Bill Pulte's family entangled with shadowy Christian group backing Trump allies: report

For more than two generations, Bill Pulte's family has had close ties with a covert Christian group that has backed allies of President Donald Trump and other conservatives, according to a report on Tuesday.The acting national intelligence director's grandfather and father have been closely involved with a group known as The Family, or The Fellowship, which organizes the National Prayer Breakfast and a C Street congressional residence on Capitol Hill. These are "leaders and financial backers of a secretive Christian organization that conducts shadow diplomacy around the world, according to public records and documents I obtained," wrote Jonathan Larsen in a Substack post, which was republished by Salon."Pulte’s grandfather, at one point one of the wealthiest men in the world, built a Fortune 500 company and gave tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars to charity before his 2018 death," Larsen wrote. "He was also friends with Doug Coe, died in 2017 after decades leading the secretive, controversial Fellowship Foundation that built and sustained a global right-wing network including dictators, lobbyists, and corrupt millionaires largely united against labor, LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights."Pulte's exact connection to The Fellowship remains unclear. It's said he was close to his grandfather, his namesake, who was a longtime friend of Coe's, Larsen wrote. Pulte's father has continued to fund religious charities connected to The Fellowship."If Pulte is personally connected to The Fellowship, he’d hardly be alone in the administration’s upper ranks," Larsen wrote."Secretary of State Marco Rubio used to live at the C Street townhouse, as did Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.). President Donald Trump’s special envoy to the United Kingdom, former 'Apprentice' producer Mark Burnett, is a regular at The Fellowship’s National Prayer Breakfast," Larsen explained."But the ties extend beyond overlapping at religious charities in the orbits of Michigan philanthropists. Pulte had a significant personal relationship with Coe, who hobnobbed with presidents of both parties and leaders of nations around the world," Larsen wrote.And that's not the only connection the Pulte family has to top political families — or the Trump family.Pulte's father also played a role in Trump's bidding war against Epstein for a Palm Beach property, which was noted by Substacker Greg Conners."The notorious bidding war for a Palm Beach estate between Trump and Jeffrey Epstein involved a third party. It was Mark Pulte, who veered off from the Pulte home-building business to focus on luxury properties. As Conners notes, Pulte, father of Trump’s appointee, outbid Epstein and was the one who actually bid up the price Trump ended up paying," Larsen added.