Dark money group shuttered after questions raised about deal involving Kellyanne Conway

A dark money group tied to conservative activist Leonard Leo shut down three days after reporters questioned its role in the multimillion-dollar sale of Kellyanne Conway's polling company.

Politico reported last month that the BH Fund, which had been formed in 2016 with an anonymous $24 million donation, apparently helped finance a 2017 transaction between Creative Response Concepts Inc. and Conway's firm The Polling Company worth between $1 million and $5 million, and correspondent Heidi Przybyla followed up with a new report showing the fund closed down immediately after she inquired about its role in the transaction.

“Nothing screams ‘efforts to conceal’ quite like folding up an organization just as you start getting questions about it,” said Saurav Ghosh, director of federal campaign finance reform for the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center.

The firm now known as CRC Advisors did extensive consulting work for Leo in 2017 and is now led by the conservative judicial activist, and spokesman Adam Kennedy told Politico that BH Fund had been dormant since the end of 2021 and was dissolved in October “as other organizations made it obsolete.”

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Leo and CRC have not disputed BH Fund's involvement in the transaction, which came as Conway served as White House adviser to Donald Trump, and the liberal watchdog group Campaign for Accountability filed a complaint to Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee Chair Gary Peters (D-MI) citing a law prohibiting executive branch employees from participating in government matters that influence their own financial interests.

“There are clear indications based on the facts at hand that Ms. Conway participated personally and substantially in advising President Trump to nominate Justices to the Supreme Court, and that her personal financial interests were affected,” the complaint says.

Leo has said the BH Fund is a "charitable organization," and the tax code permits such entities to spend unlimited money on political activities without disclosing their donors, and Ghosh said the conservative activist's role in selling Conway's business shows why the “influence of dark money is doubly problematic."

Conway, for her part, downplayed the Senate complaint by texting Politico: “That’s what outside groups ‘fighting for law and justice’ do to get attention. Use reporters."