#LyingLoserLake’s Financial Relationship with Superfeed, and Its Entire Operation, Looks Shady as Hell.

Every one of these MAGA flakes and freaks seems to be on the grift when you get a peek under the table. So I am not the least bit shocked that the reported $100K paid to Kari Lake by the shady and mysterious company Superfeed is looking ever more suspicious.

The DailyBeast has done an very thorough investigation of the finances of Superfeed entitled “Kari Lake’s Bribery Scandal Involves a Shady GOP Tech Firm” and what they found raises way more questions – and questionable accounting and finances – than answers when it comes to figuring out the tangled, incestuous, and down-right questionable ethics and financial arrangements pointed to by their findings thus far. I have no doubt that more slippers will drop and that none of them will reflect well on Lake, TPUSA, or anyone else involved.

Famously, Lake blackmailed DeWitt out of the AZGOP Chairmanship with her secret recording of him trying to bribe her out of the Senate race on behalf of vague parties ‘back East’ – which is likely a bullshit cover for people here in Arizona who recognize that Lake has ZERO chance of carrying a U.S. Senate seat for the AZGOP. It is here that DailyBeast picks up the story (emphases added in bold):

At the time the recording was made, Lake still had a financial connection to that ousted GOP chair, Jeff DeWit—via a campaign tech startup closely tied to a top MAGA-world nonprofit, a company whose most notable characteristic is a glaring absence of a political paper trail.

In fact, that startup—called “Superfeed Technologies, Inc.”—had its authority to do business revoked by the state of Arizona while it employed both DeWit, its former CEO, and Lake, who reported receiving more than $100,000 from the entity in the personal financial disclosure she filed last month.

The revocation overlapped not just with Lake’s employment, but with her failed gubernatorial campaign’s simultaneous use of Superfeed’s app during the 2022 midterm election. But despite the candidate’s ongoing business relationship with Superfeed, the Lake campaign never disclosed payments to the company until after The Daily Beast inquired about the missing expenses, eventually paying out shortly after she lost the election and just weeks before the company’s license was reinstated, filings show.

The dearth of information about the privately held company stands at odds with its connections to very public figures and groups, many of which are required to disclose their politically related spending. The secrecy raises a number of questions, like who exactly is profiting from Superfeed, who is running the company, and to what extent has it insinuated itself in Republican politics—a world where personal data can command major cash and clout. Superfeed and its current leadership did not respond to repeated requests for comment from The Daily Beast

DailyBeast.com, ‘Kari Lake’s Bribery Scandal Involves a Shady GOP Tech Firm’

Voter contact and donor data is a kind of currency in politics, and is easily exchanged for cold hard cash; Superfeed seems to have been supplying both kinds of currency to the poliitcally well-connected to MAGA in Arizona, including to Lake’s campaign, and to her personally. I won’t find it surprising at all to find that these flows of data and cash could be found to violate the law upon closer examination. No doubt these arrangements verge on the illegal if they aren’t ultimately found to actually have violated the law. The closer DailyBeast looked the more cagey and shady things appear.

Currently, 18 entities use the app, according to listings on the Apple Store and Google Play, including four Republican state parties, an Arizona GOP state House campaign, multiple conservative news sites, and right-wing activists like Scott Presler, Moms for America, and MAGA pillow king Mike Lindell. Yet records of any payment to Superfeed for the creation of these products are scarce, even in cases where state or federal laws require disclosure for political expenses or donated professional services.

Perhaps most notably, Superfeed also powers the app for Arizona-based MAGA youth group Turning Point USA, and for its political arm Turning Point Action. Both organizations have significant direct ties to the Superfeed corporate board, including Superfeed’s chair, who holds a concurrent senior leadership role at Turning Point.

Those ties appeared in the filings Superfeed submitted this month to reinstate its business license in Arizona. They came in just days before NBC News reported that the app was central to suspicions currently ricocheting among state and national party members about the “grift” at the heart of Turning Point leader Charlie Kirk’s power play inside the Republican National Committee.

“This is why [Kirk] was trying to get rid of Ronna,” one Trump ally told NBC, referring to longtime RNC chair Ronna McDaniel, who was ousted this month. “He shouldn’t make it sound like, ‘Oh, we’re tired of losing. We don’t have an early vote program.’ He should have just said, ‘Listen, he who controls the RNC controls millions of dollars and I want to get my hands on them.’ I mean, that would have been a more honest grift.”

DailyBeast.com, ‘Kari Lake’s Bribery Scandal Involves a Shady GOP Tech Firm’

So, we start to glimpse that the secretive flows of dollars and data through Superfeed were not only coursing through Lake’s campaign and Lake’s own pocketbook, but those of Arizona-based MAGA’s fascist-yugend recruiting operation Turning Point, and other MAGA candidates – all unreported and potentially illegal.

One problem: Arizona campaign finance records show no record of Lake’s campaign—or any political committee—having paid Superfeed for this service, despite the company explicitly describing its work. And that, according to election lawyer James Barton, would make the app’s operation a violation of state contribution rules.

DailyBeast.com, ‘Kari Lake-Linked Tech Firm Wreaking Campaign Finance Havoc’

Superfeed may also be key to Kirk’s attempt to cut the RNC out of Arizona’s political operations, and central to Kirk’s attempts to out RNC Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel. A coup that Trump has now succeeded in executing.

Anyone in modern politics knows that if you control the flow of data and donor dollars to campaigns, you control the modern equivalent of the political machine. That is the heart of the conflict between MAGA and the GOP establishment represented by McDaniel, and Superfeed seems key to MAGA’s attempt to muscle in on the RNC’s control of that flow:

The report said that McDaniel has expressed concerns that Kirk is siphoning conservative donors whose money could otherwise go towards strengthening the party during a critical election cycle. Party insiders tied those concerns to Superfeed, NBC News reported, with Turning Point officials pitching the app to state and county party leaders in a bid to manage their voter outreach—and acquire the lucrative personal data from those efforts.

A spokesperson for Turning Point revealed to The Daily Beast that it receives a discount on Superfeed’s development services in exchange for the group’s chief operating officer serving on the company’s board of directors in an “unpaid, volunteer capacity.” The representative added that upcoming tax forms would disclose disbursements to Superfeed for its work.

“Superfeed is nothing more than a vendor of Turning Point Action, which is helping to develop an effective GOTV mobile application in the organization’s ballot chasing initiative,” wrote spokesman Andrew Kolvet, who then referred to Turning Point USA by an abbreviation. “TPUSA pays Superfeed for app development. We have launched a beta version of the app (available on the App Store) with a more robust version also in development that is scheduled to be released later this year that will have additional design features, video feeds, content distribution etc.”

DailyBeast.com, ‘Kari Lake’s Bribery Scandal Involves a Shady GOP Tech Firm’

Nothing more than a vendor? With concurrent senior leadership between TP Action and Superfeed? That’s more than an arm’s length vendor relationship. And Superfeed’s finances and leadership are running in stealth mode.

In celestial terms, however, Superfeed would be a black hole. Outside of state business records, which offer little insight into the company beyond the composition of its board, there is hardly any publicly available information about its activities. And for a company that DeWit touted mightily just last month, no one involved seems eager to open up about its success.

Superfeed’s website is currently empty, with the only text reading, “Coming Soon.” 

DailyBeast.com, ‘Kari Lake’s Bribery Scandal Involves a Shady GOP Tech Firm’

Yeah, that’s not suspicious at all…

The clearest picture of Superfeed’s business today is found on Apple and Google app stores. Those listings show at least 18 entities currently use Superfeed-powered apps, including Republican party organizations in four critical battlegrounds—Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin—as well as in blue-tinged Colorado, which still has powerful Republican strongholds. Meanwhile, both Google and Apple offer a “Team Michigan” app by Superfeed to push content from Turning Point and other conservative sources in that key state. The precise nature of Team Michigan’s affiliation with any official political organization—in a state where the GOP power structure has split into two competing factions—is still unclear.

A few conservative media outlets also promote apps built on Superfeed, including Western Journal and Conservative News America. The vast majority of clients, however, are political organizations, who use the app like a day planner to manage staff, scheduling, contacts, and the like. Those clients include Arizona state House candidate Austin Smith, Lindell, Moms for America, and MAGA influencer Scott Presler.

DailyBeast.com, ‘Kari Lake’s Bribery Scandal Involves a Shady GOP Tech Firm’

We can see that data and money is sloshing around the MAGA-verse in key swing states, but strangely there is little trace of it in campaign and financial disclosures.

Superfeed’s revenue figures are publicly unavailable, and public records like campaign finance reports and tax filings yield almost no trace of the company. The company has submitted one lone filing with the SEC, which shows that the startup authorized the sale of up to $25 million shares in January 2021. While the filing—submitted under what’s called a 506(b) exemption—indicates that the company authorized sales to as many as 35 non-accredited investors, the report itself was only required to list the first sale.

That sale, however, turned out to be a $250,000 investment from Michael Gibbons—the banker who later ran a self-funded campaign in Ohio’s vicious 2022 GOP Senate primary, where he nearly came to blows with another candidate during a debate. Gibbons’ candidate financial disclosure listed shares in Superfeed valued between $250,000 and $500,000.

It’s also impossible to gauge Superfeed’s size through known transactions. That’s because there are hardly any records of political groups paying Superfeed, even though it has powered apps for a number of political entities and campaigns in recent years.

For instance, Turning Point Action has used the app since at least 2022—when Superfeed’s Arizona business license was revoked—but has never reported any payments to the company on its Federal Election Commission filings. The group’s tax returns to date don’t show any Superfeed expenses, either, though their 2022 return lists payouts of $107,000 and above to three other communications consultants. According to an Associated Press report last October, Turning Point uses the app to manage voter outreach efforts—a project that boasts a $108 million budget.

DailyBeast.com, ‘Kari Lake’s Bribery Scandal Involves a Shady GOP Tech Firm’

$108 million dollar operation run on an app that is the conduit gushing with dark money and data through a network of MAGA-verse campaigns in key swing states? Yeah, to this former prosecutor, that kind of smells like a major campaign finance scandal along with criminal violations galore ready to hatch out once investigators start slinging subpoenas. I am seeing a cesspit of money, political influence, and corrupt practices reeking of illicit campaign expenditures and plenty of criminal liability to go around.

While Lake’s own losing gubernatorial campaign also deployed the app in 2022, it didn’t report any payments to Superfeed until after The Daily Beast revealed she was using the app. Arizona campaign finance filings show two $3,000 payments from the Lake campaign after the election—the only recorded Superfeed payments from any political committee in the state. Lake’s financial disclosure last month indicates that she was collecting a sizable income from the company at the time.

Two Arizona Republicans at the federal level also used the app in 2022. One campaign, for failed House contender Kelly Cooper, previously told The Daily Beast that they were hazy about the extent of their use of Superfeed, later reporting a $250 payment the day before the general election, FEC records show. The second campaign, for GOP Senate primary candidate Jim Lamon, did not file any Superfeed outlays. Lamon, it turns out, was also on Superfeed’s board as of 2021, according to the SEC filing.

DailyBeast.com, ‘Kari Lake’s Bribery Scandal Involves a Shady GOP Tech Firm’

A nominated Arizona Gubantorial campaign and U.S. Senate race (by a fake elector and Superfeed board member) also ran their data and dollars through this cesspit of corruption? And only reported on $6,250 of payments? Do tell. Are those market rates?

In fact, federal campaign disclosures show Superfeed payments from only two committees—Cooper (who is running again in 2024) along with the “Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund” super PAC. But those filings indicate that the app commands a relatively high price point on the market. Tea Party Patriots has reported $110,000 starting last April, at an apparent monthly billing rate of $10,000. Lake, who served as Superfeed’s communications director, only reported paying $6,000.

DailyBeast.com, ‘Kari Lake’s Bribery Scandal Involves a Shady GOP Tech Firm’

So that would be a big, fat NO. Such unreported subsidy of market rate services would be illegal and campaign finance violations. Attorney General Mayes? Secretary of State Fontes? I think you might have some questions for some folks here in Arizona?

Similarly, there are no records of payments to Superfeed in Wisconsin, Michigan, Colorado, or Georgia for the Republican apps in those states. The party organizations for whom the apps were built did not respond to requests for comment from The Daily Beast. Arizona state filings only return Lake’s campaign payments, with no outlays from the state Republican Party, which also has a Superfeed-powered app.

This raises questions about how and where Superfeed derives revenue besides through Turning Point. Because it turns out that while Lake’s campaign was paying Superfeed, Superfeed was also paying her—and paying her a lot.

DailyBeast.com, ‘Kari Lake’s Bribery Scandal Involves a Shady GOP Tech Firm’

Oh, and the cesspit runs under several other states, too? The authorities in those states might be getting curious, as might the FEC (if it weren’t for a lack of quorum stymieing FEC investigations throughout the Trump era and the Senate blockade on nominations...) and the DOJ (if it weren’t for a timorous AG who won’t move boldly against the criminal fascist MAGA conspiracy trying continuously to overthrow American democracy…). This might be a problem for those associated with Superfeed, no?

While Superfeed is currently without a president or CEO, its revolving board of directors bears a number of political ties, chiefly to Turning Point USA.

The Browns have disappeared from Superfeed’s business filings, replaced by new blood from the TPUSA universe. Tyler Bowyer, the COO at Turning Point Action, joined Superfeed as chairman of the board in the company’s 2022 annual report. Turning Point leader Charlie Kirk’s mother-in-law also currently holds a director’s position with the company, business records show. So does TPUSA advisory board member and oil and gas exec Wayne Newkumet, alongside his son Travis, who has followed his father into the energy sector. Lindell also holds an honorary position on the TPUSA board.

Kolvet, the Turning Point spokesman, told The Daily Beast that no “board members and officers of either TPUSA and TPAction’ hold any financial interest or receive any compensation from Superfeed, including Kirk.

Superfeed’s current corporate board also includes the Arizona national committee woman for the Republican National Committee, Lori Klein Corbin [Ed. – most famous for pointing a loaded gun at a reporter…], as well as Gibbons, the Cleveland investor-turned-Senate candidate.

Superfeed’s annual reports to the state of Arizona show a number of blown deadlines. After the state approved its amended business articles in Oct. 2020, Superfeed failed to file an annual report for more than two years, missing all of 2021 and nearly all of 2022, filing its statements for 2020, 2021, and 2022 on Dec. 9 of that year. In the interim, the state yanked Superfeed’s authority to do business in Arizona, according to a notice sent to the company in December 2021.

This means that Superfeed was not authorized to conduct business in Arizona during the 2022 campaign, when Lake, Lamon, Cooper, Smith, and Turning Point Action were all using the app. Lake was also collecting payments from the company while its license was suspended.

Superfeed appears to have missed yet another deadline last year, filing its 2023 annual report on Feb. 14 this year, submitting its 2024 report on the same day.

DailyBeast.com, ‘Kari Lake’s Bribery Scandal Involves a Shady GOP Tech Firm’

Ahoy! Some of the pirates have abandoned the sinking, unlicensed pirate ship of corrupt political influence, money and data that has been raiding RINO ports across the country? I can’t say that I am surprised that this dark corvette of campaign corruption has been left floating in port with a skeleton crew. Pirates can always smell when the hangman’s noose is near…

So there it is: Superfeed certainly appears to be a sewage-filled pirate ship of dark and dirty money and illicit discount MAGA data, wholly unreported to the authorities and stinking of criminal liability. And to think, maybe none of it would have come even this far into the light if Kari Lake had not made her little power move against DeWitt, prompting intrepid journalists to start sniffing around and pulling records – and finding far too few to be easily explained as an oversight.

Truly, #LyingLoserLake may yet discover that those who live by the grift tend to be yanked into the hoosegow on the evidence of their grifts – eventually. So long as we remain a nation with the rule of law, that is. And if Trump manages to slime his way back into office and wields the pardon power once again that is far from assured. You think Lake – Trump’s practical roommate at Mar-A-Lago – and all her criminal confederates won’t be lined up for a pardon?