Criminal probe targets PAC funded by charter school management company

Sep 15, 2026 | 3:41 pm ET

By Jerod MacDonald-Evoy

Criminal probe targets PAC funded by charter school management company

(Photo via Getty Images)

A political action committee founded by the head of one of Arizona’s largest charter school networks is facing a criminal investigation for allegedly violating campaign finance law by using funds from his company to donate directly to Republican candidates.

Glenn Way is the CEO of Charter One LLC and the chairman of the Educational Freedom Fund PAC, which contributed $25,500 to Republican candidates for the Arizona House of Representatives and Senate in the 2022 and 2024 elections.

Way founded American Leadership Academy charter school in 2009, and has since expanded it to 27 campuses in Arizona, six in North Carolina and three in South Carolina. Another of his businesses, Charter One LLC, is paid millions of dollars each year to manage the schools.

The complaint, filed in January 2025 by a law firm connected to Democrats and on behalf of a former school teacher, was forwarded to Attorney General Kris Mayes’ office by the Arizona Secretary of State last year, the Arizona Mirror confirmed via public records.

The Attorney General’s Office said its investigation into the Educational Freedom Fund is ongoing and declined to comment.

Corporate entities are banned from giving money to candidates, whether that is directly or by routing it through a PAC that could otherwise make direct contributions, according to state law. A violation is a class 2 misdemeanor for the organization making the donation and a class 6 felony for the individual who makes the contribution.

Campaign finance reports show that the PAC only had two contributors: Charter One LLC, which poured nearly $200,000 into the political committee, and Youssef Khalaf, who was the PAC’s treasurer and gave $9,000.

But the committee made $83,200 in direct candidate contributions, far more than the $9,000 that it received from Khalaf — a violation of Arizona’s ban on corporate political giving, the complaint alleged. The complaint was filed by Kerry Baker, a former teacher who served in the Paradise Valley Unified School District and works as an “organizational consultant” for the AEA.

In a response to the complaint, attorneys representing the PAC defended the contributions as legal — but said if they were, in fact, illegal, the blame lies squarely on Khalaf, who was fired as treasurer after the complaint was filed.

“Throughout the 2022 and 2024 election cycles, EFF’s former treasurer Youssef Khalaf was responsible for its compliance with Arizona campaign finance law, including reviewing and approving all the PAC’s receipts and disbursements,” the Educational Freedom Fund’s attorneys said in a letter to the Secretary of State’s Office responding to the complaint. “However, Mr. Khalaf inadvertently authorized EFF to make contributions to candidates using a portion of the funds received from Charter One, without requiring that the contributions be appropriately disclosed as the funds of Mr. Way.”

Khalaf, the attorneys for the PAC and the individual who made the complaint did not respond to repeated requests for comment on this story.

The PACs attorneys said the contributions to the GOP legislative candidates that came indirectly from Charter One shouldn’t be considered corporate money — even though the Educational Freedom Fund reported it as such — because any assets that Charter One has are really Way’s personal assets.

“Charter One is a single member LLC treated as a ‘disregarded entity’ for tax purposes. Although Respondents acknowledge that some of the contributions EFF made to candidate committees included funds received from a bank account maintained by Charter One, the Respondents believed the contributions were permissible at the time they were made,” they argued.

The attorneys also contend that the contributions were done this way mistakenly and they did not “intentionally make contributions in the name of another or otherwise try to circumvent Arizona’s campaign disclosure requirements.”

One Democratic elections attorney said that explanation doesn’t pass muster with the law.

“If a corporation gives money to a PAC and if a PAC uses that money to contribute to a candidate, that’s unlawful,” attorney Jim Barton told the Arizona Mirror. “That’s pretty clear cut.”

Arizona law, which mirrors federal campaign finance law, prohibits LLCs from making contributions to candidate committees and also prohibits an LLC from evading this by using a PAC as an intermediary.

The committee made $1,000 donations to 25 Republican legislative candidates in 2022 and 2024.

Last Spring, after the complaint was filed, the Educational Freedom Fund fired Khalaf and hired a compliance firm connected with PACs that have also been accused of mishandling funds.

The committee’s attorneys argued that the proactive move to “strengthen their compliance” and prevent this issue again should be rewarded by dismissing the complaint.

While rulings like Citizens United gave corporations the ability to spend money on independent expenditures, election law still prohibits corporations from making direct donations or coordinating with campaigns, Barton said.

“Arizona law, and federal law, too, by the way, prohibits you from doing an end run around all that,” Barton noted.

In 2021, former Attorney General Mark Brnovich pursued two individuals for such violations in Kingman, Arizona.

The candidates the PAC contributed are: