Stefan Passantino (MichaelBest.com)
Blue Sky Med Labs, whose “business partner” James Fortune, tried to infiltrate voting rights groups in North Carolina, is directly linked to a former Trump administration official, an Atlanta TV station reported yesterday.
Policy Watch reported last week that Blue Sky Med Labs of Roswell, Ga., had wired two payments, $3,000 and $1,500, to Democracy North Carolina. Using similar tactics to the far-right group Project Veritas, Fortune had met with several North Carolina voting rights groups and appeared to try to entrap them into breaking election laws. Fortune claimed that he planned to open a gym in North Carolina and that Blue Sky Med Labs was his business partner.
Dale Russell, a journalist with Fox5, reported that the attorney for Blue Sky Med Labs is Stefan Passantino, the former deputy White House Counsel for Ethics Policy under Donald Trump. He left the Trump administration in 2018, but was subsequently hired by the Trump Organization in January 2019 to help deal with the onslaught of Democratic inquiries into the president’s business interests.
Passantino also is among top officials for “Lawyers for Trump,” a coalition that claims to “protect the integrity” of November’s vote.
Policy Watch previously reported on Passantino’s connections to the White House and various right-wing political operatives in Georgia, including political consultant Rick Thompson. Thompson confirmed to Fox5 that Passantino was the attorney for Blue Sky Med Labs.
Thompson is also a member of the Georgia Ethics Commission.
Fox5 reported that Passantino is out of the country and couldn’t be reached for comment.
Passantino is now an attorney with the firm Michael Best & Friedrich, where he leads the political law practice. That firm is headed by former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus.
Passantino’s biography on the firm’s website states he has “provided Congressional and Executive Branch ethics and lobbying training to members of Congress, their staff, the administration, and private corporations for over 15 years.”
He also has represented “major multi-national corporations, tax-exempt advocacy groups, political parties, and politicians, including serving as national counsel to presidential candidate and former Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich, former Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, former Gov. Rick Perry, several U.S. Senators and House Members, as well as other prominent political figures and advocacy groups.”