Tregarrick Taylor says his secret attorney told him to conceal $69,000 in travel gifts
Everyone needs a secret attorney and a mystery accountant like those telling former attorney general Tregarrick Taylor that if he doesn’t like a law he should ignore it.
They are the unknown experts who told the Republican candidate for governor that he did not have to reveal on his state disclosure forms that he received $69,000 in free travel in 2025 while he was AG.
He claims his undercover experts blessed his plan to conceal his world travels, which were largely paid for by groups and industries only interested in him because he was the Alaska attorney general.
It was all OK, the former general says, because he took vacation time from his job to fly business class to Rome with his wife, stay at the five-star Waldorf Astoria and tour the Vatican, a $22,643 tour. The Taylor also enjoyed a $21,101 junket to the Virgin Islands. There were business meetings and plenty of time for fun.
You don’t have to be an attorney general to understand that Tregarrick is wrong.
He got $50,000 in free travel from the “Attorney General Alliance” in 2025. And $19,000 from the Republican Attorneys General Association.
He revealed the donations on an ethics disclosure form that is almost never made public because no one asks for it. He excluded it on the disclosure form that is readily accessible to the public.
“I didn’t make this decision. It was a decision of the experts,” the hapless Taylor told the Anchorage Daily News. “They had the opinion that it wasn’t necessary. They had the opinion that I was overly disclosing.”
This is a brilliant legal strategy. The attorney general didn’t make the call. His so-called experts decided for him.
And more great news from the anonymous experts is that when Tregarrick was attorney general he committed overdisclosure in revealing the freebies given him as the state’s top lawyer.
They told him he was guilty of TMI when he mentioned his 2024 gift of an exclusive getaway to France and other trips.
He joined a 2023 junket to South Africa, which included a travel allowance of $26,000. Alaska pays about $10,000 a year for its AGA membership, the Northern Journal said.
“As part of your AGA membership, you are provided a travel scholarship to cover the cost of flight, lodging and meals for you and your guest during the delegation,” the 2023 guidance to AGA members said. “Each Attorney General has a $26,000 flight allowance. This allowance may be used for you and any guest(s) you designate, Flight arrangements must be made by Monday July 31, 2023,” the Daily Signal reported.
One of the flaws in Taylor’s TMI reports is that he did not list the exact charges, just a range. The state should require that the exact amounts of gifts be disclosed.
Taylor’s TMI experts are probably the same gurus who told him that the law requiring disclosure of the names of people who paid him more than $1,000 did not require their full names, so a first name and initial would suffice.
And no doubt the secret experts also told him to not worry about the state law that said he could not give more than $5,000 to his own campaign in the final days before the primary.
I can’t imagine how much it would cost to get such brilliant advice to avoid overdisclosure. Surely it’s not Dewey, Cheatem & Howe?
The only question I have is why the former attorney general is afraid to reveal the names of his advisers?
Perhaps he is worried they will be overrun with new clients throwing money at them?
Or maybe, to steal a line from Rod Serling, the experts exist only in that wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination?
Without her coverage it would not have come to anyone’s attention.
“This looks like a vacation, but this is a snapshot of how lobbyists and lawyers pay for access to your top state leaders,” is how CNN reporter Kyung Lah put it, showing Taylor and other attorneys general getting off a bus to visit the Vatican with industry lobbyists.
Industries donate money to the Attorney General Alliance, which in turn uses the money to pay for attorneys general to take junkets and hold conferences. Most of the transactions are secret because of limitations in tax law.
“Lobbyists essentially fund these trips,” Christopher Toth, former National Association of Attorneys General executive director, told the AP in 2024.
“They funnel the money through AGA, and then that insulates the AGs from being criticized that they’re taking money from lobbyists.”
Three years ago, as he retired as executive director from the NAAG, Toth took aim at the AGA for its secrecy and corporate dependency.
The NAAG gets most of its money from dues, while AGA relies on corporate sponsors.
“AGA is overwhelmingly dependent on corporate and lobbyist money for its activities. Dues only account for a very small share of its revenue. That means when you go on a delegation, some lobbyist or corporation is paying for that. When you have your room and airfare paid for, some portion of that is coming from someone you are investigating or suing,” he wrote to all state attorneys general and deputies.
The corporate donors “essentially buy programming,” he charged.
A 2020 report obtained by Axios listed various sponsorship levels. The biggest donors, those who gave the AGA $50,000 or more, qualified for the most access, including “invite-only events.”
He claimed that he didn’t have to mention because he was on vacation.
“He also said that he paid for his six children and one of their spouses to accompany him on the trip to Normandy, which they followed with a weeklong stay at an Airbnb on southern France’s Mediterranean coast to explore the Pyrenees, ‘since I’m already there,’” the Northern Journal quoted him as saying.
“Detailed documentation of Taylor’s alliance-paid trips — including travel confirmations and receipts for plane tickets — is not public because expenses covered by a third party do not need to be recorded, said Alan Birnbaum, a state attorney and public records specialist who handled a Northern Journal request to the Department of Law,” said the Journal, which has become merged into the Anchorage Press.
On the ethics disclosures that are usually kept secret because no one knows enough to ask for them, Taylor had to answer this question: “Are there circumstances in which it could reasonably be inferred that the gift is intended to influence the performance of official duties, actions or judgement?"
Taylor answered no every time, though the correct answer in each case is yes, the people who paid for Taylor’s travels were trying to influence him in the performance of his official duties.
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Tregarrick Taylor shown on a 2025 CNN report about the junket in Rome for the Attorney General Alliance.