Clerical error inadvertently exposes shady donations to Jim Jordan and MAGA groups: report

A clerical error inadvertently revealed a campaign contribution to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) that's now the subject of complaint with the Federal Election Commission.

The nonprofit Project On Government Oversight flagged a $250,000 contribution by the private prison contractor GEO Group to a super PAC aligned with Jordan less than two weeks after the lawmaker helped pass President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which provided funding to double the detention space for immigrant detainees.

"Now, what's interesting about this story is that GEO Group said in response that this is a donation that never should have been disclosed because they actually made it to a 501(c)(4) organization, which is a so-called 'dark money' group that does not legally have to disclose these kinds of donations," MS NOW correspondent David Noriega told "Morning Joe."

"So it was basically a mistake, it was an accident that we knew about this donation in the first place," Noriega continued. "It, of course, raises the question of how many more dark money donations is the GEO Group making to Republicans and to President Trump? Because we know that they're already making a lot of public donations, that information is available. Look right there on your screen. That's $1.625 million in donations to super PACs affiliated with congressional Republicans. I went back and looked at the at the FEC records to pull these numbers, that's just since 2022 now, on donations to President Trump. There have been about $3.25 million in donations since 2024 to MAGA Inc. and other super PACs affiliated with President Trump, so the question that this dark money donation to the group associated with Jim Jordan raises is, are these publicly known donations just the tip of the iceberg?"

The private contractor's contribution appears to violate federal law, according to Noriega.

"Is it legal for a large contractor with the federal government to make these kinds of political donations?" he said. "Might that not influence things like the awarding of contracts? Well, it is, in fact, illegal for federal contractors to donate money politically like this. But GEO Group has successfully argued in the past that because it's making these donations through subsidiary companies rather than through the actual main company of the GEO Group that accepts and handles the contracts, then it is legal and they can get away with it. So far, they are arguing that successfully, they are continuing to make these donations."

"Now to take a step back again, why does this matter?" Noriega added. "Well, GEO Group is doing great business locking up immigrants who are facing deportation, which is happening at a greater rate than it ever has before. Let's look at some of the recent earnings reports that GEO Group has made publicly. We just got some of their first quarter 2026 numbers. They are reporting an almost doubling of profits compared to Q1 of 2025, a 96 percent net income increase, so their profits are almost doubling."

George Zoley, chairman and CEO of the GEO Group, recently told investors that the company had seen better than expected growth due to its contracts with ICE, which is now being led by former company executive David Venturella as acting director, and the contractor expects to add roughly $520 million in annual revenue.

"A lot of that new money, a lot of that new business comes from ICE detention facilities that were either offline or empty and have been brought online by this surge in new ICE detainees in the second Trump administration, including Delaney Hall in New Jersey, around which there has been so much furor in recent weeks," Noriega said. "That's a GEO Group facility that they owned, [it] was empty, and they just brought back online."

"Last thing I'll say, I did reach out to GEO Group, they didn't respond to my request for comment," the reporter added. "I did reach out to [Department of Homeland Security]. They did respond, they said that DHS has a long-standing relationship with the GEO Group, including going back to the Obama and Biden administrations. That is, of course, true, but it is only under the Trump administration that GEO Group is achieving these record profits."

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