Donald Trump first courted Tea Party conservatives in 2015, and Taylor Budowich was cautious.

He was executive director of the California-based Tea Party Express and did admire establishment outsiders. But was Trump, then a real estate mogul who had in June announced his bid for the presidency, too fringe? Could he do more than just vent angrily about Washington?

“It’s not enough to capture the frustration,” Budowich said in August 2015, according to CNN. “You’re going to have to go further than that.”

Two elections and seven years later, Budowich, 32, has moved beyond those misgivings.

A native Sacramentan, Budowich has worked the last seven months as head of communications for Trump’s Save America PAC and the former president. He now amplifies the 45th president’s voice and helps to ensure his continued relevance.

Trump has been banned from Facebook and Twitter, and even Fox News has declined to carry his recent rallies.

Budowich is not a frequent guest on cable news, and even most Trump supporters couldn’t pick him out of a crowd. But behind the scenes, he is quietly ensuring that Trump still has a megaphone, even without the benefit of social media.

And when Trump alleges widespread voter fraud in Georgia, or laments that former Vice President Mike Pence didn’t overturn the election in the Senate, Budowich makes sure the statement lands in hundreds of journalists’ inboxes and shares it on Twitter.

He spent most of 2020 on the campaign trail with members of the Trump family, but left after the election and didn’t rejoin the Trump payroll until July 2021.

Now, a congressional committee says it has “credible evidence” of Budowich’s involvement in activities leading up to the events of Jan. 6, 2021, according to court filings, an accusation he vehemently denies.

Even if Budowich had no involvement in the insurrection, some Republicans say he’s still at fault.

“If you’re directly involved in facilitating Donald Trump’s ongoing communication of the ‘Big Lie’ that the election was stolen, then you’re facilitating what is an ongoing insurrection and attempt to subvert the United States Constitution,” said Rob Stutzman, a longtime California Republican strategist.

His path to the Trump campaign shows how a young Sacramentan first witnessed and then rode a wave of anti-establishment fervor all the way to the top echelons of the Republican Party – and, eventually, into a legal battle with members of Congress.

Budowich often draws on his experience as a student in 2011 in Cairo, where he witnessed the riots at the center of a populist uprising and eventually, the removal of a longtime autocrat. Today, Budowich is embroiled in the aftermath of rioters in Washington, D.C. storming the U.S. Capitol trying to overturn a fair and democratic election in favor of his boss.

Per court filings, Budowich has released hundreds of pages of financial records to the committee, and said he had no involvement in the Trump rally held prior to the attack on the Capitol.

He said his finances show little more than a penchant for online shopping, but committee members want more records. Now, he’s going to court over a subpoena asking his bank to release financial documents.

Budowich said subpoenaing such records is a violation of privacy and that the committee doesn’t have legitimate authority to take them. He declined to do an interview for this story, issuing a lengthy statement instead — drawing on his experience as a university student in Egypt, where he witnessed the start of the Arab Spring and the fall of longtime President Hosni Mubarak.

“I have lived under autocratic rule and have seen firsthand the capabilities of an unrestrained government. I will not and cannot be complicit or silent anymore as this reckless Democrat-run Congress tries to turn America into the country I fled,” Budowich wrote.

“Instead, we should all be heard and do what each of us can in order to protect and preserve our Constitutional rights. Let us hope, for the sake of our Nation, that the actions of this Congress are restrained and not ratified by the Judicial Branch. If they are not restrained, it sets a precedent that will surely be further weaponized by future Congresses.”

Tea Party politics

Budowich’s friends and colleagues describe him as coming from a working-class background. His father fixed washers and dryers, and his mom works as a bookkeeper and administrator.

He was born with a diaphragmatic hernia, and his mother recounted his physical struggles in an October 1999 edition of The Sacramento Bee. When he was born, he had two surgeries, one to patch a hole in his diaphragm and move his migrated organs back to their correct positions, and a second that was essentially a heart-and-lung bypass. He had a 5% chance of living.

That same article featured Budowich for donating a Nintendo set he won from a contest at his tae kwon do class to the Ronald McDonald House.

“I feel that giving it to them is something that I could do to make the world a better place and make other people feel happy,” 9-year-old Budowich told The Bee.

His father died when he was 17. According to the obituary, Kirk Budowich was remembered for his “great sense of humor and quick wit,” and enjoyed watching his son compete in martial arts, working on his car, and going dirt-bike riding.

“He had tremendous pride in his children’s accomplishments,” the obituary read. In lieu of flowers, mourners were asked to send donations for his son’s and daughter’s college funds.

Taylor Budowich graduated from El Camino Fundamental High School in Arden Arcade before moving to Cairo to attend the American University. He wrote on Medium about his tenure there, which was halting and short. In 2011, he was forced to evacuate Egypt as rebel forces took hold of Cairo.

Budowich would later write about his experience escaping the chaos of the Arab Spring.

“After decades of oppression, poverty, and life without hope, Egyptians rose up and overthrew a tyrant,” he wrote in a 2015 blog post on Medium. “But for Egyptians, burning the city to the ground was the disastrous consequence of the only option left: a revolution.”

Upon his return to Sacramento, he reached out to longtime California Republican consultant Sal Russo, who had worked for years under big-name California Republicans, including Ronald Reagan, and had recently started a political organization known as the Tea Party Express.

Russo, in an interview, recalled that Budowich, then 21, had interned in the offices of Democratic Rep. Doris Matsui and Sacramento Mayor Heather Fargo, another Democrat.

He was tenacious about joining the Tea Party Express, Russo said, and seemed to have a serious interest in public policy. So when Budowich finally returned to Sacramento, he was hired.

“I saw a great deal of potential,” Russo recalled. “I don’t think I hesitated much.”

Budowich never did finish the degree he started in Cairo. Instead, he spent the following years helping grow the Tea Party Express into a national force. A Florida political publication described him as traveling across the U.S. and organizing hundreds of political rallies in support of such heavyweight Republicans as Sens. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz and Florida Reps. Ted Yoho and Ron DeSantis.

Just a year after joining the group, Budowich, now 22, appeared in news coverage as the spokesman for the Tea Party Express.

Between 2012 and 2016, he handled media planning for the Tea Party’s response to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union addresses. By 25, he was guiding the tenor of the national GOP as executive director of the Tea Party Express.

“I think the Tea Party is going to decide who the next president of the United States is,” he told USA Today in 2015.

After Trump won the White House in 2016, Budowich argued his election was a continuation of the movement launched by the Tea Party years earlier.

“Conservatism is alive and well under Trump’s administration, and the immediate goal of conservatives should be to extend the political pendulum swing,” he wrote in a column for the Dallas Morning News. “That’s why conservatives of every stripe should work with President Trump in advancing conservative policies and not get hung up on nuance and legislative minutia.”

Florida and Trump

In September 2017, Budowich went to work for Florida House Speaker Richard Corcoran, heading up Corcoran’s political action committee, Watchdog.

At the time, political pundits speculated Budowich’s hire meant Corcoran was gearing up for a run at the governor’s office. But Corcoran’s prospects wilted after the entrance of then-U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis into the race.

DeSantis, with Trump’s blessing, won the governor’s race in 2018. Shortly after the election, Budowich joined as a member of his transition team.

James Blair, a Florida Republican consultant, worked with Budowich at Corcoran’s PAC before they both moved over to the DeSantis campaign.

He described Budowich as a “low-key guy” who used a bean bag chair at his desk and had a laid-back California style.

“He’s just kind of a hard-working, gritty kind of hustler,” he said. “He works hard, and everybody likes him.”

In his brief time in the DeSantis administration, Budowich worked as deputy policy director for education. Together with the governor, he worked to expand school choice and drafted the framework for dismantling Common Core, a controversial set of education standards for K-12 students.

He also got to know Florida fundraising powerhouse Susie Wiles, who managed DeSantis’ campaign and would later go on to head the Trump operation after the 2020 election.

Budowich’s connections in Florida and the Tea Party Express introduced him to the Trump campaign, and by December 2019, he was making appearances at the White House.

“Fun night,” he wrote under an Instagram photo showing him posing near the First Lady’s Christmas decor. “Boss’ house for a work Xmas party.”

Over the next year, Budowich traveled the country for Trump’s reelection campaign, posting photos at stops alongside Donald Trump Jr. and his fiance Kimberly Guilfoyle, who is the ex-wife of California Gov. Gavin Newsom. ProPublica, the investigative nonprofit news site, described Budowich as a “close adviser of Donald Trump Jr.”

“You’re the man Taylor,” the junior Trump commented on an Instagram photo. “Thanks for everything.”

In late August 2020, amid racial justice protests, Budowich shared a video of Black Lives Matter protesters swarming Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul as he walked a Washington, D.C., street.

“This video tells you everything you need to know about the violent mobs plaguing America’s streets,” Budowich wrote in the caption. “If these mobs and the people who champion them on social media actually cared about making the country and world a better place, they’d spend less time trying to make a statement and more time trying to make a difference.”

Budowich left the Trump operation in November 2020 to set up his own political shop. He’s currently a senior adviser to Tudor Dixon, a Republican running for governor in Michigan, as well as an adviser to Max Miller, a former Trump aide running for Congress in Ohio’s 13th district.

Budowich is also close and works with Richard Grenell, a California Republican and one-time acting director of national intelligence under Trump.

Like Grenell, Budowich supported the effort to recall Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom. Grenell had hinted at the possibility of entering the recall race in early 2021, but ultimately decided not to run.

Budowich now works with Grenell at “Fix California,” a political organization focused on election integrity and school choice. Budowich is listed as a principal officer for the group’s Education Savings Accounts committee, which raised just over $250,000 in 2021.

“We MUST protect the voice of every California voter… that means holding state officials accountable for failing to maintain California’s voter roles,” Budowich tweeted in July.

Jan. 6 subpoenas

Budowich’s social media accounts don’t mention the events of Jan. 6, 2021. He said he left the Trump campaign payroll on Nov. 15, 2020, and was in Sacramento when rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol.

The chaos resulted in the death of five people, including a Capitol police officer. Four other officers who responded to the riots that day later died by suicide.

Budowich, in a statement to The Bee, said he is against violence.

“I have been consistently against all violence, especially political violence which I have written about, unlike the Democrats in Congress. If they actually cared about addressing political violence and riots, they’d investigate the more than 450 riots that occurred throughout 2020, including those that destroyed many small- and minority-owned businesses in downtown Sacramento. Instead, California Democrats, like our former Senator (Vice President Kamala Harris), spent their time and money bailing out these criminals.”

House Democrats voted to impeach Trump following the riots. But after the Senate declined to convict him, House Democrats in summer 2021 formed a special select committee to investigate the events surrounding the attack.

In November, the committee subpoenaed Budowich to answer questions before members, stating it had “credible evidence” of his involvement in activities leading up to the events of Jan. 6, 2021.

“According to information provided to the Select Committee and press reports, you solicited a 501(c)(4) organization to conduct a social media and radio advertising campaign to encourage people to attend the rally held on the Ellipse,” the subpoena reads.

In court documents, Budowich said he submitted more than 400 pages of records to the committee, including all financial account transactions for the time period from December 19, 2020, to January 31, 2021, in connection with the Ellipse rally.

He also traveled to Washington, D.C., and sat for a four-hour deposition before the committee on Dec. 22.

Upon returning to Sacramento, Budowich said he received a notice from his bank, JP Morgan, that the committee was subpoenaing more records from the institution. Budowich and his attorneys objected to the subpoena, but ultimately didn’t stop JP Morgan from producing the financial records for the committee by the Christmas Eve deadline.

In early January, Budowich filed a lawsuit against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and members of the committee, demanding they promptly return, sequester or destroy any documents they received from JP Morgan, claiming it was a violation of the Right to Financial Privacy Act. He also claimed the panel was structurally flawed and lacked authority.

On Jan. 12, House Counsel Douglas Letter pushed back on Budowich’s assertion that the panel is structurally flawed because it lacks GOP-appointed members.

In court filings, Letter said Budowich had “already acknowledged his role in financing events on January 6 that culminated in the attack on the Capitol.”

“The documents gathered from JPMorgan Chase will also allow the Select Committee to verify the information already provided to it by Budowich and determine whether further inquiry is necessary,” Letter wrote in the filing.

Budowich denied he had any role in the Jan. 6, 2021, rally or attacks.

“This illegitimate committee is now playing word games in order to misrepresent the truth. I did not finance any part of the events that took place on January 6th, and after producing hundreds of documents and spending four hours testifying truthfully under oath in front of this Show Trial, they know exactly that,” Budowich said in his statement to The Bee. “I am suing this illegitimate committee because I will not stand by as it lies about me and erodes not only my rights, but the rights of others, which are enshrined in the Constitution. But my lawsuit is not just about me and my rights. I rest easily knowing that besides a tendency to impulse buy on Instagram, there is little of interest to be found in my banking records. However, are my banking records from November 2021 in any way relevant to the events of January 6, 2021?”

The committee has since issued subpoenas for more Trump-related individuals, including Andy Surabian, a fellow adviser to Trump Jr., who said he was off the campaign payroll and had no involvement in the rally.

“On the eve of what looks like a GOP landslide in the midterm elections, every American should consider: does anyone possess Constitutional Rights in the face of a partisan committee?” Budowich said. “As a legal matter, it is not me who should be worried about the outcome of this challenge, it is the likes of Hunter Biden, the Zuckerbergs, and others who have engaged in questionable but unscrutinized financial practices.”

In 2011 the world witnessed Egyptians take to the streets in defense of democracy and fair and free elections. Ten years later, the world watched as thousands attacked the U.S. center of democracy, demanding lawmakers overturn a fair and free election.

Budowich later wrote of watching Cairo burn as he evacuated the country on a flight, comparing it to the Baltimore riots that followed the death of Freddie Gray in 2015. In that case, he was critical of violence as a means of political protest.

Gray, a 25-year-old Black man, died after he was injured during an arrest and transportation in a police van. His death, which the medical examiner classified as a homicide, led to protests that, at times, turned violent, and included looting and burning of businesses.

“Whether you ask ‘how do we restore opportunity and prosperity to Baltimore,’ or ‘How do we ensure equality and justice for every citizen of America?,” the answer is not, ‘we need to burn it to the ground’,” Budowich wrote days after Gray’s funeral.

“And shame on those who have suggested or practiced such.”

This story was originally published February 16, 2022 at 5:00 AM.