Key player in FTX $500k cover-up named PDX mayor-elect's chief of staff

Aisling Coghlan (a) knew the $500k 2022 contribution likely came from FTX or a related person or entity, but (b) insisted the contribution came from Prime Trust.

Democratic Party of Oregon staffer Aisling Coghlan’s email to U.S. Senator Ron Wyden’s campaign staffer about the first time an FTX contribution affecting Oregon was misreported as coming from Prime Trust. Coghlan made sure there was a second time.

Portland Mayor-elect Keith Wilson has named longtime Democratic campaign operative Aisling Coghlan to be his chief of staff when he assumes office in January. Readers of this here Oregon Roundup may recall that Coghlan was perhaps the key player in the Democratic Party of Oregon’s misreporting the source of the largest contribution it ever received, $500,000 in October 2022. Aisling, at the time, worked as the director of DPO’s coordinated campaign to help elect Democrats, most prominently now-Governor Tina Kotek, to state office

I first saw the news of Wilson’s appointment of Aisling reported Wednesday by Willamette Week.

Longtime readers of this here Oregon Roundup will be well-acquainted with the saga in which the DPO received the massive cash infusion from Nishad Singh, the chief engineer for now-defunct cryptocurrency firm FTX, but initially reported the contribution actually came from his cryptocurrency bank, Prime Trust. Singh, who subsequently pleaded guilty to federal campaign finance fraud charges for being the straw man donor for a giant effort to funnel FTX funds to progressive causes and candidates in the run-up to the 2022 election.

The federal charges did not include Singh’s contribution to the DPO, as that was a state contribution. The Oregon Department of Justice announced (to me, inappropriately) earlier this year that it would not pursue charges against Singh, or anyone at DPO, for the Oregon contribution.

Coghlan, the incoming chief of staff for Portland’s new mayor, was the person within DPO who both (a) knew the contribution likely came from FTX or a related person or entity, but (b) insisted the contribution came from Prime Trust. The result was the biggest campaign finance scandal in Oregon’s history.

Below is the Oregon Roundup article for July in which I first reported on the Oregon DOJ records, released after it declined to pursue charges, that detail Coghlan’s involvement in the FTX contribution misreporting. I’ve highlighted Coghlan’s name throughout for those familiar with the story but refreshing their recollection about her involvement in it.

DEMS KNEW, COVERED UP, $500K FTX DONATION NOT FROM BANK

"I will keep my mouth shut for sure." - DPO staffer who knew DPO misreported source of its biggest contribution ever

Jeff Eager

Aug 06, 2024

A month before the hotly contested 2022 gubernatorial general election, Democratic Party of Oregon staffers expected a record-breaking $500,000 contribution to come from cryptocurrency firm FTX founder and now-felon Sam Bankman-Fried or an affiliated Super PAC, knew that the Super PAC had six months earlier misreported a contribution from Bankman-Fried and his FTX lieutenant Nishad Singh as coming from their crypto bank Prime Trust LLC, and concealed that knowledge when news broke that it had misreported its contribution, too, according to newly produced records from the Oregon Department of Justice.

These crucial findings, reported here for the first time, show the DPO both knew the donation did not come from Prime Trust, and later covered up the fact that it knew.. Yet, the Oregon DOJ announced last month that it believed there was insufficient evidence of wrongdoing to warrant further investigation of DPO.

In late September and early October, DPO staff became aware of a large incoming donation to DPO’s Coordinated Campaign, the party’s biennial get-out-the-vote slush fund designed to leverage the fundraising prowess of Oregon’s congressional delegation, led by U.S. Senator and powerful Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, to help Democrats win governor and state legislature races.

News of the incoming cash infusion first reached DPO via Rogalle, according to a DOJ report arising from an early 2024 interview with Aisling Coghlan, who in 2022 ran the Coordinated Campaign for DPO. “There was mutual knowledge amongst members of the DPO that a large donation was incoming,” according to the report. The news was surely welcome; Democrat Tina Kotek was trailing Republican Christine Drazan in polling at the time. The unthinkable - a Republican becoming governor of Oregon - seemed a very real possibility.

Based upon those early communications, Coghlan “thought the donation was coming from Protect Our Future PAC.” Protect Our Future PAC was founded to help candidates interested in issues like pandemic prevention, which were important to the PAC’s two largest funders: FTX’s Bankman-Fried and Singh.

DPO executive director Brad Martin “was led to believe that Protect our Future and Bankman-Fried would be making a large donation to the DPO. Specifically, the DPO was previously aware of Protect Our Future PAC and Sam Bankman-Fried, and his ‘family constellation’ of related donors in Democratic donor world,” according to DOJ’s report of its interview with Martin.

Protect our Future had made waves months earlier in the Democratic primary for Oregon’s new 6th Congressional District, in which the PAC spent $11 million in an attempt to nominate political newcomer Carrick Flynn. The spending from a mysterious PAC got attention from Flynn’s Democratic opponents, including now-Congresswoman Andrea Salinas, who jointly condemned Protect our Future’s and the House Democratic leadership PAC supporting Flynn.

The $500,000 pre-election lifeline went from rumor to reality quickly, with Rogalle serving as go-between for DPO and FTX. FTX political staff arranged the wire from Singh to DPO using the internal approval process FTX had arranged to push millions of campaign contributions out the door in the run-up to the November election.

DPO received the $500,000 wire on October 4, 2022. The wire confirmation showed Prime Trust as the “originator” of the transfer and described Singh as the “Originator to Ben[ificiary].” Having expected the contribution to come from Bankman-Fried’s “family constellation” of donors, DPO then sought to determine who it should report to the Oregon Secretary of State as the donor of record for the contribution.

It did so on two tracks. First, DPO staff inquired with Wyden’s contract fundraiser Rogalle who in turn learned, infamously, from an FTX consultant that “Nishad prefers Prime Trust (though not strongly) so go w[ith] that.” DPO, up against a reporting deadline necessitated by an Oregon law requiring, reported the donor of record to be Prime Trust on October 9.

But, unreported until now, DPO also pursued a second verification track that showed the contribution was not, in fact, from Prime Trust. Coordinated Campaign boss Coghlan asked DPO researcher Christa Buckland to look into Prime Trust. On October 5, the day after DPO received the wire, and four days before it reported Prime Trust as the donor of record, Buckland emailed Coghlan a summary and link to a Politico story from April 19, 2022, reporting that Protect Our Future PAC had falsely reported Prime Trust LLC as the donor of record for a $14 million cash infusion, and was forced to amend its reporting to show the funds were actually from Bankman-Fried and . . . Nishad Singh.

In response, Coghlan asked Buckland to check contributions made by Tom Pageler, the CEO of Prime Trust. Buckland replied that she found nothing on Pageler, but she continued to argue, correctly, that Prime Trust was not the donor of record for the $500,000 contribution.

It looks like the contribution referred to in the NYT article [I believe she meant Politico] that was initially reported with Prime Trust LLC as the contributor has now been changed to Bankman-Fried.

The contribution was facilitated by Prime Trust LLC but the company and it’s [sic] CEO are likely not the donor.

I believe the only way to know who the contribution is from would be to contact Prime Trust and ask who they facilitated the transaction for. My bet would be they’ll say it’s from Bankman-Fried, but it’s possible it came from someone else . . .

Buckland was right, but no one at DPO checked with Prime Trust as she suggested. The contribution was made by Singh, not Bankman-Fried, because FTX’s contribution machine and the Bankman-Fried “family constellation of donors” had determined that Singh would donate to left-leaning causes. Protect Our Future PAC executive director Michael Sadowsky put it artfully in a July 5, 2022, online chat with Singh:

but, in general, you being the center left face of our spending will mean you giving to a lot of woke sh[*]t

for transactional purposes

FTX preferred using Singh as the face of donations to left-leaning causes because donations funneled through Singh brought less Republican attention and requests for matching contributions, than donations from the better-known Bankman-Fried and Protect Our Future, according to an online chat between Singh, Bankman-Fried, Sadowsky, and Gabe Bankman-Fried, Sam’s brother.

But Coghlan was adamant in response to Buckland: “I think in this case the contribution is from Prime Trust LLC but Amelia [Manlove, DPO’s compliance director] has asked them to clarify.” It is unclear why Coghlan believed, or wanted to believe, that the contribution she expected to come from Protect our Future or elsewhere in FTX world should be attributed instead to Prime Trust. Buckland had told her otherwise, and even the tepid “Nishad prefers Prime Trust (though not strongly)” had not yet been issued or received.

Coghlan did forward the Politico summary and link to Tim Leahy, Senator Wyden’s political director and member of the Coordinated Campaign’s table of advisors, with the note, “This is what was interesting to me[.]” She forwarded the rest of Buckland’s findings about Prime Trust to DPO executive director Brad Martin, but omitted the the Politico story and link that Buckland believed, correctly, strongly indicated the $500,000 contribution was not from the Prime Trust.

Despite Buckland’s findings, known at least to the person in charge of the DPO’s Coordinated Campaign fundraising effort as well as Wyden’s top political staffer, DPO made the fateful decision to report on October 9 that Prime Trust was the donor of record for the mega-contribution that would soon jostle the close governor race.

On October 28, The Oregonian published a story about the biggest donors in the 2022 election cycle, including the $500,000 contribution then attributed to Prime Trust. Buckland noticed the story, and raised her concerns with DPO compliance director Manlove in an online chat:

Christa Buckland Oct 28, 10:56 AM

Aisling [Coghlan, DPO Coordinated Campaign director] had me look into that Prime Trust LLC contribution, and I gathered that it was not from Prime Trust directly but they were acting as a custodian of the funds. Did you hear back from them? There is an article out today that references the contribution. Which Brad [Martin, DPO executive director] just asked me not to circulate but I am thinking they might be inaccurate in their reporting.

Amelia Manlove Oct 28, 11:00 AM

No, it WAS from Prime Trust LLC. If it were from someone else, we would not have been able to accept it because that would be a contribution in a false name, which is illegal to make and illegal to accept—not that you should circulate any of this information either.

Christa Buckland Oct 28, 11:04 AM

I will keep my mouth shut for sure. I am just so surprised. Their name turned up in [Federal Election Commission] reporting before and they wound up clarifying they were not the donor and had only facilitated the transaction on behalf of Sam Bankman Fried, and the owner or Prime Trust LLC has only ever made one small contribution to a candidate he went to school with.

The FEC reporting has since been corrected to reflect Bankman Fried as the contributor.

(Emphasis by italics added)

Coghlan and Buckland no longer work for DPO.

Back in May 2023, I argued that DOJ should investigate criminally the DPO for knowingly misreporting the source of the contribution. At the time, I thought it likely, but did not know for sure, that DPO knew of the earlier misreporting by Protect Our Future:

If the DPO was aware of the federal PAC story, which tracks almost identically with its own misreporting, that strongly suggests the DPO knew Prime Trust was not the source of the donation when it told the State of Oregon it was.

Well, it turns out DPO did know about the federal PAC story and correctly surmised what it meant for how DPO should report its $500,000 contribution.

DOJ has all of the information and documents described and linked in this article. I got the documents from DOJ. DOJ knows DPO knew the contribution was not from Prime Trust when it reported it was. DOJ knows DPO covered up the fact that it knew. Yet, DOJ says DPO should not be investigated further, or charged criminally.