Senator J.D. Vance’s public Venmo account shines a light into the many corners of the Republican vice presidential nominee’s inner circle, illuminating his long-standing ties with right-wing fascists, shadowy elites, and federal employees, according to a new report from WIRED.
Vance’s public account on Venmo, a mobile payment app, was first discovered by a law enforcement and extremism researcher, who asked to remain anonymous. WIRED was able to verify that the account belonged to Vance.
It’s worth noting that when setting up a Venmo account, the app offers users the opportunity to sync their phone contacts into their friends list. So some people included on the list of Vance’s Venmo friends could have been automatically added when he made his account in 2016, and may have never made a transaction with the senator or contacted him recently.
Still, the list presents a trove of powerful right-wing voices and some surprising names, too, who could be splitting meals and trips with the Ohio Republican.
Among the more than 200 accounts listed on Vance’s Venmo friends list is that of Amelia Halikias, the government relations director at the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank behind Project 2025.
Donald Trump and Paul Dans, the project’s leader, have attempted to create the illusion that the former president is not affiliated with the fascist plan to oust civil servants and replace them with Trump sycophants. But they can’t outrun all of the evidence demonstrating that Trump had his hands all over the project.
Despite all that posturing, Vance has long-standing public links to the Heritage Foundation, and the group’s president even said he had been rooting for Vance to get the V.P. nomination. Halikias also gave a nod to Vance Monday, retweeting Elon Musk’s comment on Trump’s “excellent” pick of running mate.
Also present on Vance’s friends list is Gladden Pappin, a conservative political theorist who serves as the president of the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs. Pappin is part of the same “new right” vanguard as Vance, which has turned to Hungary’s authoritarian populist regime for inspiration on how to install Christian nationalist policies nationwide.
Pappin also co-founded an online publication called the Journal of American Greatness, which attempted to make scholarly arguments out of Trump’s talking points but shut down before the 2016 election. Alongside collaborator Julius Krein, Pappin later co-founded American Affairs, a Trumpist magazine that still exists.
A Yale alum, Vance has previously criticized elite universities as “expensive day care centers for coddled children,” but he had plenty of connections with many attorneys from expensive law schools, including (predictably) his alma mater.
Several of these lawyers are employed by the Department of Justice and would therefore be considered Trump’s so-called “deep state” enemies. One friend was an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, which once launched an investigation into Michael Cohen’s claims about the Trump Organization’s business dealings.
Vance also had links to outright Trump critics, such as former Arizona Governor Jeff Flake and Lanny Davis, Michael Cohen’s former lawyer. Davis denied being Vance’s friend on Venmo.
Others on Vance’s list include intellectual dark web doyenne Bari Weiss, hapless conservative news pundit Tucker Carlson, as well as lobbyists from conservative think tanks such as the Hoover Institution and American Enterprise Institute. None of these people responded to WIRED’s requests for comment.
While Vance’s Venmo presents a window into his inner world, it also presents a security threat, by exposing his connections to those who would seek to influence a potentially powerful person.
“What you guys need to realize is that Vance is influenceable,” wrote Andrew Torba, a right-wing social media CEO who has promoted antisemitic content, in a post on X. “We have plenty of people in his orbit. Plenty of our guys can be put into positions of power because he’s there. Our focus should be on pulling him as far right as possible by 2028. Long game. Honey, not vinegar.”
