“Bacon’s intervention on behalf of Trump’s company came at the same time Trump was talking publicly about recruiting a primary challenger against [Bacon].”
A new report from ProPublica is exposing just how willing Don Bacon is to do whatever Donald Trump tells him to.
Just two weeks after Trump threatened to recruit a primary challenger against Bacon, Trump Media asked Bacon to help them jump the line for a foreign-worker visa for a company executive – contradicting Trump and Bacon campaigning on “Hire American Policies.”
The office “quickly went into motion” and Bacon “personally” ordered a staffer to “deal with it” – despite the staffer believing it was “inappropriate to mix politics with the office’s constituent services duties.”
After the company obtained the visa, Bacon accepted thousands of dollars from a Trump Media board member and a business partner.
DCCC Spokesperson Mallory Payne:
“When Trump needed a special favor, he knew Don Bacon would fall in line. Bacon will never have the backbone to stand up to Trump because he’s so desperate to keep his seat in Washington.”
A congressman intervened to help former President Donald Trump’s social media company jump the line for a difficult-to-obtain foreign-worker visa to bring a company executive to the U.S., according to interviews and records reviewed by ProPublica.
A former staffer for Rep. Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican, said the congressman personally instructed her to help Trump Media, even though she thought it was inappropriate to mix politics with the office’s constituent services duties.
“I specifically did not want to do this,” Bacon’s former director of special projects, Makenzie Cartwright, told ProPublica when asked about emails showing the lawmaker’s intervention. “It was specifically the congressman that suggested I needed to deal with it.”
“Thank you so much for your help on making sure we push this forward,” the company’s chief operating officer wrote to another Bacon staffer in January 2022, according to an email reviewed by ProPublica. “I will make sure to thank the congressman as well!”
Trump Media, which now accounts for roughly half of Trump’s net worth, presents conflicts of interests for the former president, according to ethics experts. While there have been concerns about donors and special interests seeking to curry favor with the Republican candidate for president, this is the first known instance of a politician helping Trump in a private matter involving his social media business.
And it shows that as Trump has presented himself as an immigration hawk, his company has sought special treatment to bring its own foreign executive to the United States.
His administration generally pushed U.S. companies to hire Americans over foreign workers and instituted policies that made it harder to secure visas for skilled workers. Trump’s current platform pledges to “strengthen Buy American and Hire American Policies.”
Before Trump Media reached out to Bacon’s office, the company had already helped get the executive, Vladimir Novachki, approved for the visa. But a backlog at the American embassy in the Balkan nation was causing severe delays in scheduling interviews for Macedonians to finalize the process.
Bacon’s office helped fix the problem for Trump’s company, according to the person involved. Last year, Novachki, who had moved to Florida, was named Trump Media’s chief technology officer.
Bacon’s intervention on behalf of Trump’s company came at the same time Trump was talking publicly about recruiting a primary challenger against the moderate Republican congressman.
It’s common for companies to ask members of Congress to help speed along such applications. But they typically do so when the applicant or company is based in the lawmaker’s district. Trump Media, headquartered in Sarasota, Florida, is far outside of Bacon’s Nebraska district.
The request from the former president’s company came at a delicate moment in Bacon and Trump’s relationship. Bacon had supported Trump in both his presidential campaigns up until that point. But he was also willing to buck his own party at times, criticizing Trump’s actions during the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, for example, and voting for President Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill.
That vote prompted Trump to release a statement in January 2022 raising the specter of a primary challenge against Bacon that year: “Anyone want to run for Congress against Don Bacon in Nebraska?”
The emails from Trump’s company asking for help from Bacon’s office came a couple weeks later. Canter, the ethics expert, said the timing made the request more troubling, potentially increasing the pressure on Bacon to help.
Records show Bacon’s office quickly went into motion, gathering the forms and rationales it would need to push the case forward with the State Department.
