Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty/Reuters
At the end of May, ABC News pointed out that Nikki Haley was accepting donations from foreign lobbyists while she called for a ban on those very same foreign government advocates. It turns out, there’s a lot more to the story.
One of the lobbyists mentioned in the story—Oswaldo “Ozzie” Palomo of Chartwell Strategy Group—has worked on behalf of the Georgian government and the Social Democratic Party of Romania, and he has become one of Haley’s top contributors. In February, Palomo made a $6,600 donation to Haley’s joint fundraising committee, which was properly disclosed in Chartwell’s federal lobbying filing the next month.
But notably, even after the ABC report about Haley’s foreign lobbying support, Palomo made another contribution. This one, on June 16, was for $5,000, making Palomo a maximum contributor to both Haley’s campaign and her affiliated Stand for America PAC.