A few years back, a controversial MAGA-backed senatorial candidate Bernie Moreno bragged about smuggling into the U.S. a mint cherry-red 2015 Aston Martin Vulcan worth $2.3 million as "car parts" and shirking Clean Air Act’s emissions standards.
Only 24 of the rare two-door, two-seated race cars that can reach 208 miles per hour were ever made.
The steering wheel alone cost $20,000.
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“Nobody’s here from the EPA, right? Good,” Moreno who in 2016 teased supporters who assembled to get a firsthand gaze at the V12 Vulcan. “The car’s actually not legally allowed to be in the United States.
"It is now, but it wasn’t back in October when we got the car. We shipped it in as car parts."
Mother Jones recently profiled Moreno, the GOP hopeful challenging Ohio incumbent Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown in the November general election, and noted that the luxury wheels would have required him to secure an exemption by the EPA.
The publication detailed that the British automaker shipped only nine within a short window of March 2015 and February 2017 and only on the condition that they be driven “solely for competition.”
The multimillionaire who, Mother Jones found padded his campaign coffers with $4.5 million of his personal money, also reportedly proceeded to secure a three-car police escort to shepherd him around the streets of a Cleveland suburb to show off his largess of car dealerships in the state.
The Mother Jones investigation pored over public records and found it was unclear if the police-guided drive through North Olmsted was paid-for or if it involved any formal road closures.
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His campaign, according to Mother Jones, shifted the responsibility away from Moreno and to Aston Martin for the potentially shady import. The company told the outlet it did so legally even though Moreno said otherwise.
When Mother Jones reached out to Moreno’s campaign about the legality of the import and police-escorted drive through town — they didn't respond.
Moreno's MAGA baptism came after he initially came out as an anti-Trumper.
In 2016, the outlet pointed out that Moreno didn't filter himself, calling former President Donald Trump a “maniac.”
“There’s no scenario in which I would support Trump,” he publicly stated at the time.
Four years later he blamed Trump for the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
And then a year later, Moreno's daughter became hitched to former Trump aide Max Miller at Trump’s Bedminster golf club.
That lead to Moreno giving $100,000 to Trump’s super PAC.
Months later, Trump endorsed Moreno in a GOP primary — which he won.
“I wear with honor my endorsement from President Trump,” he said in March after spiking the primary victory football.
The article also looked at some of the lawsuits Moreno and his car dealerships settled for undisclosed amounts. They included shorting a salesman out of overtime, “racially discriminatory pay practices” at a Moreno-owned Infiniti dealership, and mistreating a senior-aged saleswoman.