Feds Say Rand and Ron Paul Aides Planned to Smear Local Pol If Payoff Failed

The dirty politics case that has snared top advisers to Rand Paul gets dirtier.

Charles Rex Arbogast/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Since last week’s indictments of three top political aides to Ron and Rand Paul, new details have emerged about the Ron Paul campaign’s scheme in 2012 to buy the endorsement of Kent Sorenson, who was then an influential Republican state senator in Iowa. In the latest court filing, federal prosecutors assert that the Paul aides planned to smear Sorenson if he refused to accept a bribe. This case will likely continue to dog presidential candidate Rand Paul, who has at times employed all three men. Two of the indicted aides, Jesse Benton (who is married to Rand Paul’s niece) and John Tate, were running the main super-PAC supporting Rand Paul’s presidential campaign. Following the indictments, each of them took a leave of absence from the super-PAC.

A federal grand jury charged Benton, Tate, and Dimitri Kesari with multiple felonies, accusing them of organizing a secret effort to pay Sorenson more than $73,000 just days before the Iowa caucuses to change his endorsement from Michele Bachmann to Ron Paul. Kesari is a longtime Paul family operative: He worked for Ron Paul’s presidential campaigns and Rand Paul’s 2010 Senate campaign, as well as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s reelection effort last year.

Prosecutors are generally required to share their evidence with a defendant to allow him or her to prepare for a trial. But on Thursday, Justice Department lawyers asked the federal judge in charge of the case for permission to withhold from these defendants copies of certain sensitive documents, such as the grand jury transcript and witness statements. The defendants will be allowed to review the information, but the prosecutors don’t want to hand over the material. They say they have reason to believe the defendants might leak sensitive documents to the media. During the pre-indictment inquiry, the prosecutors claim, investigators found emails showing that the three Paul aides were prepared to leak documents to harm Sorenson in 2012 if they couldn’t obtain his endorsement for Ron Paul.

“Those communications show that the defendants, who are career political operatives, were willing to leak sensitive documents regarding Sorenson to the press to suit their own ends,” Raymond Hulser, chief of the Department of Justice’s public integrity division, stated. “That history gives the government concern as to what the defendants (as opposed to their counsel) might do with copies of interview reports and grand jury transcripts of Sorenson and the other witnesses in this case.”

Benton’s attorney, Roscoe Howard, says he cannot comment because he’s preparing a response to file in court. But the revelation adds a new wrinkle to the case. Emails leaked publicly by a former Ron Paul aide in 2013 indicate that Sorenson was approached by the Ron Paul campaign about his willingness to switch sides, and he responded with a lengthy list of demands that included a salary of $8,000 a month and a $100,000 donation to his political action committee.

Under Iowa Senate ethics rules, a lawmaker cannot sell his endorsement to a presidential campaign. Following an Iowa Senate investigation that found Sorenson accepted payments from a company tied to the Ron Paul campaign, Sorenson resigned his seat in 2013. Last August, he pleaded guilty to campaign finance charges. Sorenson is currently awaiting sentencing.

Update: The lawyer for Jesse Benton has responded to the government’s accusation that his client planned to leak documents to smear Sorenson if he did not agree to endorse Ron Paul. In a filing made to the federal court, Benton’s attorney, Roscoe Howard, said prosecutors are referring to an email Benton sent in late 2011, around the time Sorenson switched from endorsing the Bachmann campaign to endorsing the Paul campaign. In the email, Howard noted, Benton “threatened to expose Mr. Sorenson, believing that Mr. Sorenson was trying to blackmail the 2012 RP Campaign, if Mr. Sorenson did not make up his mind on whether to commit to the Ron Paul Campaign.”

Howard wrote that it was a “a knee-jerk, emotional reaction” and pointed out that Benton never followed through.

In a clue as to what Benton’s defense might be, Howard’s filing repeatedly referred to Sorenson’s involvement with the campaign as “the employment of Mr. Sorenson”, which may be an attempt to spin the circumstances of the situation. The indictment specifically describes payments to Sorenson as being in exchange for his support.

An email that was leaked in 2013 shows the initial round of negotiation between Sorenson and the Paul campaign, involved direct discussion of Sorenson being paid for endorsing Paul. Under federal law, it was not illegal for the campaign to hire Sorenson or pay him for his endorsement – both, however would have been a violation of Iowa Senate ethics rules. The wrongdoing alleged in the indictment is that payments were covered up, regardless of what they were for.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate