A May 29 Bloomberg story revealed that during the 2016 election, a Breitbart reporter worked as an “off-the-books political operative” for the Trump campaign, encouraging a former Bernie Sanders backer to help convince black voters to vote for Donald Trump or sit out the election entirely.  

The Bloomberg report detailed how Breitbart’s Dustin Stockton recruited Black Men for Bernie founder Bruce Carter to work on behalf of the Trump campaign. Stockton introduced Carter to Steve Bannon, the former executive chairman of Breitbart News who served as chief executive officer of the Trump campaign. Bannon subsequently put Carter in contact with Karen Giorno, a senior Trump campaign adviser. The three agreed that Carter would target swing states and work to convince black voters that “Donald Trump is the only option,” but if they couldn’t bring themselves to vote for him, they ought to “simply stay home on Election Day.” From the May 29 report:  

Carter’s unlikely conversion to cheerleader for Trump started in mid-summer 2016 with a call from Stockton. Broad-chested and 6 feet, 2 inches tall, Carter had become something of a B-list celebrity on the campaign trail, showing up at Sanders’s events in a tour bus emblazoned with the Vermont senator’s photo and yelling through a bullhorn to rally anybody who would listen. He spent months on the road for Sanders, with three of his teenage daughters accompanying him, selling T-shirts and other merchandise to help fund their tour.

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The two chatted regularly after the convention by phone. On Aug. 17, Bannon, then Breitbart’s executive chairman, was named chief of the campaign. The announcement coincided with a push by Stockton to formalize Carter’s role. He says Stockton dangled an intriguing promise—a chance to engage with Bannon. That pushed him over the top: He endorsed Trump.

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While it’s impossible to precisely measure Carter’s effectiveness, Trump performed particularly well in the areas Carter targeted, says Dustin Stockton, the Breitbart reporter who recruited him.

The article also noted that after Stockton spent months recruiting Carter, Breitbart published a “carefully orchestrated” and “exclusive” story about Carter’s work in August “that went viral.” Bloomberg reported that Carter’s work for the Trump campaign and Stockton’s “unusual role” in the saga may also have violated campaign finance rules, and quoted a former general counsel of the Federal Election Commission as saying, “There are some real problems here.”