C Street: In the Beginning...
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The New Yorker called C Street “Frat House for Jesus.”
Bestselling author and journalist Jeff Sharlet wrote an entire book called “C Street.” The subtitle is “The Fundamentalist Threat to Democracy.”
It’s a three-story Washington, DC, townhouse just a couple blocks from offices of members of the House of Representatives. It’s been home to some of them, and even some senators, for roughly three decades. The Republican National Committee (RNC) headquarters is just around the corner.
I just revealed that Reps. Tom Suozzi (D-NY) and John Moolenaar (R-MI) are roommates at C Street, and upcoming reports will identify other residents. But even some of today’s political reporters may not understand the implications or even have heard of C Street.
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Fifteen years ago, every political reporter in Washington knew the C Street house. Millions of Americans knew who lived there, thanks to one, two, and then a third political sex scandal.
Since then, C Street has been eclipsed by more strident, undemocratic, Christian extremism. It’s been years since the public knew which of their representatives live there. Once, residents reportedly included South Dakota Republican John Thune, now the Senate majority leader, and Marco Rubio, now the secretary of state.
The secretive house, subsidized by dark money, is a Capitol Hill nexus for the group that runs it, the Fellowship Foundation (aka The Family) and the powerful politicians in their orbit. The Fellowship was even the subject of a Netflix documentary series, “The Family,” co-produced by Sharlet and based on his work.
As of 2024, according to a religious podcast at the time, ten members of Congress lived there. Half Republicans, half Democrats.
The Fellowship’s primary mission is relational: Sharing Jesus — not Christianity, they’ll tell you, but Jesus — around the world. The result of this work is to boost the right-wing ideologies most Fellowship insiders share, like bolstering the Ugandan politicians who enacted an LGBTQ+ death penalty. But most Fellowship work stays secret.
At C Street, the walls blur between church and state and personal life. Members of Congress meet with lobbyists and leaders, pray with each other, watch football together. It’s a convenient spot to hang out and, for a handful — while Congress is in session — to live.
Suozzi isn’t the only Democrat to take advantage of the convenience, camaraderie, and low cost of C Street residency. He’s definitely not the first Democrat to benefit from rents so low that an ethics watchdog says they may be illegal.
Then-Reps. Bart Stupak (D-MI) and Mike Doyle (D-PA) were named as residents in 2003, by the Associated Press. At the time, the C Street Center had barely begun its scandals.
The history of the property itself is messy, marbled with a literary sense of irony. Built in 1880, it was once a convent, once an environmental group’s headquarters, and once the offices of Public Citizen, a public-interest group that would later criticize the goings-on that followed after their departure.
The property first came into The Fellowship’s portfolio in the 1980s. Reportedly, Michigan millionaire Mike Timmis put up the money.
C Street’s Genesis
In his 2022 memoir, Timmis wrote about Fellowship leader Doug Coe, now deceased, saving Timmis’s son from a life of dissoluteness and heavy-metal music by putting him on a path with Jesus over the course of just four days. Having already lost a daughter to suicide, there was little Timmis wouldn’t do for Coe.
At Coe’s request, Timmis mentored a young Moolenaar. He also bankrolled a Ugandan mission that became the cornerstone of The Fellowship’s work there. The Fellowship liaison there helps with the Ugandan National Prayer Breakfast, run by parliamentary prayer group leaders who passed the LGBTQ+ death penalty into law.
Coe told Timmis that his own sons — Tim and David Coe — and their college buddy, Marty Sherman, could use help starting their ministry in Washington. So Timmis, according to the New Yorker, bought a nonprofit called C Street Center, which owned the townhouse where Tim, David, and Marty would start their ministry.
A new House rule on travel allowances made weekly commutes more feasible for members, and hundreds sought part-time accommodations in DC. The New Yorker reported that Doyle was among the first to move in, along with Reps. Steve Largent (R-OK) and Zach Wamp (R-TN) and Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK). Stupak followed soon after.
As early as 1994, then-Rep. Tony Hall (D-OH) was using the C Street house as the address for his Congressional Hunger Center. (The Fellowship doesn’t get much credit for its good works, especially a focus on third-world hunger, in part because of the proselytizing that accompanies it.)
The Rev. Rob Schenck told me that C Street was recommended to him almost instantly after he arrived in Washington in 1994 with a mission of ministering to members of Congress. At the time, he was on the road to Christian nationalism, a road he has since renounced and for which he has sought to make amends.
“You're gonna need everybody over there,” an evangelical Hill aide told Schenck. “You gotta get over to C Street.”
That aide, Ed Buckham, was chief of staff to then-Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX) (and most recently to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) before she left). Schenck got over to C Street.
“It was a hub of Christian activity for not just members of Congress, but other influential officeholders,” Schenck said. “Frequently I saw Ed Meese,” who had been Pres. Ronald Reagan’s ethics-challenged attorney general. “He was almost a constant presence there.”
According to the Associated Press, Wamp was one of the Fellowship insiders who set up living arrangements at C Street in 1997. As of 2000, the AP reported that four Republicans and three Democrats lived there.
Schenck said Wamp was “fully engaged, in the operations of not just C Street, but fully engaged in Fellowship activities.”
Wamp claimed to the AP that the C Street setup “leads to civility, that leads to tolerance, that leads to good governance.”
(Much like the National Prayer Breakfast has yet to unify the country through prayer, history has not been kind to Wamp’s claims about C Street and civility. Wamp himself called me a “snake” in 2023 after I asked for comment about the breakfast.)
At El Salvador’s prayer breakfast this year, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) — who reportedly has lived at C Street — said, “When we meet every Tuesday night, we cease to be senators or congressmen. We cease to be Republicans or Democrats. We gather as children of Jesus, as brothers and sisters in Jesus.”
Lee is known for distinctly different behavior outside the setting of C Street’s Tuesday dinners.
The Los Angeles Times reported on C Street’s ties to The Fellowship in 2002, along with the fact that C Street was technically a church. The Fellowship likes to downplay the ties, which are easier to hide behind the legal opacity afforded to churches.
One Fellowship associate — a sort of pseudo-employee who funnels donations from benefactors through Fellowship administrators — told Roll Call in 2010 that The Fellowship doesn’t own C Street.
“It isn’t owned by us. It has kind of a different agenda,” Stan Holmes said. “I don’t have meetings there. … We don’t provide funds for it. There is no official link, though we are clearly relationally linked.”
They remain relationally inextricable today.
Landlords of The Lord
The property is still owned by the C Street Center. But the C Street Center is now run entirely by Fellowship people. Washington tax records list Sherman as its beneficial owner and Tim Coe as one of three directors. The others are Timmis and Denny Pearce, a Houston businessman who sat on the Fellowship board from 2003 through 2017.
They’re all Republican donors, with the few exceptions being donations to a handful of Democrats connected to The Fellowship.
Sherman’s federal donations are exclusively Republican, with most — $1,000 worth years ago — going to Rep. Tracey Mann (R-KS), who’s spent much of his adult life in The Fellowship. Tim Coe also gave mostly to Mann, $500 in 2009. The previous year, he gave $200 to the Senate campaign of former Rep. Jim Slattery (D-KS), a longtime Fellowship insider and now a lobbyist who still helps lead the breakfasts.
Pearce, the Houston businessman, has made more than 100 federal donations. They go all the way back to 1989, with $1,925 to support then-Sen. Phil Gramm (R-TX), whose financial deregulation would later contribute to the global economic meltdown of 2007/2008.
In 1992, Pearce gave $500 to former Rep. Mark Siljander (R-MI), vying to return to Congress. Siljander is probably best known for his later conviction on charges related to lobbying for an Islamic group with terrorist ties, which allegedly paid Siljander via a $25,000 check to The Fellowship.
(Trump’s 2020 pardon of Siljander was pushed by Meese and prayer breakfast emissary Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-AL).)
Pearce also donated to former Rep. Bob McEwen (R-OH), a Fellowship ally who’s now executive director of the far-right Council for National Policy.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, Pearce started off backing Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI), then Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), and finally Trump, who got Pearce’s support again in 2020 and 2024.
Democratic donations in the federal records on Pearce include Slattery and the successful 2000 Senate campaign of then-Rep. Bill Nelson (D-FL). Nelson and his wife have for decades helped The Fellowship in its work. As I revealed in 2024, The Fellowship helped their son get off easy after one of several drunken encounters with the law.
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Pearce’s 2008 donation to Slattery was his last to a Democrat.
Timmis, too, is a prolific Republican donor, going back even further.
In 1979, Timmis gave $500 to John Connally, the former Democratic governor who had switched parties and was seeking the Republican presidential nomination. Timmis also gave to Siljander and Gramm.
Timmis supported political organizations opposed to reproductive rights, as well as campaigns of then-Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) and then-Sen. John Ashcroft (R-MO), who both had deep ties to The Fellowship.
Like the other C Street officials, Timmis’s Democratic donations went to Fellowship insiders, in his case, Stupak, a rare Democrat opposed to reproductive rights. Not surprisingly, Timmis has donated at least $12,250 to Moolenaar, his protege.
And, of course, Timmis bought the building where Moolenaar and his Democratic friend, Suozzi, pay only $800 a month.
Regardless of who technically owns it, The Fellowship runs it, has funded it, and supplies labor for its upkeep.
The L.A. Times described the building as having 12 bedrooms, with plenty of other rooms, a chapel among them, along with five living rooms. Descriptions since then have varied, either due to error or shifting uses of different rooms.
Some accounts have mentioned large-screen TVs and a stained-glass window. And football. Football comes up a lot.
Fellowship attorney Chip Grange told the L.A. Times, “There are prayer meetings, fellowship meetings, [and] evangelical meetings." Grange said, "Our mission field is Capitol Hill."
C Street provided an off-campus space for congressional fellowship, but also Fellowship work, which includes networking. Seen through stained glass, though, networking can be hard to distinguish from lobbying.
The Rev. Louis Sheldon, who chaired the conservative Traditional Values Coalition, told the L.A. Times he met with West African ambassadors at C Street. “It’s a real hideaway for congressmen and senators and ambassadors,” he said.
Rent at the time began at $600, which covered not just lodging but housekeeping. Eight Fellowship college volunteers kept the place tidy and a "house mother" washed towels and linens.
Dirty Laundry
The Fellowship’s idea of accountability doesn’t involve third parties, let alone government or other institutions answerable to the public. Secrets stay secret. Even murderous dictators aren’t asked to do penance.
Which leads us to how C Street played at least a bit role in three political sex scandals.
Understandably, the journalistic focus was the politicians, all in the C Street circle. But the coverage — and even a Senate investigation — shed light on C Street’s dynamics.
A Senate Ethics Committee report identified the Coe brothers and Sherman — said collectively as one: TimDavidandMarty — as spiritual counselors at C Street. It also said they went beyond counseling Sen. John Ensign (R-OK), telling him to end his extramarital affair (with an aide’s wife), and actively worked to make the problem go away without it going public.
When it did go public, Ensign accused his betrayed aide of seeking a financial payoff for Ensign destroying his marriage and costing the couple their jobs (the wife worked for Ensign’s campaign). The Ethics Committee, however, concluded that the idea to pay off the staffer came from Tim Coe and Sherman.
The committee report described Tim Coe as “one of the spiritual leaders of the International Foundation, the organization that counseled Members of Congress and others at the C Street Center and organized the annual National Prayer Breakfast.” (“International Foundation” is a d/b/a for The Fellowship.)
The Fellowship considers itself a mechanism for accountability, but Sherman and the Coe brothers didn’t demand that Ensign tell the Ethics Committee what he’d done and face the committee’s accountability. Or the voters’ accountability. The Fellowship helped Ensign try to make it go away, the Senate report said.
There was also Rep. Chip Pickering (R-MI), in some accounts sounding as if he used C Street itself for his trysts. But it was Gov. Mark Sanford (R-SC) who shined the brightest spotlight directly on C Street, volunteering its name and details in an extraordinary press conference about his infidelity.
Fellowship accountability may also find expression in an anecdote Schenck tells about another member of Congress, then-Speaker Denny Hastert (R-IL). The two were introduced at C Street (which is more convenient for House members than for senators, given its location).
Schenck inferred that Hastert’s presence there wasn’t unusual, describing Hastert and the C Street crowd as “quite comfortable” with each other.
Hastert bought Schenck’s pitch to accept a Ten Commandments display for his Capitol office. At the presentation ceremony, Hastert gave a glimpse of his thoughts on accountability.
According to Schenck, Hastert referred to the Ten Commandments, saying, “You know, we're no longer held to these laws, because of God's grace.” Meaning: all bets were off after Jesus’s sacrifice redeemed human sin. A member of Schenck’s group responded, “Has anyone informed Mrs. Hastert of this?”
Some measure of accountability came for Hastert in 2016, when he was convicted of financial crimes intended to cover up his abuse of four boys 17 and younger while he was their wrestling coach decades earlier.
For a while, there were rumblings within The Fellowship that more transparency might allay suspicions about C Street. The recurring pushes for more transparency haven’t won out.
There were ethics complaints about the low rents for members of Congress, subsidized by C Street’s unknown donors. And a lawsuit. Members of Congress, after all, are required by law to disclose gifts.
There were, around the same time, Sharlet’s remarkable accounts about The Fellowship supporting Christian Ugandan politicians pushing for an anti-LGBTQ+ death penalty.
Protesters called on Pres. Barack Obama to boycott the National Prayer Breakfast. He didn’t, but he did lecture the event.
It reached a point where even Doug Coe, the Fellowship leader, gave public interviews.
The Fellowship denied supporting the death penalty for LGBTQ+ Ugandans. Unaddressed was the bigger issue, that The Fellowship would support and aid allies who did. But not those who spoke out of school.
After Schenck cooperated with Sharlet, his relationships with Fellowship insiders cooled.
“It was so secretive,” Schenck told me. While the National Prayer Breakfast gave Fellowship publicity-hounds the spotlight once a year, C Street offered shadow every day.
Despite the secrecy — and the nonpartisan façade of the breakfast, the C Street house, and The Fellowship itself — the politics were unmissable.
Evangelical right-wing crusader Franklin Graham has been a reliable Fellowship supporter.
Both of his organizations routinely gave to The Fellowship1. As recently as 2019, one Graham organization gave $50,000 to The Fellowship but listed the address as the C Street address.
GOP megadonor Ronnie Cameron has given millions, as well as serving on the board, which still includes one of his executives.
Timmis’s family foundation in its most recent disclosure lists $11,500 to two Fellowship entities.
And it’s not hard to see why Republicans support The Fellowship.
The Fellowship’s global network nurtures the notion that politics and governance should be undergirded by Christianity — or Jesus, they would say. Sharlet recounted any number of foreign leaders carrot-and-sticked into right-wing politics and Protestant Christianity.
In response to my reporting about Rep. Juan Vargas (D-CA) legitimizing the National Prayer Breakfast in Ukraine, a European LGBTQ+ advocacy group issued an intelligence briefing to congressional Democrats explaining what their support for The Fellowship does.
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The Fellowship does the same thing in the U.S.: Shift national politics, and individual politicians, to the right.
In 2003, Fellowship board member Richard Carver, a former Air Force assistant secretary, told the Associated Press that the goal for C Street was to “assist” members of Congress “in better understandings of the teachings of Christ, and applying it to their jobs.”
Sharlet has reported on The Fellowship’s successful evangelization of African rulers and others, whether they came to Jesus genuinely or pragmatically. More recently, I revealed The Fellowship’s work bolstering right-wing theocrats in Central America, notably Guatemala and, just this year, El Salvador.
Sharlet also chronicled the political journey of Hall, a Fellowship Democrat who, Sharlet wrote, “in The Family's care, became pro-life, anti-gay rights, and simply confused about the separation of church and state.”
Schenck recalled Avon Williams III, a Pentagon official and Fellowship insider, reflecting that “Tony's getting better.”
The political transformations weren’t aberrations. “[T]he cultural tone of C Street,” Schenck said, “of course preferred Republicans in every way. In every way.”
The nonprofit that runs C Street hints at its objectives in government filings. Its mission statement says C Street seeks to:
“…establish, nurture, disciple, house, and equip a community of believers in Jesus who share a common calling to serve and show Biblical hospitality in the name and Spirit of Jesus to those who are living and/or working in the Capitol Hill community.”
Those who live there, the filing says, are “committed to making themselves and the C Street Center available to serve the Capitol Hill community in the name and Spirit of Jesus.”
Some Fellowship Democrats even fight for Fellowship Republicans in their campaigns, or lay down their arms.
Stupak supported Wamp’s campaign. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO) refused to back a Democrat running against a Fellowship Republican.
At last year’s prayer breakfast, Brownback discussed Slattery, the former Kansas Democrat turned lobbyist. Brownback joked, not dishonestly, “I’ve been trying to get him to be a Republican for years.”
The Fellowship has a history of insiders masquerading as something they’re not. “Messianic Muslims” in The Fellowship, for instance, don’t publicly convert to Christianity. They preserve their community standing by remaining nominally Muslim, while still pursuing Fellowship ends.
Similarly, The Fellowship needs at least token Democrats who are nominally still Democrats. Their involvement is vital to The Fellowship’s work.
Attending a bipartisan- and therefore official-seeming Potemkin breakfast, The Fellowship’s far-flung guests can pass the cost of attending on to their taxpayers.
In 2020, Australian Member of Parliament David Hodgett got reimbursed for about $8,000 in expenses “to attend the 68th Annual National Prayer Breakfast with The President of the United States and other national leaders in the Executive, Judicial and Legislative Branches of the United States government,” he said in a filing. His meetings included Fellowship members of Congress — Moolenaar, Suozzi, Coons, and Aderholt — and even Stan Holmes.
Most people don’t know it, but the multi-day annual breakfast event isn’t the only time The Fellowship serves breakfast to Congress. Members of both parties gather every week they’re in session for The Fellowship’s prayer breakfasts on Capitol Hill. Unlike the annual breakfast, these aren’t televised.
Breakfast on the Hill
While still in Congress, Hall told Politico in 2009, the weekly prayer breakfasts held in the House itself were “probably some of the best moments I had during the week” because they “closed the doors.”
Those breakfasts also open doors to C Street and The Fellowship.
Doyle, the Pennsylvania Democrat, told the AP in 2003 that he moved into C Street in the late 1990s after getting involved with The Fellowship through its weekly prayer breakfasts.
Hall said even staffers were barred from the breakfasts, let alone reporters. “[N]obody from the outside, only members.” That’s not exactly gospel.
In 2023, Wamp reminisced about the late Jordanian politician Aqel Biltaji, “a friend of this Fellowship,” bringing Jordanian royalty to the weekly House prayer breakfasts.
Other Fellowship insiders are involved.
Look at the National Prayer Breakfast Foundation’s biography for board member Stan Holmes:
“He has been connected to the US Senate and House Prayer Breakfast Groups since 1981. He has traveled to over 60 countries with or on behalf of the Members of Congress who meet weekly in the Breakfast Groups, maintaining relationships in over 100 countries.”
What qualifies Holmes to be involved in congressional prayer breakfasts? Or to travel on behalf of members of Congress?
Holmes is a Fellowship associate, according to prayer breakfast spreadsheets I obtained. A Fellowship source told me years ago that Holmes was thick with Aderholt.
Like other Fellowship insiders, Holmes has helped place people inside congressional offices, including a Fellowship chief of staff in the office of then-Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-OK) who helped hush up Fellowship connections to his campaign-finance scandal.
Who else does The Fellowship have inside the weekly Capitol Hill breakfasts?
After the 2023 National Prayer Breakfast, Croatian tennis impresario Feliks Lukas outed one as Bill Wall, “leader of the Senate and U.S. House Prayer Breakfast Group.”
Like Holmes, Wall is a Coloradan, but Wall is also a businessman, who’s tried his hand at various athletic licensing companies. The defunct XPTees, for instance, “strives to tell people about Christ and the love he have for us through Apparel such as t-shirts, hoodies, jackets, and hats.”
For some reason, Wall has traveled with Aderholt, like Holmes, and attended meetings with foreign officials (on trips The Fellowship helped fund) to meet with like-minded Fellowship allies in other governments.
Whether Wall or Holmes use the weekly prayer breakfasts to shepherd members of Congress downhill to C Street, those members continue today using the secretive townhouse for personal fellowship. And for the people’s business.
Today
Despite past scandals, or because they blew over, members of Congress still hold work-related meetings in the privacy that C Street affords them. Some of these meetings are revealed through disclosures made under sometimes stricter rules of other governments.
There was Australia’s Hodgett, for instance, holding meetings around the 2020 National Prayer Breakfast.
In 2023, when Mike Gallagher was still a member of Congress, chairing the select committee on China’s influence, he requested a meeting with Australian diplomats at C Street, another Australian government filing says.
According to that filing, Gallagher requested a meeting for June 13, 2023, at 7:15pm at the C Street house address. That was a Tuesday, traditionally the night of the house’s weekly group dinner.
The agenda for that meeting, with Australian Ambassador Kevin Rudd, according to a briefing package for Rudd, says, “Recommend no social media.” Secrecy.
The briefing treats C Street and The Fellowship as synonymous. And political.
“The Fellowship, known as ‘C-Street’ for its Capitol Hill location, is a US-based non-profit religious and political organisation. Its stated purpose is to provide a fellowship forum for decision makers to attend various religious activities, including bible study and prayer meetings. It sponsors the annual National Prayer Breakfast each February in DC where every president since Eisenhower has attended at least once. With this exception, the Fellowship avoids the spotlight. We understand membership includes Republicans and Democrats of various Christian persuasions. It also has a broad international network.”
That’s pretty accurate, as far as it goes. It elides The Fellowship’s partisanship, but confirms that C Street was still the “Capitol Hill location” of The Fellowship’s “broad international network” as recently as 2023.
(That network includes Australia’s Jock Cameron, who as a Fellowship associate in 2016 invited Rudd to that year’s U.S. National Prayer Breakfast, when Rudd held no public office, according to guest spreadsheets I obtained several years ago.)
The 2023 Rudd-Gallagher meeting apparently wasn’t about fellowship or football. The Australian briefing was released in response to a request for records about “discussions with members of the United States Congress concerning AUKUS2, proposed Australian procurement of Virginia-class (SSN-774 class) submarines, and/or the United States submarine industrial base.”
In the days after the meeting, Gallagher backed legislative language, as one released document said, “allowing Australian contractors to work in American submarine shipyards.”
The following year, Gallagher joined military contractor Palantir as head of defense3. C Street kept going, with The Fellowship, prayer breakfasts, and lobbying.
The Kenyan Lobby
Schenck told me he remembers “ambassadors being in the mix” back when he knew C Street, especially in early February, when diplomats came to Washington for the prayer breakfast. “[I]t was an anchor for all of that activity, for guests who were in town and certainly foreign delegations of different sorts.”
An internal Kenyan government report last year suggests that’s still the case.
For years, Kenya has sought U.S. reparations for al Qaeda’s 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassy in Nairobi that killed 213 people. A 2025 Kenyan filing with the U.S. Justice Department included a Kenyan government report portraying C Street as still a known hub for international lobbying.
The chair of the Kenyan Senate committee seeking U.S. compensation reported that the 2024 prayer breakfast offered an effective alternative after normal channels failed.
“…though the Committee was unable to secure appointments with the US Ambassador to Kenya and with the US Congress, [Kenyan] Sen. Daniel Maanzo and I were able to attend the National Prayer breakfast at Washington DC where we were able to meet various Senators and Congressmen and put forward our case.”
The Kenyans got those congressional meetings not via the State Department, which offers guidance for these things, but via The Fellowship, which has its own guidance. The meetings took place on Capitol Hill, but also at the Washington Hilton, where National Prayer Breakfast events take place before and after the breakfast itself. At least one meeting was held at the C Street house.
Beforehand, a Kenyan senator briefed the delegation “that the Prayer breakfast will provide a good platform for the [Kenyan] Members to lobby.”
The suggestion was: “[U]se the opportunity to get Sen. [Chris] Coons [D-DE] agree to sponsor the amendment and also to host Sen. Cory Booker [D-NJ].”
Coons was a longtime Fellowship insider and one of its few public Democratic faces, at least until this year. He wasn’t the only Fellowship insider described as helpful.
Fellowship associate Sam Owen is a longtime Nairobi resident who runs the Kenyan prayer breakfast and was known, a Fellowship source once told me, as “Mr. Kenya.” He also appears in Timmis’s book. The Kenyans reported meeting with Owen in Virginia, on the Monday before the 2024 U.S. prayer breakfast.
Owen, the report said, would “arrange for the [Kenyan] Senators to meet their [U.S.] counterparts.” The first meeting was at C Street.
Whether it was through Timmis originally, or someone else, Owen apparently had an in with Moolenaar or Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS), a longtime Fellowship insider, because that’s who the Kenyan delegates met with at C Street. The Kenyans gave the two a “legislative brief” on their pitch.
The next day, Jan. 31, the U.S. prayer breakfast events had begun, sprawling through the Hilton with breakout sessions and seminars and closed-door meetings.
The Kenyans got in to the International Women’s Coffee, “requesting” the support of congressional spouses, including the wives of Fellowship insiders Mann and Tim Walberg (R-MI), who was still in the headlines for boosting Uganda’s president at that country’s prayer breakfast after blowback against the Anti-Homosexuality Act death penalty.
On the day of the breakfast, Thursday, Feb. 1, 2024, the Kenyans got followup meetings with more Fellowship insiders. They briefed Aderholt on the reparations issue in his office at 11am, shortly after the breakfast.
By 4pm, the Kenyans were back at the Hilton to meet with Coons and Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD). This time, the agenda expanded beyond compensation to trade. The Kenyans wanted to sell more tea and coffee in the U.S. and protect sales of textiles and fabric to the U.S.
In short, Kenyan politicians unable to get congressional meetings on their own turned Fellowship connections into meetings — at C Street, the prayer breakfast, and Capitol Hill — with four House members and at least three senators. None of it was public.
Regardless of the merit of their causes, there’s no reason to think special interests in the U.S. and elsewhere aren’t still working similar angles, networking their way to U.S. politicians through The Fellowship, out of the public eye. That’s what the New York Times found in its profile of the National Prayer Breakfast back in 2018.
And The Fellowship has multiple means of keeping U.S. politicians in its network. In previous decades, Democrats were publicly shamed into attending the prayer breakfast and displaying obeisance toward religion. C Street offers simpler incentives.
While there’s genuine fellowship among the residents, there are material benefits, too. Convenience is one.
There’s scarce lodging available so near Capitol Hill, let alone on a reliable, long-term basis, where you can leave your stuff or skip a month for campaigning or recesses.
C Street also has a “house mother” who oversees the logistics of the house. “The living accommodations include housekeeping services provided by eight college-age volunteers,” a 2010 complaint filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) said. Some live in single-sex houses near The Fellowship’s Arlington, VA, headquarters, The Cedars.
Sharlet told me he was at C Street at least once while still in The Fellowship’s good graces.
“Young men and young women,” Sharlet said, “would go over there, and the idea was: Isn’t this exciting for you, you get to meet a lot of members of Congress.” And pray with them.
Sharlet said, “The idea was that you would develop relationships and mentorships” while doing menial tasks for the members of Congress. Driving, maybe. “Serving coffee, like a waiter,” a luxury offered by few other rooming houses so close to the Capitol.
To provide this luxury, C Street has The Fellowship’s youth groups to draw from.
The National Student Leadership Forum (NSLF) is a Fellowship program that molds leaders in part by having them clean up after members of Congress. Mann, a former intern of Moran’s, went on to lead the NSLF. There’s also the Cornerstone Intern House.
In the June 2011 issue of Sojourners, Lucy Bryan Green described life as a young woman in this world. It included cleaning Ensign’s C Street bedroom, among other things:
“…scrubbing toilets, stripping beds, folding hospital corners on freshly cleaned sheets, polishing the brass knobs on either side of the entryway, cleaning air vents, vacuuming carpets, and wiping and waxing the considerable number of wood surfaces in the house.”
In turn, the interns could seek counsel from political and religious leaders on burning issues.
Schenck recalled one intern launching into “a very intense conversation about masturbation.” Was it a sin, the intern wanted to know. “He seemed really beset by it.”
C Street was also, Sharlet said, a way station for Fellowship leaders. “I ran into Doug there.”
Referring to Tim, David, and Marty, Sharlet said, “That was where those guys did some counseling.” And network-building.
Sharlet said, “The vibe is very much, ‘drop in all the time; let’s be in relationship.’” Oliver North would swing by.
Arguably, the biggest material advantage to living at C Street was money.
The rent was so low at C Street that CREW filed ethics complaints. A group of clergy sued.
Nothing came of it. C Street rents have barely budged. But one thing has changed.
New House rules mean Congress reimburses members for lodging during travel, including to Washington.
In theory, this should eliminate the low-rent temptation of C Street. However, those lodging reimbursements still come out of individual member budgets.
This means that the ones who can find low rents somewhere have more money left in their budget to pay for things other members might not be able to afford; more travel, or an extra aide.
It also means that now, if they get reimbursed, their lodging expenses are public.
Still Standing
House members don’t disclose where the rent goes, but the year-to-year consistency of C Street rates revealed itself in a data analysis done by some of my readers4.
Schenck told me that he heard directly from Suozzi that he lived at C Street and didn’t want people to know about it. But Suozzi’s and Moolenaar’s own remarks at events like the El Salvador National Prayer Breakfast confirm their C Street residency.
Between praising accused human-rights abuser President Nayib Bukele, and pushing the legislature to form their own prayer groups, Suozzi and Moolenaar discussed living together and sharing Tuesday night dinners, a ritual at C Street.
They didn’t talk about the advantages of renting from The Fellowship.
Back in 2010, C Street’s monthly rental rate of $950 was so scandalously low that a group of clergy pushed the IRS to investigate. The market rate was $1,700 at the time, they said.
In fairness, the members of Congress shared rooms at C Street, so they could have made the case that they were in that range. But that wouldn’t account for the free housekeeping and coffee. Not to mention utilities and other expenses.
Those include taxes. Although it’s legally a church, the C Street Center does pay some taxes on the residential spaces. The city decided only 34.37% of the property is tax-exempt, common areas ostensibly for religious use (it is definitely, however, not a church open to the public).
The New York Times reported that some C Street rents at the time were lower than $950, as low as $600 a month. Six-hundred dollars was a steal even back in 2010.
It’s also the same rate Moolenaar reported paying through the end of 2023.
In January 2024, rent at C Street bumped up to $800 each for Moolenaar and Suozzi. That’s where it stayed, the most recent disclosure report shows, through at least the end of 2025, despite rising energy bills that drove up housing costs for other people.
The Washington Department of Human Services pegs the fair market rent for a one-bedroom apartment in the C Street Center’s zip code at $3,020. Cutting that by half, since Suozzi and Moolenaar share a room, they’re still paying well under the $1,510 that’s half of fair market rent.
According to Craig Holman, a Public Citizen federal lobbyist on ethics, lobbying and campaign finance rules, “Government ethics as well as campaign finance laws require that goods and services provided to lawmakers by outside parties be provided at market value.”
That means C Street residents are legally obliged to disclose below-market rental rates, in addition to their reimbursement filings.
Holman told me that, “When rental properties are provided below market value, that quickly adds up to possibly exceeding the limits and may constitute illegal gifts or contributions.”
Holman is familiar with The Fellowship’s previous ethical issues. He knows the history well enough to know that his organization, Public Citizen, was once headquartered at the C Street house. Holman still refers to The Fellowship as The Family, the name The Fellowship shunned after Sharlet made them famous.
“The Family's dealings as providing room and board … has ever since been mired in controversy,” Holman said. “If The Family is also providing lawmakers with below market value rent, these controversies may go beyond scandal and into violations of law.”
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It’s not clear whether they still do. The disclosure forms for one Graham organization no longer list known Fellowship entities. Graham’s other organization changed its legal status to a church and no longer has to disclose its donations.
The Australian, United Kingdom, and U.S. security partnership.
Wamp previously worked for Palantir, but a source close to the company told me it’s been more than a decade since then.
Some months have no entries for lodging reimbursements, typically in easily explained circumstances, such as government shutdowns or when Congress is not in session or members tend to be out of town, such as August and December.
Everything about C Street sounds icky and sus. It also sounds homoerotic in the most unsexy way possible.
The things our tax dollars pay for are shocking. If I’m understanding this, we subsidize their housing because members of Congress are reimbursed for living expenses?
Boo-urns.