(LifeSiteNews) – Many readers are questioning conservative journalist and prominent MAGA personality Julie Kelly this week over the surprising revelation that she and her husband have donated more than $130,000 to Democrat candidates, including Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, while publicly castigating them as threats to American freedom.
Kelly, a former The Federalist and American Greatness contributor who writes on X and Substack and is regularly cited and interviewed in conservative media, is best known for her extensive coverage of the various prosecutions of former President Donald Trump and mistreatment of those arrested following the January 6, 2021, protest at the U.S. Capitol. She has written two books: Disloyal Opposition: How the NeverTrump Right Tried—And Failed—To Take Down the President; and January 6: How Democrats Used the Capitol Protest to Launch a War on Terror Against the Political Right.
On Monday, Kyle Seraphin, another sharp critic of the Biden-Harris Justice Department, published an X post calling that work into question. Seraphin is a former FBI agent who was suspended for refusing to take the COVID-19 shot and exposing details of the bureau’s targeting of pro-life advocates.
Reviewing Federal Elections Commission (FEC) records, Seraphin found that dating back to 2012, she and her husband John Kelly (an agriculture lobbyist and owner of the Chicago-based public affairs consulting firm All-Circo, Inc.) donated to Democrat candidates, including late Harry Reid, Barack Obama, and the failed presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton.
🚨 How much of the $143,000+ Julie and John Kelly have given to politicians have been to Democrats?
Prior to Nov 2016, Julie Kelly seemed content doing propaganda for the Big Ag businesses under the guise of a regular “suburban mom” who teaches cooking classes. She lives in a… pic.twitter.com/tAd2AGF9OK
— Kyle Seraphin (@KyleSeraphin) August 26, 2024
In the years to follow, while publicly railing against the political left, its war on conservatives, and the “NeverTrump” faction of Republicans, the couple continued to donate to several of the politicians Kelly publicly considers complicit in a “war on terror” against her readers, including Robert “Beto” O’Rourke, Dick Durbin, Tim Kaine, Jon Tester, Bob Casey, the Democrat National Committee, and $2,800 to Joe Biden’s presidential campaign in 2019.
An August 26 story in South Cook News identifies the Kellys as two of Orland Park, Illinois’s three biggest donors to Kamala Harris, although the specific donations appear to be the older Biden donations rolled over into Harris’s campaign when she replaced him as Democrat nominee.
It is common practice in the lobbying world to make donations to both parties, for the sake of maintaining cordial government relations regardless of who wins elections (albeit an unusual practice to continue when one donor considers recipients to be tyrants). However, Seraphin calculates that Democrats received 90% of the Kellys’ approximate $143,000 total political contributions.
Seraphin said he was compelled to investigate the Kellys’ political spending due to past attacks by Julie on other conservatives who identified inaccuracies in her reporting and commentary – such as falsely insisting that Trump lacked the legal ability to pardon January 6 detainees before leaving office and promoting the claim that the FBI gave a special “deadly force” authorization in the 2022 search of his Mar-a-Lago residence, which The Blaze investigative reporter Steve Baker (who has been targeted by the Biden administration himself) argued was based on a “apparent misconstruence of critical facts” about automatically-filed language, standard in all searches, limiting deadly force to “a reasonable belief that the subject of such force poses an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury.”
“The point is – stop being so trusting of people’s motives when they are going to attack @SuspendablesUSA [a group of whistleblowers] for simply sharing accurate information,” Seraphin said. “Julie was wrong about the language in the FD-888 used to execute the Mar-a-Lago search warrant. @dbongino [Conservative radio host Dan Bongino] decided to back Julie’s false information and publicly attacked a number of men who have more skin in the game and future’s on the line than either the Bonginos or the Kellys. If you blindly follow this woman who has attacked @shipwreckedcrew [RedState contributor and January 6 attorney Bill Shipley], @TPC4USA [Baker], and others without justification or cause, you are supporting Democrats. Financially.”
So far, Kelly has refused to answer questions about the story, alternately telling both critics and concerned readers alike “I am not responding to attacks on my family. Do you not understand what that POS is doing?”’ “I owe you nothing”; and “literally f*** all the way off”; and demanding anonymous questioners reveal their real names.
Kelly also suggested the aforementioned critics (who cover many of the same issues she does from the same perspective) “want to discredit me and my family. Probably to stop from reporting the truth” and that Seraphin was “Part fed part DeSantis op,” a reference to Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, whom Kelly once praised effusively but began intensely criticizing when it became clear he would challenge Trump for the GOP’s 2024 nomination.
Several public figures, including former Trump administration officials Jeff Clark and Sebastian Gorka and conservative pundits Bongino and Kurt Schlicter, came to Kelly’s defense, vouching for her as a friend, patriot, and asset to conservatives, but not discussing the donations themselves. Schlichter (who the day before had called Live Action founder Lila Rose a “narcissis[t]” and “not pro-life” for criticizing the Trump-Vance campaign) claimed “It makes me sad to see us fighting each other. I’d like to see all of us working together again.”
Some have speculated the donations may have all actually been from Kelly’s husband, made in her name to overcome campaign finance limits on maximum contributions. Such straw donor practices are illegal.
Author and COVID establishment critic Justin Hart (who had his own past disputes with Kelly on some details of January 6) suggested a less nefarious explanation, albeit one Kelly has yet to offer.
“Couples give to political campaigns all the time. It’s called a ‘double-max’. I’ve personally processed entire families, husband, spouse, adult children… it’s all on the up and up,” he wrote. “Why doesn’t she admit that her husband is a big Ag lobbyist, and that sometimes she double maxes out with him?!”