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Whistleblower Prepares for GOP Senate Run
L OCA L
JESSE BERNSTEIN | JE STAFF
EVERETT STERN, the
founder and CEO of a private
intelligence agency who came to
prominence as a whistleblower,
announced his candidacy for
Sen. Pat Toomey’s soon-to-be-
vacant seat on Feb. 15.

Stern is running “to make a
significant, positive difference,
fight corruption and to clean
house,” he said. “I’m seeing
these other people I’m running
against, and they’re simply
disgusting.” Stern, 36, understands that
he’s an outsider candidate,
and that any electoral success
for him would be “a stunner.”
His last campaign for Senate,
in 2016, was as a write-in
candidate, and ended without
making much noise.

difficult journeys before. He’s
betting that those same forces
will win out again.

“When people hear me and
they hear me speak, they’re
going to hear my sincerity,
they’re going to hear that I am
the real deal,” he said.

Stern was 25 in 2010 when
he took a job with HSBC, a
major multinational bank.

Stern was added to the bank’s
recently expanded anti-money
laundering program as a
compliance officer and was
based in New Castle, Delaware.

What Stern found during
the year-plus that he worked at
HSBC was fraud and malfea-
sance on a massive scale.

Stern discovered that suspi-
cious transactions weren’t
being properly investigated
and, when he tried to bring
it up to his superiors, he was
discouraged from pursuing
money through its American
subsidiary to countries under
sanction by the U.S., like
Iran, Sudan and North Korea.

Eventually, HSBC was required
to pay a $1.92 billion fine and
further improve its anti-money
laundering practices
in exchange for a deferred prose-
cution agreement.

Stern said his experi-
ence at HSBC shaped his life
personally, professionally and
spiritually, and was the subject
of congressional reports,
magazine articles and an
episode of the Netflix televi-
sion series “Dirty Money.” It
was part of the process of his
becoming a “hardened fighter,”
he said, and set him on a
path that he intends to keep
walking. Running his intelli-
gence agency, Tactical Rabbit,
has made Stern a professional
whistleblower, by his under-
Everett Stern
Courtesy of Everett Stern for U.S. Senate
When people think ‘conservative,’ they think Jan. 6. They don’t think
what I’m talking about. [The U.S.] is really broken. The Republican Party is
destroyed right now. And I am here to unify it.”
EVERETT STERN
The Pennsylvania Republican
Party is opposed to his candidacy
and his insistence on attacking his
primary opponents, according to
Stern — “they aren’t interested in
seeing the sparks fly like this,” he
said. His positions on the regula-
tion of financial institutions buck
party orthodoxy, and though
he voted for Donald Trump in
the 2020 election, he supported
Hillary Clinton’s 2016 candidacy.

The PA GOP did not
respond to several requests for
comment. Stern promises to be a
relentless campaigner, and is
animated by a sense of duty
and belief in God that he said
has shepherded him through
4 APRIL 1, 2021
his findings. According to an
article in Rolling Stone, Stern
uncovered transactions that
were tied to groups like Hamas
and Hezbollah, and began to
pass along information to the
CIA and FBI, who initiated
their own investigations.

Though Stern left the
company in 2011, those federal
agencies were among several
that continued to investigate
widespread misconduct at
HSBC, Rolling Stone reported.

According to The New York
Times, HSBC was suspected
to have laundered money for
Mexican drug cartels and
Saudi banks with ties to terror-
ists, and to have transferred
standing. He hopes to bring
that same nose for corruption
and sense of justice to the
Senate. Regarding Trump, Stern
understands that the former
president remains a major
force in the Republican Party,
but hopes to use conservative
values as his “North Star,”
rather than any single person.

Though he believed in the
policies of the Trump admin-
istration, Stern said, he found
the man’s behavior “atrocious.”
“When people think ‘conser-
vative,’ they think Jan. 6. They
don’t think what I’m talking
about,” Stern said, referring to
the violent mob that stormed
JEWISH EXPONENT
HSBC Main Building in Hong Kong. Everett Stern’s experience at HSBC
shaped his life personally, professionally and spiritually.

gionnixxx / iStock / Getty Images Plus
the U.S. Capitol in a failed
attempt to overturn President
Joe Biden’s electoral victory
over Trump. The U.S. “is really
broken. The Republican Party
is destroyed right now. And I
am here to unify it.”
Stern, the son of a
Department of Veterans Affairs
doctor and a social worker,
was born in New York City
and raised in Florida. He is
a graduate of Florida Atlantic
University and earned an MBA
from Stetson University. In
addition to Tactical Rabbit,
Stern also runs Rabbit Alpha, a
hedge fund, and Rabbit Capital
Management. He lives in West
Chester and attends Chabad
Lubavitch of Chester County. l
jbernstein@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0740
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM