Texas man convicted over Trump donation
A federal jury has convicted a Woodlands-based political consultant for his role in funneling illegal foreign contributions to former President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Federal prosecutors said Jesse R. Benton, 45, worked with another political adviser to funnel political contributions to the 2016 presidential campaign from a Russian foreign national seeking to support, meet and take a picture with Trump.
Benton was convicted Thursday of conspiring to solicit and cause an illegal campaign contribution by a foreign national, effecting a conduit contribution and causing false records to be filed with the Federal Election Commission. He is scheduled to be sentenced Feb. 17 and faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison on the top count.
A federal district judge will determine any sentence after considering U.S. sentencing guidelines and other statutory factors.
Trump pardoned Benton in 2020 for a different campaign finance crime, months before The Woodlands man was indicted again on six counts related to facilitating the illegal foreign campaign donation, according to the Washington Post.
In a news release, Department of Justice officials stated Benton concealed the person’s nationality and arranged for the person to attend a political
fundraising event that required a political donation and offered an opportunity to take a picture with the candidate.
Benton had the Russian foreign national wire $100,000 to his political consulting firm for the purposes of making an illegal foreign contribution to the campaign. To disguise the scheme, Benton created a fake invoice, which falsely identified the funds as payment for consulting services. Benton acted as a straw donor and contributed $25,000 of the Russian foreign national’s money to the campaign, falsely identified himself as the contributor, and pocketed the remaining $75,000, the release stated.
A straw donor is a person who illegally uses another person’s money to make a political contribution in their own name, according to the DOJ.
Because Benton falsely claimed to have given the contribution himself, the candidate’s campaign entities unknowingly filed reports with the Federal Election Commission that inaccurately reported Benton — instead of the Russian foreign national — as the source of the funds.
Benton began his career on the GOP’S libertarian fringe as an aide to former Rep. Ron Paul, R-houston, whose granddaughter is Benton’s wife. He gained mainstream credibility by helping Paul’s son, Rand Paul of Kentucky win a Senate seat in 2010 and was hired by Senate Minority Leader Mitch Mcconnell’s 2014 re-election campaign, the Washington Post reported.