By 2010, the year of the midterms, he earned almost $640,000, the filing said. He and his wife bought an investment property a couple miles from their Phoenix home, according to the filing and property records.

At the end of 2010, Noble established a second firm, DC London, to do "consulting and governmental affairs," according to incorporation documents. Its name was largely aspirational; on Twitter, Noble noted that he'd never been to London. DC London opened an office in downtown Washington and went on to hire almost 30 staff members in a little more than two years.

Noble personally earned almost $2.3 million in 2011, court records show, impressive for a non-election year. Much of his income seems to have derived from having the Center to Protect Patient Rights hire his firms. The Center paid more than $6.3 million to DC London and Noble Associates for consulting, management and reimbursement for "consulting expenses paid to consultants without markup." Free Enterprise America, another nonprofit run by Noble, paid DC London almost $400,000 for consulting as well. (Noble did not disclose that he partly owned DC London on that tax return, as required by the IRS.)

Noble Associates bought a condo in Washington, D.C., in 2011 for $665,000, property records show. The Nobles also bought a half-acre of land in Hurricane, Utah, then built a 9,000-square-foot house on it, a gabled concoction with eight bedrooms, eight bathrooms and five fireplaces.

Then came 2012, a record-setter for spending by dark money groups and Noble's consulting businesses.

The Center paid a whopping $20.7 million to DC London for "consulting & other services," according to its tax return. Of that, $15.8 million was for costs "reimbursed to DC London for the Center's program expenses without markup." What costs DC London could have incurred remain a mystery: The Center's work mostly consisted of directing grants to other nonprofits, and it doesn't appear to have offered any programs. (The Center also spent $50,000 on what its tax return described as "occupancy," a term usually used to mean rent, even though the Center's lawyer told ProPublica in an email that the group had no office.)

In addition, the Center paid consulting and management fees of $270,000 to Noble Associates and $2.8 million for "survey and phone programs" to Angler, a company incorporated in October 2011 and run out of DC London's office. Noble was the president.

The Center disclosed its transactions with Noble's firms on its tax returns, as required.

After the disappointing 2012 election results, many questioned how effectively the Koch network and other conservative organizations had deployed their resources. Filings with the FEC showed that conservative dark money groups had outspent liberal ones by at least $276 million to $29 million, to little apparent effect.

One Koch donor, who wanted to remain anonymous because he feared possible retribution from the IRS, said he had attended one Koch retreat and had given to the Koch network for several years. He said he remained impressed by the organization's accomplishments in states such as Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin. He also said he didn't think the Koch brothers would tolerate a consultant steering such a large amount of money to himself.

"My guess is he'd be cut off pretty damn quickly," the donor told ProPublica.

The payments to Noble's firms were unusual, campaign finance experts said.

An analysis of tax returns filed by 100 other politically active nonprofits, including all the groups funded by the Koch network that have made their 2012 tax returns available, showed just 19 hired consulting firms owned by employees or board members.

For those 19 groups, the median payment to an employee-affiliated firm for consulting or other services was $108,000, a tiny fraction of the millions paid to Noble's firms. For instance, the Republican Jewish Coalition paid $60,000 for consulting to the firm of then-board member and former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer.

Most social-welfare nonprofits avoid insider transactions and pay their leaders fixed salaries instead. GOP strategist Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS, one of the largest politically active dark money groups, raised almost $180 million in 2012 and paid its top executive a salary of $538,000.

Owens, the former IRS official, said social welfare nonprofits are not allowed to pay "excessive" benefits to people who control the organization or to companies they run.

"That's probably an excessive private benefit right there," Owens said, after ProPublica told him how much Noble's firms earned in 2012. "That's a huge amount of contracts for someone in charge to hand out to contractors he controls."

Groups given grants by the Center to Protect Patient Rights also started hiring Noble's companies. The Center gave grants to 25 nonprofits that reported political spending to the FEC or state authorities during the 2012 election cycle. Of those groups, 10 hired Angler, the company that operated from DC London's office. The American Future Fund, for instance, paid Angler $5.3 million, mainly for social media advertisements. It's possible that much of this money went to companies such as Facebook and Twitter, with Angler keeping a smaller commission.

American Commitment -- which Noble was a board member of until June 2012 -- paid Angler $168,000 in 2012 for "media production." Kerpen, who Noble hired at American Commitment, said he picked the group's vendors based on merit, not because of Noble. "We've actually never received a contribution from any donor that asked for a particular vendor to be used," Kerpen said.

Two groups that received grants from the Center appear to have paid Angler hundreds of thousands of dollars just to use a phone system to make calls to voters. The calls themselves were made by temps hired separately through an agency.

It's not clear how much Noble personally earned in 2012, but his wife, Julie, estimated it was at least $3 million, according to court filings.

She said Noble received other perks as well. Noble Associates paid for his cell phone and his Washington, D.C., mortgage. He charged most meals in Washington to Noble Associates.

In the 2013 sworn deposition, Noble said the election year was unprecedented.

"The way that 2012 went, we're never going to see anything like that again," he said.













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oble's prime position in the Koch network took a hit at the end of the 2012 campaign, when he and the Center circumvented California election laws in an attempt to influence two state ballot measures.

Noble first met California political strategist Tony Russo in Las Vegas in October 2011, according to a recorded interview Russo later gave to California investigators. Russo wanted Koch money for an effort to fight unions. Noble agreed to help, paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to run focus groups, develop ads and reach out to voters, Russo said.

Russo hoped the Koch network would do even more. Russo later said he and Noble spoke more than 18 times in the run-up to the election, meeting once in Washington.

Meanwhile, Russo and Jeff Miller, another California consultant, raised $29 million from about 150 confidential donors to fight a proposition to raise taxes and to support another one limiting unions' political power. They transferred the money to a Virginia-based trade association that had agreed to spend it on ads related to the initiatives. But as Election Day drew closer, the association, Americans for Job Security, balked at buying ads, worried that under California law, it would be required to disclose who had donated the funds for them.

Russo said he approached Noble and offered to transfer money from the Virginia group to the Center. In return, he asked Noble to tap separate resources to help in California. Noble thought he had groups that could help, Russo recalled.

"He said, you know, get me your money," Russo said in his interview.

Americans for Job Security transferred about $4 million to the Center on Sept. 10. On Sept. 13, American Future Fund gave about $4 million to a California affiliate, the California Future Fund for Free Markets, which was spending money on the anti-union proposition.

Americans for Job Security sent another $14 million to the Center on Oct. 11. The Center then gave most of that money to Americans for Responsible Leadership, run by Kirk Adams, a friend and former client of Noble's. On Oct. 15, Americans for Responsible Leadership sent $11 million to the Small Business Action Committee, a PAC spending on the initiatives.

Within days, a good governance group demanded a state inquiry into the contribution.

Still, Americans for Job Security gave another $6.5 million to the Center on Oct. 22. But no additional money from Koch-funded groups flowed back into the California initiatives fight -- at Noble's direction, Russo said.

California had launched an investigation.

"The explanation was, your regulatory guys are going crazy and I just don't think we can do it," Russo said.

California's Fair Political Practices Commission sued Americans for Responsible Leadership on Oct. 25, 2012, seeking to force the group to reveal its donors. Six days later, a Sacramento Superior Court judge ordered that the group turn over the records to the state for an audit, saying that voters could suffer "irreparable harm" if they didn't know who was behind the group before the election. Americans for Responsible Leadership appealed. The case made its way to the California Supreme Court, which on Nov. 4 unanimously ordered Americans for Responsible Leadership to turn over its records.

The next day, just before the election, Noble and Adams sent letters to the Small Business Action Committee as part of a settlement with regulators, admitting they had funneled money from Americans for Job Security to the Small Business Action Committee.

The state then accused the groups of money laundering based on their efforts to disguise the original source of the $11 million transferred to the Small Business Action Committee in October.

In his interview with investigators, Russo said he was "shocked" by the admission from Noble, because he believed that the money came from a pool of money unrelated to the funds Americans for Job Security passed to the Center.

Miller said he felt "just completely screwed" by Noble's admission.

"I'm not sure how their network works, to be perfectly frank," Miller later told investigators in a recorded interview. "But when he, when he started to get in the shit storm, he panicked and lied to you all about how it was done to protect his organizations. That's what I think happened. I don't know that, though. That's what I think happened. I think that he panicked and to prevent your agency from opening up his books, he made, he lied."

In total, the Virginia trade association had sent $24.5 million to the Center. Only $15 million ended up going to California for the propositions, which conservatives ended up losing by a large margin.

State regulators eventually slapped Americans for Responsible Leadership and the Center with a record fine, $1 million.

Individual donors to the effort were never disclosed, although the redaction was so poor, it was possible to determine that they included financier Charles Schwab, California philanthropist Eli Broad and Gap Chairman Bob Fisher, but not the Kochs or their companies.

Initially, it appeared that the California Attorney General's office might open a criminal investigation into the donations. But the investigation never moved forward; Noble was never interviewed in the case.

As part of an agreement with the state, Adams and Noble were able to write off the $11 million transferred through their organizations to the Small Business Action Committee as a simple mistake. The failure to disclose the original source of the funds "was inadvertent, or at worst negligent," their stipulation with California's attorney general and campaign finance regulators said.

Yet Noble and the lawyers he worked with were hardly new to campaign finance. Attorneys at Holtzman Vogel Josefiak, based on the East Coast, were national experts in dark money groups and election law, representing everyone from Crossroads GPS to the American Future Fund.

A lawyer and a paralegal there had helped incorporate two of Noble's consulting firms and several Koch-connected social-welfare nonprofits, as well as handling the Center's application for tax-exempt status to the IRS. Another Holtzman Vogel lawyer had even helped incorporate and dissolve the California Future Fund for Free Markets, the nonprofit that spent money on the anti-union measure.

"I would assume, given the high skill level at Holtzman Vogel, that their lawyers were familiar with California's campaign finance law requirements," said Paul S. Ryan, senior counsel at the Campaign Legal Center in Washington. "They're good lawyers."













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he California investigation, coupled with poor election results, weakened Noble's influence on the Koch network and shrank the Center's role within it.

"There were growing rumors, frustration, through 2010, 2011 and 2012, that Sean was controlling everything, that it was too insular, that it was all about who Sean liked and knew," a top national conservative operative familiar with the Koch network told ProPublica.

Noble's life was also changing in other ways. No longer was he the Arizona outsider who blogged about serving as the Mormon bishop in his ward, who preferred Waffle House to Washington's pricey eateries, and who praised his wife for earning "sainthood for tolerating my work schedule."

In April 2013, Noble filed for divorce. Though his wife of more than 20 years was a homemaker raising their five children, he argued in filings that she deserved no spousal maintenance. After they separated, he bought a condo in Phoenix for himself for $510,000 and another for his parents for $181,500.

Noble had become involved with Elissa Scannell, a former scheduler for Shadegg who was his partner at DC London, records filed as part of the divorce case show. Just before the 2012 election, the two flew to see the World Series. According to documents submitted by his wife, Noble spent more than $7,700 for a vacation for himself and Scannell in the Bahamas over New Year's 2013. That March, he paid more than $3,600 for a trip for him and Scannell to Hawaii, records show.

Noble's life with Scannell was centered in Washington, D.C., a city he once described as a "cesspool" on his blog. He posted a photograph to Facebook the night after the Jingle Ball in December, of the two of them alongside singer Enrique Iglesias.

The Koch network was changing, too. In 2013, it gave greater prominence to Freedom Partners, which has supplanted the Center as its primary distributor of cash to other groups.

Because Freedom Partners is a trade association, this move also helped the network sidestep IRS proposed limits on political activity by social welfare nonprofits. Those would define political spending as expenditures reported to the FEC and grants to other tax-exempt groups involved in elections, unless they specifically say the money won't be spent on politics.

The dark money strategies Noble helped pioneer at the Center are likely to play a substantial role in the upcoming midterms. Targeted blasts of spending by outside groups could have far more effect on this year's smaller slate of congressional and local races than they had on 2012's megabuck national and statewide contests, campaign finance experts said.

Months after the 2012 election, Freedom Partners hired a new president, Marc T. Short, a longtime political operative and former Koch employee who tended Ronald Reagan's ranch in California in his 20s. He is 43, the same age as Noble -- and some say the most likely heir to Noble's role.

The Kochs convened their first 2014 retreat for big donors at a resort near Palm Springs, Calif., in late January. On the agenda: Centralizing control and creating a more coordinated approach to winning elections, as opposed to the piecemeal one from past years, according to Politico. The Kochs plan to back candidates in primaries, to make sure that Republicans that agree with their philosophy make it to the general election.

Noble was not among the consultants listed on a one-page agenda for the meeting obtained by Mother Jones. Short and others from Freedom Partners were.

Noble's biggest known client in recent months has been Arizona's largest electric utility, Arizona Public Service, which DC London worked for in a contentious fight over solar energy. In a strange twist, the face of the pro-solar side was Barry Goldwater Jr., the son of Noble's idol.

Last September, at a panel for a Republican conference in Michigan, Noble, wearing jeans, a light blue button-down shirt and a dark suit jacket, talked about the failures of the 2012 election. He said the Obama campaign won because of having so many people on the ground, knocking on doors and personally talking to people.

In the future, Noble said, conservative candidates needed to work harder to connect with voters, particularly young ones. Candidates also needed to face their critics.

"Ultimately, I think what we have to teach our candidates -- and this is why I will never be a candidate -- is that you just have to -- you have to deal with it, I mean you have to take the arrows, you got to have thick enough skin that you can get in the game, you know, and do that kind of thing," Noble said. "I would never do that because I've watched it up close."

For more on the Koch brothers' influence on politics, read our guide. And for more on the influence of money in politics, read the top questions from our Q&A on Dark Money in the 2012 campaign.