Becerra backers accuse Hilton campaign of hiding payments to influencers

Two vocal supporters of Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Xavier Becerra filed a formal campaign finance complaint against his rival, Steve Hilton, on Tuesday over the Republican campaign’s use of paid online promoters.

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The Becerra supporters, Beatrice Gomberg and Kaitlyn Hennessy, claim Hilton is engaging in a “misinformation campaign” involving social media accounts, conservative media figures and alleged whistleblowers who’ve criticized Becerra’s oversight of child migrants as former U.S. secretary of health and human services under President Joe Biden.

In some cases, Gomberg and Hennessy point to campaign finance records to argue that two influencers — self-described independent journalists — were paid more than $70,000 by the campaign. In others, they ask the California Fair Political Practices Commission to investigate what they argue were suspicious signs that people or marketing firms had been paid without proper disclosures.

“It is impossible to tell how many different third party influencers have been paid by the committee to create this pro-Hilton content, but we provide below a list we believe to capture at least some of those influencers,” said Hennessy and Gomberg in their complaint. “Based on our research, none of the posts these creators have published include a disclaimer.”

The two women are themselves influencers who previously accused former gubernatorial hopeful Tom Steyer and, earlier this week, Los Angeles mayoral hopeful Nithya Raman of similar infractions. The Fair Political Practices Commission cleared Steyer of wrongdoing earlier this month.

The Hilton complaint was filed against the campaign rather than the online supporters themselves.

Newsom recently signed a new law that would also subject influencers to a $5,000-per-post penalty for failing to disclose campaign payments, but it does not go into effect until January.

Hilton’s spokesperson, Hector Barajas, said influencers had been instructed to add disclaimers to campaign posts after inquiries by The Sacramento Bee.

In a statement, Hilton suggested the complaint originated from Becerra’s campaign — something Gomberg and Hennessy deny — and was an attempt to distract from the Democrat’s oversight of the influx of child migrants beginning in 2021.

“It is truly despicable that instead of apologizing for his role in sending thousands of Latino children into the clutches of child sex and labor traffickers, or withdrawing from public life in shame and disgrace, as frankly he should have done years ago, this appalling man is lashing out at the investigative journalists who for years have been putting their lives at risk to expose the horror of cartel operations enabled by Biden’s open border policy and Becerra’s migrant child abuse camps,” Hilton said.

‘America’s guerilla journalist’

Two of the most prominent pro-Hilton influencers named in the complaint, Anthony Rubin and Jorge Ventura, both produce content focused on Becerra’s tenure as HHS secretary. A 2023 Pulitzer-winning New York Times investigation found that thousands of children were trafficked into unsafe jobs under Becerra’s watch.

Becerra, who was repeatedly attacked by primary rivals over his handling of the issue, called those criticisms “Trump lies,” saying it was employers, not his agency, that mistreated the children.

Rubin and Ventura interviewed two youth who said they were victims of trafficking, a former caseworker and a former site supervisor of a San Diego detention center. They produced videos and spoke at a news conference Hilton hosted in July that aimed to provide more detail on alleged workplace and sexual abuses that critics claim occurred under Becerra’s watch.

Gomberg and Hennessy asked the FPPC to investigate whether the two youth who were allegedly trafficked had been paid for their testimony, “given the fact that the only record of their claims are by people paid by the Steve Hilton campaign.”

Barajas said the youth featured were not compensated for their interviews.

Campaign finance filings released earlier this week show Hilton’s campaign paid Rubin’s Muckraker Media $60,383.55 for unspecified campaign consultant work and travel expenses. Ventura received $12,000 for unspecified campaign consultant work.

“Muckraker and (Ventura) are independent investigators who covered this issue, helped find these immigrants under these circumstances, and conducted the interviews,” Barajas said in an email. “They were paid to look for (the whistleblowers) and film (them).”

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Hilton, Rubin and Ventura did not disclose the payments at the Aug. 5 news conference or in social media posts related to the event. In Rubin’s case, that amounted to a single video of him speaking at the event, while Ventura posted nearly two dozen times praising Hilton or attacking Becerra.

When The Fresno Bee asked Hilton if he’d paid Rubin for the footage featured at that event, Hilton said he had not.

In response to questions from The Sacramento Bee, Barajas said Hilton meant that the campaign hadn’t paid Rubin for the substance of his reporting on the topic, which predates Hilton’s campaign.

Rubin and Ventura declined to answer specific questions about their work for the Hilton campaign.

Gomberg and Hennessy’s complaint also names a third man, a former detention center supervisor named Tarek Kadourah who told Ventura that he witnessed migrant children being handed off to sponsors with little vetting and that his internal complaints were ignored.

The Hilton campaign reimbursed Kadourah $406 for travel and lodging and listed him as a “member of the staff” in campaign filings. Gomberg and Hennessy argue that language suggested Kadourah was paid as part of the campaign, and should have disclosed that connections on his social media posts on the campaign.

Both Kadourah and Barajas said that Kadourah was in fact not employed by the campaign.

In an interview, Kadourah said he identifies as an independent politically and is ineligible to vote in the governor’s race because he lives in Texas, although he’s described himself as a Hilton supporter on Instagram.

Kadourah said he’d accepted Hilton’s campaign invitation to do the interview out of disgust with Becerra’s handling of the migrant crisis. He said that he volunteers to rescue trafficked children with a nonprofit, often posting about it on an Instagram page that is peppered with heavily-armed selfies from far-flung locales.

‘The person posting has a financial incentive’

Hennessy and Gomberg’s complaint also urges regulators to investigate Hilton campaign payments to the firms Cliplabs and Affiliate Net, arguing both firms may have hired people to boost Hilton online. California law requires sub-vendors — in this case, those social media users — to be listed in campaign finance reports.

Barajas said the two firms were paid for “video clipping and social media distribution services.”

The Becerra supporters also identified a handful of pro-Hilton social media accounts which disclosed payments from the Republican in their page information but not on individual posts.

In a joint interview, Hennessy and Gomberg argued that disclosures changed how social media users viewed self-described journalists like Rubin and Ventura.

“They’re more valuable if people don’t think they’re paid to post on behalf of a campaign,” Hennessy said. “When people see this, they don’t understand that the person posting has a financial incentive.”

Barajas said they’re missing the point.

“Becerra would rather talk about who held the camera than what is on the tape,” he said.

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