Michael Caputo

Michael Raymon Caputo (born March 24, 1962) is an American political strategist and lobbyist.

Caputo was born in 1962 in Buffalo, New York, where he spent the bulk of his early years in the region known as the Southtowns.

Caputo's early public relations work was in Hawaii while with the United States Army, which he joined directly after finishing high school.

In 1983, after leaving the Army, he enrolled at the University at Buffalo.

Caputo was employed by Republican politicians such as Congressman Jack Kemp.

Caputo was mentored by Roger J. Stone Jr. in political advisement, and became his personal driver.

He learned from Stone that political campaigns could be turned into wins for candidates if the public found them entertaining.

During the Reagan Administration, Caputo helped support the president's agenda in Central America.

He worked with Oliver North to foment propaganda as part of Reagan's public relations efforts in South America and in Central America.

After his work for the Reagan Administration he served as assistant director of the House of Representatives Gallery of the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Caputo established residence in Russia in 1994.

He worked for the Reagan Administration with Oliver North, and later as director of media services on the campaign for President George H. W. Bush in the 1992 United States presidential election.

He next worked for President George H. W. Bush as director of media services in Bush's campaign in the 1992 United States presidential election.

Caputo moved to Russia in 1994, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and was an adviser to Boris Yeltsin.

He served as president of The Florence Group from 1994 to 1999, and stated he "played a pivotal role in electing Boris Yeltsin to his second term as President of the Russian Federation."

Caputo was employed by a Moscow-headquartered subsidiary of Gazprom, Gazprom-Media.

He served as an adviser to Boris Yeltsin in 1995.

In his capacity as advisor to Yeltsin, he was employed with the United States Agency for International Development.

His task was to increase Putin's public relations standing, specifically his support level in the U.S. During his residence in Russia, he became a business partner and close friend of Sergey Petrushin on or about 1997.

He worked for Gazprom Media in 2000 where he worked on improving the image of Vladimir Putin in the U.S. He moved back to the U.S. and founded a public relations company, and then moved to Ukraine to work on a candidate's campaign for parliament.

He was contracted by Gazprom in 2000 to work for Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

He moved back from Russia to the U.S. late in 2000.

After returning to the U.S., Caputo was called by his former mentor Roger Stone, who convinced him to move to Miami Beach, Florida, and then Caputo founded his media advising company Michael Caputo Public Relations.

Caputo moved back to Europe in 2007 while advising a politician's campaign for parliament in the 2007 Ukrainian parliamentary election.

Caputo was campaign manager for Carl Paladino's failed 2010 bid for Governor of New York.

Caputo worked as the campaign manager for real estate businessman Carl Paladino's unsuccessful campaign in the 2010 election for governor of New York state.

During the campaign, Caputo was profiled by The New York Times, which described Caputo's "impish spirit and no-holds-barred campaign style" as a key factor helping Paladino, then a little-known figure, gain attention in seeking the Republican nomination for governor.

Paladino was supported at the time by the Tea Party movement, and in an interview with The New York Times, Caputo embraced the outsider nature of Paladino's bid: "This is a campaign of junkyard dogs, not pedigreed poodles. Carl knows the background of everyone who works for him. He knows that each of us comes to the campaign with warts. And he has his own warts. We don't hide anything."

Paladino explained his hiring choice of Caputo as campaign manager: "I'm facing some major demons here, and I needed someone who could go right back on top of them in a matter of minutes. You've got to let them know they are going to get punished."

Donald Trump hired Caputo in 2014 to launch an astroturfing campaign in support of his stalking-horse bid for the Buffalo Bills.

Caputo worked for the Donald Trump 2016 presidential campaign from November 2015 to June 2016, and was in charge of communications for New York.

He left the campaign after publicly supporting the removal of campaign manager Corey Lewandowski.

Caputo was investigated by the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence as part of its investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election.

While working in a top position in the HHS for the Trump administration, Caputo sought to change, delay, suppress and retroactively edit scientific reports on COVID-19 by the Centers for Disease Control that were deemed unflattering to Trump or inconsistent with Trump's rhetoric, and has accused CDC scientists of sedition.

In April 2020, Caputo was appointed as assistant secretary of public affairs in the Department of Health and Human Services in the Trump administration.

On September 14, 2020, Caputo posted a Facebook video in which he claimed, without evidence, that "there are hit squads being trained all over this country" to mount armed opposition to a second term for President Trump.

He also stated "You understand that they're going to have to kill me, and unfortunately, I think that's where this is going."

Two days later Caputo took a two-month medical leave.

Caputo said of himself that his physical health was in question, and his "mental health has definitely failed."

On September 24, it was announced that he had been diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma that had spread from his throat to his neck and head.