Who Was Behind A $250k Mystery Donation To Super Pac Backing Ken Paxton?

Last year, a super PAC supporting Texas Senate hopeful Ken Paxton received a $250,000 donation from a man calling himself “Paul McLaren,” a supposed “entrepreneur” living in Plano, Texas.

But there is no “Paul McLaren” residing in Plano, and the address listed on the campaign finance record is for a rented mailbox in a strip mall.

The donor, it turns out, is a Texas businessman whose father was a well-known construction executive who received a pardon from President Donald Trump years after he pleaded guilty to filing a false tax return.

Ben Pogue, who said he and his wife made the $250,000 donation to support Paxton, said the name wasn’t “an effort to conceal the source of the donation.”

Pogue said he chose the name because his middle name is “Paul” and he owned a McLaren sports car about a decade ago, adding that the name was part of an “inside joke.” He didn’t explain why he used a rented mailbox.

A spokesperson for Lone Star Liberty PAC also said that the campaign filing should have stated the donation came from the “Paul McLaren Revocable Trust” and will be corrected.

Pogue and his wife, under the “McLaren” moniker, also donated to the Michigan and Georgia Republican parties, Herschel Walker’s failed 2022 Georgia Senate campaign and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s campaign and victory fund, according to FEC records.

A spokesperson for Paxton declined to comment.

The Texas Senate race between Paxton and Democrat James Talarico is becoming one of the most expensive in the state’s history, with AdImpact reporting that overall ad spending by both candidates and groups supporting them is around $153 million.

The extended Pogue family has given $1.5 million to Trump’s political committees since 2019, according to FEC records. They have also donated around $60,000 to Paxton, according to state and federal records. In 2017, Paxton disclosed that Ben Pogue’s father, Paul Pogue, who he called a “family friend,” gave $10,000 to him for “legal defense.”

Paul Pogue, the founder of a construction company from a town where Paxton has long owned a house, pleaded guilty in 2010 to filing a false tax return after he underreported his income by nearly $1.7 million across several years of returns. He avoided prison time and ended up getting three years of probation.

Trump pardoned him in 2020, with the White House saying he had pleaded guilty to protect the 150 employees of his company and that for more than 30 years he had given “significant humanitarian aid to countries around the world.” The White House at the time said that Paxton, among others, had supported the pardon.

Ben Pogue and his wife donated several hundred thousand dollars to Trump’s reelection efforts in 2019, although Paul Pogue didn’t donate to Trump political entities until several years after his pardon.

Paxton has had personal ties to the Pogues going for at least two decades, including serving as their notary when Pogue’s son Brandon bought a new house in the neighborhood.

In 2015, Judy Pogue posted about flying with Paul and her son Brandon to Austin for the swearing in ceremony as Paxton became the state’s attorney general.

“Ken Paxton will be great for Texas,” she wrote.