It is endorsement season, the most lucrative of all political seasons if you are the sort of political hack who for whatever reasons has stumbled into a position of party influence but are repulsed by the thought of doing any actual work—and already things are sounding very, very familiar.

In a new Axios report, we get word of what appear to be some pay-to-play endorsement schemes involving several big names in American conservatism. It’s hard to act too surprised about either of them because both actors have been so reliably crime-adjacent in the past that merely exchanging cash for an endorsement counts as a bog-standard conservative grift.

Axios reports that Arizona Republican candidate Jim Lamon, who’s currently running for Senate, wrote a $20,000 check to American Conservative Union (ACU) Chairman Matt Schlapp for “communications consulting”; two weeks after that, Schlapp announced his endorsement of Lamon’s campaign. When Lamon wrote another $20,000 check to Schlapp, the ACU announced its own endorsement of Lamon.

So did the “communications” Lamon was paying Schlapp for consist mostly of paying Schlapp to “endorse” him and prod the rest of the ACU to do the same? Probably! Almost certainly, in fact! And it’s not exactly illegal, because Lamon is getting what he paid for. He paid money to have one of the griftier powerbrokers in conservatism publicly boost him, and that’s what he got. Money well spent!

The second bit of Axios’ scoop is, well, pretty much the same story. Ohio Republican Jane Timkin is also running for Senate; Timkin’s campaign ponied up $5,000 for the services of “a firm run by ex-NYPD chief Bernard Kerik.”

“On the same day,” reports Axios, Kerik tweeted about Timkin. He went on to appear at her rallies and promote her on Ohio radio.

Apropos of nothing, the press obsession with identifying Bernard Kerik solely as a former New York Police Department chief is odd as hell. Anyone who has been on this planet for long enough to find expired soup cans in their pantry knows Kerik first and foremost for the bit where he got sentenced to a prison stint for felony tax fraud and other crookedness. His name reappears in Republican circles today in large part due to Donald Trump doling out a pardon in 2020 because Donald Trump invested a nontrivial part of his presidency in boosting the fortunes of tax cheats who lie to federal officials and/or steal cash from fellow Republicans.

Kerik is an ex-felon, yet in Axios and in other political outlets, this descriptor rarely comes up—and that is, to repeat, odd as hell.

We have all seen the stories where a heroic American saves an unconscious woman from a burning car or thwarts an attempted violent assault only to have his picture plastered in the papers with headlines like “Ex-marijuana dealer saves woman from burning car” or “Paroled felon thwarts crime.” In the story, we learn that the hero had a drug possession charge dickity-two years ago or was jailed at age 19 on a drunk driving conviction. Those are such defining moments of their life and character that even after running into a burning building or saving the Duke of South Blokenshire from a pack of rabid dogs, the “was once arrested for pot” part is still the only bit worth a headline mention.

But Kerik, now—he doesn’t get the same treatment. No, he’s just a former NYPD chief. Whatever he might have done to get booted from the job, whatever sketchmonster stuff he might have gotten up to in the days immediately after his moment of 9/11 fame … eh. Not important.

Getting back to the main story, though, it’s the Schlapp part that’s more interesting. If you were to make a wild, uninformed, completely half-assed bet as to which one of these conservative powerbrokers is most likely to someday find himself in prison for campaign finance crimes or other dodgy bookkeeping, this is one of the rare occasions on which the guy who already went to prison for financial crimes looks like the worse bet. Matt Schlapp and his wife have been repeated subjects of press reports on shady Republican campaign dealings, and the ACU is currently under federal investigation after a grand jury indicted Republican Tennessee State Sen. Brian Kelsey on multiple counts of violating federal campaign finance laws.

The circumstances of that probe are rather similar; the Republican then-candidate funneled over $100,000 through a chain of PACs that eventually resulted in about $66,000 being pushed to the ACU, which “immediately thereafter” spent around $80,000 on radio ads boosting Kelsey. Kelsey’s indictment accuses him of violating campaign rules, but the ACU is reportedly being investigated with a focus on Schlapp’s role in the endorsement and whether the money transfers amount to illegal coordination between the campaign and the conservative group.

Before that, Schlapp was in the news for collecting $750,000 in two weeks for a last-ditch lobbying campaign asking for a presidential pardon for another Trump-backing conservative financial criminal. That pardon was never written—but that doesn’t mean Schlapp didn’t walk away with enough new cash to pay off most American mortgages a few times over.

So then: exchanging $20,000 for an announcement by an important-sounding grift—er, conservative voice—that by golly, now that they’ve taken a good look at your check they’ve discovered that you’re the best candidate in the race for whatever-it-is. Is that legal? Who the hell knows at this point! Probably! Why wouldn’t it be!

It’s also legal now to scam the conservative base by telling them you’re going to build a border wall you don’t intend to build. It’s also undeniably proper to sell them “survival buckets” filled with insurmountable amounts of horrific desiccated somethings. And it’s nigh on holy to tell them that God absolutely wants you to die a horrible, miserable, agonizing tube-down-the-throat death rather than do the bare minimum to protect yourself or anybody else. There’s nothing about the ACU, its conferences, its allies, its hangers-on, and its weird creepy overdressed crowd of wannabe powerbrokers that’s not a grift. That’s the whole point of it.

Should we mention to the conservative base that this is all just a pro wrestling performance? That the people chosen as the best “conservatives” for office are chosen in large part based on who wrote the biggest check to whom? Probably, but they wouldn’t listen anyway, so screw ‘em. People have been writing entire magazine articles for years now pointing out the unbelievable amount of outright scamming that the top stars of conservatism aim at their mailing list followers, from gold coins to “nutrition” powders to pillows filled with foam scraps and petty hatred. They never listen.

Still, though, is there anyone in the Trump conservative orbit who isn’t either a felon, under indictment, or under investigation for financial crimes? Is there anyone anywhere in conservatism who’s not once removed from the movement’s biggest crooks?