A longtime friend of Vice President JD Vance has resigned after an undercover probe reportedly uncovered shady, secretive dealings to skirt British election laws.
James Orr, who was a top aide to conservative British politician Nigel Farage, stepped down after he was recorded agreeing to take donations from a foreign national through a middleman, according to The Guardian.
It is illegal in the United Kingdom to receive party funds from non-British citizens.
Orr, 48, and Vance, 42, met frequently at conferences before Vance became VP. Vance has described Orr as one of his close religious and political advisers, calling him his “British Sherpa.”
Orr, a professor of religion at Cambridge University, has previously spoken about his friendship with the VP, which he says began a year after Vance converted to Catholicism. Orr and Vance had lunch the day before Donald Trump announced Vance as his running mate, and Vance’s family has even traveled to visit Orr at his home in the United Kingdom.
Despite this, Orr told NPR in an interview before the 2024 election that his influence on Vance has been “wildly overstated.”
“If anything, he has been a mentor to me,” he said. “We’ve had wonderful conversations over the years about politics, political philosophy, faith, religion. Sen. Vance and I have a sort of kind of camaraderie on trying to work out what the new right should look like in the 21st century.”
In July of that year, Vance made headlines across the Atlantic for comments he made at the end of a speech about the United Kingdom being the first “Islamist country” with nuclear weapons.
Orr told Politico that the remark was a misunderstood joke.
“It was said jokingly in front of a few hundred conservatives,” Orr said. “He was among friends, and I don’t think he expected it to be picked up and brandished around as an attempt to undermine the special relationship.”
The VP’s office did not respond to a request for comment Friday.
Orr was elevated to a major policy role within the Reform UK party this year. The party’s media adviser Dan Jukes, Orr, and Farage were all in the supposedly incriminating footage made public Thursday. Farage is shown meeting with an alleged U.S. donor and thanking him for his support.
After first denying the allegations and calling themselves “the target of a hoax perpetuated by foreign-funded climate change activists,” Orr and Jukes stepped down from their posts in an apparent move to insulate Farage.
