An archived recording obtained by Bigger Truth Media shows failed Michigan gubernatorial candidate Ralph Rebandt told a private prayer call on May 29, 2025, that donors had asked him to run for governor and that the man who ran Kari Lake’s campaign, a description matching national Republican operative Floyd Brown, was privately advising his strategy. The call came three and a half months before Rebandt entered the race and roughly a year before he disclosed an $800,000 bitcoin gift from a donor he refuses to name, money that supplied 81% of his campaign’s funding.
Rebandt launched his campaign with a $795,000 “personal contribution” to his campaign, which raised eyebrows for the retired pastor who told observers at the end of his 2022 campaign for governor that his $95,000 contribution to that race constituted the bulk of his retirement savings.
This unearthed recording undercuts Rebandt’s public insistence, made after the gift surfaced in May 2026, that there was “no connection” between the money and his decision to run. On the call, Rebandt made donor backing a precondition of his candidacy.
“I wouldn’t do this unless I had support,” Rebandt said. “I wouldn’t do this unless donors had come to me and asked me to run.”
If the $800,000 was given to fund his campaign, Michigan law treats it as a contribution. The state caps individual contributions to a gubernatorial candidate at $8,325 and requires the donor’s name in public filings. Rebandt instead reported the money as a personal gift of “unearned income” from an unnamed “longtime friend,” a classification that carries no cap and, until a 2024 disclosure law, no reporting requirement at all. The gift was 96 times the contribution limit, and its source appears in no campaign finance filing.
“It kind of smells,” Bob LaBrant, a veteran Michigan campaign finance expert, told Bridge Michigan when the gift was disclosed. “Obviously, we don’t have a whole lot of experience with people getting $800,000 gifts.”
Rebandt, an Oakland County pastor who finished last in the 2022 Republican primary for governor, described his adviser on the call in specific terms: “The gentleman who ran Kari Lake — regardless of what you think about her ... this guy’s a national figure, he’s watching Michigan.” The adviser told him a crowded primary favored a candidate with a distinct base, Rebandt said, and “thinks it’s really possible that I could win this thing.”
Brown, founder of Citizens United, creator of the 1988 Willie Horton ad and builder of the Western Journal media operation, was chairman of Lake’s 2024 U.S. Senate campaign, according to January 2024 reporting by Right Wing Watch and others. Bigger Truth Media has identified no other nationally known operative who held that role. Brown did not respond to text message requests for comment.
On the same call, Rebandt said he had attended the Council for National Policy meeting in Naples, Florida, weeks earlier and the “prayerful launch of America’s Revival” in Miami the following weekend. The Council for National Policy is the Christian right’s longtime coordinating body of donors and operatives. It is the same milieu as Ziklag, the invitation-only network of wealthy Christian families that ProPublica reported in 2024 had planned roughly $12 million in election spending and listed Michigan among its target states.
Brown sits on the board of Ziklag’s 501c3, TransformUSA. Multiple sources with direct knowledge and experience within Mike Flynn’s organizations have told Bigger Truth that Floyd Brown helped secure the funding for Flynn’s 2024 movie and bus tour, which was part of Flynn’s and Roger Stone’s “Plan B” campaign for Flynn for President, which Stone said prior to the July 13 2024 assassination attempt that they were running in case something happened to Trump.
As Bigger Truth reported in April 2025, Ziklag was formed out of sex-scandal marked Gateway Church in Dallas/Fort Worth as a partnership between extremely high net worth family offices and the Flynn-linked Allied Special Operations Group (ASOG), which worked closely with Flynn and Byrne in their operations after the 2020 election.
In text messages to Brown’s cell phone from Bigger Truth, he was asked explicitly about his involvement in funding both Rebandt’s campaign and Flynn’s 2024 campaign. He did not respond.
Whether Brown, Ziklag or anyone in that network supplied the bitcoin is unproven. No filing, document or public record identifies the donor, and Michigan’s disclosure law required Rebandt to report the gift but not the giver. The donor’s name, a wallet trail or sworn testimony would settle the question. Bigger Truth will continue to investigate and report on the money’s source.
The timeline of the money is documented. Rebandt announced his campaign Sept. 18, 2025. Within a month, he loaned it $795,000 in three transactions. Those contributions accounted for 81% of everything the campaign raised through the end of 2025. Rebandt, who said his 2022 run consumed essentially all of his retirement savings, told Bridge Michigan he received the bitcoin “way before I announced (my campaign), but I don’t remember exactly,” and sold it “at its highest point.” Bitcoin’s 2025 peak of roughly $126,000 came Oct. 6, after his announcement and inside the window of his three loans, meaning a sale at the top was a sale by a declared candidate for governor.
“I have a friend who knew that I had given everything that we had for retirement, and he came to me and said, ‘You know, Ralph, I just want to help you out,’” Rebandt told Bridge Michigan in May 2026. He also said: “I’ve been telling people that I want to be the most truthful, honest, and transparent governor.”
Bigger Truth issued a public request for comment to Rebandt on X the day prior to publication of this article but he did not respond.
Despite his significant funding, Rebandt failed to secure enough valid signatures to appear on the August primary ballot. The Board of State Canvassers found his nominating petitions insufficient May 28, 2026. Following the well-worn path of many Flynn-linked candidates, Rebandt refused to accept the result, insisting the state deploy more resources into examining every signature after roughly two-thirds of the state’s randomly selected sample of his signatures were invalid. State courts, including the Michigan Supreme Court’s refusal to hear his appeal.
U.S. Rep. John James won the Republican nomination and faces Democrat Jocelyn Benson in November. Bigger Truth has found no record of Rebandt conceding to James or endorsing him.
Why isn’t Ralph responding to this? It shouldn’t be a hard thing to do.
In the mean time, this won’t go away. If it smells like a fish, looks like a fish, and swims like a fish, it’s probably a fish.
it makes me sad to see people calling themselves Christians (in this case, a pastor) selling themselves out for $$ and a flash in the pan of political fame. in the end he lost, and handily. i wonder if it is worth it to him now.