Victor Mellor, the Republican nominee for Rhode Island’s second congressional district, is a registered agent of Cuba under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), various media outlets reported during the summer.
What hasn’t been extensively reported is that one of his confidants, a U.S. national from Florida named Mike McEntee, is also a registered agent of Cuba at the same time he’s running a “Rhode Island First” Super PAC.
The relationship between a Republican candidate, one of his confidants, and the Cuban government is notable given the Trump administration’s ongoing maximum pressure campaign against the communist regime. The regime arrested dozens of political opponents this spring after widespread protests, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio called on freedom-seeking Cubans to seek a partnership with the CIA to overthrow the government just this week.
Mellor met Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, grandson of Cuban dictator (and Fidel’s brother) Raúl Castro, in Havana in late May. The meeting occurred just days after the Trump Justice Department charged the elder Raúl with shooting down two civilian planes in 1996, killing four people.
Initially, Mellor claimed the Cuban-American National Chamber of Commerce in Miami urged him to take the meeting. The Chamber says otherwise: “I cannot in stronger terms emphasize the fact that the Cuban-American National Chamber of Commerce (CANCC) did not in any way endorse or urge Mr. Vic Mellor’s trip to Cuba to meet with Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro,” the Chamber’s vice president told USA Today.
Mellor told The Daily Wire in an interview that the Chamber’s rejection was false.
After the May visit, Mellor took a second trip to Cuba in early June.
The congressional candidate insisted to The Daily Wire that there was nothing nefarious about his travels to Cuba. He claimed that registering under FARA was simply a precaution he took after one of his associates, Gen. Mike Flynn, pled guilty to making false statements related to his work on behalf of the Turkish government in 2017. According to Mellor, his only interest in Cuba is opening up business opportunities for Americans and ensuring that the conflict between the Cuban and American governments comes to a peaceful resolution, without major military conflict.
McEntee is both the chair of the newly formed Rhode Island First Super PAC and Mellor’s liaison to the Cuban government, the filings show. McEntee serves as Mellor’s liaison to the Cuban Minister of America Relations, the Minister of Visas, and the General Directorate of Personal Security.
McEntee performs political activities on behalf of these Cuban agencies, his FARA forms acknowledge. Mellor’s filings only admit to performing political activities on behalf of the Personal Directorate, while acknowledging a relationship with the other two Cuban entities. Neither party explained this discrepancy.
As the chair of the Rhode Island First Super PAC, McEntee would have discretion to spend unlimited sums of money on the election, presumably to support Mellor’s campaign. Super PACs are legally prohibited from coordinating campaign messaging with the candidate or their office, and are able to hide their sources of revenue, but must disclose expenditures. Rhode Island First has not yet disclosed any spending.
Despite Mellor’s claim that his trip was motivated by exploring business interests for Rhode Islanders, his forms clearly indicate a coordinated campaign to prepare and disseminate materials intended to “soften” American voters’ perception of Cuba without their realizing. Mellor indicated that his dealings with Cuba, including humanitarian work with Cuban churches, will generate business opportunities for Rhode Islanders.
“There is massive opportunity for Rhode Islanders in Cuba,” Mellor said in an interview. “I leveraged my connections down in South Florida to get on the island of Cuba, and I have made some great connections there.”
McEntee’s work in Cuba appears more extensive than Mellor’s. McEntee describes himself as Mellor’s “friend” and “contact point for media inquiries” in his FARA filings. Mellor and McEntee’s disclosures include a detailed social media strategy to shift American voter’s perception of Cuba; Mellor claimed McEntee prepared the strategy materials.
“There are factions of Cuban-Americans — concentrated in South Florida, with deep institutional reach into the U.S. Congress, the media, and the donor class — who have spent decades shaping the dominant American narrative about Cuba,” their document reads. “Their narrative is powerful, well-funded, and consistently reinforced in U.S. press coverage. We do not attack their narrative. We do not argue with their facts. We speak on different terrain — metaphor — and show what their narrative cannot see: the life that is growing inside the country they have been describing as dying.”
Notably, McEntee, who apparently created the document, lives in South Florida where his Rhode Island First Super PAC has its headquarters.
Despite performing political activity on behalf of two additional Cuban entities, which presumably have different political needs, each of McEntee’s forms for all three Cuban entities claims he is “[d]iscussing social media content ideas and strategy, including: how you post and content ideas. Explaining differences in how Cubans communicate with each other, compared to how Americans communicate with each other. Drafting sample social media content, good website ideas, communication and cultural difference type information. Created a small video, that has not been disseminated, revealing cultural misunderstandings related to people’s intentions.”
Mellor told The Daily Wire he had “plausible deniability” about McEntee’s relationship with the Cuban government. Mellor maintained he is not colluding with the Cuban government and acknowledged that doing so would be illegal. He also emphasized that he is a true patriot, having served as a Marine.
The Federal Election Commission declined to comment if they were aware of McEntee’s status as a foreign agent. They also declined to comment if any other foreign agents hold positions in Super PACs or if such a phenomenon would violate federal law.
The Daily Wire contacted McEntee with questions about his relationship with the Cuban government and Mellor. McEntee said he would only engage substantively via an in-person conversation, rather than in writing or over the phone, a condition The Daily Wire could not accommodate.
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