For Immediate Release
Thursday, February 8th, 2024
Contact: Olivia Taylor-Puckett, otpuckett@azdem.org
NEW: The Wife Of A Controversial Influencer Is Hosting A Fundraiser For Kari Lake [HuffPost] 

“Elena Cardone, the wife of get-rich-quick guru Grant Cardone, is helping raise money for the election-denying Arizona Republican..”

ARIZONA -– A new report from HuffPost reveals Kari Lake is “headlining a campaign fundraiser hosted by the wife of controversial ‘finfluencer’ Grant Cardone this month in Texas” and is the “latest example of Lake […] undermining the notion that she’s distancing herself from sources of potential controversy to appease national Republicans.”

This new reporting follows last week’s national and state coverage of Kari Lake’s fundraiser hosted by QAnon conspiracy theorists, underscoring her continued associations with conspiracy theorists as she “[burnishes] her credentials with the far right even as GOP leaders have hoped she would focus her campaign on issues more likely to resonate with the broader public in Arizona.”

• Politico: When QAnon fundraises for Kari Lake … she shows up
• Arizona Republic: Kari Lake expected at fundraiser hosted by QAnon conspiracy backers. Here’s what we know

HuffPost: The Wife Of A Controversial Influencer Is Hosting A Fundraiser For Kari Lake

By Liz Skalka

February 8th, 2024

Key Points:

• Arizona Republican Kari Lake, the likely GOP nominee for Senate in Arizona, is headlining a campaign fundraiser hosted by the wife of controversial “finfluencer” Grant Cardone this month in Texas.
• Elena Cardone is the longtime spouse of Grant Cardone, who oversees a real estate investment empire he claims is worth billions. Grant Cardone and the firm he founded, Cardone Capital, have faced scrutiny and a string of lawsuits over the alleged exploitation of renters and accusations that Cardone — who has 7 million Facebook followers and millions who follow him on other social media platforms — overhyped his investment fund and lured followers into expensive contracts for his programs.
• HuffPost reported, in a lengthy investigation in July, that “court records from lawsuits involving Grant Cardone’s training programs include claims from former clients who say they were trapped into lengthy, inflexible contracts that they were unable to pay for or get out of.”…
• It’s not clear what Elena Cardone’s role in the business entails, though her website says that she and her husband “together … have created a real estate portfolio worth $5.2 billion.” She has her own big following online, where she claims to “build women so they can build an empire.”
• Elena Cardone is listed as one of a dozen hosts of the Feb. 15 fundraiser for Lake in Round Rock, Texas, according to a copy of the invite obtained by HuffPost. It costs $1,000 just to get in the door and $13,200 per couple to become a “leadership committee” co-chair.
• It’s perhaps the latest example of Lake, the 2022 GOP nominee for governor in Arizona and a prominent election-denier during that campaign, undermining the notion that she’s distancing herself from sources of potential controversy to appease national Republicans.
• Lake was scheduled to headline a Feb. 2 fundraiser in Prescott, Arizona, hosted by Caryn and Michael Borland, wealthy GOP donors known for sharing QAnon posts on their social media accounts. Lake’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment about whether she went ahead with that event.
• In 2020, then-Vice President Mike Pence backed out of a Montana fundraiser with the Borlands over their apparent support of QAnon, a conspiracy theory whose adherents falsely believe Donald Trump and Robert Mueller were working together to stop an international cabal of powerful sex traffickers…
• On Tuesday, Grant Cardone posted to his YouTube account an interview with James O’Keefe, the right-wing provocateur who founded Project Veritas, an activist group that secretly records videos of its subjects and deceptively edits them…
• Grant Cardone posts videos on YouTube with titles like “How to Get Anything You Want in Life” and “5 Steps to Becoming a Millionaire.”…
• As recently as last year, he had been embroiled in a class-action lawsuit alleging he misled investors by overhyping the potential for investment returns, but a judge ended up tossing the complaint in October.
• An investigation from The New Republic in August revealed that “Cardone has ratcheted up rents, skimped on property maintenance, survived off wide-scale evictions, and engaged in dubious investment practices.”
• Grant Cardone did not respond to the specific allegations made in either piece but has lamented that people attempted to use the courts to go after his company for “doing great things.” He did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment about those reports…
• In an email, Elena Cardone confirmed to HuffPost that she is hosting the fundraiser for Lake and that she is endorsing her, but did not elaborate on her role in the company.
• Elena Cardone has 528,000 followers on Instagram, where she posts lifestyle content with advice on “how to stop being broke” and “how to know when it’s time to break up with a guy.”

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