Friday, February 8, 2013

The Jesse Benton Take: $1.1 Million

Open Secrets writes:
[O]ne individual in the [Ron] Paul orbit has moved into the GOP mainstream after his association with the family. Jesse Benton has been part of Paul's political network since 2007, when he joined the candidate's presidential campaign as a spokesman. Before long, the connection became familial as well: He married Paul's granddaughter, Valori Pyeatt, in 2008.

Over the next few campaign cycles, Benton worked for two of Ron Paul's congressional campaigns, another of his presidential bids, his leadership PAC (Liberty PAC) and Campaign for Liberty, Paul's 501(c)(4) nonprofit. In the middle of all that, he was also the campaign chairman for Rand Paul's successful 2010 Senate race, replacing the previous person in that slot after a flap over remarks the candidate made about the Civil Rights Act.

So it was no small thing when Benton jumped horses last fall, leaving the Paul organizations in order to run Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-Ky.) 2014 Senate campaign.

Benton leaves behind him a trail of controversy, with Paul's hardest-core tea party and libertarian acolytes freely critiquing how he ran Paul's campaigns. He was accused of not raising sufficient rabble, being overly concerned about positioning himself for his next career move and drawing too much money from the Paul network for himself.

We can't settle most of those questions. But we can make an accounting of how much Benton has earned from all the Paul organizations, now that year-end and other campaign finance and tax reports have been filed. We found that over the last three election cycles, Benton has been paid about $1.1 million by the various Paul entities -- although more than $450,000 of it was described as reimbursement for expenses he incurred, most of them unidentified.
More details here. 

4 comments:

  1. Karma's a bitch and it will bite his ass some day.

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  2. Who said crime doesn't pay when it's for the state?

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  3. Benton said that Ron Paul would, if he had been President, have gone to war in WW2. Has Paul ever confirmed this or was Benton talking out of his ass?

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    1. I'm pretty sure Benton was yet again talking out of his ass. I doubt that President Paul would have stopped steel and oil shipments to Japan just to get them to attack the U.S.

      Without an event like Pearl Harbor, the people wouldn't have wanted the U.S. in the war.

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