PARSCALE, BRAD
Former campaign manager
among those in Trump’s inner circle, few have enjoyed closer proximity to the vast sums flowing through his political operations than Parscale. It began in 2016, when the then-40-year-old Texas political novice emerged as Trump’s digital guru. As the conduit for most of Trump’s ad spending, Parscale’s firm became the campaign’s single biggest vendor, receiving $94 million from various political committees that year. Precisely how much went into Parscale’s pocket remains a secret.
After the inauguration, Parscale relocated his business to Florida, but he never stopped working for Trump—or getting paid for it. Since then, his political-consulting firms have received more than $40 million from the Presidential Inaugural
Committee, three different Trump campaign committees, the Republican National Committee, and a pro-Trump super-pac, America First Action, and its sibling “dark money” group (which he cofounded). Parscale was named Trump’s 2020 campaign manager in February 2018, but he claimed he was personally collecting a relative pittance—that the vast majority of the payments to his firm simply reimbursed costs. But much remains undisclosed, including salaries his firm was reportedly paying to Lara Trump and Kimberly Guilfoyle, the wife and girlfriend, respectively, of Trump’s sons Eric and Donald Jr.
After Parscale was named campaign manager, Parscale Strategy stopped receiving direct payments from the America First super-pac and the dark-money group, ostensibly to avoid running afoul of laws barring them from coordinating with the Trump campaign. The America First entities instead began making those payments (more than $2.5 million total) to an obscure, newly formed corporate entity, Red State Data and Digital, which employed Parscale’s wife. In separate complaints to the Federal Election Commission citing Parscale’s multiple roles, Common Cause and the Campaign Legal Center have accused the Trump campaign of illegally coordinating with America First and using Parscale’s firms to illegally hide the ultimate recipients of millions in campaign funds.
Parscale was demoted in July 2020, after the president’s campaign
blew through a massive fund-raising advantage over Joe Biden even while Trump’s poll numbers steadily declined; after embarrassingly poor attendance at a Tulsa campaign rally that Parscale had touted as drawing more than 800,000 ticket requests; and after media reports, certain to anger Trump, of Parscale’s lavish spending, including a $2.4 million waterfront Florida home, two $1 million condos, a yacht, a Ferrari, and a
Range Rover. In late September, Parscale’s wife summoned police to their Fort Lauderdale home, warning that her husband was armed and had threatened to kill himself. After being involuntarily committed, Parscale issued a statement announcing that he was stepping away from the campaign to focus on his family and deal with “overwhelming stress.”