Welcome to Pay Dirt—exclusive reporting and research from The Daily Beast’s Lachlan Markay on corruption, campaign finance, and influence-peddling in the nation’s capital. For Beast Inside members only.
Denis Calabrese helped lead the charge for criminal-justice reform. Now he’s awaiting sentencing for a felony.
Calabrese, a prominent Republican consultant based in Houston, pleaded guilty late last month to tax evasion. He admitted to filing a false tax return in 2011 that “substantially” understated his income, and to setting up a Cayman Islands company to shield revenue from his consulting business from U.S. tax collectors.