Republican gubernatorial candidates Rick Jackson and Vivek Ramaswamy appear to be entangled in the collapse of GloriFi, a bank aligned with the MAGA movement that slid into bankruptcy three years ago, according to the New York Times.

The startup, which planned to market credit cards made from the same metal used for shell casings, drew financial backing from a who's who of right-wing billionaires. Major investors included Peter Thiel, Ken Griffin and Jeff Sprecher, as well as two Republicans now vying to be governors — Vivek Ramaswamy in Ohio and Rick Jackson in Georgia, the Times reported.

The company imploded swiftly, filing for bankruptcy just months after launching its website.

Amid what the Times describes as an avalanche of litigation, and aggrieved creditors, Jackson saw an opportunity. He poured millions more last year into what remained of the defunct company, pursuing an audacious plan to turn his GloriFi bet into a winner by positioning himself at the center of an ongoing legal clash involving more than half a dozen Republican billionaires.

As a result, Jackson — now a candidate for governor of Georgia — decides who gets sued and who does not, according to the Post. It is an overlap of private financial control and a bid for statewide office — the kind of arrangement from which conflict-of-interest questions arise, regardless of how the litigation itself turns out.

Norm Eisen, who served as White House ethics counsel and reviewed the list of creditors, said the arrangement raises serious ethical concerns.

“Not in a million years would I have allowed anybody in government to maintain this kind of arrangement because of the extreme danger of a conflict” of interest “or the appearance of a conflict,” Eisen said, calling it “one of the craziest things I've ever seen.”

He noted that some creditors “could be seen as susceptible” to pressure from a governor and recommended structural safeguards. “You need to completely separate and appoint an independent trustee to manage this. And you screen yourself off so you don't have an actual conflict or the appearance of a conflict,” he said.

Contacted by the Times, the Jackson campaign would not say whether he would scale back his litigation efforts if elected governor of Georgia. The Ramaswamy campaign did not respond to the newspaper's questions. How — or whether — either candidate would separate himself from his GloriFi ties in office therefore remains an open question in both gubernatorial races.

GloriFi is not the only MAGA-aligned business to falter since its creation. Like others, it emerged in the aftermath of the first Trump administration, targeting “people focused on faith, freedom and free enterprise that felt left behind and ignored by liberal Wall Street companies,” according to the Times. Founder Toby Neugebauer, a Texas billionaire and Republican donor, worked with Nick Ayers, Mike Pence's former chief of staff, to assemble investors, the Times said. He brought on podcaster and conspiracy theorist Candace Owens to help pitch the company.

The bankruptcy litigation has swept in a roster of Trump-supporting billionaires, including Joe Lonsdale, a Trump ally, and Joe Ricketts, the founder of TD Ameritrade and a Republican megadonor, per the Times.

Another litigant is major investor Jeff Sprecher, who chairs the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange and is married to Kelly Loeffler, the former Georgia senator who heads the Small Business Administration.