EXCLUSIVE: Blake Masters on Mark Kelly’s Plane Rentals from Defense Contractor: ‘Appearance of Impropriety Is Corrosive’

PHOENIX, AZ – Republican Blake Masters told Breitbart News during an exclusive interview last week that Sen. Mark Kelly’s (D-AZ) frequent plane rentals totaling tens of thousands of dollars from a defense contractor “raises the appearance of impropriety.”

Through his campaign, the Mark Kelly Committee for Senate, Kelly frequently rents planes from the Tuscon-based company Newton Consulting & Engineering (NCE), which has received several six-figure contracts from the Department of Defense (DoD) since 2012. The latest contract, which awarded the company $249,233 for “LASER TARGET ENGINEERING EVALUATION,” came in August of 2021 after Kelly was conducting business with NCE and was serving on the Senate Armed Services committee.

I keep telling my colleagues that the best way to see Arizona is from the sky.

Someone finally took me up on it. pic.twitter.com/LbGkvBQhuJ

— Captain Mark Kelly (@CaptMarkKelly) April 29, 2022

Moreover, the company received the funding through the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, which Kelly voted for. However, the DOD selects companies to award contracts to after receiving annual funding, not the U.S. Senate. Bob Newton, an Air Force veteran who owns the company, told Breitbart News that Kelly, whose campaign shelled out more than $80,000 to the company since April 2021, pays market rates.

Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute and the author of numerous best-sellers, including Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win, spoke to Kelly’s ties in a statement to Breitbart News.

“It’s incumbent on our elected officials to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest. In this case, Senator Kelly has failed the test,” wrote Schweizer, a Breitbart News senior contributor. Masters echoed Schweizer’s sentiment while speaking with Breitbart News.

“I think it at least raises the appearance of impropriety, and sometimes that’s the same thing. It’s like the Congressional stock trading, like all these people doing the stock trading, which I think should be banned for members of Congress,” Masters said. “You know, I think some of it’s actually corrupt, probably a lot of it is not, but it gives the appearance of corruption, which is the same thing because then other people can actually do the corruption. So I think the conflicts of interest like that are to be avoided, and even the appearance of impropriety is corrosive to people’s trust in the system.”

In a statement to Breitbart News, Sarah Guggenheimer, a spokeswoman for Mark Kelly for Senate, said, “Kelly rents planes from a Service Disabled Veteran Owned small business so that he can fly himself across the state to meet Arizonans where they are because it makes him a better Senator.”

Masters also noted Kelly’s Chinese business ties through World View Enterprises, a company he co-founded.

“Mark Kelly also has a company, Worldview, which Tencent, the giant Chinese tech conglomerate, invested in,” said Masters. “And if you know anything about business in China, there’s no such thing as private enterprise like it’s a state-run enterprise, and so, it’s not a stretch to say that Mark Kelly is like business partners… with the Chinese Communist Party. And either that’s a conflict of interest or, man, it really looks like one.”

In 2014 and 2018, the company received investments from Tencent Holdings, “a Chinese company that owns the communication platform WeChat,” as Breitbart News’s Spencer Lindquist reported. “The communication platform, which has over a billion users, is suspected of surveilling the activity of its users.”

Lindquist added:

Kelly reportedly has a significant financial stake in World View Enterprises and one of his daughters works there as the company’s business opportunities manager. Real Clear Politics also reported that Kelly has received at least $5,000 from David Wallerstein, Tencent’s chief exploration officer.

“I think this kind of stuff is corrosive to public trust,” Masters stated. “And it’s why when I’m in Congress, I won’t do stuff like his airplane thing, you know? A staff member will tell me about that, and then we’ll choose a different provider. I really want to avoid the appearance of impropriety. No Chinese Communist Party syndicate is going to invest in any company I have anything to do with. People need to regain their trust in public officials, and I don’t think Mark Kelly’s been helping people do that.