Tulsi Gabbard’s campaign paid a firm to “mask connections” to an alleged pyramid scheme linked to a secretive sect she grew up in, according to a report.
The Senate Intelligence Committee is set to grill President Donald Trump’s pick to serve as director of national intelligence on Thursday over her questionable connections and background. Since she was named as nominee to the post, she has faced questions and pushback given her previous statements and her history with foreign nations.
Lawmakers have been scrutinizing Gabbard’s ties to the Science of Identity Foundation and the Hong Kong-based marketing firm QI Group, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Gabbard was raised in the secretive sect whose members pledge absolute loyalty to its reclusive guru, Chris Butler. The sect has long been tied to QI — accused of running a pyramid scheme in several countries.
Gabbard attended a Science of Identity boarding school in the Philippines and spent her formative years and schooling sheltered from outside influences, her late aunt told The Independent in 2022.
According to the Journal, Gabbard’s campaign paid the PR firm Potomac Square Group, based in Washington D.C., to “mask the connections” between the sect, the marketing firm, and the politician. But the clean-up was reportedly steered by a former follower of the sect — Sunil Khemaney — who is also a long-time political fundraiser to Gabbard and sits on the board of a QI subsidiary.
Potomac managing director Christopher Cooper told The Independent that the firm worked with Gabbard’s campaign for a few months in 2017 “to help it manage online attacks related to her religion.”
“We provided support and advice in two specific categories: to demystify the issue by helping Rep. Gabbard publicly discuss the details of her spiritual life and relationship with SIF, and to correct errors of fact,” Cooper said in a statement. “PSG wasn’t directed to mount a ‘pressure campaign’ to silence or target reporters and we didn’t conduct one [and] PSG was not hired to conceal Rep. Gabbard’s relationship with SIF and we did not do so.”
Cooper added that the firm worked “briefly” with the sect and there was “no involvement from the Gabbard campaign.”
Hong Kong-based QI and the sect have been linked for years. The company was founded in 1998 by Vijay Eswaran and Joseph Bismark, a Filipino businessman who is also reportedly a Science of Identity follower. It began as an e-commerce operation selling commemorative gold and silver coins in developing countries.
One of QI’s enterprises is an alleged pyramid selling system where customers become distributors, selling gadgets, jewelry, beauty products and more for a share of the profits. Customers, according to the Journal, are encouraged to recruit others to join the scheme and if successful, earn a cut from their sales.
Sri Lanka, Nepal and Rwanda banned QI’s subsidiaries in 2000 after they were declared pyramid schemes, the outlet reports. The firm’s direct-selling business, Qnet, has been accused of being “a Ponzi scheme in the guise of direct selling business” by prosecutors in India who carried out several raids in 2023.
Indian authorities also filed criminal charges against 25 people connected to Qnet’s network, the Journal reports, including a senior Science of Identity figure. According to the newspaper, there were more than 32,000 alleged victims involved and Qnet’s local network settled with approximately half of them. The case was closed in 2020.
In further evidence of ties between Science of Identity and QI, in 2007 the company purchased Healthy’s, the parent company of the Down to Earth grocery store chain which was founded and operated by sect followers, according to the Journal.
The chain has six locations in Hawaii.
Gabbard’s longtime fundraiser Khemaney, who she has described as “an uncle,” sits on Healthy’s board, along with QI’s founders Bismark and Eswaran who joined in 2015 and 2016, corporate records seen by the Journal reportedly show.
While Gabbard considered a 2020 run for the presidency and her political profile grew, her campaign, Tulsi For Hawaii, hired Potomac Square Group.
Potomac worked “under Khemaney’s direction” to shroud the links between the then-Democrat and Butler, and QI and the sect itself, according to documents reviewed by the Journal citing a person familiar with the matter. Potomac was paid $19,400 by the campaign in October 2017, according to the Journal, citing FEC records.
The Independent has contacted QI and the Science of Identity Foundation for further comment.
A QI spokesperson told the Journal that the seat Khemaney held on Healthy’s board was “solely as an inactive, non-executive director.”
“The QI Group has no knowledge of, and has had no involvement in the Congressional Campaign of Ms. Gabbard,” the spokesperson added.
A Science of Identity spokesperson accused the newspaper of “falsehoods, half-truths, and misrepresentations.”
A Trump administration spokesperson responded to the Journal by posting screenshots of the request for comment on X. “The media has nothing new so they keep writing the same Hinduphobic smears and other lies about LTC Tulsi Gabbard,” the spokesperson said.
In 2022, Gabbard’s late aunt Dr Caroline Sinavaiana Gabbard told The Independent that her niece’s bid for the presidency in 2020 was the culmination of four decades of effort from the sect’s founder, Butler, to seek political influence.
