Abraham Kenmore, SC Daily Gazette

COLUMBIA — The founder of South Carolina’s uber-conservative House Freedom Caucus had multiple electronic devices seized by federal law enforcement in August, according to a document filed Thursday in federal court.

A U.S. Attorney is asking the court for more time in a case involving Rep. RJ May.

The filing is the first public confirmation that the federal government seized a number of electronics from the West Columbia Republican on Aug. 5.

The U.S. Attorney for South Carolina is seeking permission to keep the electronics and extend a deadline for filing a civil forfeiture case — a noncriminal proceeding that allows the government to take items suspected of being linked to a crime.

According to the filing, the items seized are associated with a criminal investigation, and federal prosecutors anticipate “the filing of a criminal indictment within three months.”

The filing requests a delay in starting the civil proceedings, as the forthcoming criminal proceedings would make the case unnecessary. It does not say what the criminal charges are or might be.

The items seized include a Lenovo laptop, an Amazon tablet, four cellphones, four hard drives, four SD cards, two DVD-Rs and 19 thumb drives, according to the document.

Federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security Investigations seized the electronics, but the filing does not say from where. In August, a spokesperson for the federal agency confirmed to the SC Daily Gazette an “enforcement action” in Lexington County on Aug. 5 but did not provide any other details.

Neither May nor his attorney could be immediately reached Friday for comment. May has not responded to multiple messages from the SC Daily Gazette via cellphone phone and texts since Aug. 5.

The filing does say May is opposing the potential civil action.

May, first elected to the House in 2020, has led the faction of Republicans who have been warring with the chamber’s majority caucus for the last two years. The 38-year-old father of two also runs GOP political campaigns as the owner of Ivory Tusk Consulting.

May’s leadership title in the caucus was technically vice-chairman in the last session. But it was May whose GOP connections in Congress led to him starting an affiliate of the far-right U.S. House Freedom Caucus in South Carolina. And May has been the group’s de-facto spokesman.

The state chapter launched in spring 2022 with 14 Republicans who sought to pressure their GOP colleagues to move further to the right on issues including guns, taxes, abortion, and other hot-button social issues.

And they’ve had some success, as slightly different versions of several of their priorities were advanced by GOP leaders.

The schism among Republicans escalated after the 2022 elections, when May — who makes a living as a campaign consultant for Republicans who match his ideology – helped unseat at least one GOP leader.

The majority caucus then set a new rule that members couldn’t work to oust their fellow Republicans – a rule May called unfair targeting of his livelihood. The 17 Freedom Caucus members who refused to sign the pledge, likening it to a “blood oath,” were booted from the main caucus. And the House GOP civil war commenced.

May no longer has a leadership title with the caucus. Elections in July made freshman Rep. Jordan Pace of Goose Creek the chairman, and two other members became co-vice-chairmen.

Pace had no comment on the filing Friday evening.

The Freedom Caucus is losing four members this year who opted not to seek re-election – including two who lost their bids to Congress. But May has said he expects membership to return to 20 after the November election.

May easily defeated his primary challenger in June with 68% of the vote in the district that spans the area of Lexington County between Cayce, Red Bank and Gaston. He is not facing any Democrat or third-party candidate in November, although he is facing a write-in challenger.

SC Daily Gazette is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. SC Daily Gazette maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seanna Adcox for questions: info@scdailygazette.com. Follow SC Daily Gazette on Facebook and X.

COLUMBIA — South Carolina’s attorney general is questioning whether a major fundraising platform for Democrats committed fraud. State Democratic leaders and a representative of the platform contend the allegations are nonsense.

The allegations are outlined in a letter released Monday from Attorney General Alan Wilson to the CEO of Massachusetts-based ActBlue — a platform that processes donations to Democratic campaigns. ActBlue acts as a pass-through, sending donations made online to candidates in exchange for a percentage fee.

Wilson says ActBlue may have split large donations into smaller donations to avoid campaign limits, which he likened to a “smurfing” money-laundering scheme. He also says the platform may have allowed for “straw donors,” when one person makes a donation on behalf of another.

In the letter, Wilson writes that his office found specific examples of South Carolina donors making so many contributions that it appeared “implausible and highly suspicious.” The letter makes no direct accusations. Sprinkled throughout are terms such as “may,” “if true” and “raise the question.” It asks for additional information about the process that ActBlue uses to verify donor information.

“Alarmingly, some of these individuals list their occupations as ‘unemployed’ or report jobs that could not be reasonably commensurate to the total amount of financial contributions made by others in similar positions,” he wrote. “The allegations also raise the question of whether contributions were made without the reported donors’ consent or awareness, which is equally troubling.”

The information is based on public records, according to the letter. It does not specify whether the donations were made to state or federal candidates, although it does say that either could be in violation of the law.

The letter was sent to ActBlue on Thursday. Wilson is asking for a response by Sept. 6.

In a statement, an ActBlue spokesperson declined to address Wilson’s letter specifically but said the platform enforces strict anti-fraud policies. The spokesperson also confirmed the platform is cooperating with Wilson.

“We are aware of recent attempts to spread misinformation about our platform,” the statement reads. “These false so-called ‘allegations’ are intentionally designed to mislead the public.”

State Democratic leaders also dismissed the claims from Wilson, saying that a donation made through ActBlue includes all the same required information as any other political donation.

“It’s all reported. It’s all there. There’s no way to do straw donors,” Jay Parmley, state executive director for the Democratic party, told the Gazette Monday afternoon. “(Wilson) would rather make a stupid point that has no basis in fact than doing a little bit of research.”

Parmley described ActBlue as a “godsend” that made it much easier for candidates to receive donations.

“This is not going to go anywhere, but (Wilson is) going to try and confuse the electorate, make people think there’s something wrong,” Parmley said.

This is not the first time Republicans have raised questions about ActBlue.

Virginia’s attorney general, Jason Miyares, sent a similar letter in early August. Indiana’s attorney general Todd Rokita announced his office was looking into “allegations” last Wednesday. Both are Republicans.

In Maryland, right-wing filmmaker James O’Keefe alleged a laundering operation for donations through ActBlue in the spring based on information that experts dismissed as dubious.

Whitney Michael, a senior advisor with Wilson’s office, did not provide specifics about what prompted the letter other than saying the issue was “brought to our attention.”

“This isn’t a blue or a red issue. This is a transparency issue,” Michael said.

Michael said that ActBlue has promised to provide additional information, and next steps would be based on that information.

Fake donations do have a history in South Carolina.

In 2012, then-Lt. Gov. Ken Ard resigned after being indicted for campaign violations. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five years’ probation and 300 hours of public service.

This included a straw-donor scheme that involved Ard giving money to others to be donated to back to the campaign, falsely inflating the number of donations that he received. He also paid a $48,000 ethics fine for using money from his campaign to pay for personal items, like clothes, football tickets and a flat-screen TV.

SC Daily Gazette is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. SC Daily Gazette maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seanna Adcox for questions: info@scdailygazette.com. Follow SC Daily Gazette on Facebook and X.

Four years ago, Sen. Penry Gustafson stunned political observers when she narrowly beat long-time Democratic incumbent Vincent Sheheen to flip the Senate seat that spans the Midlands to the North Carolina border. Now, a year after voting to block a near-total abortion ban, she’s fighting to fend off a GOP challenger.

Gustafson, R-Camden, is among 16 incumbent senators — just over a third of the 46-member chamber — facing an opponent in the June 11 primaries.

She faces a well-funded candidate who’s better known in an area of her district that’s grown since her 2020 upset. The Legislature’s post-census redrawing of voting lines put more of Lancaster County in the district and reduced its share of Kershaw County, where she’s from and previously served in the county GOP leadership.

Allen Blackmon, of rural Heath Springs, is in his second term on the Lancaster County Council.

“I have no idea what’s going to happen on Tuesday,” Gustafson told the SC Daily Gazette on Thursday. “I think if anybody gets lazy and takes a vote for granted that’s when they lose, and that’s what happened to Sen. Vincent Sheheen.”

In 2020, Gustafson bested Sheheen — a 16-year senator who was twice Democrats’ gubernatorial nominee — by 2 percentage points, or less than 900 votes. She was among three Republicans that November who flipped Senate seats long held by Democrats, giving the Senate GOP caucus a 14-seat advantage over Democrats.

She says she’s built a conservative voting record in the four years since.

Blackmon contends her constituent service is poor, and he’ll do a better job responding to requests. He also disagrees with some of her votes, he said, chiefly her vote against the so-called “fetal heartbeat” law that effectively banned abortions last year at the sixth week of pregnancy.

Gustafson was among the chambers’ five female senators, who called themselves “ sister senators,” who helped defeat the near-total ban passed by House Republicans that would have made abortions illegal from the moment a pregnancy is medically detectable.

In 2021, Gustafson was among all but one Republican in the Senate who voted for the Legislature’s first six-week ban, which temporarily took effect in summer 2022 — after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade — and was thrown out in January 2023 as violating the state constitution.

Then in February 2023, she initially voted for the Senate version of the next six-week ban, before helping defeat the House version and ultimately voting against the bill signed by Gov. Henry McMaster. Her opposition brought a censure from the local GOP leadership in her home county.

The other two GOP “ sister senators” who voted “no” to the law upheld by the state Supreme Court last August also face primary challenges.

“We all wanted to reduce abortion,” Gustafson said. “I think all of us wanted to. It was just a matter of when and how.”

Abortion foes pledge to try again next year with a bill banning abortion from the outset of pregnancy. They’re hoping additional flips in the Senate will give them the necessary votes to overcome a filibuster in the Senate to push through a more restrictive law.

District 27, which covers much of Kershaw as well as Lancaster and Chesterfield counties along the North Carolina border, is considered safely Republican according to an analysis by the League of Women Voters. Whoever wins the primary will face Democrat Yokima Cureton in November.

If re-elected, Gustafson said she wants to work on legislation addressing the state’s surging energy needs, and investments in water and sewer systems, particularly in rural Chesterfield County.

As for Blackmon’s accusations of poor constituent services, Gustafson said she has done her best with the limited resources of the Statehouse.

Senators who aren’t in leadership lack staff, and in a chamber where seniority rules, freshmen aren’t in leadership. She notes she shares a single administrative assistant.

“Constituent services is something I think most of us strive to do. I try to balance that with my legislative work, which is the number one thing about the job,” she told the Gazette. “And I do the best I can do. But my gosh, I’m not perfect, and occasionally things slip by.

“I have loved every minute of being a state senator, and it truly would be an honor to me to keep serving, to keep doing what I’m doing, and to get better at it,” she said.

Blackmon, who spent 33 years with the state Department of Revenue, said he wants to double down on constituent services if elected.

“That is one thing I do well. I take people’s phone calls. I return phone calls, and, people have problems, I try to help them solve them,” he said.

On the legislative side, Blackmon wants to look at ways to reform the tax system, support public schools and invest in roads.

Blackmon was not the only person interested in challenging Gustafson. Rep. Richard Yow, R-Chesterfield, a friend of Blackmon, was also planning to run.

“I was running, without a doubt,” Yow told the Gazette.

Like Blackmon, he said Gustafson is not providing good constituent services and has not been visible in his area of the district.

Yow said he has known Blackmon for a decade. After talking it over, the two agreed that Blackmon would challenge Gustafson, and Yow would seek re-election to his House seat.

“I’m glad to support him,” Yow said. “No beef. No bone. I support him 100%.”

If money is any indication, Blackmon may have a shot. He has collected about $80,000 in donations plus took out a $50,000 loan. As of May 27, he had about $36,000 cash available.

Gustafson has raised about $62,000. She had a $7,300 balance, as of the pre-primary filings.

But Blackmon said his main campaigning is through direct contact with voters, knocking on doors and making phone calls.

“The path to victory is always direct voter contact,” he said.

SC Daily Gazette is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. SC Daily Gazette maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seanna Adcox for questions: info@scdailygazette.com. Follow SC Daily Gazette on Facebook and Twitter.

COLUMBIA — Two long-shot candidates excluded from South Carolina’s presidential primaries have filed separate lawsuits in federal court — one trying to get on the Democratic ballot, the other trying to kick former President Donald Trump off the Republican ballot.

Both have been rejected by their parties in South Carolina and face extremely long odds of winning their cases here.

But they’re undeterred.

Cenk Uygur, who sued the South Carolina Democratic Party and a host of state officials, says he’s willing to take his fight all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The founder of the progressive news outlet Young Turks TV wants to challenge President Joe Biden in Democratic presidential primaries. But to do that, he’s challenging a clause in the U.S. Constitution that limits the presidency to citizens born in the United States.

Uygur was born in Turkey, moved to the United States at 8 years old and later became a naturalized citizen.

The Los Angeles resident launched his legal battle in South Carolina federal court Dec. 22 after he filed to be a candidate on the presidential primary ballot here and paid the required $20,000 registration fee to the state Democratic Party.

The party did not include him, citing the Constitution.

He argues the cited section, which dates to the original document ratified in 1788, is discriminatory and has been nullified by subsequent amendments.

South Carolina’s among seven states that have kept Uygur off the ballot, while six others have listed him, according to his campaign.

But he picked South Carolina as the place to sue for several reasons, Uygur told the SC Daily Gazette.

For starters, it will be a new issue for the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. The federal court for South Carolina cases has issued no rulings on the clause, unlike at least five others that swatted down a similar attempt by naturalized citizen Abdul Karim Hassan in 2012.

South Carolina’s status as the first-in-the-nation Democratic primary recognized by the national party also played a role, Uygur said.

“It’s an early state, and we need that to be able to get a judgment quickly enough to affect the rest of the race,” he said.

Plus, he believes South Carolina was “particularly egregious” in taking his $20,000 filing fee and then not returning it after rejecting his candidacy. He says the money came from “grassroots donors,” though who’s given him money and how much is unknown. He hasn’t filed any federal campaign disclosures.

That $20,000 is collected by all applicants and sent to the state Election Commission to help pay for the primary. The state party makes clear it is nonrefundable, said state Democratic Party Chairwoman Christale Spain.

The three candidates “who met the requirements to be on the Palmetto State’s first in the nation Democratic primary ballot” were certified, she said in a statement.

They are President Joe Biden and two other long-shot candidates: U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota and self-help author Marianne Williamson.

That primary will be Feb. 3. Early voting starts Jan. 22. Absentee ballots to overseas and military ballots have already been sent out.

But Uygur said he’s unconcerned about the timeline. The court can find a solution if it sides with him, he said.

Even if Uygur loses primaries nationwide but still wins the court case, it will be worth it, he said.

His argument is essentially that the Constitution is unconstitutional, based on several later amendments and federal laws.

It largely rests on the 14th Amendment, which says all persons “born or naturalized in the United States” are citizens, and no state can diminish the rights of citizens. Ratified in 1868, the amendment was about recognizing and protecting former slaves as citizens. Congress required former Confederate states like South Carolina to agree to it before they were readmitted to the Union.

But Uygur argues it also overturns the Founding Fathers’ requirement that presidents must be a “natural born citizen.”

The Republican suing

On the Republican side, John Castro’s lawsuit to remove Trump from South Carolina’s primary ballot is based on a different clause of the 14th Amendment.

He makes similar arguments that led to the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling last month that tossed Trump from that state’s GOP ballot and the Maine secretary of state deciding on her own to remove Trump, who is appealing both decisions.

Trump is among seven Republicans certified for South Carolina’s Feb. 24 ballot. Castro himself is not.

Nevertheless, Castro, a tax attorney who said this is his first foray into election law, claims Trump’s presence on the ballot damages his campaign.

He applied and sent in a check for the state GOP’s $50,000 registration fee, causing the party to initially list him among candidates on a press release in late October. But then he canceled the check.

State GOP Chairman Drew McKissick dismissed Castro’s arguments completely, saying they come from someone who “tried to pay his filing fee with a bad check,” which is why he’s not on the ballot.

In South Carolina, unlike other states, the political parties themselves — not the state election agency or a lone elected official — decide who’s eligible for their primary ballots.

“(Castro) is trying to frustrate the will of voters in South Carolina, and we’ve been able to stop that here in South Carolina,” McKissick said during an interview on Newsmax.

He notes Castro’s lawsuit in South Carolina, one of several states where he’s sued, dates back to last fall. “There’s been no word from the federal judge” since, and the ballots are a done deal, McKissick said.

The case filed Sept. 7 against Trump and the South Carolina Election Commission claims Trump is disqualified from the ballot due to his actions during the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. As other anti-Trump lawsuits have done, he cites the clause in the post-Civil War 14th Amendment that bars people from office who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the Constitution.

Castro, of Mansfield, Texas, says it’s Trump’s actions he opposes, not his policies.

“There’s almost nothing about Trump’s political policies that I disagree with,” Castro said.

To successfully sue, people must show the court they’re directly harmed by their reason for suing.

In Castro’s case, he argues Trump’s presence on the ballot pulls votes and donations from his own candidacy — an argument that will be very hard to make with Castro not actually on the South Carolina ballot. After getting tossed, he tweaked the lawsuit to also sue the state Republican Party, claiming the $50,000 registration fee is an unconstitutional burden.

“Their first argument, obviously, is going to be ‘he’s not even on the ballot,’” Castro told SC Daily Gazette. So, “the second claim in my lawsuit is that you guys effectively blocked me from … the ballot by setting an outrageously high and unconstitutional fee.”

Other states charge similar fees.

Idaho Republicans also charge $50,000 for example, while the Democrats charge $2,500. But many charge far less. In Colorado, the fee is just $500.

In South Carolina, the whole $50,000 doesn’t go to the Republican Party. Like the Democrats, Republicans send $20,000 to the state. But the GOP charges an additional $30,000 to keep. Regardless, party officials say, the fact he sent in a check that was no good shows Castro is not a serious candidate and lacks standing to sue.

Castro said it’s not that “the check bounced,” as McKissick characterized it.

Rather, he decided that was too much money to lose and stopped payment.

Castro told SC Daily Gazette he was prepared to dip into his child’s college fund to pay the fee. But then the First Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in another case brought by Castro that the fact he paid a filing fee in that state did not give him standing.

Castro estimated he’s spent $40,000 of his own money on his campaign so far. He didn’t want to risk losing $50,000 without a guarantee that would help his case.

No matter the outcome, Castro said, the lawsuits have given him far more attention than he would have otherwise received, without spending much money.

“Kill multiple birds with one stone: You get to stand behind your principles. It’s your breakout moment,” he said. “People that would have never known your name are now going to know your name. And that can lay the foundation in the future for a more serious run.”

SC Daily Gazette is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. SC Daily Gazette maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seanna Adcox for questions: info@scdailygazette.com. Follow SC Daily Gazette on Facebook and Twitter.