Trump pal funneled millions of Israeli gov’t cash into US media
A company run by former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale, hired by the Israeli government to push pro-Israel views on a major conservative medianetwork, has directed $13 million from Israel to several Republican digital strategy firms and allies, according to a previously unreported document filed under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
Parscale was hired in part to influence major right-wing Christian media company Salem Media Group, where he is also an executive. His firm spent hundreds of thousands on ads with a Salem subsidiary. As part of the contract, Parscale’s firm also sent millions to other firms run by some of his closest political allies.
The new filing sheds light on a more detailed web of interconnected companies and political operatives capitalizing on Parscale’s contract with the Israeli government. Many of the companies getting work as part of Parscale’s Israel contract are being reported here for the first time.
Among those that received millions of dollars’ worth of payments related to the contract are ventures like SparkFire, an AI chatbot company leading a mass texting campaign, and a shadowy firm run by longtime mainstream Republican strategist Mike Shields. (None of the figures or firms in this story responded to requests for comment.)
Israel initially directly hired Parscale’s firm, Clock Tower X, last September with a contract worth $6 million. The new filing reveals that his firm has received over $15 million through an intermediary, Havas Media Network, an international media company working on behalf of the Israeli state.
The document shows that Parscale directed over $500,000 for ads to Salem Media Representatives, a subsidiary of Salem Media. Although Parscale was hired to integrate pro-Israel messaging into Salem Media shows — which feature conservative commentators such as Hugh Hewitt, Larry Elder, and Scott Jennings — these payments to the conservative media conglomerate on behalf of Israel were not previously known.
Parscale, who is the chief strategy officer for Salem Media, is not the only registered representative of Israel working for the media company.
One of Parscale’s team members working on the Israel contract, Ashley Evdokimo, is Salem’s vice president for communications. According to her LinkedIn profile, Evdokimo, who works with Parscale at his digital strategy company Campaign Nucleus, took a position at Salem Media in September 2025, the same month that Parscale was hired to work for the Israeli government. A month later, Evdokimo registered as a foreign agent for Israel.
A Parscale partnership
One of the largest recipients of the Israeli funds coming in through Parscale’s contract is a firm called Portman Road Strategies, which is run by longtime GOP strategist Mike Shields, according to Virginia state records. Shields’ firm received just under $5 million from Parscale as part of the contract in exchange for media placement, consulting, polling, and advertising work.
Shields, a longtime Parscale ally, is also largely responsible for staffing the contract with the Israeli government. Of Parscale’s 18 team members at Clock Tower X, 14 are staffers at Convergence Media, a “campaign strategy, digital, public affairs & media firm” led by Shields.
During the first Trump administration, Shields and Parscale operated as a package deal, consistently recommending each other’s services as both became power brokers in Trump world. Parscale frequently convinced GOP campaigns — including that of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — to hire Shields’ Convergence Media. The duo are now applying their digital influence campaign playbook to Israel. According to his bio, Shields was also a CNN commentator, a former chief of staff for the Republican National Committee, and a strategist for former Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).
Parscale directed another $6 million of the Israeli funds to SparkFire Technologies, an AI chatbot company. SparkFire’s role was previously unknown, but it was related to a campaign of text messages that was first reported by Responsible Statecraft. Under the contract, Parscale’s firm reaches out to Americans under the auspices of supposed “peace” organizations.
SparkFire’s main service, called the flywheel, uses AI to reach out to people with personalized messages. The AI then performs an analysis on the conversation, with SparkFire storing the data and using it to target messages to the recipient.
Bot texts sent by SparkFire can appear compassionate, understanding, and referential, based on screenshots shared with the Intercept and Responsible Statecraft.
SparkFire claims these types of conversations are highly effective. The company boasts its messaging had a 45% conversion rate, suggesting almost half of the recipients were persuaded by the AI-powered conversation. While the scale of its text campaigns is unknown, SparkFire says it can reach millions of people.
In text conversations with Americans about Israel, SparkFire’s bots frequently push links to pro-Israel websites and videos created by Parscale. One video, posted by a YouTube channel called Allies for Peace, claims that the narrative of suffering in Gaza was manufactured.
The pro-Israel websites and videos created for the initiative are also intended to influence artificial intelligence platforms like ChatGPT and Claude that scrape the internet for content.
Parscale’s websites include a legal disclaimer that they were created on behalf of the Israeli government. To identify the connection to paid pro-Israel advocacy, users of ChatGPT and Claude would have to ask the chatbot for sources, click the links to Parscale’s websites, and then scroll to the bottom of the pages to see that they are receiving information from a contractor for Israel.
Israel-loving oil tycoon
Another company that appears to be involved with Parscale’s Israel contract is Jackson Parker, whose Florida chapter was founded by Parscale and billionaire oil tycoon Tim Dunn in early 2025. The company shares an Ohio office with several other Parscale companies working on the Israel project.
A recent job listing from Jackson Parker for a director of strategic communications says, “We are a mission-driven organization focused on combating anti-Semitism and strengthening public understanding of Israel as America’s closest ally in the Middle East.” One of the position’s requirements, the listing says, is to maintain compliance with the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA.
Dunn, a major Trump donor, is an evangelical preacher and billionaire who has spent tens of millions of dollars to push Texas towards a Christian governance model. He’s staunchly pro-Israel and chairs the Christian Advisory Board of the Israel Allies Foundation. Dunn once told a Jewish Republican Texas House speaker, however, that only Christians should hold leadership positions in the statehouse.
Dunn is also heavily involved in the recently announced purchase of Salem Media. Earlier this month, WaterStone, a Colorado-based nonprofit that already controlled a 49.5% voting interest in Salem Media, said it would acquirethe remaining shares of the company at a 250% premium of its recent share price, taking the company private. Hexagon Foundation, a nonprofit led by Dunn, is the largest institutional donor to WaterStone. Dunn’s organization, which says its mission is to support WaterStone, gave $70 million to Salem’s new owners in 2025.
On LinkedIn, an employee of another company called Three Tech, which received close to half a million dollars from the Israel contract, wrote “come work with us” and then shared job listings from Jackson Parker.
Three Tech, a software development company founded in 2024, is connected to a constellation of interwoven firms run by Parscale in Ohio and Texas that have been paid with Israeli government money. Three Tech is listed as a “certified partner” of a marketing firm that shares Clock Tower X’s Medina, Ohio, address (along with another Parscale company receiving Israeli money as part of this deal, AI company Eyesover). According to the CEO’s LinkedIn, Three Tech uses a team of “80 Serbian engineers.”
Parscale’s work, with the help of subcontractors, is part of a broader strategy by the Israeli government to win back support from young conservatives and evangelicals. Fifty-seven percent of Republicans aged 18 to 49 have an unfavorable opinion of Israel, according to a Pew poll from March.
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government has ramped up spending on influence operations. Earlier this year, Israel more than quadrupled its public diplomacy budget from $150 million in 2025 to $730 million in 2026.
