Trump Campaign Is Reportedly Investigating Brad Pascale’s Spending; Campaign Denies

Sarah RumpfJul 17th, 2020, 9:26 pm
 
Brad Parscale Demoted as Trump Campaign Manager

SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images

Days after Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale was demoted, he may have new troubles heading his way. A detailed report by Business Insider describes an internal audit the campaign is conducting of “spending irregularities” during his time helming the president’s reelection efforts. The new campaign manager, Bill Stepien, denied that Parscale was being audited but other sources for the story contradicted that.

As the Business Insider report details, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner brought in Jeff DeWit, an accountant and former chief financial officer of NASA, to join the campaign as its new chief operating officer.

In an interview Friday, DeWit confirmed that he was “reviewing all campaign contracts and examining all spending,” BI reports. DeWit denied that the audit was “targeting” anyone specific, but other Republican sources familiar with the campaign’s operations identified Parscale as a likely focus because “he controlled all campaign spending, from polling and advertising to voter surveys, during a tenure that started in January 2017.”

Several news stories over the past few months have highlighted potential points of friction between Parscale and Trump, including the president’s concerns that Parscale was getting rich off the campaign, while it was floundering.

Reports kept coming at a steady drip, drip, drip that Parscale was profiting, massively, from the campaign, both directly, and in contracts steered to his consulting firm from the Trump campaign, the RNC, and other GOP candidates.

A noticeable percentage of Trump campaign Facebook ads were launched not from Trump’s own official pages, but from the one for Parscale’s firm — building an online following for Parscale, not the president. Last month, the New York Times reported that the campaign had spent $325,000 on promoted Facebook ads using Parscale’s page.

Parscale’s own personal spending habits drew further scrutiny his way, and inspired one of the anti-Trump PAC Lincoln Project’s most viewed ads, highlighting his multiple lavish home and vehicles, and penchant for travel on private jets. “He even has his very own yacht!” the ad’s female narrator coos, plus “a gorgeous Ferrari” and “a sleek Range Rover.”

The campaign’s embarrassing flop at the Tulsa rally — attendance “just shy of 6,200” after Parscale had boasted of a “million” people signing up for tickets online — was likely the crushing blow. The Lincoln Project followed up with a double entendre-filled ad mocking the “size” of the rally.

One of BI‘s Republican sources bluntly assessed the situation, noting that Kushner “brought in DeWit because Trump was so sick of hearing how much money Parscale was making.” The combination of a notoriously profligate lifestyle for Parscale and publicly humiliating strategic failures for the campaign was too much for Trump to tolerate.

You can read the full report here.

Parscale never replied to BI‘s requests for comments, but did angrily tweet a denouncement of the media as “America’s biggest enemy” shortly before the story went live online.

Roughly an hour later, new campaign head Stepien issued a denial, saying that the story was “categorically false and the only on-the-record source confirms that no audit of Brad Parscale is taking place,” slamming the writer as a “poor man’s gossip columnist.” Stepien attempted to characterize DeWit’s work as “his efforts to prepare our budget for the duration of the campaign.”

Stepien may soon find himself the focus of Trump’s baleful glare — Kenneth Vogel of the New York Times reported Thursday that Stepien’s own consulting firm has been raking in the cash advising down-ballot GOP candidates while he’s been working for the Trump campaign. “It’s rare for a presidential campaign manager to maintain other clients,” Vogel tweeted.

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Sarah Rumpf - Contributing Editor

Sarah Rumpf joined Mediaite in 2020 and is a Contributing Editor focusing on politics, law, and the media. A native Floridian, Sarah attended the University of Florida, graduating with a double major in Political Science and German, and earned her Juris Doctor, cum laude, from the UF College of Law. Sarah's writing has been featured at National Review, The Daily Beast, Reason, Law&Crime, Independent Journal Review, Texas Monthly, The Capitolist, Breitbart Texas, Townhall, RedState, The Orlando Sentinel, and the Austin-American Statesman, and her political commentary has led to appearances on television, radio, and podcast programs across the globe. Follow Sarah on Threads, Twitter, and Bluesky.