Luxurious resorts and a Texas hog hunt: How Utah A.G. Sean Reyes has spent marketing campaign donations

Utah Legal professional Basic Sean Reyes has traveled extensively since his 2020 reelection, with donors supporting greater than 30 stints at high-end resorts throughout the nation, in Mexico and in Europe — together with a Texas tour to shoot feral hogs from a helicopter.

His public marketing campaign studies additionally listing almost 135 separate airline ticket expenditures and a hefty share of restaurant payments, cab and Uber fares, airport parking charges and different travel-related bills in cities resembling Las Vegas; Phoenix; Orlando and Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; Atlanta; San Diego; and Santa Barbara, Calif.

The spending by his marketing campaign on home and worldwide journey, documented over a three-year interval ending in 2022, consists of the beforehand unpublicized group tour to hunt hogs with high-powered rifles.

Donors and Gold Star relations joined Utah’s prime legislation enforcement officer on the chartered helicopter flight, a part of a two-day tour guided by a state-sanctioned depredation program, a marketing campaign spokesperson mentioned. The hunt value at the least $46,752, in response to Reyes’ disclosures — not together with a associated $10,000 lodge invoice or almost $3,000 spent days earlier on a block of seven airline tickets.

The extent of Reyes’ marketing campaign journey involves mild as he faces scrutiny over his shut relationship with anti-child-trafficking advocate and globe-trotter Tim Ballard. In two not too long ago filed lawsuits, six ladies have accused Ballard of sexual assault and different misconduct at Operation Underground Railroad, the nonprofit he based.

Reyes’ work and friendship with Ballard have led some Utah lawmakers to query his focus as legal professional normal and to counsel the job ought to be stuffed by way of an appointment by the governor slightly than elected.

In a written assertion to The Salt Lake Tribune, Reyes mentioned when he took workplace in 2013, he vowed to maintain marketing campaign and workplace funds separate.

”I’ll stay steadfast,” he continued, “in utilizing state funds for official enterprise and marketing campaign funds for any journey or work deemed political in nature.”

”After I do should journey, I’m proud to symbolize Utah on problems with nationwide significance,” Reyes mentioned. “Whether or not in DC or different areas, it’s crucial Utah has a robust voice and illustration.”

Reyes’ chief marketing campaign guide, Alan Crooks, additionally defended Reyes’ donor-funded journey from 2020 to 2022, saying it doesn’t mirror the state legal professional normal diverting his consideration away from duties and tasks within the Beehive State.

“These expenditures say nothing about A.G. Reyes’ focus and dedication to Utah,” he advised The Tribune in an e-mail response to written questions. “He spends the vast majority of his time on state-level points in Utah and national-level points that impression Utah.”

Alongside together with his marketing campaign journey, Reyes made publicized journeys to Qatar, United Arab Emirates, the Mexican border and the nation’s capital in the course of the three-year interval.

Though Reyes is documented to have participated in considered one of Ballard’s operations abroad, Crooks mentioned no marketing campaign funds have ever been used for journey associated to OUR.

The Reyes marketing campaign reported spending a complete of $491,206 in 2022, when the favored Republican confronted no election. He made journeys to the Mexican resort cities of Acapulco and Los Cabos that 12 months, and attended a personal retreat with policymakers, expertise CEOs and enterprise leaders in a suburb of Lisbon, Portugal, referred to as Dialog International, in response to the marketing campaign.

His keep for that occasion on the Ritz-Carlton Penha Longa Resort — a lavish {golfing} vacation spot touted for its “luxurious with out limits” — value $1,660, studies present. It was considered one of at the least 4 Dialog retreats Reyes attended over the three-year interval, marketing campaign studies present, typically listed as a “marketing campaign expense” and different instances as “consulting providers.”

Organizers of the yearly convention, reportedly created by billionaire and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel someday earlier than 2015, didn’t reply to a request for info.

Connections, constituents: Why Reyes says he travels

The journeys that had been lined by marketing campaign funds and disclosed in marketing campaign filings don’t embody taxpayer-funded journey that’s a part of Reyes’ duties. To higher perceive the total scope of Reyes’ journey, The Tribune additionally filed an open data request looking for a every day calendar outlining his schedule over the previous 5 years.

However Assistant Legal professional Basic Lonny J. Pehrson earlier this month rejected The Tribune’s request, saying the workplace “doesn’t keep an official schedule for the legal professional normal” and that the calendar Reyes maintains isn’t a public report.

The Tribune is interesting that call.

The legal professional normal’s workplace has already taken one other information company to court docket in an effort to maintain Reyes’ schedule non-public. A KSL-TV reporter sought his schedule final 12 months, and Utah’s State Data Committee dominated in Might that it was public info and ordered its launch.

The legal professional normal’s workplace appealed that call to a district court docket decide a month later, and that lawsuit remains to be pending.

Crooks initially advised The Tribune that “for essentially the most half, journey and lodging listed on marketing campaign studies had been incurred by A.G. Reyes” — with just a few exceptions the place Crooks himself additionally went alongside, he mentioned, together with on one of many journeys to Mexico.

The political guide and longtime affiliate of Reyes later certified that assertion, saying “at the least most likely half” of the marketing campaign’s lodge tabs, airplane tickets and different travel-related prices had been incurred by Crooks himself, whether or not he was touring with Reyes, or in some circumstances, on his behalf.

The expenditures, he added, even have helped assist fundraising, paid journey bills for Reyes’ talking engagements or to reciprocate in entertaining visiting dignitaries who had hosted Reyes abroad.

Within the case of the Texas searching journey, he mentioned, it was partly a fundraiser and partly a charitable gesture, made doable by Reyes donors and on behalf of Gold Star households who’ve misplaced kinfolk serving within the army.

A spokesperson with Final Shadow in Temple, Texas, the corporate that guided the journey, mentioned his agency is considered one of a handful in south Texas serving to state Parks and Wildlife authorities with the eradication of invasive species. Feral hogs are focused in mild of the widespread harm they’re inflicting, spokesperson Mike Ayala mentioned, with searching fanatics paying for the expertise.

Requested about Reyes’ airborne safari, Ayala mentioned the corporate didn’t disclose “any info on prior shoppers with out their verbal and written consent.”

Final Shadow, in response to the corporate, flies hunters on guided journeys over greater than a quarter-million acres of personal land throughout south Texas and in addition affords ground-based night time searching with thermal imaginative and prescient goggles. Ayala declined to specify common per-seat prices for Final Shadow’s chopper rides, however its web site says these run between $1,100 and $1,600 an hour per shooter.

A number of different marketing campaign journey bills stemmed from journeys Reyes or others have taken to assist Utah constituents, Crooks mentioned, typically in pressing worldwide affairs.

Key elements of Reyes’ journey, he mentioned, are associated to his management roles in teams such because the Nationwide Affiliation of Attorneys Basic and Republican Attorneys Basic Affiliation, in addition to advocacy on high-profile points.

Issues with immigration and border security, human trafficking and the unlawful drug commerce, Crooks mentioned, immediately have an effect on Utahns. And whereas different state and nationally elected officers ceaselessly journey at taxpayers’ expense, Crooks mentioned, Reyes chooses to fund his personal by way of the largesse of prepared donors.

Contacts, connections and data Reyes has constructed together with his journeys, in the meantime, strengthen his job efficiency, mentioned Crooks, “and it helps us leverage the ability of Utah when we have to get one thing carried out.”

‘Egregious’ spending — or ‘the proper factor’?

One Utah lawmaker, Sen. Mike McKell, R-Spanish Fork and a member of the Senate Ethics Committee, mentioned he was shocked by the Reyes marketing campaign’s journey and spending.

“It’s egregious,” McKell mentioned, “that the legal professional normal for the state of Utah, in a nonelection 12 months, can spend almost half one million {dollars} out of his marketing campaign account to journey everywhere in the world doing random stuff that’s most likely not related to his job as legal professional normal.”

McKell mentioned the state of affairs additionally has rekindled a debate over how Utah’s legal professional normal is chosen.

“Ought to the legal professional normal be appointed?” McKell requested. “Or ought to we merely rein in marketing campaign finance legislation and ensure the affect of cash is minimized for the chief legislation enforcement officer within the state of Utah?”

The senator additionally questioned whether or not Reyes’ marketing campaign supporters had been absolutely conscious of how their donations had been getting used. “Is that what the donors had in thoughts,” he requested, “after they gave him the cash?”

Crooks mentioned some in Reyes’ community of supporters have donated particularly to offset his journey prices.

“That’s what our donors have been so nice about,” he mentioned. “We inform them, ‘We have to offset this, you realize. We’ve got a whole lot of touring bills. Are you able to donate?’ They usually’re like, ‘Yeah, what do you want?’”

A number of giant donors to the Reyes marketing campaign listed on his disclosures didn’t reply to requests for remark, however one who gave a smaller quantity mentioned he had no drawback with how Reyes spent the funds.

Casey Adams, a 49-year-old legal professional dwelling in Alpine, mentioned he’s a school buddy of Reyes and a fellow volleyball fanatic. Adams was considered one of many attorneys who’ve donated to his marketing campaign.

“I haven’t discovered that I’m ready to guage what’s essential for another person to do their job,” Adams mentioned relating to his $2,500 donation in June of this 12 months.

“I’ve identified him a very long time. I belief him. And so if he’s doing it,” Adams mentioned, “it’s most likely the proper factor.”

Utah’s marketing campaign finance legal guidelines forbid spending on “private use expenditures,” as in, these which additional a private curiosity that “isn’t related with the efficiency of an exercise as a candidate or an exercise or responsibility of an officeholder.”

Crooks mentioned the marketing campaign had been steadfast in devoting donor {dollars} solely to marketing campaign actions, and that included journey, airfare and lodge stays in addition to fundraising occasions, attendance at conferences and intercessions on behalf of constituents.

‘Good for Utah’

The marketing campaign spent a three-year complete of almost $838,000 on marketing campaign consulting, accounting and assist providers, in response to public disclosures — paid primarily to 4 corporations, together with $469,124 to Crooks’ Salt Lake Metropolis-based Complete Strategic Options.

Marketing campaign studies present at the least two dozen stints at luxurious resorts — many labeled as “political occasions” — together with Deer Valley’s Montage and St. Regis resorts, Daniels Summit Lodge in Heber Metropolis and unnamed others, along with 10 different home and worldwide resort stays.

Crooks mentioned a lot of these had been common fundraising occasions Reyes has held yearly since shortly after he was first appointed as legal professional normal by then-Gov. Gary Herbert in 2013.

He mentioned stays by Reyes in 2021 at Speaking Stick Resort & On line casino and Westin Kierland Resort & Spa, each in Scottsdale, Ariz., had been a part of his attendance at a yearly gathering of the Republican Legal professional Generals Affiliation.

The group, centered on elected Republicans, additionally gave the Reyes marketing campaign $125,000 in January 2020 — his largest single donation over a three-year interval.

4 stays in Las Vegas — at The Mirage, The Venetian and Westgate Las Vegas — listed as “journey” on marketing campaign studies, Crooks mentioned, additionally had been associated to fundraising. Many of the marketing campaign’s journeys to different U.S. cities over 2021 and 2022, the guide added, had been for comparable functions.

In 10 separate situations over a three-year interval, Reyes reported reimbursing himself from marketing campaign coffers for “journey bills,” for a complete of $52,857 — with no further element on what he spent the cash on.

Reyes’ disclosures present that almost all marketing campaign expenditures pointing to a visit, lodging, out-of-town restaurant meals or different substantial journey bills had been virtually at all times adopted inside days by charges paid to Zions Financial institution or Anedot, a digital fundraising platform utilized by political candidates and nonprofits.

The marketing campaign additionally reported almost $7,607 paid over three years to Mac’s Place, a membership-only membership in Salt Lake Metropolis, which Crooks described as “area for marketing campaign conferences and different marketing campaign occasions.”

The legal professional normal’s stays exterior Lisbon and in Santa Barbara for Dialog retreats, in response to Crooks, had been a part of the legal professional normal’s annual attendance at that closed-door occasion after he was first invited by Thiel “years in the past … as a thought chief throughout many points.”

Reyes now commonly attends the occasion, his marketing campaign guide added, “at a deeply discounted price on his personal time to remain forward of the problems of the day with a bipartisan and progressive group.”

“All bills are paid by [the] marketing campaign,” Crooks continued, “or personally by A.G. Reyes.”

The legal professional normal’s journey to Acapulco and associated visits to different locales within the Mexican state of Guerrero in early 2022 — in addition to his journey to Los Cabos on the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula in December of that 12 months — each concerned coverage discussions and coordination with Mexican authorities, Crooks mentioned.

Months later, he mentioned, when a Utahn was wrongfully arrested in Mexico in reference to a automobile accident, Reyes was capable of get the particular person freed “by making a cellphone name” to considered one of his Mexican counterparts.

By means of Reyes’ travels, Crooks added, “the leverage you’ve got and the flexibility you need to get issues carried out is magnified many instances. And that’s good for Utah.”

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