Ramaswamy Campaign Paid Bodyguard After His Arrest for Possession of “Enough Fentanyl To Kill 132,000 Ohioans”

Ramaswamy Campaign Paid Bodyguard After His Arrest for Possession of "Enough Fentanyl To Kill 132,000 Ohioans"

New reporting from TiffinOhio.net reveals how Vivek Ramaswamy's campaign "paid $14,000 to its contracted security firm in the weeks after the firm's employee - Ramaswamy's personal family bodyguard - was arrested on federal fentanyl trafficking charges."

The bodyguard was found with an amount of fentanyl that "yields an estimated potential death toll of approximately 132,000," yet the Ramaswamy campaign paid the firm $12,000, "9 days after the arrest."

"As families across Ohio have been devastated by the opioid epidemic, it is absolutely abhorrent that Vivek Ramaswamy's campaign would pay thousands of dollars to one of the criminals responsible," said DGA spokesperson Izzi Levy. "Ohioans need a governor who will take this crisis seriously, not a con-man who will give a pass to the monsters importing drugs onto their streets."

Read more below:

TiffinOhio.net: Ramaswamy kept paying security firm after bodyguard arrested with enough fentanyl to kill 132,000 Ohioans

• Campaign finance records filed with the Ohio Secretary of State show Vivek Ramaswamy's gubernatorial campaign paid $14,000 to its contracted security firm in the weeks after the firm's employee - Ramaswamy's personal family bodyguard - was arrested on federal fentanyl trafficking charges.

• Justin Salsburey, 43, of Bellefontaine, was arrested… on charges of conspiracy to distribute and possession with intent to distribute fentanyl and methamphetamine. According to federal court documents, the couple allegedly received 261 suspected drug parcels through the U.S. mail between August 2024 and December 2025. A search of their home on Dec. 30 turned up 264 grams of fentanyl pills, 938 grams of methamphetamine pills and 19 grams of MDMA…

• … one kilogram of fentanyl has the potential to kill 500,000 people. Applied to the 264 grams recovered at Salsburey's home, that ratio yields an estimated potential death toll of approximately 132,000…

• Despite the arrest, the Ramaswamy campaign continued paying ARK Protection Group. According to Ohio Secretary of State campaign finance records, the campaign paid ARK $12,000 on Jan. 8, 2026 - 9 days after the arrest and the same day the story became widely reported.

• Ohio recorded 4,452 unintentional drug overdose deaths in 2023, according to the Ohio Department of Health - a 9% decline from 4,915 in 2022. Fentanyl was involved in 78% of those deaths.

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