Bulwark Takes - $5,000 “DOGE Checks" Scam Revealed!

Episode Date: June 4, 2025

A shady pro-Trump PAC is scamming supporters with fake “Doge Checks,” claiming people can receive $5,000 payouts. In reality, it’s a scam backed by some big names to trick vulnerable donors out of their money. Morning Shots - A Gross and Brazen ‘DOGE Check’ Scam

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This free virtual event brings together leaders like Senator Heidi Heitkamp, Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Governor Andy Beshear, and others for real talk and real solutions. Together we'll tackle the most urgent issues facing rural America. Register today or learn more at ruralprogress.com. Hey, Sam Stein, managing editor of The Bullwork here,

joined by Andrew Egger, author of Morning Shot, who has a doozy of a morning shot this morning. We can call it a morning shot, shot in the morning. It's about Scampacks, specifically one Scampack, which is kind of my thing. I love writing about Scampacks, reading about Scampacks. We're going to get into it before we do. Subscribe to the feed. All right, Andrew, tell us about this scam pack that you uncovered and what exactly is

so scammy about it? So this is for people who aren't kind of in the know, this the whole idea of a scam pack is they're bringing in money. They are saying they're going to use it to, you know, fight political battles and they're mostly just spending it on operating the pack, which is basically giving themselves kickbacks, treating themselves to various sort of luxury, you know, niceties, goodies, different things, not actually fighting the political fight that they're saying they're going to do. So parties kind of hate them because they take money away from what would otherwise be, you know, actual party activities.

Voters tend to hate them as well because they are scams. The one today though is kind of remarkably shameless, like even among the scam packs. I mean, I don't know how you felt about it, Sam. You've spent more time kind of just like getting a fix to these things. But let me just read you a little bit about sure. Here's the text message from this group. You earned that $5,000 doge check. Say yes before it's gone. Well, that's interesting. There are no $5,000 Doge checks. That's not a real thing. Let's find out more. All right. Click through the link. Doge saved you $1 trillion and you said no. Our records show you may have said no to your Trump savings check. This can't be right. This isn't a handout. It's your hard earned money that corrupt bureaucrats stole from you. You only have until midnight

to update your response. Oh, my gosh. The bureaucrats were stealing my money. $5,000 Doge check. Trump wants to give me back my money that bureaucrats stole. And all I have to do is sign on the dotted line here and maybe, what's this? Give a donation to this. I mean, it's really remarkable because it's, I mean, really what you're working with here is like one of those old like Nigerian Prince scam type stories, like give me a little money now and you're going to here is like one of those old like Nigerian Prince scam type stories like Little money now and you're gonna get a lot of money later That is true, but it's why don't we put that in red? What's that? Why don't we put that in the piece?

That's such a good analogy. I only thought of it just now mid riff Should have we got a start doing a riff. We got to start doing the riff halfway through the morning morning shots editorial process Oh, yeah, cuz it doesn't take that long to begin with. So the group that did this is, what's it called? Women for America? Women for America's Freedom, which is like the most generic, amazing, I mean there are so many different groups that contain the words women for America in them, but yes, this is Women for America's Freedom, formerly at womenforamerica.org. Okay. So my thoughts on this are that it is indeed a different level of scam than what

is customary. So scam is the sort of shorthand for it. But yeah, I mean, this, this you described correctly, they take the advertiser, they're going to spend money on political projects and they spend the money on themselves more or less. And we see this across out. This is not a Republican or Democratic issue. This is universal. And you're right, like operatives hate them because they do prey on the most vulnerable, which tend to be elderly people who don't really have a good sense of how this stuff works and will believe what's in their inbox and assume that they can in this case qualify for $5,000 if they just give a few bucks here or there or sign up for an email list. In this case, the reason I think it's worse is because they're not saying, hey, help us support Doge or hey, help us support Donald Trump

by giving to this and they're saying, hey, you deserve you're going to get $5,000. And that to me is like fraud. That's just like straight up fraud. Now, I'm not a lawyer, so I shouldn't say straight up fraud, but whatever. It's malicious and bad. And so to me, that sets us apart. Yeah. And you can tell when you're reading through the solicitation that they're trying to sidle right up to that line without going over it, they say, because when you actually get down to the call to action, it's just sign our survey, you know, to say that you want your Doge check back. But, but, but that language I read earlier, I mean, I think it's open and shut that it goes beyond just, there's this money floating around out there.

Yeah. I mean, it clearly is meant to leave the impression that you have $5,000 coming your way if you just fill out some forms, right? Yeah. And that, and everyone knows that that's bullshit because there's no such things in Doge check Now as you went about reporting this what did you discover about the origins of this by who's behind it or? You know does the white is a white house even aware of this like if I were those see this is the thing I always get to me if I were the white house. I'd be pissed I'd be like what the hell you're misleading our people and they're gonna be angry because you're promising $5,000 and they're gonna get it Yeah, yeah. Well, so this is this is an interesting thing because this group is not large. I mean, this is kind of a rinky dink little scam pack in some respects.

They, they operated in the, in the last cycle, they pulled in, you know, mid six figures of total donations, $370,000 about, you know, if you remember that was like the most expensive election in history is kind of like a like a decimal point of a decimal point of the item. Yeah, it's nothing. It was getting thrown around. But what was interesting about it was not the quantity of money so much as some of the names that were attached to it, right? The website no longer exists.

But if you go back into kind of the archived versions of their website, you find that this group listed as the president of the PAC, Mary Vogt, who is a senior vice president at the Heritage Foundation for Communications, who is the former wife of Russell Vogt, who is one of Donald Trump's biggest right-hand hatchet men, big project 2025 guy, who now heads the Office of Management and Budget at the White House.

And then if you head over to their page for their advisors, their kind of, I forget the exact word, their advisory committee for the PAC. One of the three names there, one of the three women for America's freedom, you might say, is Carolyn Leavitt, who was at that time not, you know, the Carolyn Leavitt that we all know and love today, this kind of very central Trump world figure, but she was kind of emerging in that way, right? She had been a former low level Trump com staffer. Why would these people get involved in these types? It's such a rinky dink operation.

Why would they get involved in it? Do we know? Well, no, we don't know because they did not answer our request for comment. Although I will say that the Heritage Foundation reached out today after we published the piece, they said, Mary vote is not in any way affiliated with with this organization. And I wrote back, I said, okay, well, was she affiliated? And they did not respond to that. So, I mean, that's a reading between the lines. It does seem like the likeliest thing rather than that they were just lying and misappropriating the names and likenesses of these Republican women that they were at some point affiliated

with what formerly was a relatively normal Scamp Act. The weird thing, I think it's important to make this delineation here because the website no longer exists. The place closed up shop after the last, after the 2020-21- But they're still sending text messages. But that's the thing. That's the thing.

They took down their website. They just, in the last couple of days, have refiled a form for just like, hey, FEC, we still exist. We're still a pack. But obviously, Carolyn Levitt is no longer affiliated. She's at the executive branch. Mary Vogt, who was apparently formerly the president, she's no longer affiliated. So who is affiliated with this group now?

It's this one guy, at least according to these FEC filings, this one guy whose name is Thomas, I'm not gonna get his name right, Thomas Datwiler, I guess is how you would pronounce it, who is not a figure that I had remembered hearing of until I started Googling him and started bumping into news stories that I had formerly read about him

that I just didn't remember were him. Such as what? Okay, well, so a whole bunch. He's got a good link. He's got a good rap sheet. Yeah, all kind of like just like an every single headline is like this FEC scam. Yeah, George Santos. So the you know, the totally disgraced former.

We know who George Santos is. Come on. Move on. All right. All right. Yeah, George Santos. You remember George Santos. This guy was not his treasurer. He was like his shadow treasurer. He was the guy who was

actually running George Santos's reelection books while like laying a false trail and suggesting to the FEC that he wasn't anywhere involved. He at one point was involved with this group called Dan Cox for Congress that was supposedly a campaign committee for this guy, this former Maryland delegate that he was going to run for Congress, which Dan Cox then had to go and smush and tell the FEC, no, these guys are not affiliated with me. I'm not running for Congress. Don't let that group exist. He worked with Josh Mandel. He worked with, who else did he work with? A number of people and got hit with, I mean, these campaigns are constantly getting hit with fines. So he's afraid, in short, he's a flagrant abuser of the got hit with. I mean, these campaigns are constantly getting hit with fines.

In short, he's a flagrant abuser of the campaign finance system. Yes. Let me quote one more thing from a group called the Conservative Nevada Leadership Pack, which denounced his, quote, knowing, willful, and intentional conduct, which, quote, continues to cause substantial harm to our electoral process. Apparently, he had, in their telling, committed some wire fraud against them, small ball stuff. But yeah, this is the one guy who's still at this place. Let me just, and I could close this on a bow here

because this is what happens folks, is that someone, and this happens again, on both sides of the aisle, someone gets very good at standing up these generic sounding organizations that build up email lists to raise money, to then spend that money to build up more email lists to raise more money to then build up those email lists to raise more money.

And all the while they kind of burn out donors, they prey on them. They spend very little money on actual politics that they pledge to. In this case, Women's for America spent $10,000 total on about 5% of 5,000 on two different web ad campaigns and a more you know honest and effective campaign finance system with actual regulations would crack down on these groups more. It's kind of become left to the fundraising platforms themselves like ActBlue and WinRed to do the policing and in this case when Andrew did inquire About this one of the win-read pages was removed, but others do remain But this is the shady underbelly of our campaign finance culture

And unless people act to get rid of these groups and crack down on them it will continue So I encourage you to keep your eyes open cracked on them, it will continue. So I encourage you to keep your eyes open. Also, if you see something, say something, we have a tips line. TheBullwork.com. I always fucked that up. Anyways, if you see something, send it to us because we love blowing these people up. Andrew, great morning shots today. I really appreciate it. You guys should check it out on the site. Subscribe to our sub stack and subscribe to our YouTube page too. We'll talk to you soon.