Democrats distance themselves from megadonor Gaurav Srivastava who allegedly posed as a CIA operative

The now defunct Biden campaign and several other Democratic politicians and committees have frozen or returned donations from an Indian national who allegedly duped a foreign businessman into thinking he was connected to the CIA – scamming him out of millions of dollars. 

Gaurav Srivastava donated more than $1 million to Democratic causes, including the 81-year-old president’s former campaign, after allegedly conning a prominent Dutch trader into forming a business partnership that would ostensibly allow him to trade sanctioned-Russian oil, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday. 

Srivastava allegedly pressured Paramount Energy & Commodities SA founder Niels Troost to sell him half his company, loan him $51 million through an Indonesian intermediary and move his Switzerland-based firm to the US as part of the scheme – which, according to Troost, Srivastava claimed was a plan backed by his “boss” at the CIA. 

“He never showed what the money was being spent on,” Troost told the Wall Street Journal. 

It was apparently being spent on Democrats. 

Ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, Srivastava gave the Senate Majority PAC, which supports Democratic candidates, $500,000, Federal Election Commission records show.

The green-card-holding college dropout, according to the Journal, also gave more than $200,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) that year, as well as five-figure contributions to campaign committees for  Reps. Pat Ryan (D-NY) and Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.). 

In 2023, Srivastava donated nearly $290,000 to the DCCC; gave the maximum allowable individual contribution to the Biden campaign; and he bestowed an additional $50,000 to the Biden Victory Fund. 

Project Brazen, the media group that first reported on Srivastava’s fake ties with the CIA, also unearthed a photo of the alleged scammer meeting with President Biden.  

Disgraced ex-Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) and Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) also received money from Srivastava. 

As did the Atlantic Council, a DC-based think tank for which Srivastava funded a $1 million food-security conference held in Bali, for which Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) appeared in a video discussing the food crisis.

Politico reported earlier this year that the Biden campaign and the DCCC were freezing Srivastava’s donations – which also included fictitious personal details – after reports of his alleged con emerged.

The Journal also noted that those entities, as well as the Senate Majority PAC, have “frozen or returned” Srivastava’s donations. 

Srivastava’s alleged scam is being probed by the FBI, according to the Wall Street Journal. 

Lawyers for Srivastava denied the allegations reported by the outlet.