The Justice Department has opened an investigation into Texas Majority PAC after a viral undercover video showed a since-fired organizing manager spelling out what he called a “roundabout way of paying people for their votes” ahead of the midterms.
A source familiar confirmed the probe on Wednesday. The investigation was first reported by Fox News Digital, which said two sources familiar with the matter confirmed the department is looking at the Democrat operation that dumps millions into flipping Texas blue.
The footage that forced the feds’ hand was released by Townhall on September 16. Sky McAdams, then an organizing manager for Texas Majority PAC, sat down with an undercover journalist and walked through the loophole he said the group uses to skirt federal election law while boosting Democrat U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico.
“We are paying people $25 to attend a one-hour Zoom class to learn why voting is important and why the Republicans are causing all of these bad things,” McAdams said on the tape. “So it’s like a roundabout way of paying people for their votes, essentially.”
He did not stop there. McAdams told the undercover reporter you cannot hand someone cash and say, “Here’s $25, go vote for me.” What you can do, he said, is pay them to sit through a class. “And then the class just talks about the importance of… It’s a little gray.”
He named the program. “It’s called the Paid Relational Program.” He added that he thought “Rally Texas” was the official name. Then he said the quiet part out loud: “If I was a Republican, I would be pissed. I would be like, that’s shady as f**k.”
The Gateway Pundit reported the tape the day it dropped. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the Republican Talarico is trying to beat, did not mince words.
“Absolutely outrageous! James Talarico’s team just admitted they are trying to bribe people for votes. Texans aren’t for sale, no matter how much James Talarico thinks they are.”
Paying someone to vote, or to vote for a candidate, is a federal crime. The workaround McAdams described is the whole point of the investigation: dress the payment up as a “class,” then point the newly motivated voter at the Democrat on the ballot.
The PAC moved fast to contain the damage. The next day it fired McAdams and told reporters he had “mischaracterized” the program. A spokesman said participants “are being paid for grassroots organizing work,” that the description from the “rogue employee” was “factually incorrect,” and that he was “immediately fired.”
That defense has a problem. PAC spokesman Eddie Vale later told Fox News Digital the video is real and has not been digitally altered or deceptively edited. They can call him rogue. They cannot call the tape fake.
The money trail is not a rumor. In a July campaign finance report, Texas Majority PAC paid the firm Relentless $500,000 for a “relational organizing program” — about a fifth of its spending to that point, Townhall reported.
At $25 a head, that sum covers roughly 20,000 payments. Relentless says its paid relational programs “recruit low-propensity voters and compensate them for their time as they reach, persuade, and mobilize their friends and family to vote.”
Similar drives in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania in 2024 were credited by the firm with tens of thousands of Democrat votes.
According to Transparency USA figures cited by Fox News, Texas Majority PAC had raised nearly $10 million in the 2026 cycle by the end of the second quarter, spent nearly $9 million, and still held more than $1.3 million in cash.
The group was founded by Texas campaign veterans Jason Lee, Katherine Fischer, and Crystal Zermeño. Its stated mission is to turn Texas permanently blue.
Rep. Pat Fallon (R-Texas) did not wait for the PAC’s spin. On September 18 he wrote Attorney General Todd Blanche and demanded a federal investigation, Townhall reported.
“Americans deserve to participate in elections that are free of illegal immigrant voting, foreign adversary financing, and especially shady political organizations that seek to purchase the votes of Americans,” Fallon wrote.
Two weeks later, sources told Fox News Digital the Justice Department is doing exactly that.
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