The FBI charged Jesse Benton, a long-time confidant of the Paul family, former Ron Paul Campaign Manager John Tate, and former Deputy Campaign Manager Dimitrios Kesari all with arranging a payment of US$70,000 to former Iowa state Senator Kent Sorenson in 2011.
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Tate, 53, is charged by indictment with conspiracy, causing false records to obstruct a contemplated investigation, submitting false campaign expenditure reports to the Federal Election Commission and engaging in a scheme to make false statements to the FEC.
Hours before he was to participate in the first debate of the 2016 campaign for the White House, the younger Paul questioned the timing of the indictment, according to WBKO-TV of Bowling Green, Kentucky, Rand Paul’s hometown.
Ron Paul said in a statement that he found the timing of the indictment, a day before the first Republican presidential debate in which his son will appear, “highly suspicious”.
“When political operatives make under-the-table payments to buy an elected official’s political support, it undermines public confidence in our entire political system”, she said.
Sorenson was considered an influential figure among conservative Republicans in early 2011 when he signed on as Michele Bachmann’s Iowa campaign chairman.
Kentucky Democrats pounced on Benton’s indictment. The three men worked together on Ron Paul’s presidential campaign in 2012.
The PAC announced that Jesse Benton, general consultant to the PAC, and John Tate, president of the PAC would take his leave of absence “to vigorously fight to prove that they are innocent of these charges”. According to Sorenson, he was secretly paid $73,000 to endorse the Paul candidacy. A spokesman for Rand Paul issued a statement saying the charges are about activities in 2012 that have nothing to do with Rand Paul’s 2016 campaign.
It quotes Benton as telling Federal Bureau of Investigation agents, “I am not splitting hairs: Sorenson was not getting paid”. “Additionally, these actions are from 2012 and have nothing to do with our campaign”.
Of course, given that the latest polls show Rand Paul pulling in only 4.8% of the vote, a government sabotage doesn’t seem like it would be entirely necessary. Then in December 2011, after two months of secret negotiations with Paul’s campaign, the state senator met with a Paul political operative at a restaurant in Altoona, Iowa, and agreed to change his allegiance.
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“[W]e discussed that accusation, I was satisfied that those were just that, accusations and, that the issue was settled”, Harmon said in the news release.
