Inside the PAC operation that raised millions by impersonating Donald Trump

But like so many things on the internet, "Matte Nox" is not who he appears to be. "Matte Nox" is the assumed name and online persona of Matthew Tunstall, a 34-year-old from Texas who over the past three years has raised millions of dollars operating two political action committees that impersonated the Trump campaign. Founded in 2018 and 2019, Tunstall's two PACs, Support American Leaders and Campaign to Support the President, have together raised a total of $3.4 million to date, according to federal filings. While much of that money pays for the billions of robocalls the two groups make, almost all of which feature recorded soundbites of public statements from Trump, a CNN KFile analysis shows that the PACs paid Tunstall at least $738,000 of that money to date. In just the 2020 cycle alone, the Support American Leaders PAC paid Tunstall more than 360 separate times -- by far the PAC's largest number of expenditures. The majority of their contributions come from retirees, according to their filings. None of the money the two groups have raised went directly to Trump or his campaign during the 2020 cycle. Even though Tunstall reports on his federal filings that his PACs have spent approximately $407,000 toward supporting Trump, a close analysis of those independent expenditures shows that approximately $380,000 of that money was spent on robocalls and operating expenses; about $27,000 was spent on advertising. Tunstall, meanwhile, has been paid nearly double what he claims to have spent on supporting Trump.
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