A company controlled by a Canadian steel billionaire involved in illegal donations to a Donald Trump campaign team has received at least $ 58 million in contracts to help build the former president’s wall along the US-Mexico border. Barry Zekelman’s corporate empire and family – including his wife and brother – have also contributed at least $ 2.6 million to US political campaigns for decades. In one case, Mr. Zekelman personally wrote a check to an American senator. A Globe and Mail review of U.S. government campaign finance and contract databases has shed new light on the political involvement of Mr. Zekelman, based in Windsor, OD, and his US companies. That involvement, the review revealed, goes far beyond Trump’s donations that led him to hot water with US regulators earlier this spring. Canadian billionaire Barry Zekelman’s company fined by US regulators for illegal donations to Trump Super PAC In April, the US Federal Election Commission fined Wheatland Tube, a company controlled by Zekelman, for giving $ 1.75 million to Super PAC America First Action. The FEC found that these donations were illegal because Zekelman helped orchestrate them. Under U.S. law, foreign nationals who do not hold U.S. citizenship or a green card are prohibited from making or participating in political contributions. Mr Zekelman has backed Mr Trump’s protectionist trade policies, including the imposition of tariffs on Canada by the president on steel. He pressured Mr. Trump to impose import quotas on other countries, which would put Zekelman’s rivals at a disadvantage outside the United States. Mr. Zekelman’s empire has benefited from Mr. Trump’s policies in other ways as well. Atlas Tube, a Zekelman-owned company, has won two steel supply contracts for the Arizona border wall, according to federal government records. The first contract, dated September 23, 2019, was $ 52,563,747. The second, as of January 14, 2020, was worth US $ 5,902,948. In both cases, Atlas supplied steel pipes and other materials to Southwest Valley Constructors Co., which was responsible for building part of the wall south of Tucson. Southwest is one of the few wall contractors to publicly disclose its subcontractors to the federal archives. It is unknown at this time what he will do after leaving the post. The Globe asked five other companies that built parts of the wall if any had subcontracted to Zekelman companies. No one responded. Neither Mr Zekelman nor Atlas responded to requests for comment. The Arkansas Times reported in 2019 that Atlas would expand its Little Rock facility to produce wall steel. The Arizona Daily Star later found the “Atlas Tube” sealed on the steel pillars that make up the border wall at the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. The amount paid by Atlas for this project has not been previously disclosed. Under the US Campaign Finance Act, companies with government contracts are prohibited from making federal political contributions. There is no evidence that Atlas donated money to federal candidates or Super PACs. But donations have flowed in from other Zekelman companies, including Wheatland Tube, as well as Mr. Zekelman’s family. Saurav Ghosh, a former law enforcement lawyer for the Federal Election Commission, said the donation ban could also apply to companies of the same corporate family as a federal government contractor. If FEC commissioners found that, for example, the donor company is controlled by the same individuals as a contractor, they could find the donations illegal. “If the parent company has the same executives and directors as the company with the contract, I think there are cases where the FEC would go beyond the corporate structure and the legal imagination that it is a separate entity would not be enough to allow them to make political contributions. Said Goss, now director of federal reform at the Campaign Legal Center, the watchdog group that successfully protested Whitland’s Trump donations. Campaign finance records show that, in addition to donations to America First Action, Wheatland Tube also contributed $ 250,000 to Defend Arizona on October 26, 2020 and $ 250,000 to the Associated Republicans of Texas Campaign Fund on July 20, 2021. Defend Arizona is a campaign group that attacked Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly in the 2020 Arizona Senate election. Stephanie Zekelman, Zekelman’s wife, has personally made at least $ 60,800 in donations since 2008, according to The Globe. The largest include $ 28,500 in the National Republican Senate Committee in August 2008. $ 7,500 in groups that supported then-presidential candidate Mitt Romney in 2012. and $ 3,500 in Martha McSally’s campaign in the 2018 Arizona Senate. Ms. Zekelman’s most recent donations are $ 2,500 in checks to WinRed, a Republican fundraising platform, and the Senate Conservative Fund in November 2020. In some of her campaign contributions, Ms Zekelman said she worked for Zekelman Industries, her husband’s empire parent company. All her donations give her the location as a suburb of Phoenix, where she and Mr. Zekelman have a country mansion. He did not respond to a request for comment. Alan Zekelman, Barry Zekelman’s brother and partly owner of the corporate empire, contributed larger sums. It has provided at least $ 340,055 since 1995. His biggest money came in the 2012 election, when he donated $ 97,500 to several Republican groups that support Mr. Romney and various congressional candidates. His other major donations over the years included $ 20,000 to the Michigan Central Committee. $ 14,750 for the Jewish Agency PAC and $ 10,000 for the Michigan Strong Super PAC in 2022. The Michigan Strong is a group that supports Tudor Dixon’s Republican nomination for governor in 2022. A former steel saleswoman, Ms. Dixon is a conservative campaigner on a platform that would exclude trans women from women’s sports and would prohibit abortions. Alan Zekelman did not answer The Globe’s questions. On several occasions, Zekelman employees made similar donations to the same politicians at the same time as Alan Zekelman or Stephanie Zekelman. Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, received $ 2,900 from Alan Zekelman in February 2021, plus $ 7,900 among three Zekelman employees that same month. Sherrod Brown, an Ohio tariff supporter and also a member of the committee, received a total of $ 10,000, shared among 11 employees of Zekelman Industries’s predecessor on July 30, 2008, plus $ 2,300 from Ms Zekelman that day. Ms. Zekelman and Armand Lauzon, members of Zekelman’s Board of Directors, each donated the same $ 28,500 to the Republican National Senate Committee in 2008. Federal campaign records show only one direct donation from Barry Zekelman: $ 1,000 to Evan Bai, then Democratic senator from Indiana, in May 2006. Both publicly and privately, Mr. Zekelman has backed Mr. Trump’s defense agenda, including tariffs and quotas on imported steel. Mr. Zekelman advocated for tariffs on steel in Canada, something Mr. Trump did in 2018 that led to a one-year continental trade war. Such measures raised the price of steel in the US and put Mr. Zekelman’s competitors at a disadvantage. In April 2018, Mr. Zekelman attended a private dinner hosted by Mr. Trump with key campaign sponsors in a suite at the Trump International Hotel in Washington. During the lunch, Mr. Zekelman pressured the president to “reverse” the amount of steel imported from other countries by imposing quotas. The conversation became public when it was revealed during Mr. Trump’s first referral process, because it contained an irrelevant discussion about Ukraine. Meanwhile, Mr. Zekelman’s involvement in the Trump Super PAC donation came to light because Mr. Zekelman told the New York Times about it. Wheatland was ordered to pay a $ 975,000 fine, the third largest in FEC history. Mr Ghosh said cases like this, in which Mr Zekelman’s actions were only accidentally revealed, demonstrate why the law needs to be tightened. When a foreign company makes political contributions, it is very difficult to prove that the foreign owners participated in the decision to donate. Campaign Legal has advocated stricter rules that would not prohibit donations at all to majority companies abroad. “I think it happens a lot more often than we want to admit, but we just don’t know because it’s so hard to spot,” he said. “Enforcing campaign funding can not proceed on the basis of luck.” The Morning and Afternoon Newsletters are compiled by Globe editors, giving you a brief overview of the day’s most important headlines. Register today.
