Story highlights Three men were indicted Wednesday for allegedly trying to buy endorsements for Ron Paul's 2012 campaign

Two of the men are employed by the super PAC supporting Rand Paul's 2016 campaign

Washington (CNN) Senior officials for the super PAC supporting Rand Paul's presidential bid were indicted on federal charges of conspiracy and falsifying campaign records, the Justice Department said Wednesday.

Jesse Benton and John Tate, two top strategists to Paul's father's presidential campaigns, allegedly steered $73,000 to an Iowa state senator to convince him to endorse Ron Paul in the lead-up to the 2012 Iowa caucuses, prosecutors say. That senator, Kent Sorenson, had previously backed Michele Bachmann, a Paul opponent.

Benton, who served as Mitch McConnell's campaign manager early in 2014, and Tate now head America's Liberty PAC, a super PAC that raised $3.1 million to push Paul on television and online.

The long-simmering charges -- which had been investigated by the Federal Elections Commission -- now threaten to cast clouds over the campaign of his son on the eve of the first Republican presidential debate. Rand Paul has publicly backed Benton, who is married to his niece and has long been a top strategist to the Paul family, predicting he would "help us" in 2016.

"I think Jesse [Benton] is honest, he's good at politics and I don't think he's done anything wrong," Paul told a Kentucky ABC affiliate last December.

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