Strategic Allied Consulting, a firm tied to allegations of voter registration fraud, was paid more than $600,000 by Republican sources in September before being blacklisted in the wake of those allegations.
Federal campaign finance records disclosed on Friday show that in September the Republican National Committee paid the company more than $416,000 and the Republican Party of Virginia paid it another $200,000. The RNC’s payments were first reported by BuzzFeed.
Run by Arizona-based GOP consultant Nathan Sproul, Strategic Allied Consulting was hired by the RNC and several state Republican parties to run voter registration drives and get-out-the-vote campaigns throughout the nation. But the RNC fired the company late last month and the state parties followed suit after Florida officials flagged dozens of questionable voter registration forms being filed by the company. Florida authorities are now investigating whether the filings amounted to fraud. The RNC paid the company more than $3.3 million before firing it on Sept. 27.
The company has also been linked to a case of voter registration form destruction in Virginia. A former employee of the company, Colin Small, 23, was charged last week with destroying eight voter registration forms there. Small, like many employees originally hired by the company, continued to work on behalf of the Republican Party after the company was fired.
Sproul and Republican groups have denied wrongdoing and blamed the problems on low-level employees who they say had disobeyed their training.
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