The legal non-profit the Center for American Liberty, helmed by Harmeet Dhillon, paid more than $132,000 to a public relations firm that simultaneously represents the California Republican national committeewoman in her capacity as head of her own for-profit law firm and Republican activist.
According to a client list published by Praetorian Public Relations, whose proprietor is Matt Shupe, the Contra Costa county Republican chair, the firm also represents other partners and associates of Dhillon Law, other state Republican officeholders, and individuals at the center of the Center for American Liberty’s culture-war driven lawsuits.
The revelations further blur the lines between Dhillon’s non-profit work, her legal career and the political ambitions that saw her challenge the incumbent national RNC chair, Ronna McDaniel, in an election held last January.
Dhillon is also a rising media star on the Republican right.
Asked about the ties between CAL and Praetorian PR, Joan Harrington, a fellow at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at the Santa Clara University and an expert on non-profit law and ethics, said: “Every way in which [Dhillon] is benefiting from the non-profit should be considered compensation,” adding: “it should be disclosed.”
The Guardian previously reported that the CAL’s IRS filings showed that CAL had paid Dhillon Law $1.32m in fees, and that according to the 2021 filing, Dhillon additionally drew a $120,000 salary for a two-hour weekly commitment.
In that reporting, the executive director of CAL, Mark Trammell, wrote: “The 2021 Form 990 should show Ms Dhillon working 40 hours per week. That correction will be made shortly through an Amended Form 990.”
CAL removed the 2021 IRS filing from its website after the Guardian asked about Dhillon’s hours and has since replaced it with an amended form. The filing lists Praetorian alongside Dhillon Law, Blitz Digital and Eimer Stahl LLP as one of the four biggest contractors to the organization.
Praetorian’s client list includes Trammell, who is billed as “executive director and general counsel to the Center for American Liberty”. The list bills Dhillon, however, as “Managing Partner, Dhillon Law Group”, “Chairwoman, Republican National Lawyers Association”, “California’s RNC National Committeewoman”, and only lastly as “Founder and CEO of the Center for American Liberty”.
The client list also includes Dhillon Law attorneys who have worked on CAL cases, including Krista Lee Baughman and Ron Coleman.
It also includes CAL clients: the rightwing Internet personality Andy Ngo (billed as an “investigative reporter”); 18-year-old “detransitioner” Chloe Cole; and “Social Media and Cultural Influencer” Rogan O’Handley, who posts on various social media sites under the handle “dc_draino”.
CAL is assisting Ngo in a suit against Rose City Antifa which has been running since 2020, and whose delays led an Oregon judge to award a limited judgment last February, and forced Ngo’s team to move that the judgment be vacated. The Guardian contacted Ngo’s attorney, James Buchal, to ask about the delays but received no response.
CAL is sponsoring O’Hanlon’s suit against the California attorney general over O’Hanlon’s Twitter ban in 2020, and Chloe Cole’s suit against Kaiser Permanente over gender-affirming care she received in her early teens.
Neither CAL’s filings nor the Praetorian PR client list specify whose efforts CAL is paying for.
In response to questions about the relationship between CAL and Praetorian PR, and on whether CAL was paying for promoting Dhillon’s non-CAL work, Trammell, CAL’s executive director, wrote in an email: “The Center for American Liberty compensates Praetorian Public Relations only for services rendered to the Center for American Liberty.”
Trammell continued: “Any services that Praetorian Public Relations renders to its many other clients are not paid for by the Center for American Liberty. Any assertion to the contrary is categorically false.”
He added: “GuideStar awarded the Center for American Liberty with a Gold rating for its commitment to transparency.”
The Guardian pressed Trammell to clarify whether CAL paid for none, some, or all of Dhillon’s PR services with Praetorian, but received no response.
The Guardian also emailed Praetorian and the CAL clients Ngo, Cole and O’Hanlon, asking each whether they were paying for Praetorian’s themselves, or being subsidized by CAL.
Although Ngo frequently screenshots and pastes reporters’ questions to his 1.3 million-follower Twitter account, neither he nor the other CAL clients responded.
Social media posts suggest Shupe, the Praetorian boss, and Harmeet Dhillon have a warm personal friendship.
In a January 2022 Instagram post, Shupe described Dhillon as “my favorite client”. The same month, Dhillon described Shupe on Twitter as the “best PR pro in CA”. In another Shupe Instagram post the previous October, the pair posed, smiling with the far-right congressman and former Ohio State assistant wrestling coach, Jim Jordan.
Apart from managing PR for CAL, Dhillon, attorneys from her law firm and CAL and Dhillon Law clients, Praetorian lists various west coast Republican officeholders as clients, including Dhillon’s California RNC colleague Shawn Steel.
According to his LinkedIn page, Shupe has been a Republican party office holder since 2011, serving variously as vice-chair of the California College Republicans, executive director of the San Francisco Republican party, and as chair of the Contra Costa county Republican party since 2018. He was communications director for the failed California gubernatorial campaign of John Cox in 2018, and a consultant in the former San Diego mayor Kevin Faulconer’s failed attempt to displace Gavin Newsom in a 2021 recall election.
Shupe did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
Harrington, the non-profit ethics expert, explained that financial transparency was not just important for donors, and that “the public has an interest” in knowing how the finances of tax-exempt organizations are run.
“Non-profits have the luxury of being tax exempt,” Harrington said, adding that “the rest of us pay more tax to support non-profits” as a result.
“Transparency is important so that the world knows that this money is being spent properly.”
This article was amended on 23 June 2023 to clarify a reference to the IRS 990 form. An earlier version said it had been removed from CAL’s website “at the time of reporting”. The form was unavailable on the website following the Guardian’s publication of a previous story on 12 June 2023, but CAL says it was re-posted on 16 June when the error regarding Harmeet Dhillon’s hours had been corrected with the Internal Revenue Service.
