Cliff Maloney

Cliff Maloney runs the Citizens Alliance of America operation that funds Idaho Republican primary attacks, and owns the Florida LLC that takes the largest share of CAA’s vendor work. CAA paid him $195,000 in 2024 against $6.6 million combined revenue. He was fired as President of Young Americans for Liberty in January 2021 after multiple sexual-misconduct allegations. He launched CAA later that year. The same operator runs both rails.

Inside this dossier:

CAA paid Maloney $195,000 in 2024. Combined CAA Action and Foundation revenue $6.6M, expenses $6.3M. Officer compensation includes Justin Greiss at $163K and sitting Virginia state Delegate Nicholas Freitas at $161K.
Mobilize the Message LLC is Maloney’s personal Florida firm. Per CAA’s 2024 IRS Form 990, Mobilize the Message is the largest single vendor recipient — CAA pays Maloney’s own LLC for its campaign-services work.
2026-cycle CAI 99.72% funded by national CAA, which is over 72% funded by POM of Pennsylvania, LLC. A gaming-machine company being sued by the Pennsylvania Attorney General over its “skill” classification of devices Idaho banned in 2015.
Fired as YAL President January 13, 2021. Multiple women, including former YAL staffers, came forward with sexual-harassment and assault allegations under #YALtoo. The board placed Maloney and Greiss on leave January 13; Maloney was fired within days. Per Reason, Fox News, and InsideSources.
Citizens Alliance of Idaho PAC was the largest single source of out-of-state primary money in Idaho 2024. $400K spend, $390K from CAA national plus $10K direct from Doyle Beck. 17 of 32 candidates lost.
The bridge between YAL field operations and CAI funding pipelines. The same operator who put 17 of these legislators in office now runs the funding pipeline that primaries the Republicans the network wants replaced.

Who he is

Cliff Maloney runs Citizens Alliance of America, a pair of Fairfax, Virginia nonprofits — a 501(c)(3) Foundation and a 501(c)(4) Action arm — with combined 2024 revenue of about $6.6 million. He also owns Mobilize the Message LLC, a Florida political-consulting firm that takes in CAA’s vendor work. CAA’s Idaho state affiliate, Citizens Alliance of Idaho PAC, was the largest single source of out-of-state campaign money in Idaho’s 2024 Republican primaries.

Until January 13, 2021, he was President of Young Americans for Liberty.

Every dollar CAA puts into an Idaho mailer, every door knocked by Make Liberty Win in an Idaho primary, every Hazlitt Coalition policy directive Idaho legislators got before the May 2024 walkout — all of it runs back through Maloney personally. He is the bridge between the YAL field-and-funding machine and the Citizens Alliance dark-money pipeline that replaced it after his firing. Two operations, one operator at the center.

The YAL termination — January 13, 2021

On January 13, 2021, the Young Americans for Liberty board placed President Cliff Maloney and Vice President Justin Greiss on administrative leave. Multiple women, including former YAL staffers, had come forward with sexual-harassment and assault allegations from YAL events. The accusations broke through a #YALtoo hashtag modeled on #MeToo. Within two days, the board fired Maloney. The same week, Greiss was forced out.

Reason broke the story nationally. Fox News, InsideSources, PJ Media, and Heartland News all covered the firings that week. Maloney was later acquitted on the criminal charges, and related charges were dismissed.

Later in 2021, Maloney and Greiss co-founded Citizens Alliance of America in Fairfax, Virginia. The 501(c)(4) Action arm and 501(c)(3) Foundation arm registered jointly. Maloney installed himself as CEO at $167,500. Greiss installed himself as Chair and COO. Maloney also incorporated Mobilize the Message LLC in Florida that same year. As of the 2024 IRS Form 990 filings, that LLC is CAA’s largest single vendor.

The same operator the YAL board removed in January 2021 was running a $6.6 million Beltway operation by 2024 and routing the largest single share of that operation’s vendor spending to an LLC he personally owns.

What CAA pays him — and what CAA pays everyone else

The 2024 IRS Form 990 filings list officer compensation:

Cliff Maloney, CEO and Chair: $195,000 + $13,133 other.
Justin Greiss, Chair and COO: $163,573 + $13,331 other.
Nicholas Freitas, listed as host of “The Why Minutes”: $161,000 + $6,440 other. Freitas is a sitting Virginia state delegate (Republican) and a former candidate for U.S. Congress.
Shelby Smith, VP of Development: $140,377 + $6,435 other.
Nicholas Hamilton, Digital Content Manager: $101,000 + $4,040 other.

Maloney’s compensation arc: $167,500 in 2021. $200,000 in 2022. $238,000 in 2023. $195,000 in 2024.

A sitting Virginia state delegate on the payroll of the operation funding Idaho legislative primaries is not a detail CAA mentions in its public messaging.

CAA Action Inc (501c4, EIN 87-1174297) and CAA Foundation Inc (501c3, EIN 87-1153501) reported combined 2024 revenue of $6,572,000 and combined expenses of $6,275,919. Both entities are based at 10332 Main Street #264, Fairfax, VA 22030.

— ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, 2024 fiscal year

What CAA does in Idaho

Citizens Alliance of Idaho PAC is registered in Hayden. President Matt Edwards, a former Los Angeles film and TV producer who moved to Hayden during COVID, runs it. CAI is the Idaho state PAC affiliate of the national Citizens Alliance of America (CAA). The full CAI funding map, donor profile across cycles, and out-of-state pipeline live on the Citizens Alliance organization page and the Follow the Money investigation.

The national CAA PAC sent $450,000 to the Idaho affiliate in the 2026 cycle.

CAI’s largest single 2024 vendor recipient was Mobilize the Message LLC, the Florida political-consulting firm Maloney owns. The chain runs Pennsylvania gaming-machine money to a Virginia 501(c)(4), to a Hayden, Idaho PAC, to a Florida LLC owned by Maloney personally, to mailers and door-knockers and digital ads in Idaho. Each link files in its own jurisdiction. The full pipeline only emerges when filings from all four jurisdictions sit side by side. Steve Taggart, an Idaho Falls attorney with a Republican political background, traced the chain link by link in his April 7, 2026 Political Potatoes piece. Every number above is verifiable in Idaho SOS Sunshine and the ProPublica CAA 990 records.

The YAL bridge — Make Liberty Win, Maria Nate, and the May 2024 unraveling

Maloney’s old YAL apparatus and his current Citizens Alliance apparatus run as separate entities in 2026. They share donor base. They fund the same Idaho candidates. They run from the same Beltway-to-state-capitol playbook he built. Daniel Walters’s May 13, 2024 InvestigateWest reporting on a leaked recording of Maria Nate at the Idaho Capitol documents the linkage. Nate is the Idaho director of the State Freedom Caucus Network and the wife of IFF President Ron Nate.

On the recording, Nate transmits Young Americans for Liberty’s $1.1 million Idaho campaign-funding threat to a sitting Idaho state senator. Per Walters’s reporting, Nate said:

The day after Walters’s report, sixteen Idaho legislators, almost the entire IFF / Gang of 8 hardcore, publicly withdrew from YAL’s Hazlitt Coalition in a signed letter Brian Almon ran at Gem State Chronicle. By September 2024 InvestigateWest reporting, the chamber Idaho Freedom Caucus had separated from SFCN.

When YAL’s Idaho footprint collapsed, the Citizens Alliance pipeline filled the vacuum. The same Idaho candidates who walked away from the YAL-sponsored Hazlitt Coalition kept drawing out-of-state primary funding through the CAI rail Maloney runs — a different vehicle moving the same operator’s money to the same Idaho candidate slate. The full architecture is documented in the Follow the Money investigation.

Who CAA backed in Idaho’s 2024 cycle

Per the Idaho EdNews 2024 third-party-PAC analysis and Steve Taggart’s documented trace, the Idaho PAC supported these candidates in the 2024 Republican primary cycle:

Senate: Dan Foreman, Christy Zito, Tammy Nichols, Brian Lenney, Glenneda Zuiderveld
House: Scott Herndon, Elaine Price, Jaron Crane, David Leavitt, Juliane Young, Karey Hanks, Bryan Smith

CAI backed 32 candidates total. 17 lost. A 47% loss rate. That is the public record of how the operation actually performed in 2024.

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