On October 17, 2011, the New York Times reported:
In the first two weeks of Rick Perry’s presidential campaign, his aides turned to Brian D. Pardo, a Texas businessman under investigation by federal securities regulators, to use his Cessna Citation X business jet to fly to campaign events.
The Perry campaign paid Mr. Pardo about $21,000 for two days of flights that, according to logs from Flightwise.com, totaled about nine hours in the air, a number Mr. Pardo said sounded accurate.
[…]
But had the campaign rented the same plane from a charter company, it could have cost up to three times as much, other interviews suggest. Because of changes in federal campaign regulations, that raises the question of whether Mr. Perry, the Texas governor, effectively received an unreported campaign contribution by underpaying Mr. Pardo.
Read the whole article here
Published: Oct 18, 2011