Trump Gaza Board Member Rowan Gave AIPAC Super PAC $1.5 Million While Group Targeted Pro-Palestine Candidates

Marc Rowan sits on two boards this year. One, appointed by President Trump in January, is tasked with deciding what happens to the land Israel has bombed in Gaza. The other is his own checkbook, and Federal Election Commission filings show where it has been pointed.

Since the start of 2026, the Apollo Global Management CEO has donated $1.5 million to the United Democracy Project, the super PAC aligned with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. The filings show two payments: $1 million in early March, as UDP ramped up spending against then-Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., a vocal critic of U.S. military support for Israel, and $500,000 on July 23.

That same day, July 23, UDP spent nearly $50,000 on campaign mailers in Michigan attacking Abdul El-Sayed, the progressive Senate candidate who has called for cutting military aid to Israel. In Missouri, the PAC spent another $100,000 on phone banking against former Rep. Cori Bush, who was challenging pro-Israel incumbent Rep. Wesley Bell. The Intercept reports it is not clear which specific efforts Rowan's money funded, and neither Rowan nor UDP responded to requests for comment.

El-Sayed went on to win his Democratic primary against Rep. Haley Stevens. Bush and Massie both lost.

Rowan's giving to UDP is not new. He made an initial $250,000 donation in 2022, the year the super PAC was founded, and more than quadrupled that giving by 2024, according to FEC records reviewed by The Intercept.

What is new is his seat on Trump's "Board of Peace," a UN-approved body charged with carrying out the administration's plan for postwar Gaza. At a February gathering of the board, Rowan described the devastated territory in developer's terms.

"The potential here is tremendous. This is not a problem of money or collateral. This is a problem with peace."

Raed Jarrar, advocacy director at Democracy for the Arab World Now, said the dual role raises a transparency problem. "Now he sits on a board that will decide Gaza's future," Jarrar told The Intercept. "Palestinians did not choose him, and neither did American voters. Americans and Palestinians alike deserve to know whose interests are actually being served."

Margaret DeReus, executive director of the pro-Palestine counterweight PAL PAC, which backed both El-Sayed and Bush, said Rowan's spending exposes the board's real function. "Marc Rowan has used his position to try to silence Palestinians and smear students protesting Israel's genocide," DeReus said, adding that his presence on what she called "Trump's corrupt board" lays bare a goal of continued displacement of Palestinians in Gaza.

According to The Intercept, Rowan also played a role in leadership changes at the University of Pennsylvania over the school's handling of Gaza protests and served as a White House consultant on higher education in 2025. Those roles, along with a reported billion-dollar-plus net worth and a past business consulting relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, are attributed to Intercept reporting and have not been independently corroborated here.