RNC's highest-paid vendor of the 2020 election: A mystery company formed nine months ago [View all]

[Nevilledog]

https://www.salon.com/2020/12/04/rncs-highest-paid-vendor-of-the-2020-election-a-mystery-company-formed-nine-months-ago/

In August, Salon reported that the Republican National Committee (RNC) had paid about $5 million to a mystery marketing services company called Digital Consulting Group LLC, starting with a $2 million expenditure in February, just a month after the company was formed.

Now, filings with the Federal Election Commission show that the RNC paid Digital Consulting Group more than $42 million for media buys, consulting and marketing between February and October. The company went from nonexistent to being the Republican Party's highest-paid vendor of the 2020 election, all in the space of eight months.

But Digital Consulting Group presents a mystery. No other political campaign or committee has reported any payments at all to the company. While a number of organizations share the name, this particular Digital Consulting Group — a Delaware company founded Jan. 15, 2020 — does not appear to have a website, and a Delaware business entity search does not reveal an owner or location. The RNC's spending reports list a virtual address in Wilmington, but beyond that the company cannot be traced.

That $42 million in expenditures makes this anonymous company the RNC's highest-paid vendor of the last two years, pulling in nearly $3.5 million more than the next-largest vendor, the direct-mail firm Communications Corporation of America (CCA), and topping third-place JDB Marketing, another direct mail provider, by about $19 million.

For further perspective, Digital Consulting Group received four out of the five largest payments that the RNC doled out between 2019 and 2020, including a flat $6 million on Oct. 7 for an unspecified media buy. In fact, it has received three of the 10 largest payments that the RNC has ever made — all to a company that was evidently constructed to conceal is origins and prevent the public from knowing anything about it.

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