BREAKING: Iowa evangelical leader admits he was paid by the DeSantis Team prior to his endorsement pic.twitter.com/EoVmMPLe1y
— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) November 21, 2023
A top evangelical leader in Iowa, Bob Vander Plaats, confirmed Tuesday that his organization received $95,000 from what Reuters originally described as the “DeSantis campaign, a super PAC linked to him and a nonprofit group” before he endorsed the governor’s presidential election.
Fox News’s Bret Baier questioned Vander Plaats on the report, which asserts that Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R-FL) campaign and groups associated with him gave a total of $95,000 to the nonprofit, the Family Leader Foundation, which Vander Plaats heads up. At the time, Reuters pointed to campaign finance reports “and a document prepared by an Iowa state lawmaker who was helping the Vander Plaats organization raise money for a July 14 presidential candidate forum.”
“Well, it’s definitely true,” Vander Plaats told Baier, encouraging “everybody to read the Reuters article.”
“Everything we do is above board,” he added.
According to the August Reuters article, “DeSantis and supporting groups got three pages of advertisements in a booklet distributed at the July forum attended by 2,000 Christian conservatives, and tickets to the summit, lunch and an after-dinner event.”