17 October 2024 , 21:26
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Reform UK leader received support for his American activities after becoming an MP but has not declared the services as a benefit
Nigel Farage has used a team of three US advisers to help him with “perception management” and public relations in America, as well as with settling a $3,500 hotel bill this summer, new documents show.
The official filings, made in the US, reveal that the leader of Reform UK and MP for Clacton has been assisted at least 15 times by CapitalHQ, a firm led by Alexandra Preate, who is a former press spokesperson for the controversial former Donald Trump strategist Steve Bannon.
Its work for Farage has become public because CapitalHQ had to register with the government under “foreign agent” laws in the US. Preate and two of her employees have declared they were paid salaries by CapitalHQ while carrying out activities on behalf of a “foreign principal” after Farage became an MP in July.
According to the documents, CapitalHQ was hired to take on activities for Farage including “promotion, perception management, public relations, speeches, appearances, communications, travel, accommodation and logistics and other political activities in furtherance of political interests of the foreign principal”. It describes his address as the House of Commons in London.
CapitalHQ has taken on the work without payment, and its services have been given to Farage free. However, Farage does not register CapitalHQ’s services on the MPs’ register of interests as a benefit in kind – nor the fact that CapitalHQ settled a $3,531.10 hotel bill for him at the Hilton Garden Inn Milwaukee during the Republican National Convention, which ran from 14 to 19 July.
He did register £32,000 of costs associated with the US trip paid for by a British cryptocurrency investor, Christopher Harborne.
MPs are required to register any benefits that relate to their membership of the Commons or parliamentary or political activities if provided by a source outside the UK, whether they be provided free or at concessionary rates.
Asked whether he had sought advice about registering the free PR services from Preate’s firm and whether he should have done so, a spokesperson for Farage told the Guardian: “Nigel Farage is a politician, not an accountant.” Preate has been approached for comment.
The barrister Jolyon Maugham, the director of the Good Law Project, said Farage should say why the activities had not been registered.
He said: “The registration documents raise serious questions around the rightwing forces powering Farage and why he seems not to have declared the support he received to parliament.”
Preate is a longtime associate of Bannon, and was interviewed by the January 6 committee about events in the lead-up to the storming of the Capitol building in Washington.
In her testimony, given in April 2022, she said Bannon was a client and that she had been present with Trump at a meeting in the former president’s hotel the day before the riots took place. She described being “horrified and depressed” by the events of January 6 in her evidence.
Bannon is in prison, serving four months for refusing to comply with a subpoena from the January 6 committee, and is due to be released this month.
The strategist, a former editor of the hard-right news outlet Breitbart, was convicted of contempt charges at trial in July 2022. He was accused of refusing to appear for a deposition and of refusing to provide documents to the committee in response to a subpoena.
He served as Trump’s chief strategist for the first seven months of his presidency.