DES MOINES, Iowa — Joe Wiederien was an unlikely candidate to challenge a Republican congressman in one of the nation’s most competitive House districts.

A fervent supporter of former President Donald Trump, Wiederien was registered as a Republican until months earlier. A debilitating stroke had left him unable to drive. He had never run for office. For a time, he couldn’t vote because of a felony conviction.

But he arrived last month at the Iowa Capitol with well over the 1,726 petition signatures needed to qualify for the ballot as a conservative alternative to first-term Republican Rep. Zach Nunn. After filing the paperwork, he flashed a thumbs up across the room at an operative he knew only as “Johnny.”

Several other unorthodox candidates have emerged across the country—all backed by the same shadowy group, the Patriots Run Project.

For the past year, the group has recruited Trump supporters to run as independent candidates in key swing districts where they could siphon votes from Republicans in races that will help determine which party controls the House next year, an Associated Press review has found. In addition to two races in Iowa, the group recruited candidates in Nebraska, Montana, Virginia and Minnesota. All six recruits described themselves as retired, disabled—or both.

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A Deceptive Recruitment Drive on Facebook

As with other recruits, his story begins with Facebook, where the Patriots Run Project operated a series of pro-Trump pages and ran ads that used apocalyptic rhetoric to attack establishment politicians in both parties while urging conservatives to run in November.

“We need American Patriots like YOU to stand for freedom with President Trump and take back control from the globalist elites by running for office,” one such ad states.

Some candidates say they were contacted because of their political posts on Facebook. Two others said the group reached out after they completed an online survey.

Once recruited, they communicated with a handful of operatives through text messages, emails and phone calls. In-person contact was limited. Run Patriots Project advised them about what forms to fill out and how to file required paperwork.

In at least three races, petition signatures to qualify for the ballot were circulated by a Nevada company that works closely with the Democratic consulting firm Sole Strategies, according to documents, including text messages and a draft contract, as well as the firm’s co-founder. In Iowa, a different Democratic firm conducted a poll testing attacks on Nunn, while presenting Wiederien as the true conservative.

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Shadowy Origins and Potential Legal Implications

Despite the ties to Democratic firms, there is a scant paper trail to determine who is overseeing the effort.

Patriots Run Project is not a registered business in the United States and it is not listed as a nonprofit with the IRS. It has not filed paperwork to form a political committee with the Federal Election Commission. The only concrete identifying detail listed on the group’s website is a P.O. Box inside a UPS store in Washington, D.C.

Messages left at email addresses and phone numbers for the group’s operatives went unanswered.

A spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, House Democrats’ campaign arm, said the organization had no knowledge of or involvement in the effort. House Majority PAC, the Democrats’ big spending congressional super PAC, was also not involved, a spokesman said.

Jason Torchinsky, a prominent Republican election lawyer and former Justice Department official, said investigators should take interest. “Given what is described, there could be a wide variety of federal and state criminal violations,” he said.

Rick Hasen, a law professor at University of California, Los Angeles, said the effort “looks shady and unethical,” but added “it is hard to say whether any laws have been broken, which would depend not only on the facts, but also the statutes and precedents under state law.”

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Candidates’ Mixed Reactions to the Scheme

Unlike Wiederien, other candidates said they believed the group had done nothing wrong.

Thomas Bowman, 71 and disabled after a kidney transplant, said he believes he likely was recruited to run against Democratic Rep. Angie Craig of Minnesota to split the conservative vote and help Craig win reelection in the suburban Minneapolis district. But the self-described constitutional conservative expressed gratitude for free help getting signatures.

“They got me on the ballot,” Bowman said. “If I had to do that all by myself, I couldn’t do it.”

In Montana, Dennis Hayes was recruited to run as a Libertarian against GOP Rep. Ryan Zinke. The group found a donor to give him $1,740 to cover his candidate filing fee, Hayes recalled. The donor, whom Hayes would not identify, went to Hayes’ bank with him to deposit the check, which Politico previously reported.

Robert Reid, a widowed retiree running against Republican Rep. Jen Kiggans in southeastern Virginia, said he was contacted by Patriots Run Project after posting his views to Facebook. His sole in-person contact was when a man drove to his home in a Mercedes SUV to drop off his completed petition signature paperwork.

In Nebraska, Army veteran and Trump supporter Gary Bera said he was asked to run as an independent against Rep. Don Bacon, a Republican who is facing a challenge. The district, which includes Omaha, is the state’s most competitive.

In Iowa, the group recruited longtime GOP activist Stephanie Jones to run as an independent against Republican Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, even though Jones does not live in that eastern Iowa district. Jones said the group paid to gather signatures for her but fell short.

Wiederien, however, thinks the group had ulterior motives. The Iowa district he was recruited to run in has been fiercely contested in recent years. Nunn won by roughly 2,000 votes in 2022, while the Democrat who held the seat, Cindy Axne, eked out victories in two prior races that drew third-party candidates.

Wiederien said he found it suspicious “Johnny” appeared to avoid a Capitol surveillance camera and declined to have his picture taken with him. Afterward, the group paid for an Uber to drive Wiederien home.

Soon, he heard from Republicans who convinced him he’d been tricked into thinking the Patriots Run Project had Trump’s support and withdrew his name from the ballot.