Michael Caputo
Michael Raymon Caputo is a Republican political strategist, and media consultant. In April 2020, Caputo was appointed as assistant secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services for public affairs.
He worked for the Reagan Administration with Oliver North, and later as director of media services on the campaign for President George H.W. Bush in the 1992 United States presidential election.
Caputo moved to Russia in 1994, after the fall of the Soviet Union, and was an adviser to Boris Yeltsin. He worked for Gazprom Media in 2000 where he worked on improving the image of Vladimir Putin in the U.S. He moved back to the U.S. and founded a public relations company, and then moved to Ukraine to work on a candidate's campaign for parliament.
Caputo worked as the campaign manager for Carl Paladino in his 2010 bid for Governor of New York. Caputo worked for the Donald Trump campaign from November 2015 to June 2016, and was in charge of communications for New York. He left the campaign after publicly supporting the removal of campaign manager Corey Lewandowski.
Caputo was investigated by the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence as part of their investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election.
Early life and education
Caputo was born in 1962; his father was Raymond Caputo and his grandparents were immigrants from southern Italy. Born in Buffalo, New York, Caputo spent bulk of his early years in the Buffalo region known as Southtowns. Caputo early public relations work was in Hawaii while with the United States Army, which he joined directly after finishing high school. In 1983, after leaving the Army, he enrolled at the University at Buffalo.Caputo was employed by Republican politicians such as Congressman Jack Kemp. He gained experience in crisis management and working for the insurance company operated by his father. Caputo was mentored by Roger J. Stone Jr. in the ways of political advisement, and became his personal driver. He learned from Stone that political campaigns could be turned into wins for candidates if the public found them entertaining. Caputo was influenced by Jerry Garcia and Ronald Reagan, and has written about his views supporting safeguarding the environment.
Career
Reagan Administration and Bush campaign
During the Reagan Administration, Caputo helped support the president's agenda in Central America. He worked with Oliver North to foment propaganda as part of Reagan's public relations efforts in South America and in Central America. After his work for the Reagan Administration he served as assistant director of the House of Representatives Gallery of the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association. He next worked for President George H.W. Bush as director of media services in Bush's campaign in the 1992 United States presidential election.Russian advisor and media consultant
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Caputo established residence in Russia in 1994. He served as an adviser to Boris Yeltsin in 1995. In his capacity as advisor to Yeltsin, he was employed with the United States Agency for International Development. He served as president of The Florence Group from 1994 to 1999, and stated he "played a pivotal role in electing Boris Yeltsin to his second term as President of the Russian Federation."Caputo was employed by Moscow-headquartered subsidiary of Gazprom, Gazprom-Media. He was contracted by Gazprom in 2000 to work for Russian leader Vladimir Putin. His task was to increase Putin's public relations standing, specifically his support level in the U.S. He moved back from Russia to the U.S. in the year 2000.
After returning to the U.S., Caputo was called by his former mentor Roger Stone, who convinced him to move to Miami Beach, Florida, and then Caputo founded his media advising company Michael Caputo Public Relations. Caputo moved back to Europe in 2007 while advising a politician's campaign for parliament in 2007 Ukrainian parliamentary election.
Paladino campaign
Caputo worked as the campaign manager for real estate businessman Carl Paladino in the 2010 election of the governor of New York state. During the campaign, Caputo was profiled by The New York Times, which described Caputo's "impish spirit and no-holds-barred campaign style" as a key factor helping Paladino, then a little-known figure, gain attention in seeking the Republican nomination for governor.Paladino was supported at the time by the Tea Party movement, and in an interview with The New York Times, Caputo embraced the outsider nature of Paladino's bid: "This is a campaign of junkyard dogs, not pedigreed poodles. Carl knows the background of everyone who works for him. He knows that each of us comes to the campaign with warts. And he has his own warts. We don't hide anything."
Paladino explained his hiring choice of Caputo as campaign manager to The New York Times: "I'm facing some major demons here, and I needed someone who could go right back on top of them in a matter of minutes. You've got to let them know they are going to get punished."
Work for Donald Trump
hired Caputo in 2014 to launch an astroturfing campaign in support of his stalking-horse bid for the Buffalo Bills. Caputo established a shell organization named "12th Man Thunder" and hired a fake leader, amputee Chuck Sonntag, whom Trump and Caputo figured would earn sympathy. When Trump placed his bid and was no longer allowed to have ties to the organization, Caputo went fully rogue and launched a naked smear campaign against one of the other bidders, Jon Bon Jovi and Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment. The group's publicity stunts capitalized on already-simmering anti-Toronto sentiment, but it was ultimately a competitor to both bids, Buffalo Sabres owner and natural gas tycoon Terrence Pegula and his wife Kim Pegula, that bought the Bills franchise, greatly outbidding both Trump and Bon Jovi. Bills Fan Thunder remained in operation as a charity as of 2017.In 2016, offices of Michael Caputo Public Relations were located in East Aurora, New York. Caputo also had staff located in Miami Beach, Florida, and Moscow, Russia. During the 2016 New York Republican primary, Caputo became a political adviser to Trump in order to help him win the primary in that state. At the time of his hiring he was employed as a commentator on a political talk program on WBEN AM radio. In order to support Trump in New York, he joined forces with his former employer from the 2010 gubernatorial race, Carl Paladino. While working on the Trump campaign, Caputo was placed in charge of communications for the candidate in New York.
Caputo was a senior adviser to Trump's political efforts from November 2015 to June 2016. On June 20, 2016, he was fired from the Trump campaign shortly after Corey Lewandowski was replaced as campaign manager by Paul Manafort. He had tweeted in support of Lewandowski leaving; in his resignation letter to Manafort said he regretted the statement on Twitter.
Activities from 2016–2020
After Trump's election, Caputo maintained contacts with associates in the Trump Administration. After news reports of Donald Trump's disclosure of classified information to Russia in May 2017, Caputo told the Associated Press that leaks from within the Trump Administration were caused by "a coordinated, silent coup." Caputo told USA Today that he attributed the leaks to disaffected members of the Stop Trump movement, whom he called "anti-Trump zealots."In 2019 and 2020, Caputo posted numerous sexually crude and sexist tweets directed at women.
In early 2020, Caputo multiple derogatory and crude tweets about Chinese people; he deleted almost all of his past tweets before assuming a position at HHS.
Trump administration
In April 2020, Caputo was appointed as assistant secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services for public affairs.Investigation
Due to his time working on the Trump campaign and the fact that he previously worked for politicians in Russia, Caputo was contacted by the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on May 9, 2017, as part of their investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election. The House Intelligence Committee requested Caputo come in and be interviewed voluntarily and submit to the Committee relevant documents associated with their investigation.During a March 20, 2017 hearing, Representative Jackie Speier questioned FBI Director James Comey about Caputo, and cited employment with Gazprom and history in Ukraine. Caputo worked with the House Intelligence Committee to respond to their queries. Posting to social media, Caputo denied ties to Russia while on the Trump campaign. Caputo told the House Intelligence Committee: "The only time the President and I talked about Russia was in 2013, when he simply asked me in passing what it was like to live there in the context of a dinner conversation."
In May 2016, Caputo and Roger Stone had met with Henry Greenberg, a Russian national who claimed to have damaging information about Hillary Clinton. Caputo later denied contact with Russian officials or having discussed Russia with Trump or with other campaign aides. Caputo said in June 2017 that it was not until prosecutors informed him that Greenberg was Russian that he learned the man he had spoken with in 2016 was not a US citizen.
Caputo hired attorney Dennis Vacco to represent him during the investigation, and subsequently stated that he had liquidated his children's college funds to pay Vacco.
Personal life
While working in Russia in the 1990s, Caputo met and married a Russian student studying astrophysics; their marriage ended in a divorce. Caputo became a Catholic in 2000, later saying this religious change helped him find peace. While advising in Kiev, Ukraine, in 2007, Caputo met Maryna Ponomarenko, who became his second wife.As of 2016, Caputo resided in East Aurora, New York with his wife and their three children.