Preston Marshall

Preston Marshall who was involved in high-profile lawsuits over his family’s estate with Anna Nicole Smith, pleaded not guilty to assaulting his wife in February 2018. His wife, Anastasia Marshall, has initiated divorce proceedings. Marshall has been on the Cato Institute board since 2012, when he was appointed with the support of Charles and David Koch, who are major Cato funders. While his criminal case and divorce have been pending, Preston Marshall has remained on the boards of institutions including Cato and the Institute for Energy Research, a Washington-based nonprofit research organization funded largely by the energy industry. Marshall resigned last October from the board of the Kinkaid School, a prestigious private school in Houston. Marshall’s mother, Elaine Marshall, is the largest minority shareholder in Koch Industries. She and her late husband inherited the valuable stake from James Howard Marshall II, the late husband of Anna Nicole Smith. Elaine Marshall and her husband were for years involved in a legal battle with Smith, and later the executor of Smith’s estate, over the inheritance. Smith, a model and actress who died in 2007, married James Howard Marshall II in 1994, when he was 89 and she was 26. He died the following year.