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Both Rand Paul and Ron Paul have been very vocal opponents of support for Ukraine and appear to love Russia-Putin. How deep does this go? Why did the DOJ wait until after Rand Paul was re-elected to convict? At minimum, this has to do with Rand Paul’s judgement of character, which matters.

Faced with the possibility of 20 years in jail, will Jesse Benton reveal the mysteries of Ron Paul and Rand Paul’s infatuation with Russia and Putin? Will his colleague, Wead? The Pauls are Texas Germans and German-speaking Putin loves Germans and all things German. The feelings appear to be mutual.

Jesse Benton has worked as campaign manager/political director/communications director for Rand Paul and for Ron Paul. He is married to the daughter of Rand Paul’s sister. So, he’s Rand Paul’s nephew in-law and Ron Paul grandson in-law.

But, Benton’s also been a friend who even lived in Rand Paul’s basement:
“In 2010, Benton served as Rand Paul’s campaign manager when Paul was elected Senator of Kentucky. Benton simultaneously served as Ron Paul’s political director. Rand Paul had never run for office before, and was seen as an underdog.[16] Benton and Rand Paul became close, with the two speaking nearly every day and Benton moving into Paul’s basement.[13] Rand Paul’s ultimately victorious campaign was praised for its use of the internet fundraising and recruiting, and Paul’s ability to knock off a more established candidate was described by a Republican strategist as establishing a new norm for Republican primaries.[17]” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Benton

When Jesse Benton was Ron Paul’s Communications Director, in 2007, massive spam mailings (to 160 million email addresses ) about the campaign were sent out from a Russian hacker hosted site by a Russian speaking spammer. Coincidence?

Rand Paul’s sister’s son-in-law and Rand and Ron Paul’s former campaign manager/political/communications director was indicted in Sept. 2021 for laundering a campaign donation from a Russian citizen. He was convicted on November 17, 2022: “According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Jessie R. Benton, 45, of The Woodlands, Texas, schemed with another political advisor to funnel political contributions to a 2016 presidential campaign from a Russian foreign national seeking to support, meet, and take a picture with the presidential candidate. Benton arranged for the Russian foreign national – whose nationality Benton concealed from the campaign and the candidate – to attend a political fundraising event for the campaign and to take a picture with the candidate.” https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/political-consultant-convicted-scheme-involving-illegal-foreign-campaign-contribution-2016
“Benton ultimately filled out a contributor form, indicated that he was the contributor, and used a personal credit card to make a $25,000 contribution. Benton retained the remaining $75,000 of Foreign National 1’s money. Because Benton falsely claimed to have given the contribution himself, three different political committees unwittingly filed reports with the FEC that inaccurately reported Benton, rather than Foreign National 1, as the source of the funds.”
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/political-operatives-indicted-alleged-scheme-involving-illegal-campaign-contribution-2016
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Benton

Notice that Jesse Benton did this 2016 stunt without the knowledge of the 2016 Trump campaign, and he made a hefty profit, keeping 75% of the donation.

Link: https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1434226/download

“In 2007, Benton became involved with Ron Paul’s 2008 presidential candidacy. Benton started out as a volunteer, being attracted by Paul’s message on spending, civil liberties, and foreign policy, but eventually became Paul’s communications director.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Benton#Ron_Paul_presidential_campaign

“Jesse Benton, Ron Paul’s spokesman and grandson-in-law, brushed off the incident as either the work of an overzealous supporter or a political rival looking to discredit the campaign.” See: “Russian meddling in U.S. elections may go back to the Tea Party ‘revolution’ of 2008” By Louis Anslow, August 28, 2017:
https://timeline.com/ron-paul-russia-hacking-e248f87f38f2
In 2007, pro-Russian PM, Viktor Yanukovych was Ukrainian PM at the time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Yanukovych The computers rented may have been located in Ukraine. It appears that the Pauls may want their dirt in Ukraine wiped clean with Russian missiles.

“The “Ron Paul” incident
In October 2007, several anti-spam firms noticed an unusual political spam campaign emerging. Unlike the usual messages about counterfeit watches, stocks, or p*nis enlargement, the mail contained promotional information about United States presidential candidate Ron Paul. The Ron Paul camp dismissed the spam as being not related to the official presidential campaign. A spokesman told the press: “If it is true, it could be done by a well-intentioned yet misguided supporter or someone with bad intentions trying to embarrass the campaign. Either way, this is independent work, and we have no connection.”[24]
The spam was ultimately confirmed as having come from the Srizbi network.[25] Through the capture of one of the control servers involved,[26] investigators learned that the spam message had been sent to up to 160 million email addresses by as few as 3,000 bot computers. The spammer has only been identified by his Internet handle “nenastnyj” (Ненастный, means “rainy” or “foul”, as in “rainy day, foul weather” in Russian); their real identity has not been determined…

After the removal of the control servers hosted by McColo in late November 2008, the control of the botnet was transferred to servers hosted in Estonia.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srizbi_botnet

“McColo was a US-based web hosting service provider[2] that was, for a long time, the source of the majority of spam-sending activities for the entire world.[3] In late 2008, the company was shut down by two upstream providers, Global Crossing and Hurricane Electric, because a significant amount of malware and botnets had been trafficking from the McColo servers.[2] McColo was formed by a 19-year-old Russian hacker and student named Nikolai. Nikolai’s nickname was “Kolya McColo”; hence the name of the provider.[4]…” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McColo
19-year old hacker or front for Russian intelligence services? This single hacker idea is likely a myth. Even news agencies have multiple workers.

US v Benton: https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1434226/download

“FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, November 17, 2022
Political Consultant Convicted for Scheme Involving Illegal Foreign Campaign Contribution to 2016 Presidential Campaign

A federal jury today convicted a political consultant for his role in funneling illegal foreign campaign contributions from a Russian foreign national to a 2016 presidential campaign. 

According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Jessie R. Benton, 45, of The Woodlands, Texas, schemed with another political advisor to funnel political contributions to a 2016 presidential campaign from a Russian foreign national seeking to support, meet, and take a picture with the presidential candidate. Benton arranged for the Russian foreign national – whose nationality Benton concealed from the campaign and the candidate – to attend a political fundraising event for the campaign and to take a picture with the candidate.

As such attendance and engagement required a contribution, Benton caused the Russian foreign national to wire $100,000 to Benton’s political consulting firm for purposes of making an illegal foreign contribution to the campaign. To disguise the scheme, Benton created a fake invoice, which falsely identified the funds as payment for consulting services. Benton acted as a straw donor and contributed $25,000 of the Russian foreign national’s money to the campaign, falsely identified himself as the contributor, and pocketed the remaining $75,000. Because Benton falsely claimed to have given the contribution himself, the relevant campaign entities unwittingly filed reports with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) that inaccurately reported Benton – instead of the Russian foreign national – as the source of the funds.    

Benton was convicted of conspiring to solicit and cause an illegal campaign contribution by a foreign national, effecting a conduit contribution, and causing false records to be filed with the FEC.

He is scheduled to be sentenced on Feb. 17, 2023, and faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison on the top count. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.

Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite, Jr. of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney Randy Grossman for the Southern District of California, U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves for the District of Columbia, and Special Agent in Charge Stacey Moy of the FBI San Diego Field Office made the announcement.

The FBI San Diego Field Office investigated the case.

Trial Attorneys Rebecca G. Ross and Michelle K. Parikh of the Criminal Division’s Public Integrity Section and Assistant U.S. Attorney Michelle L. Wasserman for the Southern District of California, while serving in her capacity as a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, are prosecuting the case.
Topic(s): 
Public Corruption
Voting and Elections
Component(s): 
Criminal Division
Criminal – Public Integrity Section
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
USAO – California, Southern
USAO – District of Columbia
Press Release Number: 
22-1233” https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/political-consultant-convicted-scheme-involving-illegal-foreign-campaign-contribution-2016

Adam Kokesh on what the US DOJ finally established in 2017 was effectively Russian government owned Russia Today, stated “Yesterday we raised over 1 million dollars for the Ron Paul campaign…” A Complaint argued “that RTTV, which it describes as a registered foreign corporation “funded by the govemment of Russia,” provided air time for Kokesh, an “employee” of RTTV, to promote and raise funds for the presidential campaign of Ron Paul during a June 6,2011… The Complaint provided a portion of the episode’s transcript… “I’d like to end tonight on a note of some good news… Yesterday we raised over 1 million dollars for the Ron Paul campaign….”

(Excerpted from FEC response to Clifford P. Kincaid, President America’s Survival, Inc. in MUR 6481 RTTV America, Inc. Ron Paul 2012 Presidential Campaign Committee, Inc. http://eqs.fec.gov/eqsdocsMUR/14044354314.pdf

The computers for the 2007 job were rented, according to “Wired”.

“‘Criminal’ Botnet Stumps for Ron Paul, Researchers Allege
SARAH LAI STIRLANDBUSINESS, OCT 31, 2007 12:00 PM
GOP presidential hopeful Ron Paul addresses the Iowa Republican Party’s annual Reagan Dinner in Des Moines on Oct. 27. If Texas congressman Ron Paul is elected president in 2008, he may be the first leader of the free world put into power with the help of a global network of hacked […]” https://www.wired.com/2007/10/paul-bot/

“Ron Paul: How a Fringe Politician Took Over the Web
Republican presidential candidate Congressman Ron Paul When Texas Congressman Ron Paul entered the race for next year’s Republican presidential nomination, few political analysts paid much notice. Paul has no backing from political bigwigs or any campaign war chest to speak of. As the Libertarian Party presidential nominee in 1988 he won less than one-half of […]” https://www.wired.com/2007/06/ron-paul/

“Spam Promoting Ron Paul Traced to Ukrainian Botnet
A researcher at SecureWorks has traced the October flood of deceptive spam promoting Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul to a criminal botnet of compromised computers run out of Ukraine, which was rented for the three-day job. “While the total count of Ron Paul spam messages that actually landed in peoples’ inboxes can’t be known, it […]
https://www.wired.com/2007/12/ron-paul-promot/

SECURE WORKS RON PAUL THREAT ANALYSIS:

“Inside the “Ron Paul” Spam Botnet
Date: December 4, 2007
Author: Joe Stewart
On the weekend of October 27, 2007, the Internet was suddenly bombarded with a rash of spam emails promoting U.S. presidential candidate Ron Paul. The spam run continued until Tuesday, October 30, when it stopped as suddenly as it began. At the same time, political blogs began to light up, accusing the campaign (or at least its ardent supporters) of running a criminal botnet for political purposes. We decided to cut through the spin and take a closer look at this botnet to determine its origins and shine some light on who might be responsible.

Tracking the Spam
Tracking specific spam back to a particular piece of botnet malware is somewhat challenging, but given the right cooperation between researchers who hold different pieces of the puzzle, it can be accomplished. To start, one must identify key characteristics of the spam that define a “fingerprint” of the email sent by the bot. Although senders, subjects and email bodies will vary from spam to spam, often the email headers contain certain static elements which are unique to the mailer engine in the bot software.

Getting the Malware in Hand

At this point, armed with the IP addresses of current bots, it is possible to trace the command and control server of the botnet with cooperation from network administrators who have bots on their network. By monitoring and correlating network flows, the command center was soon tracked to a server at a co-location facility located in the U.S., one that is well known to malware researchers as a frequent host of this type of activity.

These clues also led us to the name of the malware behind the botnet – Trojan.Srizbi. Based on this we were able to locate several variants for testing, the earliest one having been compiled on March 31, 2007. At the end of June, Symantec wrote a fairly detailed blog entry about Srizbi. Information concerning technical details of Srizbi and its removal is available from various anti-virus firms, and will not be covered here…” https://web.archive.org/web/20080109015125/https://www.secureworks.com/research/threats/ronpaul/?threat=ronpaul