Expose On Kari Lake’s Handler Raises Questions Of Controlled Opposition

Earlier this month an independent journalist, Bigger Truth Media, published a revealing Substack report connecting the driving force behind Kari Lake’s second flagging campaign with major, drawn-out Republican losses dating back to the fateful January 6 Capitol protest.

Based on the report — which relied on the testimonies of Lake’s  former and current inner circles, as well as public records — Lake’s handler, Caroline Wren, could be said to be responsible for driving away the hundreds of thousands of Republican voters capable of preventing Arizona’s blue wave in 2022.

“Caroline Wren came in and blew it all up… There were several times I wondered, even then, if Caroline was trying to lose.” — an unnamed political advisor for Lake’s unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign.

As the report noted, Wren’s penchant for entangling Republicans in unfruitful legal messes and losing campaigns began in a big way over three years ago. It was Wren who was responsible for the doomed march to the Capitol on January 6, though Wren wasn’t initially intended to be the brains behind the protesting that day.

During her deposition by the January 6 committee, Wren said that Publix heiress Julie Fancelli asked her to get involved in January 6 planning. Subpoenaed text and email records revealed that, in a matter of days, Wren took over as a primary planner, fundraiser, and budgeter for the mass protest.

In so doing, Wren attempted to coordinate a certain vision: placing Alex Jones, Ali Alexander, and Roger Stone alongside Trump on stage, and then having them at the very front of a march to the Capitol.

Wren took hundreds of thousands in fundraising to issue national robocalls instructing protestors to go to the Capitol and stop the congressional certification of votes.

“At 1:00 p.m., we will march to the Capitol building and call on Congress to stop the steal,” said the robocall.

When all was said and done and the indictments began to rain down on Wren’s invited special guests, they would say to investigators that they had believed Wren to be an official White House contact at the time — not someone who, just months before, was an in-house fundraiser.

In her own deposition, Wren depicted herself as lacking any political prowess beyond fundraising for campaigns.

“I’m in fundraising and not necessarily political, so, like, I don’t — you know, counting electoral, like the different votes and how many points each State gets, that’s not really what I do,” said Wren.

By the summer of 2021, Wren grew distant from the Trump campaign. Sources told Business Insider that she was fired, not for setting up January 6 for failure, but over money. There were reported disagreements as to who controlled the president’s fundraising apparatus.

“She was causing a lot of chaos and not raising money [after Trump’s 2020 loss],” a Trump advisor told RawStory.

Wren maintained she left the campaign of her own accord.

Either way, when Wren apparently couldn’t hijack the post-campaign apparatus as she had the rally, she moved on to find other big GOP fish to fry.

Bigger Truth Media reported that Wren moved onto fundraising work in Arizona for General Mick McGuire in early 2022, but was allegedly fired with cause. McGuire didn’t offer comment.

Perhaps Wren would’ve moved on from Arizona, but Lake came onto the scene. As Bigger Truth Media’s report suggests, Wren studied Lake’s campaign and worked her way into Lake’s circle around the August primary. After a successful primary, Wren moved to take over, and Lake’s run took a turn for the worse. Lake dropped the campaign manager credited for her primary success and offered the role to Wren.

“Caroline was adept at sowing doubt and driving a wedge between Kari and everyone else. It wasn’t long before Kari elevated Caroline to campaign manager,” a political advisor told Bigger Truth Media.

“Kari truly had an all-star team around her. But Caroline would never let Kari listen to the solid advice of all the people around her who had done this for 10, 20, or 30 years and been successful in Arizona politics. It was a tragedy,” a transition team member said.

Wren wasted no time in derailing Lake’s campaign. Two weeks after winning her primary, the pair traveled out of state to Dallas, Texas for the CPAC conference, where Lake would utter the statement to doom her campaign: “We drove a stake through the heart of the McCain machine.”

And yet, McCain was Wren’s first boss post-college 12 years earlier. Just a few years ago, she described herself as a “McCain groupie.”

“If she worked for McCain then she knew [what would be the impact of slandering McCain and his voters]… Maybe this was part of a larger plan,” a political advisor told Bigger Truth Media.

Lake would double down on her fury against the “McCain machine” in the subsequent weeks, calling his supporters “losers” that ought to “get the hell out.”

The “McCain losers” heeded Lake’s request: over 300,000 consistent Republican voters abstained from voting.

And despite Wren’s lengthy fundraising experience, she had Lake drain the state party and her campaign funds to rent a wrapped luxury bus, hire an out-of-state production company to shoot a promotional film, and plan an extravagant election night party.

FEC data shows that Lake’s Senate campaign has paid out over $112,700 to Wren’s firm, Bluebonnet Fundraising, from last November through March of this year.

Wren’s firm has also received funds from the campaigns of Utah Republican Senate candidate Trent Staggs ($18,300) and Montana Congressman Matt Rosendale ($6,000). The latter dropped out of his reelection race in March.

President Donald Trump visited Phoenix as his first post-trial rally the day the Substack report dropped. As anticipated, Trump took time in addressing the crowds to praise Lake and his other endorsements. Given his enthusiastic support for Lake, it seems unlikely Trump has knowledge of Wren’s grip on Lake’s campaign. If he had, he may have reconsidered his endorsement — or, at the very least, advised Lake to take up better counsel.