The available information about Barney Bornhoft (also known as Galen Barney Bornhoft) indicates a thoroughly secular professional identity. He is a failed politician, having lost a race for the Iowa Legislature in 2012, with support of only 39% of voters. At the time, the Iowa State Association of Counties referred to Bornhoft as a “Carroll businessman”, not a pastor.

Barney Bornhoft’s LinkedIn profile refers to him as the owner of Bornhoft Properties in Carroll, Iowa. Bornhoft Properties is a real estate investment company that buys homes, remodels them, and “flips” them, reselling at a profit. According to this LinkedIn profile, before he began investing in real estate, Bornhoft was a salesman at a business called Rodenbaugh’s Flooring America in Dallas, Texas. Bornhoft’s professional skills are listed as visual merchandising, retail, sales, customer service, merchandising, and inventory management.

There’s nothing at all in any records about Bornhoft having any professional experience or skill related to be being a pastor.

What’s not on Barney Bornhoft’s LinkedIn profile is his work in the early 2000s as an employee of Iowa Coolers and Equipment in Westside, Iowa. A ruling of an administrative law judge at the Iowa Workforce Development Unemployment Insurance Appeals Section found that, although Bornhoft was seeking unemployment benefits, he was ineligible to receive them because he had been fired for employee misconduct.

The judge found that Barney Bornhoft had falsely claimed to be President of Iowa Coolers and Equipment, and on that basis had attempted to make a business deal and exchange of confidential business information, “fraudulently entering into a joint venture with Tri-Coast Properties, while placing the employer’s interests in serious financial and legal jeopardy.”

The ruling chastises Barney Bornhoft, reading, “The Administrative Law Judge finds the actions discussed herein to be egregious. The claimant's conduct was a willful and material breach of the duties and obligations to the employer and a substantial disregard of the standards of behavior the employer had the right to expect of the claimant.”

There’s a great deal of information available about Barney Bornhoft. None of it suggests that he’s a pastor. So, why does Donald Trump’s Iowa Faith Leader Coalition list him as a pastor? In what sense, other than standing up to to perform a prayer at a small Trump rally in an Ankeny bar, is Barney Bornhoft a faith leader?