Months before Republicans took back the House last fall, high-profile MAGA activists were preparing a power move: dropping tens of millions of dollars on a real-estate-buying spree to create “an expansive campus of buildings” in the heart of the nation’s capital and to operate an exclusive, luxe retreat on Maryland’s Eastern Shore where right-wing activists and lawmakers can hunt wildlife, play tennis and devise ways to “save this country from the leftist onslaught.”
Though former president Donald Trump’s own political future is in doubt, the Conservative Partnership Institute, whose leaders include ex-Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, Trump elections lawyer Cleta Mitchell and former Tea Party senator Jim DeMint, is pursuing an aggressive expansion. The group appears to be quietly buying up properties, often in off-market transactions, Grid has found — apparently using a network of anonymous shell companies registered in Delaware to conduct the purchases.
CPI did not respond to repeated inquiries from Grid for this story, which included a detailed list of questions about the purchases, as well as requests to interview CPI officials.
In all, Grid traced nine D.C. properties purchased in the past 14 months by seven LLCs sporting bland monikers like Clear Plains, Hudson and Newpoint. A CPI executive is listed on paperwork for the entities, and the locations of most of the property purchases correspond with CPI’s “Patriot’s Row” plans. CPI bought Camp Rydin, which comprises 2,200 acres near Cambridge, Maryland, for over $7 million, apparently using the entity “Federal Investors, LLC,” the purchaser listed on state property records.
The D.C. properties are clustered around a heavily trafficked block just steps from the Capitol complex — and near CPI’s existing headquarters, which serves as a hub for MAGA-aligned lawmakers, staff and activists.
Patriot’s Row, D.C.’s newest MAGA mall
The group’s goal, according to a report for donors obtained by Grid, is to rent well-located office space to CPI’s affiliate groups, like Mitchell’s voter-fraud-focused Election Integrity Network, and other tenants on the far right.
The expansion shows how CPI, which furthers the career of lawmakers like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) who rally to “drain the swamp,” is attempting to build itself into a Washington institution to rival influential think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, which DeMint once led.
In addition to its real estate ambitions, CPI has become the home for the PAC affiliated with the far-right Freedom Caucus and a legal group that was recently paid $20,668 for legal consulting by Trump’s 2024 campaign.
“I couldn’t imagine serving in Congress without the help of CPI,” CPI quotes Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) as saying in a report to donors.
Over the last year, CPI has been preparing for the Freedom Caucus’ ascent in the House. Last summer, the CPI-affiliated Center for Renewing America started calling on Congress to launch a committee focused on the “weaponization of the federal government” — a rallying cry that has since come to be. In November, CPI President Ed Corrigan urged lawmakers on the right to extract enough power in the new House that they could act as a third political party, governing like a “European-style coalition government.”
CPI has meanwhile helped create the underpinnings of an effective right-wing caucus: Congressional aides have attended CPI retreats at its cushy Eastern Shore resort to be trained on conducting investigations and oversight from Congress. In November, CPI held a “boot camp” for newly elected House Freedom Caucus members to orient them to Capitol Hill.
As CPI grows, so do questions about whether the organization is flouting the federal rules for nonprofits when it supports the right. As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, CPI is legally barred from pushing specific candidates for office or political campaigns, or devoting a substantial amount of its resources toward influencing public policy. But by providing a landing pad for right-leaning lawmakers and promoting their careers, the organization’s behavior borders on, and at times may cross the line into, political activity, said Marcus Owens, a lawyer specializing in nonprofits and former director at the Internal Revenue Service — a possibility other experts have also raised about CPI and its activities.
“There’s a real question whether this organization is actually a charity or not,” Owens told Grid. “What’s quite clear from even their [tax filing form 990] is that their goal is to influence public policy and support particular members of Congress.”
Brian Wise sold his house on Capitol Hill to one of the LLCs tied to CPI, Brunswick Partners, last year. He said he was unaware a conservative behemoth may have been behind the transaction until Grid reached out to ask him about the transaction.
“It was a pretty easy sale,” Wise said. A lawyer representing Brunswick Partners approached him and offered $1.8 million for the house, which Wise had been renting to tenants. He hadn’t intended to put it on the market but decided to sell.
LLCs that appear linked to CPI also acquired the two houses next to Wise and applied for a permit to renovate one of them. In total, CPI-linked entities purchased three houses, four commercial buildings and what appears to be a parking structure in 2022 and early 2023, according to property sale records reviewed by Grid. CPI owns another Capitol Hill row house, purchased in 2020, that is across Pennsylvania Avenue from the other properties. It leases its headquarters building, which is also nearby.
“They’re paying a lot”
“They’re trying to create a convenient, centrally located hub for the MAGA movement,” said Brendan Fischer, deputy executive director at the watchdog organization Documented, who has been tracking CPI’s growth. “Being able to have this headquarters where Matt Gaetz can record a podcast and far-right staffers can huddle and make plans to remain in the fold seems central to what they’re trying to do.”
Since its founding in 2017, CPI has positioned itself as a Washington hub for right-wing lawmakers who otherwise shun the GOP establishment. Its income has ballooned, even as Trump himself faces plunging popularity. The group reported more than $45 million in donations in 2021, according to tax filings, a total that does not include fundraising from CPI’s many sister organizations.
The $32.7 million that LLCs with apparent links to CPI paid between January 2022 and January 2023 for Capitol Hill parcels seemed high to commercial real estate experts Grid contacted. The amount is nearly double the properties’ $17 million assessed value, according to city property records, although city assessments generally lag behind sales prices.
“They’re paying a lot,” one commercial real estate expert told Grid. “Clearly, they really want to assemble a campus there, and they’re an institution that’s willing to put out a price that’s above market.”
The sources of funds bankrolling the property purchases are undisclosed. Several of CPI’s top donors are already known: Mike Rydin, a recently retired Texas-based software magnate, has contributed heftily to the group and is the namesake for two CPI properties, a Capitol Hill row house purchased in 2020 and CPI’s Eastern Shore retreat. Attempts to reach Rydin were not successful.
A “conservative Camp David”
Patriot’s Row is just one of two major real estate projects that CPI has taken on. In December 2021, the organization spent $7.25 million on a massive estate in Maryland’s Eastern Shore, Camp Rydin.
Unofficially, CPI has a second name for Camp Rydin that nods to its aspirations for the estate: It will be “the conservative movement’s own ‘Camp David,’” the organization has said. Photographs of the property suggest it is an order of magnitude more opulent than the rustic presidential retreat, which Trump famously eschewed in favor of weekends at Mar-a-Lago.
Camp Rydin boasts an 11-bedroom main lodge with a two-story entrance and rooms outfitted with plush leather sofas with wall-to-wall windows overlooking the countryside, as well as guest homes and marshland for hunting. Guests can hunt duck and deer, fish, kayak, and play tennis or basketball on indoor courts, according to the property’s real estate listing, as well as photos and materials prepared by a branding agency about the property and reviewed by Grid.
The Eastern Shore estate is a place “where conservatives can strategize and unite on the common mission of saving this country from the leftist onslaught,” a brochure prepared by the marketing agency reads.
Staff and lawmaker travel to Camp Rydin, including the cost of the stay and meals at the property, has to be publicly disclosed by law. But the details of aides’ stays at Camp Rydin could flout congressional ethics guidelines: The nights at the property are disclosed as costing $99, an unusually low price for a luxury resort on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.
CPI held close to a dozen retreats for Capitol Hill staff at Camp Rydin in 2022, according to congressional travel disclosures. Many of the speakers and guests have been modern figureheads on the right, or their staff.
And many of them have been named as part of, or connected to, efforts to change the 2022 election results: Meadows, election-denying members of Congress including Boebert, and aides to lawmakers who — during the last Congress — were being probed by their colleagues for their involvement in Jan. 6., like Greene and Reps. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).
Thanks to Lillian Barkley for copy editing this article.