Indicted Ron Paul Aide Is Also the Target of a Police Investigation Into a Mysterious Burglary

Last year, the laptop of a dead libertarian activist was stolen from his parents’ home. Police are investigating Paul’s deputy campaign manager in connection with the theft.

Charles Dharapak/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


On Wednesday, a trio of conservative operatives with close ties to Rand Paul and his father were indicted for their alleged role in an effort to purchase an influential Iowa Republican’s endorsement of Ron Paul during his 2012 presidential bid. Mother Jones has learned that one of these operatives, Dimitri Kesari, is also a target of a police investigation into a mysterious burglary last year at the Rhode Island home of a Ron Paul staffer who died in 2013. All that was taken, according to local police, was the deceased staffer’s laptop.

Kesari, who served as Ron Paul’s deputy campaign manager during the 2012 campaign, faces federal conspiracy, campaign finance, and obstruction of justice charges for his alleged involvement in paying more than $70,000 to then-Iowa state senator Kent Sorenson to switch his endorsement from Michele Bachmann to Ron Paul ahead of the Iowa caucuses. The burglary case involves the childhood home of one of Kesari’s colleagues on Paul’s campaign team, a young and well-known libertarian activist named Jared Gamble, who died in 2013 at the age of 26. Gamble had worked on both of Ron Paul’s presidential campaigns, as well as on Rand Paul’s 2010 senate bid. He also had a connection to Sorenson, whose 2008 campaign for Iowa state senate Gamble had assisted. Sorenson eventually acknowledged taking money from both the Paul and the Michele Bachmann campaigns and resigned his Iowa state senate seat. He pleaded guilty to federal campaign finance charges last summer and is awaiting sentencing.

Last July, on the one-year anniversary of Gamble’s death, an anonymous donor gave his parents a weekend trip to Maine, according to Glocester police chief Joseph DelPrete. While they were away, their home was broken into. DelPrete says it was not a typical burglary. No valuables or jewelry were taken—only the laptop Gamble had used for his political work.

“I know it appeared they were specifically after a computer,” DelPrete says. “And I will say that Mr. Kesari was, and still is, a target of this investigation. We believe he was involved in some way, along with others unknown to us right now. That’s about all I can say—it is an investigation, but we are not done with it.”

DelPrete says the case still needs to be reviewed by the state police and federal authorities, but notes that he is confident his department will make an arrest. Kesari and his attorney, Jesse Binnall, did not return multiple phone and email requests for comment.

When Gamble passed away unexpectedly in July 2013, his death was mourned widely among libertarian activists allied with the Paul clan. Both Ron and Rand Paul posted condolence messages on their Facebook pages, and a YouTube tribute video featured appearances by key operatives associated with the Paul family’s political machine.

Sorenson opens the video, saying how impressed he was that a then-21-year old Gamble had come to Iowa in 2008 to help him win his first election. Kesari—who has worked in conservative politics as an activist, lobbyist, and campaign staffer—also makes an appearance. He recalled meeting Gamble when the activist, just 17 at the time, began working for the National Right To Work Committee—an anti-union group where Kesari and other Paul family political operatives got their start. Prior to working on Ron Paul’s presidential campaign, Kesari had served as the NRTWC’s director of government affairs. Last year, Kesari turned up on the payroll of Sen. Mitch McConnell’s reelection campaign.

Since meeting at NRTWC, Gamble and Kesari appeared to work closely together. During the 2012 Ron Paul campaign, Gamble served as director of state operations. During that cycle, a company called WireSnap LLC that was owned by Gamble, according to his LinkedIn profile, was paid more than $26,000 for political consulting by the Paul campaign. According to corporate records, the company is now defunct, but the most recent listed registered agent is Kesari.

Kesari was arraigned in Des Moines on Wednesday and pleaded not guilty to the federal charges. His trial is scheduled to start on October 5.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate