Mike Flynn’s “Chief of Staff” Vic Mellor Is a Foreign Agent for Raulito Castro in Communist Cuba
Following Flynn’s registration as a foreign agent for Putin’s closest ally in the Balkans, his chief of staff cites Flynn in helping him form his “close relationship" with Raulito Castro.
Vic Mellor, who spent years as Mike Flynn’s self-described “chief of staff” and is now running for Congress as a Republican in Rhode Island, is a registered foreign agent for the communist Cuban government, working on behalf of Raúl Guillermo “Raulito” Rodríguez Castro, grandson of the indicted former dictator Raúl Castro and head of the regime’s General Directorate of Personal Security.
The registration, filed June 16 with the Department of Justice under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, came three weeks after Mellor flew to Havana and, by his own account, had dinner with Raulito seven times. It was executed with the help of Jesse Binnall — the same attorney who represents Flynn and is now Joe Flynn’s business partner on the $1.8 billion Balkan pipeline deal that followed Flynn’s own FARA registration as a foreign agent for Milorad Dodik, Vladimir Putin’s closest ally in the Balkans.
What Mellor Agreed to Do for the Castros
The filing itself, in Mellor’s own words, commits him to the preparation and dissemination of “informational materials” for the Cuban principal, “providing sample ideas for social media content and strategies,” proposing website concepts, “relationship building,” and bridging “communication gaps between Cubans and Americans.”
Strip away the consultant-speak and the job description is simple: social media strategy and messaging for the man who runs communist Cuba’s version of the Secret Service — a mouthpiece for the regime.
The filing states Mellor is receiving no compensation, that the arrangement dates to roughly May 29, 2026, and that it arose from neither a written contract nor an exchange of correspondence. A handshake deal with the Castro family’s heir apparent, formalized at the DOJ.
The Flynn Connection
Mellor is not some freelance adventurer who stumbled into Havana. He has said himself that he served as Flynn’s “chief of staff” for five years — a role he held throughout the ReAwaken America tour — and that the contacts he made through Flynn’s network are what connected him to the Cuban Americans who facilitated the trip. When those Cuban Americans backed out the day of departure, Mellor went anyway. His reaction, on tape: “For me, alright, this just got even cooler, you know?”
The ties run deeper than a job title. Flynn has endorsed Mellor and called him “a great friend.” Flynn headlined Mellor’s “Rhode Island First” rally at the Crowne Plaza in Warwick on March 7 and has held multiple fundraisers for the campaign. Mellor was executive producer of Flynn’s “Plan B” presidential campaign film.
Mellor owns The Hollow, the Sarasota-area venue the Washington Post called “Florida’s playground for the far-right,” a hub for the Flynn network. And when it came time to file his foreign agent paperwork, the attorney who executed it was Binnall — Flynn’s lawyer and pipeline partner.
A 30 Year Florida Resident Runs for Congress in Rhode Island from a Rented House
Mellor is running in Rhode Island’s 2nd District against Democratic incumbent Rep. Seth Magaziner, with the primary set for Sept. 9. He is a Woonsocket native — who then lived in Florida for roughly 30 years.
He rented a house in the district shortly before the deadline to establish residency. He has not sold any of his Florida property, including The Hollow. His campaign treasurer is based in his Florida hometown of three decades. His campaign is almost entirely self-funded, and its filings route money to consultants like Billy Kozis, whose only other publicly known client, RFK Jr., paid him about $47,000 in 2024.
Federal law prohibits members of Congress from acting as agents of a foreign principal under FARA. Mellor is asking Rhode Island voters to send a currently registered foreign agent of the Cuban regime to the House. The state GOP declined to endorse him, citing both the residency questions and the Cuba registration. Mellor says he didn’t want the endorsement anyway.
“I Wasn’t Negotiating.” Then He Describes Negotiating.
Mellor insists he went to Cuba as a private citizen and “salesman for the state of Rhode Island,” that he filed voluntarily for transparency, and that he wasn’t circumventing Secretary of State Marco Rubio — who, along with the administration, he says is “doing an amazing job.” The State Department confirmed Mellor is not authorized to speak or act on behalf of the U.S. government.
But on a recent podcast, in the same breath as denying he negotiated, Mellor described his conversations with Raulito this way: “All I was doing was giving my perspective on certain things. Like he would ask, and I would give my perspective, ‘Hey, you’re not gonna get anywhere until you’ve got to at least do this.’”
He also said this about “breaking bread” and “drinking beers” with the Castro “heir apparent:” “It was good. It was good... We built a relationship.”
The Cuban-American National Chamber of Commerce — which Mellor initially cited as the impetus for his trip — sent his campaign a letter flatly denying it. The group “did not in any way endorse or urge” the trip, wrote vice president Rafael Sixto, adding that the board “strongly opposes any meeting with any member of the current Cuban regime.”
The Pattern
In October 2025, Flynn registered under FARA as a paid agent of Dodik, Putin’s man in the Balkans, at $100,000 a month. Sanctions on Dodik were lifted, and the Flynn family landed a $1.8 billion pipeline deal — papered by Jesse Binnall.
In June 2026, Flynn’s longtime right hand registered under FARA as an agent of the Castro family’s security chief — papered by Jesse Binnall — while running for the United States Congress, promising that if elected, Rhode Island “will be the first one to bring businesses” into Cuba.
Two registrations, two anti-American regimes, one network, one lawyer, nine months. The tally: the Castros got an American congressional candidate producing their “informational materials” for free, and Rhode Island’s 2nd District got a candidate who lives in a rental, banks in Florida and files in Havana’s interest.
BiggerTruth readers will recognize another pattern in Mellor’s political ideology and hostility toward the Republican Party. As you’ll see in this clip, RIGOP saw him as “too hot” but he had no interest in toning things down. He says the reason why Republicans don’t win in his district, where 14% of the registered voters are Republicans, is because Republicans “don’t have the representation they want.” He thinks he speaks for everyone, “I say what everybody’s thinking.”
“We need to come out hard, we need to come out loud, and we need to do it now,” Mellor says. So far, voters in nearly every state have proven the Flynn-aligned candidates dead wrong.