He arrived in NC with big donations, but the money traces to a business with QAnon link
He claimed to be the operations manager for a New York City gym, looking to expand the business into North Carolina. On trips to the Triangle, he also handed out four-figure checks to three nonprofit, nonpartisan groups who work with voter participation.
But as the man who called himself James Fortune — dark-haired, with a trimmed beard and appearing to be in his mid-30s — talked about his suggestions for the nonprofits’ mission and pushed volunteers to them, the nonprofits started to get the feeling he wasn’t what he made himself out to be.
They checked the source of his donations — a Georgia company called Blue Sky Med Labs LLC — and saw no connection to “James Fortune” or the gym he said he managed. Instead, the corporation papers, filed days before Fortune first showed up in North Carolina, list a political consultant whose many hats include serving as the registered agent for a political organization of a U.S. House candidate who supports the QAnon movement.
In all, officials with four nonprofits now say they fear this was an infiltration by someone looking to collect or manufacture information to damage their reputations — in an attempt to influence the upcoming election in a presidential battleground state that could also determine control of the U.S. Senate.
Angeline Echeverria, the executive director for Fortaleza and affiliated nonprofit El Pueblo, said she has long dealt with opposition over the group’s efforts to help Latinx communities, but this was a dispiriting new twist.
“It feels like it comes out of nowhere, and it feels like the type of attack we’ve been enduring for years,” she said.
Marcus Bass, executive director of Advance Carolina, whose mission is to support Black communities, said he was angered and hurt “and more so shocked at the lengths that folks are willing to go to disenfranchise people.”
“This is a Constitutional right we’re trying to fight for when we talk about voting,” said Bass, whose group is affiliated with the North Carolina Black Alliance.
Advance Carolina and Fortaleza, two relatively new advocacy organizations, first connected with Fortune in July. But he also ingratiated himself with two heavyweights in the state’s voter rights circles — Democracy North Carolina and Common Cause North Carolina.
Both have fought to end gerrymandering in the state and have filed high-profile complaints against candidates and big donors. Fifteen years ago, Democracy North Carolina helped expose a blank-check campaign contribution system that aided then-House Speaker Jim Black.
Last year, Common Cause NC obtained the computer files of GOP redistricting expert Thomas Hofeller who died in 2018, exposing his efforts to add a Census question that might limit immigrant participation and thereby diminish their representation in Congress.
Inquiry launched
All four groups have asked the State Board of Elections and Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman to look into Fortune’s interactions with them. Freeman said in an interview with The News & Observer on Thursday that she is conducting a preliminary review to see if it warrants a criminal investigation.
Multiple efforts by the N&O to reach Fortune through a cell number and email address he gave to the groups were unsuccessful. Two people he sought to place as volunteers with Fortaleza and Common Cause also could not be reached through contact information they or Fortune provided the groups. Emails from the N&O to both of them went unanswered. Texts to one of them also went unanswered, and phone calls made to the number were rejected.
The News & Observer’s review of Fortune’s paper and digital trail — including donations — shows a website for a gym that lists no hours, locations or phone contact. The website was registered on June 19; its Twitter account opened that month as well. Posts on Twitter and Instagram accounts for the gym began in late June, and mention little about gym operations.
The photos on the gym website and leading the social media accounts are generic stock photos.
The phone and email addresses for Fortune and one of his volunteers do not turn up on databases including Lexis/Nexis, Spokeo, Been Verified, FastPeopleSearch or Google.
Tomas Lopez, Democracy NC’s executive director, said his organization was the first one Fortune reached out to, at the end of June, with a call to its voter assistance hotline. Fortune told them he was moving to North Carolina and had questions about how to vote.
Fortune said he was so pleased with the staffer’s help that he wanted to make a donation.
“We’re always happy to help out courageous causes and would love to just learn some more before committing (which we’re definitely gonna do) to these wonderful initiatives,” Fortune wrote in a June 30 email.
Shortly after, on July 3, a $1,500 donation arrived through Blue Sky Med Labs.
Fortune met with a Democracy NC representative on July 14, Lopez said. Fortune mentioned that he did not like President Donald Trump, which Lopez said prompted a staffer to tell Fortune that Democracy NC’s mission wasn’t to get involved in political campaigns.
Fortune joined one of the staffers and the staffer’s brother on a fishing trip off the Outer Banks five days later, on July 19. Fortune got seasick on the trip, Lopez said, and the staffer’s brother snapped a picture that he said shows Fortune slumped at a table on the boat. Officials at the nonprofits say it’s the only they have of him.
On July 24, Democracy NC received another donation from Blue Sky for $3,000.
Democracy NC staff referred Fortune to other organizations doing similar work, including Common Cause NC, Fortaleza and Advance Carolina.
Common Cause first heard from Fortune on Aug. 3, emails show. After three Zoom meetings with Common Cause representatives, Fortune gave the organization a $1,000 donation. They too noticed the money came from Blue Sky. In a fourth Zoom meeting, Fortune asked Common Cause NC Executive Director Bob Phillips to take on a volunteer Fortune identified as Selena Rodriguez.
Fortune also contacted Fortaleza on July 31, leading to a meeting a week later, said Echeverria. He arranged three meetings in public venues to talk about Fortaleza’s work, she said. She now fears someone secretly shot video during those meetings.
“He always wanted to meet at a public place and would always get there before us,” she said.
At the first meeting, Echeverria said she told Fortune that Fortaleza does not coordinate with candidates’ campaigns and was not involved at the federal level. Two days later he sent a $1,500 donation; it too came from Blue Sky.
She inquired about the source of the donation. Fortune said Blue Sky was the parent company for Equality Gym.
Text messages with Fortune that she shared with the N&O showed that one day before a second meeting, he inquired about helping elect U.S. Senate candidate Cal Cunningham, a Democrat from Lexington.
“Hey just wondering for tomorrow, do you know anyone on the Cunningham campaign or a fundraiser for them?” he asked. “I’m interested in contributing to them and I’m not sure how to make contact with them. I’d love a referral if you know someone personally.”
Echeverria said she did not respond to the text, but again told him at the second meeting Fortaleza does not coordinate with candidates or make donations. He suggested Fortaleza take on a nephew of the owners of Blue Sky as a volunteer.
Fortune asked for advice on how a business could help progressive organizations. Echeverria put him in touch with a friend who works for Replacements Ltd., a Greensboro company that operates a political action committee that supports roughly a dozen state and national progressive organizations.
A day after the second meeting, on Aug. 12, a second $1,500 donation arrived from Blue Sky.
Lisa Conklin, a spokeswoman for Replacements, declined to comment on the employee’s involvement or make him available, saying “we understand that law enforcement may be exploring these issues.”
At a third meeting between Fortune and Echeverria on Aug. 17, Fortune introduced her to who he said was the Blue Sky owners’ nephew, Javier Rodriguez. She said Fortune pressed her to have Rodriguez work with the organization as early as the following week.
Alarming phone call
The next day, Echeverria said she received an alarming phone call. Her friend, who Echeverria declined to name, called her on Aug. 18 and warned her about Fortune.
“Fortune was asking if this person thought it was feasible for Fortaleza to be used to register undocumented people,” Echeverria said. Doing so would be considered voter fraud.
She alerted the other organizations Fortune had been in contact with, and that’s when they learned Blue Sky was a registered corporation in Georgia, not New York. The registered agent listed in the incorporation records is Jason D. Boles.
A phone number could not be found for Blue Sky, but a representative for the company that owns the office plaza that includes Blue Sky’s address said the lease is held by PoliticaLabs, a company that lists Boles as the chief financial officer and Rick Thompson as the secretary. The representative, Paul Schroeder, said another business founded by Thompson, R. Thompson & Associates, that includes Boles is there as well.
The two also are partners in a political consulting business called RTA Strategy. Their website greets viewers with the saying: “You don’t know what you can get away with until you try.”
The website description of who they are states: “Our team of professionals might scare the hell out of you! We are not your typical political management group. We are misfits, overcomers and thick skinned people that sweat the details but see the big picture.”
But Thompson is also part of the regulatory system in Georgia. He’s a former Georgia ethics commission staffer who Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan named to the commission’s board last year, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. Duncan, a Republican, had used RTA Strategy’s services to file campaign disclosures during the 2018 campaign, the newspaper reported.
Thompson previously turned down an appointment by then-Gov. Nathan Deal in 2016, also a Republican, the newspaper reported, “after questions were raised about (Thompson’s) eligibility, since he had registered to lobby for his company, which provides disclosure services to candidates, elected officials and others regulated by the commission.”
Georgia incorporation records show Boles listed as the registered agent for nearly 30 entities, many of which appear to be political groups and candidate organizations. Among them, Greene for Congress, Inc., a political organization for Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Republican candidate for a Georgia congressional seat who has expressed support for QAnon, NPR and others have reported.
QAnon is a debunked conspiracy theory supported by some in the far right that claims the country is under the control of a deep state “made up of political elites, business leaders and Hollywood celebrities who are pedophiles and actively working against Trump,” USA Today reported. The FBI has identified QAnon as a potential domestic terrorism threat, but Trump has curried favor with QAnon supporters and has called Greene a “future Republican Star.”
The N&O phoned and emailed Boles and Thompson and asked a worker at a neighboring office to leave a note on the door of their business, but they have not responded.
Contact shut off
The North Carolina groups said they shut off all contact with Fortune after seeing that connection. They said they have not heard from him or the two people he sought to place as volunteers. Echeverria said she has returned the $3,000 in donations. The others said they’re holding on to the donations as evidence in the investigation.
In recent years, undercover operations have become more common in politics. Over the past decade, several left-leaning groups and officials have been infiltrated by conservative political activist James O’Keefe, whose Project Veritas seeks to collect damaging information. O’Keefe has also gone hunting for left-leaning bias among national media such as NPR.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported Wednesday that several liberal groups in Wisconsin, another battleground state, say they believe they were targeted by someone with Project Veritas posing as a documentary filmmaker. They have asked the Wisconsin attorney general, a Democrat, to investigate.
Lopez of Democracy NC said he and the other groups have not found any connections to Project Veritas as they try to figure out who was behind the infiltration. Phillips of Common Cause NC said they have notified their national parent organization to let people there know what happened and find out if other groups are seeing similar activity.
In all, Fortune, via Blue Sky Med Labs, spent $8,500 on donations to three of the four organizations. (Bass said Advance Carolina did not reconnect with Fortune after an initial Zoom meeting in July.) Phillips said Fortune told him in one meeting that Blue Sky was willing to donate much more.
That made Fortune, at that time, something of a godsend given what they see to be an enormous task of helping voters cast ballots amid the coronavirus pandemic and an election filled with vitriol.
“We’re vulnerable, because this is the kind of season when we do get more interest and we do get more attention and ultimately we do get more contributions, and that’s what happened to Common Cause,” Phillips said. “When you find out it’s completely the opposite it makes one angry. It’s frightening. But it gives us more resolve to fight back.”
This story was originally published September 18, 2020 at 3:13 PM with the headline "He arrived in NC with big donations, but the money traces to a business with QAnon link."
