The Foreign Agent
Donald Trump’s former campaign manager registered with the U.S. government as a paid agent of a foreign state — and the job, in a foreign official’s own words, was to keep young American conservatives from turning against Israel.
On September 18, 2025, Brad Parscale’s firm Clock Tower X filed under the Foreign Agents Registration Act as a representative of the State of Israel, working through the German advertising giant Havas on behalf of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The filings describe a Gen-Z-targeted influence campaign, built on AI content and search manipulation and wired into a major U.S. conservative media network. We grade the registered, documented record as fact, and fence the murkier money-trail claims that travel alongside it.
What this page is about
Brad Parscale ran Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign and is now the chief strategy officer of the Christian-conservative Salem Media Network. In September 2025 his firm, Clock Tower X LLC, registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA filing #7649) as an agent of the State of Israel. The arrangement runs through the German advertising conglomerate Havas, which contracts on behalf of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs; the disclosed deal began at roughly $1.5 million a month (about $9 million), and later reporting on the DOJ filings put the broader Parscale contract at $46.5 million, including a plan to shape how AI systems answer questions about Gaza.
Its public justification was fighting online antisemitism. But an Israeli Foreign Ministry official told Time that a strategic aim of the campaign was “preventing young conservatives from turning against Israel” — and the methods match: Gen-Z-targeted content on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and podcasts; AI-driven content generation and search-engine manipulation; and integration of the messaging into Salem Media Network properties, the network where Parscale himself is a top executive. A foreign government, in other words, hired a former U.S. presidential campaign manager to quietly steer a domestic political audience, and wrote it into the record.
Around that documented core swirls a larger, messier money map — a network of “clipper” firms paid to flood social media, some of them (Parscale’s shops, a firm run by GOP operative Mike Shields) taking money from Israel’s campaign and from U.S. political committees at the same time. We grade the parts anchored in FARA and FEC filings as fact, and we grade the parts that rest on a single investigative thread — an opaque clip-farm’s true ownership, a $20 million crypto wallet, a “political payout,” an alleged troll-farm link — as smoke: real enough to report as open questions, not yet proven.
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The Foreign Agent.
Donald Trump's former campaign manager registered with the US government as a paid agent of a foreign state — and the job, in a foreign official's own words, was to keep young American conservatives from turning against Israel.
The registration, the aim, the methods, the money
What Parscale filed, what the campaign is really for, how it works, who got paid, and where the record thins.
Registered: a Trump campaign manager, as Israel's agent.
FACTOn September 18, 2025, Clock Tower X LLC — founded by Brad Parscale, Trump's 2020 campaign manager — registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act as an agent of the State of Israel. The work runs through Havas Media Germany, contracting on behalf of Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs; the disclosed agreement started at about $1.5 million per month (roughly $9 million), and reporting on the DOJ filings describes a broader Parscale contract valued around $46.5 million. The registration itself is a public document. Graded FACT.
The real aim: keep young conservatives pro-Israel.
FACTThe campaign was packaged as a fight against rising online antisemitism. But Time reported an Israeli Foreign Ministry official stating that another strategic aim was 'preventing young conservatives from turning against Israel' — an explicit acknowledgment that the operation is about steering a specific American political demographic, not only combating hate. The target set and tactics fit: Gen-Z-focused content across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and podcasts. We grade FACT that this aim was stated by an Israeli official, and let the gap between the public framing and the private goal stand.
“Preventing young conservatives from turning against Israel. — an Israeli Foreign Ministry official, to Time, on the campaign's aim”
The methods: AI answers, search manipulation, and a media network.
FACTThe filings and reporting describe tools, not just talking points. The Parscale contract included a plan to manipulate how AI systems answer questions about Gaza, alongside search-engine optimization to shape what surfaces online. And in the Services Agreement draft inside the FARA filing, Parscale pledged to integrate the campaign's 'narrative messaging into Salem Media Network properties and aligned distribution channels' — Salem being the large conservative-Christian broadcaster where Parscale is chief strategy officer. A foreign-state message, engineered for AI and search and piped through a U.S. media network by one of its own executives, is a documented method, graded FACT.
Who got paid — from two sides at once.
FACTThe money map, assembled from FARA and FEC filings, shows the same operatives drawing checks from Israel's campaign and from American political committees simultaneously. By the compiled figures, the Government of Israel's campaign (through Clock Tower X and Havas) paid Parscale's firms tens of millions, and sent about $4.4 million for 'media placement' to a firm run by GOP operative Mike Shields — whose other firm was paid roughly $2.98 million by Speaker Mike Johnson's campaign. Firms taking a foreign government's money and a sitting Speaker's campaign money at the same time is the documented overlap, graded FACT on the filings; we attribute the compiled totals to the reporting that assembled them.
Where the record thins: the clip-farm, the wallet, the troll link.
SOME SMOKEA single investigative thread pushes further, and we mark it as smoke, not fact. It alleges that an opaque 'clipper' operation called ClipIt — which pays influencers per repost — is run by a 23-year-old in Latvia and sits near this campaign; that clippers were paid from a roughly $20 million crypto wallet traced to a stablecoin system, with one thanking the boss for a 'Political Payout of December'; and that the attack operation resembles a Turning Point-linked troll farm run by operative Jake Hoffman — a claim the reporting itself hedges as something it 'reeks of.' These threads are specific and serious, but they rest largely on one outlet and, in places, on inference. We grade them SOME SMOKE: documented enough to raise as questions, not established enough to assert, and we carry Turning Point's denial of any ClipIt tie.
The message with no return address
The point of FARA is that Americans have a right to know when the voice in their feed is paid for by a foreign government. What this record shows is how thin that protection has become: the disclosure exists — Parscale filed — but the campaign is built precisely to not read like foreign messaging, engineered into AI answers, search results, podcasts, and a trusted conservative media network so that a young American encounters it as the organic opinion of their own side. That is why this sits in Israeli Influence and Who Controls What You Get to Know: it is the same question as our advertising-weapon story from the other end — not spyware hidden in an ad, but a foreign state’s politics hidden in your feed. We hold the fence hard between what is filed and provable and what is only alleged, because the registered record alone is the story: a foreign government is paying a former presidential campaign manager to change the minds of American voters, by its own account, and the law’s answer is a form.
Questions worth taking seriously
If Parscale registered under FARA, didn't he do the legal thing?
Yes — and we say so. FARA registration is lawful disclosure, not an admission of a crime. The story isn’t the filing; it’s what the filing reveals: a foreign government paying a former Trump campaign manager, through Havas, to run an influence campaign aimed by its own officials at young American conservatives, using AI and search manipulation and a conservative media network. Disclosure is the floor, not a defense of the content.
Why fence the ClipIt / crypto-wallet / troll-farm claims instead of just running them?
Because they don’t yet hold to our standard. The FARA and FEC records — the registration, the Havas contract, the stated aim, the Salem integration, the dual-paid firms — are documents we can grade FACT. The clip-farm’s true ownership, the $20M wallet, the “political payout,” and the Turning Point troll-farm tie rest largely on one outlet’s thread and, in one case, its own “reeks of” hedge. We raise them as serious open questions and carry the denial, rather than launder inference into assertion.
If you are named on this page
If you are named on this page, or are a party materially affected by the claims made here, and you wish to respond, correct the record, or add context, use the Contact page. Responses are published verbatim alongside the original claim, with the sender identified and the date of receipt. The channel stays open for the life of the page.
This site aggregates and grades a record that other outlets and primary sources have already put on the record. Every FACT-graded claim above is sourced to court filings, government reports, sworn whistleblower disclosures, published investigative journalism, or named-source statements. The citations are the accountability mechanism; this section is how you get on the record too.
The record
- Wikipedia — Clock Tower X (FARA registration as agent of Israel; Havas; contract)
- Americans for Transparency — Salem Media and FARA #7649: Parscale’s foreign-agent role
- Americans for Transparency — Clock Tower X LLC (the FARA/FEC payment map)
- The Jerusalem Post — former Trump aide linked to Israeli campaign seeking conservative backing
- Americans for Transparency — FARA pipeline / Clock Tower X / Israel influence investigations