Carter would be able to “engage with Bannon” directly.236 Emails uncovered by Bloomberg in 2018 will reveal that, following this promise by Stockton to Carter, TUC directly coordinated with Bannon and other Trump campaign officials as to funding, strategic planning, and market identification and targeting.237 A TUC staffer created a TUC Twitter account in September 2016, but thereafter it was accessed by multiple parties Carter cannot identify; it appears that some of the tweets made by these unknown parties “highlight[ed] the rolling WikiLeaks dumps of stolen Democratic campaign emails” as well as the work of “right-wing provocateurs” like Mike Cernovich—a Twitter personality who spent much of the 2016 general election tweeting about “Pizzagate,” a conspiracy theory later tied to Russian sources by Rolling Stone.238
By early October, Carter and TUC are requesting additional funds directly from the Trump campaign—specifically, $160,000 from Steve Bannon.239 Bannon puts Carter in touch with two men then deeply involved in a national social media manipulation campaign paid for directly by the Trump campaign: former Navy SEAL Jon Iadonisi and Dallas-based venture capitalist Darren Blanton (see chapter 6).240 Iadonisi is a business partner of Trump’s top national security advisor, Mike Flynn—indeed, the two men are, at the time, sharing an office—with Iadonisi simultaneously working with Flynn on a secret lobbying campaign for Turkey as well as a social media manipulation campaign for Trump. Blanton is a future Trump transition adviser who is paid $200,000 during the presidential transition period for social media manipulation work a company of his did during the campaign.241 According to Carter, when he meets Iadonisi and Blanton for the first time in Dallas, hoping to receive a six-figure investment in TUC from them, they are accompanied by “an Army veteran who ran a Blackwater-like company that provided paramilitary services” who remains unidentified.242 Blanton promises to help TUC raise money and proceeds to do so; Iadonisi—still Flynn’s business partner and one of the Trump campaign’s social media operatives—also offers to directly assist TUC.243 It is unclear whether it is associates of Flynn, Iadonisi, Blanton, or the unidentified veteran who later tweet out WikiLeaks- and Pizzagate-related content from TUC’s Twitter account.
While Carter’s description of the “Army veteran” matches that of Trump adviser Erik Prince, Prince can be excluded as the third participant in the Carter-Iadonisi-Blanton meeting—but only because Blanton introduced Carter to both Michael Flynn and Erik Prince on October 19, 2016, within two weeks of Carter first meeting the Dallas businessman.244 On the same day, Flynn, Prince, and Blanton introduce Carter to Rebekah Mercer, the owner of Trump’s data firm, Cambridge Analytica.245 In the ensuing week, Alexandra Preate—a spokeswoman for Bannon, Breitbart, and Mercer—drafts a press release hyping Carter and TUC.246 At the end of that weeklong period, on October 26, Trump announces, in what he calls a “major policy speech” in North Carolina, a “new deal for Black America.”247 The next day, BuzzFeed News reports that, according to a Trump campaign aide, the Trump campaign is self-admittedly running “three major voter suppression operations” in the lead-up to Election Day, and that one of these efforts is targeting black voters.248
Just days after the election, everyone associated with the Trump campaign who had been in contact with Bruce Carter cuts ties with him, with Blanton in a terse email citing, as justification for the move, a past criminal conviction that Carter had done nothing to hide and that would have shown up in any background check conducted on him by the Trump campaign pre-election.249
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In late October 2016, Thomas Barrack writes an op-ed for Fortune that details what the longtime Trump adviser believes the next president—which he long ago predicted would be Trump—should do in the Middle East. In his editorial, Barrack insists that “the United States should make a radical, historic shift in its outreach towards the Arab world.… America should forge alliances with a new generation of Arab leaders.… [T]he US should take the lead in establishing a 21st century ‘Marshall Plan’ of economic aid” to the Middle East.250 While attempting to maintain his existing relationships in the region with words of praise for America’s long-standing ally Qatar, Barrack writes also of the hope he finds in “the rise of a new generation in government,” mentioning both Saudi Arabia and the UAE as countries with “brilliant young leaders … crafting forward-looking policies to effectively forge a new Middle East. American foreign policy must persuade these bold visionaries.… These leaders need and deserve active, engaged US support,” writes Barrack.251 Strikingly, Barrack writes of