# Sam Patten **Sam Patten** (born July 22, 1971) is a Republican consultant and longtime partner of [[Konstantin Kilimnik]] who pleaded guilty in 2018 to acting as an unregistered foreign agent — and admitted routing a Ukrainian oligarch's money into Trump's inauguration. ## The Kilimnik partnership Patten ran the International Republican Institute's Moscow office from 2001 to 2004, where he worked with Kilimnik. He consulted for SCL Group, the parent of [[Cambridge Analytica]], in 2014. In February 2015 he and Kilimnik co-founded Begemot Ventures International; the pair were paid more than $1 million for work for Ukrainian opposition politicians. ## The plea On August 31, 2018 Patten pleaded guilty to violating [[FARA]] through unregistered lobbying for the Opposition Bloc between 2014 and 2018. He admitted using a U.S. straw buyer to purchase four inauguration tickets for a Ukrainian oligarch with $50,000 routed through a Cypriot bank account. RFE/RL identifies the oligarch as Serhiy Lyovochkin *[single-sourced]*. On April 12, 2019 Judge Amy Berman Jackson sentenced him to three years' probation, 500 hours of community service and a $5,000 fine, crediting "substantial assistance" to prosecutors. He published a memoir, *Dangerous Company*, in 2023 *[single-sourced]*. ## RWKB angle Patten's case is the clearest proven instance of foreign money entering Trump's inaugural — the Kilimnik pipeline in miniature. See [[Paul Manafort Ukraine Operations]]. ## See Also - [[Konstantin Kilimnik]] - [[FARA]]