Republican Party leaders in the Fayetteville area have spent years covering up illegal donations to their party, new complaints allege — part of a case that provides a look into the sometimes secretive and contentious world of local political organizing and fundraising.
The complaints, filed Tuesday with the North Carolina State Board of Elections, ask officials to discipline two local GOP leaders — including with possible criminal charges. The documents are backed up by sworn affidavits from five Cumberland County Republican Party operatives and politicians.
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Longtime North Carolina campaign finance watchdog Bob Hall filed the complaints. He alleges that Brenda Eldridge, a former chair of the Cumberland County Republican Party who currently serves on the county elections board, orchestrated what’s called a strawman donor scheme to hide the identity of party donors.
He accuses her — based on the affidavits of her fellow Republicans — of hiding the true source of the money behind a $25,000 check she signed in 2022 to pay retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn to appear at a local GOP fundraiser. It is a felony to make a political donation under the wrong name. It is also a felony for political parties, among others, to knowingly receive such donations.
Eldridge didn’t respond to a request for comment. Hall wrote in his complaint that he confronted her with his evidence before filing the complaint, and that she denied it to him.
Hall also alleges in a separate complaint that Linda Devore, another local Republican Party official who currently serves as chair of the Cumberland County Board of Elections, failed to report the allegations to the state even as she told fellow GOP officials that she suspected the donation was illegal. Hall seeks to have her removed from the board.
“A reasonable person should have reported a potential violation, an apparent violation,” Hall said in an interview Tuesday. “And instead, she buried it.”
Devore told WRAL Tuesday that the complaint is false, that she has deep respect for elections laws, and that she doesn’t believe Eldridge committed a crime or did anything else improper.
“She's a trained treasurer,” Devore said. “She knows the campaign finance laws. I trust her.”
Devore also said she’s sorry that the complaint might give people the impression that the county elections board isn’t performing its duties properly, which she said it is.
“The voters in our county deserve better than this” she said. “They deserve a Board of Elections that can work in a bipartisan fashion and get the work done that voters expect of us. And I just think this is unfortunate.”
On Wednesday, a day after this article was initially published, the North Carolina Republican Party issued a statement expressing support for Eldridge and Devore and attacking Hall and the five Republican Party members whose affidavits are the basis of the complaints.
“There is not a single credible allegation of legal or procedural wrongdoing,” NCGOP Chairman Jason Simmons wrote in a statement. “Just innuendo, spin and political resentment.”
A spokesperson for the state elections board declined to comment on nearly all the allegations outlined in both complaints. State law requires ongoing campaign finance investigations to remain secret. The board confirmed it's looking into a separate, non-finance-related part of the Devore complaint related to her ongoing work for the Republican Party.
Flynn's speaking fee
Hall alleges that Eldridge collected money from people that she intentionally kept anonymous, by putting their donations under her own name, while she served as the chairwoman of the Cumberland County Republican Party in 2022.
The $25,000 in question was used to pay Flynn to speak at a local GOP fundraiser in 2022, Hall alleges.
Flynn, a top advisor to President Donald Trump during his 2016 presidential campaign, pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying about communications with high-level Russian officials during an investigation into Russia’s efforts to influence the 2016 election. Trump pardoned him in 2020 and, last week, Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, had the government pay Flynn about $1.2 million to settle a wrongful-prosecution claim.
Flynn has remained a popular figure in conservative politics throughout, often giving speeches that include Christian nationalism themes and theories about election fraud. His speech in Fayetteville drew hundreds of people, the complaint says, and the guests’ spending on tickets helped the party profit thousands of dollars.
Some of the sworn affidavits supporting Hall’s complaints allege that Eldridge raised all or part of Flynn’s $25,000 speaking fee from military personnel who wanted to help pay Flynn to come speak but didn’t want their names publicly associated with him, for fear of harming their military careers.
To protect the donors, Hall alleges based on the affidavits, Eldridge agreed to say the money all came from her. Fayetteville is home to Fort Bragg, the largest military base in the world. Eldridge told Hall she did nothing illegal, he wrote in his complaint. He said that she sought to clear her name by showing him one of her bank accounts, but that she refused to let him see several others.
Hall further alleges that Devore knew about the purported scheme and failed to report it, even as she also indicated to fellow GOP officials that it could bring felony charges if discovered.
Two of the five officials making the accusations in affidavits say Devore told them about the $25,000 check to Flynn and then referenced the criminal prosecution of conservative activist Dinesh D’Souza, who was convicted of a felony for similar actions, known as a strawman donor scheme.
When Hall confronted Devore about the allegations, she acknowledged referencing D’Souza’s case in regard to these local allegations, although she claimed she was just joking, Hall said in his complaint.
Devore also told WRAL it was just a joke — and one she makes frequently, to remind people of the importance of following campaign finance rules.
“I don't want anybody to break the rules,” she said Tuesday. “And anytime anybody brings up a topic in which they're implying or suggesting that somebody do something different, I always say ‘You don't want to go to prison like Dinesh D’Sousa,’ because they need to understand this is serious business.”
‘Was that a felony?’
The five affidavits signed by fellow Cumberland County Republican Party officials paint a different picture. Signing a false affidavit is also a crime in North Carolina, punishable by felony perjury charges.
The five officials include a longtime elected official, a former party chair and others:
- Linda McAlister-Brown: Former chair of the Fayetteville Republican Women’s Club, planned the Michael Flynn speech.
- Jaunita Gonzalez: Former member of the Fayetteville City Council, Cumberland County Commissioners and the Cumberland County Board of Education.
- Venus de la Cruz: A 2026 state Senate candidate and CCGOP executive board member from 2023 to 2025.
- Calista Cuevas: Chair of the Cumberland County Moms For Liberty.
- Nina Morton: CCGOP chair in 2023, was on the executive board in 2022 while Eldridge was chair.
Gonzalez invoked her decades-long political career in urging the resignation — or removal — of Devore and Eldridge from their positions on the local elections board.
“I wonder how Brenda and Linda can serve on the Cumberland County Board of Elections and oversee elections and campaigns,” she wrote in her affidavit. “It doesn’t seem right to me. I took my oath of office seriously.”
McAlister-Brown said it was her idea to invite Flynn to speak, and that she was involved in planning the speech. As part of that process, she said, Edlridge told her directly that “she was getting donations from friends and neighbors,” McAlister-Brown said in her affidavit. “I knew she and her husband had many friends in the military.”
Morton, a prior chair of the county party, said in her affidavit that official party records about the Flynn fundraiser contain line items to reference money from an individual. It doesn’t list the $25,000 that Eldridge gave, even though it was ostensibly an individual donation she made, Morton said in the affidavit. Rather, that check is listed under a separate line item titled “private donations,” which Morton said amplified her suspicions. Political parties must record all of their donors publicly.
“My understanding is that the private donations [Eldridge] raised came from military people who didn’t want to be identified because it was an event with Lt. Gen. Flynn,” Morton wrote in her affidavit.
Morton also wrote that in 2023, while she was party chair, she had a conversation with Devore after which she came away convinced that “[Devore] knew [Elridge] had done something wrong,” and by 2024, Morton wrote, she believed that “other people knew about it but it was all kept hush-hush.”
Two of the people who signed affidavits for the complaint said they previously tried to bring these allegations to the attention of the State Board of Elections.
Gonzalez says she tried raising concerns to the state in 2024. She said investigators told her they wanted more documentation before they’d start looking into it. She said she never got around to providing the documents. “We were very busy with the presidential election, so we kind of got away from it,” Gonzalez said in her affidavit. Morton also wrote that she contacted the state elections board with concerns, but she didn’t provide further details.
It’s unclear whether state investigators ever followed up with either woman to try confirming details of the allegations they tried reporting. Board officials didn’t immediately respond to an inquiry about that claim.
Gonzalez was also one of the two people, along with de la Cruz, to relate the story of Devore talking about Edlridge’s check and then invoking D’Souza’s criminal prosecution.
But de la Cruz’s version, in her sworn affidavit, doesn’t present the conversation as a joke. She said Devore, who had long helped the local GOP audit its finances, told her that she quit that role when it came time to audit the $25,000 check from Eldridge because she believed Eldridge broke the rules.
“I can’t recall the exact words,” de la Cruz said in her affidavit, “but [Devore] went on to say something like, ‘You know, that contribution was illegal. Dinesh D’Souza went to prison for that same thing.’ I was shocked. … I replied as a question to the effect that, ‘Was that a felony?’ She confirmed that it was.”
D’Souza pleaded guilty in 2014 to a felony for running a straw-donor scheme involving $20,000 worth of illegal contributions. He was sentenced to probation along with eight months in a halfway house and a $30,000 fine. Trump pardoned him in 2018.
Devore said she thinks people might have just misinterpreted her warnings about messy bookkeeping related to something else, and that she hadn’t intended for them to believe she was accusing Eldridge of breaking the law.
“I say this all the time,” she said of invoking the D’Souza case. “This is nothing new.”
‘Authoritarian leadership’
In his complaint against Devore, Hall also alleges that she has engaged in a pattern of “authoritarian leadership” while running the Cumberland County elections board, infused with political and ethnic biases that have led to mistakes in election administration, staffing problems and other concerns.
Devore denied that characterization, adding she doesn’t think elections administration should be run in a partisan fashion and believes her record would support that.
The complaint questions her ability to lead in a nonpartisan fashion, noting that state law bans political party officials from serving on elections boards. Devore audits the local GOP’s financial reporting. She said that doesn’t make her a party official like a treasurer. The complaint says otherwise. A spokesman for the state elections board told WRAL that specific question doesn’t appear to have ever been previously addressed.
The complaint also alleges Devore criticized a fellow elections board member, who is an immigrant, for having failed to assimilate to American culture. Democratic board member Irene Grimes told WRAL that’s a reference to her; she was born to Greek and Austrian parents but has lived in the U.S. most of her life and became a U.S. citizen in 1997.
“It was just a casual joke,” Devore said. “She knew that.”
Grimes said she doesn’t believe Devore should be kicked off the board for that remark. But if the other allegations are proven — particularly if it’s found that she covered up an illegal campaign finance scheme — Devore should be removed from office, Grimes said.
“What she says to me, I can brush off and move on,” Grimes said in an interview Tuesday after WRAL informed her of the complaint. “My livelihood doesn't depend on the Board of Elections. Not behaving properly to the staff is a whole different issue. And then, if what you just told me is true, then we’ve got bigger problems.”