Trump allies rake in lucrative contracts with right-wing non-profit they founded: report

Travis Gettys
May 6, 2024 

Mark Meadows (Photo: Gage Skidmore/Flickr)

The nonprofit Conservative Partnership Institute has enjoyed a substantial boost in fundraising after becoming a nerve center for the MAGA movement, but recent tax filings show much of that money has been funneled to corporations led by the group's leaders or their relatives.

The filings show the institute's three highest-paid contractors were each connected to insiders, including its president Edward Corrigan and his brother Patrick Corrigan, chief operating officer Wesley Denton and senior legal fellow Cleta Mitchell, which could be in violation of its nonprofit status with the Internal Revenue Service, reported the New York Times.

“There’s no checks and balances,” said Michael West, a lawyer at the New York Council of Nonprofits. "The potential for overpayment here is epic.”

The nonprofit has become a landing spot for Trump's former allies and staffers, including Mitchell, who assisted the former president in his attempt to overturn his 2020 election loss, as well as former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and former senior adviser Stephen Miller.

The institute is funded by Republican political campaigns and conservative businesspeople.

“I’ve known them a long time,” said major donor Robert Bruce, a retired Texas aviation entrepreneur who has given "several hundred thousand" dollars. “They’re good people.”

Former Senator Jim DeMint founded the institute in 2017, after he was ousted as president of the conservative Heritage Institute, and its fundraising jumped — from $7 million in 2020 to $45 million in 2021 — after Democrats returned to power.

The newly flush organization bought a 2,200-acre retreat in Maryland and commercial properties near the U.S. Capitol, and the institute's leaders founded a series of companies in Delaware that soon contracted with the nonprofit.

“You have an obligation to behave in the interest of that organization,” said Linda Sugin, a professor of nonprofit law at Fordham University. “The problem is, when you’re on both sides of the transaction, then we’re skeptical that you’re going to put the organization’s interests before your own.”

The institute could have reduced its risks by soliciting outside bids to see whether insiders were charging market rates for their service or asked them to recuse themselves from decisions on hiring their own companies, Sugin said, and Corrigan and other leaders did not respond to requests for comment from the Times on whether those steps were taken.

The Conservative Partnership Institute could face financial penalties from regulators or lose its tax-exempt status if it is found to have improperly benefitted insiders, the Times reported.