WSJ: NC congressman’s big bro is the man-to-see in Trump’s DC
Not every lobbyist gets this kind of schmoozing from The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times when they first arrive in Washington to set up shop. But Ches McDowell, the WSJ notes, is leveraging his long-time close friendship with presidential son Donald Trump, Jr. to make quite a splash in The Nation’s Capital:
[…] To get to know Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the lobbyist Ches McDowell didn’t scramble to set up a meeting after the election or donate to Donald Trump’s inauguration fund, both common tactics in Washington.
Instead, McDowell snagged an invite, through his friend Donald Trump Jr., to a falconry trip Kennedy hosted. On a sunny day in upstate New York last October, McDowell got his time with the future cabinet secretary while he fed mice to the falcons after a successful hunt.
[…] The 35-year-old McDowell is a North Carolina lobbyist who never worked for Congress, the White House or any other Washington institution. He is instead parlaying his background as a self-described government skeptic, who made his children baby food out of dandelion root and bear meat he hunted himself in an effort to avoid additives, into a power broker for the new administration where Kennedy, the health secretary, is reconsidering the role of pharmaceuticals and food ingredients.
He has hired Jackson Hines, Kennedy’s young nephew who worked on Kennedy’s presidential campaign, as one of the first employees for his Washington operation, as well as Chris LaCivita Jr., the son of one of Trump’s campaign managers.
His firm, Checkmate Government Relations, is preparing to open its Washington office next month on Pennsylvania Avenue. McDowell is decorating it with hunting trophies, antique Oriental rugs and an office chair custom-made out of crocodile hide.
One of the first items to be delivered: A taxidermied black bear, frozen midstride, that McDowell killed in North Carolina and shipped to Washington last week on a flatbed truck
During his first weeks in Washington, McDowell registered to lobby on behalf of Novo Nordisk, which makes the popular anti-obesity drugs Wegovy and Ozempic, Eli Lilly, the vaccine maker Sanofi and the ?University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, among others. One longtime client has already seen a win: Three days after inauguration, Trump signed an executive order declaring that the client, a North Carolina Native American tribe, should have federal recognition.
Critics say the relationship between Trump’s family, his advisers and the lobbyists who are gaining traction in his second administration is an overly cozy one that presents potential conflicts of interest. “So much for ‘draining the swamp,’” said Tony Carrk, executive director of the watchdog group Accountable.US.
McDowell said Hines, who declined interview requests, doesn’t directly lobby his uncle. […]
If the name McDowell sounds familiar, Ches’s brother Addison McDowell got elected in 2024 — with a big boost from President Trump — to North Carolina’s Sixth Congressional District seat in the US House.
Ches McDowell, the article also notes, made a name for himself in and around the North Carolina General Assembly in Raleigh:
[…] A few years after a college internship in the North Carolina Senate, McDowell tried his hand at lobbying and started signing clients from UPS to the sports-gambling industry, which has more recently retained McDowell to work on its behalf in Washington. […]
McDowell “makes things happen,” said North Carolina GOP state Rep. John Bell, who met McDowell at a milk-chugging contest outside the state General Assembly roughly a decade ago. (McDowell’s team won, Bell said.)
In 2021, the state Senate blocked a bill to crack down on debt-settlement companies, which were McDowell’s clients, after the House had passed it.
“I guess we’re just going to do whatever Ches f—ing McDowell wants,” GOP state Rep. Julia Howard quipped to colleagues at the time, according to people who heard about the comments. (Howard recently said she didn’t recall using “foul language,” but that “if I did, I’m not ashamed.”)
Today, McDowell often wears a navy blue suit with the phrase “Ches F—ing McDowell” embroidered inside the jacket. […]
Ches McDowell’s name also emerged in a more recent Journal story about how the “going rate” for lobbyists to advocate for a presidential pardon was now in the neighborhood of $1 million:
[…] President Trump had just awarded
a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom for Charlie Kirk in October when his son ushered friends toward the Oval Office.
As a string ensemble played in the background, Donald Trump Jr. walked up with lobbyist Ches McDowell to chat with the president. Trump Jr. at one point pulled McDowell forward to shake the president’s hand, according to a livestream broadcast. After they went inside, McDowell took the president aside to discuss a pressing issue, according to people familiar with the matter: One of his clients was seeking a pardon.
The client was Changpeng Zhao, founder of the world’s largest crypto exchange, Binance. That afternoon, the president agreed to sign Zhao’s pardon, the people said.
Zhao was one of the beneficiaries of a new, informal path to presidential pardons that has become a feature of Trump’s second term, which allows some clemency applicants with deep pockets or politically connected lobbyists to circumvent the traditional pardon process.
McDowell told The Wall Street Journal that Trump Jr. didn’t help him pursue the pardon and had left the room when he brought up Zhao. Trump Jr. had brought him because they were leaving later that afternoon for a hunting trip in Utah, McDowell said. A spokesman for Trump Jr. declined to comment. […]
In the first year of his first term, Trump granted a single pardon and commuted one sentence. He waited until his final day in office to issue around 140 additional acts of clemency. This term, he pardoned more than 1,500 people on his first day alone, and has since granted clemency to a further 87 people and companies.
The new approach—driven in part by Trump’s own experience as a criminal defendant, people close to him say—has spawned a pardon-shopping industry where lobbyists say their going rate is $1 million. Pardon-seekers have offered some lobbyists close to the president success fees of as much as $6 million if they can close the deal, according to people familiar with the offers.
A lobbying firm run by former Trump bodyguard Keith Schiller and former Trump Organization executive George Sorial was paid $1 million in the first quarter to lobby for a developer convicted of bribing former Sen. Robert Menendez (D., N.J.) with hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and gold bars. He hasn’t been pardoned. The firm declined to comment, and a spokesman for the developer said he terminated his relationship with the lobbying shop this spring.
Conservative operatives Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman, who themselves pleaded guilty to felony telecommunications fraud in 2022, were paid $960,000 in the second quarter to lobby for a pardon for a former nursing-home operator who pleaded guilty to defrauding the government of $38 million. Trump pardoned the man, Joseph Schwartz, last month.
“We are so pleased that the President in his wisdom chose to act,” Burkman said in an email.
Binance paid McDowell $450,000 in the third quarter, during which he was registered to lobby for only 10 days. He said he wasn’t paid a success fee. […]
I may be wr wr wr wrong and i damn sure hope i am but i think i smell the $pecial Intere$t Coa$tal Con$ervation A$$ociation
In the background. If so, President Trumps efforts to save the commercial fishing industry in this country and especially in NC (Shrimpgate) may just have hit a snag.
The Berger machine in the Senate is certain bought and paid for by that corrupt organization as shown by Shrimpgate. They are an embarassment to the Republican Party.
The important thing is to hold a common sense majority in the House, as stopped Shrimpgate before. The danger is that Berger, often working through Jimmy Dixon recruited candidates to challenge the 6 top leaders of the Freedom Caucus in House primaries. The Freedom Caucus was who provided the troops to stop Shrimpgate in the House. If Berger succeeds in taking them down, the people of North Carolina are in real trouble, with our commercial fishermen having the biggest target on their backs..
The good thing is that Berger and his little errand boy Dixon both have primaries. It would be a great day in North Carolina if both of those scoundrels go down.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvTmc-IgiZo
I’m not following the replies. The McDowwel guy represented the Shrimpers, why did you say you smell a group or you think commercial fishermen have hit a snag?
On Kidwell, I don’t get his 3-4 cultish defenders up here. I don’t believe for one minute that Berger is going after that guy. I think Berger is pretty busy at the moment. Kidwell wants to make Phil Berger the boogie man in hopes of gaining support for himself. I saw a photo online from his opponents kick off. His opponent has a ton of local support. It is hard for activists to accept, or remember, but most republican primary voters do not attend monthly republican meetings. If you are only talking to folks at party meetings, you are ignoring the majority of Republicans in a County.
In my opinion, Kidwell is facing a challenge because people in his district are tired of his antics and his mouth. We will see. I still laugh out loud about a text I received from a buddy telling me that Kidwell reported he donated a $100,000 AR-15 to his campaign as an “in kind” donation in June of 2024. I guess exaggeration just lives in his bones…
It was Kidwell that screwed over his Dare County constituents with the slimy, secret Affordable Housing legislation. He cost tax payers money when those towns had to file lawsuits. Kidwell tried to run from it, but the outer banks voice busted him and published proof it was him. He got a $6,400 from an interested party and less than two weeks later that provision turns up in the budget? Let that be anyone else and you would be raking them over the coals and talking about how corrupt they were.
You’re right. Kidwell is using the boogey man campaign tactic. Inexplicably, he and his supporters are also upping the ante on bullying and mistreating local conservatives in Beaufort County. That alone is alienating even more people. I imagine as he is faced with a primary, he and his friends can’t help but display more of their true colors concerning their attitudes about the locals. Many people have already recognized the trait. Now, as they circle the wagons it is more and more obvious. He and his cronies are now bringing phony charges on even more very good people as they attempt to run the local party with an illegal shadow committee while excluding the executive committee formed from the last county convention. The situation on the ground here is not good. Corruption everywhere.
R.E. Minder, i understand why you might think i was speaking negatively about Mr McDowell himself but that is not the case. About the snag, there are multiple other names of mention in this same article.