Bernie Sanders has consistently opposed Saudi Arabia but his media firm performed work for Saudi lobby

WFB: A firm paid tens of millions of dollars by the 2016 presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), a vocal critic of Saudi Arabia, performed work on behalf of Saudi interests.

Sanders announced this week that he would again run for president. During his previous run in 2016, Old Towne Media was his main vendor for advertisements throughout the cycle.

Sanders was the primary candidate disbursing funds to the little-known Old Towne Media and ultimately paid more than $80 million from his presidential committee to the firm, which was also his top vendor. Old Towne Media has not recorded payments from any other campaign committees since that time, a search of Federal Election Commission filings shows.

Not much was initially known about Old Towne Media, which was established a year prior to Sanders announcing his 2016 presidential aspirations. The firm was a “front company” for the Washington, D.C.-based Canal Partners Media, a media company where two of its top partners, Shelli Hutton-Harting and Barbara Abar, were tied to past controversies involving Sanders’s wife, Jane. All three worked as media buyers for Sanders’s 2006 Senate campaign.

Sanders’s Republican opponent at the time accused Jane Sanders of “improperly profiting” from the ad buys by the campaign. Sanders’s campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, claimed that Sanders’s wife made the buys as a volunteer and then gave her commission to the firm, Abar Hutton Media. That firm was operated by Hutton-Harting and Abar, who now both help run Canal Partners Media, which ran the Old Towne Media.  more here