Ashley Hinson, Iowa GOP accepted donations from megadonor accused in 2019 sex trafficking sting

Billionaire John W. Childs is back to seeding Republican campaigns with large checks after his 2019 solicitation charges related to a sex trafficking sting were dropped. Records show his deep pockets are helping Iowa’s Congressional delegation as they prepare for the 2026 midterms.  

[Update: After publication, a reader pointed out that John Childs of Vero Beach, Florida has also given US Rep. Randy Feenstra $12,000 since 2020.]

A Republican megadonor who was charged in a 2019 sex trafficking bust is dropping serious money in Iowa’s biggest races. 

John W. Childs, a Florida-based private equity executive, has donated tens of thousands of dollars to Republican campaigns across the Hawkeye State, connecting him to US Reps. Ashley Hinson, Mariannette Miller-Meeks, and Zach Nunn, as well as the state party. 

A review of Federal Election Commission records found Childs gave $50,000 to Team Hinson, a joint fundraising PAC for Hinson’s US Senate race; $17,000 to Ashley Hinson Victory Committee, another PAC; and $7,000 directly to Hinson’s campaign. 

Since 2021, Miller-Meeks’ campaign has accepted $25,000 from Childs. In the same period, Nunn’s campaign got $16,000. Since 2019, the Republican Party of Iowa has accepted $68,000 from Childs, including more than $5,000 last September.

‘Economic inequalities’ halt sex trafficking prosecution

In 2019, Childs, along with billionaire New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and former Citigroup president John Havens, were snared in a six-month criminal investigation into multiple massage parlors across Florida. 

NPR reported a multi-jurisdictional sting revealed a $20 million human trafficking operation. Women were allegedly brought from China with the promise of jobs at massage parlors. Their passports were taken and they were forced to do sex work. 

During a news conference, NBC6 in Miami reported Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg said the investigation was not about any one defendant but the “cold reality” of sex trafficking in the state.

“I can assure you that our office treats everyone the same whether you have a lot of money or you are indigent. We treat all defendants the same and no one gets any special justice in Palm Beach County,” Aronberg said.

For his part, Childs was charged with solicitation of prostitution. At the 2019 news conference, Aronberg said each case was being charged as a First Degree misdemeanor because that charge includes mandatory 100 hours of community service, a mandatory $5,000 fine, and a mandatory class on the dangers of prostitution and human trafficking, as well as the potential for increasing the jail sentence from 60 days to a year.

“The accusation of solicitation of prostitution is totally false,” Childs told Bloomberg News in 2019. 

Following the charges, Childs stepped down as chairman of his private equity firm J. W. Childs Associates and director of the board of KeyImpact, telling Institutional Investor he was “muzzled by my lawyers.” 

In 2020, NBC News reported that a Florida appeals court ruled that police violated the 4th Amendment rights of the defendants when they secretly installed video cameras inside massage parlors as part of their investigation. In its coverage of Robert Kraft’s trial, The Palm Beach Post reported that County Judge Leonard Hanser quashed the videos, “throwing solicitation of prostitution cases against Kraft and other men into disarray.”

“The fact that some totally innocent women and men had their entire lawful time spent in a massage room fully recorded and viewed intermittently by a detective-monitor is unacceptable and results from the lack of sufficient pre-monitoring written guidelines,” Hanser wrote in his 2019 opinion. 

The court barred the use of the surveillance footage at trial, and Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody decided not to appeal the ruling.

“Without these videos,” Aronberg wrote in a 2020 filing, “we cannot move forward with our prosecutions and thus we are ethically compelled to drop the cases against all the defendants.” At the time, he lamented that “economic inequalities” in the justice system allowed wealthy defendants to hire investigators and lawyers to poke holes in criminal cases. 

In the end, no human trafficking charges were ever filed in relation to these cases. The charges brought against Childs and others caught in the sting were dropped. Childs’ legal team had his record expunged. When a record is expunged, it is sealed or destroyed, removing it from public view and background checks, as if it never occurred.

The money kept flowing

For over a decade, Childs has put a tremendous amount of money towards Republican candidates and causes. In 2012, he gave $1 million to Restore Our Future PAC, created to support Mitt Romney’s failed 2012 presidential campaign, according to Open Secrets. In 2024, he gave another $1 million to Win It Back PAC, a group affiliated with the conservative Club for Growth. 

During Childs’ legal battle, at least two former Republican senators, Martha McSally of Arizona and Mike Braun of Indiana, donated the contributions they received from Childs, CNBC reported.

Iowa Starting Line reached out to the campaigns of Nunn, Hinson, and Miller-Meeks, as well as the Republican Party of Iowa about the money they received from Childs. They did not respond to questions by press time.