Alex Mierjeski, ProPublica

The Trump administration has vowed to go after anyone who got lower mortgage rates by claiming more than one primary residence on their loan papers.

President Donald Trump has used it as a justification to target political foes, including a governor on the Federal Reserve Board, a Democratic U.S. senator and a state attorney general.

Real estate experts say claiming primary residences on different mortgages at the same time is often legal and rarely prosecuted.

But if administration officials continue the campaign, mortgage records show there’s another place they could look: Trump’s own Cabinet.

Underscoring how common the practice is, ProPublica found that at least three of Trump’s Cabinet members call multiple homes their primary residences on mortgages. We discovered the loans while examining financial disclosure forms, county real estate records and publicly available mortgage data provided by Hunterbrook Media.

Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer entered into two primary-residence mortgages in quick succession, including for a second home near a country club in Arizona, where she’s known to vacation. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has primary-residence mortgages in New Jersey and Washington, D.C. Lee Zeldin, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, has one primary-residence mortgage in Long Island and another in Washington, D.C., according to loan records.

In a flurry of interviews and rapid-fire posts on X, Bill Pulte, the Federal Housing Finance Agency director, has led the charge in accusing Trump opponents of mortgage fraud. “If somebody is claiming two primary residences, that is not appropriate, and we will refer it for criminal investigation,” Pulte said last month.

A political donor to the president and heir to a housing company fortune, Pulte’s posts online tease big developments and criminal referrals, drawing reposts from Trump himself and promises of swift consequences. “Fraud will not be tolerated in President Trump’s housing market,” Pulte has warned.

Real estate experts told ProPublica that, in its bid to wrest control of the historically independent Fed and go after political enemies, the Trump administration has mischaracterized mortgage rules. Its justification for launching criminal investigations, they said, could also apply to the Trump Cabinet members.

All three Cabinet members denied wrongdoing. In a statement, a White House spokesperson said: “This is just another hit piece from a left-wing dark money group that constantly attempts to smear President Trump’s incredible Cabinet members. Unlike [Fed Gov.] Lisa ‘Corrupt’ Cook who blatantly and intentionally committed mortgage fraud, Secretary DeRemer, Secretary Duffy, and Administrator Zeldin own multiple residences, and they have followed the law and they are fully compliant with all ethical obligations.”

Mortgages for a person’s main home tend to receive more favorable terms than for a second home or an investment property. That includes better interest rates and the ability to borrow more money.

The idea is that borrowers are more likely to pay back — and less likely to default on — a loan attached to the home they actually live in. That makes those loans less risky for lenders. Interest rates are typically a quarter- to a half-point lower for primary mortgages, according to Pulte. On the low end, that could save around $75 each month over the life of a 30-year, 5% interest, half-million-dollar loan — or a total of around $25,000.

Standard mortgage documents commonly include an occupancy clause that requires the borrower to use the property as their principal residence for at least a year. They also include a section where borrowers can check a box when the mortgage is for a second home.

Misrepresenting occupancy status is not rare, according to a widely cited 2023 study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. In interviews, real estate lawyers said that mortgage lenders are typically well aware of their clients’ other loans and sometimes even encourage the primary-residence language for second homes.

They also pointed to a mundane reason that innocent mistakes are common: Homebuyers simply sign stacks of forms without reading them.

“Few consumers understand this issue, and if there is someone at fault here, it is likely the loan officer who likely advised them to sign up for this loan that obviously wasn’t for their primary residence,” said real estate lawyer Doug Miller. “Loan officers who are competing for business will often quote lower rates in order to get a customer’s business.”

Mortgage fraud is rarely prosecuted, according to real estate lawyers and federal sentencing data. Pulte has pointed to a case from 2016 in which a California woman was found guilty of obtaining multiple loans for condos that she falsely stated would be her primary residence. But that case had an added layer of fraud: The woman never intended to live in the homes. She was secretly being paid because she had good credit to act as a front for the true buyer of the properties, to whom they were later transferred. She later defaulted on the loans, causing more than half a million dollars in losses for the lenders.

Lawyers told ProPublica that determining ill intent would be key to prosecute. “Fraud requires the borrower to be aware that the borrower was making a false representation,” said Jon Goodman, an attorney focused on real estate at Frascona, Joiner, Goodman and Greenstein.

But Pulte has framed the issue in black-and-white terms: “Your second home is not your primary home,” he warned in one recent post on X.

By that standard, Trump’s labor secretary, Chavez-DeRemer, could be in the wrong.

In her financial disclosure form, she listed two mortgages on personal residences, both obtained in 2021. Mortgage records show her home is in Happy Valley, a city near Portland where Chavez-DeRemer served as mayor before being elected to represent the area in the U.S. House.

She and her husband, Shawn DeRemer, who leads an anesthesia company in Portland, refinanced their longtime Oregon home in January 2021. Two months later, the couple bought a newly built house near a golf course in Fountain Hills, Arizona.

The pair had previously enjoyed vacationing in Arizona, according to news reports and social media posts. (In one incident that made the news, Chavez-DeRemer was briefly hospitalized after a golf cart accident on her way back from watching a Sonoran Desert sunset.)

The mortgage agreement for the Arizona property required them to occupy the home as their “principal residence” for at least a year, barring “extenuating circumstances” or the lender allowing them to violate the stipulation.

A spokesperson for Chavez-DeRemer said that the couple bought the Arizona home with the intent to retire there, but then Chavez-DeRemer decided to run for Congress representing her Oregon district and did not move.

“This is nothing more than a left-wing rag inventing a story just to attack the Trump Administration. It’s common for families to refinance then buy a home with future plans in mind — trying to spin that as some type of scandal is pure nonsense,” said spokesperson Courtney Parella.

In response to questions from ProPublica, a White House official said that although DeRemer opted to stay in Oregon, her husband “continued to move forward with the process of becoming” an Arizona resident. Political donation records list his home in Oregon as recently as late 2023.

Duffy, Trump’s transportation secretary, and his wife also have two primary-residence mortgages, obtained a few years apart.

In August 2021, the Duffys, who have nine children, purchased a large $2 million home in Far Hills, New Jersey, about an hour’s drive from Manhattan, where Rachel Campos-Duffy works as a Fox News host.

They got a $1.6 million mortgage to purchase the property, and documents show it was a “principal residence” loan.

In February, after Duffy took the job in Trump’s cabinet, the couple bought another home, in Washington, D.C. Again, they got a principal-residence mortgage, this time for $1.76 million. Both Duffy and his wife are listed as borrowers on both mortgages, which came from the same bank.

It’s not clear where Sean Duffy lives most of the time, and a Department of Transportation spokesperson declined to answer questions about where Duffy and his wife each make their primary home. In late May, several months after they purchased the Washington home, “Fox & Friends Weekend” ran a segment in which Rachel Campos-Duffy cooked a “Make America Healthy Again” breakfast for host Steve Doocy. Sean Duffy and some of the couple’s children were also in the segment, and it was filmed in the New Jersey home.

Duffy’s spokesperson said in a statement that after being confirmed, “Sean purchased a home in Washington D.C. where he works full-time. The home in DC is not a rental, investment or vacation property. The same bank holds both mortgages and was fully informed of Secretary Duffy’s new employment location and need for a DC residence.”

A White House spokesperson said, “The bank, not the Secretary, determined and classified both mortgages as primary residences.”

Like the Duffys, Lee Zeldin, the EPA administrator, and his wife also have two concurrent primary-residence mortgages.

One, obtained in 2007, is on a home in Shirley, New York, on Long Island, which Zeldin represented in Congress for several years. Last year, Zeldin and his wife obtained a second mortgage, for $712,500, on a property in Washington, D.C., a short walk from the EPA’s headquarters. Both are primary-residence mortgages.

An EPA spokesperson said in a statement that Zeldin’s primary residence was previously on Long Island but is now in Washington. The spokesperson didn’t respond to questions about where his wife lives. “Administrator Zeldin followed ALL steps to complete the move in accordance with all laws, rules, and contracts, notifying his mortgage company, insurance company, and local government,” the spokesperson said. “EVERY ‘I’ was dotted and ‘t’ was crossed 1000% by the book without exception.”

The dual mortgages identified by ProPublica among Trump’s cabinet secretaries resemble the loans obtained by U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff, whom Trump accused of mortgage fraud.

In May, Pulte referred Schiff to the Justice Department for taking out a primary-residence mortgage in Maryland, for a home he purchased in 2003 after being elected to the House, while also claiming his primary home was in Burbank, California, in the district he represented. Schiff and his wife refinanced the Maryland home several times as a primary residence, Pulte noted, until a 2020 refinance in which they reclassified it as a secondary home.

“Schiff appears to have falsified records in order to receive favorable loan terms,” Pulte concluded in a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Representatives for Schiff called the allegations “transparently false” and said his lenders had “full knowledge of the senator’s year-round bicoastal work obligations” and “his use of two homes for that reason.” Schiff, according to his office, navigated the two mortgages in consultation with a House lawyer.

Pulte made similar allegations in a criminal referral about New York Attorney General Letitia James, alleging she may have committed fraud by getting a primary-residence mortgage for a home in Virginia, even though her position required her to live in New York. Her lawyer has said James helped a family member buy the property and notified the mortgage broker at the time that it would not be her primary residence. James became one of Trump’s top political enemies after she brought a fraud lawsuit against the president and his company in 2022. Representatives for James have called the fraud claims made against her politically motivated and false. (Pulte did not respond to a request for comment from ProPublica.)

Pulte’s most consequential allegations thus far were made against Cook, a Federal Reserve governor. Trump has been going after Fed Chair Jerome Powell for months for not lowering interest rates, even raising the specter that he would take the unprecedented step of attempting to fire the chair. Pulte’s criminal referral against Cook presented Trump with another avenue for bending the traditionally independent Fed to his will, securing a majority of the Fed’s board by firing Cook, a move that Cook has sued to block.

Pulte pointed to mortgage records that show that within just a couple of weeks, Cook signed primary-residence mortgages for homes in Michigan and Georgia. Legal experts said the close proximity was a red flag but that much was still unknown, including Cook’s intent and what her lenders were told. Pulte also flagged a third property, in Massachusetts, that Cook represented as a second home in mortgage documents but as an investment property in subsequent financial disclosures. Investment properties can be hit with higher mortgage rates than second homes.

“3 strikes and you’re out,” he posted on X.

Cook’s lawyers have denied that she committed mortgage fraud but have not provided a detailed explanation of the context for the various mortgages. They argued in court this week that her loans cannot be legally used as grounds to terminate her.

The Justice Department has begun investigating all three Trump foes singled out in Pulte’s referrals, according to news reports. The department has issued subpoenas in Cook’s case, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

ProPublica’s review of mortgage agreements by Trump cabinet officials shows that some made clear to lenders they were purchasing second homes.

When Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for example, got a mortgage for his home near the Kennedy Compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, the agreement included a rider making it clear he would be using it as a second home.

In 2023, while Kristi Noem was governor of South Dakota, she supplemented her income by secretly accepting a cut of the money she raised for a nonprofit that promotes her political career, tax records show.

In what experts described as a highly unusual arrangement, the nonprofit routed funds to a personal company of Noem’s that had recently been established in Delaware. The payment totaled $80,000 that year, a significant boost to her roughly $130,000 government salary. Since the nonprofit is a so-called dark money group — one that’s not required to disclose the names of its donors — the original source of the money remains unknown.

Noem then failed to disclose the $80,000 payment to the public. After President Donald Trump selected Noem to be his secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, she had to release a detailed accounting of her assets and sources of income from 2023 on. She did not include the income from the dark money group on her disclosure form, which experts called a likely violation of federal ethics requirements.

Experts told ProPublica it was troubling that Noem was personally taking money that came from political donors. In a filing, the group, a nonprofit called American Resolve Policy Fund, described the $80,000 as a payment for fundraising. The organization said Noem had brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars.

There is nothing remarkable about a politician raising money for nonprofits and other groups that promote their campaigns or agendas. What’s unusual, experts said, is for a politician to keep some of the money for themselves.

“If donors to these nonprofits are not just holding the keys to an elected official’s political future but also literally providing them with their income, that’s new and disturbing,” said Daniel Weiner, a former Federal Election Commission attorney who now leads the Brennan Center’s work on campaign finance.

ProPublica discovered details of the payment in the annual tax form of American Resolve Policy Fund, which is part of a network of political groups that promote Noem and her agenda. The nonprofit describes its mission as “fighting to preserve America for the next generation.” There’s little evidence in the public domain that the group has done much. In its first year, its main expenditures were paying Noem and covering the cost of some unspecified travel. It also maintains social media accounts devoted to promoting Noem. It has 100 followers on X.

In a statement, Noem’s lawyer, Trevor Stanley, said, “Then-Governor Noem fully complied with the letter and the spirit of the law” and that the Office of Government Ethics, which processes disclosure forms for federal officials, “analyzed and cleared her financial information in regards to this entity.” Stanley did not respond to follow-up questions about whether the ethics office was aware of the $80,000 payment.

Stanley also said that “Secretary Noem fully disclosed all of her income on public documents that are readily available.” Asked for evidence of that, given that Noem didn’t report the $80,000 payment on her federal financial disclosure form, Stanley did not respond.

Before being named Homeland Security secretary, overseeing immigration enforcement, Noem spent two decades in South Dakota’s government and the U.S. House of Representatives, drawing a public servant’s salary. Her husband, Bryon Noem, runs a small insurance brokerage with two offices in the state. Between his company and his real estate holdings, he has at least $2 million in assets, according to Noem’s filing.

While she is among the least wealthy members of Trump’s Cabinet, her personal spending habits have attracted notice. Noem was photographed wearing a gold Rolex Cosmograph Daytona watch that costs nearly $50,000 as she toured the Salvadoran prison where her agency is sending immigrants. In April, after her purse was stolen at a Washington, D.C., restaurant, it emerged she was carrying $3,000 in cash, which an official said was for “dinner, activities, and Easter gifts.” She was criticized for using taxpayer money as governor to pay for expenses related to trips to Paris, to Canada for bear hunting and to Houston to have dental work done. At the time, Noem denied misusing public funds.

Noem’s personal company, an LLC called Ashwood Strategies, shares a name with one of her horses. It was registered in Delaware early in her second term as South Dakota governor, around 1 p.m. on June 22, 2023. Four minutes later, the nonprofit American Resolve Policy Fund was incorporated in Delaware too.

American Resolve raised $1.1 million in 2023, according to its tax filing. The group reported that it had zero employees, and what it did with that money is largely unclear.

In 2023, the nonprofit spent only about $220,000 of its war chest — with more than a third of that going to Noem’s LLC. The rest mostly went toward administrative expenses and a roughly $84,000 travel budget. It’s not clear whose travel the group paid for.

The nonprofit reported that it sent the $80,000 fundraising fee to Noem’s LLC as payment for bringing in $800,000, a 10% cut. A professional fundraiser who also raised money for the group was paid a lower rate of 7%.

In the intervening years, American Resolve has maintained a low public profile. In March, it purchased Facebook ads attacking a local news outlet in South Dakota, which had been reporting on Noem’s use of government credit cards. Noem’s lawyer did not answer questions about whether the group paid her more money after 2023, the most recent year for which its tax filing is available.

The nonprofit has an affiliated political committee, American Resolve PAC, that’s been more active, at least in public. Touting Noem’s conservative leadership under a picture of her staring off into the sky, its website said the PAC was created to put “Kristi and her team on the ground in key races across America.” Noem traveled the country last year attending events the PAC sponsored in support of Republican candidates.

American Resolve’s treasurer referred questions to Noem’s lawyer. In his statement, Noem’s lawyer said she “did not establish, finance, maintain, or control American Resolve Fund. She was simply a vender for a non-profit entity.”

While Noem failed to report the fundraising income Ashwood Strategies received on her federal financial disclosure, she did provide some other details. She described the LLC as involving “personal activities outside my official gubernatorial capacity” and noted that it received the $140,000 advance for her book “No Going Back.” The LLC also had a bank account with between $100,001 and $250,000 in it and at least $50,000 of “livestock and equipment,” she reported.

The fact that Ashwood Strategies is Noem’s company only emerged through the confirmation process for her Trump Cabinet post. South Dakota has minimal disclosure rules for elected officials, and Noem had not previously divulged that she created a side business while she was governor.

Noem’s outside income may have run afoul of South Dakota law, according to Lee Schoenbeck, a veteran Republican politician and attorney who was until recently the head of the state Senate. Thelaw requires top officials, including the governor, to devote their full time to their official roles.

“There’s no way the governor is supposed to have a private side business that the public doesn’t know about,” Schoenbeck told ProPublica. “It would clearly not be appropriate.”

Noem’s lawyer said South Dakota law allowed her to receive income from the nonprofit.

Former President Donald Trump’s social media company outsourced jobs to workers in Mexico even as Trump publicly railed against outsourcing on the campaign trail and threatened heavy tariffs on companies that send jobs south of the border.

The firm’s use of workers in Mexico was confirmed by a spokesperson for Trump Media, which operates the Truth Social platform. The workers were hired through another entity to code and perform other technical duties, according to a person with knowledge of Trump Media. The reliance on foreign labor was met with outrage among the company's own staff, who accused its leadership of betraying their “America First” ideals, the person said.

The outsourcing to Mexico helped prompt a recent whistleblower letter from staff to Trump Media’s board that has been roiling the company.

That complaint, reported by ProPublica last month, calls for the board to fire CEO Devin Nunes, a former Republican congressman. The letter alleges he has “severely” mismanaged the company. It also asserts the company is hiring “America Last” — with Nunes imposing a directive to hire only foreign contractors at the expense of “American workers who are deeply committed to our mission.”

“This approach not only contradicts the America First principles we stand for but also raises concerns about the quality, dedication, and alignment of our workforce with our core values,” the complaint reads.

A Trump Media spokesperson said the company uses “two individual workers” in Mexico. “Presenting the fact that [Trump Media] works with precisely two specialist contractors in Mexico as some sort of sensational scandal is just the latest in a long line of defamatory conspiracy theories invented by the serial fabricators at ProPublica,” the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson declined to answer other questions about the company’s Mexican contractors, including how much they’ve been paid, how many have been used over time and how their hiring squares with Trump’s promises to punish firms that send jobs outside of the U.S. The Trump campaign did not respond to questions.

For a company of its prominence, Trump Media has a tiny permanent staff, employing just a few dozen people as of the end of last year, only a portion of whom work on the Truth Social technology.

Trump Media’s hiring of Mexican coders also prompted frustration within the staff, the person with knowledge of the company said, because they were perceived by staff to not have the technical expertise to do the work.

On its homepage, Truth Social bills itself as “Proudly made in the United States of America. 🇺🇸”

Both as president and in his campaign for a second term, Trump has criticized companies that send jobs abroad, particularly to Mexico. If elected, he has pledged to “stop outsourcing” and “punish” companies that send jobs abroad.

For example, Trump recently threatened agricultural machinery giant John Deere with tariffs if it went through with plans to move some of its manufacturing to Mexico.

“I’m just notifying John Deere right now, if you do that, we’re putting a 200 percent tariff on everything you want to sell into the United States,” Trump said.

He has made a similar threat against automakers building cars in Mexico, demanding they hire American workers and manufacture domestically.

“I'm not going to let them build a factory right across the border,” Trump promised, “and sell millions of cars into the United States and destroy Detroit further."

Trump owns nearly 60% of the social media company, a stake worth around $3.5 billion at the stock’s Friday closing price — more than half of the former president’s net worth.

The results of the election are widely seen as a major factor in the future value of the company. As the Nov. 5 election draws closer, Trump Media’s stock price has fluctuated wildly even as little or nothing has changed in the company’s actual business, which generates scant revenue. The stock closed Friday down 40% from its recent peak on Tuesday. Despite that drop, it has still nearly doubled since the beginning of October.

One Trump Media board member, Eric Swider, offered a defense of relying on foreign labor in a statement to ProPublica from his lawyer.

“President Trump maintains an America First policy, which includes prioritizing American workers. Trump Media, however, is a global multi-media company. For a global multi-media company to utilize subcontractors, which in turn may utilize coders located in a foreign country, is a practice common to the industry,” the statement said. “Such global multi-media companies like Trump Media would have no right to control the employment decisions of its subcontractors, which may employ workers in a multitude of different countries in addition to the United States.”

Swider, a businessman based in Puerto Rico, serves on the board alongside better known figures such as Donald Trump Jr. and Linda McMahon, the former Trump cabinet member who is now co-chair of his transition team.

The outsourcing to Mexico is not the only instance of Trump Media relying on foreign workers. ProPublica previously reported that the company used a foreign firm to source labor in the Balkans.

Nunes, for his part, is quoted in a new book about Truth Social, “Disappearing the President,” boasting about his ability to keep costs down at Trump Media, though he didn’t mention outsourcing.

“Nobody grew as fast as we did. I don't think there's any other example even close to us out there, especially with as little money as we spent,” Nunes said. “Don't forget that. We built this for a fraction of what these other companies were built for.”

Federal Judge Aileen M. Cannon, the controversial jurist who tossed out the classified documents criminal case against Donald Trump in July, failed to disclose her attendance at a May 2023 banquet funded by a conservative law school.

Cannon went to an event in Arlington, Va. honoring the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, according to documents obtained from the Law and Economics Center at George Mason University. At a lecture and private dinner, she sat among members of Scalia’s family, fellow Federalist Society members and more than 30 conservative federal judges. Organizers billed the event as “an excellent opportunity to connect with judicial colleagues.”

A 2006 rule, intended to shine a light on judges’ attendance at paid seminars that could pose conflicts or influence decisions, requires them to file disclosure forms for such trips within 30 days and make them public on the court’s website.

It’s not the first time she has failed to fully comply with the rule.

In 2021 and 2022, Cannon took weeklong trips to the luxurious Sage Lodge in Pray, Montana, for legal colloquiums sponsored by George Mason, which named its law school for Scalia thanks to $30 million in gifts that conservative judicial kingmaker Leonard Leo helped organize.

Current rates for standard rooms at Sage Lodge can exceed $1,000 per night, depending on the season. With both Montana trips, Cannon’s required seminar disclosures were not posted until NPR reporters asked about the omissions this year as part of a broader national investigation of gaps in judicial disclosures.

Cannon did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

In response to questions from ProPublica, the clerk in the Southern District of Florida wrote in an email that Cannon had filed the Sage Lodge trips with the federal judiciary’s administrative office but had “inadvertently” not taken the second step of posting them on the court’s website. She explained that “Judges often do not realize they must input the information twice.”

The clerk said she had no information about the May 2023 banquet.

“Judges administer the law, and we have a right to expect every judge to comply with the law,” said Virginia Canter, chief ethics counsel for the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Cannon’s husband, Joshua Lorence, a restaurant executive, accompanied her to the 2021 and 2022 colloquiums, which featured noted conservative jurists, lawyers and professors as well as lengthy “afternoon study breaks,” according to records obtained by ProPublica. Cannon emailed university staff to submit airport parking expenses and inquire about rental car reimbursement.

The rule for paid seminars is among the policies set by the Judicial Conference. Federal judges are also required by law to file annual financial disclosures, listing items such as assets, outside income and gifts.

Cannon’s annual disclosure form for 2023, which was due in May and offers another chance to report gifts and reimbursements from outside parties, has yet to be posted. (Cannon reported the two Montana trips on her annual disclosure forms, but the required 30-day privately funded seminar reports had not been posted. In 2021, Cannon incorrectly listed the school as “George Madison University.”)

The court’s administrative office declined to say if she requested a one-time extension to give her until Aug. 13 to file. A spokesperson would not discuss whether she met the deadline or the status of her disclosure, which must be reviewed internally.

Cannon’s performance during almost four years of a lifetime appointment has drawn criticism from lawyers, former federal judges and courtroom observers who told ProPublica that she doesn’t render timely decisions and has made unpredictable rulings in both civil and criminal matters. On July 15, she threw out the case brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith that alleges Trump mishandled classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence; Cannon called Smith’s appointment unconstitutional since he was not nominated by the president and approved by the Senate.

Smith is appealing to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has asked the court to remand her decision and replace her.

By contrast, Trump, who appointed Cannon in 2020 to the Fort Pierce courthouse, has praised her brilliance, and Federalist Society founder Steven Calabresi called her a heroine for throwing out the criminal case against Trump.

For decades, judicial education programs sponsored by George Mason’s Law and Economics Center have drawn in 5,000 state and federal judges and four current Supreme Court justices, according to its website. The school says its programs strive for balance and intellectual rigor. But conference agendas and speaker lists that the university must file with the courts detail lectures and panel discussions built around Federalist Society principles that are associated with conservative legal movements.

Ken Turchi, associate dean for external affairs, said the law school plays no role in judicial disclosures. “Judges’ decisions to submit (or not submit) disclosure forms are theirs alone — it’s a self-reporting process,” he said.

The guest list for the May 2023 Scalia Forum included William H. Pryor Jr., chief judge of the 11th Circuit, which is now hearing Smith’s appeal. Pryor and dinner speaker Kyle Duncan, a 5th Circuit judge, did file their required disclosures for the Scalia dinner.

Pryor’s court has overruled Cannon twice in the Trump case. It sided with the government in September 2022 on a motion for a stay and found that it “had established a substantial likelihood of success on the merits.” In December 2022, it ruled that she erred in naming a special master to examine classified documents seized from Mar-a-Lago. After that decision, Cannon had to dismantle an expensive operation set up by her special master, a senior federal judge in New York.

Gabe Roth, who directs Fix the Court, a nonprofit judicial reform group, said compliance with the privately funded seminar rule has improved in some circuits since his group pressed for compliance with the Administrative Office of the Courts.

“They’re a more effective way for litigants and the public to get a sense of what types of individuals and groups a judge might be hanging out with and learning from,” he said.

Records show that Cannon submitted minor reimbursement requests related to the Scalia Forum trip after she returned, including the 158 miles she drove round trip to the airport. She inquired with George Mason staff about details for an Alaska excursion recommended by a former lawyer in the Trump-era White House Counsel’s Office.

Cannon registered for George Mason’s Hill Country Colloquium at a Texas resort in December 2023 but had to back out for scheduling reasons.

“I hope to join that event, and others, in future years,” she wrote.

This month, former President Donald Trump’s media company announced it was making its first major purchase: technology to help stream TV on Truth Social, its Twitter-like platform.

There was a mystery at the center of the deal: One of the companies on the other side of the transaction, which went unmentioned in Trump Media’s press release but was named in securities filings, is an obscure entity called JedTec LLC. Based in a North Louisiana village, the company has virtually no public footprint and no website, and it is unknown to streaming technology experts.

Interviews and public records reveal that the man behind JedTec is Louisiana energy magnate James E. Davison. A major Republican donor, he is known for his immense influence in state and federal government, including personal friendships with past presidents, and for using his wealth to benefit people in politics.

The acquisition will put Trump’s company in a business relationship with someone with numerous interests before the federal government. Davison, for example, owns a major stake in Genesis Energy, a large oil pipeline and mining firm. A trade group representing Genesis and other publicly traded pipeline firms previously lobbied the Trump administration and lawmakers for a tax break and on environmental issues. Davison’s family also has a stake in a regional bank and owns a small defense contractor. And Davison could benefit if the 2017 Trump tax cut provisions, which expire after next year, are extended.

Davison also has a record of influence with the Trump White House, successfully leveraging connections there in 2019 to win a $17 million federal grant to build roads, according to one Louisiana official.

The streaming deal crystalizes the sort of conflicts that Trump’s business interests pose as he vies for a second term.

Before his first term, Trump rejected calls to divest from his business. Trump’s years in the White House were marred by controversy as political groups and foreign governments spent millions of dollars at his properties.

But his stake in Trump Media, created after he left office, has the potential to eclipse those concerns. His shares of the company, a meme stock that has soared despite the company generating almost no revenue, are valued at more than $3 billion. That makes up more than half of his estimated net worth. Ethics experts have warned that advertisers, vendors or investors who have political agendas could try to use Trump Media to curry favor.

The deal with Davison poses just that potential for undue influence, said Virginia Canter, a former government ethics lawyer.

It could give Davison access to a future president and an advantage in extracting favors from Trump, Canter said. “It puts them in a more favorable position to get their perspectives before the president or other members of his administration.”

The Trump Media deal suggests an ongoing business relationship between the companies: It calls for the full price — roughly $170 million in cash and shares, at the stock’s current value — to be paid out based on a series of milestones. It’s difficult to assess whether the price being paid by Trump Media is fair because the companies involved are little known in the industry and the filings don’t offer much detail about the technology and services they’ll be providing.

Filings don’t disclose what portion of the purchase price will go to JedTec, the Louisiana company involved in the deal. Business records show Davison as the person behind JedTec. And interviews and records show that Davison has a longtime relationship with one of Trump Media’s board members. But in a brief call with ProPublica, Davison denied he personally played a role in the sale, before hanging up.

“I’m not really involved with that,” he said. “I haven’t been part of it.”

Davison didn’t respond to follow-up questions sent in writing.

Trump hasn’t said whether he would divest from Trump Media & Technology Group if elected, but his spokesperson has said he would “follow ethics guidelines.”

A Trump Media spokesperson declined to answer detailed questions about the deal with Davison, saying that the company “believes its partners can deliver the best technology for TMTG’s platform, encompassing a unique, uncancellable tech delivery stack for streaming.”

The spokesperson also suggested that the company might take legal action in response to this article: “The assertions and insinuations in this story, including of any ethical improprieties whatsoever or any material omissions from TMTG’s disclosures, are false, defamatory and a textbook example of a fake news story that will land the left-wing shills at ProPublica in court.”

Davison turned down a job offer out of college, instead helping his father at his small trucking company in rural North Louisiana. Over the years, he transformed the company from a two-truck operation to one with hundreds of trucks, hundreds of employees and business lines across the energy industry, including petroleum storage, fuel procurement and refining operations that removed sulfur from sour gas streams.

As Davison’s business empire grew, so too did his political influence.

In Louisiana, he is known as a philanthropist for local institutions and is considered a political kingmaker. “Members of Congress, governors, state lawmakers, they’re sitting in front of him asking for his support, asking for his advice, asking if they should run or not,” said Rick Hohlt, former publisher of the Ruston Daily Leader, the newspaper for Davison’s hometown. “He’s a powerhouse.”

His influence extends beyond Louisiana. Davison, now 86, has counted presidents as friends, including both Bushes. He would “refer to presidents by their number,” one associate recalled. “‘I was spending time with 41 the other day.’” Davison helped lead fundraising efforts in the state for Jeb Bush’s 2016 presidential campaign.

In 2019, when Trump was president, the mayor of Ruston credited Davison’s influence with the White House for securing the $17 million federal grant to build roads in the city. “He is well connected in D.C. He knows everybody that’s a player,” the mayor, Ronny Walker, said in an interview with ProPublica, adding that he flew with Davison on the businessman’s private jet to Washington for lobbying trips.

Davison has donated an estimated $3 million to federal Republican candidates and causes in the last decade, including more than $90,000 to Trump committees for his previous two campaigns.

Davison’s connections to people in politics have sometimes raised ethical questions. Last year, after the state’s now-governor was questioned about not disclosing private flights provided by campaign donors, the state Republican Party disclosed several such trips, including from Davison. In 2014, a Louisiana congressman’s chief of staff was arrested for driving drunk. The aide was reportedly driving a Mercedes registered to one of Davison’s businesses.

Davison’s business interests are vast. In 2007, Genesis Energy, a Houston-based pipeline company, bought Davison’s trucking company and other businesses in a deal worth about $560 million. The Davison family got a large stake of Genesis as part of the deal, and both Davison and his son are on its board.

The trade group that represents publicly traded pipeline businesses including Davison’s lobbied during the Trump presidency on its signature tax legislation. The industry won a carveout in the 2017 legislation that allowed its investors to get a large tax break.

That tax break is set to expire after 2025, when Trump, if he wins the election, would be in his second term. Trump has promised to extend the tax law.

Genesis Energy’s agenda is not limited to taxes. Its operations are regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency, and its fortunes can hinge on who’s in the White House. In a public filing, the company credited Trump with easing regulations related to the Clean Air Act, including on methane emissions for oil and gas companies. President Joe Biden, the company noted, restored those regulations.

When Trump Media announced the streaming TV deal July 3, the company said its plan is to host news shows and religious channels at risk of “cancellation.”

“We are rapidly pushing forward with our plans to launch a high-quality streaming service that we believe cannot be canceled by Big Tech,” CEO Devin Nunes said.

The deal announced by Trump Media involves a series of largely unknown small players. Trump Media’s disclosures about the deal describe a nesting doll of companies that leave many questions unanswered about its new business partners.

The sellers include a pair of Louisiana companies: Davison’s JedTec LLC along with another called WorldConnect IPTV Solutions.

The ultimate provider of the technology is a British firm called Perception Group, which has offices and engineers in Slovenia. The clients listed on its website are far less prominent than Trump’s social media site. They include a telecom in Slovenia, an entertainment service for crews on commercial ships and an Arabic-language streaming service in Sudan.

JedTec does not have any online footprint. Davison, in the brief phone interview with ProPublica, acknowledged he knew about the deal but said WorldConnect was behind it.

Industry experts said they had never heard of WorldConnect. The phone numbers listed on WorldConnect’s website are disconnected. The most recent press release was eight years old. One item from 2012 celebrated China Central Television, the Chinese government’s propaganda channel, launching on a streaming platform in the United Kingdom. WorldConnect listed just seven staffers on its website. (Hours after ProPublica sent the company and its executives questions, the company website was taken down entirely.)

Both its CEO, Dr. Jarrett Flood, and president, Von Boyett, are serial entrepreneurs.

In his biography, Flood describes himself as being “trained as a medical doctor and critical thinker.” Flood’s social media pages list other roles including owner of a medical center and Flood International Consulting Agency. (It’s not clear where Flood went to medical school, and searches in medical license databases for his name turn up no results.)

Boyett says in his biography he has decades of experience in multiple industries: petrochemicals; telecoms; medical equipment; and product sourcing. He cites working with Russian state energy giant Gazprom in the 1980s and brokering the Soviet Union’s first foreign TV programming deal.

Boyett and Flood are also named as executives in another company that lists just five employees but says on its website it is involved in a dizzying array of businesses, including purchasing power plants, medical technology, education and solar energy.

Boyett and Flood did not respond to requests for comment.

The Trump Media spokesperson said that the company had done “extensive beta testing and due diligence” for the deal.

A person familiar with the history of WorldConnect told ProPublica that the company entered into a joint venture with Davison in 2017 to buy the rights to sell Perception’s TV technology in the United States. Davison put up most of the money for the deal, the person said.

Both companies are private, so their finances and the details of their ownership are not public.

How Davison got involved in the Trump Media deal is unclear. But even before the deal was announced, he did have one clear link to the company.

Trump Media’s board is composed almost entirely of high-profile allies of the former president, including his son Donald Trump Jr. and former cabinet members in his administration such as Linda McMahon and Robert Lighthizer.

One board member who does not fit that profile is W. Kyle Green, a lawyer from the Ruston area with a much more modest background. According to his Trump Media biography, he runs his own small law firm. Previously, he served as Ruston’s city prosecutor for eight years “where he successfully prosecuted more than 20,000 criminal defendants.” (A longtime district attorney in the area told ProPublica that a tally of prosecutions that enormous in a city with a population of just over 20,000 likely included traffic tickets, which is in line with the kind of low-level issues that office handles.)

Green is Davison’s lawyer, Davison’s wife told ProPublica. He’s listed as the registered agent on state business filings for JedTec, and he did the legal paperwork to create the LLC in 2017. If Green has an ownership stake in JedTec, or plays a significant role in the company, Trump Media may have been required to disclose his connection in public filings. The company didn’t do this.

Green didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Trump Media’s streaming deal could close as early as this month. In filings, the company said it expects to pay up to 5.1 million shares of stock — about $150 million at current market value — plus $17.5 million in cash. Its payment to the companies involved will be staggered, with roughly half of the stock in the deal — more than 2 million shares — delivered only when the streaming software is implemented at greater and greater scales.

Nine witnesses in the criminal cases against former President Donald Trump have received significant financial benefits, including large raises from his campaign, severance packages, new jobs, and a grant of shares and cash from Trump’s media company.

The benefits have flowed from Trump’s businesses and campaign committees, according to a ProPublica analysis of public disclosures, court records and securities filings. One campaign aide had his average monthly pay double, from $26,000 to $53,500. Another employee got a $2 million severance package barring him from voluntarily cooperating with law enforcement. And one of the campaign’s top officials had her daughter hired onto the campaign staff, where she is now the fourth-highest-paid employee.

These pay increases and other benefits often came at delicate moments in the legal proceedings against Trump. One aide who was given a plum position on the board of Trump’s social media company, for example, got the seat after he was subpoenaed but before he testified.

Significant changes to a staffer’s work situation, such as bonuses, pay raises, firings or promotions, can be evidence of a crime if they come outside the normal course of business. To prove witness tampering, prosecutors would need to show that perks or punishments were intended to influence testimony.

White-collar defense lawyers say the situation Trump finds himself in — in the dual role of defendant and boss of many of the people who are the primary witnesses to his alleged crimes — is not uncommon. Their standard advice is not to provide any unusual benefits or penalties to such employees. Ideally, decisions about employees slated to give evidence should be made by an independent body such as a board, not the boss who is under investigation.

Even if the perks were not intended to influence witnesses, they could prove troublesome for Trump in any future trials. Prosecutors could point to the benefits to undermine the credibility of those aides on the witness stand.

“It feels very shady, especially as you detect a pattern. … I would worry about it having a corrupt influence,” Barbara McQuade, a former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, said after hearing from ProPublica about benefits provided to potential Trump witnesses.

But McQuade said these cases are difficult to prove, even if the intent were actually to influence testimony, because savvy defendants don’t explicitly attach strings to the benefits and would more likely be “all wink and a nod, ‘You’re a great, loyal employee, here’s a raise.’”

In response to questions from ProPublica, a Trump campaign official said that any raises or other benefits provided to witnesses were the result of their taking on more work due to the campaign or his legal cases heating up, or because they took on new duties.

The official added that Trump himself isn’t involved in determining how much campaign staffers are paid, and that compensation is entirely delegated to the campaign’s top leaders. “The president is not involved in the decision-making process,” the official said. “I would argue Trump doesn’t know what we’re paid.”

Campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement that “the 2024 Trump campaign is the most well-run and professional operation in political history. Any false assertion that we’re engaging in any type of behavior that may be regarded as tampering is absurd and completely fake.”

Trump’s attorney, David Warrington, sent ProPublica a cease-and-desist letter demanding this article not be published. The letter warned that if the outlet and its reporters “continue their reckless campaign of defamation, President Trump will evaluate all legal remedies.”

It’s possible the benefits are more widespread. Payments from Trump campaign committees are disclosed publicly, but the finances of his businesses are mostly private, so raises, bonuses and other payments from those entities are not typically disclosed.

ProPublica did not find evidence that Trump personally approved the pay increases or other benefits. But Trump famously keeps close watch over his operations and prides himself on penny-pinching. One former aide compared working for the Trump Organization, his large company, to “a small family business” where every employee “in some sense reports to Mr. Trump.” Former aides have said Trump demands unwavering loyalty from subordinates, even when their duties require independence. After his Attorney General Jeff Sessions decided to recuse himself against then-President Trump’s wishes, paving the way for a special counsel to investigate his campaign’s ties to Russia, Trump fumed about being crossed. “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” Trump asked, referring to the notorious former aide to Sen. Joseph McCarthy who later served as Trump’s faithful fixer long before Trump became president.

In addition to the New York case in which Trump was convicted last week, stemming from hidden payments to a porn star, Trump is facing separate charges federally and in Georgia for election interference and in another federal case for mishandling classified documents.

Attempts to exert undue influence on witnesses have been a repeated theme of Trump-related investigations and criminal cases over the years.

Trump’s former campaign manager and former campaign adviser were convicted on federal witness tampering charges in 2018 and 2019. The campaign adviser had told a witness to “do a ‘Frank Pentangeli,’” referencing a character in “The Godfather Part II” who lies to a Senate committee investigating organized crime. Trump later pardoned both men in the waning days of his presidency. (He did not pardon a co-defendant of the campaign manager who had cooperated with the government.)

During the congressional investigation into the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, a former White House staffer testified that she got a call from a colleague the night before an interview with investigators. The colleague told her Trump’s chief of staff “wants me to let you know that he knows you’re loyal and he knows you’ll do the right thing tomorrow and that you’re going to protect him and the boss.” (A spokesperson for the chief of staff denied that he tried to influence testimony.)

Last year, Trump himself publicly discouraged a witness from testifying in the Georgia case. Trump posted on social media that he had read about a Georgia politician who “will be testifying before the Fulton County Grand Jury. He shouldn’t.”

One witness has said publicly that, when he quit working for Trump in the midst of the classified documents criminal investigation, he was offered golf tournament tickets, a lawyer paid for by Trump and a new job that would have come with a raise. The witness, a valet and manager at Mar-a-Lago, had direct knowledge of the handling of the government documents at the club, the focus of one of the criminal cases against the former president. “I’m sure the boss would love to see you,” the employee, Brian Butler, recalled Trump’s property manager telling him. (The episode was first reported by CNN.)

In an interview with ProPublica, Butler, who declined the offers, said he looked at them “innocently for a while.” But when he added up the benefits plus the timing, he thought “it could be them trying to get me back in the circle.”

One Trump aide who plays a key role in multiple cases is a lawyer named Boris Epshteyn, who became an important figure in Trump’s effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

A college classmate of one of Trump’s sons who worked on the 2016 campaign and briefly in the White House, Epshteyn was involved in assembling sets of false electors around the country after Trump lost the 2020 election, and Epshteyn’s emails and texts have come up repeatedly in investigations.

In 2022, he testified before the Georgia grand jury that later indicted Trump on charges related to attempts to overturn the election. The FBI seized his phone, and in April 2023 he was interviewed by the federal special counsel.

In early August 2023, the special counsel charged Trump with conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding as part of an effort to overturn the 2020 election. A couple weeks later, the Georgia grand jury handed down an indictment accusing Trump of racketeering as part of a plot to overturn the election results in the state. From November 2022 to August 2023, the Trump campaign had paid Epshteyn’s company an average of $26,000 per month. The month after the indictments, his pay hit a new high, $50,000, and climbed in October to $53,500 per month, where it has remained ever since.

Epshteyn is a contractor with the campaign and the payments go to his company, Georgetown Advisory, which is based at a residential home in New Jersey. The company does not appear to have an office or other employees. Campaign filings say the payments are for “communications & legal consulting.”

Kenneth Notter, an attorney at MoloLamken who specializes in white-collar defense, said that a defendant should have a good explanation for a major increase in pay like Epshteyn’s. “Any change in treatment of a witness is something that gets my heart rate up as a lawyer.”

Already in early 2023, months before the pay bump, a Trump campaign spokesperson described Epshteyn to The New York Times as “a deeply valued member of the team” who had “done a terrific job shepherding the legal efforts fighting” the investigations of Trump. The Times reported then that Epshteyn spoke to Trump multiple times per day.

Timothy Parlatore, an attorney who left Trump’s defense team last year citing infighting, found Epshteyn’s large raise baffling. He questioned Epshteyn’s fitness to handle high-stakes criminal defense given his scant experience in the area. “He tries to coordinate all the legal efforts, which is a role he’s uniquely unqualified for,” Parlatore said.

The Trump campaign official told ProPublica that Epshteyn got a pay raise because Trump’s legal cases intensified and, as a result, Epshteyn had more legal work to coordinate. The official declined to say if he started working more hours: “All of us are working 24/7, ... every second of the day.” Epshteyn declined to comment on the record.

Even after the major pay increase, Epshteyn has not devoted all of his working time to the Trump campaign. He has continued to consult for other campaigns in recent months, disclosure filings show. And in November, he got a new role as managing director of a financial services firm in New York called Kenmar Securities, regulatory filings show.

Other employees in Trump’s political orbit have followed a similar pattern — including his top aide.

Trump campaign head Susie Wiles, a Florida political consultant, was present when Trump allegedly went beyond improperly holding onto classified documents and showed them to people lacking proper security clearances.

When Trump was indicted on June 8, 2023, over his handling of the documents, the indictment described Wiles as a “PAC representative.” It described Trump allegedly showing her a classified map related to a military operation, acknowledging “that he should not be showing it” and warning her to “not get too close.”

That June, Right Coast Strategies, the political consulting firm Wiles founded, received its highest-ever monthly payment from the Trump campaign: $75,000, an amount the firm has equaled only once since.

Wiles had been a grand jury witness before the indictment. News reports indicated Wiles had told others that she continued to be loyal to Trump and only testified because she was forced to. (And, according to Wiles, Trump was told she was a witness sometime before the indictment’s June release.)

The Trump campaign official told ProPublica that the spike in payments was largely because Wiles was billing for previous months.

She also got a 20% raise that May, from $25,000 to $30,000 per month. “She went back and redid her contract,” the official said, adding that her role as a witness was not a factor in that raise.

A few months later, the Wiles family got more good news. Wiles’ daughter Caroline, who had done some work for Trump’s first campaign and in the White House, where she reportedly left one job because she didn’t pass a background check, was hired by his campaign. Her salary: $222,000, making her currently the fourth-highest-paid staffer. (The Trump campaign official said her salary included a monthly housing stipend.)

Susie Wiles said she and another campaign official were responsible for hiring her daughter, who she said has an expertise in logistics and was brought on to handle arrangements for surrogates taking Trump’s place at events he couldn’t attend. Wiles said Trump wasn’t involved in the hire.

Caroline Wiles told ProPublica her mother’s position in the campaign played no role in her getting a job, but she declined to describe the circumstances around the job offer. “How did I get the job? Because I have earned it,” she said. “I don’t think it has anything to do with Susie.”

The indictment suggests Susie Wiles herself has been aware of efforts to keep potential witnesses in the fold. Soon after the FBI found classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, a Trump employee was asked in a group text chat that included Wiles to confirm that the club’s property manager “was loyal.”

Wiles told ProPublica she couldn’t talk about the details of the case, but she called the text message exchange “a nothing.”

More generally, she said she was unaware of the need to ensure employees who are witnesses do not appear to be receiving special treatment. “It’s the first time I’ve heard that’s best practice,” she said. “I don’t mind telling you I conduct myself in such a way that I don’t worry about any of that.” Trump, she said, had never talked to her about her role as a witness.

Less powerful aides who are witnesses have also enjoyed career advances.

Margo Martin, a Trump aide who, like Wiles, allegedly witnessed Trump showing off what he described as a secret military document, got a significant raise not long after the classified documents case heated up with the search at Mar-a-Lago.

According to the indictment, Trump told Martin and others the military plan was “secret” and “highly confidential.” “As president I could have declassified it,” he allegedly told the group. “Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.”

A few months before her grand jury appearance, she moved from the payroll of a Trump political committee to a job with the campaign as it was launching. Martin was given a roughly 20% pay raise, from $155,000 to $185,000 per year, according to the Trump campaign. Campaign finance filings show a much larger pay increase for Martin, but the Trump campaign said the filings are misleading because of a difference in how payroll taxes and withholdings are reported by the two committees.

Because of that quirk, it’s impossible to know who else got raises and how big they were. The campaign official said that at least one other witness also got a pay raise but did not provide details about how much and when.

Dan Scavino is a longtime communications aide who Trump once called the “most powerful man in politics” because he could post for Trump on the president’s social media accounts. Scavino was among the small group of staff who had an up-close view of Trump during the final weeks of his presidency — a focus of the congressional inquiry into the Jan. 6 insurrection and the criminal probe into election interference.

In August 2021, a month after the congressional investigation began, securities filings show that the parent company behind Truth Social, Trump’s social media company, gave Scavino a consulting deal that ultimately paid out $240,000 a year.

The next month, lawmakers issued a subpoena to Scavino to ask him what the White House knew about the potential for violence before the attacks and what actions Trump took to try to overturn the election results. The panel gave Scavino a half-dozen extensions while negotiating with him, but he ultimately refused to testify or turn over documents and was held in contempt.

In September 2022, Scavino received a subpoena to testify before the criminal grand jury in the federal election interference probe. This time, he wasn’t able to get out of it and was seen leaving the Washington, D.C., courthouse in May 2023.

Bits of Scavino’s testimony were reported by ABC News, citing unnamed sources. Though his recollections of Trump from Jan. 6 painted the former president unfavorably, his reported testimony didn’t include significant new information. He testified Trump was “very angry” that day, and, despite pleas from aides to calm the Capitol rioters, Trump for hours “was just not interested” in taking action to stop it. When the testimony was reported, Trump’s spokesperson said Scavino is one of the former president’s “most loyal allies, and his actual testimony shows just how strong President Trump is positioned in this case.”

Between getting the subpoena and testifying, Scavino was given a seat on the board of the Trump social media company.

Scavino was also granted a $600,000 retention bonus and a $4 million “executive promissory note” paid in shares, according to SEC filings. The company’s public filings do not make clear when these deals were put in place.

As one of the few aides who Trump was with on Jan. 6, Scavino is likely to be called if Trump’s election interference cases go to trial.

Reached by ProPublica, Scavino declined to answer questions about how he got the board seat and other benefits from the Trump media company. “It has nothing to do,” he said, “with any investigation.”

A Trump Media spokesperson declined to answer questions about who made the decision to give Scavino the benefits and why, but said, “It appears this article will comprise utterly false insinuations.”

When Atlanta attorney Jennifer Little was hired to represent Trump in his Georgia election interference case, it marked the high point of her career.

A former local prosecutor who started her own practice, she had previously taken on far more modest cases. Highlights on her website include a biker who fell because of a pothole, a child investigated for insensitive social media comments and drunk drivers with “DUI’s as high as .19.” Little had made headlines for some higher profile cases, like a candidate for lieutenant governor accused of sexual harassment, but everything on her resume paled in comparison to representing a former president accused of plotting to reverse the outcome of an election.

Then in May 2022, her job got even more complicated when Trump pulled her into his brewing showdown with the Justice Department over classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. Despite multiple requests, Trump had not returned all of the documents he had brought with him from the White House to his Florida club. The Justice Department had just elevated the matter by subpoenaing Trump for the records, and Trump wanted her advice.

Little told him, according to news reports, that unlike the government’s prior requests, a subpoena meant he could face criminal charges if he didn’t comply.

When Trump ultimately did not turn over the records and the criminal investigation intensified, Little’s involvement in that pivotal meeting got her called before a grand jury by federal prosecutors.

Some of her testimony before that grand jury, which determines whether someone will be indicted, may have been favorable for Trump. In one reported instance, Little’s recollections undermined contemporaneous documentary evidence that was damaging to Trump. Investigators had obtained notes from another lawyer at the May 2022 meeting indicating Trump suggested they not “play ball” with federal authorities: “Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here?”

Little told the grand jury she remembered the question more benignly, according to an ABC News story that cited anonymous sources, and said she couldn’t recall Trump recommending they not “play ball.”

Trump has since been indicted over his handling of the classified documents. If the case goes to trial, Little’s testimony could prove crucial as the two sides try to make their case about Trump's consciousness of guilt and whether he purposely withheld documents. (Trump has pleaded not guilty in that case and has said he did nothing wrong.)

Just after Little was forced to testify before the grand jury in March 2023, a Trump political action committee paid her $218,000, by far the largest payment she’d received while working for Trump. In the year after she became a witness, she has made at least $1.3 million from the Trump political committee, more than twice as much as she had during the year prior.

Little told ProPublica the large payment she received soon after she was compelled to testify was due to a lengthy motion she filed around then to block the release of the Georgia grand jury’s findings and prevent Trump from being indicted. Her hourly rate did not change, she said, the workload increased. The elevated payments in the year after she became a witness did coincide with the Georgia case heating up and Trump getting indicted.

The Trump campaign official said the spike in payments to Little after she became a witness was the result of her billing for multiple time periods at once.

A similar pattern played out for the other Trump lawyer present at the Mar-a-Lago meeting about the subpoena.

Evan Corcoran, a former federal prosecutor who specializes in white-collar criminal defense, was new to the team at the time. And it was his notes, obtained by investigators, that memorialized Trump suggesting they not “play ball.” His notes also included a description of Trump seeming to instruct him to withhold some sensitive documents from authorities when the former president made a “plucking motion.”

“He made a funny motion as though — well okay why don’t you take them with you to your hotel room and if there’s anything really bad in there, like, you know, pluck it out,” Corcoran’s notes read, according to the indictment.

Like Little, Corcoran tried to fight being forced to testify before a grand jury, asserting that as Trump’s lawyer, their communications were protected. But prosecutors were able to convince a judge that the protection didn’t apply because their legal advice was used to commit crimes.

Corcoran’s notes from his conversations with Trump formed the backbone of the eventual indictment, and his descriptions of those meetings are expected to be a critical component at trial. The lawyer made an initial appearance before the grand jury in January 2023 and appeared again in another session in March.

Around the time he was forced to be a witness, Corcoran recused himself from the classified documents case, but he continued to represent Trump on other matters. Nevertheless his firm’s compensation shot up for a few months.

Just days after his March grand jury testimony, the Trump campaign sent two payments to his firm totaling $786,000, the largest amount paid in a single day in his almost two years working for Trump. The firm brought in a total of $1.4 million in that four-week span, more than double its payments from any other comparable period during Corcoran’s time working for Trump.

Corcoran did not respond to questions from ProPublica. The Trump campaign official said the spike in payments came because the firm was billing for more hours of work as Trump’s cases ramped up. The official added that the number of lawyers from the firm working on the case may have increased but could not provide specifics.

The issue of witnesses who have received financial rewards from Trump has already come up at both of the former president’s New York trials.

In the civil fraud case last year, prosecutors questioned the Trump Organization’s former controller about the $500,000 in severance he had been promised after retiring earlier in the year. During his testimony, the former controller broke down in tears as he complained about allegations against an employer he loved and defended the valuations at the center of the case as “justified.” At the time of the testimony, he was still receiving his severance in installments.

Former chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg got a $2 million severance agreement in January 2023, four months after the New York attorney general sued Trump for financial fraud in his real estate business. The agreement contains a nondisparagement clause and language barring Weisselberg from voluntarily cooperating with investigators.

It came up in Trump’s hush money trial last month when prosecutors told the judge that the severance agreement was one of the reasons they would not call Weisselberg . He was still due several payments.

“The agreement seems to preclude us from talking to him or him talking to us at the risk of losing $750,000 of outstanding severance pay,” one prosecutor said.

In last year’s fraud trial, the judge wrote of the severance agreement, “The Trump Organization keeps Weisselberg on a short leash, and it shows.”

A Trump Organization spokesperson said in a statement that after Weisselberg and the controller announced their retirement plans, “the company agreed to pay them severance based on the number of years they worked at the company. President Trump played no role in that decision.” Weisselberg’s severance agreement was signed by Trump’s son Eric.

Another witness from the civil trial last year, longtime Trump friend and real estate executive Steve Witkoff, was called as an expert witness by Trump’s defense team, and he defended the Trump Organization real estate valuations at the heart of the case.

Two months after Witkoff’s testimony, Trump’s campaign for the first time started paying his company, the Witkoff Group, for air travel. The payments continued over several weeks, ultimately totalling more than $370,000.

The Trump campaign official confirmed the campaign used Witkoff’s private jet for multiple trips, including Trump’s visit to a stretch of the Texas border in February, saying it “appropriately reimbursed” him for the flights. The official said it sometimes used commercial charter jet services but opted for Witkoff’s plane because of “availability, space, and convenience.”

Witkoff and The Witkoff Group did not respond to requests for comment.

Do you have any information about Trump’s campaign or his businesses that we should know? Robert Faturechi can be reached by email at robert.faturechi@propublica.org and by Signal or WhatsApp at 213-271-7217. Justin Elliott can be reached by email at justin@propublica.org or by Signal or WhatsApp at 774-826-6240.

In early January 2000, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was at a five-star beach resort in Sea Island, Georgia, hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.

After almost a decade on the court, Thomas had grown frustrated with his financial situation, according to friends. He had recently started raising his young grandnephew, and Thomas’ wife was soliciting advice on how to handle the new expenses. The month before, the justice had borrowed $267,000 from a friend to buy a high-end RV.

At the resort, Thomas gave a speech at an off-the-record conservative conference. He found himself seated next to a Republican member of Congress on the flight home. The two men talked, and the lawmaker left the conversation worried that Thomas might resign.

Congress should give Supreme Court justices a pay raise, Thomas told him. If lawmakers didn’t act, “one or more justices will leave soon” — maybe in the next year.

At the time, Thomas’ salary was $173,600, equivalent to over $300,000 today. But he was one of the least wealthy members of the court, and on multiple occasions in that period, he pushed for ways to make more money. In other private conversations, Thomas repeatedly talked about removing a ban on justices giving paid speeches.

Thomas’ efforts were described in records from the time obtained by ProPublica, including a confidential memo to Chief Justice William Rehnquist from a top judiciary official seeking guidance on what he termed a “delicate matter.”

The documents, as well as interviews, offer insight into how Thomas was talking about his finances in a crucial period in his tenure, just as he was developing his relationships with a set of wealthy benefactors.

Congress never lifted the ban on speaking fees or gave the justices a major raise. But in the years that followed, as ProPublica has reported, Thomas accepted a stream of gifts from friends and acquaintances that appears to be unparalleled in the modern history of the Supreme Court. Some defrayed living expenses large and small — private school tuition, vehicle batteries, tires. Other gifts from a coterie of ultrarich men supplemented his lifestyle, such as free international vacations on the private jet and superyacht of Dallas real estate billionaire Harlan Crow.

Precisely what led so many people to offer Thomas money and other gifts remains an open question. There’s no evidence the justice ever raised the specter of resigning with Crow or his other wealthy benefactors.

George Priest, a Yale Law School professor who has vacationed with Thomas and Crow, told ProPublica he believes Crow’s generosity was not intended to influence Thomas’ views but rather to make his life more comfortable. “He views Thomas as a Supreme Court justice as having a limited salary,” Priest said. “So he provides benefits for him.”

Thomas and Crow didn’t respond to questions for this story. Crow, a major Republican donor, has not had cases at the Supreme Court since Thomas joined it and has previously said Thomas is a dear friend. David Sokol, a conservative financier who has taken Thomas on vacation on a private jet, said in a statement that he and Thomas had never discussed the justice’s finances or when he might retire.

Thomas’ comments in 2000 were to Florida Rep. Cliff Stearns, a vocal conservative who’d been in Congress for 11 years and occasionally socialized with the justice. They set off a flurry of activity across the judiciary and Capitol Hill. “His importance as a conservative was paramount,” Stearns said in a recent interview. “We wanted to make sure he felt comfortable in his job and he was being paid properly.”

There’s an often-criticized dynamic surrounding most important jobs in the federal government: The posts pay far less than comparable jobs in the private sector, but officials can cash in once they leave. Ex-regulators sell advice to the regulated. Generals retire to join military contractors. Former senators get jobs lobbying Congress.

But there is no revolving-door payday waiting on the other side of a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court. Justices generally stay on the bench past their 80th birthday, if not until death. In 2000, justices were paid more than cabinet secretaries or members of Congress, and far more than the average American. Still, judges’ salaries were not keeping pace with inflation, a source of ire throughout the federal judiciary. Young associates at top law firms made more than Supreme Court justices, while partners at the firms could earn millions a year.

Some of Thomas’ colleagues were extremely wealthy — Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was married to a high-paid tax lawyer and Justice Stephen Breyer to the daughter of a wealthy British lord. Thomas did not come from money. When he was appointed to the court in 1991, he was 43 years old and had spent almost all his adult life working for the government. At the time, he still had student loans from law school, Thomas has said.

The full details of Thomas’ finances over the years remain unclear. He made at least two big purchases around the early ’90s: a Corvette and a house in the Virginia suburbs on 5 acres of land. When Thomas and his wife, Ginni, bought the home for $522,000 a year after he joined the court, they borrowed all but $8,000, less than 2% of the purchase price, property records show.

Public records suggest a degree of financial strain. Throughout the first decade of his tenure, the couple regularly borrowed more money, including a $100,000 credit line on their house and a consumer loan of up to $50,000. Around January 1998, Thomas’ life changed when he took in his 6-year-old grandnephew, becoming his legal guardian and raising him as a son. The Thomases sent the child to a series of private schools.

In early January 2000, Thomas took the trip to the Georgia beach resort. Thomas was there to deliver a keynote speech at Awakening, a “conservative thought weekend” featuring golf, shooting lessons and aromatherapy along with panel discussions with businessmen and elected officials. (A founder and organizer of the annual event, Ernest Taylor, told ProPublica that Thomas’ trip was paid for by the organization. Thomas reported 11 free trips that year on his annual financial disclosure, mostly to colleges and universities, but did not disclose attending the conservative conference, an apparent violation of federal disclosure law.)

On a commercial flight back from Awakening, Thomas brought up the prospect of justices resigning to Stearns, the Republican lawmaker. Worried, Stearns wrote a letter to Thomas after the flight promising “to look into a bill to raise the salaries of members of The Supreme Court.”

“As we agreed, it is worth a lot to Americans to have the constitution properly interpreted,” Stearns wrote. “We must have the proper incentives here, too.”

Stearns’ office soon sought help from a lobbying firm working on the issue, and he delivered a speech on the House floor about judges’ salaries getting eroded by inflation. Thomas’ warning about resignations was relayed at a meeting of the heads of several judges’ associations. L. Ralph Mecham, then the judiciary’s top administrative official, fired off the memo describing Thomas’ complaints to Rehnquist, his boss.

“I understand that Justice Thomas clearly told him that in his view departures would occur within the next year or so,” Mecham wrote of Thomas’ conversation with Stearns. Mecham worried that “from a tactical point of view,” congressional Democrats might oppose a raise if they sensed “the apparent purpose is to keep Justices [Antonin] Scalia and Thomas on the Court.” (Scalia had nine children and was also one of the less wealthy justices. Scalia, Mecham and Rehnquist have since died.)

It’s not clear if Rehnquist ever responded. Several months later, Rehnquist focused his annual year-end report on what he called “the most pressing issue facing the Judiciary: the need to increase judicial salaries.”

Several people close to Thomas told ProPublica they believed that it was implausible the justice would ever retire early, and that he may have exaggerated his concerns to bolster the case for a raise. But around 2000, chatter that Thomas was dissatisfied about money circulated through conservative legal circles and on Capitol Hill, according to interviews with prominent attorneys, former members of Congress and Thomas’ friends. “It was clear he was unhappy with his financial situation and his salary,” one friend said.

Former Sen. Trent Lott, then the Republican Senate majority leader, recalled in a recent interview that there were serious concerns at the time that Thomas or other justices would leave.

The public received hardly a hint that such conversations about Thomas were unfolding in Washington. Thomas did once allude to government salaries, in a 2001 speech praising the value of public service. “The job is not worth doing for what they pay. It’s not worth doing for the grief,” he said. “But it is worth doing for the principle.”

Around that time, Thomas was also pushing to allow justices to make paid speeches — a source of income that had been banned in the 1980s. On several occasions, Thomas discussed lifting the ban with appellate Judge David Hansen, who chaired the judiciary’s committee responsible for lobbying Congress on issues like pay, according to Mecham’s memo.

At Sen. Mitch McConnell’s request, a provision removing the ban for judges was quietly inserted into a spending bill in mid-2000. Why McConnell made the proposal became a subject of scrutiny in the legal press. After the Legal Times reported the measure had been dubbed the “Keep Scalia on the Court” bill, Scalia responded that the “honorarium ban makes no difference to me” and denied that he would ever leave the court for financial reasons. (The ban was never lifted. McConnell did not respond to a request for comment.)

During his second decade on the court, Thomas’ financial situation appears to have markedly improved. In 2003, he received the first payments of a $1.5 million advance for his memoir, a record-breaking sum for justices at the time. Ginni Thomas, who had been a congressional staffer, was by then working at the Heritage Foundation and was paid a salary in the low six figures.

Thomas also received dozens of expensive gifts throughout the 2000s, sometimes coming from people he’d met only shortly before. Thomas met Earl Dixon, the owner of a Florida pest control company, while getting his RV serviced outside Tampa in 2001, according to the Thomas biography “Supreme Discomfort.” The next year, Dixon gave Thomas $5,000 to put toward his grandnephew’s tuition. Thomas reported the payment in his annual disclosure filing.

Larger gifts went undisclosed. Crow paid for two years of private high school, which tuition rates indicate would’ve cost roughly $100,000. In 2008, another wealthy friend forgave “a substantial amount, or even all” of the principal on the loan Thomas had used to buy the quarter-million dollar RV, according to a recent Senate inquiry prompted by The New York Times’ reporting. Much of the Thomases’ leisure time was also paid for by a small set of billionaire businessmen, who brought the justice and his family on free vacations around the world. (Thomas has said he did not need to disclose the gifts of travel and his lawyer has disputed the Senate findings about the RV.)

By 2019, the justices’ pay hadn’t changed beyond keeping up with inflation. But Thomas’ views had apparently transformed from two decades before. That June, during a public appearance, Thomas was asked about salaries at the court. “Oh goodness, I think it’s plenty,” Thomas responded. “My wife and I are doing fine. We don’t live extravagantly, but we are fine.”

A few weeks later, Thomas boarded Crow’s private jet to head to Indonesia. He and his wife were off on vacation, an island cruise on Crow’s 162-foot yacht.