In the grand and gilded circus of American politics, there is a particular performance that plays out with metronomic regularity. It is the spectacle of a reformer entering the ring with a flourish, only to discover that the ringmaster’s wallet is fuller than his convictions.
And in the 2026 act unfolding here, two characters are dominating the marquee: the billionaire who bought an oil empire, and the senator who may have provided the moral lubrication for the deal.
One of Cory Booker’s four dozen billionaire donors, Paul Singer, acquired Citgo, the U.S.-based subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-run oil company, shortly before Trump ordered the arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
The tale centers on an extraordinary transaction. Last November, an affiliate of Elliott Investment Management, the $65 billion hedge fund founded by Republican mega-donor Paul Singer, placed the winning bid to acquire the American jewel of Venezuela’s oil crown, Citgo.
The $5.9 billion price was described by market analysts as a spectacular bargain for a company whose heartland refineries were recently valued at more than twice that amount.
The sale was the result of a tortuous, years-long federal court process, initiated to collect on billions in defaulted debts owed by the Venezuelan state.
Amber Energy’s winning bid, valued at approximately $5.9 billion, was approved in late November 2025 by U.S. District Judge Leonard Stark, whose confirmation Booker supported, authorizing the transfer of shares of PDV Holding, Citgo’s parent company.
The auction was a result of an eight-year court case following Venezuela’s default on billions in debt. The Venezuelan government, led by Nicolás Maduro, denounced the sale as “fraudulent.”
Yet, the timing has raised eyebrows that could arch over the Hudson.
The legal machinery concluded mere weeks before an audacious and not-yet-fully-explained American military operation in January 2026 that ended with the capture of Venezuela’s authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro.
To a certain kind of skeptic, this sequence of events—courtroom victory for a major Republican donor, followed swiftly by a geopolitical coup—looks less like serendipity and more like a meticulously laid plan. It is the kind of coincidence that begs for a whistleblower.
Enter Lisa McCormick, an anti-establishment Democrat now mounting a primary challenge against New Jersey’s senior senator, Cory Booker.
McCormick, an unabashed progressive who captured a stunning 38% of the primary vote against the scandal-plagued Bob Menendez in 2018, trades not in whispered innuendo but in rhetorical cannon fire.
In her view, the Citgo acquisition is not a legalistic footnote but a scandalous climax, a “political giveaway” greased by connections and cash.
She offers a theory as explosive as it is unproven: that former President Donald Trump informed Singer of the United States’ plans for Maduro, turning a complex legal judgment into what she calls a “crooked connection” of the highest order.
To McCormick, this episode is not an isolated incident but a diagnostic symptom.
It is proof, she argues, of a system where billionaires are not makers of wealth but takers of it, where “sixty percent of their wealth is from inheritance, monopoly power, or crooked connections”.
Her campaign’s central plank is a promise as stark as it is simple: to “abolish billionaires” by capping personal wealth at $100 million.
It is a direct and deliberate affront to the economic architecture that has funded the political career of her opponent.
For Booker, the Singer-Citgo affair lands with an uncomfortable thud, landing squarely on a long and complicated history.
The Singer family, both Paul and his wife Linda, were among the many Wall Street financiers who backed Booker’s early ascent, contributing the maximum allowable donation to his 2010 campaign for mayor of Newark.
The Singers were part of a constellation of private equity and hedge fund luminaries—including Bain Capital partners and the Republican megadonor Julian Robertson—who collectively poured over $565,000 into Booker’s first mayoral race alone.
Booker, subsequently, has been the top beneficiary of Wall Street money in Congress.
This financial affinity found its most famous expression in 2012, during President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign. When Obama’s team launched a populist broadside against Mitt Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital, labeling him a “vulture capitalist,” it was then-Mayor Cory Booker who rushed to the defense of the shamelessly greedy industry.
On NBC’s Meet the Press, Booker called Obama’s attacks “nauseating” and declared, “I’m not about to sit here and indict private equity.”
The remarks, which he later partially walked back, created a full-blown mutiny within the Democratic ranks and were gleefully seized upon by Republicans.
A top Obama adviser publicly called Booker “wrong”, but the damage to the party’s anti-Wall Street message was done.
Today, McCormick wields that 2012 moment as a blunt instrument.
“Booker defended vulture capitalism because he is addicted to Wall Street money,” said McCormick.
“Is he only pretending to be on our side,” she asks of the senator, “or is he such a complete loser that he could never stop Trump from winning elections, defying justice, implementing illegal policies, waging war, and confirming unqualified and disqualified appointees?”
Her question cuts to the core of a profound frustration simmering within the Democratic electorate.
McCormick frames the Singer-Citgo deal as the grotesque, logical endpoint of that philosophy.
This is not merely a New Jersey story. It is a microcosm of a national “anti-establishment moment” where a large majority of Americans believe the economy is rigged for the rich and that traditional politicians do not care about them.
From Colorado to North Carolina, progressive insurgents are challenging incumbent Democrats they deem too cozy with corporate power and too complacent in the face of Republican ascendance.
They argue that the party needs “battle-ready Democrats,” not those who “go along to get along.”
Booker’s record presents a complex profile for this moment.
He has been a reliable vote for progressive priorities, but has also taken stances that align with major New Jersey industries from which he has received significant support, such as pharmaceuticals. Booker was the only Democrat to support Senate confirmation of Charles Kushner as the American ambassador to France.
Booker also voted to confirm Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and Brooke Rollins for secretary of agriculture.
He pledged to forgo corporate PAC money in 2018, a vow McCormick contends his subsequent fundraising has contradicted.
The Singer connection, however, is the starkest juxtaposition: the senator who speaks of economic justice, and the billionaire donor whose fund’s victory in court has been denounced by the Venezuelan government as “fraudulent” and exploitative.
In the end, the voters of New Jersey’s Democratic primary, set for June 2, 2026, face a choice that is both philosophical and deeply personal.
It is a choice between a polished national figure who has mastered the art of fundraising within the system, and a grassroots insurgent who declares that the system is irredeemably corrupt.
It is a choice between incrementalism and revolution, between a senator backed by “four dozen billionaires” and a challenger who believes billionaires themselves should not exist.
The ultimate question, then, is not simply about Citgo or Cory Booker.
It is about what the Democratic Party believes itself to be.
Is it a vessel for sober, pragmatic governance that navigates within the existing channels of power and finance? Or is it, as its insurgent wing insists, the last best hope for tearing those channels down and building something new?
In the shadow of a captured oil company and a captured authoritarian, that question has never felt more urgent, or the answer more consequential. The people of New Jersey, and perhaps the nation, are waiting to hear the reply.