Sarah PAC's Mystery Research Firm
Andy Kroll and Daniel Schulman at Mother Jones report:
In recent months, Sarah Palin's political action committee, SarahPAC, has paid thousands of dollars to a mysterious company that's gone to significant lengths to mask its ownership. Addresses linked to the firm lead to mail drops. It has no website. No phone number. Not even the California lawyer who incorporated the company knew who was behind it. But a Mother Jones investigation has found that this firm is run by an unlikely foreign political operative.
Federal Election Commission filings show that SarahPAC has paid the company, Paideia Research LLC, at least $16,000 for its services. The payments to Paideia—which takes its name from the ancient Greek word meaning "education" or "instruction"—are the only research-related expenditures listed on the PAC's latest disclosures.
Managed by a shell company, and incorporated in a state with favorable tax laws and scant disclosure requirements, Paideia's corporate structure virtually assured anonymity. But interviews and a review of domestic and international business records led to the identity of Paideia's owner—which presented yet another mystery: Why is Palin's political action committee employing a Dutch right-wing journalist named Joshua Livestro, who is known for incendiary rhetoric?
Two recent federal filings for SarahPAC list a Sheridan, Wyoming, address for Paideia Research. When one local blogger visited the address, he found a low-slung, non-descript building that's home to Sheridan Answering and Secretarial Services, a company that handles phone calls and mail for customers. (Other bloggers soon started asking questions about Palin's mystery research firm.) When asked by Mother Jones about Paideia, Sheridan Answering's owner, Ginger Horton, replied, "I have no idea who they are."
Wyoming business records show that Paideia was incorporated in July. In addition to the local Wyoming address, these records list another in southern California. That address, in turn, traces to another mail forwarding service. Paideia's corporate filings also indicate that it is managed by Pyramid Management LLC, which belongs to a California-based ex-lawyer and realtor, David DeLoach, who specializes in setting up untraceable LLCs and pre-fab shell companies in Wyoming and Nevada—states that don't tax corporate income and have exceedingly lax disclosure rules.
In a brief phone interview, DeLoach said he vaguely remembered setting up Paideia. But as his website promises, the entire process was confidential. He said he himself didn't know who was behind Paideia or why it was created.
So it appears the owner of Paideia truly wanted to keep its origins secret. And he might have succeeded, had Karen Wheeler, the Wyoming Secretary of State's business compliance director, not told Mother Jones that she had recently spoken to Paideia's owner by phone. She didn't get his name, but said he "had quite the English accent" and told her he was based in England.
A search of British business records turned up a company called Paideia Limited. Livestro is its sole director and shareholder.
The 40-year-old is not your typical hire for an American political operation. ...
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