GOP 'Slush Fund' Pays Trump's Ex-Bodyguard $15K a Month
RNC says it's for security services
By Rob Quinn, Newser Staff
Posted Feb 22, 2018 2:35 AM CST
newser.com
(NEWSER) – One of President Trump's longest-serving and most loyal employees left the White House in September, and campaign finance groups are concerned about his new job: Advising the Republican National Committee for a hefty $15,000 a month. Keith Schiller, who was Trump's personal bodyguard for almost 20 years, is being paid to advise the RNC on security for potential sites for its 2020 convention, CNBC reports. The money is coming from the RNC's convention fund, which campaign finance watchdog groups say is a slush fund, "lightly regulated and ripe for abuse." Schiller's firm, KS Global Group, "is getting a fat payout from the RNC and its deep-pocketed donors," says former Federal Election Commission special counsel Stephen Spaulding.
The generous deal from the RNC is raising eyebrows partly because he served as director of Oval Office operations at a time of interest to special counsel Robert Mueller, the Washington Post reports. Former Trump aide Michael Caputo says Trump trusts Schiller, a former NYPD officer, "implicitly," and chose him to hand-deliver the letter firing FBI Director James Comey because he was "his closest aide and friend." "It pays to be in Donald Trump's circle of trust," says Dave Levinthal of the Center for Public Integrity watchdog group. "He has a long history of taking good care of people who do his bidding and cutting off those who don't." (In November, Schiller told a House committee that in 2013, he rejected a Russian offer to send five women to Trump's Moscow hotel room.) |
