Skip to content
You can now search across every topic, entity and event.What's new
US Midterms 2026
21JUN

Fellowship PAC: $11m filed, $89m missing

4 min read
17:53UTC

Fellowship PAC filed its Q1 2026 report with the FEC on 15 April disclosing $11 million against a claimed $100 million war chest, with $10 million from Cantor Fitzgerald and ad buys routed through a firm founded by Tether's US chief executive.

← Back to Wave or grind: the measure splitsJump to analysis ↓
PoliticsDeveloping
Key takeaway

A crypto PAC chaired by Tether's lobbyist is funding the senators who will write Tether's regulatory framework.

Fellowship PAC filed its Q1 2026 report with the Federal Election Commission on 15 April 2026, disclosing $11 million in receipts against a publicly claimed $100 million war chest 1. Cantor Fitzgerald, the US investment bank that acts as custodian of the dollar reserves backing Tether, gave $10 million in January. Anchorage Digital, a federally chartered crypto bank, gave $1 million. The remaining $89 million of the public claim remains unsupported by federal records.

The donor identities matter more than the gap. Tether is the world's largest stablecoin issuer, running USDT pegged to the US dollar; its dollar reserves sit with Cantor Fitzgerald. Fellowship PAC's treasurer Mitchell Nobel is Cantor's director of digital asset strategy. Its chair Jesse Spiro is Tether's head of government affairs. Bloomberg and CoinDesk reported that Fellowship's ad buys were routed through a firm founded by Tether's US chief executive, a connection the filing does not explain 2. The PAC has already spent $850,000 on Kentucky Senate candidate Nate Morris, $350,000 on Nebraska Senator Pete Ricketts, and $300,000 in the Georgia 14th runoff closed on 7 April .

The structure closes a loop around the CLARITY Act (Digital Asset Market Structure bill), the legislation that would establish the US regulatory framework for stablecoins. The bank that custodies Tether's reserves funds the PAC chaired by Tether's government-affairs head, and the PAC spends on senators who will vote on the bill that writes the rulebook for Tether's business. The CLARITY Act markup remains stalled into late April , which means the senators whose campaigns Fellowship is funding have not yet delivered the regulatory outcome. The broader crypto super-PAC layer is already deployed: Fairshake holds $171 million cash against end-2025 claims of $193 million and raised only $1.2 million in January and February . Fellowship is building a second channel into the same campaign window.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Tether is the world's largest 'stablecoin', a digital currency designed to always be worth exactly $1. It works because Tether keeps real US dollars in reserve. Those reserves are held by a US bank called Cantor Fitzgerald. A US political spending group called Fellowship PAC says it has raised $100 million to spend on the 2026 elections. When it filed its first financial disclosure with the government in April, only $11 million appeared, $10 million of which came from Cantor Fitzgerald. The remaining $89 million is unaccounted for in federal records. The senators this PAC is funding sit on committees that are deciding whether to pass a new law regulating stablecoins. If that law passes in a form friendly to Tether, Tether's business becomes more secure, and so does Cantor Fitzgerald's lucrative role holding its reserves. The concern is that money is flowing from the entities that benefit from legislation to the politicians who vote on it.

Deep Analysis
Root Causes

The structural root cause is the CLARITY Act's stablecoin framework: if enacted, it would create a federal regulatory regime under which Tether, currently an offshore entity without US federal registration, could seek a US charter or continue operating in the US market under defined rules. Cantor Fitzgerald, as Tether's reserve custodian, benefits from Tether's continued scale and from any regulatory certainty that reduces the risk of Tether being excluded from US markets.

The $89 million gap in the FEC filing has a specific structural explanation: the most plausible mechanism is that the $100 million claim reflects commitments from donors who have not yet transferred funds, a common gap between announcement and actual receipts in crypto industry fundraising, where liquidity timing (stablecoin redemptions, token sales) differs from traditional cash donations.

What could happen next?
  • Risk

    If the $89 million gap reflects pledges that do not convert to actual donations, Fellowship PAC's operational capacity for the 2026 cycle is $11 million, less than 0.5% of the Republican super-PAC ecosystem, making its influence projection largely notional.

    Short term · 0.71
  • Consequence

    The Cantor-Tether-fellowship circuit, now documented in FEC filings, provides a ready-made legal brief for any Democratic senator on the Banking Committee seeking to add conflict-of-interest provisions to the CLARITY Act markup.

    Short term · 0.8
  • Precedent

    The PAC structure demonstrates that crypto industry campaign finance has moved from diversified bundling (Fairshake's model) to targeted single-outcome funding, a concentration pattern that FEC disclosure rules will expose in subsequent quarterly filings.

    Medium term · 0.75
Sources:FEC·Bloomberg
Mentions:Anchorage Digital →Mitchell Nobel →Jesse Spiro →Nate Morris →CLARITY Act →Fairshake →Bloomberg →Nebraska →CoinDesk →Georgia (U.S. state) →Campaign Legal Center →FEC →Kentucky →Cantor Fitzgerald →Pete Ricketts →501(c)(4) →Fellowship PAC →Tether →
First Reported In

Update #3 · Tariff shock reads in GDP. Senate map moves.

FEC· 16 Apr 2026
Read original →
Causes and effects
Caused by
Fellowship PAC Shows Zero in Federal Filings
Fellowship PAC's prior $0 filings (ID:2280) set the expectation that the 15 April Q1 filing would resolve the $100M claim, and the $11M disclosure directly updates that finding.
Occurred 10 Apr 2026
Read story →
Trump Family Ethics Clause Stalls Crypto Bill
The CLARITY Act stall caused by ethics provisions (ID:2278) is the legislative context making Fellowship PAC's donor-senator closed loop politically consequential.
Occurred 10 Apr 2026
Read story →
This Event
Fellowship PAC: $11m filed, $89m missing
The filing exposes a closed-loop structure in which the custodian of Tether's dollar reserves funds a PAC spending on the senators who will write the stablecoin regulatory framework.
Led to
Fellowship PAC ghost-ad draws GOP scrutiny
Fellowship PAC's Q1 FEC filing disclosing $11M (against a $100M public claim) preceded the Paxton ghost-ad revelation showing a $1.75M reported spend that never aired.
Occurred 26 Apr 2026
Read story →
Fellowship PAC drops $3M on GOP races
Fellowship PAC's $11M Q1 receipts provided the capital base for the $3M-plus post-31 March independent expenditure deployment
Occurred 7 May 2026
Read story →
Different Perspectives
Cook Political Report
Cook Political Report
Cook Political Report published a dated House ratings snapshot on 11 September and changed no seat's rating, holding at 206 Democratic to 208 Republican with 21 tossups since its 3 September batch. Publishing without a change is a dated decision, not an oversight, leaving Republicans ahead on seats while Democrats lead the national vote by 6.6 points.
Department of Justice
Department of Justice
A Justice Department official told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that preservation letters like the one sent to Aguilar go to states the department is in active litigation against over incomplete voter registration lists. The department would not answer the paper's specific questions about the personal investigation notice riding inside the same letter.
Francisco Aguilar
Francisco Aguilar
Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar publicly rejected Justice Department pressure on 12 September, days after a 4 September letter combined a records-preservation demand with a personal notice that he is under investigation. He said he will not fold until a judge orders him to, making his office's compliance a political stand rather than a routine filing.
Brett Kavanaugh
Brett Kavanaugh
Justice Brett Kavanaugh denied Missouri's state-track stay application alone on 8 September without referring it, then sent the separate federal-track application in Onder v. State of Missouri to the full Court, which stayed it on 10 September. His choice of which application to keep and which to share decided how much of the fight one justice controlled.
Robert Onder and the federal plaintiffs
Robert Onder and the federal plaintiffs
Robert Onder and three other Republican plaintiffs won a temporary restraining order from Chief Judge Stephen R. Clark on 8 September ordering Missouri to use HB 1, then lost it when the Supreme Court stayed it on 10 September. Their federal route ran parallel to Hoskins's own reversal and ended the same way, with the 2022 map governing 3 November.
Richard Von Glahn and People Not Politicians
Richard Von Glahn and People Not Politicians
Richard Von Glahn and People Not Politicians won Von Glahn v. Hoskins on 3 September, persuading the Missouri Supreme Court that their referendum petition stripped HB 1 of effect and sent it to voters as Proposition A. The contempt finding against Hoskins this week confirms their win held even after the state's chief election officer tried to reverse it.