Campaign finance records show that GOP congressional candidate Tom Barrett has dubious donors
Plus, Ron Johnson’s conspiracy consternations.
FEC reports reveal that Tom Barrett, the GOP’s candidate for Michigan’s 7th House district, has accepted money from several questionable donors. A $3,300 donation comes from Woody Hunt, the owner of Hunt Companies. Hunt’s firm builds and manages housing on military bases, but it has faced multiple lawsuits from service members and their families over the past five years for providing unsanitary and potentially hazardous living conditions.
In 2021, multiple Texas families living at the Randolph Air Force Base sought legal action against Hunt Companies for failing to deal with “pervasive mold, rodent and insect infestations, seeping sewage and leaking pipes, to name a few,” according to the Military Times. This was a pervasive problem, as 11 families at a base in Mississippi filed a similar claim in 2018.
The same year as the Texas lawsuit, another group of families in Hawaii asserted in court that Hunt Companies allowed jet fuel to contaminate the water supply of some 3,000 tenants. The suit alleges that the firm failed to inform residents of this problem.
And in 2022, a Delaware court compelled Hunt Companies to pay out $500,000 to the Air Force after discovering they had submitted false information regarding work orders at the Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. Such business dealings violated the False Claims Act.
“For its services, Hunt is eligible to receive quarterly performance incentive fees if it meets certain performance objectives such as maintaining the residences while they are occupied and preparing the residences for new tenants once they are vacated,” a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Delaware district reads. “Between January 2013 and June 2019, Hunt submitted materially false information to the Air Force in order to receive higher performance incentive payouts from the Government. The settlement agreement resolves these allegations; there has been no admission of fault.”
Hunt, an active conservative donor, has spent $250,000 in lobbying expenses this year alone, and over the years he has allotted millions to Republican candidates across the country.
Another questionable contributor is Ken Fisher, who along with his wife Sherrilyn gave Barrett's campaign two donations worth $6,600. Fisher, a billionaire money manager, faced public scrutiny in 2018 and 2019 after several comments he made in person and online cost him $4 billion.
In audio acquired by CNBC, Fisher was heard juxtaposing the selling of mutual funds to trying to seduce women. “I mean the, the most stupid thing you can do, which is what every mutual fund firm in the world always did, was to brag about performance, uh, in, in a direct mail piece, which is a little bit like walking into a bar if you’re a single guy and you want to get laid and walking up to some girl and saying, ‘Hey, you want to have sex?’” Fisher said in a recording.
The ensuing backlash to this comment resulted in institutions like Michigan’s public pension fund pulling billions of assets from Fisher’s management firm.
The drama would continue in 2019 after a post on Twitter (now X) by Fisher was unearthed, wherein he called Abraham Lincoln his least-favorite U.S. president because of how he handled the abolition of slavery.
“Douglass C. North proved slavery was profitable at the time of the war. Wait 30 years and technology would have rendered it profitless and slavery would have fallen peacefully,’ Fisher wrote. "And had it, African Americans and everyone today would be hugely better off.”
By Richard Eberwein
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) issued another unfounded conspiracy theory on Wednesday, when he alleged that the federal government was involved in coups to “take out” former Presidents John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon and Donald Trump.
“The first coup is you take out Kennedy. The second coup, you take out Nixon. Then you take out Trump,” Johnson said on the “Federalist Radio Hour” podcast. “You know, to what extent is the federal government involved in these things?”
Ironically, Johnson was involved in former President Donald Trump’s coups to decertify legitimate election results from 2020. On Jan. 6, 2021, Johnson attempted to deliver a fake slate of electors to then-Vice President Mike Pence before he certified the presidential election results. These “alternate slates” suggested that the majority of voters in Michigan and Wisconsin voted for Trump, when they had actually voted for Joe Biden.
Johnson’s coup statement comes a day after the senator dubiously claimed on “The Vicki McKenna Show” that the Great Depression was “pretty well planned.” After offering no evidence for his claim, Johnson said he doesn’t “completely understand it” but that he feels it in his bones that it’s true.
Johnson won a third term in the Senate in 2022 after defeating Democratic challenger and former Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes by just 26,718 votes. During his 13+ years in office, Johnson has routinely espoused fringe conspiracy theories and potentially false narratives about a variety of topics like climate change, the 2020 election and Social Security.