. Records show that a super PAC called DefendA Arizona paid more than $4 million for Red Right Media’s services.
Super PAC supported Martha McSally as she ran a failed campaign against Sinema in the 2018 election. DefendA Arizona was funded in part by Citadel CEO Ken Griffin and the Senate Leadership Foundation, a super PAC affiliated with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
Black Rock Group, a media consulting firm co-founded by Dubke that is not affiliated with the investment firm BlackRock, was previously paid more than $100,000 by Cheney’s campaign in 2018. Dubke and Black Rock Group did not pay comment request.
Other Trump consultants who previously worked with Cheney during her primary and who have previously supported Trump include SCM Associates, a fundraising and direct mail consulting group based based in New Hampshire. Campaign Cheney paid over $600,000 for SCM’s help with direct mail advertising. The Trump campaign paid SCM more than $8 million during the 2020 election cycle, according to campaign finance data.
TAG Strategies, a political marketing firm that worked for Trump during the 2020 campaign and several candidates he supported midterms, was paid nearly $380,000 by Cheney’s campaign for services. digital and marketing, including more than $100,000 in May, according to FEC filings. The Trump campaign paid TAG Strategies over $200,000 during the 2020 election cycle.
Erin Perrine, TAG’s vice president, who also worked in communications for Trump’s re-election bid, told CNBC in an email that the company’s work for Cheney was a “one-time-only service at a single location.” moment in the preliminary time.” “TAG is a Republican company and we work for America First, Conservative and center-right candidates,” she said.
SCM did not return a request for comment.
