The Justice Department is investigating Texas Majority PAC after a fired operative was caught on video calling $25 Zoom payouts a roundabout way of paying people for votes.
A source familiar with the matter confirmed Wednesday that federal investigators have opened a probe into the Democratic group, following undercover footage that spread online earlier this month. Fox News first reported the inquiry, and the New York Post later detailed the same confirmation.
At the center is Sky MacAdams, then an organizing manager for Texas Majority PAC. In hidden-camera video released by Townhall, MacAdams described a payment scheme tied to a one-hour online class and framed it as a workaround for rules that bar direct cash for ballots.
Federal law prohibits payments in exchange for voting or not voting for certain candidates. Violators can face up to two years in prison. That legal line is exactly what Republicans say the PAC flirted with, and what the PAC now insists it never crossed.
MacAdams did not mince words on the recording. He told the undercover journalist the group was handing out money for a Zoom session meant to push Democratic turnout and help U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico.
He said:
"We are paying people $25 to attend a one-hour Zoom class to learn why voting is important and why the Republicans are causing all of these bad things."
Then he went further:
"So it’s like a roundabout way of paying people for their votes, essentially."
MacAdams acknowledged the legal limit even as he described skirting it. “You can’t pay someone to vote for someone,” he said. “You can’t be like, ‘Here’s $25, go vote for me.’ You can say, ‘Attend a one-hour class and you can receive $25.’”
He even rated the optics from the other side of the aisle: “If I was a Republican, I would be pissed. I would be like, that’s shady as f***.”
Texas Majority PAC fired him after the remarks surfaced.
Spokesman Eddie Vale told Fox News the fired manager’s account was wrong and that the program is ordinary campaign work. Vale said the PAC hires Texans for events that teach them to organize friends and family, encourage turnout, and send voting reminders, and that those workers are paid for that labor “just like any other job.”
Vale added:
"Texas Majority PAC runs a relational organizing program, which for years has been a standard part of every campaign’s playbook."
He drew a hard line between the group’s practice and MacAdams’ description:
"Participants in the program are being paid for grassroots organizing work. The way it was described by one rogue employee is factually incorrect, not how we operate, and they were immediately fired."
Neither the PAC nor the Justice Department immediately answered the Post’s request for comment.
A state campaign finance report shows Texas Majority PAC paid $500,000 in May to political consulting firm Relentless for its Relational Organizing Program. That documented partnership is what Rep. Pat Fallon, R-Texas, seized on when he pressed Attorney General Todd Blanche last week to open an inquiry.
In his letter, Fallon wrote that the PAC, “through its documented partnership with Relentless, has openly admitted to defying the law and purchasing votes in the US Senate race.” He added: “If this is true, this criminal behavior has no place in America and our elections.” And he framed the duty plainly: “The government has a responsibility to investigate and hold accountable those that seek to circumvent free and fair elections through bribery of voters.”
The Justice Department’s move follows that letter and the Townhall video. No charges, subpoenas, or case numbers have been publicly detailed in the reporting so far. Absolute dates for the video release, the Fallon letter, and Wednesday’s confirmation were not pinned down beyond the relative timeline.
Paying someone to cast a ballot is illegal. Paying someone to sit through a training, then organize neighbors, is how the PAC wants this framed. MacAdams’ own words collapsed that distinction on camera: the $25 was presented as the path around the ban, not a clean wage for field work.
Democrats have spent years warning about threats to election integrity. Here the allegation runs the other direction, an operative on their own side describing money tied to voting, a six-figure consulting outlay for the same program, a quick firing once the tape dropped, and now a federal probe. Voters do not need a seminar to see why that sequence demands answers.
Elections stay legitimate only when cash stays out of the ballot booth, no Zoom loophole required.
