John Rutherford Corruption & Ethics Florida

Two 'Pro-Police' PACs Tied to a Convicted Telemarketing Fraudster Booked $727,000 Supporting John Rutherford. The Ex-Sheriff Has Never Said a Word About It.

Police and Trooper Support PAC and Support America's Police PAC raised millions from retirees, spent most of it on their own phone banks, and recorded the biggest outside spending in Rutherford's FEC file. The same days, the same dollars were booked supporting a Democrat.

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Two 'Pro-Police' PACs Tied to a Convicted Telemarketing Fraudster Booked $727,000 Supporting John Rutherford. The Ex-Sheriff Has Never Said a Word About It.

John Rutherford spent 41 years at the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office, the last 12 as the elected sheriff of Duval County. Police work is his whole identity as a politician. He sits on the House Appropriations subcommittee that writes the Homeland Security budget.

So it is worth knowing which outside groups have spent the most money in his name.

Pull up the Federal Election Commission's records of independent expenditures supporting Rutherford, and two committees sit on top of the list:

That's $726,815 recorded as supporting one congressman, from two committees with police-sounding names.

Here's what those committees actually are.

They spend the money on themselves

Both are registered with the FEC as independent expenditure-only committees — super PACs. Their own filings show where the money goes.

In the 2022 cycle, Police and Trooper Support PAC took in $3.45 million and spent $2.70 million on operating expenses — versus $723,555 on actual independent expenditures. Support America's Police PAC took in $2.55 million, spent $1.95 million on operating, and $586,631 on expenditures.

By 2024 it got worse. Police and Trooper Support raised $1.76 million and reported $25,995 in independent expenditures for the whole cycle. Nearly everything else — $1.71 million — went to operating costs.

And what are the operating costs? Their own disbursement filings name the vendors and the service: "LEADS / PHONE LISTS" and "PHONEBANK IT/TECH SUPPORT." Phone banks. The money raised on the phone goes to pay for more phone calls.

The people on the other end of those calls are not corporate donors. The largest individual contributions in these committees' files are $600, $750, $1,000, $1,250 — and the occupation field on row after row reads RETIRED.

The Zeitlin connection

In December 2024, Las Vegas telemarketer Richard Zeitlin was sentenced to 121 months in federal prison for running exactly this kind of scheme. From the Justice Department's description:

"ZEITLIN directed his employees to alter the call scripts used when calling potential donors on behalf of certain PACs in order to mislead potential donors into believing that they would be giving to a direct-services organization (i.e., a charity), rather than to a political advocacy organization (i.e., a PAC)."

His businesses, DOJ said, "typically received approximately 90% of the funds donated." Sometimes 100%, "with none of the money going to the causes described in telemarketing calls to donors." He was ordered to forfeit and repay $8,906,760.

Both of the committees at the top of Rutherford's independent-expenditure list are connected to that world. The Lever reported in July 2024:

"Support America's Police, which has paid Zeitlin's companies almost $970,000 this election cycle, is run by Oliver Cappleman, who has known Zeitlin for decades."

And:

"Matt Cobos, who was named in the 2021 class-action lawsuit as the treasurer for the now-defunct Zeitlin-linked political action committee Disabled Veterans Coalition, currently runs two committees, Police and Trooper Support and Patriots for Police, which have together raised almost $1.6 million this election cycle and paid $1.3 million to Zeitlin's businesses."

The Lever found that six Zeitlin-linked pro-police committees raising real money that cycle "spent about 70 to 95 percent of their funds on fundraising alone," and that "less than 5 percent of their haul went towards political campaigns or ads for candidates."

The detail that gives the game away

Read the individual expenditure lines that name Rutherford and you find something strange.

On August 26, 2021, Police and Trooper Support PAC booked $23,524.06 as an independent expenditure supporting John Rutherford, described as "LEADS / PHONE LISTS(ESTIMATE)." The same day, it booked $23,524.06 — the identical figure — as an expenditure supporting Abigail Spanberger, a Virginia Democrat.

It did it again on August 19 ($21,281.40 each), on September 2 ($21,214.99 and $21,214.98), and on September 9 ($20,259.63 each). Support America's Police PAC ran the same pattern, splitting mailer costs three ways across Rutherford, Spanberger and Nebraska Republican Don Bacon.

That is not a campaign supporting a candidate. That's the cost of buying phone lists, divided up and filed under a few members' names — a Republican and a Democrat getting the exact same dollar figure on the exact same day.

Rutherford's name was the paperwork.

Why this lands on him

Rutherford did not send these calls. Independent expenditures are, by law, made without a candidate's coordination, and there is no evidence he had any hand in them. That's the honest version and we're not going past it.

But two things are still his.

First, this is what his money looks like. Rutherford ranks #429 out of 440 House members in grassroots funding — near the very bottom. Just 1% of his campaign money comes from small donors; 94% comes from PACs, super PACs and large donors. Among the ones giving directly are the defense contractors whose budgets his own Appropriations subcommittees write: BAE Systems ($39,000), General Dynamics ($38,000), Boeing ($38,000), RTX ($36,000), Northrop Grumman ($34,000), Lockheed Martin ($33,000).

Second, this is supposed to be his subject. A 41-year law enforcement officer, a former elected sheriff, a member of Congress who writes the Homeland Security budget, whose state is full of the retirees these calls target — and the single largest bloc of outside spending recorded in his name came from committees that police departments and consumer regulators have been warning people about for years. We could find no statement from Rutherford about either committee, at any point.

He has time to put out a press release the day a war starts. He has not had time for this.

And there is no venue to ask him about it, because he doesn't hold town halls. In March 2025 he told Jacksonville Today that constituents who want one will "scream and holler, and act like fools." He hasn't held one since.

Sources

John Rutherford Report Card

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