Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.

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How the Murder of Mollie Tibbetts Shined a Light On the GOP’s Dark Money Propaganda Machine

What does the death of Mol­lie Tib­betts, an Iowa col­lege stu­dent mur­dered by an undoc­u­ment farm work­er in Iowa back in July, have in com­mon with down­fall of Amer­i­ca? Well, if you had asked Fox News or Pres­i­dent Trump in the days fol­low­ing the rev­e­la­tion that Mol­lie’s mur­der­er was ‘an ille­gal’, they would have told you ille­gal immi­gra­tion is what the mur­der and Amer­i­ca’s down­fall have in com­mon.

But then the real com­mon link between Mol­lie’s mur­der and the down­fall of Amer­i­ca was dis­cov­ered and the right-wing noise machine sud­den­ly stopped talk­ing about Mol­lie’s mur­der. Because that com­mon link turned out to be a per­son. The per­son who ille­gal­ly employed and housed for years Tib­betts’s mur­der­er. A per­son the Repub­li­can par­ty and the bil­lion­aires it works for would rather the Amer­i­can pub­lic not read about because she hap­pens to be one of the Repub­li­can Par­ty’s mas­ters of the dark arts of wield­ing ‘dark mon­ey’ in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics: Nicole Schlinger, an influ­en­tial Iowan Repub­li­can fundrais­er and an impor­tant fig­ure in a net­work of Repub­li­can polit­i­cal oper­a­tives who found­ed and oper­ate Amer­i­can Future Fund (AFF), a 501(c)(4) (‘social wel­fare’) polit­i­cal super PAC.

Nicole was AFF’s first pres­i­dent. And it turns out the sto­ry of AFF, which was start­ed in 2008, two years before Cit­i­zens Unit­ed, is the sto­ry of what was wrong with the US cam­paign finance sys­tem in the pre-Cit­i­zens Unit­ed era and the sto­ry of how it got much worse in the post-Cit­i­zen Unit­ed era.

The sto­ry of Amer­i­can Future Fund is also a sto­ry about how the mega-donor net­works oper­at­ed by the Koch broth­ers and Karl Rove were respon­si­ble for the vast major­i­ty of new ‘dark mon­ey’ flow­ing into the US polit­i­cal sys­tem post-Cit­i­zens Unit­ed. The right-wing donor net­works oper­at­ed by the Kochs and Rove have played a mas­sive role in that wors­en­ing post-Cit­i­zens Unit­ed sit­u­a­tion and Nicole Schlinger’s AFF was an impor­tant tool for both net­works in exploit­ing that wors­en­ing sit­u­a­tion. AFF pro­vides a full spec­trum of polit­i­cal ser­vices, but one of its most impor­tant ser­vices is oper­at­ing large­ly in the dark with­out the pub­lic know­ing what its doing and who hired it.

Schlinger also runs Cam­paign­HQ, a call-cen­ter busi­ness that pro­vides robo-call­ing and fundrais­ing ser­vices for a num­ber of the most anti-immi­grant GOP politi­cians today, from Ted Cruz to Corey Stew­art (the ‘Alt Right’ GOP guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­date in Vir­ginia this year). And in Ted Cruz’s and Corey Stew­art’s cas­es, Schlinger raised funds for them in their races this year. Keep in mind that Cruz was locked in an excep­tion­al­ly tight reelec­tion race this year when this sto­ry broke, so this the kind of sto­ry that could have had sig­nif­i­cant polit­i­cal ram­i­fi­ca­tions if it end­ed up mak­ing Cruz look like a hyp­ocrite who will defend the employ­ers of undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers when they’re rais­ing mon­ey for him. And Corey Stew­art straight up says in the first arti­cle below that he does­n’t real­ly care with Schlinger does “in her per­son­al life” as long as she’s good a fundrais­ing.

That’s all part of why the Repub­li­can Par­ty would like­ly pre­fer the Amer­i­can pub­lic remains in the dark about the sto­ry of Nicole Schlinger, her career as a Repub­li­can fundrais­er and offi­cer in dark mon­ey enti­ties like Amer­i­can Future Fund, and her propen­si­ty for hir­ing undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants. And in the con­text of the cur­rent fix­a­tion with­in the GOP today on ille­gal immi­gra­tion, the fact that a key Repub­li­can mas­ter of dark mon­ey pol­i­tics is the per­son who ille­gal­ly hired Tib­betts mur­der­er is a per­fect storm sto­ry for shin­ing a light on Amer­i­can’s dark mon­ey infra­struc­ture.

So when the right-wing noise machine sud­den­ly stopped talk­ing about Mol­lie’s mur­der short­ly after Nicole Schlinger’s name entered the sto­ry it’s hard to avoid the con­clu­sion that a desire to keep Schlinger’s per­son­al biog­ra­phy as a mas­ter of the dark mon­ey pol­i­tics out of the news. A biog­ra­phy that, again, real­ly is like the quin­tes­sen­tial sto­ry of how right-wing bil­lion­aire mon­ey has infest­ed Amer­i­can pol­i­tics.

That’s the sto­ry we’re going to look at in this post. The sto­ry of the Amer­i­can Future Foun­da­tion. It’s a sto­ry that over­laps with Schlinger’s life but has a life of its own. A sto­ry with the fol­low­ing key points:

1. AFF was start­ed in 2008 as a 501(c)(4) ‘social wel­fare’ non­prof­it, with Schlinger as its first pres­i­dent. But Schlinger was just one of the Iowan Repub­li­can pow­er bro­kers behind it. As we’re going to see, main­tain­ing the pre­tense of being a ‘social wel­fare’ non­prof­it is cen­tral to how dark mon­ey oper­ates in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics and AFF’s adop­tion of that ‘social wel­fare’ sta­tus is par­tic­u­lar­ly emblem­at­ic of the far­ci­cal nature of dark mon­ey enti­ties claim­ing ‘social wel­fare’ sta­tus.

2. By 2009, AFF was lob­by­ing the Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion (FEC) to weak­en state reg­u­la­tions on polit­i­cal robo-call­ing in antic­i­pa­tion of robo-call­ing cam­paigns explic­it­ly advo­cat­ing for and against politi­cians in the 2010 mid-terms. As we’re going to see, the rules for 501(c)(4)s for polit­i­cal attack ads that direct­ly advo­cate for or against a can­di­date require the dis­clo­sure of how much was spent on the ads but not who paid for them. And lack of donor dis­clo­sure require­ments is a crit­i­cal fea­ture of 501(c)(4)s that make them ide­al for let­ting bil­lion­aires inject mas­sive amounts of mon­ey in pol­i­tics anony­mous­ly.

3. AFF appears to be close­ly affil­i­at­ed with DCI Group, a shady Repub­li­can lob­by­ing firm known for tak­ing on clients like RJ Reynolds Tobac­co and the Burmese Jun­ta. AFF was con­tract­ing a DCI Group affil­i­ate in 2009 and both AFF and DCI Group were hired by Doral Finan­cial Group in 2014 to lob­by­ing the gov­ern­ment of Puer­to Rico.

4. Two of the key fig­ures behind the for­ma­tion of AFF were pre­vi­ous­ly asso­ci­at­ed two of the sleazi­est polit­i­cal attacks in mod­ern Amer­i­can pres­i­den­tial pol­i­tics: the hyper-racist Willie Hor­ton ad from 1988 used against Michael Dukakis and the ‘Swift­boat Vet­er­ans for Truth’ smear cam­paign used against John Ker­ry in 2004. Specif­i­cal­ly, Ben Gins­berg — the for­mer chief out­side coun­sel to the Bush-Cheney 2004 cam­paign who resigned after it was revealed that he was also pro­vid­ing advice to Swift Boat Vet­er­ans for Truth — was AFF’s legal coun­cil. AFF’s media strate­gist was Lar­ry McCarthy, the guy who pro­duced the 1988 Willie Hor­ton ad.
5. When the 501(c)(4) sys­tem was start­ed near­ly a cen­tu­ry ago, these ‘social wel­fare’ enti­ties were expect­ed to “exclu­sive­ly” focus on social wel­fare caus­es and avoid explic­it par­ti­san advo­ca­cy for or against politi­cians in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. But that was “exclu­sive­ly” rule was changed in 1959 to “pri­mar­i­ly” and sud­den­ly 501(c)(4) ‘social wel­fare’ enti­ties were allowed to spend up to half of their expen­di­tures on polit­i­cal attack ads. But that 50 per­cent cap can effec­tive­ly be raised to almost 100 per­cent via the use of net­works of affil­i­at­ed 501(c)(4)s all donat­ing to each oth­er. AFF can, and does, act as such a for-hire node in net­works of 501(c)(4)s.

6. 501(c)(4)s can run “Issue ads” — ads that don’t direct­ly advo­cate for or against a can­di­date — that don’t count as polit­i­cal attack ads. So a 501(c)(4) could spend half of its mon­ey on polit­i­cal attack ads advo­cat­ing for or against can­di­dates and spend the oth­er half on “issue ads” that are also indi­rect­ly advo­cat­ing for or against a can­di­date. In the past, the dif­fer­ence between a polit­i­cal attack ad and an issue is a neb­u­lous issue that large­ly comes down to whether or not cer­tain “mag­ic words” were used in the ad based on the 1976 Buck­ley v Valeo Supreme Court Case. Today, the rules aren’t quite so arbi­trary and the FEC has the pow­er to fac­tor in the larg­er con­text of an ad can be used to deter­mine whether or not its a polit­i­cal attack ad, but Repub­li­cans on the FEC board con­sis­tent­ly pre­vent the FEC from using that broad­er pow­er and the “mag­ic words” cri­te­ria remains the de fac­to rule. AFF is an expert in nav­i­gat­ing these grey lines.

7. The amount of mon­ey flow­ing into 501(c)(4)s explod­ed over the past decade. in 2006, $5.2 mil­lion was raised by 501(c)(4)s. It grew to $310 mil­lion by By 2012. The Supreme Court’s Cit­i­zens Unit­ed rul­ing was in Jan­u­ary of 2010. The vast major­i­ty of that rise in 501(c)(4) dona­tions was to right-wing groups $265.2 mil­lion of the $310 mil­lion). AFF was a major recip­i­ent of that mon­ey. Almost all of AFF’s dona­tions dur­ing this peri­od were from the Koch net­work. The Koch and Rove donor net­works played the largest roles in this spike in 501(c)(4) dona­tions.

8. Oth­er key enti­ties in the Koch net­work of 501(c)(4)s include 60 Plus (sup­pos­ed­ly a con­ser­v­a­tive ver­sion of the A.A.R.P. that actu­al­ly works as lob­by­ing mer­ce­nary), the TC4 Trust and the Cen­ter to Pro­tect Patient Rights (CPPR). TC4 and CPPR were dubbed “shad­ow mon­ey mail­box­es” after it was revealed how they act­ed as key mid­dle-men orga­ni­za­tions that would accept dona­tions from the Koch net­work and then re-gift that mon­ey to oth­er enti­ties in the Koch net­work to the obscure the mon­ey flows. The mon­ey trail was fur­ther obscured by TC4 and CPPR using “dis­re­gard­able enti­ties”, which are sub-units of 501(c)(4)s that use dif­fer­ent names to the pub­lic. The use of these “dis­re­gard­able enti­ties” was fur­ther obscured by incor­rect IRS fil­ings that left out the exis­tence of these “dis­re­gard­able enti­ties” and were only cor­rect­ed in lat­er years with tax fil­ing amend­ments.

9. Fol­low­ing the 2012 elec­tion, AFF was large­ly kicked out of the Koch net­work after it was revealed that AFF’s work on a 2012 Cal­i­for­nia bal­lot ini­tia­tive vio­lat­ed Cal­i­for­nia law. A Koch-based enti­ty, Amer­i­cans for Job Secu­ri­ty, gave $24 mil­lion to CPPR. CPPR, in turn, gave $7 mil­lion to AFF and $13 mil­lion to Amer­i­cans for Respon­si­ble Lead­er­ship, anoth­er Koch-backed 501(c)(4). AFF and Amer­i­cans for Respon­si­ble Lead­er­ship then passed the mon­ey along to var­i­ous Cal­i­for­nia bal­lot ini­tia­tives. This was con­sid­ered cam­paign mon­ey laun­der­ing by Cal­i­for­nia law.

10. AFF respond­ed to get­ting cut off from the Koch funds by find­ing oth­er clients. Like cor­po­rate lob­by­ing for Doral Finan­cial Group. In 2014, Karl Rove’s Cross­roads GPS 501(c)(4) hired AFF to get involved in the North Car­oli­na sen­ate race. But AFF did­n’t back the Repub­li­can. AFF backed the Lib­er­tar­i­an can­di­date as part of a strat­e­gy to bleed off younger vot­ers away from the Demo­c­rat by empha­siz­ing the Lib­er­tar­i­an’s advo­ca­cy for legal­iz­ing mar­i­jua­na. The Repub­li­can can­di­date won that race.

11. By 2016, AFF’s clients includ­ed the estab­lish­ment Repub­li­can mega-donors back­ing Mar­co Rubio’s run for the White House. Rubio’s cam­paign direct­ly hired AFF for the gen­er­al elec­tion after Mar­co Rubio dropped out of the pres­i­den­tial race and jumped back into the Sen­ate race.

12. In 2016, AFF donat­ed $3 mil­lion to the Nation­al Rifle Asso­ci­a­tion, high­light­ing its ser­vice as a mid­dle-man donor.

13. In 2018, AFF was used by the House Repub­li­can lead­er­ship to secret­ly get involved in Cal­i­for­ni­a’s unusu­al “Jun­gle” pri­maries (where all can­di­dates from all par­ties run in a sin­gle pri­ma­ry and the top two head to a gen­er­al elec­tion run-off). This includ­ed pro­vid­ing ser­vices like hir­ing an army of door-knock­ers across three Cal­i­for­nia dis­tricts that knocked on 400,000 doors. At the time, Repub­li­cans were open­ly anx­ious about the lack of nation­al Repub­li­can par­ty involve­ment but it was lat­er revealed that the Repub­li­can par­ty lead­er­ship want­ed their hir­ing of AFF to remain a secret over con­cerns that their moves could anger the Repub­li­can base.

14. While the spend­ing by 501(c)(4)s is tax free, the dona­tions to 501(c)(4)s has been sub­ject to the gift tax since the 1980s, but the IRS nev­er con­sis­tent­ly enforced this rule and many large donors nev­er paid it. In 2011, the IRS attempt­ed to audit five large 501(c)(4) donors over whether or not they paid their gift tax­es on pre­vi­ous dona­tions. The Repub­li­cans in Con­gress pres­sure the IRS to shut down the audit. In 2015, Con­gress was passed a law elim­i­nat­ing the gift tax for all non­prof­its, includ­ing 501(c)(4)s, cit­ing that 2011 audit attempt as jus­ti­fi­ca­tion.

15. In July of this year, the IRS declared that 501(c)(4)s no longer need to dis­close the iden­ti­ties of large donors to the IRS itself. This is seen as poten­tial­ly incon­se­quen­tial because the IRS almost nev­er audits 501(c)(4)s any­way. The 2015 lift­ing of the gift tax on 501(c)(4)s by con­gress was used as a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for this move. The right-wing hys­te­ria and out­rage over the fake ‘IRS was tar­get­ing con­ser­v­a­tives’ scan­dal of 2013 was also used as a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. And while experts see this as large­ly incon­se­quen­tial since the IRS rarely audits 501(c)(4)s any­ways, one area that experts do see this impact is watch­ing out for for­eign dona­tions. Although groups like AFF or Lim­it­ed Lia­bil­i­ty Cor­po­ra­tions can be used to obscure for­eign dona­tions so it still might not mat­ter.

16. In Sep­tem­ber of this year, the Supreme Court actu­al­ly made a poten­tial­ly his­toric rul­ing that 501(c)(4)s do actu­al­ly have to dis­close donor iden­ti­ties for the mon­ey used for polit­i­cal attack ads (i.e. ads that explic­it­ly advo­cate for or against a par­tic­u­lar can­di­date). But experts expect this rul­ing to have a lim­it­ed impact on the dis­clo­sure of donor iden­ti­ties thanks to the use of groups like AFF that can act as mid­dle-men enti­ties between the donor and the enti­ties that run the actu­al ads (i.e., the only donors that will be dis­closed will be the names of groups like AFF, not the names of the peo­ple who donat­ed to AFF).

That’s the sto­ry we’re going to be look­ing at in this post. The sto­ry of how 501(c)(4) ‘social wel­fare’ orga­ni­za­tions were used by wealthy right-wing donors to unleashed a flood of unlim­it­ed anony­mous polit­i­cal spend­ing in Amer­i­ca’s cam­paigns. That’s the sto­ry of Amer­i­can Future Fund. A sto­ry that’s one degree removed from the mur­der of Iowa col­lege stu­dent Mol­lie Tib­betts.

So let’s start off with an arti­cle look­ing at how Nicole Schlinger and her hus­band Eric Lang just hap­pen to own the farm that employed and housed Cristhi­an Bahena Rivera, the undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grant who killed Mol­lie Tib­betts. Rivera was one of 10 oth­er undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants employed by the farm. The sto­ry was imme­di­ate­ly pro­mot­ed by the Repub­li­can par­ty as some­how the most impor­tant sto­ry in the coun­try after Rivera was iden­ti­fied as the mur­der­er. It’s a par­tic­u­lar­ly awk­ward sit­u­a­tion for not just Schlinger but her Repub­li­can clients too. Clients that include some of the most anti-immi­grant politi­cians run­ning in 2018 like Ted Cruz and Corey Stew­art. And yet, as the arti­cle notes, Schlinger and her hus­band have some­how man­aged to avoid the media spot­light, an impres­sive feat the cou­ple has man­aged to main­tain to this day:

Asso­ci­at­ed Press

The Man Accused of Killing Mol­lie Tib­betts Lived on Land Owned by GOP Fundrais­er

By RYAN J. FOLEY
Aug. 24, 2018

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — A top Repub­li­can fundrais­er whose firm works for sev­er­al promi­nent immi­gra­tion hard­lin­ers is the par­tial own­er of the land where the Mex­i­can man accused of killing Iowa col­lege stu­dent Mol­lie Tib­betts lived rent-free, a farm spokes­woman said Fri­day.

Nicole Schlinger has long been a key fundrais­er and cam­paign con­trac­tor for GOP politi­cians in Iowa and beyond, includ­ing this cycle for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Vir­ginia Sen­ate can­di­date Corey Stew­art.

Schlinger is the pres­i­dent of Cam­paign Head­quar­ters, a call cen­ter that makes fundrais­ing calls, iden­ti­fies sup­port­ers and helps turn out vot­ers for con­ser­v­a­tive can­di­dates and groups. Her busi­ness is one of the largest in Brook­lyn, the cen­tral Iowa town where Tib­betts dis­ap­peared while out for a run on July 18.

Schlinger is mar­ried to Eric Lang, the pres­i­dent of the fam­i­ly-owned dairy that has acknowl­edged pro­vid­ing employ­ment and hous­ing for the last four years to Cristhi­an Bahena Rivera, the man charged with mur­der in Tib­betts’ death.

The cou­ple — along with her husband’s broth­er Craig Lang and his wife — own farm­land out­side Brook­lyn that includes trail­ers where some of the dairy’s employ­ees live for free as a ben­e­fit of their employ­ment, farm spokes­woman Eileen Wixted con­firmed.

She said Rivera lived there for the dura­tion of his employ­ment, and about half of the farm’s oth­er 10 work­ers do so as well. Under the arrange­ment, the farm­ing com­pa­ny pays the cou­ples to rent the land but work­ers do not have to pay, she said.

In an email Fri­day, Schlinger said that she was “shocked and deeply sad­dened” by Tib­betts’ death and had nev­er met Rivera. “The per­pe­tra­tor should be pun­ished to the fullest extent of the law, and when he meets his mak­er, suf­fer the con­se­quences he deserves,” she wrote.

She said that she was gift­ed an own­er­ship inter­est in the land many years ago from her husband’s fam­i­ly and that she has no role in the farm­ing oper­a­tion.

Still, the fact that one of its own oper­a­tives has indi­rect ties to the case could com­pli­cate GOP efforts to high­light the grue­some slay­ing in its polit­i­cal mes­sag­ing ahead of the Novem­ber midterm elec­tion. Dairy co-own­er Craig Lang also was a Repub­li­can can­di­date for Iowa agri­cul­ture sec­re­tary, fin­ish­ing third in a five-way race in the June pri­ma­ry.

Repub­li­cans such as Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump and Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds called for stricter immi­gra­tion laws and enforce­ment almost imme­di­ate­ly after Rivera, who is sus­pect­ed of being in the coun­try ille­gal­ly, was charged Tues­day. Some have blamed Demo­c­ra­t­ic poli­cies for the slay­ing, even though stud­ies have dis­put­ed the notion that those in the coun­try ille­gal­ly are more like­ly to com­mit vio­lent crime.

“Every vic­tim below would be alive today if we enforced our immi­gra­tion laws,” U.S. Rep. Steve King of Iowa tweet­ed Fri­day, above a pic­ture of Tib­betts and oth­er vic­tims. “Left­ists sac­ri­ficed thou­sands, includ­ing their own, on the altar of Polit­i­cal Cor­rect­ness.”

Schlinger’s busi­ness calls itself “the best con­ser­v­a­tive call cen­ter in Amer­i­ca.” Her biog­ra­phy claims she is the most pro­lif­ic fundrais­er in Iowa GOP his­to­ry, hav­ing brought in more than $50 mil­lion for politi­cians and caus­es. She has said her busi­ness has made mil­lions of phone calls for can­di­dates seek­ing offices rang­ing from pres­i­dent to city coun­cil since its found­ing in 1999. Her firm’s client list includes sev­er­al politi­cians who rou­tine­ly call for stricter immi­gra­tion enforce­ment.

Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion records show that Cruz’s re-elec­tion cam­paign has paid Cam­paign­HQ near­ly $1.7 mil­lion since the begin­ning of 2017. A Cruz cam­paign spokes­woman had no imme­di­ate com­ment.

Stew­art, who has made step­ping up depor­ta­tions of immi­grants in the coun­try ille­gal­ly a major cam­paign theme, has also employed the firm, along with the cam­paigns of Sen. Mike Lee of Utah and Rep. Joe Wil­son of South Car­oli­na. The now-defunct Stop Sanc­tu­ary Cities PAC paid the firm $3,449 for its ser­vices in March.

In an inter­view Fri­day, Stew­art said he had no prob­lem with Schlinger’s prop­er­ty ties to the sus­pect, say­ing her firm does a “great job” rais­ing mon­ey.

“I hire peo­ple for their abil­i­ty to do the work for my cam­paign,” he said. “What­ev­er she does in her per­son­al life is her busi­ness.”

After Rivera was charged, Reynolds denounced an immi­gra­tion sys­tem that “allowed a preda­tor like this to live in our com­mu­ni­ty.” Cam­paign­HQ was a top ven­dor for the cam­paigns of for­mer Iowa Gov. Ter­ry Branstad, who select­ed Reynolds as his run­ning mate in 2010, and has also done some work direct­ly for Reynolds’ cam­paigns, state records show.

Inves­ti­ga­tors say that Rivera came to the coun­try from Mex­i­co ille­gal­ly sev­er­al years ago when he was in the late teens. He is accused of stalk­ing Tib­betts while she was out for a run a few miles from his home, killing her after she threat­ened to call police on him, and dump­ing her body in a corn­field. Pre­lim­i­nary autop­sy results show that Tib­betts died from mul­ti­ple “sharp force injuries.”

Schlinger and her hus­band have man­aged to large­ly avoid the intense media spot­light that has fol­lowed the case. They did not speak at a press con­fer­ence Wednes­day when farm man­ag­er Dane Lang said Rivera pre­sent­ed an out-of-state iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and Social Secu­ri­ty num­ber with a dif­fer­ent name when he was hired in 2014. Dane Lang said he was shocked to learn to that Rivera’s alleged­ly not in the coun­try legal­ly.

But oth­ers around town, includ­ing Rivera’s defense lawyer, ques­tion whether the fam­i­ly had to have had sus­pi­cions, if not known, about Rivera’s immi­gra­tion sta­tus.

...

———-

“The Man Accused of Killing Mol­lie Tib­betts Lived on Land Owned by GOP Fundrais­er” by RYAN J. FOLEY; Asso­ci­at­ed Press; 08/24/2018

Still, the fact that one of its own oper­a­tives has indi­rect ties to the case could com­pli­cate GOP efforts to high­light the grue­some slay­ing in its polit­i­cal mes­sag­ing ahead of the Novem­ber midterm elec­tion. Dairy co-own­er Craig Lang also was a Repub­li­can can­di­date for Iowa agri­cul­ture sec­re­tary, fin­ish­ing third in a five-way race in the June pri­ma­ry.”

The killer’s employ­ers are big time Repub­li­cans. It’s quite a com­pli­ca­tion for the GOP efforts to cap­i­tal­ize on the grue­some slay­ing. Not only is it obvi­ous­ly polit­i­cal­ly embar­rass­ing, but Nicole Schlinger is also a key fundrais­er for politi­cians in Iowa and beyond via her Cam­paign­HQ call cen­ter com­pa­ny. That includes fundrais­ing for two can­di­dates in tough races this year: Ted Cruz in Texas and Corey Stew­art in Vir­ginia:

...
Nicole Schlinger has long been a key fundrais­er and cam­paign con­trac­tor for GOP politi­cians in Iowa and beyond, includ­ing this cycle for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Vir­ginia Sen­ate can­di­date Corey Stew­art.

Schlinger is the pres­i­dent of Cam­paign Head­quar­ters, a call cen­ter that makes fundrais­ing calls, iden­ti­fies sup­port­ers and helps turn out vot­ers for con­ser­v­a­tive can­di­dates and groups. Her busi­ness is one of the largest in Brook­lyn, the cen­tral Iowa town where Tib­betts dis­ap­peared while out for a run on July 18.
...

And Schlinger and her hus­band Eric Lang did­n’t just employ Rivera for the last four years. They also pro­vid­ed his hous­ing free of charge along with 10 oth­er work­ers. That sure sounds like the kind of arrange­ment that a com­pa­ny that knew it was employ­ing undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers would do:

...
Schlinger is mar­ried to Eric Lang, the pres­i­dent of the fam­i­ly-owned dairy that has acknowl­edged pro­vid­ing employ­ment and hous­ing for the last four years to Cristhi­an Bahena Rivera, the man charged with mur­der in Tib­betts’ death.

The cou­ple — along with her husband’s broth­er Craig Lang and his wife — own farm­land out­side Brook­lyn that includes trail­ers where some of the dairy’s employ­ees live for free as a ben­e­fit of their employ­ment, farm spokes­woman Eileen Wixted con­firmed.

She said Rivera lived there for the dura­tion of his employ­ment, and about half of the farm’s oth­er 10 work­ers do so as well. Under the arrange­ment, the farm­ing com­pa­ny pays the cou­ples to rent the land but work­ers do not have to pay, she said.
...

Then there’s the fact that a num­ber of Schlinger’s clients are viru­ent­ly anti-immi­grant politi­cians:

...
Schlinger’s busi­ness calls itself “the best con­ser­v­a­tive call cen­ter in Amer­i­ca.” Her biog­ra­phy claims she is the most pro­lif­ic fundrais­er in Iowa GOP his­to­ry, hav­ing brought in more than $50 mil­lion for politi­cians and caus­es. She has said her busi­ness has made mil­lions of phone calls for can­di­dates seek­ing offices rang­ing from pres­i­dent to city coun­cil since its found­ing in 1999. Her firm’s client list includes sev­er­al politi­cians who rou­tine­ly call for stricter immi­gra­tion enforce­ment.

Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion records show that Cruz’s re-elec­tion cam­paign has paid Cam­paign­HQ near­ly $1.7 mil­lion since the begin­ning of 2017. A Cruz cam­paign spokes­woman had no imme­di­ate com­ment.

Stew­art, who has made step­ping up depor­ta­tions of immi­grants in the coun­try ille­gal­ly a major cam­paign theme, has also employed the firm, along with the cam­paigns of Sen. Mike Lee of Utah and Rep. Joe Wil­son of South Car­oli­na. The now-defunct Stop Sanc­tu­ary Cities PAC paid the firm $3,449 for its ser­vices in March.
...

It’s a tricky sit­u­a­tion for GOP: extreme oppor­tu­ni­ty cou­pled with pos­si­ble polit­i­cal per­il. Polit­i­cal per­il exem­pli­fied by Corey Stew­art’s response to the rev­e­la­tion that one of fundrais­ers, Schlinger, was bla­tant­ly employ­ing undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers: Stew­art sim­ply said he sees no prob­lem and it was none of his busi­ness what Schlinger did with her busi­ness. It’s the kind of answer Trump’s base prob­a­bly did­n’t like:

...
In an inter­view Fri­day, Stew­art said he had no prob­lem with Schlinger’s prop­er­ty ties to the sus­pect, say­ing her firm does a “great job” rais­ing mon­ey.

“I hire peo­ple for their abil­i­ty to do the work for my cam­paign,” he said. “What­ev­er she does in her per­son­al life is her busi­ness.”
...

“What­ev­er she does in her per­son­al life is her busi­ness.”

That’s quite a state­ment from an Alt Right can­di­date who has defined his polit­i­cal per­sona with his fix­a­tion on the dan­gers of ille­gal immi­gra­tion.

And yet, despite the polit­i­cal­ly explo­sive nature of this twist in the mur­der of Mol­lie Tib­betts, Schlinger’s ties to this sto­ry received hard­ly any cov­er­age:

...
In an email Fri­day, Schlinger said that she was “shocked and deeply sad­dened” by Tib­betts’ death and had nev­er met Rivera. “The per­pe­tra­tor should be pun­ished to the fullest extent of the law, and when he meets his mak­er, suf­fer the con­se­quences he deserves,” she wrote.

She said that she was gift­ed an own­er­ship inter­est in the land many years ago from her husband’s fam­i­ly and that she has no role in the farm­ing oper­a­tion.

...

Schlinger and her hus­band have man­aged to large­ly avoid the intense media spot­light that has fol­lowed the case. They did not speak at a press con­fer­ence Wednes­day when farm man­ag­er Dane Lang said Rivera pre­sent­ed an out-of-state iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and Social Secu­ri­ty num­ber with a dif­fer­ent name when he was hired in 2014. Dane Lang said he was shocked to learn to that Rivera’s alleged­ly not in the coun­try legal­ly.

But oth­ers around town, includ­ing Rivera’s defense lawyer, ques­tion whether the fam­i­ly had to have had sus­pi­cions, if not known, about Rivera’s immi­gra­tion sta­tus.
...

And as we now know months lat­er, the ties Schlinger and Lang have to the mur­der of Mol­lie has large­ly stayed out of the media spot­light, in large part because the mur­der of Mol­lie just sud­den­ly became a non-sto­ry not long after Schlinger and Lang’s ties were revealed.

Nichol Schlinger’s Amer­i­can Future Fund is the Sto­ry of the Present Day Amer­i­can Dark Mon­ey Night­mare

That’s all part of what is com­pli­cat­ing what would nor­mal­ly be a prime oppor­tu­ni­ty for GOP anti-immi­grant dem­a­goguery. But as we’re going to see in this post, the polit­i­cal con­se­quences of seri­ous media atten­tion to Nicole Schlinger could have sig­nif­i­cant reper­cus­sion. Reper­cus­sions that could, and should, shine sig­nif­i­cant light on the pub­lic’s under­stand­ing of how polit­i­cal ‘dark mon­ey’ oper­ates in Amer­i­ca’s bro­ken cam­paign finance sys­tem. The sto­ry of Nic­hole Schlinger’s Amer­i­can Future Fund is a pro­found­ly sym­bol­ic sto­ry about how the flood of mon­ey from anony­mous wealthy donors is actu­al­ly put to use to influ­ence elec­tions.

Because Amer­i­can Future Fund is both a provider of cam­paign ser­vices — every­thing from devel­op­ing and run­ning TV ad cam­paigns to hir­ing armies of door knock­ers to sign peti­tions — and a for-hire ‘social wel­fare’ orga­ni­za­tion node in a larg­er net­work of ‘social wel­fare’ 501(c)(4)s orga­ni­za­tions. Like the Koch net­work of polit­i­cal­ly active 501(c)(4) ‘social wel­fare’ orga­ni­za­tions. And Karl Rove’s net­work of polit­i­cal­ly active 501(c)(4) ‘social wel­fare’ orga­ni­za­tions. AFF has worked for both net­works. Specif­i­cal­ly, after the Koch net­work kicked AFF out of its net­work in 2013 after AFF was caught break­ing the 501(c)(4) rules in Cal­i­for­nia, AFF found a new home in Karl Rove’s net­work. We’re going to see that sto­ry play out in the arti­cles below.

So let’s start off our tour of Amer­i­can Future Fund (AFF) and the shad­owy world of polit­i­cal 501(c)(4) polit­i­cal ‘social wel­fare’ enti­ties by look­ing at this Novem­ber 2009 Talk­ing Points Memo piece about Schlinger’s AFF inform­ing the Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion that it’s plan­ning on run­ning a series of robo-call ads in the 2010 mid-term elec­tions that are going to be explic­it­ly advo­cat­ing for or against can­di­dates. AFF was advo­cat­ing that fed­er­al laws on robo-calls over­ride Iowa’s more strin­gent state laws on robo-calls and ask­ing the FEC to make a rul­ing. As the arti­cle notes, it was a request for an FEC rul­ing that would have impact­ed all US states, not just Iowa.

So in 2009, AFF was try­ing to weak­en the nation’s laws reg­u­lat­ing robo-calls in antic­i­pa­tion of its 2010 robo-call­ing cam­paigns on behalf of Repub­li­cans. Or at least that was one of the things AFF was up to in 2009. As we’ll see, it’s often up to a lot.

As the arti­cle also notes, AFF back in 2009 con­sist­ed more peo­ple affil­i­at­ed with the Repub­li­can par­ty than just Nic­hole Schlinger. Jason Torchin­sky, a lawyer for AFF’s polit­i­cal action group that would be car­ry­ing out the robo calls, was one of the archi­tects of the Amer­i­can Cen­ter for Vot­ing Rights (ACVR), a faux “vot­ing-rights” out­fit that was set up by GOP oper­a­tives in 2005 to “give ‘think tank’ aca­d­e­m­ic cachet to the unproven idea that vot­er fraud is a major prob­lem in elec­tions.”

Jason Torchin­sky worked at the time for a law firm run by Alex Vogel and his wife, Vir­ginia State Sen­a­tor Jill Holtz­man Vogel. Alex Vogel was ACVR’s exec­u­tive direc­tor and a for­mer RNC lawyer. His wife Jill had a track record of hard­ball tac­tics, includ­ing hav­ing her babysit­ter lev­el a cam­paign finance irreg­u­lar­i­ty alle­ga­tions against her pri­ma­ry oppo­nent and a local pros­e­cu­tor who was a sup­port­er inves­ti­gate it. She won the pri­ma­ry. The charges were dropped. Giv­en the fact that the legal exis­tence of some­thing AFF is a giant vio­la­tion of pru­dent cam­paign finance law, it’s iron­ic to have some­one affil­i­at­ed with the AFF with a his­to­ry of mak­ing fraud­u­lent cam­paign finance vio­la­tion alle­ga­tions as a polit­i­cal dirty trick.

Also keep in mind that this was just a cou­ple months before the Jan­u­ary 2010 Cit­i­zens Unit­ed Supreme Court deci­sion that sanc­tioned unlim­it­ed secret cor­po­rate and union polit­i­cal spend­ing through 501(c)(4)s. Unlim­it­ed mon­ey that would pay for a lot of robo-calls. Although it’s also impor­tant to point out that AFF with­drew its request for the FEC to rule that fed­er­al robo-call reg­u­la­tions over­ruled stricter state reg­u­la­tions just a cou­ple months lat­er in Jan­u­ary of 2010. So this was more of an aspi­ra­tion attempt to weak­en Amer­i­can’s robo-call­ing laws. The key point in the arti­cle is that AFF was bold­ly announc­ing plans for over­ly polit­i­cal adver­tis­ing advo­cat­ing for and against spe­cif­ic can­di­dates in the 2010 mid-terms. In oth­er words, it was behav­ing exact­ly like a high­ly par­ti­san polit­i­cal enti­ty. And yet it’s legal­ly allowed to mas­quer­ade as a non­prof­it ‘social wel­fare’ enti­ty, grant­i­ng it all sorts of priv­i­leges, like hid­ing its donors from the pub­lic.

Final­ly, as the arti­cle notes, because the AFF is a 501(c)(4), it’s not required to pub­licly dis­close very much infor­ma­tion. We’ll take a much clos­er look into those dis­clo­sure laws below. And the AFF ful­ly embraced that lack of required dis­clo­sure by hav­ing no one talk to the media. It was oper­at­ing as a black box enti­ty and a very large polit­i­cal mega-phone simul­ta­ne­ous­ly. And Nic­hole Schlinger was pres­i­dent at the time. So the arti­cle makes clear, avoid­ing media expo­sure is some­thing Nic­hole Schlinger has long had expe­ri­ence with. It’s an inte­gral aspect of her line of work as a dark mon­ey polit­i­cal oper­a­tive

Talk­ing Points Memo
Muck­rak­er

Shad­owy GOP-Linked Group Plans Bar­rage Of 2010 Robo-Calls

By Zachary Roth
Novem­ber 23, 2009 8:10 am

A shad­owy con­ser­v­a­tive group with ties to the oper­a­tives behind a host of GOP dirty tricks is work­ing to under­mine state restric­tions on polit­i­cal robo-calls, as it gears up to unleash a bar­rage of such calls in 2010 races.

Last month, Amer­i­can Future Fund Polit­i­cal Action (AFFPA) informed the FEC that it’s plan­ning robo-calls in con­gres­sion­al races. Jason Torchin­sky, a lawyer for AFFPA, wrote that the group “wish­es to dis­trib­ute pre-record­ed tele­phone calls … as part of a nation­wide pro­gram of polit­i­cal out­reach.” The calls, wrote Torchin­sky, “will express­ly advo­cate the elec­tion or defeat of one or more clear­ly iden­ti­fied can­di­dates for Fed­er­al office.”AFFPA was ask­ing the FEC for an advi­so­ry opin­ion on whether state laws restrict­ing robo-calls should apply, or whether, as AFFPA argues, they’re pre-empt­ed by a less restric­tive fed­er­al law that sought to stan­dard­ize the reg­u­la­tion of robo-calls. An FEC rul­ing in AFFPA’s favor would bad­ly under­mine state laws such as Minnesota’s, which requires the lis­ten­er to active­ly con­sent to hear­ing a record­ed mes­sage before the mes­sage can be played.

That’s worth pay­ing atten­tion to in itself. But behind the robo-call effort is a team of high-pow­ered GOP oper­a­tives behind a slew of sleazy cam­paign tac­tics over the years.

You might remem­ber Torchin­sky, AFFPA’s lawyer, as one of the archi­tects of the Amer­i­can Cen­ter for Vot­ing Rights (ACVR), the bogus “vot­ing-rights” group that was set up by GOP oper­a­tives in 2005 to “give ‘think tank’ aca­d­e­m­ic cachet to the unproven idea that vot­er fraud is a major prob­lem in elec­tions,” as elec­tion law expert Rick Hasen has writ­ten.

For sev­er­al months, ACVR’s exec­u­tive direc­tor was Alex Vogel, a for­mer RNC lawyer whose con­sult­ing firm report­ed­ly was paid $75,000 for the ACVR gig. (Also involved with ACVR: TPM­muck­rak­er favorite Pat Rogers, the New Mex­i­co GOP activist who helped get David Igle­sias fired for not pur­su­ing bogus vot­er fraud com­plaints.)

Vogel also appears to have a hand in AFF: Torchin­sky, a for­mer Bush cam­paign lawyer, works for the law firm run by Vogel and his wife, Vir­ginia State Sen­a­tor Jill Holtz­man Vogel.

Holtz­man Vogel’s own polit­i­cal career may owe some­thing to sim­i­lar­ly hard­ball tac­tics. A for­mer RNC coun­sel her­self, she faced a tight pri­ma­ry in her Vir­ginia Sen­ate race, but pre­vailed after her oppo­nent, Mike Tate, was indict­ed for cam­paign finance irreg­u­lar­i­ties. The per­son who brought the com­plaint to the atten­tion of author­i­ties was Holtz­man Vogel’s baby-sit­ter, and the local pros­e­cu­tor who ini­tial­ly han­dled it was a Holtz­man Vogel sup­port­er. The charges against Tate were even­tu­al­ly dropped.

As for AFF itself, the group already has earned a rep­u­ta­tion for traf­fick­ing in vicious and mis­lead­ing shots against Democ­rats. A typ­i­cal recent ad alleged that the gov­ern­ment “planned to give flu shots to detainees at Guan­tanamo.”

It also has worked close­ly with Dick Armey’s Free­dom­Works to help pro­mote the Tea Par­ty ral­lies against health-care reform. Repub­li­can heavy-hit­ters Jan Van Lohuizen, Ed Tobin, Ben Gins­berg are all report­ed­ly involved with the group.

Because AFF is a 501c4, it’s not required by law to release much infor­ma­tion about itself, and no one seems eager to speak on its behalf. Torchin­sky declined to speak to TPM­muck­rak­er on the record. Tim Albrecht, an Iowa GOP activist who now works for the guber­na­to­r­i­al cam­paign of Ter­ry Branstad, was quot­ed ear­li­er this month as a spokesman for the group, but told TPM­muck­rak­er that he could no longer serve in that capac­i­ty, and declined to pass our inquiry on to any oth­er spe­cif­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tive, say­ing only that he could for­ward it to the group’s gen­er­al mail­box. A sep­a­rate email to that address went unre­turned. AFF’s web­site lists San­dra Grein­er, anoth­er Iowa Repub­li­can, as pres­i­dent, while the Iowa sec­re­tary of states data­base lists Nicole Schlinger, a local GOP con­sul­tant as pres­i­dent. Nei­ther Grein­er nor Schlinger returned a call.

...

———–

“Shad­owy GOP-Linked Group Plans Bar­rage Of 2010 Robo-Calls” by Zachary Roth; Talk­ing Points Memo; 11/23/2009

“A shad­owy con­ser­v­a­tive group with ties to the oper­a­tives behind a host of GOP dirty tricks is work­ing to under­mine state restric­tions on polit­i­cal robo-calls, as it gears up to unleash a bar­rage of such calls in 2010 races.”

The attempt­ed under­min­ing of polit­i­cal robo-call­ing reg­u­la­tions in antic­i­pa­tion of a big polit­i­cal ad cam­paign the next year. It’s just one of the many polit­i­cal activ­i­ties AFF was up to in 2009:

...
Last month, Amer­i­can Future Fund Polit­i­cal Action (AFFPA) informed the FEC that it’s plan­ning robo-calls in con­gres­sion­al races. Jason Torchin­sky, a lawyer for AFFPA, wrote that the group “wish­es to dis­trib­ute pre-record­ed tele­phone calls … as part of a nation­wide pro­gram of polit­i­cal out­reach.” The calls, wrote Torchin­sky, “will express­ly advo­cate the elec­tion or defeat of one or more clear­ly iden­ti­fied can­di­dates for Fed­er­al office.”AFFPA was ask­ing the FEC for an advi­so­ry opin­ion on whether state laws restrict­ing robo-calls should apply, or whether, as AFFPA argues, they’re pre-empt­ed by a less restric­tive fed­er­al law that sought to stan­dard­ize the reg­u­la­tion of robo-calls. An FEC rul­ing in AFFPA’s favor would bad­ly under­mine state laws such as Minnesota’s, which requires the lis­ten­er to active­ly con­sent to hear­ing a record­ed mes­sage before the mes­sage can be played.
...

And while AFF isn’t tech­ni­cal­ly a branch of the Repub­li­can Par­ty, it clear­ly should be seen as such based on the peo­ple behind it. Peo­ple like Jason Torchinksy and Alex and Julia Vogel:

...
That’s worth pay­ing atten­tion to in itself. But behind the robo-call effort is a team of high-pow­ered GOP oper­a­tives behind a slew of sleazy cam­paign tac­tics over the years.

You might remem­ber Torchin­sky, AFFPA’s lawyer, as one of the archi­tects of the Amer­i­can Cen­ter for Vot­ing Rights (ACVR), the bogus “vot­ing-rights” group that was set up by GOP oper­a­tives in 2005 to “give ‘think tank’ aca­d­e­m­ic cachet to the unproven idea that vot­er fraud is a major prob­lem in elec­tions,” as elec­tion law expert Rick Hasen has writ­ten.

For sev­er­al months, ACVR’s exec­u­tive direc­tor was Alex Vogel, a for­mer RNC lawyer whose con­sult­ing firm report­ed­ly was paid $75,000 for the ACVR gig. (Also involved with ACVR: TPM­muck­rak­er favorite Pat Rogers, the New Mex­i­co GOP activist who helped get David Igle­sias fired for not pur­su­ing bogus vot­er fraud com­plaints.)

Vogel also appears to have a hand in AFF: Torchin­sky, a for­mer Bush cam­paign lawyer, works for the law firm run by Vogel and his wife, Vir­ginia State Sen­a­tor Jill Holtz­man Vogel.

Holtz­man Vogel’s own polit­i­cal career may owe some­thing to sim­i­lar­ly hard­ball tac­tics. A for­mer RNC coun­sel her­self, she faced a tight pri­ma­ry in her Vir­ginia Sen­ate race, but pre­vailed after her oppo­nent, Mike Tate, was indict­ed for cam­paign finance irreg­u­lar­i­ties. The per­son who brought the com­plaint to the atten­tion of author­i­ties was Holtz­man Vogel’s baby-sit­ter, and the local pros­e­cu­tor who ini­tial­ly han­dled it was a Holtz­man Vogel sup­port­er. The charges against Tate were even­tu­al­ly dropped.
...

Nicole Schlinger was then the pres­i­dent of AFF, but she nor any­one else asso­ci­at­ed with AFF were inter­est­ed in talk­ing about its polit­i­cal activ­i­ties and could get away with this thanks to the secre­cy ben­e­fits that 501(c)(4) orga­ni­za­tions get:

...
Because AFF is a 501c4, it’s not required by law to release much infor­ma­tion about itself, and no one seems eager to speak on its behalf. Torchin­sky declined to speak to TPM­muck­rak­er on the record. Tim Albrecht, an Iowa GOP activist who now works for the guber­na­to­r­i­al cam­paign of Ter­ry Branstad, was quot­ed ear­li­er this month as a spokesman for the group, but told TPM­muck­rak­er that he could no longer serve in that capac­i­ty, and declined to pass our inquiry on to any oth­er spe­cif­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tive, say­ing only that he could for­ward it to the group’s gen­er­al mail­box. A sep­a­rate email to that address went unre­turned. AFF’s web­site lists San­dra Grein­er, anoth­er Iowa Repub­li­can, as pres­i­dent, while the Iowa sec­re­tary of states data­base lists Nicole Schlinger, a local GOP con­sul­tant as pres­i­dent. Nei­ther Grein­er nor Schlinger returned a call.
...

Yep, it turns out that Amer­i­can Future Fund (AFF) list­ed Nicole Schlinger as its pres­i­dent and “prin­ci­ple offi­cer” back in 2009. It’s worth not­ing that Iowa state sen­a­tor San­dra Gre­nier was pres­i­dent of AFF as of Feb­ru­ary of 2011, so Schlinger’s time as pres­i­dent was rel­a­tive­ly short. But as the first pres­i­dent of AFF that sig­ni­fies a par­tic­u­lar­ly close asso­ci­a­tion with the peo­ple behind it.

And it’s impor­tant to note anoth­er activ­i­ty AFF was up to in 2009: work­ing to pro­mote the then-nascent Tea Par­ty on behalf of the Koch-finan­cie Free­dom­Works:

...
As for AFF itself, the group already has earned a rep­u­ta­tion for traf­fick­ing in vicious and mis­lead­ing shots against Democ­rats. A typ­i­cal recent ad alleged that the gov­ern­ment “planned to give flu shots to detainees at Guan­tanamo.”

It also has worked close­ly with Dick Armey’s Free­dom­Works to help pro­mote the Tea Par­ty ral­lies against health-care reform. Repub­li­can heavy-hit­ters Jan Van Lohuizen, Ed Tobin, Ben Gins­berg are all report­ed­ly involved with the group.
...

One of the rea­sons this work by AFF in 2009 to pro­mote the Tea Par­ty is impor­tant to note is because the fact that bil­lion­aire-backed enti­ties like the AFF were pro­mot­ing the Tea Par­ty in 2009, and this was pub­licly known, dou­bles as a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the scruti­ny give by the IRS to the flood of new Tea Par­ty groups fil­ing for 501(c)(4) sta­tus in 2010–2012. That scruti­ny led to right-wing out­cry 2013 charg­ing that the IRS was tar­get­ing con­ser­v­a­tive 501(c)(4)s in a par­ti­san man­ner. Scruti­ny designed to inves­ti­gate whether or not these groups apply­ing for 501(c)(4) social wel­fare sta­tus tru­ly were social wel­fare groups and weren’t just polit­i­cal enti­ties mas­querad­ing as social wel­fare enti­ties.

And as we’ll see below, that out­cry in 2013 over ‘IRS tar­get­ing Tea Par­ty’ groups was also used to jus­ti­fy the fur­ther weak­en­ing of cam­paign finance laws in recent years. So the fact that AFF was work­ing with the Koch broth­ers’ Free­dom­Works 2009 to pro­mote the Tea Par­ty high­lights the fact that the ques­tion of whether or not the IRS should have applied scruti­ny to groups apply­ing for 501(c)(4) sta­tus is real­ly a ques­tion of whether or not bil­lion­aire-backed groups like AFF that are clear­ly deeply polit­i­cal enti­ties should be allowed to call them­selves a non­prof­it 501(c)(4) social wel­fare orga­ni­za­tion and get all of the tax and secre­cy ben­e­fits that come with that non­prof­it sta­tus. The Supreme Court may have allowed for unlim­it­ed mon­ey to flow into 501(c)(4)s with the 2010 Cit­i­zens Unit­ed rul­ing, but the deci­sion by reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies to let bla­tant­ly par­ti­sans enti­ties like AFF pre­tend to be social wel­fare orga­ni­za­tion and obtain that 501(c)(4) sta­tus also plays a crit­i­cal role in intro­duc­ing unlim­it­ed spend­ing on US elec­tion.

The Amer­i­can Future Fund’s For-Hire Cor­po­rate Lob­by­ing Ser­vices And the DCI Group: It’s Anoth­er One of AFF’s ‘Social Wel­fare’ Ser­vices

Talk­ing Points Memo fol­lowed up the above look at AFF the next day with the fol­low­ing arti­cle that point­ed out one of the more egre­gious aspects of AFF’s claim of ‘social wel­fare’ sta­tus: AFF appeared to have ties to DCI Group, a Repub­li­can lob­by­ing firm with a rep­u­ta­tion for for dirty tricks and shady clients like RJ Reynolds Tobac­co and the Burmese Jun­ta:

Talk­ing Points Memo

GOP Group Under­min­ing Robo-Call Laws Has Ties To DCI

By Zachary Roth
Novem­ber 24, 2009 12:37 pm

Amer­i­can Future Fund (AFF), the shad­owy con­ser­v­a­tive advo­ca­cy group work­ing to under­mine state laws against robo-call­ing, has ties to DCI Group, a Repub­li­can lob­by­ing firm with a rep­u­ta­tion for dirty tricks and shady clients. And a clos­er look at AFF sug­gests the group has been designed to car­ry out polit­i­cal attacks while escap­ing scruti­ny from the press and pub­lic.

AFF paid $249,000 last year to McKen­na & Asso­ciates for fundrais­ing work, accord­ing to a copy of AFF’s 990 form for 2008 that was obtained by TPM­muck­rak­er. The Arling­ton, Vir­ginia-based firm is run by Andrew McKen­na, a GOP oper­a­tive and for­mer senior vice-pres­i­dent of DCI Group. McKen­na did not imme­di­ate­ly respond to TPMmuckraker’s request for com­ment.DCI Group, a Repub­li­can lob­by­ing and PR shop with close ties to Karl Rove, has rep­re­sent­ed the Burmese jun­ta. In the 1990s, it worked to devel­op “smok­ers’ rights” groups on behalf of RJ Reynolds Tobac­co, and lat­er helped the Bush admin­is­tra­tion gin up fake grass­roots sup­port for pri­va­tiz­ing social secu­ri­ty. A DCI off­shoot, FLS Con­nect, recent­ly announced it would con­duct an inter­nal audit after its seedy fundrais­ing tech­niques were exposed by TPM­muck­rak­er and oth­ers. FLS also launched its own robo-call attacks against Barack Oba­ma last fall, that were so vicious and mis­lead­ing that they were denounced even by some Repub­li­cans.

Despite its plans to launch a bar­rage of robo-calls next year, and its ongo­ing mis­lead­ing polit­i­cal attacks against sup­port­ers of health-care reform, AFF is tak­ing pains to avoid dis­clos­ing infor­ma­tion on its fund­ing, and to cre­ate con­fu­sion about its orga­ni­za­tion­al struc­ture.

AFF report­ed a total rev­enue of just under $7.5 mil­lion last year, accord­ing to the 990 form, which, as a pub­lic copy, does not include the iden­ti­fy of the group’s con­trib­u­tors.

When the Des Moines Reg­is­ter report­ed on AFF’s effort to under­mine robo-call laws, it spoke to Nick Ryan, who it iden­ti­fied as the chair of AFF’s board. But Ryan, an Iowa GOP polit­i­cal oper­a­tive, appears to play a more active role. The con­tact phone num­ber list­ed both on AFF’s web­site and on its 990 goes to the Con­cor­dia Group, a Des-Moines-based polit­i­cal con­sult­ing and lob­by­ing firm that Ryan found­ed and runs. A press release sent out by AFF this week — prais­ing Iowa’s Repub­li­can sen­a­tor, Chuck Grass­ley, for his vote in oppo­si­tion to health-care reform, and slam­ming Demo­c­ra­t­ic sen­a­tor Tom Harkin for his vote in sup­port — lists Jill Lath­am as a con­tact for AFF. Like Ryan, Lath­am works for the Con­cor­dia Group. And AFF paid Con­cor­dia $300,000 for “con­sult­ing” last year, accord­ing to the 990 for­mDes Moines Reg­is­ter.

...

———-

“GOP Group Under­min­ing Robo-Call Laws Has Ties To DCI” by Zachary Roth; Talk­ing Points Memo; 11/24/2009

“Amer­i­can Future Fund (AFF), the shad­owy con­ser­v­a­tive advo­ca­cy group work­ing to under­mine state laws against robo-call­ing, has ties to DCI Group, a Repub­li­can lob­by­ing firm with a rep­u­ta­tion for dirty tricks and shady clients. And a clos­er look at AFF sug­gests the group has been designed to car­ry out polit­i­cal attacks while escap­ing scruti­ny from the press and pub­lic.

Yep, not only does AFF have ties to DCI Group, described as “a Repub­li­can lob­by­ing firm with a rep­u­ta­tion for dirty tricks and shady clients”, but AFF appears to have been designed to car­ry out polit­i­cal attacks while escap­ing scruti­ny from the press and pub­lic. It’s, again, a reminder Nicole Schlinger’s abil­i­ty to escape scruti­ny isn’t just use­ful in the con­text of the Mol­lie Tib­betts mur­der. Avoid­ing atten­tion and scruti­ny is a core ser­vice of enti­ties like AFF. A ser­vice that requires main­tain­ing its 501(c)(4) sta­tus and the absurd pre­tense that it’s a ‘social wel­fare’ orga­ni­za­tion.

But while AFF was already work­ing in the Koch broth­ers orbit by 2009 — like with its Free­dom­Works Tea Par­ty pro­mo­tion work — it sounds like Karl Rove may have been one of the key peo­ple behind DCI Group.

And DCI Group isn’t just offer­ing ser­vices to polit­i­cal par­ties. It also rep­re­sent­ed clients like the Burmese Jun­ta and devel­oped a fake grass­roots “smok­ers’ rights” cam­paign for RJ Reynolds. And AFF was found to have paid a firm in 2008 for “fundrais­ing work” run by Andrew McKen­na, a for­mer DCI Group senior vice-pres­i­dent:

...
AFF paid $249,000 last year to McKen­na & Asso­ciates for fundrais­ing work, accord­ing to a copy of AFF’s 990 form for 2008 that was obtained by TPM­muck­rak­er. The Arling­ton, Vir­ginia-based firm is run by Andrew McKen­na, a GOP oper­a­tive and for­mer senior vice-pres­i­dent of DCI Group. McKen­na did not imme­di­ate­ly respond to TPMmuckraker’s request for com­ment.DCI Group, a Repub­li­can lob­by­ing and PR shop with close ties to Karl Rove, has rep­re­sent­ed the Burmese jun­ta. In the 1990s, it worked to devel­op “smok­ers’ rights” groups on behalf of RJ Reynolds Tobac­co, and lat­er helped the Bush admin­is­tra­tion gin up fake grass­roots sup­port for pri­va­tiz­ing social secu­ri­ty. A DCI off­shoot, FLS Con­nect, recent­ly announced it would con­duct an inter­nal audit after its seedy fundrais­ing tech­niques were exposed by TPM­muck­rak­er and oth­ers. FLS also launched its own robo-call attacks against Barack Oba­ma last fall, that were so vicious and mis­lead­ing that they were denounced even by some Repub­li­cans.
...

RJ Reynolds and the Burmese Jun­ta. DCI Group is that kind of enti­ty. Snd while the above arti­cle described how AFF hired a con­sult­ing firms run by a DCI Group for­mer senior vice pres­i­dent in 2008 for fundrais­ing work, as we’re going to see below, DCI Group actu­al­ly hired AFF to run lob­by­ing cam­paigns on behalf of DCI’s cor­po­rate clients. In par­tic­u­lar, AFF was hired to run a lob­by­ing cam­paign in Puer­to Rico on behalf of Doral Finan­cial Group at the same time DCI Group was lob­by­ing for Doral. DCI Group denied it sub­con­tract­ed AFF to do this work. We’ll look at that scheme more lat­er on.

The Roots of the Amer­i­can Future Fund: Willie Hor­ton Meets the Swift Boaters

But AFF’s asso­ci­a­tions to the peo­ple behind DCI Group is far from the only col­lec­tion of the AFF’s ties to eth­i­cal­ly dubi­ous hyper-par­ti­sans. As the fol­low­ing pro­file of the Amer­i­can Future Fund in the Iowa Inde­pen­dent (avail­able via the Way­back Machine) informs us, some the key fig­ures behind AFF itself include peo­ple involved with both the 2004 “Swift­boat” smear ads against John Ker­ry in 2004 and the 1988 racist Willie Hor­ton ads used by George H. W. Bush against Michael Dukakis.

Specif­i­cal­ly, the piece points out that Ben Gins­berg — the for­mer chief out­side coun­sel to the Bush-Cheney 2004 cam­paign who resigned after it was revealed that he was also pro­vid­ing advice to Swift Boat Vet­er­ans for Truth — was AFF’s legal coun­cil. In addi­tion, AFF’s media strate­gist was Lar­ry McCarthy, the guy who pro­duced the 1988 Willie Hor­ton ad.

The pro­file is from 2008, the year the AFF formed, and is a par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant report on the AFF at the time giv­en that almost noth­ing was list­ed on its web­site about its lead­er­ship and who was fund­ing it.

What the arti­cle does­n’t list is who exact­ly was financ­ing AFF at this time. The arti­cle also describes how it is that AFF was able to oper­ate with so lit­tle known about who is financ­ing it: AFF claims to be a “social wel­fare orga­ni­za­tion”, mak­ing it a 501(c)(4) enti­ty under the US tax code. And thanks to var­i­ous loop­holes in US cam­paign finance laws — loop­holes that pre­date the noto­ri­ous 2010 Cit­i­zens Unit­ed Supreme Court rul­ing — as long as an orga­ni­za­tion does­n’t spend the major­i­ty of its funds on polit­i­cal advo­ca­cy and as long as its polit­i­cal ads avoid cer­tain things (like explic­it­ly say­ing to vote for a cer­tain can­di­date), that orga­ni­za­tion can large­ly avoid US cam­paign finance laws and keep its donors entire­ly secret. Which is exact­ly how AFF oper­ates: In the dark, hid­ing behind the pre­tense that it’s a “social wel­fare” orga­ni­za­tion.

And as we’re going to see in sub­se­quent arti­cle excerpts, the secret donors behind the AFF went from the Koch broth­ers (who were almost entire­ly fund­ing the group by 2012), then shift­ed to Karl Rove’s fundrais­ing net­work and oth­er Repub­li­can estab­lish­ment donors, includ­ing the Repub­li­can House lead­er­ship. In oth­er words, the AFF isn’t just any ‘ol shady 501(c)(4) dark mon­ey enti­ty. It’s been qui­et­ly one of the key dark mon­ey enti­ties used by some of the most pow­er­ful forces behind the Repub­li­can par­ty. It’s, again, why the con­nec­tion between Nicole Schlinger and the AFF is poten­tial­ly such a sen­si­tive sto­ry. The sto­ry of the AFF is the sto­ry of the rise of the ascen­dance of dark mon­ey in US pol­i­tics:

Iowa Inde­pen­dent

Secrets of the Amer­i­can Future Fund
Iowa-based con­ser­v­a­tive advo­ca­cy group includes mas­ter­minds of Swift Boat and Willie Hor­ton ads

By Jason Han­cock 8/19/08 12:29 PM

A net­work of Iowa Repub­li­cans is play­ing a lead­ing role in a secre­tive group advo­cat­ing nation­al­ly on behalf of “con­ser­v­a­tive and free mar­ket ideals” in con­gres­sion­al races around the coun­try. Among the group’s lead­ers are two media con­sul­tants who played key roles in the Swift Boat Vet­er­ans for Truth ads in 2004 and the Willie Hor­ton ad in 1988, both of which helped defeat Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates.

The Amer­i­can Future Fund (AFF), oper­at­ing out of Des Moines, is spon­sor­ing advo­ca­cy adver­tise­ments in close­ly con­test­ed con­gres­sion­al races from New York to Louisiana to Min­neso­ta and Col­orado. It is one of the most ambi­tious con­ser­v­a­tive inde­pen­dent expen­di­ture groups to emerge in 2008. Most observers expect AFF to begin increas­ing its role in elec­tions around the coun­try, stok­ing spec­u­la­tion that it will spend heav­i­ly to prop up light­ly fund­ed Repub­li­can cam­paign com­mit­tees.

Because of the way the group is orga­nized under Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice guide­lines for non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tions it does not have to dis­close its donors and is not gov­erned by the Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion (FEC).

But an Iowa Inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion has found the group has deep roots in state Repub­li­can pol­i­tics. And, unlike MoveOn.org, a sim­i­lar group advo­cat­ing lib­er­al caus­es, it’s hard to deter­mine who is actu­al­ly behind the AFF. The key play­ers include:

Nicole Schlinger, the group’s pres­i­dent, the for­mer exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Repub­li­can Par­ty of Iowa.

Tim Albrecht, a for­mer spokesman for Repub­li­cans in the Iowa House who worked for Mitt Romney’s pres­i­den­tial cam­paign and spent a short time this year work­ing for the Repub­li­can Par­ty of Iowa, is the group’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions direc­tor.

David Kochel, anoth­er for­mer state GOP exec­u­tive direc­tor and a senior advis­er to the Rom­ney cam­paign, who has served as spokesman for AFF, although Albrecht said he is no longer asso­ci­at­ed with the group.

The Wash­ing­ton Post report­ed in March – and Albrecht con­firmed to Iowa Inde­pen­dent — that Ben Gins­berg, of the high-pow­ered D.C. law firm Pat­ton Bog­gs, is the group’s legal coun­sel. Gins­berg resigned as chief out­side coun­sel to the Bush-Cheney cam­paign in August 2004 when it was revealed that he was also pro­vid­ing advice to Swift Boat Vet­er­ans for Truth, a group that spon­sored error-laden attacks on the mil­i­tary ser­vice record of 2004 Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee John Ker­ry.

Lar­ry McCarthy, pres­i­dent of D.C.-based media firm McCarthy Mar­cus Hen­nings, is AFF’s media strate­gist. In 1988, McCarthy pro­duced the infa­mous, racial­ly tinged Willie Hor­ton tele­vi­sion ad that helped then-Vice Pres­i­dent George H.W. Bush bury Michael Dukakis under charges that he was soft on crime.

Pub­lic records show the AFF also has con­nec­tions to Iowa busi­ness­man Bruce Rastet­ter, who is wide­ly believed to be con­sid­er­ing a run for gov­er­nor in 2010. Rastet­ter is a reg­u­lar donor to the Repub­li­can Par­ty and founder of Hawk­eye Renew­ables, the fourth largest ethanol pro­duc­er in the nation. Eric Peter­son, busi­ness man­ag­er at Sum­mit Farms, anoth­er of Rastetter’s com­pa­nies, is list­ed on doc­u­ments filed with the Iowa Sec­re­tary of State’s office as pres­i­dent, sec­re­tary and direc­tor of Iowa Future Fund, a con­ser­v­a­tive non­prof­it that essen­tial­ly mor­phed into Amer­i­can Future Fund.

The address list­ed on an AFF ad buy in Min­neso­ta is a post office box used by Nick Ryan, a Des Moines lob­by­ist who works pri­mar­i­ly for Rastetter’s com­pa­nies and who served as cam­paign man­ag­er for 2006 Repub­li­can guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­date Jim Nus­sle. In Feb­ru­ary, Ryan was act­ing as spokesman for Hawk­eye Renew­ables when 29,000 gal­lons of ethanol was acci­den­tal­ly spilled at the company’s Iowa Falls plant.

The many faces of AFF

The Iowa Future Fund, tech­ni­cal­ly the first incar­na­tion of AFF, gained pub­lic atten­tion in March when it ran a series of tele­vi­sion and radio ads accus­ing Gov. Chet Cul­ver of increas­ing spend­ing by 20 per­cent over the past two years and rais­ing tax­es and fees by $100 mil­lion.

“Cul­ver rais­es tax­es and spends more mon­ey and wants to use your tax dol­lars to ben­e­fit Microsoft,” the ad’s nar­ra­tor said, refer­ring to a tax pack­age that Cul­ver backed and that the leg­is­la­ture passed geared to lure com­pa­nies like Microsoft Corp. and Google to the state.

The Iowa Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty filed a com­plaint with the Iowa Ethics and Cam­paign Dis­clo­sure Board to deter­mine whether the ads con­sti­tut­ed polit­i­cal adver­tis­ing, which would require dis­clo­sure of the group’s donors.

Char­lie Smith­son, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Iowa Ethics Cam­paign and Dis­clo­sure Board, said the com­plaint has not yet been ful­ly set­tled.

“It is still under inves­ti­ga­tion,” he said. “The deter­mi­na­tion was made that it did not vio­late the state cam­paign laws because it did not ‘express­ly advo­cate’ for or against Gov. Cul­ver or a clear­ly iden­ti­fied can­di­date for office. The issue the Board is now look­ing at is whether any of the state lob­by­ing laws were trig­gered.”

The next Ethics Board meet­ing is Aug. 28.

In April, Iowa Future Fund effec­tive­ly split into two groups: AFF, which focus­es on fed­er­al races around the coun­try, and the Iowa Progress Project, which puts its resources toward state issues.

Albrecht said AFF and Iowa Future Fund “are com­plete­ly unre­lat­ed.” But they share an orga­ni­za­tion­al his­to­ry. AFF and IFF were incor­po­rat­ed on the same day by the same Vir­ginia law firm. David Kochel served for a time as spokesman for IFF and AFF before becom­ing pres­i­dent of Iowa Progress Project.

In March, an ad run by AFF in the race between Demo­c­rat Al Franken and Repub­li­can Sen. Norm Cole­man for Minnesota’s U.S. Sen­ate seat caused the state’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic-Farmer-Labor­Par­ty to file a for­mal com­plaint with the FEC alleg­ing that the group vio­lat­ed fed­er­al elec­tion law and that its ads con­sti­tute bla­tant elec­toral advo­ca­cy.

“The Amer­i­can Future Fund is a shad­owy non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion,” the com­plaint said. “It pur­ports to be exempt from tax under sec­tion 501(c)(4) of the Inter­nal Rev­enue Code. But its notion of ‘pro­mot­ing the social wel­fare’ is to send valen­tines to elec­toral­ly trou­bled Repub­li­can Sen­ate can­di­dates. The Com­mis­sion should take imme­di­ate steps to enforce the law and expose this group’s secret financ­ing to light of day.”

Under fed­er­al elec­tion law, the orga­ni­za­tion is pro­hib­it­ed from engag­ing sole­ly in “express advo­ca­cy,” which would include ask­ing vot­ers to vote for or against a cer­tain can­di­date. But so long as the ad hasn’t been coor­di­nat­ed with a cam­paign and doesn’t out­right say “vote for” or “vote against,” it is not con­sid­ered express advo­ca­cy, accord­ing to Paul S. Ryan, FEC pro­gram direc­tor for the Cam­paign Legal Cen­ter, a Wash­ing­ton, D.C.-based orga­ni­za­tion.

“An orga­ni­za­tion that is care­ful about how it writes the script of its ad can fly under the radar or stay out­side of the net of cam­paign finance activ­i­ty,” he said.

The ad in ques­tion didn’t ask vot­ers to vote for Cole­man, but rather asked vot­ers to “call Norm Cole­man and thank him for his agen­da for Min­neso­ta.”

In 2004, sev­er­al groups filed com­plaints against so-called inde­pen­dent expen­di­ture com­mit­tees say­ing they ignored cam­paign finance law. It took the FEC two years to rule on the com­plaints. In the end, the groups had to pay less than 2 per­cent of the fund they ille­gal­ly raised and spent.

Brad Smith, a for­mer chair­man of the FEC and cur­rent­ly a pro­fes­sor of law at Cap­i­tal Uni­ver­si­ty Law School in Colum­bus, Ohio, said that if a group’s “major pur­pose” is not try­ing to affect elec­tions, “they are not reg­u­lat­ed by the FEC.” But Smith added the def­i­n­i­tion of “major pur­pose” is not clear, which could open the door for some non­prof­it groups to face a chal­lenge on their tax sta­tus.

“I think there would be an open­ing for some­one who want­ed to pros­e­cute a group who is spend­ing mil­lions of dol­lars on adver­tis­ing,” said Smith, a Repub­li­can who has been a vocal crit­ic of cam­paign finance reform.

Albrecht said there is no valid­i­ty to claims that AFF is any­thing but an issues-focused orga­ni­za­tion.

“We are an issues orga­ni­za­tion,” he said. “That is evi­dent by the things that are promi­nent­ly dis­played on our Web site and in our work.”

...

Albrecht said AFF is sim­ply a reac­tion to lib­er­al groups like MoveOn.org who have dom­i­nat­ed this realm of pol­i­tics for years.

“For far too long the left has been on the field with no oppo­si­tion,” he said. “Amer­i­can Future Fund has said it’s time to play ball. We’re not going to sit on the side­lines any longer. It’s impor­tant for free mar­ket, con­ser­v­a­tive prin­ci­ples to be high­light­ed in pub­lic, and that’s what we intend to do.”

The dif­fer­ence is that MoveOn.org, a decade-old lib­er­al group, iden­ti­fies its lead­er­ship on its Web site, boasts more than a mil­lion mem­bers and nev­er shies away from the spot­light as a means for ampli­fy­ing its mes­sage. AFF is decid­ed­ly low­er-pro­file, dis­clos­ing noth­ing about its lead­ers, his­to­ry or mem­ber­ship on its Web site, and it makes lit­tle or no effort on pub­lic appear­ances, press con­fer­ences and media book­ings.

...

———–

“Secrets of the Amer­i­can Future Fund” by Jason Han­cock; Iowa Inde­pen­dent; 08/19/2008

“Because of the way the group is orga­nized under Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice guide­lines for non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tions it does not have to dis­close its donors and is not gov­erned by the Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion (FEC).”

That’s one of the core ele­ments of the scan­dalous nature of the Amer­i­can Future Fund: it’s able to do what it does in secret by sim­ply orga­niz­ing itself in a way that tech­ni­cal­ly makes it a non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion. A non­prof­it enti­ty that tried to water-down robo-call­ing reg­u­la­tions in 2009 in antic­i­pa­tion of its planned 2010 par­ti­san robo-call­ing cam­paign on behalf of Repub­li­can can­di­dates.

And the AFF is typ­i­cal, at least in terms of exploit­ing these 501(c)(4) rules. But it’s not typ­i­cal in terms of who was behind it at its incep­tion. As we saw, it was a who’s who of Iowa’s Repub­li­can estab­lish­ment:

...
A net­work of Iowa Repub­li­cans is play­ing a lead­ing role in a secre­tive group advo­cat­ing nation­al­ly on behalf of “con­ser­v­a­tive and free mar­ket ideals” in con­gres­sion­al races around the coun­try. Among the group’s lead­ers are two media con­sul­tants who played key roles in the Swift Boat Vet­er­ans for Truth ads in 2004 and the Willie Hor­ton ad in 1988, both of which helped defeat Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates.

...

But an Iowa Inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion has found the group has deep roots in state Repub­li­can pol­i­tics. And, unlike MoveOn.org, a sim­i­lar group advo­cat­ing lib­er­al caus­es, it’s hard to deter­mine who is actu­al­ly behind the AFF. The key play­ers include:

Nicole Schlinger, the group’s pres­i­dent, the for­mer exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Repub­li­can Par­ty of Iowa.

Tim Albrecht, a for­mer spokesman for Repub­li­cans in the Iowa House who worked for Mitt Romney’s pres­i­den­tial cam­paign and spent a short time this year work­ing for the Repub­li­can Par­ty of Iowa, is the group’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions direc­tor.

David Kochel, anoth­er for­mer state GOP exec­u­tive direc­tor and a senior advis­er to the Rom­ney cam­paign, who has served as spokesman for AFF, although Albrecht said he is no longer asso­ci­at­ed with the group.

...

Pub­lic records show the AFF also has con­nec­tions to Iowa busi­ness­man Bruce Rastet­ter, who is wide­ly believed to be con­sid­er­ing a run for gov­er­nor in 2010. Rastet­ter is a reg­u­lar donor to the Repub­li­can Par­ty and founder of Hawk­eye Renew­ables, the fourth largest ethanol pro­duc­er in the nation. Eric Peter­son, busi­ness man­ag­er at Sum­mit Farms, anoth­er of Rastetter’s com­pa­nies, is list­ed on doc­u­ments filed with the Iowa Sec­re­tary of State’s office as pres­i­dent, sec­re­tary and direc­tor of Iowa Future Fund, a con­ser­v­a­tive non­prof­it that essen­tial­ly mor­phed into Amer­i­can Future Fund.

The address list­ed on an AFF ad buy in Min­neso­ta is a post office box used by Nick Ryan, a Des Moines lob­by­ist who works pri­mar­i­ly for Rastetter’s com­pa­nies and who served as cam­paign man­ag­er for 2006 Repub­li­can guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­date Jim Nus­sle. In Feb­ru­ary, Ryan was act­ing as spokesman for Hawk­eye Renew­ables when 29,000 gal­lons of ethanol was acci­den­tal­ly spilled at the company’s Iowa Falls plant.
...

Note that Iowa busi­ness­man Bruce Rastet­ter was char­ac­ter­ized in 2015 by Politi­co as Iowa’s GOP “King­mak­er”. Don’t for­get the out­sized impor­tance Iowa has in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics with the ear­ly Iowa caus­es in the pri­maries. So being an Iowan GOP king­mak­er is an extra big deal in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics.

And then there were the two peo­ple that don’t appear to be based in Iowa but who had his­to­ries in the dark arts of polit­i­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tion: Ben Gins­berg (Swift Boat smears) and Lar­ry McCarthy (Willie Hor­ton race-bait­ing):

...
The Wash­ing­ton Post report­ed in March – and Albrecht con­firmed to Iowa Inde­pen­dent — that Ben Gins­berg, of the high-pow­ered D.C. law firm Pat­ton Bog­gs, is the group’s legal coun­sel. Gins­berg resigned as chief out­side coun­sel to the Bush-Cheney cam­paign in August 2004 when it was revealed that he was also pro­vid­ing advice to Swift Boat Vet­er­ans for Truth, a group that spon­sored error-laden attacks on the mil­i­tary ser­vice record of 2004 Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee John Ker­ry.

Lar­ry McCarthy, pres­i­dent of D.C.-based media firm McCarthy Mar­cus Hen­nings, is AFF’s media strate­gist. In 1988, McCarthy pro­duced the infa­mous, racial­ly tinged Willie Hor­ton tele­vi­sion ad that helped then-Vice Pres­i­dent George H.W. Bush bury Michael Dukakis under charges that he was soft on crime.
...

Note that it was April of 2008 that the AFF offi­cial­ly formed. But it real­ly was just the result of the Iowa Future Fund split­ting its fed­er­al and state oper­a­tions into the AFF (fed­er­al) and the Iowa Progress Project (state). So the AFF real­ly pre­dates 2008 and it’s also a reflec­tion of the nation­al ambi­tions of this group of Iowa Repub­li­cans.

Of course, as we’ll see, it’s also a vehi­cle for laun­der­ing nation­al GOP estab­lish­ment mon­ey by mega-donors like the Koch net­work and Karl Rove’s donor net­work. So whether or not the AFF pri­mar­i­ly rep­re­sent­ed the nation­al ambi­tions of ‘King­mak­er’ Bruce Rastet­ter or whether it was act­ing as a laun­der­ing out­fit for nation­al enti­ties like the Kochs and Rove from the start is an inter­est­ing ques­tion. But regard­less of how it start­ed, The AFF has clear­ly become a laun­der­ing enti­ty for GOP mega-donors at this point:

...
The many faces of AFF

The Iowa Future Fund, tech­ni­cal­ly the first incar­na­tion of AFF, gained pub­lic atten­tion in March when it ran a series of tele­vi­sion and radio ads accus­ing Gov. Chet Cul­ver of increas­ing spend­ing by 20 per­cent over the past two years and rais­ing tax­es and fees by $100 mil­lion.

...

In April, Iowa Future Fund effec­tive­ly split into two groups: AFF, which focus­es on fed­er­al races around the coun­try, and the Iowa Progress Project, which puts its resources toward state issues.

Albrecht said AFF and Iowa Future Fund “are com­plete­ly unre­lat­ed.” But they share an orga­ni­za­tion­al his­to­ry. AFF and IFF were incor­po­rat­ed on the same day by the same Vir­ginia law firm. David Kochel served for a time as spokesman for IFF and AFF before becom­ing pres­i­dent of Iowa Progress Project.
...

And from the very begin­ning, the mer­ce­nary AFF main­tained a pre­tense of being a “social wel­fare” advo­ca­cy group. Because that absurd non­prof­it pre­tense is what’s required to qual­i­fy as a 501(c)(4) enti­ty and avoid report­ing donors to the FEC and avoid scruti­ny by the IRS:

...
In March, an ad run by AFF in the race between Demo­c­rat Al Franken and Repub­li­can Sen. Norm Cole­man for Minnesota’s U.S. Sen­ate seat caused the state’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic-Farmer-Labor­Par­ty to file a for­mal com­plaint with the FEC alleg­ing that the group vio­lat­ed fed­er­al elec­tion law and that its ads con­sti­tute bla­tant elec­toral advo­ca­cy.

“The Amer­i­can Future Fund is a shad­owy non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion,” the com­plaint said. “It pur­ports to be exempt from tax under sec­tion 501(c)(4) of the Inter­nal Rev­enue Code. But its notion of ‘pro­mot­ing the social wel­fare’ is to send valen­tines to elec­toral­ly trou­bled Repub­li­can Sen­ate can­di­dates. The Com­mis­sion should take imme­di­ate steps to enforce the law and expose this group’s secret financ­ing to light of day.”

Under fed­er­al elec­tion law, the orga­ni­za­tion is pro­hib­it­ed from engag­ing sole­ly in “express advo­ca­cy,” which would include ask­ing vot­ers to vote for or against a cer­tain can­di­date. But so long as the ad hasn’t been coor­di­nat­ed with a cam­paign and doesn’t out­right say “vote for” or “vote against,” it is not con­sid­ered express advo­ca­cy, accord­ing to Paul S. Ryan, FEC pro­gram direc­tor for the Cam­paign Legal Cen­ter, a Wash­ing­ton, D.C.-based orga­ni­za­tion.

“An orga­ni­za­tion that is care­ful about how it writes the script of its ad can fly under the radar or stay out­side of the net of cam­paign finance activ­i­ty,” he said.

The ad in ques­tion didn’t ask vot­ers to vote for Cole­man, but rather asked vot­ers to “call Norm Cole­man and thank him for his agen­da for Min­neso­ta.”

In 2004, sev­er­al groups filed com­plaints against so-called inde­pen­dent expen­di­ture com­mit­tees say­ing they ignored cam­paign finance law. It took the FEC two years to rule on the com­plaints. In the end, the groups had to pay less than 2 per­cent of the fund they ille­gal­ly raised and spent.
...

The whole absurd sit­u­a­tion is exem­pli­fied by the quote from Tim Albrecht, AFF’s found­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions direc­tor, who declared “We are an issues orga­ni­za­tion, that is evi­dent by the things that are promi­nent­ly dis­played on our Web site and in our work,” while ref­er­enc­ing a web­site that dis­closed noth­ing about its lead­ers, his­to­ry or mem­ber­ship. It’s a bla­tant black box squawk­ing about how trans­par­ent it is. And it is trans­par­ent in the sense that it’s trans­par­ent­ly opaque:

...
Albrecht said there is no valid­i­ty to claims that AFF is any­thing but an issues-focused orga­ni­za­tion.

“We are an issues orga­ni­za­tion,” he said. “That is evi­dent by the things that are promi­nent­ly dis­played on our Web site and in our work.”

...

Albrecht said AFF is sim­ply a reac­tion to lib­er­al groups like MoveOn.org who have dom­i­nat­ed this realm of pol­i­tics for years.

“For far too long the left has been on the field with no oppo­si­tion,” he said. “Amer­i­can Future Fund has said it’s time to play ball. We’re not going to sit on the side­lines any longer. It’s impor­tant for free mar­ket, con­ser­v­a­tive prin­ci­ples to be high­light­ed in pub­lic, and that’s what we intend to do.”

The dif­fer­ence is that MoveOn.org, a decade-old lib­er­al group, iden­ti­fies its lead­er­ship on its Web site, boasts more than a mil­lion mem­bers and nev­er shies away from the spot­light as a means for ampli­fy­ing its mes­sage. AFF is decid­ed­ly low­er-pro­file, dis­clos­ing noth­ing about its lead­ers, his­to­ry or mem­ber­ship on its Web site, and it makes lit­tle or no effort on pub­lic appear­ances, press con­fer­ences and media book­ings.
...

And note how the AFF was expect­ed to become a nation­al play­er in elec­tions with heavy spend­ing back in 2008. It was obvi­ous­ly backed by big mon­ey despite the lack of dis­clo­sure. The writ­ing was on the wall from the begin­ning:

...
The Amer­i­can Future Fund (AFF), oper­at­ing out of Des Moines, is spon­sor­ing advo­ca­cy adver­tise­ments in close­ly con­test­ed con­gres­sion­al races from New York to Louisiana to Min­neso­ta and Col­orado. It is one of the most ambi­tious con­ser­v­a­tive inde­pen­dent expen­di­ture groups to emerge in 2008. Most observers expect AFF to begin increas­ing its role in elec­tions around the coun­try, stok­ing spec­u­la­tion that it will spend heav­i­ly to prop up light­ly fund­ed Repub­li­can cam­paign com­mit­tees.
...

So the Amer­i­can Future Fund was clear­ly a tool of the Iowan Repub­li­can estab­lish­ment when it was set up in 2008 and was already work­ing close­ly with peo­ple involved with the Rove-con­nect­ed DCI group by 2009, dur­ing Nicole Schlinger’s tenure as AFF’s pres­i­dent and “prin­ci­pal offi­cer”. The AFF was lit­er­al­ly a right-wing ‘social wel­fare nonprofit’-for-hire in the pre-Cit­i­zen’s Unit­ed era.

Cit­i­zens Unit­ed: More Steroids for 501(c)(4)s That Were Already on Steroids

But as we’re going to see, it was 2010 when the AFF’s abil­i­ty to influ­ence US pol­i­tics explod­ed. More so. 2010 is of course the year when the poten­tial influ­ence of all 501(c)(4)s ‘social wel­fare non­prof­it’ enti­ties explod­ed in the US thanks, of course, to the Cit­i­zens Unit­ed Supreme Court rul­ing. But as we saw from the above review of the AFF’s pre-Cit­i­zens Unit­ed days, the sit­u­a­tion for 501(c)(4) orga­ni­za­tions was already absured. Cor­po­rate mer­ce­nary enti­ties like the AFF could already claim ‘social wel­fare non­prof­it’ sta­tus and their donors did­n’t need to be dis­closed.

So what did Cit­i­zens Unit­ed change? Sad­ly, not as much as Amer­i­cans often assume, which is reflec­tion of how long the dys­func­tion­al influ­ence of mon­ey in US pol­i­tics has been the norm. The biggest change is that cor­po­ra­tions and unions can now donate direct­ly to 501(c)(4)s, which was pre­vi­ous­ly banned. So, pre-Cit­i­zens Unit­ed, the 501(c)(4) enti­ties could take unlim­it­ed amounts of mon­ey from indi­vid­u­als like the Koch broth­ers but not direct­ly for the Kochs’ cor­po­ra­tions. Post-Cit­i­zens Unit­ed, the Kochs and their cor­po­rate enti­ties could all donate as much as they want­ed. And the source of that spend­ing would all remain a secret as long as they suc­cess­ful­ly pre­tend­ed to be social wel­fare non­prof­its.

So what do 501(4)©s need to do in order main­tain that “social non­prof­it” pre­tense? Don’t spend a major­i­ty of their mon­ey on open advo­ca­cy for or against a can­di­date. But spend­ing 49.9999% of their mon­ey on attack ads is fine. As long as they spend the rest of their mon­ey on “social wel­fare”. And issue ads that don’t talk about a can­di­date (like an ad that extolls the virtues of low tax­es on bil­lion­aires) count as “social wel­fare” spend­ing. So as long as an enti­ty like the AFF spends 50% + 1 dol­lars on issue ads instead of attack ads, it can claim to be a social wel­fare non­prof­it with full secre­cy pro­tec­tions for donors with no caps on the dona­tions.

In oth­er words, when the Kochs give $10 mil­lion to one of their 501(c)(4) groups like the AFF or Amer­i­cans For Pros­per­i­ty, that’s seen as basi­cal­ly char­i­ty under the tax code and unlim­it­ed funds can be poured into them with­out dis­clo­sure. And what makes an enti­ty like the AFF so notable in this land­scape is that a group like Amer­i­cans For Pros­per­i­ty is obvi­ous­ly backed by the Kochs. They start­ed it and fund it. The AFF, on the oth­er hand, is much more mer­ce­nary in nature than Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty. Maybe the Kochs and their net­work are pri­mar­i­ly financ­ing the AFF’s activ­i­ties at some point. Or maybe it’s Karl Rove and his non-Koch ‘estab­lish­ment’ net­work. Or per­haps the DCI Group is sub-con­tract­ing AFF’s ser­vices. It’s a for-hire enti­ty of choice for a num­ber of dif­fer­ent clients. And that ambi­gu­i­ty is part of why mer­ce­nary groups like the AFF are poten­tial­ly so use­ful for how mega-donors influ­ence pol­i­tics with big dona­tions in secret. Even when they have to dis­close how much they’ve spent, they don’t have to say who paid for it and it’s not always obvi­ous who their clients are because they have lots lf dif­fer­ent clients.

The fol­low­ing arti­cle also describes one of the key loop­holes 501(c)(4)s must jump through in order to main­tain the pre­tense that their “issue ads” aren’t actu­al­ly polit­i­cal ads designed to influ­ence an elec­tion which is all part of the “social wel­fare” facade. It all goes back to the 1976 Supreme Court deci­sion of Buck­ley v. Valeo, where the court spec­u­lat­ed in a foot­note that there were cer­tain phras­es that would make it clear that an ad was a cam­paign ad (designed to influ­ence the out­come of an elec­tion) and not an issue ad. Those phras­es — “vote for,” “elect,” “sup­port,” “cast your bal­lot for,” “Smith for Con­gress,” “vote against,” “defeat,” and “reject” — became known as the “mag­ic words” that 501(c)(4)s need­ed to avoid in their ‘issue ads’ being declared cam­paign ads. Don’t for­get that 501(c)(4)s can’t get caught spend­ing a major­i­ty of their funds on cam­paign ads (but 49.999% is fine). So the “mag­ic words” became an impor­tant guide­line that helped keep “social wel­fare” sham of secret unlim­it­ed cam­paign spend­ing going in US pol­i­tics for the past four decades.

As the arti­cle notes, the IRS still has the pow­er to revoke a 501(c)(4) enti­ty’s non­prof­it sta­tus if it deter­mines the enti­ty is pri­mar­i­ly engaged in cam­paign­ing even if the enti­ty avoids those “mag­ic words”. The IRS now says it looks at the “the facts and cir­cum­stances” of a 501(c)(4)‘s ad. But in prac­tice that rarely hap­pens because IRS audits of 501(4)©s almost nev­er hap­pen in the first place. So explo­sion of ‘dark mon­ey’ in US pol­i­tics is simul­ta­ne­ous­ly root­ed in an absurd set of rules that, if fol­lowed, make reg­u­la­tor scruti­ny much less like­ly cou­pled with the real­i­ty that the reg­u­la­tors are bare­ly scru­ti­niz­ing any­thing in the first place. It’s a full-spec­trum sham:

Front­line

The Rules That Gov­ern 501(c)(4)s

Octo­ber 30, 2012
by Emma Schwartz

Near­ly a cen­tu­ry ago, Con­gress cre­at­ed the com­pli­cat­ed legal frame­work that gov­erns these tax-exempt non­prof­its, also known as 501(c)(4)s for the part of the tax code they fall under. That rule said they were sup­posed to oper­ate “exclu­sive­ly for the pro­mo­tion of social wel­fare” — a def­i­n­i­tion that includes groups rang­ing from local fire depart­ments to the Sier­ra Club to the Nation­al Right to Life Com­mit­tee.

While these non­prof­its have always been allowed to lob­by for change, in 1959, reg­u­la­tors opened the door to polit­i­cal activ­i­ty by inter­pret­ing “exclu­sive­ly” to mean that groups had to be “pri­mar­i­ly” engaged in social wel­fare and help­ing the com­mu­ni­ty.

But reg­u­la­tors nev­er defined exact­ly how they would mea­sure this bal­ance. Part of the rea­son, said Mar­cus Owens, a for­mer head of the IRS divi­sion over­see­ing non­prof­its, is because the IRS didn’t want to lim­it what it could eval­u­ate in decid­ing what was polit­i­cal activ­i­ty.

How­ev­er, the lack of clar­i­ty has cre­at­ed a unique type of orga­ni­za­tion when it comes to pol­i­tics — chief among those dif­fer­ences being what the pub­lic must be told about these non­prof­its’ donors.

Why Don’t 501(c)(4)s Have to Dis­close Their Donors?

Social wel­fare non­prof­its don’t fall under the Fed­er­al Elec­tion Commission’s stan­dard def­i­n­i­tion of a polit­i­cal com­mit­tee, which, under FEC guide­lines, must dis­close its donors. Because 501(c)(4)s say their pri­ma­ry pur­pose is social wel­fare, they can keep their donors secret. The only excep­tion is if some­one gives them mon­ey and specif­i­cal­ly states the funds are for a polit­i­cal ad.

And unlike polit­i­cal com­mit­tees, social wel­fare non­prof­its have a legal right to keep their donors secret. That stems from the land­mark 1958 Supreme Court case, NAACP v. Alaba­ma, which held the NAACP didn’t have to iden­ti­fy its mem­bers because dis­clo­sure could lead to harass­ment.

Fast for­ward to the post-Cit­i­zens Unit­ed world of cam­paign finance where out­side groups can now spend unlim­it­ed amounts of mon­ey to influ­ence elec­tions so long as they are inde­pen­dent of can­di­dates. See­ing the advan­tages offered by groups that can engage in polit­i­cal activ­i­ty while keep­ing their donors secret, both Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans have seized onto this open­ing in the tax code.

That’s why in recent years, many new 501(c)(4)s have popped up right before the elec­tion sea­son, focus­ing heav­i­ly on tele­vi­sion adver­tis­ing, usu­al­ly attack­ing, though some­times pro­mot­ing, can­di­dates run­ning for office.

These non­prof­its do have to report some of their activ­i­ties to the FEC. When they run ads direct­ly advo­cat­ing for the elec­tion or defeat of a can­di­date, they have to tell reg­u­la­tors how much and what they spend mon­ey on — but not where the mon­ey comes from.

Since they can’t make these types of ads their sole activ­i­ty, many 501(c)(4)s focus on so-called issue ads, which they only have to report to the FEC in defined win­dows before an elec­tion.

The Debate Over “Issue Ads”

But what exact­ly defines an issue ad?

The key start­ing point is a 1976 Supreme Court case, Buck­ley v. Valeo, in which the court spec­u­lat­ed in a foot­note that if cer­tain words were used in an ad, it was clear­ly a cam­paign ad. The eight phras­es list­ed in the foot­note –“vote for,” “elect,” “sup­port,” “cast your bal­lot for,” “Smith for Con­gress,” “vote against,” “defeat,” and “reject” — became known as the “mag­ic words” and for decades served as a bright line test between an issue ad and a cam­paign ad.

But many cam­paign finance reform­ers saw that dis­tinc­tion as a sham, espe­cial­ly as increas­ing amounts of fed­er­al cam­paign dol­lars head­ed to polit­i­cal par­ties where the soft mon­ey loop­hole allowed unlim­it­ed mon­ey to be spent on issue ads. While avoid­ing the mag­ic words, these issue ads typ­i­cal­ly focused on one can­di­date run­ning for office and ran just before an elec­tion. In oth­er words, the reform­ers argued, they were clear­ly try­ing to influ­ence elec­tions.

The reform­ers tried to address this loop­hole in the Bipar­ti­san Cam­paign Finance Reform Act of 2002, oth­er­wise known as the McCain-Fein­gold bill. In a 2003 case, McConnell v. FEC, the Supreme Court appeared to agree, say­ing that the mag­ic words were “func­tion­al­ly mean­ing­less.”

But the deci­sion didn’t bar states from using the mag­ic words and the court has since backed away from its ear­li­er stance. And so legal debate con­tin­ues. For instance, ear­li­er this year, the Col­orado Supreme Court upheld the mag­ic words test as the bright line between issue ads and direct cam­paign ads.

Today, both the FEC and the IRS use tests broad­er than just the mag­ic words to deter­mine what counts as an issue ad. The FEC says that any ad that men­tions a can­di­date dur­ing defined win­dows before an elec­tion must be dis­closed, even if it doesn’t include the mag­ic words. The IRS looks at what it calls “the facts and cir­cum­stances” sur­round­ing an ad. Tax experts say that many of the issue ads that fall out­side FEC report­ing win­dows would be con­sid­ered polit­i­cal by the IRS.

But the real­i­ty on the ground for groups like 501(c)(4)s is less clear: Because three of the FEC com­mis­sion­ers sym­pa­thize with the mag­ic words test they have “refused to apply the broad­er test in recent years,” says Paul Ryan, senior coun­sel at the Cam­paign Legal Cen­ter, a group that push­es for more cam­paign finance reforms.

...

What that means for 501(c)(4)s is this: by avoid­ing the mag­ic words, social wel­fare non­prof­its have a bet­ter chance of con­vinc­ing reg­u­la­tors they are focused on issues and not pol­i­tics.

Of course, the IRS could revoke a nonprofit’s tax-exempt sta­tus if it engages in too much polit­i­cal activ­i­ty. In prac­tice, that hasn’t hap­pened much. But the IRS has indi­cat­ed it is start­ing to look into some of these groups and recent­ly sent a let­ter (pdf) to Con­gress say­ing it had more than 70 “ongo­ing exam­i­na­tions” of 501(c)(4)s.

What­ev­er it does, the IRS remains lim­it­ed in what it can do to watch over these groups. As a recent ProP­ub­li­ca inves­ti­ga­tion found: “One rea­son the IRS strug­gles is that it can’t match the speed of pol­i­tics.” In oth­er words, by the time these groups sub­mit tax returns, they have often stopped oper­at­ing or cre­at­ed new groups under new names.

———-

“The Rules That Gov­ern 501(c)(4)s” by Emma Schwartz; Front­line; 10/30/2012

Near­ly a cen­tu­ry ago, Con­gress cre­at­ed the com­pli­cat­ed legal frame­work that gov­erns these tax-exempt non­prof­its, also known as 501(c)(4)s for the part of the tax code they fall under. That rule said they were sup­posed to oper­ate “exclu­sive­ly for the pro­mo­tion of social wel­fare” — a def­i­n­i­tion that includes groups rang­ing from local fire depart­ments to the Sier­ra Club to the Nation­al Right to Life Com­mit­tee.”

Yes, it was near­ly a cen­tu­ry ago when Con­gress set up the legal frame­work for 501(c)(4)s to be treat­ed as non­prof­its. But, cru­cial­ly, it was only if they oper­at­ed exclu­sive­ly for the pro­mo­tion of social wel­fare. It was in 1959 that the rules got loos­ened by reg­u­la­tors to sim­ply require that 501(c)(4)s oper­ate pri­mar­i­ly on ‘social wel­fare’. But the def­i­n­i­tion of what it meant to be “pri­mar­i­ly” on social wel­fare was nev­er defined:

...
While these non­prof­its have always been allowed to lob­by for change, in 1959, reg­u­la­tors opened the door to polit­i­cal activ­i­ty by inter­pret­ing “exclu­sive­ly” to mean that groups had to be “pri­mar­i­ly” engaged in social wel­fare and help­ing the com­mu­ni­ty.

But reg­u­la­tors nev­er defined exact­ly how they would mea­sure this bal­ance. Part of the rea­son, said Mar­cus Owens, a for­mer head of the IRS divi­sion over­see­ing non­prof­its, is because the IRS didn’t want to lim­it what it could eval­u­ate in decid­ing what was polit­i­cal activ­i­ty.

How­ev­er, the lack of clar­i­ty has cre­at­ed a unique type of orga­ni­za­tion when it comes to pol­i­tics — chief among those dif­fer­ences being what the pub­lic must be told about these non­prof­its’ donors.
...

And it was one year ear­li­er, in 1958, that the Supreme Court ruled in NAACP v. Alaba­ma that 501(c)(4)s can keep their donors secret specif­i­cal­ly because they main­tain that their pri­ma­ry pur­pose is social wel­fare. Iron­i­cal­ly, it was a case brought for­ward by the NAACP — a group that real­ly was fight­ing for social wel­fare and real­ly did have mem­bers who had legit­i­mate rea­sons to want their iden­ti­ties to remain secret — that cre­at­ed the legal prece­dent that today allows indi­vid­u­als like the Koch broth­ers and Karl Rove to hide behind ‘social wel­fare’ secre­cy. It a reminder of how immense­ly chal­leng­ing it is to write laws that won’t be abused by the unscrupu­lous­ly pow­er­ful, which is one of the meta-chal­lenges fac­ing human­i­ty:

...
Why Don’t 501(c)(4)s Have to Dis­close Their Donors?

Social wel­fare non­prof­its don’t fall under the Fed­er­al Elec­tion Commission’s stan­dard def­i­n­i­tion of a polit­i­cal com­mit­tee, which, under FEC guide­lines, must dis­close its donors. Because 501(c)(4)s say their pri­ma­ry pur­pose is social wel­fare, they can keep their donors secret. The only excep­tion is if some­one gives them mon­ey and specif­i­cal­ly states the funds are for a polit­i­cal ad.

And unlike polit­i­cal com­mit­tees, social wel­fare non­prof­its have a legal right to keep their donors secret. That stems from the land­mark 1958 Supreme Court case, NAACP v. Alaba­ma, which held the NAACP didn’t have to iden­ti­fy its mem­bers because dis­clo­sure could lead to harass­ment.

Fast for­ward to the post-Cit­i­zens Unit­ed world of cam­paign finance where out­side groups can now spend unlim­it­ed amounts of mon­ey to influ­ence elec­tions so long as they are inde­pen­dent of can­di­dates. See­ing the advan­tages offered by groups that can engage in polit­i­cal activ­i­ty while keep­ing their donors secret, both Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans have seized onto this open­ing in the tax code.

That’s why in recent years, many new 501(c)(4)s have popped up right before the elec­tion sea­son, focus­ing heav­i­ly on tele­vi­sion adver­tis­ing, usu­al­ly attack­ing, though some­times pro­mot­ing, can­di­dates run­ning for office.
...

And even when 501(c)(4)s like the Amer­i­can Future Fund or Amer­i­cans For Pros­per­i­ty do engage in open polit­i­cal activ­i­ties (i.e. using the “mag­ic words” in their ads), they only have to report the amount spent. But not report who paid for them. Which, again, is why mer­ce­nary enti­ties with numer­ous clients like the Amer­i­can Future Fund are so use­ful for main­tain­ing secre­cy. If the AFF spends $1 mil­lion on attack ads it only needs to say it spent $1 mil­lion on attack ads. It does­n’t need to say if it the ‘donors’ (clients) were Rove’s net­work or the Kochs’ net­work, or maybe RJ Reynolds. We only get to know some enti­ty paid for the ads, not which enti­ty:

...
These non­prof­its do have to report some of their activ­i­ties to the FEC. When they run ads direct­ly advo­cat­ing for the elec­tion or defeat of a can­di­date, they have to tell reg­u­la­tors how much and what they spend mon­ey on — but not where the mon­ey comes from.
...

But 501(c)(4)s still have to lim­it their spend­ing on open polit­i­cal ads to less than 50% of their expen­di­tures, all of the rest of their ad spend­ing needs to be on “issue ads”. Which are basi­cal­ly cam­paign ads with­out the “mag­ic words” laid out by the 1976 Buck­ley v. Valeo Supreme Court deci­sion. As long as these groups to spend 49.999% of their funds on open cam­paign advo­ca­cy (i.e. cam­paign ads that include the “mag­ic words”) and the rest of their funds on ‘issue ads’ (i.e. cam­paign ads that don’t include the “mag­ic words”) they are high­ly unlike­ly to face any IRS scruti­ny and can main­tain their donors’ secre­cy:

...
Since they can’t make these types of ads their sole activ­i­ty, many 501(c)(4)s focus on so-called issue ads, which they only have to report to the FEC in defined win­dows before an elec­tion.

The Debate Over “Issue Ads”

But what exact­ly defines an issue ad?

The key start­ing point is a 1976 Supreme Court case, Buck­ley v. Valeo, in which the court spec­u­lat­ed in a foot­note that if cer­tain words were used in an ad, it was clear­ly a cam­paign ad. The eight phras­es list­ed in the foot­note –“vote for,” “elect,” “sup­port,” “cast your bal­lot for,” “Smith for Con­gress,” “vote against,” “defeat,” and “reject” — became known as the “mag­ic words” and for decades served as a bright line test between an issue ad and a cam­paign ad.
...

And despite the fact that the “mag­ic words” cri­te­ria for dis­tin­guish­ing between polit­i­cal ads and issue ads has been rec­og­nized as a sham, it’s still a sig­nif­i­cant loop­hole to be exploit­ed. Con­gress addressed it in the 2002 ‘McCain-Fein­gold’ cam­paign finance bill and the Supreme Court in 2003 with McConnell v. FEC. But state reg­u­la­tors could still choose to rely on the “mag­ic word” cri­te­ria and the Supreme Court basi­cal­ly reaf­firmed the “mag­ic words” cri­te­ria in 2004 in FEC v. Wis­con­sin Right to Life. In oth­er words, the “mag­ic words” have had a seem­ing­ly mag­i­cal abil­i­ty remain in place for decades despite being a bla­tant­ly absurd loop­hole. The endur­ing nature of teh bla­tant­ly absurd is one of the big themes of the his­to­ry of US cam­paign finance law:

...
But many cam­paign finance reform­ers saw that dis­tinc­tion as a sham, espe­cial­ly as increas­ing amounts of fed­er­al cam­paign dol­lars head­ed to polit­i­cal par­ties where the soft mon­ey loop­hole allowed unlim­it­ed mon­ey to be spent on issue ads. While avoid­ing the mag­ic words, these issue ads typ­i­cal­ly focused on one can­di­date run­ning for office and ran just before an elec­tion. In oth­er words, the reform­ers argued, they were clear­ly try­ing to influ­ence elec­tions.

The reform­ers tried to address this loop­hole in the Bipar­ti­san Cam­paign Finance Reform Act of 2002, oth­er­wise known as the McCain-Fein­gold bill. In a 2003 case, McConnell v. FEC, the Supreme Court appeared to agree, say­ing that the mag­ic words were “func­tion­al­ly mean­ing­less.”

But the deci­sion didn’t bar states from using the mag­ic words and the court has since backed away from its ear­li­er stance. And so legal debate con­tin­ues. For instance, ear­li­er this year, the Col­orado Supreme Court upheld the mag­ic words test as the bright line between issue ads and direct cam­paign ads.
...

Flash for­ward to the post-Cit­i­zens Unit­ed land­scape, and we have both the FEC and IRS declar­ing that they will go beyond sim­ply apply­ing the “mag­ic words” cri­te­ria. But despite that, three of the FEC com­mis­sion­ers them­selves con­tin­ued to sym­pa­thize with the “mag­ic words” stan­dard and refused to apply a broad­er test. Keep in mind that arti­cle was from 2012, so the struc­ture of the FEC is going to change. But it points to the fact that whether or not the “mag­ic words” gets used as the sole cri­te­ria is still going to remain up to the FEC com­mis­sion­ers and, in turn, the polit­i­cal make­up of the FEC board. So if you have a Repub­li­can-dom­i­nat­ed FEC it’s like­ly going to revert back to exclu­sive­ly rely­ing on the “mag­ic words” sham. Sim­i­lar­ly, the IRS could apply­ing a broad­er test than the “mag­ic words” test. But in prac­tice that rarely hap­pens. It under­scores the impor­tance of the ide­o­log­i­cal make­up of the FEC’s board in clean­ing up the Amer­i­can cam­paign finance sys­tem:

...
Today, both the FEC and the IRS use tests broad­er than just the mag­ic words to deter­mine what counts as an issue ad. The FEC says that any ad that men­tions a can­di­date dur­ing defined win­dows before an elec­tion must be dis­closed, even if it doesn’t include the mag­ic words. The IRS looks at what it calls “the facts and cir­cum­stances” sur­round­ing an ad. Tax experts say that many of the issue ads that fall out­side FEC report­ing win­dows would be con­sid­ered polit­i­cal by the IRS.

But the real­i­ty on the ground for groups like 501(c)(4)s is less clear: Because three of the FEC com­mis­sion­ers sym­pa­thize with the mag­ic words test they have “refused to apply the broad­er test in recent years,” says Paul Ryan, senior coun­sel at the Cam­paign Legal Cen­ter, a group that push­es for more cam­paign finance reforms.

And some out­side groups are try­ing to keep it that way.

What that means for 501(c)(4)s is this: by avoid­ing the mag­ic words, social wel­fare non­prof­its have a bet­ter chance of con­vinc­ing reg­u­la­tors they are focused on issues and not pol­i­tics.

Of course, the IRS could revoke a nonprofit’s tax-exempt sta­tus if it engages in too much polit­i­cal activ­i­ty. In prac­tice, that hasn’t hap­pened much. But the IRS has indi­cat­ed it is start­ing to look into some of these groups and recent­ly sent a let­ter (pdf) to Con­gress say­ing it had more than 70 “ongo­ing exam­i­na­tions” of 501(c)(4)s.

What­ev­er it does, the IRS remains lim­it­ed in what it can do to watch over these groups. As a recent ProP­ub­li­ca inves­ti­ga­tion found: “One rea­son the IRS strug­gles is that it can’t match the speed of pol­i­tics.” In oth­er words, by the time these groups sub­mit tax returns, they have often stopped oper­at­ing or cre­at­ed new groups under new names.
...

Also not­ed that when you read “But the IRS has indi­cat­ed it is start­ing to look into some of these groups and recent­ly sent a let­ter (pdf) to Con­gress say­ing it had more than 70 “ongo­ing exam­i­na­tions” of 501(c)(4)s,” that’s actu­al­ly an ear­ly ref­er­ence to the IRS inves­ti­ga­tions that even­tu­al­ly explod­ed into the fake ‘IRS tar­get­ing con­ser­v­a­tive groups’ scan­dal. When the IRS actu­al­ly did what it was sup­posed to do in 2010–2012 and inves­ti­gat­ed whether or not the many 501(c)(4) groups that popped up in the 2012 elec­tion where actu­al­ly “social wel­fare” orga­ni­za­tion, that was con­tort­ed by the right-wing noise machine into some sort of IRS attack on con­ser­v­a­tives, which makes sense giv­en how much the right-wing noise machine depends on the lack of cam­paign finance law enforce­ment.

501(c)(4)s: The Gift That Keeps On Giv­ing. To Itself. As Char­i­ty. Because That’s How the Scam Works

So we just saw how the 501(c)(4) sys­tem start­ed off with a Con­gres­sion­al act that allowed these groups to count as social wel­fare orga­ni­za­tions for tax pur­pos­es as long as they are exclu­sive­ly ded­i­cat­ed to social wel­fare. Con­gress made the mas­sive change to that rule in 1959 when it ruled that orga­ni­za­tions only had to be pri­mar­i­ly focused on social wel­fare in order to keep their tax treat­ment, allow­ing for up to half of a 501(c)(4)‘s spend­ing on polit­i­cal advo­ca­cy like attack ads. That con­gres­sion­al move fol­lowed the 1958 NAACP v. Alaba­ma rul­ing that allowed 501(c)(4)s to keep their donors secret from the pub­lic, which is a very rea­son­able request for an orga­ni­za­tion like the NAACP but the bil­lion­aires get to stay secret too.

501(c)(4)s still have to report to the IRS how much they spend on polit­i­cal ads, which can be up to half their spend­ing. And they still have to report their donors to the IRS. But their donor names were redact­ed from the pub­lic tax fil­ings of these orga­ni­za­tions. The right to donor secre­cy to the pub­lic is one of the key things that dif­fer­en­ti­ates 501(c)(4)s from their “super PAC” coun­ter­parts.

Then, in 1976, Buck­ley v. Valeo cre­at­ed the “mag­ic words” stan­dard for deter­min­ing whether or not an ad is con­sid­ered an “issue ad” or a polit­i­cal ad, thus cre­ate a set of rules that could be eas­i­ly over­come to allow for the cre­ation of ‘issue ads’ that are clear­ly polit­i­cal ads in real­i­ty.

Flash for­ward to the 2010 Cit­i­zens Unit­ed Supreme Court and we find that it basi­cal­ly just expand­ed to cor­po­ra­tions and unions the lux­u­ry of unlim­it­ed undis­closed use of the 501(c)(4)s sys­tem that had been used by wealthy donors and orga­ni­za­tions for decades. The rul­ing took an absurd­ly bro­ken sys­tem and made it more absurd­ly bro­ken.

In the fol­low­ing arti­cle, we’ll look at how allied net­works of 501(c)(4)s can sim­ply donate mon­ey to each oth­er in a man­ner sub­stan­tial­ly rais­es the 50% cap for spend­ing on polit­i­cal ads. How so? Because imag­ine a 501(c)(4) with $10 mil­lion spend­ing $5 mil­lion on polit­i­cal ads and then donat­ing the remain­ing $5 mil­lion to a dif­fer­ent allied 501(c)(4). Now half of that donat­ed $5 mil­lion gets to be spent on polit­i­cal ads too. So instead of a 50% cap on polit­i­cal spend­ing it effec­tive­ly becomes at 75% cap and the process can be repeat­ed over and over, effec­tive­ly rais­ing the cap each time.

The arti­cle also notes how the report­ed mon­ey flow­ing into 501(c)(4) between 2006 and 2012 jumped from $5.2 mil­lion to $310.8 mil­lion. And as the arti­cle also notes, of the $310.8 mil­lion that flowed into these orga­ni­za­tions in 2012, $34.7 mil­lion was spent by self-declared lib­er­al groups com­pared to $265.2 mil­lion spent by self-described con­ser­v­a­tive orga­ni­za­tions. So almost all of that explo­sion in mon­ey flow­ing into 501(c)(4)s in the years fol­low­ing Cit­i­zens Unit­ed was flow­ing into right-wing orga­ni­za­tions:

The New York Times
Op-Ed

Dark Mon­ey Pol­i­tics

By Thomas B. Edsall
June 12, 2013 9:39 pm

In the world of non­prof­it dark mon­ey” groups, noth­ing is as it seems: polit­i­cal com­mit­tees, through the mag­ic of the inter­nal rev­enue code, become tax-exempt “social wel­fare” orga­ni­za­tions; a par­ti­san cam­paign ad becomes prin­ci­pled “issue advo­ca­cy”; and fed­er­al elec­tion law that requires pub­lic dis­clo­sure of donors is ren­dered tooth­less by reg­u­la­to­ry loop­holes.

The flow of cash through orga­ni­za­tions assert­ing tax-exempt sta­tus under sec­tion 501(c)(4) of the fed­er­al tax code has been ris­ing expo­nen­tial­ly, from just $5.2 mil­lion in 2006 to $310.8 mil­lion in 2012.

There is one rea­son for this growth: 501(c)(4) groups do not have to reveal their donors.

Two pie charts — Fig­ure 1 and Fig­ure 2 — drawn up by the Cen­ter for Respon­sive Pol­i­tics demon­strate the cru­cial role of con­ser­v­a­tive non-prof­its in dri­ving this increase in spend­ing.
[see Cen­ter for Respon­sive Pol­i­tics pie chart that shows spend­ing in 2006 by self-described lib­er­al ($639.1k), con­ser­v­a­tive ($542.2k), and non-ide­o­log­i­cal ($4.1M) groups]
[see Cen­ter for Respon­sive Pol­i­tics pie chart that shows spend­ing in 2012 by self-described lib­er­al ($34.7M), con­ser­v­a­tive ($265.2M), and non-ide­o­log­i­cal ($10.9M) groups]

The Cen­ter, which has dug deeply into this sub­merged area of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics, has gath­ered a lot of the rel­e­vant data about the influ­ence of mon­ey on Amer­i­can pol­i­tics at OpenSecrets.org. It makes for instruc­tive read­ing.

The con­tro­ver­sy over the rev­e­la­tion that orga­ni­za­tions whose names include the words “Tea Par­ty” were tar­get­ed by the I.R.S. for review has pro­vid­ed new cov­er for polit­i­cal­ly active con­ser­v­a­tive orga­ni­za­tions, allow­ing them to charge that inves­ti­ga­tions of the legit­i­ma­cy of their tax-exempt sta­tus are polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed. Many of these groups have, in fact, been explic­it­ly involved in fed­er­al elec­tion cam­paigns, as report­ed upon by The New York Times and Politi­co.

Sheila Krumholz, the Center’s exec­u­tive direc­tor, told me that despite the denials com­ing from con­ser­v­a­tive non-prof­its her orga­ni­za­tion has found increas­ing evi­dence of prac­tices designed to evade I.R.S. rules gov­ern­ing tax-exempt sta­tus and donor dis­clo­sure.

The actu­al I.R.S. rule is worth exam­in­ing close­ly:

The pro­mo­tion of social wel­fare does not include direct or indi­rect par­tic­i­pa­tion or inter­ven­tion in polit­i­cal cam­paigns on behalf of or in oppo­si­tion to any can­di­date for pub­lic office. How­ev­er, a sec­tion 501(c)(4) social wel­fare orga­ni­za­tion may engage in some polit­i­cal activ­i­ties, so long as that is not its pri­ma­ry activ­i­ty. How­ev­er, any expen­di­ture it makes for polit­i­cal activ­i­ties may be sub­ject to tax under sec­tion 527(f).

The phrase “not its pri­ma­ry activ­i­ty” has been inter­pret­ed by cam­paign finance lawyers to mean that a 501(c)(4) orga­ni­za­tion can spend no more that 49.9% of its mon­ey on polit­i­cal activ­i­ty, accord­ing to Krumholz.

In a process she refers to as “mon­ey churn­ing,” a hypo­thet­i­cal tax-exempt orga­ni­za­tion, let’s call it the Good Gov­ern­ment Coali­tion, has $10 mil­lion in rev­enues. The G.G.C. ful­fills its oblig­a­tion to spend just over half its mon­ey on non-polit­i­cal activ­i­ty by giv­ing $5 mil­lion plus $1 to anoth­er tax-exempt social wel­fare orga­ni­za­tion with an ambigu­ous name, the Lib­er­ty Bell Alliance. G.G.C. can now spend what it has left, $4,999,999 on polit­i­cal activ­i­ty. The Lib­er­ty Bell Alliance, which now has $5 mil­lion plus $1, can spend just under half, $2,499,999, on polit­i­cal activ­i­ty. The net result is that of the orig­i­nal $10 mil­lion, instead of only $4,999,999 going to polit­i­cal activ­i­ty, $7,499,998, or 75 per­cent of the orig­i­nal $10 mil­lion, can be spent on pol­i­tics.

Your eyes glaze over try­ing to fol­low mon­ey trail between orga­ni­za­tions with names like TC4 Trust, the Cen­ter for the Pro­tec­tion of Patients’ Rights, Amer­i­cans for Job Secu­ri­ty, Amer­i­can Future Fund and Amer­i­can Com­mit­ment – not to men­tion the dif­fi­cul­ty for a layper­son, or even for a polit­i­cal pro­fes­sion­al, of keep­ing track of the dif­fer­ences between 501(c)(4)s, 501(c)(3)s, super PACs, Polit­i­cal Action Com­mit­tees, inde­pen­dent expen­di­ture groups, and polit­i­cal par­ty com­mit­tees — or God for­bid 501(c)(6)s.

Let’s look at just one “social wel­fare” 501(c)(4) orga­ni­za­tion, the 60 Plus Asso­ci­a­tion. The pur­pose of 60 Plus is to serve as a con­ser­v­a­tive counter to the A.A.R.P., which many Repub­li­cans believe to be a sub­sidiary of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty.

60 Plus claims to be “a non-par­ti­san seniors advo­ca­cy group.” Non­par­ti­san­ship is cru­cial for an orga­ni­za­tion seek­ing to get and main­tain 501(c)(4) tax exempt sta­tus as a social wel­fare orga­ni­za­tion, which con­fers the mag­ic right to con­ceal the iden­ti­ty of donors.

Gen­er­ous­ly inter­pret­ing the 49.9 per­cent guide­line cov­er­ing polit­i­cal activ­i­ty, 60 Plus has pushed the non-par­ti­san­ship rule beyond the lim­it. Its web site fea­tures items like these: “Shame­ful Democ­rats Rush to Defense of Their I.R.S. Polit­i­cal Part­ners”; “House Votes to Repeal Oba­macare as Democ­rats Stand by Cor­rupt I.R.S.”; “Seniors Over­whelm­ing Sup­port for Rom­ney Could Spell Trou­ble for Democ­rats Nation­al­ly”; “Demo­c­rat Decep­tions on Full Dis­play with Paul Ryan Join­ing GOP Tick­et.”

James Mar­tin, the chair­man of 60 Plus, demon­strat­ed his “non­par­ti­san­ship” just before the 2012 elec­tion thus:

Senior cit­i­zens bet­ter than any oth­er group under­stand how dev­as­tat­ing Pres­i­dent Obama’s poli­cies have been to every gen­er­a­tion. They won’t sit idly by as he con­tin­ues to squan­der our nation’s great­ness, and liq­ui­date our future under tril­lions more in debt.

Mar­tin con­tin­ued in the same vein:

Nev­er for­get, America’s seniors fought in wars and bled to defend free­dom and make this coun­try every­thing it is today. For four long years we’ve watched as this Pres­i­dent has tram­pled on every­thing that defines us as a nation, and now tram­ples on his oppo­nent, his pre­de­ces­sor and the truth itself in a des­per­ate plea for four more years. Seniors know a great leader when they see one, regard­less of par­ty, and this Pres­i­dent falls far short of deserv­ing our con­sid­er­a­tion or our vote.

In the past two elec­tions, 60 Plus has invest­ed heav­i­ly in overt­ly par­ti­san inde­pen­dent expen­di­tures. In 2012, the tax-exempt orga­ni­za­tion doled out $4.62 mil­lion, $3.19 mil­lion of which was spent in sup­port of Repub­li­cans, with the remain­ing $1.43 mil­lion spent to defeat Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates for fed­er­al office, includ­ing $321,933 to defeat Oba­ma.

In the 2010 elec­tions, 60 Plus spent even more mon­ey, $6.72 mil­lion, almost all of which, $6.67 mil­lion, was allo­cat­ed to defeat Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates.

60 Plus is one of the major ben­e­fi­cia­ries of the recent surge in the invest­ment of con­ser­v­a­tive mon­ey in 501(c)(4) orga­ni­za­tions.

In the two years from July 1, 2007 to June 30, 2009, the organization’s annu­al bud­gets were a mod­est $1.89 mil­lion and $1.81 mil­lion, accord­ing to 990 forms filed with the I.R.S. and avail­able through the Guidestar web site. In 2009-10, 60 Plus receipts abrupt­ly rose to $16.01 mil­lion, and then to $18.58 mil­lion in 2010-11. In 2011-12, the total fell to $11.8 mil­lion, which was still 650 per­cent larg­er than in 2008-09.

This burst of cash was in part the result of mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar grants to 60 Plus from two of the oth­er “social wel­fare” groups I men­tioned above, TC4 Trust and the Cen­ter for the Pro­tec­tion of Patient Rights. The Cen­ter for the Pro­tec­tion of Patient Rights has been the sub­ject of inves­ti­ga­tions by the Cen­ter for Respon­sive Pol­i­tics, by the Cal­i­for­nia Fair Polit­i­cal Prac­tices Com­mis­sion, the web-based Repub­lic Report and the Los Ange­les Times.

The L.A. Times report­ed that Charles and David Koch, the con­ser­v­a­tive bil­lion­aire broth­ers who own Koch Indus­tries, “have sev­er­al ties” to the Cen­ter for the Pro­tec­tion of Patient Rights:

It is run by Sean Noble, a Phoenix-based GOP con­sul­tant who is a key oper­a­tive in the Kochs’ polit­i­cal activ­i­ties, as not­ed by the inves­tiga­tive blog Repub­lic Report. One of the center’s orig­i­nal direc­tors, Heather Hig­gins, is chair­woman of the Inde­pen­dent Women’s Forum, which has received fund­ing from a Koch-con­trolled foun­da­tion. And Cheryl Hillen, a Con­necti­cut-based con­sul­tant who raised $2.6 mil­lion for the cen­ter, was direc­tor of fundrais­ing for the Koch-backed Cit­i­zens for a Sound Econ­o­my.

The Cen­ter for Respon­sive Pol­i­tics found that the Cen­ter to Pro­tect Patient Rights gave 60 Plus a total of $11.39 mil­lion, TC4 Trust gave $4.06 mil­lion, and oth­er groups gave small­er amounts, includ­ing Karl Rove’s Cross­roads GPS ($50,000) and the Amer­i­can Petro­le­um Insti­tute ($25,000).

This year, 60 Plus report­ed in lob­by­ing dis­clo­sure forms that in addi­tion to issues affect­ing seniors, it is sup­port­ing off-shore drilling leg­is­la­tion and a mea­sure to per­mit online gam­bling. Past issues it has sup­port­ed have includ­ed oppo­si­tion to the fed­er­al tele­phone excise tax and to leg­is­la­tion allow­ing drug imports, as well as sup­port for Arc­tic drilling and the stor­age of nuclear waste at Yuc­ca Moun­tain in Neva­da.

60 Plus has been the sub­ject of a num­ber of attempts to restrain its activ­i­ties, but it remains undaunt­ed. In July 2012, for exam­ple, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­to­r­i­al Cam­paign Com­mit­tee filed a com­plaint with the Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion charg­ing that 60 Plus, Cross­roads GPS and Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty “are ‘polit­i­cal com­mit­tees’ who have failed to reg­is­ter and dis­close with the F.E.C.” The D.S.C.C. dis­missed the orga­ni­za­tions’ claims of 501(c)(4) sta­tus as “spu­ri­ous” and “ris­i­ble on their face.” The com­plaint is still pend­ing before the F.E.C.

In July, 2012, well before the cur­rent I.R.S. con­tro­ver­sy, Sen­a­tor Carl Levin, Demo­c­rat of Michi­gan, called on the I.R.S to inves­ti­gate the polit­i­cal activ­i­ties of a dozen 501(c)(4)s, includ­ing 60 Plus. Levin’s list includ­ed both Repub­li­can and Demo­c­ra­t­ic-lean­ing 501(c)(4)s: Cross­roads Grass­roots Pol­i­cy Strate­gies, Pri­or­i­ties U.S.A., Amer­i­cans Elect, Amer­i­can Action Net­work, Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty, Amer­i­can Future Fund, Amer­i­cans for Tax Reform, Patri­ot Major­i­ty USA, Club for Growth, Cit­i­zens for a Work­ing Amer­i­ca Inc. and the Susan B. Antho­ny List.

60 Plus was not cowed. It is pulling out the stops to cap­i­tal­ize on the con­tro­ver­sy regard­ing the I.R.S. focus on Tea Par­ty groups. In one of his many denun­ci­a­tions of Democ­rats and the I.R.S., James Mar­tin declared:

The shades of Water­gate con­tin­ue to hov­er over this scan­dal. We recall Nixon’s defend­ers dis­missed that as a “3rd rate bur­glary.” With new rev­e­la­tions com­ing out by the day and more I.R.S. employ­ees tuck­ing tail, this dis­grace­ful escapade is mak­ing Water­gate look like a bad hair day by com­par­i­son.

...

The cur­rent polit­i­cal activ­i­ties of large num­bers of 501© orga­ni­za­tions in no way con­sti­tute the kind of char­i­ta­ble work for which the pub­lic would grant favor­able tax sta­tus as a reward. One of the rea­sons the peo­ple involved with polit­i­cal non­prof­its — oper­a­tives and donors alike — love secre­cy is that they fear pub­lic reper­cus­sions if their activ­i­ties have to be con­duct­ed in the open. It is by now abun­dant­ly clear that abuse of the 501(c)(4) loop­hole cor­rupts and cor­rodes a cam­paign-finance sys­tem that was hard­ly a mod­el of rec­ti­tude to begin with.

———-

“Dark Mon­ey Pol­i­tics” by Thomas B. Edsall; The New York Times; 06/12/2013

“The flow of cash through orga­ni­za­tions assert­ing tax-exempt sta­tus under sec­tion 501(c)(4) of the fed­er­al tax code has been ris­ing expo­nen­tial­ly, from just $5.2 mil­lion in 2006 to $310.8 mil­lion in 2012.”

From $5.2 mil­lion in 2006 to $310.8 mil­lion in 2012. A near­ly 60-fold increase in mon­ey flow­ing into 501(c)(4). Although that’s not quite a fair com­par­i­son since 2006 was a mid-term elec­tion and 2012 was a pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. A bet­ter com­par­i­son is 2008 and 2012. And in 2008 we find $57.5 mil­lion going to con­ser­v­a­tive groups, $33.2 mil­lion going to lib­er­al groups, and $11.7 to inde­pen­dent groups ($102.4 mil­lion in total). So it’s more like a tripling of spend­ing between the pre- and post-Cit­i­zens Unit­ed 501(c)(4) spend­ing vol­umes in pres­i­den­tial years.

And note how the 2012 spend­ing on lib­er­al groups was $34.7 mil­lion, com­pared to $33.2 mil­lion in 2008. Which means the tripling in spend­ing was due almost entire­ly to more spend­ing by con­ser­v­a­tive groups:

...
There is one rea­son for this growth: 501(c)(4) groups do not have to reveal their donors.

Two pie charts — Fig­ure 1 and Fig­ure 2 — drawn up by the Cen­ter for Respon­sive Pol­i­tics demon­strate the cru­cial role of con­ser­v­a­tive non-prof­its in dri­ving this increase in spend­ing.
[see Cen­ter for Respon­sive Pol­i­tics pie chart that shows spend­ing in 2006 by self-described lib­er­al ($639.1k), con­ser­v­a­tive ($542.2k), and non-ide­o­log­i­cal ($4.1M) groups]
[see Cen­ter for Respon­sive Pol­i­tics pie chart that shows spend­ing in 2012 by self-described lib­er­al ($34.7M), con­ser­v­a­tive ($265.2M), and non-ide­o­log­i­cal ($10.9M) groups]
...

The arti­cle also points out the right-wing out­cry over the IRS ‘scan­dal’ — the IRS inves­ti­ga­tion of the numer­ous ‘Tea Par­ty’ orga­ni­za­tions (in addi­tion to numer­ous left-lean­ing groups) to deter­mine whether or not they were tru­ly ‘social wel­fare’ orga­ni­za­tions — was com­plete­ly bogus since so many of those orga­ni­za­tions real­ly were explic­it­ly and obvi­ous­ly involved in elec­tions and not sim­ply focused on ‘social wel­fare’:

...
The Cen­ter, which has dug deeply into this sub­merged area of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics, has gath­ered a lot of the rel­e­vant data about the influ­ence of mon­ey on Amer­i­can pol­i­tics at OpenSecrets.org. It makes for instruc­tive read­ing.

The con­tro­ver­sy over the rev­e­la­tion that orga­ni­za­tions whose names include the words “Tea Par­ty” were tar­get­ed by the I.R.S. for review has pro­vid­ed new cov­er for polit­i­cal­ly active con­ser­v­a­tive orga­ni­za­tions, allow­ing them to charge that inves­ti­ga­tions of the legit­i­ma­cy of their tax-exempt sta­tus are polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed. Many of these groups have, in fact, been explic­it­ly involved in fed­er­al elec­tion cam­paigns, as report­ed upon by The New York Times and Politi­co.

Sheila Krumholz, the Center’s exec­u­tive direc­tor, told me that despite the denials com­ing from con­ser­v­a­tive non-prof­its her orga­ni­za­tion has found increas­ing evi­dence of prac­tices designed to evade I.R.S. rules gov­ern­ing tax-exempt sta­tus and donor dis­clo­sure.
...

Sheila Krumholz, the Center’s exec­u­tive direc­tor, told me that despite the denials com­ing from con­ser­v­a­tive non-prof­its her orga­ni­za­tion has found increas­ing evi­dence of prac­tices designed to evade I.R.S. rules gov­ern­ing tax-exempt sta­tus and donor dis­clo­sure.”

Keep in mind that the fact that so many osten­si­bly ‘grass-roots’ Tea Par­ty orga­ni­za­tions were engaged in prac­tices designed to evade IRS rules gov­ern­ing donor dis­clo­sure should be a clue about the ‘grass-roots’ nature of a lot of these orga­ni­za­tions.

And then there’s the “mon­ey churn­ing”. That’s the prac­tice of one ‘social wel­fare’ orga­ni­za­tion mak­ing a dona­tion to anoth­er ‘social wel­fare’ group for the pur­pose of effec­tive­ly rais­ing the 50% cap on the amount these grounds can spend on direct polit­i­cal advo­ca­cy ads. A group with $10 mil­lion to spend can only spend 50% , or $5 mil­lion ($4,999,999 real­ly), on direct polit­i­cal ads. But if they hand the oth­er $5 mil­lion to an allied group, that allied group can now spend just under half of that $5 mil­lion on direct polit­i­cal ads too, rais­ing the effec­tive polit­i­cal spend­ing cap on that orig­i­nal $10 mil­lion from 50% to 75%. And there’s noth­ing stop­ping the process from repeat­ing itself, each time effec­tive­ly lift­ing the cap even more:

...
The actu­al I.R.S. rule is worth exam­in­ing close­ly:

The pro­mo­tion of social wel­fare does not include direct or indi­rect par­tic­i­pa­tion or inter­ven­tion in polit­i­cal cam­paigns on behalf of or in oppo­si­tion to any can­di­date for pub­lic office. How­ev­er, a sec­tion 501(c)(4) social wel­fare orga­ni­za­tion may engage in some polit­i­cal activ­i­ties, so long as that is not its pri­ma­ry activ­i­ty. How­ev­er, any expen­di­ture it makes for polit­i­cal activ­i­ties may be sub­ject to tax under sec­tion 527(f).

The phrase “not its pri­ma­ry activ­i­ty” has been inter­pret­ed by cam­paign finance lawyers to mean that a 501(c)(4) orga­ni­za­tion can spend no more that 49.9% of its mon­ey on polit­i­cal activ­i­ty, accord­ing to Krumholz.

In a process she refers to as “mon­ey churn­ing,” a hypo­thet­i­cal tax-exempt orga­ni­za­tion, let’s call it the Good Gov­ern­ment Coali­tion, has $10 mil­lion in rev­enues. The G.G.C. ful­fills its oblig­a­tion to spend just over half its mon­ey on non-polit­i­cal activ­i­ty by giv­ing $5 mil­lion plus $1 to anoth­er tax-exempt social wel­fare orga­ni­za­tion with an ambigu­ous name, the Lib­er­ty Bell Alliance. G.G.C. can now spend what it has left, $4,999,999 on polit­i­cal activ­i­ty. The Lib­er­ty Bell Alliance, which now has $5 mil­lion plus $1, can spend just under half, $2,499,999, on polit­i­cal activ­i­ty. The net result is that of the orig­i­nal $10 mil­lion, instead of only $4,999,999 going to polit­i­cal activ­i­ty, $7,499,998, or 75 per­cent of the orig­i­nal $10 mil­lion, can be spent on pol­i­tics.
...

And note how the arti­cle refers to the Amer­i­can Future Fund when list­ing the orga­ni­za­tions with con­fus­ing mon­ey flows between them. The AFF isn’t just a ran­dom 501(4)©. It’s both a major con­duit and des­ti­na­tion of right-wing dark mon­ey:

...
Your eyes glaze over try­ing to fol­low mon­ey trail between orga­ni­za­tions with names like TC4 Trust, the Cen­ter for the Pro­tec­tion of Patients’ Rights, Amer­i­cans for Job Secu­ri­ty, Amer­i­can Future Fund and Amer­i­can Com­mit­ment – not to men­tion the dif­fi­cul­ty for a layper­son, or even for a polit­i­cal pro­fes­sion­al, of keep­ing track of the dif­fer­ences between 501(c)(4)s, 501(c)(3)s, super PACs, Polit­i­cal Action Com­mit­tees, inde­pen­dent expen­di­ture groups, and polit­i­cal par­ty com­mit­tees — or God for­bid 501(c)(6)s.
...

Final­ly, the arti­cle cov­ers focus­es in on the “60 Plus Asso­ci­a­tion” orga­ni­za­tion. It pre­tends to be a “a non-par­ti­san seniors advo­ca­cy group.” A non-par­ti­san group that coin­ci­den­tal­ly exclu­sive­ly pro­motes Repub­li­cans and bash­es Democ­rats. In 2010, 60 Plus spent $6.72 mil­lion on overt­ly par­ti­san activ­i­ties. $6.67 mil­lion of that was spent on defeat­ing Democ­rats:

...
Let’s look at just one “social wel­fare” 501(c)(4) orga­ni­za­tion, the 60 Plus Asso­ci­a­tion. The pur­pose of 60 Plus is to serve as a con­ser­v­a­tive counter to the A.A.R.P., which many Repub­li­cans believe to be a sub­sidiary of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty.

60 Plus claims to be “a non-par­ti­san seniors advo­ca­cy group.” Non­par­ti­san­ship is cru­cial for an orga­ni­za­tion seek­ing to get and main­tain 501(c)(4) tax exempt sta­tus as a social wel­fare orga­ni­za­tion, which con­fers the mag­ic right to con­ceal the iden­ti­ty of donors.

Gen­er­ous­ly inter­pret­ing the 49.9 per­cent guide­line cov­er­ing polit­i­cal activ­i­ty, 60 Plus has pushed the non-par­ti­san­ship rule beyond the lim­it. Its web site fea­tures items like these: “Shame­ful Democ­rats Rush to Defense of Their I.R.S. Polit­i­cal Part­ners”; “House Votes to Repeal Oba­macare as Democ­rats Stand by Cor­rupt I.R.S.”; “Seniors Over­whelm­ing Sup­port for Rom­ney Could Spell Trou­ble for Democ­rats Nation­al­ly”; “Demo­c­rat Decep­tions on Full Dis­play with Paul Ryan Join­ing GOP Tick­et.”

James Mar­tin, the chair­man of 60 Plus, demon­strat­ed his “non­par­ti­san­ship” just before the 2012 elec­tion thus:

Senior cit­i­zens bet­ter than any oth­er group under­stand how dev­as­tat­ing Pres­i­dent Obama’s poli­cies have been to every gen­er­a­tion. They won’t sit idly by as he con­tin­ues to squan­der our nation’s great­ness, and liq­ui­date our future under tril­lions more in debt.

Mar­tin con­tin­ued in the same vein:

Nev­er for­get, America’s seniors fought in wars and bled to defend free­dom and make this coun­try every­thing it is today. For four long years we’ve watched as this Pres­i­dent has tram­pled on every­thing that defines us as a nation, and now tram­ples on his oppo­nent, his pre­de­ces­sor and the truth itself in a des­per­ate plea for four more years. Seniors know a great leader when they see one, regard­less of par­ty, and this Pres­i­dent falls far short of deserv­ing our con­sid­er­a­tion or our vote.

In the past two elec­tions, 60 Plus has invest­ed heav­i­ly in overt­ly par­ti­san inde­pen­dent expen­di­tures. In 2012, the tax-exempt orga­ni­za­tion doled out $4.62 mil­lion, $3.19 mil­lion of which was spent in sup­port of Repub­li­cans, with the remain­ing $1.43 mil­lion spent to defeat Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates for fed­er­al office, includ­ing $321,933 to defeat Oba­ma.

In the 2010 elec­tions, 60 Plus spent even more mon­ey, $6.72 mil­lion, almost all of which, $6.67 mil­lion, was allo­cat­ed to defeat Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates.
...

And 60 Plus, of course, is also a major ben­e­fi­cia­ry of dona­tions from oth­er 501(c)(4) enti­ties. It’s how the ‘mon­ey churn­ing’ works. Specif­i­cal­ly, dona­tion from Koch-financed groups like TC4 Trust ($4.06 mil­lion) and the Cen­ter for the Pro­tec­tion of Patient Rights ($11.39 mil­lion), along with oth­er enti­ties like Karl Rove’s Cross­roads GPS super­PAC ($50,000) and the Amer­i­can Petro­le­um Insti­tute ($25,000):

...
60 Plus is one of the major ben­e­fi­cia­ries of the recent surge in the invest­ment of con­ser­v­a­tive mon­ey in 501(c)(4) orga­ni­za­tions.

In the two years from July 1, 2007 to June 30, 2009, the organization’s annu­al bud­gets were a mod­est $1.89 mil­lion and $1.81 mil­lion, accord­ing to 990 forms filed with the I.R.S. and avail­able through the Guidestar web site. In 2009-10, 60 Plus receipts abrupt­ly rose to $16.01 mil­lion, and then to $18.58 mil­lion in 2010-11. In 2011-12, the total fell to $11.8 mil­lion, which was still 650 per­cent larg­er than in 2008-09.

This burst of cash was in part the result of mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar grants to 60 Plus from two of the oth­er “social wel­fare” groups I men­tioned above, TC4 Trust and the Cen­ter for the Pro­tec­tion of Patient Rights. The Cen­ter for the Pro­tec­tion of Patient Rights has been the sub­ject of inves­ti­ga­tions by the Cen­ter for Respon­sive Pol­i­tics, by the Cal­i­for­nia Fair Polit­i­cal Prac­tices Com­mis­sion, the web-based Repub­lic Report and the Los Ange­les Times.

The L.A. Times report­ed that Charles and David Koch, the con­ser­v­a­tive bil­lion­aire broth­ers who own Koch Indus­tries, “have sev­er­al ties” to the Cen­ter for the Pro­tec­tion of Patient Rights:

It is run by Sean Noble, a Phoenix-based GOP con­sul­tant who is a key oper­a­tive in the Kochs’ polit­i­cal activ­i­ties, as not­ed by the inves­tiga­tive blog Repub­lic Report. One of the center’s orig­i­nal direc­tors, Heather Hig­gins, is chair­woman of the Inde­pen­dent Women’s Forum, which has received fund­ing from a Koch-con­trolled foun­da­tion. And Cheryl Hillen, a Con­necti­cut-based con­sul­tant who raised $2.6 mil­lion for the cen­ter, was direc­tor of fundrais­ing for the Koch-backed Cit­i­zens for a Sound Econ­o­my.

The Cen­ter for Respon­sive Pol­i­tics found that the Cen­ter to Pro­tect Patient Rights gave 60 Plus a total of $11.39 mil­lion, TC4 Trust gave $4.06 mil­lion, and oth­er groups gave small­er amounts, includ­ing Karl Rove’s Cross­roads GPS ($50,000) and the Amer­i­can Petro­le­um Insti­tute ($25,000).
...

And as we should prob­a­bly expect giv­en the range of inter­ests donat­ing to 60 Plus, the group’s lob­by­ing efforts includ­ed top­ics like sup­port­ing off-shore drilling leg­is­la­tion, Arc­tic drilling, online gam­bling, and nuclear waste stor­age. This from a group that ped­dles itself as a non-par­ti­san senior advo­ca­cy orga­ni­za­tion:

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This year, 60 Plus report­ed in lob­by­ing dis­clo­sure forms that in addi­tion to issues affect­ing seniors, it is sup­port­ing off-shore drilling leg­is­la­tion and a mea­sure to per­mit online gam­bling. Past issues it has sup­port­ed have includ­ed oppo­si­tion to the fed­er­al tele­phone excise tax and to leg­is­la­tion allow­ing drug imports, as well as sup­port for Arc­tic drilling and the stor­age of nuclear waste at Yuc­ca Moun­tain in Neva­da.
...

And as we should also expect, 60 Plus was loud­ly com­plain­ing about unfair IRS scruti­ny dur­ing the fake ‘IRS tar­get­ing the Tea Par­ty’ scan­dal. A scan­dal that was par­tic­u­lar­ly oppor­tune for the orga­ni­za­tion giv­en that it was fac­ing calls for inves­ti­ga­tions before the ‘scan­dal’ even start­ed:

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60 Plus has been the sub­ject of a num­ber of attempts to restrain its activ­i­ties, but it remains undaunt­ed. In July 2012, for exam­ple, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­to­r­i­al Cam­paign Com­mit­tee filed a com­plaint with the Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion charg­ing that 60 Plus, Cross­roads GPS and Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty “are ‘polit­i­cal com­mit­tees’ who have failed to reg­is­ter and dis­close with the F.E.C.” The D.S.C.C. dis­missed the orga­ni­za­tions’ claims of 501(c)(4) sta­tus as “spu­ri­ous” and “ris­i­ble on their face.” The com­plaint is still pend­ing before the F.E.C.

In July, 2012, well before the cur­rent I.R.S. con­tro­ver­sy, Sen­a­tor Carl Levin, Demo­c­rat of Michi­gan, called on the I.R.S to inves­ti­gate the polit­i­cal activ­i­ties of a dozen 501(c)(4)s, includ­ing 60 Plus. Levin’s list includ­ed both Repub­li­can and Demo­c­ra­t­ic-lean­ing 501(c)(4)s: Cross­roads Grass­roots Pol­i­cy Strate­gies, Pri­or­i­ties U.S.A., Amer­i­cans Elect, Amer­i­can Action Net­work, Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty, Amer­i­can Future Fund, Amer­i­cans for Tax Reform, Patri­ot Major­i­ty USA, Club for Growth, Cit­i­zens for a Work­ing Amer­i­ca Inc. and the Susan B. Antho­ny List.

60 Plus was not cowed. It is pulling out the stops to cap­i­tal­ize on the con­tro­ver­sy regard­ing the I.R.S. focus on Tea Par­ty groups. In one of his many denun­ci­a­tions of Democ­rats and the I.R.S., James Mar­tin declared:

The shades of Water­gate con­tin­ue to hov­er over this scan­dal. We recall Nixon’s defend­ers dis­missed that as a “3rd rate bur­glary.” With new rev­e­la­tions com­ing out by the day and more I.R.S. employ­ees tuck­ing tail, this dis­grace­ful escapade is mak­ing Water­gate look like a bad hair day by com­par­i­son.

...

“60 Plus was not cowed. It is pulling out the stops to cap­i­tal­ize on the con­tro­ver­sy regard­ing the I.R.S. focus on Tea Par­ty groups.”

Yep, a group that was emblem­at­ic of how the “mon­ey churn­ing” scam oper­ates jumped at the oppor­tu­ni­ty to com­plain loud­ly about unfair tar­get­ing by the IRS. Because that’s how the sys­tem works. A sys­tem pow­ered by cun­ning, gall, and end­less reserves of shame­less­ness. Should bil­lion­aire-fund­ed groups like AFF and 60 Plus be allowed to legit­i­mate­ly claim non-par­ti­san ‘social wel­fare’ sta­tus? That’s the real ques­tion at the heart of the ‘IRS tar­get­ing con­ser­v­a­tives’ fake scan­dal.

The TC4 Trust and the Cen­ter to Pro­tect Patient Rights: The Koch Broth­ers’ Tem­po­rary “Shad­ow Mon­ey Mail­box” 501(c)(4)s Filled With “Dis­re­gard­able Enti­ties”

And 60 Plus was just one ele­ment node in the net­work of 501(c)(4) orga­ni­za­tions used by the Koch donor net­work. Next, we’re going to take a clos­er look at how this larg­er net­work oper­ates includ­ing some of the tricks used to obscure the mon­ey-trails. And keep in mind that, until around 2013, AFF was a sig­nif­i­cant com­po­nent of the Koch net­work and it was only kicked out after it was caught break­ing the 501(c)(4) rules.

Also keep in mind that the Kochs were a major influ­en­tial force in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics for decades before they became a house­hold name around 2010. Long before their ‘com­ing out’ moment for with the 2010 rise of the Tea Par­ty in 2010, the Kochs were financ­ing major right-wing orga­ni­za­tions like the Cato Insti­tute and Amer­i­can Enter­prise Insti­tute. And they did a remark­able job stay­ing off the pub­lic’s radar all those years. Stay­ing hid­den was appar­ent­ly no long pos­si­ble with hun­dreds of mil­lions of the Koch net­works dol­lars flow­ing into US elec­tions. But even after it’s become clear that the Kochs are spend­ing for­tunes on influ­enc­ing the US elec­torate in elec­tion after elec­tion, the specifics of how they’re spend­ing that mon­ey still remain heav­i­ly hid­den. We know that mon­ey is out there, we just don’t know how it’s being spent. It’s one of the ways ‘dark mon­ey’ is a lot like ‘dark mat­ter’: we know it’s there even if we can’t see it.

Yet every once in a while, we get a snap­shot of how these dark mon­ey net­works oper­ate and that’s what hap­pened in 2013 when some of the enti­ties in the Koch net­work shut­down and pub­licly issued ter­mi­na­tion reports. And those ter­mi­na­tion reports includ­ed the recip­i­ents of these shut down groups’ dona­tions, recip­i­ents that includ­ed oth­er 501(c)(4) enti­ties, yield­ing a num­ber of fas­ci­nat­ing insights into the tech­niques used by how these net­works.

So let’s take a clos­er look at the two big fun­ders of 60 Plus men­tioned above, TC4 and the Cen­ter to Pro­tect Patient Rights (CPPR), to get a bet­ter idea of how the sys­tem actu­al­ly works. As we’re going to see, the two groups weren’t just gen­er­ous donors to 60 Plus. They act­ed as “Shad­ow Mon­ey Mail­box­es” that did lit­tle oth­er than col­lect dona­tions and dis­burse the mon­ey to oth­er enti­ties. TC4 was actu­al­ly a very big donor to the CPPR too. Yes, even the Shad­ow Mon­ey Mail­box­es donate to each oth­er. Because, again, that’s how this sys­tem works.

But TC4 did­n’t give direct­ly to CPPR. TC4 report­ed giv­ing $27.9 mil­lion in grants to oth­er groups between July 1, 2011 and June 30, 2012 and $14.3 mil­lion of that was sent to a group called Cor­ner Table LLC. Cor­ner Table, of course, turns out to be a “dis­re­gard­able enti­ty” of CPPR. That’s a sub-unit that is ‘dis­re­gard­ed’ for tax pur­pos­es and treat­ed as part of the par­ent enti­ty.

TC4 report­ed that $27.9 mil­lion in spend­ing in its 2013 ter­mi­na­tion report, which was its final report before shut­ting down. So who was behind Cor­ner Table? Well, that only became clear two days after TC4 filed its ter­mi­na­tion report when CPPR filed some amend­ments to its 2010–2011 IRS fil­ings. Those fil­ings revealed that Cor­ner Table was pre­vi­ous­ly called Eleventh Edi­tion which received $4.3 mil­lion from TC4 some­time between July 1, 2010 and June 30, 2011. This amend­ment by CPPR also con­tra­dict­ed its ini­tial 2010–2012 fil­ings with the IRS that stat­ed it had no dis­re­gard­able enti­ties at all.

That points out one of the basic tech­niques 501(c)(4)s can use to obscure their mon­ey flow trails: change the name of the dis­re­gard­ed enti­ty and then neglect to report dona­tions up front and report them a year lat­er as amend­ments so there’s a lag in what the pub­lic knows about what your 501(c)(4) spent. A lag that gives enough time to change names and obfus­cate the pub­lic record even more. TC4 reports on its 2010–2011 that it gave $4.3 mil­lion to an enti­ty called Eleventh Edi­tion. But CPPR, the own­er of Eleventh Edi­tion, did­n’t dis­close receiv­ing that mon­ey until its 2013 amend­ment. And this effec­tive­ly hid from the pub­lic in 2012, an elec­tion year, the knowl­edge that TC4 gave $4.3 mil­lion to CPPR in 2010–2011. And then TC4 dis­bands in 2013, pre­sum­ably to be replaced by a new Koch-backed front. And in its ter­mi­na­tion report it reveals that it donat­ed $14.3 mil­lion to Cor­ner Table LLC in 2011–2012, and the only pub­lic infor­ma­tion that indi­cates that Cor­ner Table is a CPPR sub-unit is the CPPR amend­ment to its 2010–2011 fil­ings that belat­ed­ly reveal that Eleventh Edi­tion exists and changed its name to Cor­ner Table. So it order to trace the $4.3 mil­lion and $14.3 mil­lion dona­tions made by TC4 back to CPPR in 2010–2012 you would have need­ed to view pub­licly dis­closed tax infor­ma­tion for both TC4 and the CPPR and con­nect the dots.

And Eleventh Edition/Corner Table was­n’t the only ‘dis­re­gard­able enti­ty’ CPPR dis­closed in a 2013 amend­ment to its pre­vi­ous tax returns. CPPR also belat­ed­ly revealed in a 2013 amend­ment the exis­tence of Merid­i­an Edi­tion LLC. The amend­ment also revealed that Merid­i­an Edi­tion had pre­vi­ous­ly used the name Amer­i­can Com­mitt­ment, a name that has appar­ent­ly been used by a num­ber of oth­er 501(c)(4)s, high­light­ing anoth­er way the dark mon­ey sys­tem obscures mon­ey flows: the tem­po­rary dis­re­garable enti­ties don’t just change their names. They share names too, mak­ing the IRS fil­ings of these enti­ties ambigu­ous. The CPPR 2013 amend­ment showed a $9.3 mil­lion dona­tion to Amer­i­can Com­mitt­ment from TC4 in 2010–2011. And TC4 pre­sum­ably dis­close that dona­tion in its ini­tial fil­ings. But it was­n’t until CPPR filed that amend­ment that it was pub­licly revealed that Amer­i­can Com­mitt­ment was a CPPR sub-unit.

The arti­cle also notes that an ear­li­er dona­tion from TC4 to Amer­i­can Com­mitt­ment was obscured because of a smudge on TC4’s tax fil­ings. A smudge. That’s appar­ent­ly also one of the obfus­ca­tion tech­niques. And it appar­ent­ly worked.

There were a num­ber of oth­er Koch-affil­i­at­ed enti­ties get­ting grants from TC4. TC4 also gave $891,000 to PRDIST LLC, a dis­re­gard­ed enti­ty of Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty, one of the Kochs’ pri­ma­ry polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tions. TC4 donat­ed an addi­tion­al $500,000 in its 2013 ter­mi­na­tion report.

One enti­ty that received about $9 mil­lion in grants TC4 gave to POFN LLC, a sub-unit of SGC4 Trust, which does busi­ness under the name Pub­lic Notice. The exec­u­tive direc­tor of Pub­lic Notice hap­pens to be Gretchen Hamel, one of the found­ing mem­bers of TC4. It’s a small world in the world of 501(c)(4)s.

One of the biggest recip­i­ents of TC4’s $64 mil­lion in grants was Themis Trust, a con­ser­v­a­tive vot­er data­base project start­ed in 2010 by the Koch broth­ers. And this, of course, also involved the use of dis­re­gard­ed enti­ties to hide the mon­ey trail. TC4 gave $2.5 mil­lion to Themis under its own name, but then gave anoth­er $5.6 mil­lion to a Themis sub-unit called STN LLC and anoth­er $1.8 mil­lion to Themis sub-unit DAS MGR. In all, TC4 gave Themis Trust $9.9 mil­lion, and 75% of those grants were effec­tive­ly hid­den from the pub­lic using dis­re­gard­ed enti­ties.

Themis Trust, in turn, made grants to some non-Koch enti­ties. For exam­ple, TC4 donat­ed $750,000 to an enti­ty called ORRA LLC, a dis­re­gard­ed enti­ty of Evangchr4 LLC. It turns out Evangchr4 is for­mal­ly a relat­ed orga­ni­za­tion of Themis Trust. Evangchr4, in turn, donat­ed $1.2 mil­lion to Cit­i­zen­Link, a 501(c)(4) enti­ty of the right-wing evan­gel­i­cal chris­t­ian orga­ni­za­tion Focus on the Fam­i­ly. And Cit­i­zen­Link end­ed up spend­ing $2.6 mil­lion in 2012, large­ly in sup­port of Mitt Rom­ney. So we have TC4 giv­ing mon­ey to a dis­re­gard­ed enti­ty of Evangchr4, which itself is for­mal­ly a relat­ed orga­ni­za­tion of Themis Trust. And Evangchr4 — a name that sounds like it was set up by evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians — gave mon­ey to Focus on the Fam­i­ly’s 501(c)(4) Cit­i­zen­Link. Final­ly, Cit­i­zen­Link spent mil­lions pro­mot­ing Mitt Rom­ney in 2012. And this was all done under the pre­tense of these all being non-polit­i­cal social wel­fare orga­ni­za­tions.

And as the fol­low­ing arti­cle notes, there were a num­ber of enti­ties list­ed as recip­i­ents of TC4’s dona­tions in its ter­mi­na­tion report where Open Secrets could­n’t iden­ti­fy who was behind them. And that high­lights one of the key aspects of this to keep in mind: even when these groups reveal in their pub­lic IRS reports how much mon­ey they gave and the recip­i­ents of that mon­ey, there’s still no guar­an­tee that even inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ists like the peo­ple at Open Secrets will have the infor­ma­tion they need to deter­mine who is actu­al­ly behind these groups. Because that’s how the sys­tem is cur­rent­ly designed. To be inves­tiga­tive-jour­nal­ist-proof:

Open Secrets

Exclu­sive: Largest Dark Mon­ey Donor Groups Share Funds, Hide Links

By Robert Maguire and Vive­ca Novak
Sep­tem­ber 10, 2013

There’s a new dark mon­ey game in town, one meant to fur­ther cov­er the tracks of tax-exempt groups that have pro­vid­ed major sums to help Repub­li­can caus­es in the 2010 and 2012 elec­tions.

Recent tax fil­ings by the two largest “shad­ow mon­ey mail­box­es” — groups that do vir­tu­al­ly noth­ing but pass grants through to oth­er polit­i­cal­ly active 501(c)(4) orga­ni­za­tions, many of which have been big spenders on elec­tion ads ben­e­fit­ing the GOP — show their finan­cial ties run far deep­er than pre­vi­ous­ly known.

The groups, TC4 Trust and the Cen­ter to Pro­tect Patient Rights — both of which have con­nec­tions to the bil­lion­aire indus­tri­al­ist Koch broth­ers — have been play­ing a high-stakes game of hide-the-ball, dis­guis­ing trans­fers of mil­lions of dol­lars from one to the oth­er behind a veil of Delaware lim­it­ed lia­bil­i­ty cor­po­ra­tions.

All cov­ered up

Already, under tax law, 501(c)(4) groups — like TC4, CPPR and near­ly all the groups to which they’ve giv­en mon­ey through the years — don’t have to dis­close their donors. By fur­ther shroud­ing the recip­i­ent groups behind enti­ties with dif­fer­ent names (and, usu­al­ly, dif­fer­ent employ­er iden­ti­fi­ca­tion num­bers), the donors are attempt­ing to make it even more dif­fi­cult to find out how the mon­ey is flow­ing.

TC4 is now out of busi­ness. But in its ter­mi­na­tion report, signed on May 14, 2013 and sent to the IRS, TC4 report­ed giv­ing $27.9 mil­lion in grants to oth­er groups between July 1, 2011 and June 30, 2012. The report was includ­ed in data post­ed yes­ter­day Resource.org.

The largest grant by far — $14.3 mil­lion — was sent to a group called Cor­ner Table LLC. That’s a big chunk of change to a folksy-sound­ing but unknown — in the polit­i­cal or any oth­er realm — orga­ni­za­tion.

But two days after TC4’s trustee final­ized its ter­mi­na­tion report, the Cen­ter to Pro­tect Patient Rights — the oth­er big shad­ow mon­ey pass-through — signed off on amend­ments to its 2010 and 2011 tax fil­ings that help solve the mys­tery.

The amend­ments say that, con­trary to CPPR’s ear­li­er rep­re­sen­ta­tions on IRS fil­ings that it had no con­nect­ed enti­ties oper­at­ing under a dif­fer­ent name, it actu­al­ly did.

One of them, accord­ing to one of the amend­ments, was called Eleventh Edi­tion, which received $4.3 mil­lion from TC4 some­time between July 1, 2010 and June 30, 2011. And not only was Eleventh Edi­tion the same as CPPR, but it had tak­en on a new name: Cor­ner Table LLC.

And CPPR’s oth­er amend­ment indi­cates it has anoth­er of these units: Merid­i­an Edi­tion LLCwhich, the doc­u­ments say, was orig­i­nal­ly called Amer­i­can Com­mit­ment LLC. Amer­i­can Com­mitt­ment had received a total of $9.3 mil­lion from TC4 in 2010 and 2011 (its ear­li­er grant was unclear at first because the recipient’s name was smudged on TC4’s 990 return).

Amer­i­can Com­mit­ment is a name that has been used for sev­er­al non­prof­its. The incar­na­tion that received the TC4 mon­ey (a group that seemed to dis­ap­pear, along with its mil­lions from TC4) — is the one that shows up in CPPR’s amend­ed fil­ing.

The image below shows TC4’s con­tri­bu­tions to CPPR:
[See image show­ing TC4 Trust using dif­fer­ent mid­dle-men orga­ni­za­tions 2009, 2010, and 2011 to fun­nel mil­lions to the Cen­ter to Pro­tect Patient Rights]
The upshot: Now we know that CPPR — through its pre­vi­ous­ly unknown sub-units — received a total of near­ly $28 mil­lion from TC4 from August 2009 through June 2012. That’s a big chunk of CPPR’s over­all $95 mil­lion rev­enue. The source of most of the rest of its funds remains pub­licly unknown.

Dis­re­gard­ed no more

These whol­ly-owned sub-units of larg­er groups have a par­tic­u­lar des­ig­na­tion under the law: They’re known as “dis­re­gard­ed enti­ties” — mean­ing their dif­fer­ent names and sep­a­rate iden­ti­fi­ca­tion num­bers are dis­re­gard­ed by the IRS for income tax pur­pos­es, and they must be report­ed on the same forms with their par­ent groups. Offi­cial­ly, they are “dis­re­gard­ed as an enti­ty sep­a­rate from its own­er.” They are almost always sin­gle-mem­ber LLCs.

CPPR has giv­en out more than $70 mil­lion in grants from its incep­tion in 2009 through the end of 2011. And we don’t yet know — because of lag time in IRS fil­ing sched­ules — what it spent in 2012, which could have been a big year for the orga­ni­za­tion.

TC4, which began oper­at­ing the same year as CPPR, has made $64.7 mil­lion in grants. One of its main recip­i­ents has been a con­ser­v­a­tive vot­er data­base project, Themis Trust, start­ed in ear­ly 2010 by David and Charles Koch, the bil­lion­aire indus­tri­al­ists who are major fun­ders of the right.

Themis Trust, too, has hid­den some of the grants it has received from TC4 by using dis­re­gard­ed enti­ties. Under its own name, Themis received $2.5 mil­lion from TC4. But the donor group also gave $5.6 mil­lion to a Themis unit called STN LLC, and sent $1.8 mil­lion to yet anoth­er Themis LLC, DAS MGR. The grants from TC4 to Themis total $9.9 mil­lion.

In addi­tion, TC4’s final fil­ing shows it gave a grant of $725,000 to some­thing called ORRA LLC, which is a dis­re­gard­ed enti­ty of Evangchr4 Trust.

The lat­ter group is for­mal­ly a “relat­ed orga­ni­za­tion” of Themis, accord­ing to Themis’ 990. And Evangchr4 gave out $1.2 mil­lion in grants, almost all of which went to some­thing called Cit­i­zen­Link, the c4 arm of the social con­ser­v­a­tive group Focus on the Fam­i­ly. The last link in that par­tic­u­lar daisy chain of grants, Cit­i­zen­Link report­ed to the FEC that it spent $2.6 mil­lion on inde­pen­dent expen­di­tures in 2012, most of it on behalf of Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee Mitt Rom­ney.

Cit­i­zen­Link is just one of the tax-exempt, nondis­clos­ing orga­ni­za­tions that report­ed spend­ing more than $250 mil­lion in the 2012 elec­tions, accord­ing to fil­ings made with the FEC.

TC4 has in the past giv­en grants to sev­er­al oth­er dis­re­gard­ed enti­ties of oth­er groups, such as $891,000 it sent to PRDIST LLC — a unit of the much bet­ter-known Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty. In its ter­mi­na­tion report, TC4 report­ed send­ing PRDIST anoth­er $500,000.

Then there was the $7.3 mil­lion TC4 sent to POFN LLC, a sub­sidiary of SGC4 Trust, which does busi­ness under the name Pub­lic Notice. TC4’s final report notes anoth­er $1.7 mil­lion con­tri­bu­tion to POFN.

There are still grantees whose true iden­ti­ties OpenSe­crets Blog hasn’t yet been able to learn: Some­thing called TRGN LLC had ear­li­er received $1.5 mil­lion from TC4, but the lat­est report shows anoth­er grant of $2.1 mil­lion. Three oth­er groups appear on the ter­mi­na­tion report for the first time, receiv­ing a total of a lit­tle less than $5 mil­lion: SLAH LLC, TDNA LLC and TOHE LLC. It’s not clear what these groups do or whether they are relat­ed to more well-known orga­ni­za­tions.

...

Things go bet­ter with Kochs

The con­nec­tions between these groups and the Koch broth­ers, gen­er­ous fun­ders of con­ser­v­a­tive caus­es, are evi­dent in their per­son­nel as well as in grants.

Gretchen Hamel, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of Pub­lic Notice, the recip­i­ent (through its sub-units) of $9 mil­lion from TC4, gave a pre­sen­ta­tion dur­ing at least one of the Kochs’ annu­al con­ser­v­a­tive strat­e­gy ses­sions. But that’s not all: Hamel was also a found­ing mem­ber of TC4, which from its ear­li­est days gave to the Kochs’ vot­er data­base project Themis.

Anoth­er pre­sen­ter at that same con­fer­ence was Sean Noble, a polit­i­cal con­sul­tant known for being close­ly con­nect­ed to the Kochs’ oper­a­tions. He found­ed CPPR, and is still its pres­i­dent and exec­u­tive direc­tor. Noble knows his way around the world of polit­i­cal­ly focused 501(c)(4)s: He also found­ed all three ver­sions of Amer­i­can Com­mit­ment — the most recent of which is now run by Phil Ker­pen, who’s on the board of the Kochs’ large ©(4), Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty.

Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty — which spent more than $36 mil­lion in the 2012 elec­tion cycle, almost all of used for ads oppos­ing Pres­i­dent Obama’s re-elec­tion, accord­ing to reports filed with the FEC — has received a total of near­ly $1.4 mil­lion from TC4, and at least anoth­er $4.3 mil­lion from Noble’s CPPR.

CPPR fig­ured in a scheme last year in which a Amer­i­cans for Respon­si­ble Lead­er­ship, a group found­ed by one of Noble’s clients, fun­neled $11 mil­lion to advo­cates mobi­liz­ing against a Cal­i­for­nia bal­lot ini­tia­tive (a tem­po­rary tax increase for edu­ca­tion) and on behalf of anoth­er one (to ban unions from using dues for polit­i­cal pur­pos­es).

When California’s elec­tion watch­dog won a court order to force ARL to dis­close its donors, it revealed lit­tle: ARL got its mon­ey from CPPR, which had received it from anoth­er dark mon­ey group called Amer­i­cans for Job Secu­ri­ty. The mon­ey, then, had passed through a triple-lay­ered cur­tain of nondis­clos­ing groups, and its orig­i­nal source was still unknown. The state agency called it a plain case of “mon­ey laun­der­ing.” The Dai­ly Beast has report­ed that a grand jury has been empan­eled to inves­ti­gate the trans­ac­tions.

———-

“Exclu­sive: Largest Dark Mon­ey Donor Groups Share Funds, Hide Links” by Robert Maguire and Vive­ca Novak; Open Secrets; 09/10/2013

“Recent tax fil­ings by the two largest “shad­ow mon­ey mail­box­es” — groups that do vir­tu­al­ly noth­ing but pass grants through to oth­er polit­i­cal­ly active 501(c)(4) orga­ni­za­tions, many of which have been big spenders on elec­tion ads ben­e­fit­ing the GOP — show their finan­cial ties run far deep­er than pre­vi­ous­ly known.”

“Shad­ow mon­ey mail­box­es”: It’s an apt label for groups like TC4 and CPPR that exist sole­ly to take con­tri­bu­tions and pass that mon­ey along to oth­er 501(c)(4)s.

And while these ‘shad­ow mon­ey mail­box­es’ already have the legal right to not dis­close their donors to the pub­lic, they still use sub-‘shadow mon­ey mail­box­es’ oper­at­ing under dif­fer­ent names (usu­al­ly with dif­fer­ent employ­er iden­ti­fi­ca­tion num­bers) to make it as dif­fi­cult as pos­si­ble for the pub­lic to track the mon­ey flows that get pub­licly dis­closed:

...
All cov­ered up

Already, under tax law, 501(c)(4) groups — like TC4, CPPR and near­ly all the groups to which they’ve giv­en mon­ey through the years — don’t have to dis­close their donors. By fur­ther shroud­ing the recip­i­ent groups behind enti­ties with dif­fer­ent names (and, usu­al­ly, dif­fer­ent employ­er iden­ti­fi­ca­tion num­bers), the donors are attempt­ing to make it even more dif­fi­cult to find out how the mon­ey is flow­ing.
...

These sub-units are tech­ni­cal­ly known as “dis­re­gard­ed enti­ties”, which refers to how their sep­a­rate iden­ti­fi­ca­tion num­bers are are dis­re­gard­ed by the IRS for income tax pur­pos­es, and they must be report­ed on the same forms with their par­ent groups. But as the short-lived life four-year lives of the dis­re­gard­ed enti­ties used by TC4 and CPPR make clear, they could also be described as dis­card­able enti­ties because they are clear­ly used as tem­po­rary orga­ni­za­tions that get cre­at­ed, maybe change their names, and then dis­ap­pear in a few years to be replaced by a new dis­re­gard­ed enti­ty. They’re dis­pos­able enti­ties used to obscure mon­ey-trails:

...
Dis­re­gard­ed no more

These whol­ly-owned sub-units of larg­er groups have a par­tic­u­lar des­ig­na­tion under the law: They’re known as “dis­re­gard­ed enti­ties — mean­ing their dif­fer­ent names and sep­a­rate iden­ti­fi­ca­tion num­bers are dis­re­gard­ed by the IRS for income tax pur­pos­es, and they must be report­ed on the same forms with their par­ent groups. Offi­cial­ly, they are “dis­re­gard­ed as an enti­ty sep­a­rate from its own­er.” They are almost always sin­gle-mem­ber LLCs.
...

And as the arti­cle makes clear, the largest dona­tions to come out of these shad­ow mon­ey mail­box­es were dona­tions from TC4 to CPPR. Large dona­tions that were obscured with the use of sub-units: of the $27.9 mil­lion in grants TC4 made in the one year peri­od of from July 1 2011 to June 30, 2012, over half of that went to CPPR. But it actu­al­ly sent to a CPPR sub-unit called Cor­ner Table LLC:

...
TC4 is now out of busi­ness. But in its ter­mi­na­tion report, signed on May 14, 2013 and sent to the IRS, TC4 report­ed giv­ing $27.9 mil­lion in grants to oth­er groups between July 1, 2011 and June 30, 2012. The report was includ­ed in data post­ed yes­ter­day Resource.org.

The largest grant by far — $14.3 mil­lion — was sent to a group called Cor­ner Table LLC. That’s a big chunk of change to a folksy-sound­ing but unknown — in the polit­i­cal or any oth­er realm — orga­ni­za­tion.
...

And it just hap­pens to be the case that CPPR hid from the IRS the fact that Cor­ner Table LLC — orig­i­nal­ly named Eleventh Edi­tion — was one of its sub-units. This was­n’t dis­closed until two days after TC4’s 2013 ter­mi­na­tion report when CPPR filed amend­ments to its 2010–2011 tax­es. It was only after those amend­ments were filed in 2013 that researchers at Open Secrets were able to dis­cov­er that TC4 was a major fund of CPPR:

...
But two days after TC4’s trustee final­ized its ter­mi­na­tion report, the Cen­ter to Pro­tect Patient Rights — the oth­er big shad­ow mon­ey pass-through — signed off on amend­ments to its 2010 and 2011 tax fil­ings that help solve the mys­tery.

The amend­ments say that, con­trary to CPPR’s ear­li­er rep­re­sen­ta­tions on IRS fil­ings that it had no con­nect­ed enti­ties oper­at­ing under a dif­fer­ent name, it actu­al­ly did.

One of them, accord­ing to one of the amend­ments, was called Eleventh Edi­tion, which received $4.3 mil­lion from TC4 some­time between July 1, 2010 and June 30, 2011. And not only was Eleventh Edi­tion the same as CPPR, but it had tak­en on a new name: Cor­ner Table LLC.
...

And Cor­ner Table/Eleventh Edi­tion was just one of the CPPR sub-units used for these mon­ey flows between TC4 and CPPR. There was also Merid­i­an Edi­tion LLC — orig­i­nal­ly named Amer­i­can Com­mitt­ment LLC, which is a name appar­ent­ly used by mul­ti­ple non­prof­its — which received almost $10 mil­lion from TC4 also in 2010–2011. This sub-unit was also only belat­ed­ly dis­closed to the IRS in CPPR’s 2013 amend­ments:

...
And CPPR’s oth­er amend­ment indi­cates it has anoth­er of these units: Merid­i­an Edi­tion LLCwhich, the doc­u­ments say, was orig­i­nal­ly called Amer­i­can Com­mit­ment LLC. Amer­i­can Com­mitt­ment had received a total of $9.3 mil­lion from TC4 in 2010 and 2011 (its ear­li­er grant was unclear at first because the recipient’s name was smudged on TC4’s 990 return).

Amer­i­can Com­mit­ment is a name that has been used for sev­er­al non­prof­its. The incar­na­tion that received the TC4 mon­ey (a group that seemed to dis­ap­pear, along with its mil­lions from TC4) — is the one that shows up in CPPR’s amend­ed fil­ing.
...

So between 2009–2012, these two sub-units of CPPR received $28 mil­lion from TC4. And each of which changed their name dur­ing this peri­od. And CPPR did­n’t dis­close its rela­tion­ship to them to the IRS until 2013. That’s how much work these Koch-backed enti­ties did to obscure the mon­ey flows between these two key ‘shad­ow mon­ey mail­box­es’. That $28 mil­lion was over a quar­ter of the $98 mil­lion CPPR took in from 2009–2012. And CPPR turned around and basi­cal­ly gave almost that same amount in grants of its own:

...
The upshot: Now we know that CPPR — through its pre­vi­ous­ly unknown sub-units — received a total of near­ly $28 mil­lion from TC4 from August 2009 through June 2012. That’s a big chunk of CPPR’s over­all $95 mil­lion rev­enue. The source of most of the rest of its funds remains pub­licly unknown.

...

CPPR has giv­en out more than $70 mil­lion in grants from its incep­tion in 2009 through the end of 2011. And we don’t yet know — because of lag time in IRS fil­ing sched­ules — what it spent in 2012, which could have been a big year for the orga­ni­za­tion.
...

And that’s why enti­ties like TC4 and CPPR are shad­ow mon­ey mail­box­es. They just act as mid­dle-men in chains of dona­tions across net­works of orga­ni­za­tions. The Koch net­work of mega-donors give to orga­ni­za­tions like TC4 that, in turn, give to sub-units of oth­er mon­ey mail­box­es like CPPR which gives the mon­ey out again. Or giv­en to enti­ties like AFF that might spend the mon­ey on actu­al cam­paign­ing or fur­ther donate to anoth­er 501(c)(4). And the tax fil­ings are delayed and sub-unit names are changed to fur­ther obscure the trail of what’s pub­licly dis­closed. In oth­er words, the mega-donors aren’t just shield­ed by the fact that 501(c)(4)s don’t have to dis­close their donors. They’re also obscured by con­vo­lut­ed delayed tax dis­clo­sures and a mon­ey flow across net­works of orga­ni­za­tions donat­ing mon­ey to each oth­er using tem­po­rary sub-orga­ni­za­tions that pop-up, change their names in a few years, and dis­ap­pear.

And then there’s Themis Trust, a Koch-backed enti­ty that appears to be a hyrid between shad­ow mon­ey mail­box­es and a con­ser­v­a­tive vot­er data­base project. Themis received $9.9 mil­lion from TC4 using a series of dis­re­gard­ed entites:

...
TC4, which began oper­at­ing the same year as CPPR, has made $64.7 mil­lion in grants. One of its main recip­i­ents has been a con­ser­v­a­tive vot­er data­base project, Themis Trust, start­ed in ear­ly 2010 by David and Charles Koch, the bil­lion­aire indus­tri­al­ists who are major fun­ders of the right.

Themis Trust, too, has hid­den some of the grants it has received from TC4 by using dis­re­gard­ed enti­ties. Under its own name, Themis received $2.5 mil­lion from TC4. But the donor group also gave $5.6 mil­lion to a Themis unit called STN LLC, and sent $1.8 mil­lion to yet anoth­er Themis LLC, DAS MGR. The grants from TC4 to Themis total $9.9 mil­lion.
...

But in addi­tion to its vot­er data­base project, Themis also gave $750,000 to Evangchr4 Trust, which appears to be focused on giv­ing mon­ey to Focus on the Fam­i­ly. In that sense, Themis and its “relat­ed orga­ni­za­tion” Evangchr4 Trust were act­ing as a shad­ow mon­ey mail­box. One more mail­box in the chain to fur­ther obscure mon­ey flows:

...
In addi­tion, TC4’s final fil­ing shows it gave a grant of $725,000 to some­thing called ORRA LLC, which is a dis­re­gard­ed enti­ty of Evangchr4 Trust.

The lat­ter group is for­mal­ly a “relat­ed orga­ni­za­tion” of Themis, accord­ing to Themis’ 990. And Evangchr4 gave out $1.2 mil­lion in grants, almost all of which went to some­thing called Cit­i­zen­Link, the c4 arm of the social con­ser­v­a­tive group Focus on the Fam­i­ly. The last link in that par­tic­u­lar daisy chain of grants, Cit­i­zen­Link report­ed to the FEC that it spent $2.6 mil­lion on inde­pen­dent expen­di­tures in 2012, most of it on behalf of Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee Mitt Rom­ney.

Cit­i­zen­Link is just one of the tax-exempt, nondis­clos­ing orga­ni­za­tions that report­ed spend­ing more than $250 mil­lion in the 2012 elec­tions, accord­ing to fil­ings made with the FEC.
...

If you think about it, TC4, CPPR, Themis Trust, and the rest of these Koch-financed enti­ties, they real­ly should all be declar­ing them­selves “relat­ed orga­ni­za­tions” because that’s exact­ly what they are. One big net­work of high­ly relat­ed Koch-financed orga­ni­za­tions set up to main­tain the pre­tense of being ‘social wel­fare’ orga­ni­za­tions so they can get prefer­able tax treat­ment avoid dis­clos­ing their donors. It’s so Koch-cen­tric that TC4 even gave to a dis­re­gard­ed enti­ty of Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty, one of the Koch’s pri­ma­ry polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tions:

...
TC4 has in the past giv­en grants to sev­er­al oth­er dis­re­gard­ed enti­ties of oth­er groups, such as $891,000 it sent to PRDIST LLC — a unit of the much bet­ter-known Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty. In its ter­mi­na­tion report, TC4 report­ed send­ing PRDIST anoth­er $500,000.
...

$9 mil­lion was giv­en by TC4 to an enti­ty called Pub­lic Notice. The exec­u­tive direc­tor of Pub­lic Notice was a found­ing mem­ber of TC4 Trust:

...
Then there was the $7.3 mil­lion TC4 sent to POFN LLC, a sub­sidiary of SGC4 Trust, which does busi­ness under the name Pub­lic Notice. TC4’s final report notes anoth­er $1.7 mil­lion con­tri­bu­tion to POFN.

...

Things go bet­ter with Kochs

The con­nec­tions between these groups and the Koch broth­ers, gen­er­ous fun­ders of con­ser­v­a­tive caus­es, are evi­dent in their per­son­nel as well as in grants.

Gretchen Hamel, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of Pub­lic Notice, the recip­i­ent (through its sub-units) of $9 mil­lion from TC4, gave a pre­sen­ta­tion dur­ing at least one of the Kochs’ annu­al con­ser­v­a­tive strat­e­gy ses­sions. But that’s not all: Hamel was also a found­ing mem­ber of TC4, which from its ear­li­est days gave to the Kochs’ vot­er data­base project Themis.
...

Sean Noble, the founder of CPPR, is also a known Koch oper­a­tive:

...
Anoth­er pre­sen­ter at that same con­fer­ence was Sean Noble, a polit­i­cal con­sul­tant known for being close­ly con­nect­ed to the Kochs’ oper­a­tions. He found­ed CPPR, and is still its pres­i­dent and exec­u­tive direc­tor. Noble knows his way around the world of polit­i­cal­ly focused 501(c)(4)s: He also found­ed all three ver­sions of Amer­i­can Com­mit­ment — the most recent of which is now run by Phil Ker­pen, who’s on the board of the Kochs’ large ©(4), Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty.
...

It’s one big hap­py fam­i­ly because this whole net­work is real­ly all one big dis­trib­uted orga­ni­za­tion — the polit­i­cal influ­ence oper­a­tions of the Koch net­work — man­i­fest­ed as a net­work of sep­a­rate orga­ni­za­tions, giv­ing mon­ey back and forth to each oth­er’s sub-orga­ni­za­tions. One big hap­py fam­i­ly of Koch net­work orga­ni­za­tions mas­querad­ing as a col­lec­tion of social wel­fare orga­ni­za­tions and act­ing as one giant orga­ni­za­tion. Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty spent more than $36 mil­lion in the 2012 elec­tion cycle, almost $6 mil­lion of which came from TC4 and CPPR. And who knows how much of the rest of that $36 mil­lion was donat­ed through oth­er Koch enti­ties. But it’s clear that when we’re look­ing at TC4 and CPPR and all the affil­i­at­ed orga­ni­za­tions like Themis Trust and Pub­lic Notice, we’re look­ing at a Koch-cre­at­ed net­work of ‘social wel­fare’ orga­ni­za­tions set up for the pur­pose of laun­der­ing Koch donor net­work mon­ey and keep­ing the iden­ti­ties of those donors secret:

...
Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty — which spent more than $36 mil­lion in the 2012 elec­tion cycle, almost all of used for ads oppos­ing Pres­i­dent Obama’s re-elec­tion, accord­ing to reports filed with the FEC — has received a total of near­ly $1.4 mil­lion from TC4, and at least anoth­er $4.3 mil­lion from Noble’s CPPR.
...

Note the case of mon­ey laun­der­ing involv­ing CPPR and Cal­i­for­nia bal­lot ini­tia­tive and how CPPR was receiv­ing mon­ey from Amer­i­cans for Job Secu­ri­ty and pass­ing it along to a group called Amer­i­cans for Respon­si­ble Lead­er­ship. We’ll be look­ing more close­ly at the in the next arti­cle below:

...
CPPR fig­ured in a scheme last year in which a Amer­i­cans for Respon­si­ble Lead­er­ship, a group found­ed by one of Noble’s clients, fun­neled $11 mil­lion to advo­cates mobi­liz­ing against a Cal­i­for­nia bal­lot ini­tia­tive (a tem­po­rary tax increase for edu­ca­tion) and on behalf of anoth­er one (to ban unions from using dues for polit­i­cal pur­pos­es).

When California’s elec­tion watch­dog won a court order to force ARL to dis­close its donors, it revealed lit­tle: ARL got its mon­ey from CPPR, which had received it from anoth­er dark mon­ey group called Amer­i­cans for Job Secu­ri­ty. The mon­ey, then, had passed through a triple-lay­ered cur­tain of nondis­clos­ing groups, and its orig­i­nal source was still unknown. The state agency called it a plain case of “mon­ey laun­der­ing.” The Dai­ly Beast has report­ed that a grand jury has been empan­eled to inves­ti­gate the trans­ac­tions.
...

And as the Open Secret’s team not­ed, four of the recip­i­ents of TC4 grants in its ter­mi­na­tion report were orga­ni­za­tions where it’s not clear whether they’re a dis­re­gard­ed enti­ty or relat­ed orga­ni­za­tion of a more well known orga­ni­za­tion. And also not clear what they even do. And that lack of trans­paren­cy more or less tells us what they do: act as shad­ow mon­ey mail­box­es and/or hide the spend­ing of that mon­ey in ways to influ­ence the polit­i­cal process:

...
There are still grantees whose true iden­ti­ties OpenSe­crets Blog hasn’t yet been able to learn: Some­thing called TRGN LLC had ear­li­er received $1.5 mil­lion from TC4, but the lat­est report shows anoth­er grant of $2.1 mil­lion. Three oth­er groups appear on the ter­mi­na­tion report for the first time, receiv­ing a total of a lit­tle less than $5 mil­lion: SLAH LLC, TDNA LLC and TOHE LLC. It’s not clear what these groups do or whether they are relat­ed to more well-known orga­ni­za­tions.
...

So TC4 and CPPR are cre­at­ed in 2009, with TC4 giv­ing mil­lions to CPPR’s dis­re­gard­ed enti­ties like Eleventh Edi­tion and Merid­i­an Edi­tion. Then in 2010 we have Cit­i­zens Unit­ed, open­ing the flood­gates to unlim­it­ed cor­po­rate polit­i­cal dona­tions. Eleventh Edi­tion and Merid­i­an Edi­tion change their names to Cor­ner Table and Amer­i­can Com­mitt­ment. TC4 con­tin­ues giv­ing mil­lions to CPPR’s renamed dis­re­gard­ed enti­ties. And in 2013 TC4 folds up — act­ing as a dis­pos­able shad­ow mon­ey mail­box — and CPPR belat­ed informs the IRS that it has these dis­re­gard­ed enti­ties, final­ly reveal­ing to the IRS the fact that TC4 has been giv­ing mil­lions to CPPR from 2009–2012. And that’s just one thread of a sto­ry about how the Koch donor obscured itself by split­ting up into mul­ti­ple tem­po­rary sham social wel­fare enti­ties.

The Amer­i­can Future Fund and Its Koch-backed Peers Get Exposed and Kicked Out of the Koch Orbit.

As we just saw, one of the Koch broth­ers’ major ‘shad­ow mon­ey mail­box­es’ from 2009–2012 just sud­den­ly fold­ed up and dis­ap­peared in 2013. It was a tem­po­rary shad­ow mon­ey mail­box, which makes per­fect sense giv­en the clear pur­pose of enti­ties like TC4 and CPPR of mak­ing the mon­ey flows for polit­i­cal expens­es as unclear to the pub­lic as pos­si­ble while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly main­tain­ing the guise of being a ‘social wel­fare’ orga­ni­za­tion.

And as we’ll see in the fol­low­ing 2014 arti­cle, TC4 was­n’t the only enti­ty in this Koch-backed net­work of 501(c)(4)s to pull a dis­ap­pear­ing act fol­low­ing the 2012 elec­tions. By the time the 2014 elec­tions came around there was almost no Koch mon­ey flow­ing into The Amer­i­can Future Fund (AFF). Funds flow­ing into 60 Plus, the Koch-backed ‘alter­na­tive to the AARP’ we looked at above, also dried up. Flows into Amer­i­cans for Job Secu­ri­ty, which we saw in the pre­vi­ous arti­cle was involved with a scheme the state of Cal­i­for­nia described as cam­paign mon­ey laun­der­ing send­ing, also dried in the 2014 mid-terms. Even Grover Norquist’s Amer­i­cans for Tax Reform saw its funds sud­den­ly dry up in 2014.

So what caused all of these enti­ties that were seen as key dark mon­ey fund­ing vehi­cles in pre­vi­ous elec­tions to sud­den­ly get shunned? They all got caught cheat­ing. And that points to one of the key fea­tures of this sys­tem: the 501(c)(4)s are dis­pos­able so when they get caught cheat­ing they can just fade away and get replaced by a new ambigu­ous­ly named enti­ty.

60 Plus saw its funds dry up when it was caught cheat­ing its fun­ders. Specif­i­cal­ly, 60 Plus’s founder, Sean Noble (who we looked at in the above arti­cle excerpt), was found to have charged exor­bi­tant fees for an under­whelm­ing 2012 ad cam­paign and this end­ed up get­ting him, and 60 Plus, exiled from the Koch net­work.

In the case of the AFF, it got caught in the same mon­ey laun­der­ing scan­dal that caused Amer­i­cans for Job Secu­ri­ty to fall out of favor: the laun­der­ing of mil­lions of dol­lars into 2012 Cal­i­for­nia bal­lot ini­tia­tives, where Amer­i­cans for Job Secu­ri­ty gave $24 mil­lion to CPPR, which, in turn, gave $7 mil­lion to the AFF and $13 mil­lion to Amer­i­cans for Respon­si­ble Lead­er­ship, both a which passed the mon­ey along to bal­lot ini­tia­tive pur­pos­es. This vio­lat­ed Cal­i­for­nia law and was exposed, hence, these groups sud­den­ly became a lia­bil­i­ty and their dis­pos­able nature was revealed when the mon­ey flows dried up in 2014.

Norquist’s Amer­i­cans for Tax Reform got caught in a sim­i­lar mon­ey laun­der­ing scan­dal. Karl Rove’s Cross­roads GPS gave the group $26.4 mil­lion in 2012 and over half of it was spent on elec­tion ads, while it only report­ed to the IRS spend­ing a third of the mon­ey on elec­tion ads. So in addi­tion to breach­ing the 501(c)(4) rule of not spend­ing over half of its mon­ey on polit­i­cal activ­i­ty, Amer­i­cans for Tax Reform also lied to the IRS. So Grover Norquist’s sig­na­ture group got caught fla­grant­ly mak­ing a mock­ery of the US cam­paign finance sys­tem in 2012 and end­ed up get­ting shut out in 2014 as pun­ish­ment.

But unlike TC4, which fold­ed up entire­ly after the 2012 elec­tions, these oth­er groups did­n’t dis­ap­pear entire­ly. Instead, they sim­ply offered their ser­vices to oth­er clients. Recall what we saw above in the AFF’s his­to­ry: it was basi­cal­ly a right-wing mer­ce­nary out­fit with a vari­ety of clients and did work for the DCI Group and clients like the Burmese Jun­ta. It’s a polit­i­cal mer­ce­nary out­fit. So when the Koch mon­ey dried up, AFF found new clients. They did­n’t have near­ly as much mon­ey to spend, but they remained active.

Amer­i­cans for Job Secu­ri­ty and Amer­i­cans for Tax Reform both went back to pro­mot­ing a gener­ic anti-tax, anti-union and pro-busi­ness agen­da with much small­er bud­gets. And 60 Plus — cut off from that sweet, sweet Koch sug­ar — found work attack­ing the pri­ma­ry oppo­nents of Ari­zona guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­date Doug Ducey. So unlike TC4, which fold­ed up entire­ly in 2013 after four yeras of serv­ing its shad­ow mon­ey mail­box func­tion, these oth­er enti­ties just kind of qui­et­ly hung around as they searched for new clients:

The Huff­in­g­ton Post

Dark Mon­ey Groups That Spent Mil­lions In 2012 Van­ish In 2014

By Paul Blu­men­thal
09/12/2014 07:31 am ET Updat­ed Sep 12, 2014

WASHINGTON — The Iowa-based con­ser­v­a­tive non­prof­it group Amer­i­can Future Fund released new adver­tise­ments near­ly every week from the spring of 2012 through Elec­tion Day that year, hit­ting Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma or Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­ate can­di­dates in com­pet­i­tive races. By mid-Sep­tem­ber, the group had spent $9.5 mil­lion. It went on to spend north of $30 mil­lion on fed­er­al races after receiv­ing mas­sive fund­ing from the net­work oper­at­ed by the net­work oper­at­ed by the bil­lion­aire broth­ers Charles and David Koch.

This year, with eight weeks before the 2014 midterm elec­tions, Amer­i­can Future Fund adver­tis­ing is nowhere to be seen on the air. The non­prof­it, which does not dis­close donors, has spent less than $250,000 in fed­er­al cam­paigns and has announced lit­tle in the way of issue advo­ca­cy tar­get­ing can­di­dates.

The Amer­i­can Future Fund is not the only non­prof­it dis­ap­pear­ing act. The con­ser­v­a­tive non­prof­its 60 Plus Asso­ci­a­tion, Amer­i­cans for Tax Reform, and Amer­i­cans for Job Secu­ri­ty also have large­ly evap­o­rat­ed from the fed­er­al elec­tion scene after spend­ing mil­lions in both 2010 and 2012.

The dis­ap­pear­ances show how non­prof­it polit­i­cal net­works use groups with the capa­bil­i­ty for elec­toral action as fronts for their own cam­paigns and, when they are no longer use­ful or become a dis­trac­tion, how eas­i­ly they can be cut loose.

Non­prof­it groups have been a major fea­ture of polit­i­cal cam­paigns since the Supreme Court’s 2007 Wis­con­sin right to life rul­ing, and they pro­lif­er­at­ed after the 2010 Cit­i­zens Unit­ed deci­sion. The groups can raise unlim­it­ed sums from cor­po­ra­tions, unions and indi­vid­u­als, with the added bonus of keep­ing donors’ iden­ti­ties secret — so long as they abide by bare­ly enforced rules requir­ing them to spend the major­i­ty of their time and mon­ey on the pur­pose they claimed to obtain tax-exempt sta­tus. Col­lec­tive­ly, non­prof­its have spent more than $142 mil­lion on cam­paigns tar­get­ing fed­er­al can­di­dates in 2014.

Run­ning afoul of fed­er­al and state laws and reg­u­la­tions, or the desires of their fun­ders, appears to be a prime rea­son for this year’s lack of spend­ing from these non­prof­its.

The dis­ap­pear­ance of Amer­i­can Future Fund and Amer­i­cans for Job Secu­ri­ty, respon­si­ble for more than $15 mil­lion in report­ed 2012 elec­tion adver­tis­ing, came after they were caught laun­der­ing cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions into two Cal­i­for­nia bal­lot ini­tia­tive cam­paigns. This rev­e­la­tion by California’s Fair Polit­i­cal Prac­tices Com­mis­sion led to a record set­tle­ment requir­ing the groups to dis­gorge improp­er­ly donat­ed funds and to release a donor list that revealed iden­ti­ties of some secret fun­ders. Nei­ther group respond­ed to inquiries.

Amer­i­can Future Fund was almost entire­ly fund­ed by the Koch polit­i­cal net­work. The group raised $68 mil­lion in 2012, with more than $60 mil­lion from Free­dom Part­ners Cham­ber of Com­merce and the Cen­ter to Pro­tect Patient Rights. This total includ­ed $7 mil­lion passed from Amer­i­cans for Job Secu­ri­ty through the Cen­ter to Pro­tect Patient Rights. Of that amount, $4 mil­lion land­ed in a Cal­i­for­nia bal­lot cam­paign com­mit­tee.

The Cen­ter to Pro­tect Patient Rights, run by then-Koch point man Sean Noble, was used by Amer­i­cans for Job Secu­ri­ty to fun­nel mon­ey into the Cal­i­for­nia bal­lot cam­paigns. The Vir­ginia-based group sent $24 mil­lion through the Cen­ter to Pro­tect Patient Rights. This con­tri­bu­tion was split into the $7 mil­lion to the Amer­i­can Future Fund and $13 mil­lion to Amer­i­cans for Respon­si­ble Lead­er­ship, both of which then passed con­tri­bu­tions onto Cal­i­for­nia groups.

Anoth­er dis­ap­pear­ing group, the 60 Plus Asso­ci­a­tion, formed in the ear­ly 1990s as a con­ser­v­a­tive counter to the AARP, was large­ly fund­ed by the Koch net­work. The orga­ni­za­tion received more than $18 mil­lion from Free­dom Part­ners and the Cen­ter to Pro­tect Patient Rights in 2012, and spent $13 mil­lion on elec­tion and issue ads attack­ing fed­er­al can­di­dates.

In 2014, the 60 Plus Asso­ci­a­tion has spent $525,000 on adver­tis­ing that tar­gets mem­bers of Con­gress and oth­er con­gres­sion­al can­di­dates. The group’s big adver­tis­ing cam­paign oppos­ing a mort­gage reform bill spon­sored by Sens. Mike Crapo (R‑Idaho) and Tim John­son (D‑S.D.) led to a rebuke by its fun­ders. Accord­ing to The Asso­ci­at­ed Press, polit­i­cal advis­ers in the Koch net­work were “frus­trat­ed” by the adver­tise­ments. The 60 Plus Asso­ci­a­tion didn’t respond to a request for com­ment.

Anti-tax advo­cate Grover Norquist’s Amer­i­cans for Tax Reform, mean­while, has gone from spend­ing $15.8 mil­lion in the 2012 elec­tion to less than $40,000 on the 2014 midterms. Cross­roads GPS, a non­prof­it found­ed by Karl Rove, pro­vid­ed $26.4 mil­lion to Amer­i­cans for Tax Reform in what was sup­posed to be non-polit­i­cal spend­ing. Norquist’s group, how­ev­er, spent more than half of its funds on elec­toral adver­tise­ments, while claim­ing on tax fil­ings to the Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice to have spent less than one-third of its funds on elec­tion ads.

The con­tro­ver­sial spend­ing by Amer­i­cans for Tax Reform has seem­ing­ly led to the end of its role as a dark mon­ey front. The group didn’t answer an inquiry from The Huff­in­g­ton Post. In an email con­ver­sa­tion with New York Times reporter Tom Edsall, Cross­roads spokesman Paul Lind­say wrote that the group has “imple­ment­ed stricter due dili­gence” in deter­min­ing which groups to fund.

...

While Amer­i­can Future Fund, Amer­i­cans for Job Secu­ri­ty, Amer­i­cans for Tax Reform and 60 Plus Asso­ci­a­tion appear to have stopped being con­duits for big sources of undis­closed mon­ey in fed­er­al elec­tions, they remain a use­ful resource for oth­er sources of mon­ey.

For Amer­i­cans for Job Secu­ri­ty and Amer­i­cans for Tax Reform, the plan has been to sim­ply go back to engag­ing in their declared social wel­fare pur­pose: Advanc­ing a con­ser­v­a­tive anti-tax, anti-union and pro-busi­ness agen­da.

Amer­i­cans for Job Secu­ri­ty is reg­is­tered as a busi­ness trade asso­ci­a­tion and has a long his­to­ry of serv­ing as a hired gun for cor­po­ra­tions. Amer­i­cans for Tax Reform has its sta­ple of anti-tax poli­cies to pro­mote, includ­ing Norquist’s Tax­pay­er Pro­tec­tion Pledge, and has also done work for indus­try lob­by­ing cam­paigns, includ­ing tobac­co com­pa­nies.

The two pro-busi­ness groups have, how­ev­er, found them­selves on oppo­site ends of busi­ness lob­by­ing bat­tles in Wash­ing­ton. Amer­i­cans for Job Secu­ri­ty, a rou­tine ally of the retail indus­try, sup­port­ed rules lim­it­ing swipe fees imposed on stores for cus­tomer deb­it card pur­chas­es in 2011, and backs the cur­rent pro­pos­al to allow states to impose a sales tax on online pur­chas­es. Amer­i­cans for Tax Reform took oppo­site posi­tions on both issues.

The 60 Plus Asso­ci­a­tion appears to have main­tained a place in the orbit of Noble, who was excom­mu­ni­cat­ed from the Koch net­work fol­low­ing his involve­ment in the Cal­i­for­nia inves­ti­ga­tion and his exor­bi­tant con­sult­ing fees. The seniors group ran ads in the Ari­zona Repub­li­can guber­na­to­r­i­al pri­ma­ry attack­ing oppo­nents of the even­tu­al nom­i­nee Doug Ducey. What remains of Noble’s non­prof­it net­work had mobi­lized out­side sup­port for Ducey.

In Iowa, the Amer­i­can Future Fund con­tin­ues to oper­ate as a front for whomev­er has the funds. It received $750,000 from the Judi­cial Cri­sis Net­work, a con­ser­v­a­tive group pro­mot­ing a right-wing judi­cia­ry and sup­port­ing Repub­li­can can­di­dates in state attor­ney gen­er­al races, and prompt­ly gave $670,000 to the Repub­li­can Attor­neys Gen­er­al Asso­ci­a­tion, accord­ing to IRS doc­u­ments.

After pro-gun con­trol groups ran ads blast­ing Sen. Kel­ly Ayotte (R‑N.H.) for oppos­ing back­ground check leg­is­la­tion, the Amer­i­can Future Fund launched an adver­tis­ing blitz on her behalf. Pri­or to and dur­ing the ad cam­paign, the non­prof­it received $125,000 from the lead­er­ship PACs of Ayotte’s Sen­ate Repub­li­can col­leagues.

The group spent $287,000 to boost Nebras­ka state Sen. Beau McCoy’s cam­paign for the Repub­li­can guber­na­to­r­i­al nom­i­na­tion — like­ly at the behest of McCoy’s sole donor: Nebras­ka busi­ness­man Charles Herb­ster. When asked by the Oma­ha World-Her­ald whether he fund­ed the Amer­i­can Future Fund ads, Herb­ster said, “That’s one of the ques­tions I’m going to take the Fifth Amend­ment on, OK?” McCoy ulti­mate­ly lost the GOP nom­i­na­tion to Pete Rick­etts.

Amer­i­can Future Fund’s most recent adver­tis­ing cam­paign is a far cry from its his­to­ry of back­ing con­ser­v­a­tive can­di­dates. For the past three months, the non­prof­it has run ads in news­pa­pers includ­ing Politi­co and The Wall Street Jour­nal as part of a lob­by­ing cam­paign by Doral Finan­cial Corp., a Puer­to Rican bank. The bank is in a spat with the com­mon­wealth gov­ern­ment over a refund for over­paid tax bills it says it is due, and hired the DCI Group, a PR firm with long­stand­ing ties to the Amer­i­can Future Fund, to pres­sure Con­gress to inter­vene on its behalf.

And so the world of dark mon­ey non­prof­its turns.

———-

“Dark Mon­ey Groups That Spent Mil­lions In 2012 Van­ish In 2014” by Paul Blu­men­thal; The Huff­in­g­ton Post; 09/12/2014

“This year, with eight weeks before the 2014 midterm elec­tions, Amer­i­can Future Fund adver­tis­ing is nowhere to be seen on the air. The non­prof­it, which does not dis­close donors, has spent less than $250,000 in fed­er­al cam­paigns and has announced lit­tle in the way of issue advo­ca­cy tar­get­ing can­di­dates.”

After spend­ing mil­lions of dol­lars in Koch funds from 2009–2012 ($60 mil­lion from the CPPR in 2012 alone) on ads and oth­er polit­i­cal influ­ence oper­a­tions, Amer­i­can Future Fund’s spend­ing dried up to just $250,000 as of Sep­tem­ber of 2014:

...
Amer­i­can Future Fund was almost entire­ly fund­ed by the Koch polit­i­cal net­work. The group raised $68 mil­lion in 2012, with more than $60 mil­lion from Free­dom Part­ners Cham­ber of Com­merce and the Cen­ter to Pro­tect Patient Rights. This total includ­ed $7 mil­lion passed from Amer­i­cans for Job Secu­ri­ty through the Cen­ter to Pro­tect Patient Rights. Of that amount, $4 mil­lion land­ed in a Cal­i­for­nia bal­lot cam­paign com­mit­tee.

The Cen­ter to Pro­tect Patient Rights, run by then-Koch point man Sean Noble, was used by Amer­i­cans for Job Secu­ri­ty to fun­nel mon­ey into the Cal­i­for­nia bal­lot cam­paigns. The Vir­ginia-based group sent $24 mil­lion through the Cen­ter to Pro­tect Patient Rights. This con­tri­bu­tion was split into the $7 mil­lion to the Amer­i­can Future Fund and $13 mil­lion to Amer­i­cans for Respon­si­ble Lead­er­ship, both of which then passed con­tri­bu­tions onto Cal­i­for­nia groups.
...

And the AFF was just one of the promi­nent 501(c)(4)s act­ing as a shad­ow mon­ey mail­box that saw their mil­lions in dona­tions sud­den­ly dry up. Did this reflect a dip in polit­i­cal spend­ing by the Kochs and oth­er right-wing mega-donors? Of course not. It reflect­ed the bad press the AFF and oth­er promi­nent shad­ow mon­ey mail­box­es received when they got caught break­ing the 501(c)(4) rules and/or cheat­ing the donors:

...
The Amer­i­can Future Fund is not the only non­prof­it dis­ap­pear­ing act. The con­ser­v­a­tive non­prof­its 60 Plus Asso­ci­a­tion, Amer­i­cans for Tax Reform, and Amer­i­cans for Job Secu­ri­ty also have large­ly evap­o­rat­ed from the fed­er­al elec­tion scene after spend­ing mil­lions in both 2010 and 2012.

The dis­ap­pear­ances show how non­prof­it polit­i­cal net­works use groups with the capa­bil­i­ty for elec­toral action as fronts for their own cam­paigns and, when they are no longer use­ful or become a dis­trac­tion, how eas­i­ly they can be cut loose.

...

Run­ning afoul of fed­er­al and state laws and reg­u­la­tions, or the desires of their fun­ders, appears to be a prime rea­son for this year’s lack of spend­ing from these non­prof­its.
...

Amer­i­can Future Fund and Amer­i­cans for Job Secu­ri­ty both got kicked out of the Koch net­work after get­ting caught mon­ey laun­der­ing dona­tions into two Cal­i­for­nia bal­lot inia­tives. In oth­er words, they became real-world exam­ples of the Kochs mak­ing a mock­ery of the ‘non-polit­i­cal social wel­fare’ pre­tense that 501(c)(4)s have to main­tain:

...
The dis­ap­pear­ance of Amer­i­can Future Fund and Amer­i­cans for Job Secu­ri­ty, respon­si­ble for more than $15 mil­lion in report­ed 2012 elec­tion adver­tis­ing, came after they were caught laun­der­ing cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions into two Cal­i­for­nia bal­lot ini­tia­tive cam­paigns. This rev­e­la­tion by California’s Fair Polit­i­cal Prac­tices Com­mis­sion led to a record set­tle­ment requir­ing the groups to dis­gorge improp­er­ly donat­ed funds and to release a donor list that revealed iden­ti­ties of some secret fun­ders. Nei­ther group respond­ed to inquiries.
...

Grover Norquist’s Amer­i­cans for Tax Reform (ATR) also got caught break­ing 501(c)(4) rules in 2012 by allo­cat­ing more than half of its spend­ing on elec­tion ads. So its dona­tions dried up too in 2014:

...
Anti-tax advo­cate Grover Norquist’s Amer­i­cans for Tax Reform, mean­while, has gone from spend­ing $15.8 mil­lion in the 2012 elec­tion to less than $40,000 on the 2014 midterms. Cross­roads GPS, a non­prof­it found­ed by Karl Rove, pro­vid­ed $26.4 mil­lion to Amer­i­cans for Tax Reform in what was sup­posed to be non-polit­i­cal spend­ing. Norquist’s group, how­ev­er, spent more than half of its funds on elec­toral adver­tise­ments, while claim­ing on tax fil­ings to the Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice to have spent less than one-third of its funds on elec­tion ads.

The con­tro­ver­sial spend­ing by Amer­i­cans for Tax Reform has seem­ing­ly led to the end of its role as a dark mon­ey front. Tie group didn’t answer an inquiry from The Huff­in­g­ton Post. In an email con­ver­sa­tion with New York Times reporter Tom Edsall, Cross­roads spokesman Paul Lind­say wrote that the group has “imple­ment­ed stricter due dili­gence” in deter­min­ing which groups to fund.

Lind­say pro­vid­ed a state­ment to The Huff­in­g­ton Post: “Like labor unions, we invest in a num­ber of orga­ni­za­tions that have com­ple­men­tary mis­sions that help us advance our issue agen­da. Our grants to oth­er 501c4’s, which are made pub­lic in our 990, are pred­i­cat­ed on a review of their finan­cial records and a stip­u­la­tion that the funds only be used for their exempt activ­i­ty and not for polit­i­cal pur­pos­es.”
...

Then there’s the 60 Plus Asso­ci­a­tion, anoth­er major recip­i­ent of CPPR mon­ey. 60 Plus got kicked out of the Koch net­work — which con­sist­ed of 17 groups and raise $407 mil­lion in 2012 — for pay­ing the head of 60 Plus, long-time Koch oper­a­tive Sean Noble, exor­bi­tant fees while yield­ing ques­tion­able results. That was appar­ent­ly the last straw for Noble. But 60 Plus found some new con­gres­sion­al clients. And 60 Plus was still piss­ing off the Koch net­work again in 2014 when its biggest ad cam­paign opposed a bipar­ti­san mort­gage reform bill that would have replaced Fan­nie Mae and Fred­die Mac (that the Koch net­work appar­ent­ly sup­port­ed too). Pre­sum­ably a new client deter­mined 60 Plus’s stance. It’s an exam­ple of how even 501(c)(4)s that get caught scam­ming their donors, like 60 Plus, will still be kept alive by the right-wing bil­lion­aire net­work. There’s that much mon­ey and that much demand for the kinds of fake 501©(04) ser­vices groups like 60 Plus offers:

...
Anoth­er dis­ap­pear­ing group, the 60 Plus Asso­ci­a­tion, formed in the ear­ly 1990s as a con­ser­v­a­tive counter to the AARP, was large­ly fund­ed by the Koch net­work. The orga­ni­za­tion received more than $18 mil­lion from Free­dom Part­ners and the Cen­ter to Pro­tect Patient Rights in 2012, and spent $13 mil­lion on elec­tion and issue ads attack­ing fed­er­al can­di­dates.

In 2014, the 60 Plus Asso­ci­a­tion has spent $525,000 on adver­tis­ing that tar­gets mem­bers of Con­gress and oth­er con­gres­sion­al can­di­dates. The group’s big adver­tis­ing cam­paign oppos­ing a mort­gage reform bill spon­sored by Sens. Mike Crapo (R‑Idaho) and Tim John­son (D‑S.D.) led to a rebuke by its fun­ders. Accord­ing to The Asso­ci­at­ed Press, polit­i­cal advis­ers in the Koch net­work were “frus­trat­ed” by the adver­tise­ments. The 60 Plus Asso­ci­a­tion didn’t respond to a request for com­ment.

...

The 60 Plus Asso­ci­a­tion appears to have main­tained a place in the orbit of Noble, who was excom­mu­ni­cat­ed from the Koch net­work fol­low­ing his involve­ment in the Cal­i­for­nia inves­ti­ga­tion and his exor­bi­tant con­sult­ing fees. The seniors group ran ads in the Ari­zona Repub­li­can guber­na­to­r­i­al pri­ma­ry attack­ing oppo­nents of the even­tu­al nom­i­nee Doug Ducey. What remains of Noble’s non­prof­it net­work had mobi­lized out­side sup­port for Ducey.
...

The Amer­i­can Future Fund also respond­ed to the loss of the Kochs by find­ing new clients like Repub­li­can can­di­dates and the Judi­cial Cri­sis Net­work and lob­by­ing for Doral Finan­cial Corp., a Puer­to Rican bank that hired DCI Group to lob­by Con­gress to force Puer­to Rico over its claims of an over­paid tax bill:

...
In Iowa, the Amer­i­can Future Fund con­tin­ues to oper­ate as a front for whomev­er has the funds. It received $750,000 from the Judi­cial Cri­sis Net­work, a con­ser­v­a­tive group pro­mot­ing a right-wing judi­cia­ry and sup­port­ing Repub­li­can can­di­dates in state attor­ney gen­er­al races, and prompt­ly gave $670,000 to the Repub­li­can Attor­neys Gen­er­al Asso­ci­a­tion, accord­ing to IRS doc­u­ments.

After pro-gun con­trol groups ran ads blast­ing Sen. Kel­ly Ayotte (R‑N.H.) for oppos­ing back­ground check leg­is­la­tion, the Amer­i­can Future Fund launched an adver­tis­ing blitz on her behalf. Pri­or to and dur­ing the ad cam­paign, the non­prof­it received $125,000 from the lead­er­ship PACs of Ayotte’s Sen­ate Repub­li­can col­leagues.

The group spent $287,000 to boost Nebras­ka state Sen. Beau McCoy’s cam­paign for the Repub­li­can guber­na­to­r­i­al nom­i­na­tion — like­ly at the behest of McCoy’s sole donor: Nebras­ka busi­ness­man Charles Herb­ster. When asked by the Oma­ha World-Her­ald whether he fund­ed the Amer­i­can Future Fund ads, Herb­ster said, “That’s one of the ques­tions I’m going to take the Fifth Amend­ment on, OK?” McCoy ulti­mate­ly lost the GOP nom­i­na­tion to Pete Rick­etts.

...

Amer­i­can Future Fund’s most recent adver­tis­ing cam­paign is a far cry from its his­to­ry of back­ing con­ser­v­a­tive can­di­dates. For the past three months, the non­prof­it has run ads in news­pa­pers includ­ing Politi­co and The Wall Street Jour­nal as part of a lob­by­ing cam­paign by Doral Finan­cial Corp., a Puer­to Rican bank. The bank is in a spat with the com­mon­wealth gov­ern­ment over a refund for over­paid tax bills it says it is due, and hired the DCI Group, a PR firm with long­stand­ing ties to the Amer­i­can Future Fund, to pres­sure Con­gress to inter­vene on its behalf.
...

It’s worth not­ing that the Judi­cial cri­sis Net­work was one of the lead­ing dark mon­ey groups pro­mot­ing the con­fir­ma­tion of Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, pour­ing mil­lions of dol­lars into pro-Kavanaugh ads and polit­i­cal bribes.

It’s also worth not­ing that the Judi­cial Cri­sis Net­work donors over­laps with mem­bers of the Koch donor net­work. So while the Kochs may have kick out Amer­i­can Future Fund out of the Koch donor net­work in 2014, mon­ey from those Koch net­work donors was still flow­ing to the AFF.

Also note that Doral Finan­cial was shut down by the gov­ern­ment in 2017 and the inves­ti­ga­tion into the 2011 exe­cu­tion-style shoot­ing of a Doral exec­u­tive who was hired to clean up the bank remains unsolved. It was that kind of bank. So of course they hired both DCI Group and AFF to lob­by for them. DCI Group claimed at the time that it was­n’t coor­di­nat­ing with AFF, although many were skep­ti­cal.

For Amer­i­cans for Job Secu­ri­ty and Amer­i­cans for Tax Reform, they sim­ply returned to gener­ic anti-tax, anti-union and pro-big busi­ness agen­da:

...
While Amer­i­can Future Fund, Amer­i­cans for Job Secu­ri­ty, Amer­i­cans for Tax Reform and 60 Plus Asso­ci­a­tion appear to have stopped being con­duits for big sources of undis­closed mon­ey in fed­er­al elec­tions, they remain a use­ful resource for oth­er sources of mon­ey.

For Amer­i­cans for Job Secu­ri­ty and Amer­i­cans for Tax Reform, the plan has been to sim­ply go back to engag­ing in their declared social wel­fare pur­pose: Advanc­ing a con­ser­v­a­tive anti-tax, anti-union and pro-busi­ness agen­da.

Amer­i­cans for Job Secu­ri­ty is reg­is­tered as a busi­ness trade asso­ci­a­tion and has a long his­to­ry of serv­ing as a hired gun for cor­po­ra­tions. Amer­i­cans for Tax Reform has its sta­ple of anti-tax poli­cies to pro­mote, includ­ing Norquist’s Tax­pay­er Pro­tec­tion Pledge, and has also done work for indus­try lob­by­ing cam­paigns, includ­ing tobac­co com­pa­nies.
...

So as we can see, these ‘social wel­fare’ groups might lose their exist­ing donor base after they get caught break­ing the rules or cheat­ing their clients. But that does­n’t shut them down. They just qui­et­ly find new donors and car­ry on. There’s plen­ty of non-Koch right-wing and cor­po­rate dark mon­ey float­ing around out there.

From the Kochs to Karl Rove’s ‘Estab­lish­ment’ Net­work: Meet the New Boss. Basi­cal­ly the Same as the Old Boss.

And then there’s Karl Rove donor net­work. Like the Koch net­work (and like dark mat­ter), we know it exists. We just don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly know what it’s up to. And as the fol­low­ing 2016 OpenSecrets.org arti­cle makes clear, we should def­i­nite­ly want to know what Karl Rove’s donor net­work is up to because they are like­ly up to no good, as evi­denced by the task Rove’s group hired the AFF to car­ry out in 2014 after the AFF got most­ly cut off from the Koch net­work.

Specif­i­cal­ly, it was Karl Rove’s “Cross­roads GPS” super-PAC in 2014 that hired AFF’s ser­vices. For a par­tic­u­lar dirty trick. Cross­roads GPS was heav­i­ly involved in the North Car­oli­na sen­ate race that year, so it gave $2 mil­lion to AFF and AFF got involved in that race. But AFF did­n’t back the Repub­li­can can­di­date. Nope, AFF backed Sean Haugh, a Lib­er­tar­i­an can­di­date who sup­port­ed mar­i­jua­na legal­iza­tion. AFF cre­at­ed a series of web ads near the end of the cam­paign with slo­gans like “More weed, Less War”. AFF spent $420k on that ad cam­paign (which is almost like trolling the FEC). So Karl Rove hired AFF to pro­mote a Lib­er­tar­i­an can­di­date as a means of siphon­ing off youth vot­ers from the Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date by empha­siz­ing his mar­i­jua­na legal­iza­tion stance. It seems like there’s a les­son there. Because that’s the kind of dirty trick that could be employed in all sorts of races. In that sense, it’s a dirty trick that also shares some­thing in com­mon with dark mat­ter and dark mon­ey: we know it’s there, we just don’t know where.

By 2016, AFF appeared to be act­ing as basi­cal­ly a tool of the GOP estab­lish­ment head­ing into the GOP pri­ma­ry, implic­it­ly back­ing Mar­co Rubio with a string of attack ads against all of the major GOP can­di­dates. Rubio was wide­ly seen as the estab­lish­men­t’s pre­ferred can­di­date in the 2016 GOP pri­maries. It was so obvi­ous that AFF favored Rubio that when it ran a neg­a­tive ad about a Trump Uni­ver­si­ty law­suit in March of 2016, Trump tweet­ed back “Pho­ny Rubio com­mer­cial. I could have set­tled, but won”. His cam­paign went on to clar­i­fy its charge, assert­ing that AFF ille­gal­ly coor­di­nat­ed with Rubio’s cam­paign. And while Trump’s cam­paign did­n’t pro­vide evi­dence of this charge, the behav­ior of AFF in 2016 (only leav­ing Rubio alone) is evi­dence itself.

And as the arti­cle also points out, it was AFF who was help­ing with the right-wing pro­pa­gan­da cam­paign of 2016 to pro­mote the idea that the GOP should­n’t allow any Supreme Court nom­i­nee sub­mit­ted by the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion to fill the late Asso­ciate Jus­tice Antonin Scalia’s seat. This was part of their work for the Judi­cial Cri­sis Net­work. So the lack of pub­lic out­rage over Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Mitch McConnel’s deci­sion to not con­sid­er any Oba­ma Supreme Court nom­i­nee in the Sen­ate — thus hyper-politi­ciz­ing all Supreme Court open­ings in the fourth year of a pres­i­den­tial term — is thanks in part to AFF.

And that range of sleazy cam­paigns, from cor­po­rate lob­by­ing cam­paigns to Karl Rove and the Kochs, is basi­cal­ly what AFF is all about: a right-wing shad­ow mer­ce­nary enti­ty that spe­cial­izes in offer­ing the kinds of polit­i­cal ser­vices clients don’t want to be pub­licly asso­ciates with:

OpenSecrets.org

Exiled from Koch orbit, Amer­i­can Future Fund turns to GOP estab­lish­ment for cash

By Robert Maguire
March 7, 2016

Last week, real estate mogul and cur­rent GOP pres­i­den­tial front-run­ner Don­ald Trump tweet­ed to his 6.6 mil­lion Twit­ter fol­low­ers about a “pho­ny Rubio com­mer­cial” that was mak­ing hay out of Trump’s ongo­ing legal trou­bles with the now-defuct Trump Uni­ver­si­ty.

The tweet links to a press release demand­ing “the imme­di­ate retrac­tion of the ads.”

The spots weren’t spon­sored by Sen. Mar­co Rubio’s cam­paign, how­ev­er, but by a group called the Amer­i­can Future Fund, a 501(c)(4) social wel­fare orga­ni­za­tion with a long his­to­ry that runs from its days as a core ben­e­fi­cia­ry of the Koch donor net­work to its new­er ties with GOP estab­lish­ment groups.

New tax fil­ings obtained by OpenSe­crets Blog sug­gest that, of all the still-exist­ing groups that have been exiled from the Koch net­work, Amer­i­can Future Fund has been the most suc­cess­ful at sur­viv­ing — most­ly, it appears, as a ©(4)-for-hire, func­tion­ing as a con­duit for estab­lish­ment-lean­ing groups like Cross­roads GPS, the grand­dad­dy of polit­i­cal­ly active non­prof­it groups that don’t dis­close their donors.

Make Amer­i­can Future Fund Great Again

The Trump campaign’s state­ment alleges that Amer­i­can Future Fund “unlaw­ful­ly coor­di­nat­ed with light­weight Sen­a­tor Mar­co Rubio on these mis­lead­ing com­mer­cials.” The release doesn’t offer evi­dence to back up the charge, and the Trump cam­paign didn’t respond to requests from OpenSe­crets Blog to elab­o­rate. If true, the coor­di­na­tion of strat­e­gy between the Flori­da senator’s cam­paign oper­a­tion and AFF would be a vio­la­tion of fed­er­al elec­tion laws, which require groups like AFF to act inde­pen­dent­ly of can­di­dates.

Coor­di­nat­ed or not, AFF’s pat­tern of ad buys does lend some cre­dence to the idea that the group is at least act­ing as ground sup­port for the Rubio cam­paign. AFF has spent more than any oth­er nondis­clos­ing “dark mon­ey” group in the elec­tion so far, $4.9 mil­lion, and often on tar­gets oth­er than Trump. Days before the Iowa cau­cus­es, AFF put $1.5 mil­lion into ads attack­ing Gov John Kasich of Ohio, anoth­er GOP White House hope­ful, as a sup­port­er of Com­mon Core and a “cheer­leader for Med­ic­aid expan­sion” under the Afford­able Care Act.

About two weeks lat­er, in the run-up to the New Hamp­shire pri­maries, AFF spent anoth­er $1.5 mil­lion accus­ing Texas Sen. Ted Cruz for being weak on nation­al secu­ri­ty.

And with out­lays of $1.9 mil­lion on a series of ads hit­ting Trump, Rubio is the only one of the remain­ing GOP pres­i­den­tial con­tenders who hasn’t been attacked by AFF. He also hap­pens to be the establishment’s favored can­di­date to lead the par­ty into the Novem­ber elec­tion.

Mov­ing Clos­er to the Estab­lish­ment

Amer­i­can Future Fund was one of the first polit­i­cal­ly active non­prof­its on the scene after the Supreme Court’s 2007 deci­sion in FEC v. Wis­con­sin Right to Life, which freed up 501© orga­ni­za­tions to make elec­tion­eer­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions — so-called “issue ads” run short­ly before an elec­tion that often look like out­right polit­i­cal ads. In the four elec­tions from 2008 to 2014, AFF — and groups to which it fun­neled mon­ey via grants — spent more than $40 mil­lion bol­ster­ing Repub­li­can can­di­dates.

Until late 2012, the vast major­i­ty of the group’s receipts — more than $77 mil­lion — flowed from donor hubs in the Koch net­work.

That changed after AFF was called out, with two oth­er Koch net­work groups, in a cash shuf­fle that Cal­i­for­nia reg­u­la­tors labeled “cam­paign mon­ey laun­der­ing.” High­er-ups in the Koch net­work — even more hush-hush then than it is now — weren’t pleased with all the atten­tion the legal pro­ceed­ings in Cal­i­for­nia brought to their oper­a­tions, and AFF and the two oth­er groups involved were in effect thrown out in the cold.

Of the three orga­ni­za­tions, though, AFF appears to have been the most suc­cess­ful in find­ing new sources of funds to keep its doors open. Rev­enues are less than they were in the days when Koch mon­ey was plen­ti­ful — about $6.9 mil­lion in 2014 — but the group man­aged to bring in about twice as much in 2013 and 2014 as Amer­i­can Encore, pre­vi­ous­ly known as the Cen­ter to Pro­tect Patient Rights; that orga­ni­za­tion, once the hub of Plan­et Koch, boast­ed receipts of more than $247 mil­lion over four years.

Amer­i­can Encore has found a sec­ond life as a sort of pub­lic rela­tions out­fit sup­port­ing Ari­zona Gov­er­nor Doug Ducey.

But AFF — which has no employ­ees and just two board mem­bers who each, accord­ing to the group’s fil­ing, spend three hours per week on AFF busi­ness — appears to have become some­thing of a dark mon­ey mer­ce­nary, a vehi­cle for polit­i­cal ads on behalf of donors who don’t want their involve­ment to be pub­lic.

North Carolina’s highs…

In the final days of the 2014 midterms, a series of web ads came out sup­port­ing long­shot Lib­er­tar­i­an Sen­ate can­di­date Sean Haugh. The ads played on the sound of Haugh’s last name — which sounds remote­ly like the word “high” if you are, indeed, high. The ad showed young peo­ple hold­ing signs say­ing, “Get High, Get Haugh,” with slo­gans like “More weed, Less War.” FEC doc­u­ments show that the cam­paign cost $420,000 — get it? — and AFF was foot­ing the bill.

Haugh him­self wasn’t too hap­py, tweet­ing “While I appre­ci­ate the sup­port, I now have a whole new rea­son to despise Koch broth­ers & their dark mon­ey.” Haugh could be excused for asso­ci­at­ing AFF with the Kochs, giv­en that the only avail­able infor­ma­tion at the time — past tax fil­ings from AFF and oth­er Koch groups — showed over­whelm­ing link­age.

It turns out that none of the core Koch orga­ni­za­tions fund­ed AFF in 2014. But anoth­er group with a big stake in the out­come of the Sen­ate elec­tion in North Car­oli­na did. Cross­roads GPS, a polit­i­cal­ly active non­prof­it linked to the GOP estab­lish­ment, gave $2 mil­lion to Amer­i­can Future Fund, tax doc­u­ments filed last year show.

Cross­roads GPS was heav­i­ly invest­ed in the Car­oli­na race to unseat incum­bent Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen. Kay Hagan. The group ulti­mate­ly spent $4.9 mil­lion sup­port­ing her oppo­nent Thom Tillis, and the OpenSe­crets Blog found last fall that GPS had pro­vid­ed near­ly the entire bud­get of anoth­er non­prof­it, Car­oli­na Ris­ing — which effec­tive­ly spent close to 100 per­cent of that mon­ey sup­port­ing Tillis.

While Haugh wasn’t right about AFF being a Koch group any­more, he was right about one thing. GPS and AFF were prob­a­bly using him to draw younger, more lib­er­al vot­ers away from Hagan.

“It’s all kind of sur­re­al, frankly,” Haugh told NPR. “Obvi­ous­ly they want to try to use me to siphon votes away from Kay Hagan and maybe swing the elec­tion to Thom Tillis.”

GPS, then, fund­ed two groups, includ­ing AFF, that mount­ed cam­paigns ben­e­fit­ing Tillis. GPS’ mul­ti­far­i­ous show of force ush­ered Tillis into the win­ners cir­cle in 2014, help­ing swing the Sen­ate into GOP con­trol.

While GPS was its largest sin­gle sup­port­er in 2014, AFF received more than $1 mil­lion apiece from two oth­er donors; those three con­tri­bu­tions made up 64 per­cent of AFFs rev­enue in 2014, accord­ing to the group’s lat­est tax fil­ing.

One of those oth­er donors, pro­vid­ing $1.35 mil­lion, was the Judi­cial Cri­sis Net­work (JCN), as OpenSe­crets Blog has report­ed — which itself is entire­ly fund­ed by anoth­er shad­owy group called the Well­spring Com­mit­tee. JCN and AFF, along with an AFF sub­sidiary called The Progress Project, then put $1.8 mil­lion into the Repub­li­can Attor­neys Gen­er­al Asso­ci­a­tion.

But, while elect­ing con­ser­v­a­tive attor­neys gen­er­al around the coun­try has been a focus of JCN’s efforts, it hasn’t been the only one. The group has spent heav­i­ly in judi­cial races over the last two cycles — includ­ing more than $600,000 in the lead-up to Arkansas’ court elec­tions last week, in which JCN’s favored can­di­date was the vic­tor. After the vot­ing was done, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchin­son ® said that, “regret­tably, a win­ner in yesterday’s cam­paign was dark mon­ey.” The group has also launched a “sev­en fig­ure tele­vi­sion, radio and dig­i­tal adver­tis­ing cam­paign” prais­ing sev­er­al Repub­li­can sen­a­tors in tight re-elec­tion bat­tles for promis­ing to block con­sid­er­a­tion of any Supreme Court nom­i­nee sub­mit­ted by the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion to fill the late Asso­ciate Jus­tice Antonin Scalia’s seat.

…and Puer­to Rico’s lows

Back in 2014, AFF round­ed out its year with an ad cam­paign that had noth­ing to do with attor­neys gen­er­al or the con­gres­sion­al midterms, pay­ing for a series of ads in Politi­co and the Wall Street Jour­nal accus­ing the Demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nor of Puer­to Rico, Ale­jan­dro Gar­cia Padil­la, of being a part of a “Cul­ture of Cor­rup­tion.” The ads were con­spic­u­ous­ly timed to run just before a law­suit brought by Doral Finan­cial Group was to go to court, OpenSe­crets Blog report­ed last year. Doral Finan­cial Group won its suit, receiv­ing a $230 mil­lion tax refund from the strug­gling Puer­to Rican gov­ern­ment, which is tee­ter­ing on the brink of bank­rupt­cy.

When AFF report­ed all of this spend­ing to the IRS, it count­ed $3.4 mil­lion as “polit­i­cal expen­di­tures” — just shy of the 49 per­cent lim­it the agency impos­es on the polit­i­cal activ­i­ty of social wel­fare groups. That’s assum­ing that AFF’s oth­er expen­di­tures on things like “production/writing” or “sur­vey research” was for actu­al social wel­fare pro­grams rather than sup­port­ing the group’s polit­i­cal agen­da. And a larg­er ques­tion is whether the group pro­vides an exces­sive pri­vate ben­e­fit to a can­di­date or par­ty, in this case the Repub­li­can par­ty.

Its unlike­ly that the IRS will ever answer that ques­tion, though, as it only audits sev­en out of each 1,000 returns filed every year.

The pic­ture that has emerged of Amer­i­can Future Fund, post Koch, is one of a group that is some­thing of a hired gun, where AFF — in the mold of oth­er groups like Amer­i­cans for Job Secu­ri­ty — does the dirty work of oth­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly if it helps the GOP estab­lish­ment.

...

———-

“Exiled from Koch orbit, Amer­i­can Future Fund turns to GOP estab­lish­ment for cash” by Robert Maguire; OpenSecrets.org; 03/07/2016

New tax fil­ings obtained by OpenSe­crets Blog sug­gest that, of all the still-exist­ing groups that have been exiled from the Koch net­work, Amer­i­can Future Fund has been the most suc­cess­ful at sur­viv­ing — most­ly, it appears, as a ©(4)-for-hire, func­tion­ing as a con­duit for estab­lish­ment-lean­ing groups like Cross­roads GPS, the grand­dad­dy of polit­i­cal­ly active non­prof­it groups that don’t dis­close their donors.”

When one check­book clos­es, anoth­er opens. That’s how things have worked out for the Amer­i­can Future Fund after it got large­ly shut out of the Koch net­work’s lucra­tive mon­ey flows. The rest of the GOP estab­lish­ment had plen­ty of work for the them. And in the 2016 GOP pri­maries that work includ­ed act­ing as a shad­ow mon­ey attack dog for the estab­lish­ment-pre­ferred Mar­co Rubio. Grant­ed, the AFF and its secret clients nev­er explic­it­ly said they were back­ing Mar­co Rubio. But the fact that the AFF was attack­ing every Repub­li­can can­di­date in the 2016 except for Mar­co Rubio even­tu­al­ly made that obvi­ous. So obvi­ous that then-can­di­date Don­ald Trump point­ed out the obvi­ous when it was his turn to get attacked by the AFF:

...
Last week, real estate mogul and cur­rent GOP pres­i­den­tial front-run­ner Don­ald Trump tweet­ed to his 6.6 mil­lion Twit­ter fol­low­ers about a “pho­ny Rubio com­mer­cial” that was mak­ing hay out of Trump’s ongo­ing legal trou­bles with the now-defuct Trump Uni­ver­si­ty.

The tweet links to a press release demand­ing “the imme­di­ate retrac­tion of the ads.”

The spots weren’t spon­sored by Sen. Mar­co Rubio’s cam­paign, how­ev­er, but by a group called the Amer­i­can Future Fund, a 501(c)(4) social wel­fare orga­ni­za­tion with a long his­to­ry that runs from its days as a core ben­e­fi­cia­ry of the Koch donor net­work to its new­er ties with GOP estab­lish­ment groups.
...

Trump went as far as claim­ing that AFF was ille­gal­ly coor­di­nat­ing with the Rubio cam­paign, which would be a vio­la­tion of the 501(c)(4) rules. And while the Trump cam­paign could­n’t pro­vide actu­al evi­dence of this, it was pret­ty obvi­ous. And that’s how this sys­tem works: even when it’s obvi­ous that a 501(c)(4) is work­ing to ben­e­fit a par­tic­u­lar can­di­date, it can’t be eas­i­ly proven:

...
Make Amer­i­can Future Fund Great Again

The Trump campaign’s state­ment alleges that Amer­i­can Future Fund “unlaw­ful­ly coor­di­nat­ed with light­weight Sen­a­tor Mar­co Rubio on these mis­lead­ing com­mer­cials.” The release doesn’t offer evi­dence to back up the charge, and the Trump cam­paign didn’t respond to requests from OpenSe­crets Blog to elab­o­rate. If true, the coor­di­na­tion of strat­e­gy between the Flori­da senator’s cam­paign oper­a­tion and AFF would be a vio­la­tion of fed­er­al elec­tion laws, which require groups like AFF to act inde­pen­dent­ly of can­di­dates.

Coor­di­nat­ed or not, AFF’s pat­tern of ad buys does lend some cre­dence to the idea that the group is at least act­ing as ground sup­port for the Rubio cam­paign. AFF has spent more than any oth­er nondis­clos­ing “dark mon­ey” group in the elec­tion so far, $4.9 mil­lion, and often on tar­gets oth­er than Trump. Days before the Iowa cau­cus­es, AFF put $1.5 mil­lion into ads attack­ing Gov John Kasich of Ohio, anoth­er GOP White House hope­ful, as a sup­port­er of Com­mon Core and a “cheer­leader for Med­ic­aid expan­sion” under the Afford­able Care Act.

About two weeks lat­er, in the run-up to the New Hamp­shire pri­maries, AFF spent anoth­er $1.5 mil­lion accus­ing Texas Sen. Ted Cruz for being weak on nation­al secu­ri­ty.

And with out­lays of $1.9 mil­lion on a series of ads hit­ting Trump, Rubio is the only one of the remain­ing GOP pres­i­den­tial con­tenders who hasn’t been attacked by AFF. He also hap­pens to be the establishment’s favored can­di­date to lead the par­ty into the Novem­ber elec­tion.
...

So who ulti­mate­ly hired AFF to go after all of Mar­co Rubio’s 2016 pri­ma­ry oppo­nents? That’s not entire­ly clear, but based on the sleazy job AFF was hired to do by Karl Rove’s Cross­roads GPS 501(c)(4) in 2014, it seems like Cross­roads GPS should be con­sid­ered the like­li­est sus­pect: Rove hired AFF to sup­port a Lib­er­tar­i­an can­di­date in the 2014 Sen­ate race to siphon votes away from the Demo­c­rat. What was the log­ic here? Well, the Lib­er­tar­i­an can­di­date, Sean Haugh, hap­pened to be a big mar­i­jua­na legal­iza­tion pro­po­nent, and that made Haugh the kind of can­di­date that Karl Rove assumed would result in a net loss for the Democ­rats:

...
North Carolina’s highs…

In the final days of the 2014 midterms, a series of web ads came out sup­port­ing long­shot Lib­er­tar­i­an Sen­ate can­di­date Sean Haugh. The ads played on the sound of Haugh’s last name — which sounds remote­ly like the word “high” if you are, indeed, high. The ad showed young peo­ple hold­ing signs say­ing, “Get High, Get Haugh,” with slo­gans like “More weed, Less War.” FEC doc­u­ments show that the cam­paign cost $420,000 — get it? — and AFF was foot­ing the bill.

Haugh him­self wasn’t too hap­py, tweet­ing “While I appre­ci­ate the sup­port, I now have a whole new rea­son to despise Koch broth­ers & their dark mon­ey.” Haugh could be excused for asso­ci­at­ing AFF with the Kochs, giv­en that the only avail­able infor­ma­tion at the time — past tax fil­ings from AFF and oth­er Koch groups — showed over­whelm­ing link­age.

It turns out that none of the core Koch orga­ni­za­tions fund­ed AFF in 2014. But anoth­er group with a big stake in the out­come of the Sen­ate elec­tion in North Car­oli­na did. Cross­roads GPS, a polit­i­cal­ly active non­prof­it linked to the GOP estab­lish­ment, gave $2 mil­lion to Amer­i­can Future Fund, tax doc­u­ments filed last year show.

Cross­roads GPS was heav­i­ly invest­ed in the Car­oli­na race to unseat incum­bent Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen. Kay Hagan. The group ulti­mate­ly spent $4.9 mil­lion sup­port­ing her oppo­nent Thom Tillis, and the OpenSe­crets Blog found last fall that GPS had pro­vid­ed near­ly the entire bud­get of anoth­er non­prof­it, Car­oli­na Ris­ing — which effec­tive­ly spent close to 100 per­cent of that mon­ey sup­port­ing Tillis.

While Haugh wasn’t right about AFF being a Koch group any­more, he was right about one thing. GPS and AFF were prob­a­bly using him to draw younger, more lib­er­al vot­ers away from Hagan.

“It’s all kind of sur­re­al, frankly,” Haugh told NPR. “Obvi­ous­ly they want to try to use me to siphon votes away from Kay Hagan and maybe swing the elec­tion to Thom Tillis.”

GPS, then, fund­ed two groups, includ­ing AFF, that mount­ed cam­paigns ben­e­fit­ing Tillis. GPS’ mul­ti­far­i­ous show of force ush­ered Tillis into the win­ners cir­cle in 2014, help­ing swing the Sen­ate into GOP con­trol.
...

Note that the final results of that race was 47.3% for the Democ­rats, 48.8% fro the Repub­li­can, and 3.7% for Sean Haugh. So assum­ing Rove’s cal­cu­lus was cor­rect and Haugh was drew more votes from the Democ­rats than the Repub­li­can, it real­ly does look like Haugh cost the Democ­rats that seat and hand­ed the Repub­li­cans con­trol of the Sen­ate that year. AFF’s third-par­ty vote-drain­ing dirty trick worked!

But as we saw in the above arti­cle, Rove’s GPS Cross­roads was­n’t the only big client of AFF in 2014. There was also the Judi­cial Cri­sis Net­work. And in 2016, the Judi­cial Cri­sis Net­work hired the AFF again. This time it was an ad cam­paign to sup­port Repub­li­can sen­a­tors who promised to block con­sid­er­a­tion for any of Pres­i­dent Oba­ma’s Supreme Court nom­i­nees fol­low­ing the death of Antonin Scalia:

...
While GPS was its largest sin­gle sup­port­er in 2014, AFF received more than $1 mil­lion apiece from two oth­er donors; those three con­tri­bu­tions made up 64 per­cent of AFF’s rev­enue in 2014, accord­ing to the group’s lat­est tax fil­ing.

One of those oth­er donors, pro­vid­ing $1.35 mil­lion, was the Judi­cial Cri­sis Net­work (JCN), as OpenSe­crets Blog has report­ed — which itself is entire­ly fund­ed by anoth­er shad­owy group called the Well­spring Com­mit­tee. JCN and AFF, along with an AFF sub­sidiary called The Progress Project, then put $1.8 mil­lion into the Repub­li­can Attor­neys Gen­er­al Asso­ci­a­tion.

But, while elect­ing con­ser­v­a­tive attor­neys gen­er­al around the coun­try has been a focus of JCN’s efforts, it hasn’t been the only one. The group has spent heav­i­ly in judi­cial races over the last two cycles — includ­ing more than $600,000 in the lead-up to Arkansas’ court elec­tions last week, in which JCN’s favored can­di­date was the vic­tor. After the vot­ing was done, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchin­son ® said that, “regret­tably, a win­ner in yesterday’s cam­paign was dark mon­ey.” The group has also launched a “sev­en fig­ure tele­vi­sion, radio and dig­i­tal adver­tis­ing cam­paign” prais­ing sev­er­al Repub­li­can sen­a­tors in tight re-elec­tion bat­tles for promis­ing to block con­sid­er­a­tion of any Supreme Court nom­i­nee sub­mit­ted by the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion to fill the late Asso­ciate Jus­tice Antonin Scalia’s seat.
...

So as the above 2016 piece by OpenSecrets.org makes clear, while the Amer­i­can Future Fund may have seen its finances shrink sig­nif­i­cant­ly after get­ting most­ly cut off from the Koch net­work fol­low­ing the bad press it got in 2012 for vio­lat­ing the 501(c)(4) rules, there was still plen­ty of right-wing shad­ow mon­ey look­ing in search of the kinds of ser­vices the AFF offers. GOP ‘estab­lish­ment’ mon­ey in search of ser­vices like Karl Rove’s dirty tricks. Or ser­vices like the cor­po­rate lob­by­ing for com­pa­nies like Dor­ral Finan­cial Group or one of DCGI Group’s clients.

So how much in total did Amer­i­can Future Fund raise in 2016 with its estab­lish­ment back­ers com­pared to 2012 when it was suck­ling the Koch teet? As the fol­low­ing OpenSecrets.org arti­cle from 2018 informs us, AFF man­aged to raise more than $29.4 mil­lion in 2016. That’s a lit­tle less than half of the $68 mil­lion in raised from the Koch net­work in 2012, which is still a sub­stan­tial sum, espe­cial­ly when you con­sid­er that AFF got kicked out the Koch net­work for get­ting caught break­ing the 501(c)(4) rules. Bounc­ing back in four years with $29 mil­lion after that is actu­al­ly quite an accom­plish­ment. An accom­plish­ment that hap­pens to sig­ni­fy the flood of dark mon­ey slosh­ing around in Amer­i­ca’s polit­i­cal sys­tem

Anoth­er notable expen­di­ture by AFF in 2016 was a $3 mil­lion dona­tion to the Nation­al Rifle Asso­ci­a­tion. Keep in mind that one of AFF’s clients pre­sum­ably gave the mon­ey to AFF for the explic­it pur­pose of hav­ing the AFF turn around and hand that mon­ey to groups like the NRA. It’s an exam­ple the AFF act­ing as a ‘shad­ow mon­ey mail­box’ in order to obscure the ori­gins of these dona­tions.

Amus­ing­ly, the fol­low­ing OpenSecrets.org piece also clar­i­fies the rela­tion­ship of the AFF with Mar­co Rubio. As we saw in the pre­vi­ous arti­cle, AFF appeared to be work­ing on behalf of Rubio dur­ing the 2016 GOP pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry, but this was nev­er proven. Well, by 2018 there was enough infor­ma­tion pub­licly avail­able for OpenSecrets.org to con­clude that Rubio did indeed hire the AFF, but he actu­al­ly hired them to help him win his sen­ate race, after the pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry was over and after Rubio dropped out of the pres­i­den­tial race. So it’s still ambigu­ous who was pay­ing AFF to attack all of Rubio’s pri­ma­ry oppo­nent, but it’s clear that Rubio did hire the AFF for ser­vices lat­er in 2016 to attack his Demo­c­ra­t­ic sen­ate oppo­nent. Which, again, is an exam­ple of how much demand there is for an enti­ty offer­ing the kinds of polit­i­cal ser­vices AFF can pro­vide:

OpenSecrets.org

Secret donors come back to boost for­mer-Koch group

By Robert Maguire
Jan­u­ary 25, 2018

A secre­tive polit­i­cal group that is lit­tle more than a mail­box full of mon­ey in a Des Moines UPS Store raised more than $29.4 mil­lion in 2016, most of which was fun­neled into ads aimed at elect­ing Repub­li­cans.

Tax doc­u­ments obtained by the Cen­ter for Respon­sive Pol­i­tics show that Amer­i­can Future Fund (AFF), a 501(c)(4) social wel­fare orga­ni­za­tion that doesn’t have to dis­close its donors, had a ban­ner year in 2016.

The $29.4 mil­lion haul marks the group’s high­est rev­enues since it was cut from the con­stel­la­tion of polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tions linked to bil­lion­aire indus­tri­al­ists Charles and David Koch amidst a cam­paign mon­ey laun­der­ing scan­dal in 2012. In 2015, the dark mon­ey group raised just a lit­tle over $350,000.

Bring­ing in such a con­sid­er­able sum is no small feat for an orga­ni­za­tion that boasts no employ­ees nor any mea­sur­able social wel­fare beyond its robust polit­i­cal spend­ing. But in the world of secre­tive polit­i­cal groups, it’s not an anom­aly.

A com­bi­na­tion of unclear rules and lax over­sight from both the IRS and the FEC has made it easy for nom­i­nal­ly apo­lit­i­cal groups like AFF to become vehi­cles for secret polit­i­cal mon­ey, allow­ing wealthy cor­po­rate and indi­vid­ual donors to spend in elec­tions with­out any pub­lic fin­ger­prints.

Near­ly 90 per­cent of Amer­i­can Future Fund’s rev­enue in 2016 came from donors giv­ing between $1 mil­lion and $8 mil­lion. But because groups like AFF are not tech­ni­cal­ly polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tions, and there­fore not sub­ject to the same dis­clo­sure require­ments as polit­i­cal action com­mit­tees (PACs), the enti­ties fuel­ing AFF with sev­en-fig­ure checks will remain far from the pub­lic eye.

Stealth Rubio Group

...

Tax doc­u­ments for a group called Con­ser­v­a­tive Solu­tions Project obtained by the Cen­ter for Respon­sive Pol­i­tics show the group — which was set up by Rubio allies to boost his cam­paign with mon­ey raised from anony­mous donors — gave $1 mil­lion to AFF.

The CSP grant came after Rubio had dropped out of the pres­i­den­tial race. In the final weeks of the elec­tion, how­ev­er, when Rubio was fight­ing to keep his Sen­ate seat, AFF spent $2.8 mil­lion against his oppo­nent, Patrick Mur­phy (D‑Fla), and Rubio clenched the vic­to­ry.

AFF’s largest out­lays — beyond its direct polit­i­cal spend­ing — came in the form of more than $4.7 mil­lion in grants, the largest of which went to oth­er dark mon­ey groups active in the 2016 elec­tions.

Groups like AFF often dis­perse grants as a way to get around IRS lim­its on polit­i­cal spend­ing because they can count the grants to oth­er 501© orga­ni­za­tions as “social wel­fare” spend­ing, even when the recip­i­ent groups are also spend­ing the mon­ey on pol­i­tics.

AFF gave $3 mil­lion to the Nation­al Rifle Asso­ci­a­tion, boost­ing the gun rights group’s his­toric spend­ing in sup­port of Don­ald Trump’s suc­cess­ful cam­paign.

It gave anoth­er $750,000 to End­ing Spend­ing and $708,500 to The Progress Project, it’s sis­ter orga­ni­za­tion. Both groups were active in help­ing Repub­li­cans keep their majori­ties in the House and Sen­ate in 2016.

...

———-

“Secret donors come back to boost for­mer-Koch group” by Robert Maguire; OpenSecrets.org; 01/25/2018

Tax doc­u­ments obtained by the Cen­ter for Respon­sive Pol­i­tics show that Amer­i­can Future Fund (AFF), a 501(c)(4) social wel­fare orga­ni­za­tion that doesn’t have to dis­close its donors, had a ban­ner year in 2016.”

2016 was a ban­ner year for Amer­i­can Future Fund. That’s the pic­ture that emerged from its tax doc­u­ments. Sure, that’s less than half of the $68 mil­lion AFF received in 2012 from the Koch net­work, but it’s still a remark­able rebound just four years lat­er:

...
The $29.4 mil­lion haul marks the group’s high­est rev­enues since it was cut from the con­stel­la­tion of polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tions linked to bil­lion­aire indus­tri­al­ists Charles and David Koch amidst a cam­paign mon­ey laun­der­ing scan­dal in 2012. In 2015, the dark mon­ey group raised just a lit­tle over $350,000.
...

And as OpenSecrets.org points out, while that $29.4 mil­lion might appear extra impres­sive for an enti­ty like AFF which has almost no employ­ees or any real ‘social wel­fare’ activ­i­ty, it’s not at all anom­alous. This is how the right-wing bil­lion­aire 501(c)(4) game is played and the only real ser­vice AFF pro­vides is its abil­i­ty to obscure donors as mon­ey is passed through it. You don’t need a lot of employ­ees to do that:

...
Bring­ing in such a con­sid­er­able sum is no small feat for an orga­ni­za­tion that boasts no employ­ees nor any mea­sur­able social wel­fare beyond its robust polit­i­cal spend­ing. But in the world of secre­tive polit­i­cal groups, it’s not an anom­aly.

A com­bi­na­tion of unclear rules and lax over­sight from both the IRS and the FEC has made it easy for nom­i­nal­ly apo­lit­i­cal groups like AFF to become vehi­cles for secret polit­i­cal mon­ey, allow­ing wealthy cor­po­rate and indi­vid­ual donors to spend in elec­tions with­out any pub­lic fin­ger­prints.

Near­ly 90 per­cent of Amer­i­can Future Fund’s rev­enue in 2016 came from donors giv­ing between $1 mil­lion and $8 mil­lion. But because groups like AFF are not tech­ni­cal­ly polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tions, and there­fore not sub­ject to the same dis­clo­sure require­ments as polit­i­cal action com­mit­tees (PACs), the enti­ties fuel­ing AFF with sev­en-fig­ure checks will remain far from the pub­lic eye.
...

Keep in mind that with $29.4 mil­lion in rev­enues, AFF pre­sum­ably spent half of that on direct polit­i­cal ads since that’s what the 501(c)(4) rules allow. The oth­er half, ($14.7 mil­lion) was then pre­sum­ably spent on ‘social wel­fare’. ‘Social wel­fare’ that can include sim­ply giv­ing the mon­ey to oth­er groups like the NRA:

...
AFF’s largest out­lays — beyond its direct polit­i­cal spend­ing — came in the form of more than $4.7 mil­lion in grants, the largest of which went to oth­er dark mon­ey groups active in the 2016 elec­tions.

Groups like AFF often dis­perse grants as a way to get around IRS lim­its on polit­i­cal spend­ing because they can count the grants to oth­er 501© orga­ni­za­tions as “social wel­fare” spend­ing, even when the recip­i­ent groups are also spend­ing the mon­ey on pol­i­tics.

AFF gave $3 mil­lion to the Nation­al Rifle Asso­ci­a­tion, boost­ing the gun rights group’s his­toric spend­ing in sup­port of Don­ald Trump’s suc­cess­ful cam­paign.

It gave anoth­er $750,000 to End­ing Spend­ing and $708,500 to The Progress Project, it’s sis­ter orga­ni­za­tion. Both groups were active in help­ing Repub­li­cans keep their majori­ties in the House and Sen­ate in 2016.
...

Also dis­cov­ered in the tax fil­ings was that a group of anony­mous Mar­co Rubio sup­port­ers did indeed give AFF $1 mil­lion in 2016, but it was dur­ing the gen­er­al elec­tion after the GOP pri­maries when AFF was attack­ing all of Rubio’s pri­ma­ry oppo­nents. So it seems very pos­si­ble that it was the same group of Rubio back­ers that paid for that AFF’s ser­vices dur­ing the pri­maries and the gen­er­al elec­tion, but we don’t get to know. That’s the point of the law:

...
Stealth Rubio Group

...

Tax doc­u­ments for a group called Con­ser­v­a­tive Solu­tions Project obtained by the Cen­ter for Respon­sive Pol­i­tics show the group — which was set up by Rubio allies to boost his cam­paign with mon­ey raised from anony­mous donors — gave $1 mil­lion to AFF.

The CSP grant came after Rubio had dropped out of the pres­i­den­tial race. In the final weeks of the elec­tion, how­ev­er, when Rubio was fight­ing to keep his Sen­ate seat, AFF spent $2.8 mil­lion against his oppo­nent, Patrick Mur­phy (D‑Fla), and Rubio clenched the vic­to­ry.
...

So as we can see, AFF start­ed off 2016 as a secret weapon of the GOP ‘Estab­lish­ment’ (at least the non-Koch wing of the GOP estab­lish­ment) in the pri­maries in favor or Mar­co Rubio. It even­tu­al­ly turned into a not-so-secret weapon when it became clear that AFF was attack­ing every­one but Rubio. Then Rubio drops out of the pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry, goes on to his Sen­ate race (break­ing his ear­li­er pledge not to run for the Sen­ate even if he lost the pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry), and a bunch of his wealthy back­ers fun­nel mil­lions of pro-Rubio ad spend­ing through the AFF.

AFF in 2018: The Estab­lish­men­t’s Secret Weapon...For Med­dling in GOP Pri­maries. And Mail­ers. And Door Knock­ing. It’s a Full Ser­vice ‘Social Wel­fare’ Enti­ty

Flash for­ward to 2018 and we find out that secret med­dling in GOP pri­maries is becom­ing an AFF spe­cial­ty appar­ent­ly. We also find out that AFF is work­ing in Cal­i­for­nia races again. Recall that it was get­ting caught break­ing 501(c)(4) rules that in Cal­i­for­nia races in 2012 that prompt­ed the Kochs to cut off AFF from the Koch net­work.

So it’s going to be inter­est­ing to see if AFF breaks the rules again in Cal­i­for­nia. As the fol­low­ing arti­cles demon­strate, AFF is prob­a­bly going to have plen­ty of oppor­tu­ni­ties to break those rules because it pro­vides a very con­ve­nient ser­vice. A ser­vice specif­i­cal­ly for GOP lead­er­ship: secret­ly pick­ing favorites in pri­maries.

In 2016, AFF was the vehi­cle the GOP ‘Estab­lish­ment’ (i.e. Karl Rove’s donor net­work) used to pick Mar­co Rubio as a favorite in the pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry. But in 2018, AFF was the vehi­cle for the actu­al Repub­li­can Par­ty lead­er­ship secret­ly play­ing favorites. Specif­i­cal­ly, House Speak­er Paul Ryan’s Con­gres­sion­al Lead­er­ship Fund threw $1.5 mil­lion at sev­er­al Cal­i­for­nia “Jun­gle” pri­maries.

Cal­i­for­nia adopt­ed a “Jun­gle pri­ma­ry” sys­tem back in 2010, where all can­di­dates from all par­ties run in one giant pri­ma­ry and the top two can­di­dates head for a run off in the gen­er­al elec­tion. It was seen as a way of cre­at­ing com­pet­i­tive races in Demo­c­rat-dom­i­nat­ed Cal­i­for­nia where a race between a Demo­c­rat and a Repub­li­can at a statewide-lev­el is a fore­gone con­clu­sion.

So Cal­i­for­ni­a’s Jun­gle pri­ma­ry sys­tem cre­at­ed the real pos­si­bil­i­ty that a par­ty could get shut out of the gen­er­al elec­tion. And not just shut out because its a very unpop­u­lar in a par­tic­u­lar area. It’s also pos­si­ble a par­ty could field so many can­di­dates that it dilutes the vote and none of them make it into the top two slots. It’s one of the unin­tend­ed con­se­quences of the Jun­gle pri­ma­ry sys­tem. The Jun­gle pri­maries do indeed make for more mean­ing­ful con­tests in the gen­er­al elec­tion, but at the cost of the risk that the pop­u­lar par­ty los­es on a tech­ni­cal­i­ty.

It’s worth keep­ing in mind that los­ing on a tech­ni­cal­i­ty has become a sad­ly com­mon fea­ture in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics at the pres­i­den­tial lev­el thanks to the elec­toral col­lege. Both George W. Bush and Don­ald Trump won on elec­toral col­lege tech­ni­cal­i­ties. Tech­ni­cal loss­es hap­pen. To Democ­rats. But in the case of the Jun­gle pri­ma­ry, where the par­ty that fields the most can­di­dates runs the risk of shut­ting itself out of the gen­er­al elec­tion, that’s a tech­ni­cal­i­ty that both Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans. And for Repub­li­cans, mak­ing sure that did­n’t hap­pen to them and try­ing to do it to Democ­rats became the tasks House Speak­er Paul Ryan hired Amer­i­can Future Fund to do. Secret­ly.

Specif­i­cal­ly, the Con­gres­sion­al Lead­er­ship Fund super­PAC, which is close­ly tied to Paul Ryan, pumped in $1.5 mil­lion into mul­ti­ple Cal­i­for­nia pri­maries in April. Six GOP­ers were assist­ed in all, some of them run­ning in the same pri­ma­ry (in order to try and lock out the Democ­rats). And AFF did­n’t just buy ads. AFF also sent out mail­ers and door-knock­ers across three dis­tricts. They claimed over 400,000 doors were knocked on.. That’s an aggres­sive full spec­trum ad cam­paign, all pro­vid­ed by AFF.

But Paul Ryan and the House lead­er­ship did this qui­et­ly, as we can see in the fol­low­ing TPM piece from May 23, 2018, dis­cussing the sud­den set of ad buys by AFF a week ear­li­er into three Cal­i­for­nia pri­maries. It’s clear in the arti­cle that that no one knows the House GOP lead­er­ship hired AFF to get involved in these races a month ear­li­er because there are lots of quotes from Repub­li­cans about their frus­tra­tion with the nation­al Repub­li­can par­ty not get­ting involved in the new Jun­gle pri­maries to try and avoid a lock out dis­as­ter. The Nation­al Repub­li­can Cam­paign Com­mit­tee (NRCC) takes the offi­cial posi­tion of not choos­ing can­di­dates in pri­maries and this was clear­ly frus­trat­ing a num­ber of par­ty mem­bers.

As we’ll see in the next arti­cle, when AFF ran its ads they nev­er men­tioned the Con­gres­sion­al Lead­er­ship Fund was pay­ing for them. This was at the request of the House Repub­li­can lead­er­ship, who did­n’t want AFF to men­tion that the Con­gres­sion­al Lead­er­ship Fund was behind its activ­i­ty because they did­n’t want to anger the GOP pri­ma­ry can­di­dates and con­ser­v­a­tive activists who did­n’t get the AFF’s back­ing.

So AFF pro­vid­ed a way for the nation­al Repub­li­cans get involved in Cal­i­for­ni­a’s Jun­gle pri­maries secret­ly. While AFF could­n’t hide the fact that it was pay­ing for these cam­paigns across Cal­i­for­nia, the 501(c)(4) was still able to hide who was pay­ing for it. And that’s what AFF did by not indi­cat­ing at all who paid for their work. Who knows, when Repub­li­cans saw the reports of AFF get­ting involved in these pri­maries they prob­a­bly assumed it was Karl Rove’s donor net­work behind it. It’s a reminder of how the more clients a group like AFF gets, the bet­ter it is at obscur­ing who is pay­ing for a par­tic­u­lar activ­i­ty:

Talk­ing Points Memo
DC

GOP Group Launch­es Bid To Shut Dems Out Of Key Cal­i­for­nia House Races

By Cameron Joseph
May 23, 2018 5:06 pm

A Repub­li­can super PAC is launch­ing a last-minute effort to boost a hand­ful of House GOP can­di­dates in south­ern Cal­i­for­nia. The goal is to block Democ­rats from get­ting a can­di­date into the gen­er­al elec­tion in some key House races.

The Amer­i­can Future Fund, an Iowa-based GOP group, has dropped almost $700,000 to boost four GOP can­di­dates in three dis­tricts, accord­ing to doc­u­ments filed with the Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion on Wednes­day.

Their goals are to ele­vate some flag­ging Repub­li­cans and try to help them make the Novem­ber bal­lot in dis­tricts that are key to Democ­rats’ hopes of win­ning the House this fall.

California’s “jun­gle” pri­ma­ry sys­tem allows the top two vote-get­ters to advance to the gen­er­al elec­tion, regard­less of par­ty. That’s led to con­cerns among Democ­rats that their can­di­dates could split the Demo­c­ra­t­ic vote, allow­ing Repub­li­cans to fin­ish in the top two spots in some con­gres­sion­al races and imme­di­ate­ly cost­ing them chances at a hand­ful of winnable seats in the state.

Nation­al Democ­rats have been spend­ing heav­i­ly to try to avoid that sce­nario.

Repub­li­cans had been sur­pris­ing­ly qui­et in their response, con­sid­er­ing how with some effort now they could guar­an­tee vic­to­ry in a few key House bat­tles — as well as save them­selves a lot of mon­ey in Novem­ber in the expen­sive dis­tricts. But this buy sug­gests things may be start­ing to shift.

The GOP super-PAC’s buy includes almost $500,000 on adver­tis­ing, direct mail and door-to-door vot­er out­reach to boost Rocky Chavez and Diane Harkey, a pair of Repub­li­can can­di­dates run­ning for the seat cur­rent­ly held by Rep. Dar­rell Issa (R‑CA), who is retir­ing. That race is one in which both par­ties wor­ry they might get shut out and fail to get a can­di­date through to the Novem­ber elec­tion, though Democ­rats are more alarmed at the prospect.

The group is also spend­ing $100,000 to boost Scott Baugh, a Repub­li­can run­ning against con­tro­ver­sial Rep. Dana Rohrabach­er (R‑CA). That dis­trict is the one where Demo­c­ra­t­ic con­cerns about being shut out, giv­en their own crowd­ed field, are most acute.

The GOP group is also chip­ping in about $100,000 to boost Young Kim, the GOP front-run­ner in the crowd­ed race to replace retir­ing Rep. Ed Royce (R‑CA).

The efforts for Kim and Harkey began last week, but this is the first evi­dence that the group’s push is to block Democ­rats out in some of these dis­tricts, rather than help out par­tic­u­lar GOP can­di­dates. The group didn’t respond to requests for an expla­na­tion of their strat­e­gy.

Repub­li­cans had expressed grow­ing frus­tra­tion that their par­ty wasn’t doing more to med­dle in these pri­maries to ensure the best results. Democ­rats already have spent mil­lions on the races.

Issa told TPM on Tues­day, before these ads had become pub­lic, that House Minor­i­ty Leader Nan­cy Pelosi’s Democ­rats were doing a bet­ter job orga­niz­ing in the state, even in tra­di­tion­al­ly con­ser­v­a­tive enclaves like his dis­trict.

“Pelosi nat­u­ral­ly gets us bet­ter. That’s not to say any­thing against Steve,” Issa said, refer­ring to Nation­al Repub­li­can Con­gres­sion­al Com­mit­tee Chair­man Steve Stivers (R‑OH). “It’s just that the obser­va­tion in my dis­trict is the Democ­rats are play­ing a game that could well get one of their can­di­dates in that oth­er­wise wouldn’t if both sides were play­ing.”

Oth­er Repub­li­cans have also griped about the lack of nation­al inter­ven­tion to help them.

“You wish the par­ty would rec­og­nize this oppor­tu­ni­ty and lift us up,” GOP strate­gist John Thomas, who’s work­ing with can­di­date Shawn Nel­son in Royce’s dis­trict, told TPM. “They just don’t under­stand the top-two dynam­ic.”

Democ­rats have been spend­ing heav­i­ly against Nel­son and Bob Huff to avoid them get­ting into the runoff with Kim, the GOP front-run­ner, and Repub­li­cans still have done lit­tle in response to help them.

...

———-

“GOP Group Launch­es Bid To Shut Dems Out Of Key Cal­i­for­nia House Races” by Cameron Joseph; Talk­ing Points Memo; 05/23/2018

The Amer­i­can Future Fund, an Iowa-based GOP group, has dropped almost $700,000 to boost four GOP can­di­dates in three dis­tricts, accord­ing to doc­u­ments filed with the Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion on Wednes­day.”

So in mid-May of this year, AFF revealed to the FEC that it spent $700,000 on three Cal­i­for­nia pri­ma­ry races. Races where the nation­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty was already spend­ing heav­i­ly but the nation­al Repub­li­can par­ty had been sur­pris­ing­ly unin­volved in giv­en the risk of get­ting shut out entire­ly. Or at least that’s how it seemed:

...
Nation­al Democ­rats have been spend­ing heav­i­ly to try to avoid that sce­nario.

Repub­li­cans had been sur­pris­ing­ly qui­et in their response, con­sid­er­ing how with some effort now they could guar­an­tee vic­to­ry in a few key House bat­tles — as well as save them­selves a lot of mon­ey in Novem­ber in the expen­sive dis­tricts. But this buy sug­gests things may be start­ing to shift.

...

Repub­li­cans had expressed grow­ing frus­tra­tion that their par­ty wasn’t doing more to med­dle in these pri­maries to ensure the best results. Democ­rats already have spent mil­lions on the races.

Issa told TPM on Tues­day, before these ads had become pub­lic, that House Minor­i­ty Leader Nan­cy Pelosi’s Democ­rats were doing a bet­ter job orga­niz­ing in the state, even in tra­di­tion­al­ly con­ser­v­a­tive enclaves like his dis­trict.

“Pelosi nat­u­ral­ly gets us bet­ter. That’s not to say any­thing against Steve,” Issa said, refer­ring to Nation­al Repub­li­can Con­gres­sion­al Com­mit­tee Chair­man Steve Stivers (R‑OH). “It’s just that the obser­va­tion in my dis­trict is the Democ­rats are play­ing a game that could well get one of their can­di­dates in that oth­er­wise wouldn’t if both sides were play­ing.”

Oth­er Repub­li­cans have also griped about the lack of nation­al inter­ven­tion to help them.

“You wish the par­ty would rec­og­nize this oppor­tu­ni­ty and lift us up,” GOP strate­gist John Thomas, who’s work­ing with can­di­date Shawn Nel­son in Royce’s dis­trict, told TPM. “They just don’t under­stand the top-two dynam­ic.”
...

So Cal­i­for­nia Repub­li­cans were both wor­ried and angry about a lack of nation­al Repub­li­can par­ty inter­ven­tion in these Jun­gle pri­maries where the risk of get­ting shut out was very real. But as the fol­low arti­cle from June of this year reveals, the nation­al Repub­li­cans were indeed already involved in these races. It was Paul Ryan’s Con­gres­sion­al Lead­er­ship Fund that had actu­al­ly hired AFF back in April to get involved in these races. But they did­n’t want to show their hand out of fear of anger­ing con­ser­v­a­tive activists:

Politi­co

Repub­li­can super PAC secret­ly pro­mot­ed can­di­dates in Cal­i­for­nia

By ALEX ISENSTADT and ELENA SCHNEIDER

06/05/2018 02:00 PM EDT

A House GOP lead­er­ship-backed super PAC secret­ly picked favorites in three high-pro­file Cal­i­for­nia pri­maries to be decid­ed Tues­day that could help to decide con­trol of the cham­ber.

Repub­li­can lead­er­ship typ­i­cal­ly stays out of con­test­ed pri­maries where incum­bents are not seek­ing reelec­tion. But in April, Con­gres­sion­al Lead­er­ship Fund, a group close­ly aligned with House Speak­er Paul Ryan, fun­neled about $1.5 mil­lion to Amer­i­can Future Fund, an Iowa-based out­side Repub­li­can orga­ni­za­tion, accord­ing to a CLF offi­cial.

Amer­i­can Future Fund, which is over­seen by long­time GOP strate­gist Nick Ryan, then aired TV com­mer­cials, sent out mail­ers, and dis­patched door-knock­ers across three sprawl­ing Orange Coun­ty-based dis­tricts. Over 400,000 doors were knocked on.

The adver­tis­ing onslaught was aimed at boost­ing six Repub­li­cans com­pet­ing in Tuesday’s “jun­gle pri­ma­ry,“ in which the top two vote-get­ters advance to the gen­er­al elec­tion regard­less of par­ty affil­i­a­tion.

None of the com­mer­cials iden­ti­fied Con­gres­sion­al Lead­er­ship Fund as a spon­sor. The super PAC was con­cerned that if their med­dling was known it could have unin­tend­ed con­se­quences by invit­ing blow­back from con­ser­v­a­tive activists.

...

The strat­e­gy was borne in April, when Con­gres­sion­al Lead­er­ship Fund con­duct­ed sur­veys in the dis­tricts left vacant by the upcom­ing retire­ments of GOP Reps. Ed Royce and Dar­rell Issa. The polls, the CLF offi­cial said, found that Repub­li­cans were at risk of being locked out of the Novem­ber gen­er­al elec­tion in both races, a poten­tial­ly dis­as­trous sce­nario for the par­ty, which is strug­gling to hold onto their 23-seat House major­i­ty.

In California’s 39th Dis­trict, sev­en Repub­li­cans are run­ning, but the Con­gres­sion­al Lead­er­ship Fund opt­ed to ele­vate only two of them: Assem­bly­woman Young Kim and for­mer state Sen­ate Minor­i­ty Leader Bob Huff.

The Nation­al Repub­li­can Cam­paign Com­mit­tee stays out of open pri­maries, but it has added sev­er­al Cal­i­for­nia Repub­li­cans to its “Young Guns” pro­gram, which pro­vides fundrais­ing and infra­struc­ture sup­port to can­di­dates. Some Young Guns did not receive help from Con­gres­sion­al Lead­er­ship Fund, includ­ing Gas­par.

But the NRCC did spend six-fig­ures on dig­i­tal ads in all three dis­tricts, aim­ing to amp up GOP turnout with­out nam­ing any spe­cif­ic can­di­date.

House Democ­rats are also at risk of a top-two lock­out in the three dis­tricts. It has led the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Con­gres­sion­al Cam­paign Com­mit­tee to endorse can­di­dates in two of the races. The DCCC has also spent mil­lions of dol­lars on TV ads to dri­ve turnout.

———-

“Repub­li­can super PAC secret­ly pro­mot­ed can­di­dates in Cal­i­for­nia” by ALEX ISENSTADT and ELENA SCHNEIDER; Politi­co; 06/05/2018

“Repub­li­can lead­er­ship typ­i­cal­ly stays out of con­test­ed pri­maries where incum­bents are not seek­ing reelec­tion. But in April, Con­gres­sion­al Lead­er­ship Fund, a group close­ly aligned with House Speak­er Paul Ryan, fun­neled about $1.5 mil­lion to Amer­i­can Future Fund, an Iowa-based out­side Repub­li­can orga­ni­za­tion, accord­ing to a CLF offi­cial.

So back in April, the Repub­li­can lead­er­ship, which does­n’t nor­mal­ly get involved in con­test­ed pri­maries, did exact­ly that when it qui­et­ly dumped $1.5 mil­lion into AFF hat went to TV com­mer­cials, mail­ers, and even door-knock­ers.

...
A House GOP lead­er­ship-backed super PAC secret­ly picked favorites in three high-pro­file Cal­i­for­nia pri­maries to be decid­ed Tues­day that could help to decide con­trol of the cham­ber.

...

Amer­i­can Future Fund, which is over­seen by long­time GOP strate­gist Nick Ryan, then aired TV com­mer­cials, sent out mail­ers, and dis­patched door-knock­ers across three sprawl­ing Orange Coun­ty-based dis­tricts. Over 400,000 doors were knocked on.

The adver­tis­ing onslaught was aimed at boost­ing six Repub­li­cans com­pet­ing in Tuesday’s “jun­gle pri­ma­ry,“ in which the top two vote-get­ters advance to the gen­er­al elec­tion regard­less of par­ty affil­i­a­tion.

...

The strat­e­gy was borne in April, when Con­gres­sion­al Lead­er­ship Fund con­duct­ed sur­veys in the dis­tricts left vacant by the upcom­ing retire­ments of GOP Reps. Ed Royce and Dar­rell Issa. The polls, the CLF offi­cial said, found that Repub­li­cans were at risk of being locked out of the Novem­ber gen­er­al elec­tion in both races, a poten­tial­ly dis­as­trous sce­nario for the par­ty, which is strug­gling to hold onto their 23-seat House major­i­ty.
...

But AFF specif­i­cal­ly did not iden­ti­fy Ryan’s Con­gres­sion­al Lead­er­ship Fund as the spon­sor for these ads because it Repub­li­can lead­er­ship was con­cerned it could court blow­back from the con­ser­v­a­tive base:

...
None of the com­mer­cials iden­ti­fied Con­gres­sion­al Lead­er­ship Fund as a spon­sor. The super PAC was con­cerned that if their med­dling was known it could have unin­tend­ed con­se­quences by invit­ing blow­back from con­ser­v­a­tive activists.
...

And that’s just what AFF was up to ear­li­er this year dur­ing the mid-term pri­maries for one client. A promi­nent client, but no doubt just one AFF’s many clients. It’s also undoubt­ed­ly the case that AFF has been engaged in all sorts of mer­ce­nary ‘social wel­fare’ activ­i­ties dur­ing the mid-term gen­er­al elec­tion too. We’ll pre­sum­ably find out about that activ­i­ty at some point, although we still won’t know who paid for it.

A Light at the End of the Dark Mon­ey Tun­nel? Yes, But It’s a Dim Light That’s Easy to Turn Off

Or will we? That tan­ta­liz­ing pos­si­bil­i­ty — that the donor secre­cy rules and loop­holes that make 501(c)(4)s so pop­u­lar as ‘dark mon­ey’ tool of choice for secret­ly financ­ing poten­tial­ly unlim­it­ed amounts of polit­i­cal activ­i­ties would final­ly be closed — sud­den­ly became a real­i­ty less than two months ago thanks to a qui­et Supreme Court deci­sion that qui­et­ly took place in Sep­tem­ber.

The rul­ing has to do with 501(c)(4) spend­ing on attack ads, as opposed to “issue ads” that don’t advo­cat­ed for or against a can­di­date. Recall how 501(c)(4)s have to dis­close the amounts spent on attack ads, but not the donor iden­ti­ties. Thanks to the new rul­ing, those attack ad donor iden­ti­ties might have to be revealed for all donors who give more than $200 for that attack ad spend­ing.

Part of the lack of fan­fare is due to the fact that the Supreme Court did­n’t hear argu­ments and issue a new rul­ing. They mere­ly reversed a stay on a low­er court rul­ing. A stay on a low­er court rul­ing that was ini­tial­ly pro­vid­ed by Chief Jus­tice John Roberts. Cross­roads GPS filed an emer­gency motion for a stay direct­ly to Roberts fol­low­ing the deci­sions by a dis­trict court and appeals court not to grant Cross­roads GPS’s stay request after a fed­er­al court ruled against them in a law­suit.

The low­er court rul­ing against Cross­roads GPS addressed a loop­hole that was root­ed in the FEC using a 1980 FEC rul­ing to avoid legal dis­clo­sure require­ments that were made into law after the 1980 FEC rul­ing. The 1980 FEC rul­ing intro­duced a loop­hole in the dis­clo­sure of donor for “inde­pen­dent expen­di­tures” — com­mu­ni­ca­tions that explic­it­ly call on vot­ers to sup­port or oppose cer­tain can­di­dates (i.e. attack ads). That 1980 FEC reg­u­la­tion ruled that 501©s could avoid dis­clos­ing their donors for polit­i­cal attack ads that if the donors’ con­tri­bu­tions were not ear­marked for spe­cif­ic adver­tise­ments.

So Roberts tried to keep the 1980 FEC loop­hole in place and the rest of the Supreme Court all ruled to reverse Robert­s’s deci­sion. It was a remark­able move. The Supreme Court may have just pro­vid­ed a sig­nif­i­cant cor­rec­tion to the cur­rent sys­tem of unlim­it­ed polit­i­cal spend­ing by secret donors under the guise of ‘social wel­fare’. As we saw above, a num­ber of dif­fer­ent laws, court rul­ings, and reg­u­la­to­ry actions over the past 50+ years all went into cre­at­ing the US cam­paign finance sys­tem today. There isn’t a sin­gle cam­paign finance law, rul­ing, or reg­u­la­tion that could be reversed to ‘fix’ the prob­lem. Numer­ous sig­nif­i­cant fix­es are required, which can hap­pen one fix at a time or all at once. So revers­ing that 1980 FEC rul­ing is just one of the many rules that needs fix­ing. But it’s a sig­nif­i­cant one.

The law­suit against Cross­roads GPS emerged from a com­plaint filed by Cit­i­zens for Respon­si­bil­i­ty and Ethics in Wash­ing­ton (CREW) with the FEC fol­low­ing the 2012 elec­tions. CREW argued in the com­plaint that the laws required Cross­roads GPS to dis­close donors asso­ci­at­ed with its polit­i­cal attack ads. And while CREW was cor­rect that the cam­paign finance laws required were writ­ten in a way that should have required Cross­roads GPS to dis­close its polit­i­cal ad donors, the FEC was choos­ing not to require this based on that 1980 FEC rul­ing. The FEC respond­ed to the CREW com­plaint in 2015 with a 3–3 rul­ing that result­ed in an FEC deci­sion to not fol­low through with CREW’s com­plaint and not force Cross­roads GPS to dis­close its polit­i­cal ad donors. So CREW sued in 2016, and in August of 2018, a low­er court ruled that CREW was cor­rect and it was clear­ly spelled out in the law that the FEC had to required the dis­clo­sure of the donors for “inde­pen­dent expen­di­tures” (polit­i­cal attack ads). Cross­roads GPS sued for a tem­po­rary stay and the dis­trict and appeals courts denied the stay. Cross­roads GPS fol­lowed with the direct emer­gency stay appeal to Roberts, who com­plied. And a few days lat­er the rest of the court over­turned him. The final Supreme Court res­o­lu­tion to that entire case with poten­tial­ly sig­nif­i­cant ram­i­fi­ca­tions to US cam­paign finance laws all qui­et­ly just hap­pened.

But anoth­er rea­son there has­n’t been much fan­fare about this rul­ing is that that new rules still con­tains a sig­nif­i­cant loop­hole. And it’s exact­ly the kind of loop­hole that the ‘shad­ow mon­ey mail­box­es’ like AFF or all the oth­er enti­ties we’ve looked at (TC4, CPPR, 60 Plus, etc) is designed to exploit. The new loop­hole is that it is still pos­si­ble to avoid dis­clos­ing donors under the new rul­ing sim­ply by hav­ing donor give their mon­ey to a mid­dle-man orga­ni­za­tion first and hav­ing that orga­ni­za­tion make the dona­tion to the 501(c)(4) that ulti­mate­ly runs the polit­i­cal ads. For exam­ple, the Kochs might give $10 mil­lion to TC4 for gener­ic advo­ca­cy pur­pos­es. TC4 then gives the mon­ey to AFF for more spe­cif­ic polit­i­cal advo­ca­cy pur­pos­es. Recall that this is basi­cal­ly the scheme that AFF was caught being involved in 2012 with Cal­i­for­ni­a’s bal­lot ini­tia­tives that got AFF kicked out of the Koch net­work.

So when AFF is forced to dis­close their donors for that advo­ca­cy under this new rul­ing, they only have to reveal that it was TC4 who made the dona­tions but TC4 won’t have to reveal that it was the Kochs who ulti­mate­ly made the dona­tion. And as we’ve seen, that’s how things are already done because that’s how they max­i­mize the amounts that can be spent on polit­i­cal ads. Remem­ber the “mon­ey laun­der­ing” sce­nario that allowed the 50 per­cent cap on polit­i­cal spend­ing rise with each suc­ces­sive mid­dle-man enti­ty? That behav­ior is per­fect­ly sit­u­a­tion to make this new Supreme Court rul­ing moot. So the poten­tial­ly his­to­ry Supreme Court rul­ing that could shake up the sta­tus quo is made moot by the sta­tus quo, which does­n’t mean this was an insignif­i­cant reform, but in order to see the ben­e­fits of this reform more fix­es of this nature are need­ed:

The Atlantic

Supreme Court Lets Stand a Deci­sion Requir­ing ‘Dark Mon­ey’ Dis­clo­sure

Advo­cates for greater cam­paign-finance dis­clo­sure said the high court’s move would enable vot­ers to find out who’s pay­ing for the cam­paign ads they’re see­ing on tele­vi­sion.

Dave Levinthal and Sarah Klein­er
Sep 18, 2018

Secret mon­ey in pol­i­tics will soon be a lot less secret. The Supreme Court on Tues­day let stand a low­er-court rul­ing forc­ing polit­i­cal­ly active non­prof­it groups to dis­close the iden­ti­ty of any donor giv­ing more than $200 when those groups adver­tise for or against polit­i­cal can­di­dates.

Until now, such non­prof­it organizations—generally those of the 501(c)(4) “social wel­fare” and 501(c)(6) “busi­ness league” varieties—could keep their donors secret under most cir­cum­stances.

It wasn’t imme­di­ate­ly clear whether non­prof­it groups that advo­cate for and against polit­i­cal can­di­dates must retroac­tive­ly dis­close their fun­ders or only do so going for­ward, con­tin­gent on their future polit­i­cal spend­ing.

Nev­er­the­less, dis­clo­sure advo­cates hailed the Supreme Court’s “dark mon­ey” deci­sion.

“This is a real vic­to­ry for trans­paren­cy,” said Ellen Wein­traub, the vice chair­woman of the Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion. “As a result, the Amer­i­can peo­ple will be bet­ter informed about who’s pay­ing for the ads they’re see­ing this elec­tion sea­son.”

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive John Sar­banes, a Demo­c­rat from Mary­land who has called for over­haul­ing the way mon­ey is spent in pol­i­tics, con­curred: “Now we’ll see how much comes down and how quick­ly in this par­tic­u­lar case, but its broad­er impli­ca­tion can’t be denied. It’s a huge­ly pos­i­tive step for­ward in terms of trans­paren­cy.”

Oth­ers believe vot­ers will wind up with less infor­ma­tion before they cast their bal­lot in Novem­ber. David Keat­ing, the pres­i­dent of the Insti­tute for Free Speech, which sup­ports the dereg­u­la­tion of cam­paign finance, said the deci­sion will almost cer­tain­ly throw a wet blan­ket on inde­pen­dent expen­di­tures from now to the Novem­ber 6 midterm elec­tions.

“We think that’s a real prospect—that a num­ber of groups are going to choose silence rather than speech—and there are good rea­sons why they would do that,” Keat­ing said. “Cer­tain­ly not all but most of these groups may come to the con­clu­sion this is too risky: ‘Our donors gave us mon­ey under the assump­tion they would remain con­fi­den­tial, and we don’t want to do things that would make them not give us mon­ey any­more.’”

Wein­traub said it wouldn’t be sur­pris­ing to see some groups “come up with clever ways of get­ting around the rules.” She expects FEC com­mis­sion­ers to come togeth­er soon in an effort to clar­i­fy which donors need to be dis­closed. But that could be dif­fi­cult, giv­en that the FEC’s four remain­ing com­mis­sion­ers are often at ide­o­log­i­cal odds with one anoth­er.

Today’s deci­sion is six years in the mak­ing. It stems from a com­plaint filed by Cit­i­zens for Respon­si­bil­i­ty and Ethics in Wash­ing­ton (CREW), a cam­paign-finance-reform group, with the FEC against Cross­roads GPS, a con­ser­v­a­tive non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion that has spent tens of mil­lions of dol­lars to boost Repub­li­can polit­i­cal can­di­dates. CREW alleged that Cross­roads GPS was vio­lat­ing fed­er­al law by keep­ing its donors secret.

The FEC in 2015 dead­locked 3–3 on whether to inves­ti­gate Cross­roads GPS. In 2016, CREW then sued the FEC. Last month, U.S. Dis­trict Court Chief Judge Beryl A. How­ell ruled for CREW. She gave the FEC 45 days to issue a new reg­u­la­tion that would require donor dis­clo­sure in accor­dance with the law.

Cross­roads GPS sought an emer­gency stay from the D.C. Cir­cuit, which declined to grant it. Supreme Court Chief Jus­tice John Roberts stayed the low­er court’s deci­sion on Sat­ur­day, but the stay was brief: The full Supreme Court vacat­ed Roberts’s stay, allow­ing Howell’s rul­ing to stand.

The high court’s action is tem­pered by two con­sid­er­a­tions. The deci­sion appears to leave a loop­hole: Some super PACs, which must dis­close their donors pub­licly, accept mon­ey from non­prof­it groups. Con­ceiv­ably, a super PAC could take mon­ey from a non­prof­it group that doesn’t itself advo­cate for or against polit­i­cal candidates—meaning the super PAC could con­tin­ue hid­ing the flesh-and-blood source of the cash fund­ing its efforts, sev­er­al elec­tion lawyers told the Cen­ter for Pub­lic Integri­ty. Also, the orig­i­nal case that prompt­ed today’s action, Cit­i­zens for Respon­si­bil­i­ty and Ethics in Wash­ing­ton v. Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion and Cross­roads GPS, remains under appeal, mean­ing today’s deci­sion could be temporary—or not.

Thus, at least for the time being, Cross­roads GPS and all oth­er sim­i­lar­ly polit­i­cal­ly active non­prof­it groups, such as the Repub­li­can-lean­ing U.S. Cham­ber of Com­merce, must begin report­ing their donors to the FEC. That includes a grow­ing num­ber of Demo­c­rat-back­ing orga­ni­za­tions that trade in secret mon­ey, such as Major­i­ty For­ward.

...

The Supreme Court’s 2010 deci­sion in Cit­i­zens Unit­ed v. FEC first allowed non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tions such as Cross­roads GPS to spend unlim­it­ed amounts of mon­ey to direct­ly advo­cate for or against polit­i­cal can­di­dates. But while the Cit­i­zens Unit­ed deci­sion did note that “trans­paren­cy enables the elec­torate to make informed deci­sions and give prop­er weight to dif­fer­ent speak­ers and mes­sages,” it did not require that polit­i­cal­ly active non­prof­its dis­close their fun­ders pub­licly, includ­ing to the FEC, which reg­u­lates and enforces fed­er­al cam­paign-finance laws.

Not all of Cross­roads GPS’s mon­ey is secret. Issue One, a non­par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion that advo­cates for stricter cam­paign-finance reg­u­la­tions, revealed this month that Cross­roads GPS has been fund­ed by the Repub­li­can Jew­ish Coali­tion ($4 mil­lion), the Alliance for Qual­i­ty Nurs­ing Home Care ($500,000) and the Amer­i­can Health Care Asso­ci­a­tion ($450,000), among oth­ers. But it’s not always clear who, in turn, funds these groups.

———-

“Supreme Court Lets Stand a Deci­sion Requir­ing ‘Dark Mon­ey’ Dis­clo­sure” by Dave Levinthal and Sarah Klein­er; The Atlantic; 09/18/2018

“Secret mon­ey in pol­i­tics will soon be a lot less secret. The Supreme Court on Tues­day let stand a low­er-court rul­ing forc­ing polit­i­cal­ly active non­prof­it groups to dis­close the iden­ti­ty of any donor giv­ing more than $200 when those groups adver­tise for or against polit­i­cal can­di­dates.”

It’s a tan­ta­liz­ing prospect: polit­i­cal­ly active 501(c)(4)s will have to dis­close any donors who give more than $200 when those 501(c)(4)s. There could still be unlim­it­ed polit­i­cal spend­ing, but at least the peo­ple financ­ing that unlim­it­ed spend­ing could­n’t do so in secret. That’s the kind of con­se­quence to this new rul­ing that cam­paign finance advo­cates are hop­ing for.

And there’s even the pos­si­bil­i­ty that this dis­clo­sure rul­ing will be enforced retroac­tive­ly:

...
Until now, such non­prof­it organizations—generally those of the 501(c)(4) “social wel­fare” and 501(c)(6) “busi­ness league” varieties—could keep their donors secret under most cir­cum­stances.

It wasn’t imme­di­ate­ly clear whether non­prof­it groups that advo­cate for and against polit­i­cal can­di­dates must retroac­tive­ly dis­close their fun­ders or only do so going for­ward, con­tin­gent on their future polit­i­cal spend­ing.
...

But despite the fact that this rul­ing is unam­bigu­ous­ly a step in the right direc­tion, it remains high­ly ambigu­ous as to how big of a step it is. And a big rea­son for that ambi­gu­i­ty cen­ters around the fact that there does­n’t appear to be any­thing pre­vent­ing donors from remain­ing hid­den by sim­ply donat­ing to a mid­dle-man 501(c)(4) which will in-turn donate to anoth­er 501(c)(4) to do the actu­al polit­i­cal activ­i­ty, so when the time comes to dis­close the donors the only name dis­closed is the name of the mid­dle-man orga­ni­za­tion. Despite this rul­ing being a big step in the right direc­tion, mas­sive loop­holes remain:

...
Nev­er­the­less, dis­clo­sure advo­cates hailed the Supreme Court’s “dark mon­ey” deci­sion.

“This is a real vic­to­ry for trans­paren­cy,” said Ellen Wein­traub, the vice chair­woman of the Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion. “As a result, the Amer­i­can peo­ple will be bet­ter informed about who’s pay­ing for the ads they’re see­ing this elec­tion sea­son.”

...

Wein­traub said it wouldn’t be sur­pris­ing to see some groups “come up with clever ways of get­ting around the rules.” She expects FEC com­mis­sion­ers to come togeth­er soon in an effort to clar­i­fy which donors need to be dis­closed. But that could be dif­fi­cult, giv­en that the FEC’s four remain­ing com­mis­sion­ers are often at ide­o­log­i­cal odds with one anoth­er.

...

The high court’s action is tem­pered by two con­sid­er­a­tions. The deci­sion appears to leave a loop­hole: Some super PACs, which must dis­close their donors pub­licly, accept mon­ey from non­prof­it groups. Con­ceiv­ably, a super PAC could take mon­ey from a non­prof­it group that doesn’t itself advo­cate for or against polit­i­cal candidates—meaning the super PAC could con­tin­ue hid­ing the flesh-and-blood source of the cash fund­ing its efforts, sev­er­al elec­tion lawyers told the Cen­ter for Pub­lic Integri­ty. Also, the orig­i­nal case that prompt­ed today’s action, Cit­i­zens for Respon­si­bil­i­ty and Ethics in Wash­ing­ton v. Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion and Cross­roads GPS, remains under appeal, mean­ing today’s deci­sion could be temporary—or not.
...

The effec­tive­ness of this loop­hole is high­light­ed by the fact that when Cross­roads GPS has dis­closed its donors in the past for some activ­i­ties, the only names dis­closed in many cas­es are the names of oth­er groups. Not the names of the actu­al donors:

...
Not all of Cross­roads GPS’s mon­ey is secret. Issue One, a non­par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion that advo­cates for stricter cam­paign-finance reg­u­la­tions, revealed this month that Cross­roads GPS has been fund­ed by the Repub­li­can Jew­ish Coali­tion ($4 mil­lion), the Alliance for Qual­i­ty Nurs­ing Home Care ($500,000) and the Amer­i­can Health Care Asso­ci­a­tion ($450,000), among oth­ers. But it’s not always clear who, in turn, funds these groups.
...

And, again, this is exact­ly what we saw above when AFF was part of the Koch net­work, receiv­ing funds from ‘shad­ow mon­ey mail­box­es’ like TC4. So when Cross­roads GPS became one of AFF’s major clients, AFF would pre­sum­ably just have to dis­close the name Cross­road GPS for that polit­i­cal activ­i­ty. Not the names of Cross­roads GPS’s actu­al donors. And this abil­i­ty to run ‘dona­tions’ through net­works of ‘social wel­fare’ 501(c)(4) orga­ni­za­tions is why cam­paign finance experts are pre­dict­ing that this Supreme Court deci­sion prob­a­bly isn’t going to shine near­ly as much light on the iden­ti­ties of big dark mon­ey donors as many are hop­ing:

The Wash­ing­ton Post

Polit­i­cal non­prof­its seek answers after court deci­sion tar­get­ing ‘dark mon­ey’

By Michelle Ye Hee Lee
Sep­tem­ber 21, 2018

As polit­i­cal­ly active non­prof­its scram­ble to fig­ure out the impli­ca­tions of a recent court deci­sion requir­ing them to dis­close some of their donors, experts said one thing is clear: There will be ways around the new rules.

Groups could accept mon­ey through shell cor­po­ra­tions, said cam­paign finance lawyers and advo­cates of more reg­u­la­tion of mon­ey in pol­i­tics. They could shift mon­ey to allied super PACs. They could adjust their ads so they come right up against the line that would trig­ger dis­clo­sure.

Such jock­ey­ing has become com­mon­place as advo­cates push for more trans­paren­cy about polit­i­cal con­tri­bu­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly the giv­ing from undis­closed donors they call “dark mon­ey.”

“It’s always been kind of a cat-and-mouse game about dis­clo­sure,” said Richard Hasen, an elec­tion law expert at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at Irvine. “I don’t think peo­ple who are herald­ing the end of ‘dark mon­ey’ are going to be sat­is­fied with what we end up see­ing.”

Some of the biggest play­ers in pol­i­tics are non­prof­its that don’t dis­close their donors, includ­ing Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty on the right and the Sier­ra Club on the left. They typ­i­cal­ly influ­ence elec­tions by rais­ing mil­lions of dol­lars and run­ning inde­pen­dent polit­i­cal ads urg­ing vot­ers to con­tact their law­mak­ers, or call­ing for the elec­tion or defeat of a spe­cif­ic can­di­date.

These groups have pro­lif­er­at­ed since the Supreme Court’s land­mark 2010 Cit­i­zens Unit­ed deci­sion, which allowed cor­po­ra­tions, includ­ing non­prof­its, to spend unlim­it­ed mon­ey on polit­i­cal activ­i­ty sep­a­rate from can­di­dates.

Non­prof­it advo­ca­cy groups his­tor­i­cal­ly have not been required to pub­licly dis­close their donors, as polit­i­cal com­mit­tees must. But last month, in response to a long-run­ning law­suit from trans­paren­cy advo­cates, a fed­er­al judge threw out a decades-old rule that allowed the groups to with­hold donors’ iden­ti­ties, broad­en­ing the type of donors who would now be sub­ject to dis­clo­sure.

The Supreme Court on Tues­day declined to inter­vene in the case and did not grant an emer­gency request to stay the rul­ing by Chief U.S. Dis­trict Judge Beryl A. How­ell. The rul­ing is under appeal, but Howell’s deci­sion went into effect imme­di­ate­ly.

...

Despite the expect­ed efforts to pro­tect donors’ iden­ti­ties, the deci­sion will no doubt shed more light on the con­trib­u­tors to polit­i­cal­ly active non­prof­its, although exact­ly how much is uncer­tain as groups and fed­er­al offi­cials take stock of the deci­sion.

“The bot­tom line is, we do not know yet how much dis­clo­sure we’re going to get,” said Fred Wertheimer, pres­i­dent of Democ­ra­cy 21, a group that advo­cates for reduc­ing the role of big mon­ey in pol­i­tics. “What we know here is that this is a break­through deci­sion, because the court clear­ly rec­og­nized that Con­gress want­ed the donors dis­closed who were fund­ing elec­tion activ­i­ties. But we are going to have a ways to go.”

In the absence of new reg­u­la­tion, non­prof­it groups are left in a gray area, which could lead to new meth­ods of avoid­ing dis­clo­sure and main­tain­ing donor pri­va­cy, lawyers and advo­cates said.

One way groups could avoid dis­clo­sure is by hav­ing their donors give mon­ey through lim­it­ed lia­bil­i­ty com­pa­nies, or LLCs. It is almost impos­si­ble to fig­ure out who finances LLCs or who set them up.

Anoth­er tech­nique could be to accept dona­tions and then give them to a con­nect­ed super PAC. Such a trans­fer may not be con­sid­ered a direct polit­i­cal expen­di­ture, allow­ing the non­prof­it to avoid dis­clos­ing its financiers.

It is unclear what will ulti­mate­ly be per­mit­ted. The Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion must now write a new rule, which will take at least sev­er­al months. With a bare-min­i­mum quo­rum, the FEC fre­quent­ly dead­locks, which may lead to fur­ther delays in craft­ing the rule.

Still, some groups have begun shift­ing more activ­i­ty to allied super PACs in antic­i­pa­tion of the rul­ing. Oth­ers are sug­gest­ing that donors give instead to an affil­i­at­ed super PAC so that there is less con­fu­sion about the rules, even though it means their names will be pub­licly dis­closed.

Donors are start­ing to ask how close­ly the pub­lic will fol­low their con­tri­bu­tions and how often super PACs will be report­ing their names, accord­ing to one GOP strate­gist who rais­es mon­ey for non­prof­its and super PACs, and request­ed anonymi­ty to speak about pri­vate donor con­ver­sa­tions.

Some non­prof­its expect that they will still be able to raise mon­ey for cer­tain non­po­lit­i­cal pur­pos­es — such as edu­ca­tion pro­grams — with­out dis­clos­ing donor iden­ti­ties, while sep­a­rate­ly car­ry­ing out polit­i­cal adver­tis­ing cam­paigns.

But Wertheimer said such a strat­e­gy could push the enve­lope on what a “polit­i­cal pur­pose” is.

Sim­i­lar­ly, some groups may begin using donors’ mon­ey for ads that do not specif­i­cal­ly call for the elec­tion or defeat of a can­di­date — which trig­gers dis­clo­sure — but come as close to it as pos­si­ble by attack­ing a candidate’s stance on a par­tic­u­lar issue, or by urg­ing vot­ers to call law­mak­ers to tell them they sup­port or oppose their posi­tion on an issue.

...

———-

“Polit­i­cal non­prof­its seek answers after court deci­sion tar­get­ing ‘dark mon­ey’” by Michelle Ye Hee Lee; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 09/21/2018

“As polit­i­cal­ly active non­prof­its scram­ble to fig­ure out the impli­ca­tions of a recent court deci­sion requir­ing them to dis­close some of their donors, experts said one thing is clear: There will be ways around the new rules.”

We don’t know what the new dis­clo­sure rules are ulti­mate­ly going to be as a result of this Supreme Court rul­ing. But we can be con­fi­dent that there’s going to be ways around the new rules. That’s the state of Amer­i­ca’s cam­paign finance night­mare. Even when there’s a big win it’s still large­ly a sym­bol­ic win until more big wins are accrued.

As we saw above, there’s the obvi­ous tech­nique of donat­ing to a mid­dle-man 501©(4) which will, in turn, make the actu­al dona­tion to anoth­er 501(c)(4) for the pur­pose of polit­i­cal activ­i­ties. But anoth­er approach involves using shell cor­po­ra­tions as the mid­dle-man. Specif­i­cal­ly, lim­it­ed lia­bil­i­ty cor­po­ra­tions that have the ben­e­fit of lim­it­ing knowl­edge of who is behind them:

...
“The bot­tom line is, we do not know yet how much dis­clo­sure we’re going to get,” said Fred Wertheimer, pres­i­dent of Democ­ra­cy 21, a group that advo­cates for reduc­ing the role of big mon­ey in pol­i­tics. “What we know here is that this is a break­through deci­sion, because the court clear­ly rec­og­nized that Con­gress want­ed the donors dis­closed who were fund­ing elec­tion activ­i­ties. But we are going to have a ways to go.”

In the absence of new reg­u­la­tion, non­prof­it groups are left in a gray area, which could lead to new meth­ods of avoid­ing dis­clo­sure and main­tain­ing donor pri­va­cy, lawyers and advo­cates said.

One way groups could avoid dis­clo­sure is by hav­ing their donors give mon­ey through lim­it­ed lia­bil­i­ty com­pa­nies, or LLCs. It is almost impos­si­ble to fig­ure out who finances LLCs or who set them up.

Anoth­er tech­nique could be to accept dona­tions and then give them to a con­nect­ed super PAC. Such a trans­fer may not be con­sid­ered a direct polit­i­cal expen­di­ture, allow­ing the non­prof­it to avoid dis­clos­ing its financiers.
...

The oth­er obvi­ous tech­nique for get­ting around the new rules is for the 501(c)(4) to avoid hav­ing its polit­i­cal activ­i­ty explic­it­ly advo­cate for or against a par­tic­u­lar can­di­date. A tac­tic of refram­ing polit­i­cal ads tar­get­ing par­tic­u­lar can­di­dates in the form of ads sup­port­ing or oppos­ing a pol­i­cy that can be effec­tive­ly asso­ci­at­ed with those can­di­dates. That’s a gim­mick that could eas­i­ly be employed to get around dis­clo­sure rules as long as the rule that dis­clo­sure only needs to be done in the case of ads that explic­it­ly advo­cate for or against a can­di­date remain in place:

...
Some non­prof­its expect that they will still be able to raise mon­ey for cer­tain non­po­lit­i­cal pur­pos­es — such as edu­ca­tion pro­grams — with­out dis­clos­ing donor iden­ti­ties, while sep­a­rate­ly car­ry­ing out polit­i­cal adver­tis­ing cam­paigns.

But Wertheimer said such a strat­e­gy could push the enve­lope on what a “polit­i­cal pur­pose” is.

Sim­i­lar­ly, some groups may begin using donors’ mon­ey for ads that do not specif­i­cal­ly call for the elec­tion or defeat of a can­di­date — which trig­gers dis­clo­sure — but come as close to it as pos­si­ble by attack­ing a candidate’s stance on a par­tic­u­lar issue, or by urg­ing vot­ers to call law­mak­ers to tell them they sup­port or oppose their posi­tion on an issue.
...

So going for­ward in Amer­i­ca, when you see an ads say­ing “call your rep­re­sen­ta­tive and tell them you’re upset about [insert issue here]”, that’s prob­a­bly going to be an ad from a 501(c)(4) try­ing to skirt these new dis­clo­sure rules.

But at this point we still don’t know what those new rules will be. And as the 3–3 FEC dead­lock in 2015 over this CREW vs Cross­roads com­plaint reminds us, it’s entire­ly pos­si­ble we’re going to see more dead­locks on the cre­ation of new dis­clo­sure rules:

...
It is unclear what will ulti­mate­ly be per­mit­ted. The Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion must now write a new rule, which will take at least sev­er­al months. With a bare-min­i­mum quo­rum, the FEC fre­quent­ly dead­locks, which may lead to fur­ther delays in craft­ing the rule.
...

So we don’t know what the new FEC rules are going to be and we don’t know when the FEC will issue them. But it’s going to hap­pen at some point. And 501(c)(4)s are going to find a way around it.

And as the his­to­ry of AFF reveals, there’s going to be min­i­mum changes need­ed to the exist­ing pro­ce­dures to get around new rules for enti­ties like the Koch net­work or Karl Rove’s net­work. Because they’re already oper­at­ing with webs of 501(c)(4)s all donat­ing to each oth­er in a man­ner clear­ly intend­ed to obscure their activ­i­ties. These net­works are already set up to allow each orga­ni­za­tion in the net­work to act as a mid­dle-man between oth­er enti­ties in the net­work. And they’re already cre­at­ing tem­po­rary ‘dis­re­gard­ed enti­ties’ of sub-units oper­at­ing under dif­fer­ent names that are tem­porar­i­ly formed, used for a while, and thrown away. As we saw with TC 4 and CPPR above, incor­rect IRS fil­ings that are only belat­ed updat­ed can also be used to obscure the mon­ey trail. The infra­struc­ture for evad­ing mean­ing­ful dis­clo­sure is already a well oiled machine.

Also recall how AFF ads an extra lay­er of pro­tec­tion for its donors sim­ply be being a mer­ce­nary ‘social wel­fare’ out­fit with lots of dif­fer­ent clients. Includ­ing cor­po­rate clients. If an orga­ni­za­tion is exclu­sive­ly financed by the Koch net­work or Kark Rove’s net­work, sim­ply nam­ing that orga­ni­za­tion as the donor more or less reveals who is behind it. But if AFF is list­ed as the donor for a polit­i­cal ad we don’t real­ly know which of AFF’s clients ulti­mate­ly paid for it. Maybe it was Cross­roads GPS. Maybe a politi­cian like Mar­co Rubio. Or per­haps the DCI Group hired AFF on behalf of a cor­po­rate client. Or a for­eign gov­ern­ment (like the Burmese Jun­ta). AFF has a lot of pay­mas­ters and that fea­ture actu­al­ly helps it con­duct its work because a big part of AFF’s work is doing things in secret.

And if it turns out that the Koch net­work and Rove net­work prove to be resis­tant to new dis­clo­sure rules, it seems rea­son­able to assume that every­one is going to start emu­lat­ing that mod­el to the extent they can. Small donors that go over the $200 thresh­old will be the most like­ly to be dis­closed. But the big donors will just set up lots of dum­my mid­dle-men orga­ni­za­tions and LLCs and do what the GOP mega-donors are already doing. And if that hap­pens and there’s an explo­sion of new net­works of sham ‘social wel­fare’ enti­ties like AFF to get around new dis­clo­sure requires, we can be sure that AFF will prob­a­bly par­tic­i­pate in those new net­works to help mud­dy the paper trail waters ever more. A galaxy of sham ‘social wel­fare’ orga­ni­za­tions and LLCs that all receive mon­ey and effec­tive­ly laun­der away the iden­ti­ty of the orig­i­nal donor by pass­ing it along through the net­work. That’s prob­a­bly what we have to look for­ward to as a con­se­quence of new dis­clo­sure require­ments. Which is not to say that this cam­paign finance reform isn’t a net pos­i­tive. It’s an impor­tant step. But just a step and the peo­ple pour­ing dark mon­ey into pol­i­tics are going to respond to those steps with steps of their own.

The Oth­er Recent Big Change to Cam­paign Finance Laws: Trump’s IRS Makes a ‘See No Tax-Frauds, Hear No Tax-Frauds, Audit No Tax-Frauds’ Rule Change

So while we should indeed applaud this recent change in US cam­paign finance laws, it’s impor­tant to keep in mind that the US has been increas­ing­ly erod­ing its cam­paign finance laws for decades and it’s going to prob­a­bly take decades to real­ly fix it. Sad­ly, a lot of steps in the right direc­tion are going to be required.

Some of those future steps in the right direc­tion will have to come from the courts. Some from law­mak­ers. And some from the reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies that enforce cam­paign finance laws. And as the fol­low­ing arti­cle from July of this year makes clear, some of those future steps in the right direc­tion are going to have cor­rect future steps in the wrong direc­tion. Because, back in July, the IRS took a BIG step in the wrong direc­tion when it ruled that 501(c)(4)s no longer need to even report to the IRS the names and address­es of major donors. Up until this deci­sion, the IRS required all non­prof­its, includ­ing 501(c)(4)s, to report the IRS the names and address­es of each major donor and the dol­lar amounts con­tributed that year. Start­ing next year, non­prof­its will no longer have that report­ing require­ment to the IRS.

What was the IRS’s jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for this move? In part, they argued that enforce­ment of non­prof­it sta­tus is the domain of the FEC and Trea­sury Depart­ment. Well, the IRS has the option of over­rid­ing this report­ing require­ment in cer­tain cas­es when it deter­mines that the infor­ma­tion is “not nec­es­sary for the effi­cient admin­is­tra­tion of the inter­nal rev­enue laws.” So they sim­ply declared that this infor­ma­tion isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly in all cas­es. Accord­ing to Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Steve Mnuchin, “The IRS sim­ply does not need tax returns with donor names and address­es to do its job in this area.”

And what was the IRS’s jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for deter­min­ing that this infor­ma­tion is no longer nec­es­sary to do its job? That’s where things get extra sad. First, the IRS point­ed out that the major donors them­selves are no longer required to report on their own tax return their non­prof­it dona­tions thanks to a 2015 change to the tax code that exempt­ed many gifts or con­tri­bu­tions to non­prof­its from tax­a­tion. This is in ref­er­ence to a tax code change that was slipped into the omnibus spend­ing bill at the end of 2015. Omnibus bills are noto­ri­ous for hav­ing all sorts of high­ly ques­tion­able pro­vi­sions because it’s of those areas where both par­ties have to come to an agree­ment or the gov­ern­ment shuts down. And in Decem­ber of 2015, a gov­ern­ment shut­down was indeed loom­ing. So the GOP suc­cess­ful­ly lever­aged the out­rage over the fake ‘IRS was unfair­ly tar­get­ing con­ser­v­a­tive orga­ni­za­tions apply­ing for 501(c)(4) sta­tus’ scan­dal that erupt­ed in 2013 and used that as a rea­son to for­mal­ly make dona­tions to 501(c)(4)s tax deductible. Yep, the fake ‘IRS tar­get­ed con­ser­v­a­tives’ scan­dal of 2013 was used to make all those dona­tions to the Koch net­work of fake ‘social wel­fare’ groups tax deductible in 2015.

But the fake ‘IRS is tar­get­ing con­ser­v­a­tives’ scan­dal was­n’t the only fake scan­dal used to jus­ti­fy expempt­ing dona­tions to 501(c)(4)s from the gift tax. Tech­ni­cal­ly, when Con­gress made this change to the gift tax in the tax code in 2015 it real­ly just for­mal­ized a long-time unof­fi­cial IRS prac­tice. Until that 2015 change, the actu­al tax code required 35 per­cent gift tax­es to be paid on dona­tions to 501(c)(4)s over $13,000 annu­al­ly. Gifts to oth­er types of non­prof­its — like char­i­ties or gifts to 527 polit­i­cal action com­mit­tees — aren’t sub­ject to the gift tax. But the IRS did rule in the 1980’s that gifts to 501(c0(4) non­prof­its are sub­ject to the gift tax. How­ev­er, the IRS nev­er con­sis­tent­ly enforced the gift tax on 501(c)(4)s and many wealthy donors sim­ply left it off of their tax returns and did­n’t pay the gift tax. So the gift tax offi­cial­ly applied to 501(c)(4) dona­tions but unof­fi­cial­ly did­n’t real­ly apply.

That lack of gift tax enforce­ment on dona­tions to 501(c)(4)s briefly changed in 2011, the year fol­low­ing Cit­i­zens Unit­ed, when the IRS decid­ed to audit five big donors going back to their 2008 dona­tions to see if they were indeed pay­ing the gift tax.

This move by the IRS in 2011 infu­ri­at­ed the Repub­li­cans in Con­gress and the Repub­li­can chair­man of the House ways and means com­mit­tee sent a let­ter to then-IRS com­mis­sion­er Doug Shul­man demand­ing the names and titles of IRS staffers involved in the gift tax probe, and the cri­te­ria used to pick which donors to scru­ti­nize. Much like with the ‘IRS tar­get­ed con­ser­v­a­tives’ fake scan­dal, the Repub­li­cans por­trayed this as a par­ti­san attack by the IRS on con­ser­v­a­tive mega-donors and demand­ed that the IRS halt the audits. The IRS com­plied with those demands. The IRS nev­er released the names of those five mega-donors they decid­ed to audit, but it’s worth not­ing that both David Koch and George Soros (a major con­trib­u­tor to left-wing groups) refused to com­ment on whether or not they paid the gift tax on their 501(c)(4) dona­tions and whether they were among the five fac­ing this IRS audit. In oth­er words, it does­n’t look like the five mega donors select­ed by the IRS for this audit were all con­ser­v­a­tive mega donors which is unfor­tu­nate­ly impor­tant point out giv­en the right-wing strat­e­gy of demand­ing pol­i­cy changes and new laws by por­tray­ing the IRS as par­ti­san.

So in addi­tion to the whipped up out­rage over the ‘IRS tar­get­ing con­ser­v­a­tives’ that whole episode from 2011 was also part of the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for remov­ing the gift tax for 501(c)(4)s when Repub­li­can law­mak­ers slipped the pro­vi­sion into the 2015 omnibus bill. Flash for­ward to 2018 and we find the IRS cit­ing the 2015 lift­ing of the gift tax on dona­tions to 501(c)(4)s as one of the pri­ma­ry rea­sons for the IRS lift­ing the require­ment that 501(c)(4) report the names or their donors IRS. Yep, the IRS used the fact that the givers of dona­tions no longer need to report their dona­tions as an excuse for no longer requir­ing the receivers of those dona­tions to report too.

But as bad as this move by the IRS sounds, it’s actu­al­ly worse. Worse in the sense that it does­n’t appear to real­ly mat­ter that the IRS just removed the donor report­ing require­ments. That’s the assess­ment by a num­ber of cam­paign finance experts in the fol­low­ing ProP­ub­lic arti­cle.

Why don’t experts think it will mat­ter that the IRS is lim­it­ing its access to exact­ly the kind of infor­ma­tion it needs to audit 501(c)(4)s and ensure they’re actu­al­ly act­ing as ‘social wel­fare’ orga­ni­za­tions? Because the IRS was almost nev­er audit­ing 501(c)(4)s any­way, so access to donor infor­ma­tion is already moot:

ProP­ub­li­ca

Why the IRS’ Recent Dark Mon­ey Deci­sion May Be Less Dire Than It Seems
With the tax agency already “tooth­less” on polit­i­cal cas­es, how much dif­fer­ence does it make if it’s now “deaf and blind,” too?

by Ian Mac­Dougall
July 25, 2018 1:20 p.m. EDT

Start­ing next year, the Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice will no longer col­lect the names of major donors to thou­sands of non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tions, from the Nation­al Rifle Asso­ci­a­tion to the Amer­i­can Civ­il Lib­er­ties Union to the AARP. Demo­c­ra­t­ic mem­bers of Con­gress and crit­ics of mon­ey in pol­i­tics blast­ed the move, announced last week by the Trea­sury Depart­ment, the IRS’ par­ent agency. The Democ­rats claim the new pol­i­cy will expand the flow of so-called dark mon­ey — con­tri­bu­tions from undis­closed donors used to fund elec­tion activ­i­ties — in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. For their part, Repub­li­cans and con­ser­v­a­tive groups praised the deci­sion as a much-need­ed step to avoid chill­ing the First Amend­ment rights of pri­vate cit­i­zens.

The Supreme Court’s deci­sion in Cit­i­zens Unit­ed unleashed these groups, typ­i­cal­ly orga­nized as 501(c)(4) non­prof­its, to spend unlim­it­ed amounts of mon­ey on cam­paign ads. Their role in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics has grown increas­ing­ly cen­tral. In the­o­ry, the new IRS pol­i­cy could have a sig­nif­i­cant impact on the tax agency’s abil­i­ty to detect improp­er con­tri­bu­tions — and there­by curb ille­gal cam­paign spend­ing.

But in prac­tice, even crit­ics acknowl­edge that the IRS very rarely audits non­prof­its. In oth­er words, the IRS will no longer receive infor­ma­tion that it was seem­ing­ly mak­ing lit­tle use of. And the infor­ma­tion in ques­tion was already shield­ed from the public’s view.

Up to now, IRS reg­u­la­tions have required all types of non­prof­its to report the names and address­es of each major donor, as well as the dol­lar amount the donor con­tributed that year, on their tax returns. But the IRS can over­ride this report­ing require­ment in cer­tain cas­es when it finds that the infor­ma­tion is “not nec­es­sary for the effi­cient admin­is­tra­tion of the inter­nal rev­enue laws.”

That’s what the IRS did last week — reliev­ing most non­prof­its, exclud­ing 501(c)(3) char­i­ties and foun­da­tions, of the need to report the names and address­es of major donors. “The IRS sim­ply does not need tax returns with donor names and address­es to do its job in this area,” Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Steven Mnuchin said in a press release.

The Trea­sury Depart­ment point­ed to 2015 changes to the tax code that exempt­ed from tax­a­tion many gifts or con­tri­bu­tions to non­prof­its. With­out the need to ensure that donors were pay­ing tax­es on their con­tri­bu­tions, the depart­ment rea­soned, there was no need for the iden­ti­ties of the donors.

Crit­ics of the move, how­ev­er, ques­tion the sin­cer­i­ty of that ratio­nale. They note that a num­ber of large­ly con­ser­v­a­tive orga­ni­za­tions, like those affil­i­at­ed with bil­lion­aire broth­ers Charles and David Koch, have lob­bied Con­gress and the Trump admin­is­tra­tion to elim­i­nate this report­ing require­ment since 2017. Treasury’s “nar­row argu­ment that the gift tax has been elim­i­nat­ed so they don’t need this for the spe­cif­ic pur­pose of enforc­ing tax law — giv­en the tim­ing, that’s prob­lem­at­ic,” said Bren­dan Fis­ch­er of the watch­dog group Cam­paign Legal Cen­ter.

The Trea­sury also cit­ed a more par­ti­san rea­son for the deci­sion: “Con­ser­v­a­tive tax-exempt groups were dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly impact­ed by improp­er screen­ing in the pre­vi­ous Admin­is­tra­tion.” Alle­ga­tions dur­ing the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion that IRS offi­cials had sub­ject­ed Tea Par­ty groups seek­ing tax-exempt sta­tus to improp­er scruti­ny touched off a polit­i­cal firestorm that led sev­er­al senior IRS offi­cials to resign.

But a Trea­sury Depart­ment inspec­tor gen­er­al report ulti­mate­ly found that both con­ser­v­a­tive and lib­er­al groups had been sub­ject to such IRS scruti­ny and that it had occurred dur­ing both the Bush and Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tions.

It remains unclear the extent to which the IRS’ deci­sion will reduce over­sight of elec­tion spend­ing. As ProP­ub­li­ca and oth­ers have doc­u­ment­ed, non­prof­its have become a com­mon vehi­cle for elec­tion spend­ing while shield­ing their donors from pub­lic view.

What the IRS makes pub­lic about donors to non­prof­its, includ­ing those involved in polit­i­cal activ­i­ties, how­ev­er, has always been fair­ly lim­it­ed. The pub­lic sees only the num­ber of major con­trib­u­tors and how much each gave in a year. The iden­ti­ties of the donors are redact­ed. Still, jour­nal­ists and groups like the Cen­ter for Respon­sive Pol­i­tics have used the spe­cif­ic quan­ti­ties con­tributed by indi­vid­ual donors — even with­out know­ing who the donor is — to guide research on mon­ey in pol­i­tics.

Under the new IRS pol­i­cy, the pub­lic will still have access to this infor­ma­tion, accord­ing to the Trea­sury Depart­ment. “The same infor­ma­tion about tax-exempt orga­ni­za­tions that was pre­vi­ous­ly avail­able to the pub­lic will con­tin­ue to be avail­able,” Mnuchin said.

Crit­ics of the new pol­i­cy have also argued that the IRS deci­sion will lim­it the agency’s abil­i­ty to detect ille­gal polit­i­cal con­tri­bu­tions by for­eign nation­als. It’s legal for for­eign nation­als to donate to non­prof­its, though fed­er­al elec­tion law bars them from spend­ing mon­ey to influ­ence Amer­i­can elec­tions. Press reports sug­gest fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tors are prob­ing whether Russ­ian nation­als fun­neled cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions through the NRA. (The NRA has denied the alle­ga­tion.)

These crit­ics note that, even though staffing and bud­get short­falls have led the IRS to do lit­tle polic­ing of non­prof­it con­tri­bu­tions, that doesn’t excuse fur­ther ham­per­ing its poten­tial to do so. “The IRS was already a tooth­less watch­dog,” said Robert Maguire, who inves­ti­gates polit­i­cal­ly active non­prof­it groups at the Cen­ter for Respon­sive Pol­i­tics. “Now it will also become a deaf and blind watch­dog.”

Sup­port­ers of the new pol­i­cy counter that it’s not the IRS’ job to enforce cam­paign finance laws and that there are lim­its on shar­ing tax infor­ma­tion with gov­ern­ment agen­cies respon­si­ble for enforc­ing those laws, the Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion and the Jus­tice Depart­ment. Where there is sus­pi­cion of an improp­er dona­tion, they say, the IRS still has the abil­i­ty to inves­ti­gate by request­ing infor­ma­tion from the non­prof­it.

...

Still, the change means it’s one step more dif­fi­cult for the IRS to take action, in those rare cas­es when it’s inclined to do so.

———-

“Why the IRS’ Recent Dark Mon­ey Deci­sion May Be Less Dire Than It Seems” by Ian Mac­Dougall; ProP­ub­li­ca; 07/25/2018

Start­ing next year, the Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice will no longer col­lect the names of major donors to thou­sands of non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tions, from the Nation­al Rifle Asso­ci­a­tion to the Amer­i­can Civ­il Lib­er­ties Union to the AARP. Demo­c­ra­t­ic mem­bers of Con­gress and crit­ics of mon­ey in pol­i­tics blast­ed the move, announced last week by the Trea­sury Depart­ment, the IRS’ par­ent agency. The Democ­rats claim the new pol­i­cy will expand the flow of so-called dark mon­ey — con­tri­bu­tions from undis­closed donors used to fund elec­tion activ­i­ties — in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. For their part, Repub­li­cans and con­ser­v­a­tive groups praised the deci­sion as a much-need­ed step to avoid chill­ing the First Amend­ment rights of pri­vate cit­i­zens.”

It’s the end of an IRS era! Sort of: Start­ing in 2019, the IRS will no longer even both­er col­lect­ing the names of major donors to non­prof­its. Sure, this infor­ma­tion was already blocked from the pub­lic, but now it’s going to be blocked from the IRS too for all non­prof­its. And that includes 501(c)(4) ‘non­prof­its’ like Karl Rove’s Cross­roads GPS or mer­ce­nary ‘non­prof­its’ like AFF that will per­form ‘social wel­fare’ polit­i­cal ser­vices to the high­est right-wing bid­der. The IRS offi­cial­ly no longer cares about know­ing who is mak­ing large dona­tions to these kinds of enti­ties. All pre­tense has been dropped.

Sad­ly, as the var­i­ous cam­paign finance experts point­ed out, the IRS has unof­fi­cial­ly not cared about know­ing who is donat­ing to these enti­ties for years:

...
The Supreme Court’s deci­sion in Cit­i­zens Unit­ed unleashed these groups, typ­i­cal­ly orga­nized as 501(c)(4) non­prof­its, to spend unlim­it­ed amounts of mon­ey on cam­paign ads. Their role in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics has grown increas­ing­ly cen­tral. In the­o­ry, the new IRS pol­i­cy could have a sig­nif­i­cant impact on the tax agency’s abil­i­ty to detect improp­er con­tri­bu­tions — and there­by curb ille­gal cam­paign spend­ing.

But in prac­tice, even crit­ics acknowl­edge that the IRS very rarely audits non­prof­its. In oth­er words, the IRS will no longer receive infor­ma­tion that it was seem­ing­ly mak­ing lit­tle use of. And the infor­ma­tion in ques­tion was already shield­ed from the public’s view.
...

Still, we are assured that the IRS will still be able to get all of that donor infor­ma­tion on the off chance that the IRS actu­al­ly audits a non­prof­it. Which may be be true, but that’s also assum­ing that the IRS nev­er needs access to donor ids in the first place in order to deter­mine whether or not an audit is required. Like keep­ing an eye out for for­eign dona­tions to polit­i­cal­ly active 501(c)(4)s. Plus, time has a way of mak­ing doc­u­ments dis­ap­pear:

...
Sup­port­ers of the new pol­i­cy counter that it’s not the IRS’ job to enforce cam­paign finance laws and that there are lim­its on shar­ing tax infor­ma­tion with gov­ern­ment agen­cies respon­si­ble for enforc­ing those laws, the Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion and the Jus­tice Depart­ment. Where there is sus­pi­cion of an improp­er dona­tion, they say, the IRS still has the abil­i­ty to inves­ti­gate by request­ing infor­ma­tion from the non­prof­it.

...

Still, the change means it’s one step more dif­fi­cult for the IRS to take action, in those rare cas­es when it’s inclined to do so.

...

Crit­ics of the new pol­i­cy have also argued that the IRS deci­sion will lim­it the agency’s abil­i­ty to detect ille­gal polit­i­cal con­tri­bu­tions by for­eign nation­als. It’s legal for for­eign nation­als to donate to non­prof­its, though fed­er­al elec­tion law bars them from spend­ing mon­ey to influ­ence Amer­i­can elec­tions. Press reports sug­gest fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tors are prob­ing whether Russ­ian nation­als fun­neled cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions through the NRA. (The NRA has denied the alle­ga­tion.)

These crit­ics note that, even though staffing and bud­get short­falls have led the IRS to do lit­tle polic­ing of non­prof­it con­tri­bu­tions, that doesn’t excuse fur­ther ham­per­ing its poten­tial to do so. “The IRS was already a tooth­less watch­dog,” said Robert Maguire, who inves­ti­gates polit­i­cal­ly active non­prof­it groups at the Cen­ter for Respon­sive Pol­i­tics. “Now it will also become a deaf and blind watch­dog.”
...

But this move by the IRS isn’t just cyn­i­cal­ly jus­ti­fied by point­ing out that the IRS almost nev­er audits non­prof­its any­way, includ­ing ‘non­prof­its’ like AFF or Cross­roads GPS. It was also cyn­i­cal­ly jus­ti­fied by point­ing to the 2015 change to the tax laws snuck into the omnibus bill that made dona­tions to 501(c)(4)s no longer sub­ject to the gift tax. Again, it’s an exam­ple of how the weak­en­ing of cam­paign finance laws are used to jus­ti­fy fur­ther weak­en­ing cam­paign finance laws:

...
The Trea­sury Depart­ment point­ed to 2015 changes to the tax code that exempt­ed from tax­a­tion many gifts or con­tri­bu­tions to non­prof­its. With­out the need to ensure that donors were pay­ing tax­es on their con­tri­bu­tions, the depart­ment rea­soned, there was no need for the iden­ti­ties of the donors.

Crit­ics of the move, how­ev­er, ques­tion the sin­cer­i­ty of that ratio­nale. They note that a num­ber of large­ly con­ser­v­a­tive orga­ni­za­tions, like those affil­i­at­ed with bil­lion­aire broth­ers Charles and David Koch, have lob­bied Con­gress and the Trump admin­is­tra­tion to elim­i­nate this report­ing require­ment since 2017. Treasury’s “nar­row argu­ment that the gift tax has been elim­i­nat­ed so they don’t need this for the spe­cif­ic pur­pose of enforc­ing tax law — giv­en the tim­ing, that’s prob­lem­at­ic,” said Bren­dan Fis­ch­er of the watch­dog group Cam­paign Legal Cen­ter.
...

The Trea­sury Depart­ment went on to cite the faux ‘IRS tar­get­ing con­ser­v­a­tive 501(c)(4)s’ scan­dal of 2013, high­light­ing how whipped up out­rage and fake scan­dals can con­tin­ue to inflict dam­age years after they take place:

...
The Trea­sury also cit­ed a more par­ti­san rea­son for the deci­sion: “Con­ser­v­a­tive tax-exempt groups were dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly impact­ed by improp­er screen­ing in the pre­vi­ous Admin­is­tra­tion.” Alle­ga­tions dur­ing the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion that IRS offi­cials had sub­ject­ed Tea Par­ty groups seek­ing tax-exempt sta­tus to improp­er scruti­ny touched off a polit­i­cal firestorm that led sev­er­al senior IRS offi­cials to resign.

But a Trea­sury Depart­ment inspec­tor gen­er­al report ulti­mate­ly found that both con­ser­v­a­tive and lib­er­al groups had been sub­ject to such IRS scruti­ny and that it had occurred dur­ing both the Bush and Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tions.
...

And let’s not for­get that elim­i­nat­ing donor infor­ma­tion makes is sub­stan­tial­ly hard­er to deter­mine if there’s a mon­ey laun­der­ing net­work of ‘dark mon­ey mail­box­es’ — like TC4 and CPPR in the Koch net­works — giv­ing dona­tions to each oth­er ‘social wel­fare’ enti­ties like AFF in order to effec­tive­ly raise the amount they spend on polit­i­cal activ­i­ties well above the 501(c)(4) 50 per­cent cap on polit­i­cal spend­ing. Sure, the IRS clear­ly was­n’t look­ing into that any­way, but it’s going to be a lot hard­er to inves­ti­gate such activ­i­ties if the IRS does decide to look into this at some point in the future.

Let’s also note for­get that the Supreme Court rul­ing this Sep­tem­ber that donors need to be pub­licly dis­closed only applies when teh 501(c)(4) is engaged in overt polit­i­cal attack ads that explic­it­ly advo­cate for or against a can­di­date. It does­n’t appear to apply to “issue ads”. So the con­tro­ver­sy over whether or not the def­i­n­i­tion of an issue ad should come down to the use of the FEC’s “mag­ic words” is going to be even more impor­tant going for­ward. The polit­i­cal make­up of the FEC board is also going to be more impor­tant.

The Future of the Amer­i­can Future Fund: More Use­ful Now Than Ever (Which is Prob­a­bly a Rea­son the Mur­der of Mol­lie Tib­betts Became a Non-Sto­ry)

But let’s also not for­get that, as we saw above, two months after the IRS declared that 501(c)(4)s no longer need to report the iden­ti­ties of major donors the Supreme Court rules that polit­i­cal­ly active 501(c)(4)s do need to pub­licly report the iden­ti­ties of donors who donat­ed more than $200 dol­lars for attack ad cam­paigns. So does the Supreme Court deci­sion forc­ing the dis­clo­sure of the major donors more or negate the IRS’s deci­sion to no longer col­lect that infor­ma­tion? At least when it comes to attack ads? After all, if 501(c)(4)s have to pub­licly dis­close donor iden­ti­ties for polit­i­cal 501(c)(4)s that makes that infor­ma­tion avail­able to IRS agents too.

Well, as we also saw above, the expec­ta­tion from cam­paign finance experts about the impact of that Supreme Court deci­sion is that big mon­ey donors like the Koch net­work will find ways around that new dis­clo­sure require­ment. And one of the like­ly tech­niques for get­ting around those new dis­clo­sure require­ments is the uti­liza­tion of net­works of 501(c)(4)s and LLCs act­ing as mid­dle-man orga­ni­za­tions sep­a­rat­ing the orig­i­nal donors from the final polit­i­cal ad expen­di­tures. Which, again, is exact­ly what the AFF is ide­al for, espe­cial­ly because its mer­ce­nary nature results in numer­ous dif­fer­ent clients. This peri­od fol­low­ing that Supreme Court deci­sion is arguably the time when an orga­ni­za­tion like the AFF, with its long his­to­ry of dif­fer­ent clients, is one of the most use­ful polit­i­cal dark mon­ey enti­ties in exis­tence.

So, return­ing to the inter­est­ing ques­tion of how it was that the sto­ry of the mur­der of Mol­lie Tib­betts — a sto­ry the right-wing media com­plex and Repub­li­can Par­ty ini­tial­ly pounced on because almost per­fect­ly sit­u­at­ed to be used by the Repub­li­can Par­ty dur­ing a time when hys­te­ria of undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants is a key polit­i­cal cud­gel — just fell off the news radar two months before the mid-term elec­tions, it seems pret­ty obvi­ous that the sto­ry of AFF and the pro­found lessons that sto­ry has for the Amer­i­can pub­lic is a big rea­son the Repub­li­can Par­ty and right-wing media sud­den­ly dropped the sto­ry of Mol­lie’s mur­der. There are oth­er like­ly rea­sons Schlinger’s ties to the sto­ry were extreme­ly incon­vient for the Repub­li­can Par­ty’s plans to politi­cize Mol­lie’s mur­der. like the fact that Trump and the GOP qui­et­ly shelved the push for man­dat­ing E‑Verify for US employ­ers ear­li­er this year. But the sto­ry of AFF is sure­ly a sto­ry the Amer­i­ca’s right-wing bil­lion­aires would pre­fer not be told.

Sure, even if Schlinger was­n’t close­ly tied to AFF, the gen­er­al awk­ward­ness of hav­ing the mur­der­er be employed and housed by a top Repub­li­can fundrais­er would alone be awk­ward enough to prompt the Repub­li­can Par­ty and Pres­i­dent Trump to rapid­ly drop this sto­ry. But there’s no avoid­ing the fact that the hous­ing and employ­ing of undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants for years that Nicole Schlinger and her hus­band Eric Lang engaged in was exact­ly the kind of thing that will enrage a huge por­tion of the Amer­i­can elec­torate, espe­cial­ly Trump’s vot­ing base. So it was very pos­si­ble a lot of pub­lic atten­tion would have been paid to the his­to­ry of Nicole Schlinger and AFF if the GOP and Pres­i­dent Trump and the right-wing media com­plex had indeed con­tin­ued mak­ing Mol­lie’s mur­der a grue­some dai­ly talk­ing point. And it’s hard to imag­ine that the Repub­li­can par­ty’s mega-donors (the peo­ple who the par­ty actu­al­ly works for) weren’t per­turbed by the risk of the sto­ry of AFF becom­ing a pub­lic top­ic with its high­ly instruc­tive his­to­ry as a right-wing bil­lion­aire ‘social wel­fare’ polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion that cov­ers almost the full spec­trum of dark mon­ey activ­i­ty in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. The Repub­li­can Par­ty’s mega-donors were/are Amer­i­can Future Fund’s pri­ma­ry clients, after all.

So the GOP has decid­ed to deal with the emer­gence of sto­ry of AFF as pos­si­ble top­ic of pub­lic focus by get­ting very qui­et about it and any­thing asso­ci­at­ed with it. But what should the Amer­i­can pub­lic’s response be? Giv­en the Cit­i­zens Unit­ed rul­ing of 2010 there’s going to be a lim­it to what the pub­lic can do. Obvi­ous­ly, one of the first things the pub­lic should do is elect rep­re­sen­ta­tives (i.e. not Repub­li­cans) who will pass sen­si­ble cam­paign finance laws and con­firm Supreme Court jus­tices who won’t strike down those new laws. Anoth­er approach is to make it much hard for pri­mar­i­ly polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tions to get 501(c)(4) sta­tus in the first place. The lead­er­ship of the FEC and IRS will need to play a role in that. The ben­e­fits of pub­lic financ­ing of cam­paigns and spend­ing caps is anoth­er option that should clear­ly be exam­ined as a long-term post-Cit­i­zens Unit­ed goal.

But there’s one thing the Amer­i­ca pub­lic can do right now in response to dark mon­ey night­mare sit­u­a­tion in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics that does­n’t require any gov­ern­ment action: rec­og­nize that almost all of that dark mon­ey is being spent on some form of adver­tis­ing because pro­pa­gan­da works. That’s part of the solu­tion. Sim­ply rec­og­niz­ing that pro­pa­gan­da works. Pro­pa­gan­da in a vari­ety of forms work on you and every­one else. That’s why so much mon­ey is spent on adver­tis­ing. All adver­tis­ing. Not just polit­i­cal. Because we real­ly are sug­gestible crea­tures. And being aware of that vul­ner­a­bilty is the start­ing point of address­ing it.

The sto­ry of AFF is a sto­ry of the busi­ness of mod­ern pro­pa­gan­da. That’s the ulti­mate goal of all this dark mon­ey. Per­suad­ing peo­ple. Chang­ing minds. And because AFF’s sto­ry is specif­i­cal­ly a sto­ry of mod­ern right-wing pro­pa­gan­da, it’s a sto­ry of pro­pa­gan­da designed to per­suade peo­ple to vote against their best inter­est­ing and ped­dle right-wing mis­in­for­ma­tion. Don’t for­get that AFF and its DCI Group allied firm weren’t just known as Repub­li­can pub­lic rela­tions firms. They are also known as ped­dlers of dirty pol­i­tics and mis­in­for­ma­tion. So the sto­ry of AFF is real­ly a sto­ry of bad pro­pa­gan­da. There can be pos­i­tive pro­pa­gan­da, like pub­lic aware­ness cam­paigns that encour­age wear­ing your seat belt. One can eas­i­ly see the ‘social wel­fare’ that would come from a pro-seat belt adver­tis­ing cam­paign. It’s pos­i­tive pro­pa­gan­da. AFF and its 501(c)(4) peers in the Koch and Rove net­work aren’t putting out that kind of pos­i­tive pro­pa­gan­da. They’re pump­ing out right-wing bil­lion­aire pro­pa­gan­da. Which is almost always bad pro­pa­gan­da.

This is a sto­ry of bad right-wing bil­lion­aire pro­pa­gan­da. Which is trag­i­cal­ly the over­whelm­ing aspect of the over­all sto­ry of pro­pa­gan­da in Amer­i­ca today. Amer­i­cans live is a sea of pro­pa­gan­da. Much of it com­mer­cial pro­pa­gan­da like ads. Some gov­ern­men­tal or non­prof­it (where you’ll poten­tial­ly find real social wel­fare pos­i­tive pro­pa­gan­da). But a out­sized por­tion of the mod­ern Amer­i­can sea of pro­pa­gan­da is bad right-wing bil­lion­aire garbage pro­pa­gan­da. The kind that’s designed to inflame the pub­lic with sto­ries like out­rage over the mur­der of an Iowan col­lege stu­dent by an undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grant. Real­ly, real­ly bad pro­pa­gan­da.

And that’s part of how the trag­ic mur­der of Mol­lie Tib­betts became trag­i­cal­ly inter­twined with the world of dark mon­ey pol­i­tics the mod­ern down­fall of Amer­i­ca: the mur­der of Mol­lie was in the process of being turned into exact­ly the kind of bad right-wing pro­pa­gan­da that enti­ties like AFF spe­cial­ize in shov­ing at the Amer­i­can pub­lic in order to get them to vote for the politi­cians backed by the right-wing bil­lion­aires. The mur­der of Mol­lie was the process of being turned into a pro­pa­gan­da and the only thing that stopped it was the dis­cov­er of that mur­der­er’s long-time employ­er and houser was a key right-wing pro­pa­gan­da play­er.

So as the sto­ry of the inves­ti­ga­tion and pros­e­cu­tion of Mol­lie Tib­betts’s mur­der plays out, let’s hope the tan­gen­tial­ly con­nect­ed sto­ry of the vast right-wing bil­lion­aire fund­ed bad pro­pa­gan­da net­work that was in the mid­dle of pro­pa­gan­diz­ing Mol­lie’s mur­der before it became tan­gen­tial­ly con­nect­ed to the mur­der also gets told. It real­ly is the sto­ry of the down­fall of Amer­i­ca. The kind of down­fall that def­i­nite­ly can’t be blamed on ille­gal immi­grants.

Discussion

36 comments for “How the Murder of Mollie Tibbetts Shined a Light On the GOP’s Dark Money Propaganda Machine”

  1. There appears to be a new offi­cial tool in the Repub­li­can Par­ty’s polit­i­cal dirty tricks toolk­it: lame duck ses­sion pow­er-grabs right after an elec­tion where the Repub­li­can los­es a key state office like gov­er­nor or attor­ney gen­er­al.

    The dirty trick is very straight for­ward: pass a bunch of laws very quick­ly dur­ing the lame duck ses­sion that strips the incom­ing demo­c­rat of exist­ing pow­ers. This tool is, of course, only an option in states where the GOP con­trols the state leg­is­la­ture and gov­er­nor’s office. But in states across the US where the GOP’s abil­i­ty to pass new leg­is­la­tion is unchecked the GOP does indeed appear to be will­ing to use that option of just pass­ing laws to strip pow­ers from incom­ing Democ­rats. That the GOP has found a new low is no longer remark­able, although this is a remark­able low new low.

    We got a pre­view of this tac­tic after the 2016 elec­tions when the GOP state leg­is­la­ture stripped incom­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nor Roy Coop­er of pow­ers and now the GOP is try­ing it again in Wis­con­sin fol­low­ing Scott Walk­er’s loss. These bla­tant pow­er grabs are iron­i­cal­ly framed by the GOP as a ‘improv­ing checks and bal­ances’. It’s a pow­er grab that dou­bles as a pow­er cling­ing lunge, mak­ing it both anti-Demo­c­ra­t­ic and pro­found­ly anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic.

    And it’s not lim­it­ed to Wis­con­sin and North Car­oli­na. Michi­gan’s GOP intro­duced bills last week to lim­it the pow­ers of the incom­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nor, attor­ney gen­er­al, and sec­re­tary of state. Michi­gan’s GOP leg­is­la­ture is even scal­ing back a bal­lot ini­tia­tives on sick pay Michi­gan vot­ers just passed in the 2018 elec­tions dur­ing the lame duck ses­sion. Again, it’s a pro­found­ly anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic new low for the GOP.

    It’s also high­ly emblem­at­ic of the fact that the GOP real­ly is just the play thing of right-wing bil­lion­aires in the mod­ern era. What­ev­er spir­it of democ­ra­cy it may have had in the past was sold a long time ago. It’s a mer­ce­nary par­ty right now and its bil­lion­aire pay­mas­ters want the GOP to do what­ev­er it takes to cling to pow­er no mat­ter how ridicu­lous­ly spite­ful and unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic it looks.

    So it’s urgent­ly impor­tant to note that the GOP-con­trolled Michi­gan Sen­ate passed on Thurs­day that would make it a crime for pub­lic offi­cials to demand that non­prof­its, includ­ing 501(c)(4)s, dis­close their donors to the pub­lic or the gov­ern­ment. Unless there’s a war­rant and a gov­ern­ment agency can demon­strate “a com­pelling need” by pro­vid­ing clear and con­vinc­ing evi­dence to the court.

    The Michi­gan GOP’s Sen­ate bill also bans state agen­cies from requir­ing gov­ern­ment con­trac­tors to dis­close con­tri­bu­tions they have made to non­prof­its. And that, of course, includes 501(c)(4) ‘non­prof­its’ that are pure­ly polit­i­cal enti­ties. So state con­trac­tors pay­ing off state politi­cians is about to get a lot eas­i­er in Michi­gan. Gov­ern­ment offi­cials who vio­late the rules would poten­tial­ly face impris­on­ment for up to 90 days and/or a fine.

    Yep, the GOP wants to make it a crime pun­ish­able with jail time if Michi­gan state gov­ern­ment employ­ees ever requests infor­ma­tion about non­prof­it donor iden­ti­ties unless they can prove “a com­pelling need” to courts. Mak­ing it effec­tive­ly impos­si­ble for Michi­gan to inves­ti­gate the use of char­i­ties as front groups. And since the GOP clear­ly does the bid­ding for its right-wing bil­lion­aire mega-donors who make copi­ous use of 501(c)(4) ‘social wel­fare’ enti­ties for dark mon­ey pol­i­tics, it seems like a pret­ty rea­son­able assump­tion that the Michi­gan GOP is doing a lame duck pow­er grab to make it eas­i­er for those bil­lion­aires to increase their grip on pow­er. That’s the log­i­cal con­se­quence of mak­ing the dark mon­ey sys­tem dark­er. The sys­tem becomes ever more behold­en to the dark mon­ey mas­ters.

    The restric­tion on state offi­cials demand­ing donor iden­ti­ties also means it’s less con­se­quen­tial for right-wing bil­lion­aires if their 501(c)(4)s get in trou­ble. And that means we should expect some seri­ous­ly sleazy right-wing 501(c)(4) activ­i­ty com­ing up in Michi­gan’s polit­i­cal scene, even by GOP stan­dards.

    It has yet to pass the Michi­gan House, but that vote is sched­uled for Tues­day, so it’s pre­sum­ably on the verge of being passed by the House since the GOP con­trols it. Then out­go­ing gov­er­nor Rick Sny­der will make it law. It appears to be a fore­gone con­clu­sion that this is going to hap­pen because the GOP is oper­at­ing super-extra shame­less mode. Elec­tions are a cou­ple years away so they pre­sum­ably assume vot­ers will for­get.

    Oh, and it turns out the incom­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic sec­re­tary of state ran on a plat­form of greater trans­paren­cy of polit­i­cal mon­ey in Michi­gan. Sur­prise!:

    Sludge

    Dark­er Mon­ey: Michi­gan Sen­ate Pass­es Bill Mak­ing Dark Mon­ey Dis­clo­sure a Crime

    The bill comes as Michigan’s Sec­re­tary of State-elect has pledged to increase trans­paren­cy of dark mon­ey

    Don­ald Shaw
    Pub­lished on Dec 3, 2018 3:15PM EST

    By a vote of 25–12, the Repub­li­can-con­trolled Michi­gan Sen­ate passed a bill on Nov. 29 that would make it a mis­de­meanor crime for pub­lic offi­cials in Michi­gan to require non­prof­it groups, includ­ing those that spend mon­ey on elec­tions, to dis­close their donors for gov­ern­ment or pub­lic review.

    Under the bill, which is spon­sored by Repub­li­can Sen. Mike Shirkey, state and local agen­cies would no longer be allowed to request donor details from any 501© non­prof­it with­out a war­rant. In order to get a war­rant, agen­cies would have to demon­strate “a com­pelling need” by pro­vid­ing clear and con­vinc­ing evi­dence to the court. It would also ban agen­cies from requir­ing gov­ern­ment con­trac­tors to dis­close con­tri­bu­tions they have made to non­prof­its. Vio­la­tions of the bill would be pun­ish­able by impris­on­ment for up to 90 days and/or a fine.

    The bill was intro­duced in the lame-duck leg­isla­tive ses­sion two days after the elec­tion of Sec­re­tary of State-elect Joce­lyn Ben­son, who cam­paigned on increas­ing trans­paren­cy of polit­i­cal mon­ey in Michi­gan.

    “Our lead­ers in Lans­ing should cham­pi­on reforms that will make gov­ern­ment trans­par­ent and account­able to the peo­ple it serves, like requir­ing instant dis­clo­sure of all mon­ey spent to influ­ence our elect­ed offi­cials,” she wrote in a 2017 op-ed.

    Attor­ney Gen­er­al-elect Dana Nes­sel wrote on Face­book that the bill would lim­it her abil­i­ty to pro­tect Michi­gan res­i­dents from char­i­ties that com­mit fraud and scam the pub­lic.

    ...

    In the 2018 elec­tion cycle, non-dis­clos­ing non­prof­it groups spent at least $3.1 mil­lion on influ­enc­ing Michi­gan State Sen­ate races, accord­ing to an analy­sis of TV ad track­ing data by the Michi­gan Cam­paign Finance Net­work.

    The groups spend­ing dark mon­ey on the 2018 Michi­gan Sen­ate elec­tions include Michi­gan Cit­i­zens for Fis­cal Respon­si­bil­i­ty, a 501(c)(4) that shares an address with a con­sul­tant that works with the Michi­gan Sen­ate Repub­li­can Cam­paign Com­mit­tee, and Cit­i­zens for Ener­giz­ing Michigan’s Econ­o­my, a 501(c)(4) with ties to the gas and elec­tric indus­tries in Michi­gan.

    In July, the IRS made it more dif­fi­cult for their agency to con­duct over­sight of dark mon­ey groups by no longer requir­ing them to sub­mit the iden­ti­ties of their donors in their annu­al fil­ings. The rule change makes it near­ly impos­si­ble for the gov­ern­ment to enforce restric­tions on for­eign mon­ey flow­ing into U.S. elec­tion.

    After pass­ing the Sen­ate, the Michi­gan bill was referred to the Michi­gan House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives’ Michi­gan Com­pet­i­tive­ness Com­mit­tee, which is sched­uled to meet tomor­row at 9 AM and could advance the bill to the full House for a vote. If it is passed, it would go to the desk of term-lim­it­ed out­go­ing Repub­li­can Gov­er­nor Rick Sny­der for his sig­na­ture.

    ———-

    “Dark­er Mon­ey: Michi­gan Sen­ate Pass­es Bill Mak­ing Dark Mon­ey Dis­clo­sure a Crime” by Don­ald Shaw; Sludge; 12/03/2018

    Under the bill, which is spon­sored by Repub­li­can Sen. Mike Shirkey, state and local agen­cies would no longer be allowed to request donor details from any 501© non­prof­it with­out a war­rant. In order to get a war­rant, agen­cies would have to demon­strate “a com­pelling need” by pro­vid­ing clear and con­vinc­ing evi­dence to the court. It would also ban agen­cies from requir­ing gov­ern­ment con­trac­tors to dis­close con­tri­bu­tions they have made to non­prof­its. Vio­la­tions of the bill would be pun­ish­able by impris­on­ment for up to 90 days and/or a fine.”

    In order to get a war­rant, agen­cies would have to demon­strate “a com­pelling need” by pro­vid­ing clear and con­vinc­ing evi­dence to the court. It would also ban agen­cies from requir­ing gov­ern­ment con­trac­tors to dis­close con­tri­bu­tions they have made to non­prof­its. The future inves­ti­ga­tions of state con­trac­tors pay­ing polit­i­cal bribes is going to be inter­est­ing.

    And this bill that’s bla­tant­ly designed to make it eas­i­er for Repub­li­can donors to use 501(c)(4)s to inject dark mon­ey into Michi­gan’s pol­i­tics (which is large­ly spent on poi­so­nous pro­pa­gan­da) was intro­duced in the Michi­gan Sen­ate just two days after the vic­to­ry of the incom­ing sec­re­tary of state who cam­paign on increas­ing the trans­paren­cy of polit­i­cal mon­ey in Michi­gan. Sec­re­tary of State-elect Joce­lyn Ben­son even called for requir­ing instant dis­clo­sure of all mon­ey spent to influ­ence elect­ed offi­cials, which is basi­cal­ly the oppo­site of the GOP is work­ing work:

    ...
    The bill was intro­duced in the lame-duck leg­isla­tive ses­sion two days after the elec­tion of Sec­re­tary of State-elect Joce­lyn Ben­son, who cam­paigned on increas­ing trans­paren­cy of polit­i­cal mon­ey in Michi­gan.

    “Our lead­ers in Lans­ing should cham­pi­on reforms that will make gov­ern­ment trans­par­ent and account­able to the peo­ple it serves, like requir­ing instant dis­clo­sure of all mon­ey spent to influ­ence our elect­ed offi­cials,” she wrote in a 2017 op-ed.
    ...

    And the incom­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic attor­ney gen­er­al is point­ing out that this move to shield dark mon­ey is going to also make it eas­i­er to pull off char­i­ty scams on the pub­lic. The scammed are pre­sum­ably seen as just accept­able col­lat­er­al dam­age the war to mak­ing mon­ey as dark as pos­si­ble in Michi­gan:

    ...
    Attor­ney Gen­er­al-elect Dana Nes­sel wrote on Face­book that the bill would lim­it her abil­i­ty to pro­tect Michi­gan res­i­dents from char­i­ties that com­mit fraud and scam the pub­lic.
    ...

    And note how the list of like­ly abusers of 501(c)(4)s in Michi­gan’s near future includes the Michi­gan Repub­li­can Par­ty itself, which ran it’s own dark mon­ey 501(c)(4) under the name Michi­gan Cit­i­zens for Fis­cal Respon­si­bil­i­ty:

    ...
    In the 2018 elec­tion cycle, non-dis­clos­ing non­prof­it groups spent at least $3.1 mil­lion on influ­enc­ing Michi­gan State Sen­ate races, accord­ing to an analy­sis of TV ad track­ing data by the Michi­gan Cam­paign Finance Net­work.

    The groups spend­ing dark mon­ey on the 2018 Michi­gan Sen­ate elec­tions include Michi­gan Cit­i­zens for Fis­cal Respon­si­bil­i­ty, a 501(c)(4) that shares an address with a con­sul­tant that works with the Michi­gan Sen­ate Repub­li­can Cam­paign Com­mit­tee, and Cit­i­zens for Ener­giz­ing Michigan’s Econ­o­my, a 501(c)(4) with ties to the gas and elec­tric indus­tries in Michi­gan.
    ...

    Recall how the nation­al Repub­li­can Par­ty lead­er­ship in the House did the same thing this year when Paul Ryan and the House lead­er­ship hired Amer­i­can Future Fund to inter­vene the Cal­i­for­nia pri­maries.

    And this ‘dark money’-darkening GOP bill is poised pass the Michi­gan House poten­tial­ly on Tues­day and get signed into law by the out­go­ing gov­er­nor Rick Sny­der:

    ...
    After pass­ing the Sen­ate, the Michi­gan bill was referred to the Michi­gan House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives’ Michi­gan Com­pet­i­tive­ness Com­mit­tee, which is sched­uled to meet tomor­row at 9 AM and could advance the bill to the full House for a vote. If it is passed, it would go to the desk of term-lim­it­ed out­go­ing Repub­li­can Gov­er­nor Rick Sny­der for his sig­na­ture.
    ...

    It’s look­ing like this real­ly will hap­pen in Michi­gan. Very soon. Because that’s how the GOP’s lame duck pow­er grabs work. They’re both pre­med­i­tat­ed and all of a sud­den.

    So if you’re won­der­ing if the bla­tant­ly cor­rupt nature of the Michi­gan GOP’s lame duck pow­er grab has the GOP con­cerned that this will cost them polit­i­cal­ly in the eyes of Michi­gan vot­ers, don’t for­get that dark mon­ey is basi­cal­ly used to buy pro­pa­gan­da to change vot­ers minds. That’s the ‘social wel­fare’ they’re sup­pos­ed­ly engaged. Chang­ing minds with right-wing pro­pa­gan­da. So while the Michi­gan GOP is prob­a­bly some­what con­cerned about the dam­age they could be doing with their image with this pow­er grab, the par­ty is also prob­a­bly pret­ty excit­ed about all that extra new mind-chang­ing dark mon­ey its about to get as a result of this move.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | December 3, 2018, 11:34 pm
  2. Here’s a set of sto­ries that high­lights how cen­tral the net­work of peo­ple who run the Amer­i­can Future Fund (AFF) are to the larg­er Repub­li­can dark mon­ey fundrais­ing machin­ery: First, note that we have mul­ti­ple reports that the Trump inau­gu­ra­tion com­mit­tee is fac­ing legal scruti­ny for ille­gal activ­i­ties. The Wall Street Jour­nal report­ed that fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors at the Man­hat­tan office are look­ing into whether or not the Trump inau­gur­al com­mit­tee, which raised unprece­dent­ed amounts of mon­ey (over $100 mil­lion) for the rel­a­tive­ly low key Trump inau­gu­ra­tion par­ties, was accept­ing mon­ey from donors in exchange for access (a ‘pay-to-play’ sce­nario) and the New York Times report­ed that Robert Mueller’s probe is look­ing into the pos­si­bil­i­ty that for­eign donors, in par­tic­u­lar from the Mid­dle East, were donat­ing to inau­gur­al com­mit­tee.

    And now we’re learn­ing that the Trump-owned hotel where many of the inau­gur­al fes­tiv­i­ties took place may have heav­i­ly over­charged the inau­gur­al com­mit­tee (effec­tive­ly laun­der­ing the mon­ey) and Rick Gates tried to avoid report­ing dona­tions by request­ing that donors skip mak­ing dona­tions to the inau­gur­al com­mit­tee and direct­ly make dona­tions to the ven­dors pro­vid­ing the inau­gur­al cel­e­bra­tion ser­vices. The ven­dors felts this was unusu­al and con­cern­ing accord­ing to some sources.

    So the ques­tion of who donat­ed to the Trump inau­gur­al com­mit­tee and how that mon­ey was spend has sud­den­ly been added to Pres­i­dent Trump’s lists of legal woes. And as we’re going to see, it appears that a big chunk of that inau­gur­al mon­ey came from a dark mon­ey Repub­li­can donor net­work. But it’s not the bet­ter known Koch broth­ers or Karl Rove donor net­works. At least not exact­ly. It’s the donor net­work oper­at­ed by far right bil­lion­aires Ann and Neil Cork­ery, although it sounds like there’s a heavy over­lap with the Koch and Rove net­works.

    The Cork­ery’s donor net­work is the pri­ma­ry fun­der of Well­spring Com­mit­tee, which appears to be their main dark mon­ey 501(c)(4) used to dis­trib­ute tens of mil­lions of dol­lars to oth­er polit­i­cal­ly active enti­ties. In that sense, it Well­spring sounds very sim­i­lar to groups like TC4 Trust and Cen­ter for the Pro­tec­tion of Patient Rights in the Koch net­work which, as we’ve seen, act­ed large­ly as ‘shad­ow mon­ey mail­box’ mid­dle-man 501(c)(4) enti­ties that received mon­ey and then hand­ed that mon­ey out to oth­er enti­ties in the Koch net­work like AFF. For exam­ple, Well­spring gave $14.8 mil­lion to Judi­cial Cri­sis Net­work (JCN) last year. As we’ve seen, JCN was one of the key dark mon­ey groups back­ing the con­fir­ma­tion of Supreme Court Jus­tice nom­i­nee Brett Kavanaugh. In 2016, JCN also financed an ad cam­paign advo­cat­ing that the Repub­li­can con­trolled Sen­ate NOT con­firm Barack Oba­ma’s Supreme Court Jus­tice nom­i­nee Mer­rick Gar­land.

    Well­spring is the pri­ma­ry donor to JCN, hav­ing donat­ed for than $54 mil­lion to JCN since 2010. Well­spring itself appears to be almost exclu­sive­ly financed by a hand­ful of donors, with a sin­gle mys­tery donor pro­vid­ing almost all the fund­ing pre-2017. In 2017, three mys­tery donors pro­vid­ed the bulk of Well­spring’s funds.

    Here’s where Well­spring enters the mys­tery around the Trump inau­gu­ra­tion funds: there was only one con­trac­tor by by Well­spring in 2017, a mys­te­ri­ous LLC called BH Group. BH Group made a $1 mil­lion dona­tion to the Trump inau­gur­al com­mit­tee on Dec. 22, 2016. It was cre­at­ed on August 22, 2016. BH Group’s con­tract­ing work for Well­spring got it a $750,000 pay­ment in 2016. The work was “pub­lic rela­tions”. Well­spring does­n’t even have a web­site. So the ques­tion of what that $750,000 was for is a ques­tion that rais­es the pos­si­bil­i­ty of tax law vio­la­tions by Well­spring’s net­work.

    BH Group also received a $947,000 pay­ment from JCN around the time BH Group made its Trump inau­gur­al dona­tion. And in 2017, Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project, JCN’s sis­ter 501(c)(3) non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion, paid BH Group $1.3 mil­lion.

    Not sur­pris­ing­ly, BH Group appears to have deep ties to the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety, the far right legal group that large­ly con­trols Repub­li­can judi­cial nom­i­nees. It turns out Leonard Leo, the exec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent at the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety, list­ed “BH Group” as his employ­er in a cam­paign finance fil­ing. Leo is the only known employ­ee. Leo and anoth­er Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety vice pres­i­dent were involved in a non­prof­it called the BH Fund. BH Fund was set up to enforce a donor agree­ment between an anony­mous $20 mil­lion donor and the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty. Recall how George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty is a major recip­i­ent of Koch broth­ers dona­tions.

    And here’s where the fig­ures asso­ci­at­ed with AFF becomes direct­ly involved: BH Group’s address in its incor­po­ra­tion records list a vir­tu­al office in Arling­ton, Va. and the only iden­ti­fied point of con­tact is Don­na Smith, whose name match­es that of a long­time para­le­gal at Holtz­man Vogel Jose­fi­ak Torchin­sky, the law firm that shared a War­ren­ton, Va. office with the address the Trump inau­gur­al com­mit­tee on its tax return.

    Recall how, as we’ve already seen, AFF was set up in 2008 by a group of promi­nent Iowa Repub­li­can fundrais­ers. This includ­ed Nicole Schlinger, the own­er of the farm that employed and housed the alleged killer of Mol­lie Tib­betts. But it also includ­ed Jason Torchin­sky, a lawyer for an AFF polit­i­cal action group that was car­ry­ing out robo calls for clients. Torchin­sky was one of the archi­tects of the Amer­i­can Cen­ter for Vot­ing Rights (ACVR), a faux “vot­ing-rights” out­fit that was set up by GOP oper­a­tives in 2005 to “give ‘think tank’ aca­d­e­m­ic cachet to the unproven idea that vot­er fraud is a major prob­lem in elec­tions.” Torchin­sky worked at the time for a law firm run by Alex Vogel and his wife, Vir­ginia State Sen­a­tor Jill Holtz­man Vogel. Alex Vogel was ACVR’s exec­u­tive direc­tor and a for­mer RNC lawyer. His wife Jill had a track record of hard­ball tac­tics, includ­ing hav­ing her babysit­ter lev­el a cam­paign finance irreg­u­lar­i­ty alle­ga­tions against her pri­ma­ry oppo­nent and a local pros­e­cu­tor who was a sup­port­er inves­ti­gate it. She won the pri­ma­ry and the charges were dropped.

    It’s also impor­tant to note that Torchin­sky has con­tin­ued work­ing as AFF’s lawyer. In 2015, Torchin­sky was rep­re­sent­ing AFF when AFF decid­ed to sue a super­PAC start­ed by Bob­by Jin­dal called “Amer­i­can Future Project”, argu­ing that its name was con­fus­ing­ly sim­i­lar to AFF’s. So Torchin­sky, Alex Vogel, and Jill Holtz­man Vogel all have a law firm, Holtz­man Vogel Jose­fi­ak Torchin­sky, and now we’re learn­ing that BH Group’s only point of con­tact is a para­le­gal at this firm and it shared an office with the address of the Trump inau­gur­al com­mit­tee on its tax returns and that like­ly mean the Trump inau­gur­al com­mit­tee is using the ser­vices of Holtz­man Vogel Jose­fi­ak Torchin­sky:

    Truth Out

    New Clues Link Trump Inau­gu­ra­tion Funds to Dark Mon­ey

    By Anna Mas­soglia,
    Cen­ter for Respon­sive Pol­i­tics

    Pub­lished Decem­ber 4, 2018

    Noto­ri­ous “dark mon­ey” con­duit Well­spring Com­mit­tee gave $14.8 mil­lion to the pri­ma­ry spender on Supreme Court Jus­tice Brett Kavanaugh’s con­fir­ma­tion and paid $919,900 to the mys­te­ri­ous LLC that made a $1 mil­lion dona­tion to Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s inau­gur­al com­mit­tee, accord­ing to a new tax return obtained Nov. 27 by the Cen­ter for Respon­sive Pol­i­tics.

    Well­spring has act­ed as a con­duit for large con­tri­bu­tions from secre­tive donors since it was set up, effec­tive­ly laun­der­ing mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar dona­tions with no sub­stan­tive dis­clo­sure or account­abil­i­ty.

    Despite oper­at­ing behind the scenes with a name unknown to most of the Amer­i­can pub­lic, Well­spring is at the crux of Ann and Neil Corkery’s net­work of polit­i­cal­ly active dark mon­ey groups, fun­nel­ing mil­lions from anony­mous financiers to polit­i­cal caus­es they don’t want their names attached to — and doing osten­si­bly lit­tle else.

    Well­spring has con­tin­ued to be the chief financier of the Judi­cial Cri­sis Net­work (JCN), with a $14,814,998 con­tri­bu­tion last year.

    JCN is anoth­er nondis­clos­ing polit­i­cal­ly active non­prof­it linked to the Cork­erys’ net­work of con­ser­v­a­tive dark mon­ey groups. It has become the pre­dom­i­nant dark mon­ey spender in Supreme Court con­fir­ma­tion fights as a vehi­cle for deep-pock­et­ed donors to fun­nel mil­lions of dol­lars behind or against judi­cial nom­i­nees.

    Since 2010, Well­spring has fun­neled more than $54.2 mil­lion to JCN, accord­ing to tax returns obtained by CRP.

    The bulk of Wellspring’s funds that came from three mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar secret donors in 2017, a shift from pri­or years in which the biggest amount the group received from a sin­gle mys­tery donor increased with each pass­ing year. The largest donor account­ed for $8.9 mil­lion, anoth­er gave $5.5 mil­lion and a third secret donor pro­vid­ed $2 mil­lion — but all of their iden­ti­ties remain hid­den from the pub­lic.

    The biggest anony­mous con­tri­bu­tion to Well­spring in 2016 was near­ly $28.5 mil­lion, a jump from $8.5 mil­lion in 2015 and $6.96 mil­lion in 2014. That one secret donor account­ed for around 90 per­cent of Wellspring’s fund­ing in 2016, a year it gave $23 mil­lion to JCN.

    As a 501(c)(4) social wel­fare orga­ni­za­tion, JCN is not required to report its donors to the IRS — and choos­es not to dis­close its fun­ders’ iden­ti­ties to the pub­lic — so its only dis­cov­er­able donors are oth­er enti­ties like Well­spring that act as con­duits for the anony­mous mon­ey direct­ed at JCN.

    JCN was back in the lime­light this year as the biggest spender in sup­port of Trump’s sec­ond Supreme Court nom­i­nee, Brett Kavanaugh. Fol­low­ing its tried and true play­book, JCN launched its first ad about Kavanaugh before Trump even fin­ished announc­ing his nom­i­na­tion and soon after announced plans to spend $10 mil­lion on his con­fir­ma­tion. JCN pledged $10 mil­lion to sup­port the suc­cess­ful con­fir­ma­tion of Trump’s first Supreme Court nom­i­nee, Neil Gor­such, the pri­or year and report­ed spend­ing $7 mil­lion to block the con­fir­ma­tion of Mer­rick Gar­land before Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma left office.

    JCN has also spent sub­stan­tial sums on lob­by­ists, includ­ing Jon Kyl, who lob­bied to help JCN mar­shall in Gorsuch’s nom­i­na­tion before becom­ing the offi­cial White House “sher­pa” guid­ing Kavanaugh through that same process. He was lat­er appoint­ed to fill the late Sen. John McCain’s seat — ulti­mate­ly enabling him to vote for the con­fir­ma­tion he was once tasked with help­ing Kavanaugh secure.

    JCN spent $483,246 in total on Face­book ads and just $1,900 on Google plat­forms around the fight to con­firm Kavanaugh with an esti­mat­ed reach of poten­tial­ly mil­lions of Face­book users.

    TV adver­tis­ing made up the bulk of JCN’s report­ed spend­ing on Kavanaugh with around $3.9 mil­lion going TV ads, accord­ing to Kan­tar Media/CMAG esti­mates — leav­ing mil­lions of dol­lars JCN had pledged to spend unac­count­ed for.

    The Puz­zle of Trump’s Mys­te­ri­ous Inau­gur­al Gift

    The only con­trac­tor paid by Well­spring last year was BH Group, the mys­te­ri­ous LLC cre­at­ed four months to the day before it made a $1 mil­lion dona­tion to the Trump inau­gur­al com­mit­tee on Dec. 22, 2016.

    The new­ly dis­cov­ered pay­ment for “pub­lic rela­tions” fol­lows a $750,000 pay­ment to the new­ly mint­ed BH Group the pri­or year as well as $947,000 from JCN to the BH Group around when the LLC made its inau­gur­al dona­tion.

    While it ini­tial­ly appeared that BH Group was mere­ly a shell com­pa­ny cre­at­ed sole­ly for the pur­pose of laun­der­ing mon­ey into the Trump inau­gur­al com­mit­tee, more infor­ma­tion about the LLC has only added to its mys­tery.

    New tax returns reviewed by CRP reveal that Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project, JCN’s sis­ter 501(c)(3) non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion, also paid an addi­tion­al $1.3 mil­lion to BH Group LLC last year. Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Fund keeps its donors anony­mous but CRP tracked the bulk of the group’s recent fund­ing to DonorsTrust, which account­ed for more than 99 per­cent of its mon­ey last year. Like JCN, Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Fund has also been fund­ed by Well­spring in pri­or years.

    One name that CRP has tied to the mys­te­ri­ous LLC is Leonard Leo, the exec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent at the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety, an influ­en­tial con­ser­v­a­tive and lib­er­tar­i­an legal orga­ni­za­tion, who list­ed “BH Group” as his employ­er in a cam­paign finance fil­ing report­ed to the Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion.

    Leo’s more wide­ly known affil­i­a­tion with the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety has gained atten­tion after reports that it played a sub­stan­tial role guid­ing the hand of Trump’s White House in its judi­cial nom­i­na­tion process, includ­ing in the selec­tion of Supreme Court jus­tices.

    Ann Cork­ery, the Well­spring Committee’s for­mer pres­i­dent and wife of cur­rent pres­i­dent Neil Cork­ery, has report­ed­ly worked close­ly with him in this process and Leo has been “direct­ly involved” in rais­ing much of the anony­mous mon­ey the Well­spring Com­mit­tee brings in every year.

    A pub­lic records request revealed that Leo and anoth­er Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety vice pres­i­dent have also been involved in a non­prof­it called the BH Fund, which was set up to enforce a donor agree­ment between an anony­mous $20 mil­lion donor and the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty, whose pres­i­dent came under fire for allow­ing donors to dic­tate con­di­tions in return for finan­cial gifts.

    Incor­po­ra­tion records list BH Group’s address as a vir­tu­al office in Arling­ton, Va. and the only iden­ti­fied point of con­tact is Don­na Smith, whose name match­es that of a long­time para­le­gal at Holtz­man Vogel Jose­fi­ak Torchin­sky, the law firm that shared a War­ren­ton, Va. office with the address the Trump inau­gur­al com­mit­tee on its tax return.

    Con­tin­u­ing the Mon­ey Churn

    Stay­ing the course from pri­or years, Well­spring also gave $400,000 to the Catholic Asso­ci­a­tion, $48,000 to the Annu­al Fund and $350,000 to the Foun­da­tion for Gov­ern­ment Accountability’s 501(c)(4) arm, FGA Action.

    Anoth­er appendage of the Cork­erys’ dark mon­ey web is the Foun­da­tion for Account­abil­i­ty and Civic Trust (FACT), a non­prof­it run by act­ing Attor­ney Gen­er­al Matthew Whitak­er before he became Jeff Ses­sions’ chief of staff, as CRP first report­ed in 2016. Like Well­spring, JCN and the Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project, Neil Cork­ery is also the trea­sur­er of FACT. Near­ly 100 per­cent of FACT’s fund­ing came from a sin­gle anony­mous donor each year since the group was cre­at­ed in 2014, which CRP dis­cov­ered came entire­ly from a donor-advised fund called DonorsTrust.

    In addi­tion to long­stand­ing dark mon­ey stal­warts that have realigned their pri­or­i­ties for the Trump era, new groups spend­ing heav­i­ly in sup­port of Trump’s agen­da also weighed in on Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court con­fir­ma­tion bat­tle but are not entire­ly iso­lat­ed from the Wash­ing­ton swamp Trump pledged to drain.

    Well­spring was one of the ear­ly donors of 45Committee, anoth­er 501(c)(4) social wel­fare non­prof­it that pri­mar­i­ly exists to sup­port Trump’s agen­da which spent on ads sup­port­ing Supreme Court Jus­tice Brett Kavanaugh’s con­fir­ma­tion this year.

    Anoth­er spender was Amer­i­ca First Poli­cies, the 501(c)(4) non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion staffed by for­mer Trump cam­paign and White House per­son­nel that has become the main dark mon­ey group sup­port­ing Trump’s agen­da.

    Although Amer­i­ca First Poli­cies itself does not reveal donors’ iden­ti­ties, CRP traced over a quar­ter of its fund­ing to major cor­po­rate play­ers, includ­ing Reynolds Amer­i­can and Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal Research and Man­u­fac­tur­ers of Amer­i­ca (PhRMA), a trade group rep­re­sent­ing the drug com­pa­ny industry’s lob­by­ing inter­ests.

    New tax doc­u­ments filed by anoth­er pro-Trump non­prof­it, Great Amer­i­ca Alliance, show it raised and spent around $3.4 mil­lion dur­ing that peri­od. Unlike Amer­i­ca First Poli­cies, which report­ed mil­lions more in pre­vi­ous­ly undis­closed polit­i­cal spend­ing it its new tax return, Great Amer­i­ca Alliance claimed that it “edu­cat­ed vot­ers through direct and indi­rect polit­i­cal advo­ca­cy mes­sag­ing nation­wide with­in the scope of applic­a­ble laws and reg­u­la­tions.”

    ...

    ———-

    “New Clues Link Trump Inau­gu­ra­tion Funds to Dark Mon­ey” by Anna Mas­soglia; Truth Out; 12/04/2018

    “Despite oper­at­ing behind the scenes with a name unknown to most of the Amer­i­can pub­lic, Well­spring is at the crux of Ann and Neil Corkery’s net­work of polit­i­cal­ly active dark mon­ey groups, fun­nel­ing mil­lions from anony­mous financiers to polit­i­cal caus­es they don’t want their names attached to — and doing osten­si­bly lit­tle else.”

    Accept­ing shad­ow mon­ey and hand­ing it right back out. That’s a pret­ty much the only thing Well­spring does. Because that’s the only thing ‘shad­ow mon­ey mail­box­es’ like Well­spring do. Accept mon­ey for donors and hand it back out, obscur­ing the mon­ey-trail in the process.

    And in the case of Well­spring, it appears to get almost all of its mon­ey from just a hand­ful of these secret donors:

    ...
    The bulk of Wellspring’s funds that came from three mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar secret donors in 2017, a shift from pri­or years in which the biggest amount the group received from a sin­gle mys­tery donor increased with each pass­ing year. The largest donor account­ed for $8.9 mil­lion, anoth­er gave $5.5 mil­lion and a third secret donor pro­vid­ed $2 mil­lion — but all of their iden­ti­ties remain hid­den from the pub­lic.
    ...

    Keep in mind that we don’t know if those secret donors are, them­selves, wealthy indi­vid­u­als or instead oth­er 501(c)(4)s. It’s a mys­tery.

    One of the biggest recip­i­ents of Well­spring’s gen­eros­i­ty is the Judi­cial Cri­sis Net­work (JCN), which receives the bulk of its funds from Well­spring. In 2016, Well­spring received a $28.5 mil­lion anony­mous dona­tion and hand­ed $23 mil­lion to JCN. So it appears that one of Well­spring’s key func­tions is to pro­vide extra-anony­mous financ­ing to JCN:

    ...
    Well­spring has con­tin­ued to be the chief financier of the Judi­cial Cri­sis Net­work (JCN), with a $14,814,998 con­tri­bu­tion last year.

    JCN is anoth­er nondis­clos­ing polit­i­cal­ly active non­prof­it linked to the Cork­erys’ net­work of con­ser­v­a­tive dark mon­ey groups. It has become the pre­dom­i­nant dark mon­ey spender in Supreme Court con­fir­ma­tion fights as a vehi­cle for deep-pock­et­ed donors to fun­nel mil­lions of dol­lars behind or against judi­cial nom­i­nees.

    Since 2010, Well­spring has fun­neled more than $54.2 mil­lion to JCN, accord­ing to tax returns obtained by CRP.

    ...

    The biggest anony­mous con­tri­bu­tion to Well­spring in 2016 was near­ly $28.5 mil­lion, a jump from $8.5 mil­lion in 2015 and $6.96 mil­lion in 2014. That one secret donor account­ed for around 90 per­cent of Wellspring’s fund­ing in 2016, a year it gave $23 mil­lion to JCN.

    As a 501(c)(4) social wel­fare orga­ni­za­tion, JCN is not required to report its donors to the IRS — and choos­es not to dis­close its fun­ders’ iden­ti­ties to the pub­lic — so its only dis­cov­er­able donors are oth­er enti­ties like Well­spring that act as con­duits for the anony­mous mon­ey direct­ed at JCN.

    JCN was back in the lime­light this year as the biggest spender in sup­port of Trump’s sec­ond Supreme Court nom­i­nee, Brett Kavanaugh. Fol­low­ing its tried and true play­book, JCN launched its first ad about Kavanaugh before Trump even fin­ished announc­ing his nom­i­na­tion and soon after announced plans to spend $10 mil­lion on his con­fir­ma­tion. JCN pledged $10 mil­lion to sup­port the suc­cess­ful con­fir­ma­tion of Trump’s first Supreme Court nom­i­nee, Neil Gor­such, the pri­or year and report­ed spend­ing $7 mil­lion to block the con­fir­ma­tion of Mer­rick Gar­land before Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma left office.
    ...

    And then we get to BH Group, the mys­te­ri­ous LLC cre­at­ed in August of 2016 that donat­ed $1 mil­lion to the Trump inau­gur­al com­mit­tee and appears to share an address with the inau­gur­al com­mit­tee. BH Group was paid $750,00 for “pub­lic rela­tions” work by Well­spring and $1.3 mil­lion on dona­tions from JCN’s sis­ter 501(c)(3) enti­ty in 2017. In 2016, BH Group also received $947,000 from JCN around the time of its $1 mil­lion dona­tion. So when BH Group donat­ed $1 mil­lion to the Trump inau­gu­ra­tion fund, it was basi­cal­ly act­ing as con­duit for JCN which was in turn act­ing as a con­duit for Well­spring which was act­ing as a con­duit for Well­spring’s wealthy anony­mous donors:

    ...
    The Puz­zle of Trump’s Mys­te­ri­ous Inau­gur­al Gift

    The only con­trac­tor paid by Well­spring last year was BH Group, the mys­te­ri­ous LLC cre­at­ed four months to the day before it made a $1 mil­lion dona­tion to the Trump inau­gur­al com­mit­tee on Dec. 22, 2016.

    The new­ly dis­cov­ered pay­ment for “pub­lic rela­tions” fol­lows a $750,000 pay­ment to the new­ly mint­ed BH Group the pri­or year as well as $947,000 from JCN to the BH Group around when the LLC made its inau­gur­al dona­tion.

    While it ini­tial­ly appeared that BH Group was mere­ly a shell com­pa­ny cre­at­ed sole­ly for the pur­pose of laun­der­ing mon­ey into the Trump inau­gur­al com­mit­tee, more infor­ma­tion about the LLC has only added to its mys­tery.

    New tax returns reviewed by CRP reveal that Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project, JCN’s sis­ter 501(c)(3) non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion, also paid an addi­tion­al $1.3 mil­lion to BH Group LLC last year. Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Fund keeps its donors anony­mous but CRP tracked the bulk of the group’s recent fund­ing to DonorsTrust, which account­ed for more than 99 per­cent of its mon­ey last year. Like JCN, Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Fund has also been fund­ed by Well­spring in pri­or years.
    ...

    Adding to the evi­dence that BH Group, JCN, and Well­spring are also work­ing in con­cert with the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety and all oper­at­ing as part of the same net­work, we learn that Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety exec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent Leonard Leo list­ed BH Group as his employ­er and Leo has been direct­ly involved in rais­ing much of the anony­mous mon­ey for Well­spring each year:

    ...
    One name that CRP has tied to the mys­te­ri­ous LLC is Leonard Leo, the exec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent at the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety, an influ­en­tial con­ser­v­a­tive and lib­er­tar­i­an legal orga­ni­za­tion, who list­ed “BH Group” as his employ­er in a cam­paign finance fil­ing report­ed to the Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion.

    Leo’s more wide­ly known affil­i­a­tion with the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety has gained atten­tion after reports that it played a sub­stan­tial role guid­ing the hand of Trump’s White House in its judi­cial nom­i­na­tion process, includ­ing in the selec­tion of Supreme Court jus­tices.

    Ann Cork­ery, the Well­spring Committee’s for­mer pres­i­dent and wife of cur­rent pres­i­dent Neil Cork­ery, has report­ed­ly worked close­ly with him in this process and Leo has been “direct­ly involved” in rais­ing much of the anony­mous mon­ey the Well­spring Com­mit­tee brings in every year.

    A pub­lic records request revealed that Leo and anoth­er Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety vice pres­i­dent have also been involved in a non­prof­it called the BH Fund, which was set up to enforce a donor agree­ment between an anony­mous $20 mil­lion donor and the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty, whose pres­i­dent came under fire for allow­ing donors to dic­tate con­di­tions in return for finan­cial gifts.
    ...

    Final­ly, we learn that BH Group’s only iden­ti­fied point of con­tact in a para­le­gal at Holtz­man Vogel Jose­fi­ak Torchin­sky, the law firm that shared an office with the address of the Trump inau­gur­al com­mit­tee on its tax returns:

    ...
    Incor­po­ra­tion records list BH Group’s address as a vir­tu­al office in Arling­ton, Va. and the only iden­ti­fied point of con­tact is Don­na Smith, whose name match­es that of a long­time para­le­gal at Holtz­man Vogel Jose­fi­ak Torchin­sky, the law firm that shared a War­ren­ton, Va. office with the address the Trump inau­gur­al com­mit­tee on its tax return.
    ...

    So if the Trump inau­gur­al fund was using Holtz­man Vogel Jose­fi­ak Torchin­sky as its address, it’s prob­a­bly using the law ser­vices of Holtz­man Vogel Jose­fi­ak Torchin­sky for a lot of oth­er stuff. Mak­ing this law firm, the same one used by AFF, as crit­i­cal dark mon­ey enti­ty.

    And it appears that the Well­spring net­work and the Cork­ery’s have anoth­er key tie to the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s approach to legal mat­ters: the Foun­da­tion for Account­abil­i­ty and Civic Trust (FACT), a non­prof­it run by act­ing Attor­ney Gen­er­al Matthew Whitak­er before he became Jeff Ses­sions’ chief of staff, is part of the Cork­ery’s dark mon­ey net­work:

    ...
    Con­tin­u­ing the Mon­ey Churn

    Stay­ing the course from pri­or years, Well­spring also gave $400,000 to the Catholic Asso­ci­a­tion, $48,000 to the Annu­al Fund and $350,000 to the Foun­da­tion for Gov­ern­ment Accountability’s 501(c)(4) arm, FGA Action.

    Anoth­er appendage of the Cork­erys’ dark mon­ey web is the Foun­da­tion for Account­abil­i­ty and Civic Trust (FACT), a non­prof­it run by act­ing Attor­ney Gen­er­al Matthew Whitak­er before he became Jeff Ses­sions’ chief of staff, as CRP first report­ed in 2016. Like Well­spring, JCN and the Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project, Neil Cork­ery is also the trea­sur­er of FACT. Near­ly 100 per­cent of FACT’s fund­ing came from a sin­gle anony­mous donor each year since the group was cre­at­ed in 2014, which CRP dis­cov­ered came entire­ly from a donor-advised fund called DonorsTrust.

    In addi­tion to long­stand­ing dark mon­ey stal­warts that have realigned their pri­or­i­ties for the Trump era, new groups spend­ing heav­i­ly in sup­port of Trump’s agen­da also weighed in on Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court con­fir­ma­tion bat­tle but are not entire­ly iso­lat­ed from the Wash­ing­ton swamp Trump pledged to drain.
    ...

    Whitak­er was on the Cork­ery dark mon­ey gravy train. That seems notable.

    And as the arti­cle also notes, we should­n’t for­get that Well­spring is just one of the 501(c)(4) dark mon­ey groups that were set up to pro­mote the Trump admin­stra­tion’s poli­cies and sell the Amer­i­can pub­lic an ideas like the nom­i­na­tion of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court or refus­ing the nom­i­na­tion of Mer­rick Gar­land. There’s also groups like Amer­i­ca First Poli­cies, a recip­i­ent of large amounts of cor­po­rate mon­ey for enti­ties like Reynolds Amer­i­can (the tobac­co com­pa­ny) and Big Phar­ma:

    ...
    Well­spring was one of the ear­ly donors of 45Committee, anoth­er 501(c)(4) social wel­fare non­prof­it that pri­mar­i­ly exists to sup­port Trump’s agen­da which spent on ads sup­port­ing Supreme Court Jus­tice Brett Kavanaugh’s con­fir­ma­tion this year.

    Anoth­er spender was Amer­i­ca First Poli­cies, the 501(c)(4) non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion staffed by for­mer Trump cam­paign and White House per­son­nel that has become the main dark mon­ey group sup­port­ing Trump’s agen­da.

    Although Amer­i­ca First Poli­cies itself does not reveal donors’ iden­ti­ties, CRP traced over a quar­ter of its fund­ing to major cor­po­rate play­ers, includ­ing Reynolds Amer­i­can and Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal Research and Man­u­fac­tur­ers of Amer­i­ca (PhRMA), a trade group rep­re­sent­ing the drug com­pa­ny industry’s lob­by­ing inter­ests.
    ...

    So as we can see, if there’s going to be a seri­ous inves­ti­ga­tion of the financ­ing and activ­i­ties of the Trump inau­gur­al com­mit­tee, that’s an inves­ti­ga­tion that had bet­ter include Well­spring, BH Group, and the var­i­ous fig­ures behind these dark mon­ey enti­ties. And, in par­tic­u­lar, the fig­ures at Holtz­man Vogel Jose­fi­ak Torchin­sky.

    Giv­en the way Holtz­man Vogel Jose­fi­ak Torchin­sky is clear­ly act­ing against the pub­lic inter­est by act­ing as a spe­cial­ist in keep­ing bil­lion­aire dark mon­ey in the dark, it rais­es the ques­tion of what the man­ag­ing part­ner at Holtz­man Vogel Jose­fi­ak Torchin­sky, Vir­ginia state Sen­a­tor Jill Holtz­man Vogel, answers when asked about the activ­i­ties of her law firm. She is an elect­ed offi­cial, after all. An elect­ed offi­cial who ran for Vir­gini­a’s lieu­tenant gov­er­nor in 2017. So how does she respond to ques­tions about her firm? Well, as the fol­low­ing arti­cle makes clear, her answer is to avoid answer­ing such ques­tions as much as pos­si­ble and, when pressed, present her­self as an ethics lawyer who works as an advo­cate for char­i­ties and non­prof­its exer­cis­ing her first amend­ment rights. So as ques­tions about the role Holtz­man Vogel Jose­fi­ak Torchin­sky played in the Trump inau­gua­ra­tion fund mys­ter­ies start get­ting asked more earnest­ly as this poten­tial scan­dal unfolds, get ready for lots of attempts to equate these dark mon­ey man­aeu­ver­ings as a defense of char­i­ty:

    Wash­ing­ton Post

    ‘Dark-mon­ey’ super­lawyer bills her­self as advo­cate for char­i­ties in Va. lieu­tenant governor’s race

    By Lau­ra Vozzel­la
    Octo­ber 14, 2017

    RICHMOND — In her bid to become Vir­gini­a’s next lieu­tenant gov­er­nor, Repub­li­can state Sen. Jill Holtz­man Vogel cam­paigns as an ethics attor­ney who rep­re­sents char­i­ties and non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tions.

    But her fir­m’s spe­cial­ty is help­ing wealthy donors, cor­po­ra­tions and polit­i­cal action com­mit­tees influ­ence elec­tions — often in secret.

    Vogel and her bou­tique law firm rep­re­sent some of the nation’s largest super PACs and their relat­ed non­prof­its, which are often called “dark-mon­ey” groups because they are not legal­ly required to dis­close the names of their donors.

    Those enti­ties include Amer­i­can Cross­roads, the super PAC con­ceived by Repub­li­can guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­date Ed Gille­spie and strate­gist Karl Rove, as well as Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty and oth­er arms of the con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal net­work found­ed by bil­lion­aires Charles and David Koch.

    Those groups took off in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2010 Cit­i­zens Unit­ed deci­sion, which found indi­vid­u­als, cor­po­ra­tions and unions could spend unlim­it­ed sums on pol­i­tics as long as they did so inde­pen­dent­ly of cam­paigns and par­ties.

    And Vogel’s firm — Holtz­man Vogel Jose­fi­ak Torchin­sky PLLC, known as HVJT — became one of the pre­miere legal shops to help the PACs dis­trib­ute their largesse.

    Between 2005 and 2016, PACs and non­prof­its that have hired Vogel’s firm spent close to $1 bil­lion on fed­er­al elec­tions, rep­re­sent­ing near­ly a quar­ter of all out­side spend­ing over that peri­od, accord­ing to data com­piled by the Cen­ter for Respon­sive Pol­i­tics. For the 2016 cycle alone, those orga­ni­za­tions account­ed for more than $234 mil­lion of $1.4 bil­lion in total out­side spend­ing.

    Crit­ics say Vogel’s firm prof­its from a nation­al prob­lem — untrace­able mon­ey in pol­i­tics that is cor­rod­ing democ­ra­cy.

    “They rep­re­sent the who’s who of secret, dark-mon­ey groups that are pump­ing a lot of mon­ey into our elec­tions,” said Steve Spauld­ing, chief of strat­e­gy for Com­mon Cause. “She’s not exact­ly an ethics lawyer rep­re­sent­ing mom-and-pop non­prof­its. ... We’re talk­ing about the Koch broth­ers’ non­prof­its.”

    Vogel and attor­neys work­ing for her firm — based in rur­al War­ren­ton, 50 miles west of Wash­ing­ton — declined to be inter­viewed. Through a cam­paign spokesman, Vogel issued a brief state­ment that said attor­ney-client priv­i­lege pre­vents her from dis­cussing her work.

    “As an ethics attor­ney, I hold myself and my firm to the high­est eth­i­cal and moral stan­dards pos­si­ble and I don’t set­tle for any­thing less,” read the state­ment, which then sought to shift atten­tion to the law prac­tice of her Demo­c­ra­t­ic oppo­nent, Justin Fair­fax, a for­mer fed­er­al ­pros­e­cu­tor-turned-cor­po­rate lawyer. “There is absolute­ly no basis to this sto­ry at all.”

    ...

    Vogel’s firm has some­times been accused by reg­u­la­tors and elec­tion offi­cials of push­ing the lim­its of elec­tion law.

    That was the case in Cal­i­for­nia in 2012, when mys­te­ri­ous donors poured $15 mil­lion into two Cal­i­for­nia propo­si­tion bat­tles not long before Elec­tion Day.

    Some of the mon­ey was to oppose Propo­si­tion 30, which even­tu­al­ly passed and raised the Cal­i­for­nia sales tax and income tax. The rest was to sup­port Propo­si­tion 32, which failed and would have pro­hib­it­ed unions from using pay­roll deduc­tions for polit­i­cal pur­pos­es.

    The size of the dona­tion raised eye­brows, as did the source: out-of-state non­prof­its that had nev­er been involved in Cal­i­for­nia pol­i­tics.

    When Cal­i­for­nia reg­u­la­tors final­ly unrav­eled it — on the eve of Elec­tion Day, after the state Supreme Court held an unprece­dent­ed Sun­day ses­sion to order dis­clo­sure — the source of the $15 mil­lion turned out to be close to home: wealthy Cal­i­for­ni­ans, includ­ing the Fish­er fam­i­ly that found­ed the Gap retail chain and San Fran­cis­co investor Charles Schwab, who had want­ed their names kept under wraps.

    Under fed­er­al elec­tion law, the names could be kept pri­vate. But Cal­i­for­nia state law requires the dis­clo­sure of donors who spon­sor ads with­in 60 days of an elec­tion. Rather than dis­close, the mon­ey was shift­ed from one Koch broth­ers’ non­prof­it to anoth­er with help from Vogel’s firm, said Ann Rav­el, a for­mer Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion mem­ber who was then the state’s chief elec­tions watch­dog as chair of the Cal­i­for­nia Fair Polit­i­cal Prac­tices Com­mis­sion (FPPC).

    “It’s like if a restau­rant gave mon­ey to all their employ­ees to make dona­tions to a polit­i­cal issue,” Rav­el said. “That’s ille­gal. You have to give con­tri­bu­tions in your own name. You can­not essen­tial­ly laun­der it.”

    Those involved were not charged with any crime; they reached a civ­il set­tle­ment with the FPPC and state attor­ney gen­er­al and were ordered to pay a record fine of $1 mil­lion. And the two Cal­i­for­nia polit­i­cal com­mit­tees that had received and spent the mon­ey were ordered to pay the state $15 mil­lion.

    Vogel did not play any role in the Cal­i­for­nia case, her cam­paign spokesman said.

    But legal experts say that as man­ag­ing part­ner of the 13-lawyer firm, Vogel is ulti­mate­ly respon­si­ble for its actions, much as a chief exec­u­tive is respon­si­ble for the activ­i­ties of a cor­po­ra­tion.

    Vogel’s firm was at the cen­ter of con­tro­ver­sy again last fall, right after Gov. Pat McCro­ry of North Car­oli­na came up short in his reelec­tion bid. HVJT was enlist­ed to help McCro­ry, a Repub­li­can, who was refus­ing to con­cede.

    With­in weeks, the firm filed protests against 600 vot­ers across the state. It said some vot­ers were dead and oth­ers had vot­ed in two states or were felons who had not com­plet­ed their sen­tences.

    But the state and local elec­tions offi­cials even­tu­al­ly threw out the protests because they were rid­dled with mis­takes — some­times con­fus­ing legit­i­mate vot­ers with inel­i­gi­ble peo­ple with sim­i­lar names, accord­ing a study by the non­par­ti­san Democ­ra­cy North Car­oli­na.

    Vot­ers saw their names appear in news­pa­pers, as sus­pects in an alleged felony vot­er fraud con­spir­a­cy. Some had to defend them­selves before they were cleared by local elec­tions boards.

    Press­ly M. Millen, a North Car­oli­na attor­ney for sev­er­al vot­ers who were false­ly accused of vot­ing ille­gal­ly, said the protest was an attempt to dele­git­imize the elec­tion.

    Stephen T. Smith, a promi­nent Raleigh, N.C., lawyer, filed a griev­ance with thes­tate bar against four lawyers from Vogel’s firm, say­ing they had vio­lat­ed rules of pro­fes­sion­al con­duct. Bar offi­cials would nei­ther con­firm nor deny the exis­tence of a pend­ing com­plaint. Smith said he believes it remains pend­ing.

    In her brief state­ment to The Wash­ing­ton Post, Vogel said she was “nev­er aware of any such com­plaint made against my firm.”

    The bar com­plaint is not against the firm per se but against the four lawyers, who did not respond to requests for com­ment. Vogel was not among the four. But the firm was recent­ly added as a defen­dant in what could become a class-action law­suit on behalf of all vot­ers false­ly accused of ille­gal vot­ing. A judge will decide whether Vogel’s firm should be part of the suit.

    Chris West, a spokesman for the Vogel cam­paign, said she was unaware that her firm had been named in a law­suit.

    “Cer­tain­ly no alle­ga­tions even link Sen­a­tor Vogel to any work in North Car­oli­na, nor has any doc­u­ment been cit­ed to name Sen­a­tor Vogel,” he said in a text mes­sage. “All work done in North Car­oli­na by oth­er lawyers in the firm was done under the super­vi­sion of North Car­oli­na lawyers. There is no basis to this sto­ry at all and none of this has any­thing to do with Sen­a­tor Vogel or the Lt. Gov­er­nor’s race in Vir­ginia.”

    Vogel, 47, is a Shenan­doah Val­ley native and the daugh­ter of a long­time Repub­li­can donor, Holtz­man Oil founder William B. Holtz­man. He has donat­ed $1.9 mil­lion to her cam­paigns and those of oth­er Vir­ginia Repub­li­cans over the past 10 years, includ­ing $611,000 toward Vogel’s cur­rent bid.

    Vogel was appoint­ed chief coun­sel to the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee in 2004, under her tick­et­mate Gille­spie, who was then chair­man.

    After estab­lish­ing her own firm, Vogel made “strate­gic hires” from the world of pol­i­tics that helped fuel its rapid growth, Mitchell said.

    Vogel’s firm includes her hus­band, Alex Vogel, for­mer chief coun­sel to then-Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Bill Frist (R‑Tenn.); Tom Jose­fi­ak, a for­mer Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion chair­man and gen­er­al coun­sel to Pres­i­dent George W. Bush’s 2004 cam­paign; and Jason Torchin­sky, deputy gen­er­al coun­sel for that cam­paign.

    Along with super PAC Amer­i­can Cross­roads, HVJT has rep­re­sent­ed its tax-exempt affil­i­ate, Cross­roads Grass­roots Pol­i­cy Strate­gies, which pio­neered the use of non­prof­its as dark-mon­ey polit­i­cal play­ers. Known as 501(c)(4) groups, they are allowed to keep their con­trib­u­tors secret as long as they don’t spend most of their mon­ey on pol­i­tics.

    Vogel’s ties to many of the super PACs and dark-mon­ey groups are a mat­ter of pub­lic record, dis­closed in Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion and IRS fil­ings. In addi­tion to report­ing pay­ments to the firm, the orga­ni­za­tions some­times use HVJT’s War­ren­ton address as their own and list HVJT lawyers as their trea­sur­ers or oth­er offi­cials.

    Years ahead of Vogel’s statewide cam­paign, one of her part­ners spoke to a reporter about the fir­m’s work, which he described as help­ing clients with legit­i­mate free-speech rights nav­i­gate a shift­ing legal land­scape.

    “The rules keep chang­ing,” Torchin­sky told Bloomberg News in 2012, “which is part of the rea­son that peo­ple need law firms to fig­ure out how to speak.”

    ———-

    “‘Dark-mon­ey’ super­lawyer bills her­self as advo­cate for char­i­ties in Va. lieu­tenant governor’s race” by Lau­ra Vozzel­la; Wash­ing­ton Post; 10/14/2017

    “Between 2005 and 2016, PACs and non­prof­its that have hired Vogel’s firm spent close to $1 bil­lion on fed­er­al elec­tions, rep­re­sent­ing near­ly a quar­ter of all out­side spend­ing over that peri­od, accord­ing to data com­piled by the Cen­ter for Respon­sive Pol­i­tics. For the 2016 cycle alone, those orga­ni­za­tions account­ed for more than $234 mil­lion of $1.4 bil­lion in total out­side spend­ing.”

    Yep, Jill Holtz­man Vogel’s law­firm, Holtz­man Vogel Jose­fi­ak Torchin­sky, has rep­re­sent­ed the PACs and non­prof­its that spent near­ly a quar­ter of all out­side spend­ing on Amer­i­can elec­tions between 2005 and 2016. So this isn’t just any law firm. It is the dark mon­ey law firm. And that includes Jason Torchin­sky’s long-time work rep­re­sent­ing Amer­i­can Future Fund. Rep­re­sen­ta­tion that led to AFF and oth­er Koch net­work enti­ties vio­lat­ing Cal­i­for­ni­a’s cam­paign finance laws in 2012, result­ing in mul­ti­ple fines (but no crim­i­nal charges). Recall how it was this scan­dal that end­ed up get­ting AFF boot­ed out of the Koch donor net­work, effec­tive­ly push­ing AFF into work for Karl Rove’s net­work and direct work for the Repub­li­can Par­ty. Also recall how Jason Torchin­sky was rep­re­sent­ing AFF in 2015. So the fact that Holtz­man Vogel Jose­fi­ak Torchin­sky gave AFF advice that broke Cal­i­for­nia law and got it kicked out of the Koch donor net­work did­n’t result in AFF find new legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion:

    ...
    Vogel’s firm has some­times been accused by reg­u­la­tors and elec­tion offi­cials of push­ing the lim­its of elec­tion law.

    That was the case in Cal­i­for­nia in 2012, when mys­te­ri­ous donors poured $15 mil­lion into two Cal­i­for­nia propo­si­tion bat­tles not long before Elec­tion Day.

    Some of the mon­ey was to oppose Propo­si­tion 30, which even­tu­al­ly passed and raised the Cal­i­for­nia sales tax and income tax. The rest was to sup­port Propo­si­tion 32, which failed and would have pro­hib­it­ed unions from using pay­roll deduc­tions for polit­i­cal pur­pos­es.

    The size of the dona­tion raised eye­brows, as did the source: out-of-state non­prof­its that had nev­er been involved in Cal­i­for­nia pol­i­tics.

    When Cal­i­for­nia reg­u­la­tors final­ly unrav­eled it — on the eve of Elec­tion Day, after the state Supreme Court held an unprece­dent­ed Sun­day ses­sion to order dis­clo­sure — the source of the $15 mil­lion turned out to be close to home: wealthy Cal­i­for­ni­ans, includ­ing the Fish­er fam­i­ly that found­ed the Gap retail chain and San Fran­cis­co investor Charles Schwab, who had want­ed their names kept under wraps.

    Under fed­er­al elec­tion law, the names could be kept pri­vate. But Cal­i­for­nia state law requires the dis­clo­sure of donors who spon­sor ads with­in 60 days of an elec­tion. Rather than dis­close, the mon­ey was shift­ed from one Koch broth­ers’ non­prof­it to anoth­er with help from Vogel’s firm, said Ann Rav­el, a for­mer Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion mem­ber who was then the state’s chief elec­tions watch­dog as chair of the Cal­i­for­nia Fair Polit­i­cal Prac­tices Com­mis­sion (FPPC).

    “It’s like if a restau­rant gave mon­ey to all their employ­ees to make dona­tions to a polit­i­cal issue,” Rav­el said. “That’s ille­gal. You have to give con­tri­bu­tions in your own name. You can­not essen­tial­ly laun­der it.”

    Those involved were not charged with any crime; they reached a civ­il set­tle­ment with the FPPC and state attor­ney gen­er­al and were ordered to pay a record fine of $1 mil­lion. And the two Cal­i­for­nia polit­i­cal com­mit­tees that had received and spent the mon­ey were ordered to pay the state $15 mil­lion.

    Vogel did not play any role in the Cal­i­for­nia case, her cam­paign spokesman said.

    But legal experts say that as man­ag­ing part­ner of the 13-lawyer firm, Vogel is ulti­mate­ly respon­si­ble for its actions, much as a chief exec­u­tive is respon­si­ble for the activ­i­ties of a cor­po­ra­tion.
    ...

    Then there’s the work done by Holtz­man Vogel Jose­fi­ak Torchin­sky in 2016 for North Car­oli­na gov­er­nor Pat McCro­ry dur­ing an excep­tion­al­ly tight reelec­tion effort. It was Holtz­man Vogel Jose­fi­ak Torchin­sky that filed protests against 600 vot­ers, alleg­ing they were either dead or felons or peo­ple who vot­ed in mul­tipe states. This turned out to be sim­ply pro­pa­gan­da, result­ing in a law­suit by those vot­ers and the fil­ing of a griev­ance against four lawyers at Vogel’s firm and the firm itself was added as a defend­ent to a class action law­suit:

    ...
    Vogel’s firm was at the cen­ter of con­tro­ver­sy again last fall, right after Gov. Pat McCro­ry of North Car­oli­na came up short in his reelec­tion bid. HVJT was enlist­ed to help McCro­ry, a Repub­li­can, who was refus­ing to con­cede.

    With­in weeks, the firm filed protests against 600 vot­ers across the state. It said some vot­ers were dead and oth­ers had vot­ed in two states or were felons who had not com­plet­ed their sen­tences.

    But the state and local elec­tions offi­cials even­tu­al­ly threw out the protests because they were rid­dled with mis­takes — some­times con­fus­ing legit­i­mate vot­ers with inel­i­gi­ble peo­ple with sim­i­lar names, accord­ing a study by the non­par­ti­san Democ­ra­cy North Car­oli­na.

    Vot­ers saw their names appear in news­pa­pers, as sus­pects in an alleged felony vot­er fraud con­spir­a­cy. Some had to defend them­selves before they were cleared by local elec­tions boards.

    Press­ly M. Millen, a North Car­oli­na attor­ney for sev­er­al vot­ers who were false­ly accused of vot­ing ille­gal­ly, said the protest was an attempt to dele­git­imize the elec­tion.

    Stephen T. Smith, a promi­nent Raleigh, N.C., lawyer, filed a griev­ance with thes­tate bar against four lawyers from Vogel’s firm, say­ing they had vio­lat­ed rules of pro­fes­sion­al con­duct. Bar offi­cials would nei­ther con­firm nor deny the exis­tence of a pend­ing com­plaint. Smith said he believes it remains pend­ing.

    In her brief state­ment to The Wash­ing­ton Post, Vogel said she was “nev­er aware of any such com­plaint made against my firm.”

    The bar com­plaint is not against the firm per se but against the four lawyers, who did not respond to requests for com­ment. Vogel was not among the four. But the firm was recent­ly added as a defen­dant in what could become a class-action law­suit on behalf of all vot­ers false­ly accused of ille­gal vot­ing. A judge will decide whether Vogel’s firm should be part of the suit.
    ...

    Beyond ques­tion­able legal advice, there’s anoth­er ser­vice Holtz­man Vogel Jose­fi­ak Torchin­sky offer: let­ting orga­ni­za­tions use the firms War­ren­ton address as their own and list Holtz­man Vogel Jose­fi­ak Torchin­sky’s lawyers and their offi­cials. In oth­er words, Holtz­man Vogel Jose­fi­ak Torchin­sky does­n’t just help dark mon­ey enti­ties exe­cute their dark mon­ey strate­gies. The firm lit­er­al­ly helps clients obscure their loca­tions and key employ­ees, which is exact­ly what it appears to have done for the Trump inau­gu­ra­tion com­mit­tee:

    ...
    Along with super PAC Amer­i­can Cross­roads, HVJT has rep­re­sent­ed its tax-exempt affil­i­ate, Cross­roads Grass­roots Pol­i­cy Strate­gies, which pio­neered the use of non­prof­its as dark-mon­ey polit­i­cal play­ers. Known as 501(c)(4) groups, they are allowed to keep their con­trib­u­tors secret as long as they don’t spend most of their mon­ey on pol­i­tics.

    Vogel’s ties to many of the super PACs and dark-mon­ey groups are a mat­ter of pub­lic record, dis­closed in Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion and IRS fil­ings. In addi­tion to report­ing pay­ments to the firm, the orga­ni­za­tions some­times use HVJT’s War­ren­ton address as their own and list HVJT lawyers as their trea­sur­ers or oth­er offi­cials.

    Years ahead of Vogel’s statewide cam­paign, one of her part­ners spoke to a reporter about the fir­m’s work, which he described as help­ing clients with legit­i­mate free-speech rights nav­i­gate a shift­ing legal land­scape.

    “The rules keep chang­ing,” Torchin­sky told Bloomberg News in 2012, “which is part of the rea­son that peo­ple need law firms to fig­ure out how to speak.”

    So as we can see, as fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tors start exam­in­ing the inner work­ings of the Trump inau­gu­ra­tion com­mit­tee, they’re going to have to deal with the fact that this com­mit­tee is appar­ent­ly using the ser­vices of Holtz­man Vogel Jose­fi­ak Torchin­sky to hide infor­ma­tion about itself like its address.

    And since BH Group’s only iden­ti­fi­able offi­cer is a Holtz­man Vogel Jose­fi­ak Torchin­sky para­le­gal it would appear that the same ser­vices are being used by BH Group to hide its own oper­a­tions. And yet Leonard Leo of the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety list­ed BH Group has his employ­er on his tax fil­ings and its known that Leo helps raise funds for Well­spring. So while we don’t yet know what exact­ly the rela­tion­ship is between Well­spring, BH Group, and the Trump inau­gur­al com­mit­tee, we do know that it’s a tight rela­tion­ship and Holtz­man Vogel Jose­fi­ak Torchin­sky is play­ing a major role in facil­i­tat­ing it.

    And as the fol­low­ing arti­cle notes, it’s unclear if that rela­tion­ship actu­al­ly end­ed with Trump’s inau­gu­ra­tion. Why? Because it’s very unclear if that $750,000 pay­ment from Well­spring to BH Group in 2017 for “pub­lic rela­tions” work was actu­al­ly for pub­lic rela­tions because BH Group did­n’t appear to engage in any pub­lic rela­tions and Well­spring itself has no pub­lic face. $750,000 for pub­lic rela­tions for an enti­ty with­out a pub­lic face. That’s lit­er­al­ly the claim Well­spring made about that con­trac­tor pay­ment to BH Group. Recall how we saw above that BH Group was Well­spring’s only con­trac­tor that yera. And accord­ing to tax experts, if it turns out that $750,000 fil­ing was­n’t actu­al­ly for pub­lic rela­tions, that’s an ille­gal mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion that might raise per­jury con­cerns. As these tax experts also point out, the IRS rarely audits non­prof­its, so those per­jury con­cerns might not actu­al­ly be very con­cern­ing to the IRS or Well­spring.

    One obvi­ous pos­si­bil­i­ty is that the $750,000 was pay­ing back the BH Group peo­ple for that $1 mil­lion dona­tion to Trump’s inau­gur­al com­mit­tee in Decem­ber. But it’s worth keep­ing in mind the news about Rick Gates try­ing to get donors to direct­ly pay ven­dors to avoid hav­ing to report ALL the dona­tions as inau­gur­al dona­tions because they were tak­ing in so much mon­ey. So it’s pos­si­ble that the $750,000 was one chunk of the 2017 (ear­ly Jan­u­ary) indi­rect dona­tions to Trump’s inau­gur­al. That’s also where the for­eign dona­tions are most like­ly.

    So when you con­sid­er that the under­ly­ing inves­ti­ga­tion into the Trump inau­gu­ra­tion funds is the ques­tion of whether or not there was a ‘pay-to-play’ sit­u­a­tion going on, where donors pay into the fund for polit­i­cal influ­ence, it’s hard to ignore the fol­low­ing:

    1. BH Group appears to be set up for max­i­mum anonymi­ty for its donors.
    2. Leonard Leo, BH Group’s only known employ­ee, appears to be a skilled fund rais­er, includ­ing his work rais­ing funds for Well­spring.
    3. Well­spring is the major fun­der of BH Group.
    4. BH Group’s only known activ­i­ty in 2016 was giv­ing $1 mil­lion to the Trump inau­gu­ra­tion fund.
    5. BH Group’s only known activ­i­ty in 2017 is $750,000 in “pub­lic rela­tions” for Well­spring, an enti­ty with no pub­lic face.
    6. This is all per­fect for the pur­pose of facil­it­ing pay-to-play polit­i­cal influ­ence ped­dling trans­ac­tions.
    7. If the $750,000 to BH Group for “pub­lic rela­tions” was secret­ly passed along to the Trump admin­is­tra­tion through an indi­rect chan­nel, like what Rick Gates sug­gest­ed, that kind of secret indi­rect pay­ment scheme could be used after the inau­gur­al. It’s just a gener­i­cal­ly use­ful avenue for secret polit­i­cal dona­tions.

    And that all rais­es the ques­tion of whether or not the $750,000 to BH Fund for “pub­lic rela­tions” in 2017 paid for off the books pay­ments to the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, pre-and-post inau­gu­ra­tion:

    McClatchy

    $1 mil­lion mys­tery gift to inau­gu­ra­tion traced to con­ser­v­a­tive legal activists

    By Robert Maguire

    May 14, 2018 04:41 PM,

    Updat­ed May 15, 2018 09:54 AM

    WASHINGTON

    One of the largest con­tri­bu­tions to Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s inau­gur­al com­mit­tee in 2016 appears to have been orches­trat­ed by a set of pow­er­ful con­ser­v­a­tive legal activists who have since been put in the driver’s seat of the administration’s push to select and nom­i­nate fed­er­al judges.

    The $1 mil­lion inau­gur­al gift came from a North­ern Vir­ginia com­pa­ny called BH Group, LLC. Unlike oth­er gen­er­ous cor­po­rate inau­gur­al donors, like Bank of Amer­i­ca and Dow Chem­i­cal, though, BH Group was a cipher, and like­ly was set up sole­ly to pre­vent dis­clo­sure of the actu­al donor’s name.

    Almost noth­ing is known about the com­pa­ny, includ­ing who runs it or its rea­son for being beyond writ­ing a sev­en-fig­ure check on Dec. 22, 2016, almost a month before Trump was sworn in.

    While the source of the mon­ey used to make the gift was masked from the pub­lic, a trail of clues puts the con­tri­bu­tion at the doorstep of some of the same actors — most notably Leonard Leo, an exec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent at the con­ser­v­a­tive Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety — who have helped pro­mote Trump’s mis­sion, and that of his White House coun­sel, Don McGahn, to fill judi­cial vacan­cies as quick­ly as he can with staunch­ly con­ser­v­a­tive, prefer­ably young jurists.

    Set up four months to the day before it made the dona­tion, BH Group’s address, as giv­en in its Vir­ginia incor­po­ra­tion papers, is a vir­tu­al office in Arling­ton, Va.; the only per­son iden­ti­fied on the fil­ing is a Don­na Smith.

    That name, while com­mon, match­es the name of a long­time para­le­gal at the polit­i­cal law firm Holtz­man Vogel Jose­fi­ak Torchin­sky, whose War­ren­ton, Vir­ginia, office was list­ed as the Trump inau­gur­al committee’s main address on the tax return it filed last Feb­ru­ary.

    Holtz­man Vogel is a Repub­li­can firm known for spe­cial­iz­ing in cre­ative legal maneu­vers that allow donors to con­ser­v­a­tive caus­es to remain anony­mous, at least to the pub­lic.

    In March, when a reporter tried to speak with Don­na Smith about the BH Group, Michael Bayes, a part­ner at the firm, respond­ed instead, say­ing “We don’t have any com­ment on client mat­ters.”

    Anoth­er con­nec­tion to the BH Group was revealed in Novem­ber 2017, when a polit­i­cal­ly active non­prof­it called the Well­spring Com­mit­tee filed tax doc­u­ments show­ing a $750,000 pay­ment to the new­ly-mint­ed firm for “Pub­lic Rela­tions.”

    That’s a sub­stan­tial pay­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en that the BH Group does not appear to have mar­ket­ed itself as a pub­lic rela­tions firm. The group doesn’t seem to have a web­site or any list­ings that adver­tise its ser­vices.

    Sim­i­lar­ly, the Well­spring Com­mit­tee is a noto­ri­ous­ly secre­tive Vir­ginia non­prof­it, with no demon­stra­ble pub­lic-fac­ing oper­a­tions, no web­site for pub­li­ciz­ing them and only three employ­ees.

    It’s also not clear why a group like Well­spring would need cost­ly pub­lic rela­tions assis­tance. Its rep­re­sen­ta­tives did not respond to requests to com­ment for this sto­ry.

    The group only has a sin­gle board mem­ber, Neil Cork­ery, and almost all of its mon­ey in 2016 went out the door as grants to oth­er con­ser­v­a­tive orga­ni­za­tions or as pay­ment to the BH Group.

    Well­spring was prac­ti­cal­ly the sole fun­der in 2016, to the tune of near­ly $23.5 mil­lion, of the Judi­cial Cri­sis Net­work — a group that poured mil­lions into stop­ping the Sen­ate from con­firm­ing for­mer Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s Supreme Court pick in the last year of his term, leav­ing an open slot for Trump to fill.

    Legal­ly, experts say there would be no prob­lem with the Well­spring Com­mit­tee giv­ing $750,000 to the inau­gur­al com­mit­tee direct­ly or, like­ly, giv­ing it to the BH Group for that pur­pose; it’s not clear that straw donor rules apply to inau­gur­al com­mit­tees.

    How­ev­er, Wellspring’s char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of the pay­ment might raise issues for the non­prof­it, if the check was­n’t in fact for ser­vices ren­dered.

    If Well­spring “inten­tion­al­ly mis­rep­re­sent­ed the pay­ment” on its tax fil­ing, said Lloyd May­er, a tax pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Notre Dame, in an email, “that would in the­o­ry raise per­jury con­cerns.” The IRS, how­ev­er, rarely pur­sues cas­es based on inac­cu­ra­cies in an organization’s tax fil­ings.

    At the cen­ter of the con­vo­lut­ed net­work through which the inau­gur­al con­tri­bu­tion flowed is Leonard Leo, the exec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent at the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety, one of the nation’s most influ­en­tial con­ser­v­a­tive legal orga­ni­za­tions — to which some say the White House has out­sourced its judi­cial nom­i­na­tion process.

    For exam­ple, when then-Supreme Court nom­i­nee Neil Gor­such was asked how he had come to Trump’s atten­tion, he wrote, “On about Decem­ber 2, 2016, I was con­tact­ed by Leonard Leo.”

    Steven Cal­abre­si, a Fed­er­al­ist cofounder and board mem­ber, told The Hill last year that Leo’s work offer­ing guid­ance to the White House is sole­ly in his capac­i­ty as an indi­vid­ual cit­i­zen.

    But help­ing him in this task, accord­ing to the New York Times, is lawyer Ann Cork­ery, the wife of Neil Cork­ery, the Well­spring Committee’s pres­i­dent. Ann her­self was pres­i­dent of Well­spring from its found­ing in 2008 until 2015.

    The assis­tance between Leo and the Cork­erys goes both ways. Accord­ing to one source close to the three of them, Leo is direct­ly involved in rais­ing much of the anony­mous mon­ey the Well­spring Com­mit­tee brings in every year.

    ...

    Though the source couldn’t con­firm Leo’s role in the BH Group, Leo him­self recent­ly made the con­nec­tion in a cam­paign finance fil­ing report­ed to the Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion: He list­ed “BH Group” as his employ­er.

    It’s unlike­ly that Leo him­self is the source of the $1 mil­lion, but his role at the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety allows him to meet and min­gle with some of the wealth­i­est con­ser­v­a­tive donors in the coun­try. The orga­ni­za­tion counts among its fun­ders con­ser­v­a­tive bil­lion­aires like Charles and David Koch, as well as indus­try groups like the Cham­ber of Com­merce and For­tune 500 com­pa­nies like Wal­mart and Pfiz­er, accord­ing to its 2017 annu­al report.

    Leo and anoth­er vice pres­i­dent at the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety, Jonathan Bunch, are also involved in a non­prof­it called the BH Fund. A pub­lic records request by alum­ni and stu­dents at George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty shows that the BH Fund was set up to enforce a donor agree­ment with GMU’s Antonin Scalia Law School on behalf of an anony­mous donor who pledged $20 mil­lion to the pro­gram, accord­ing to a report last year from Buz­zfeed.

    Last month, GMU’s pres­i­dent Ángel Cabr­era — who has come under pres­sure for allow­ing donors to dic­tate con­di­tions in return for finan­cial gifts — said that some agree­ments the school accept­ed in return for con­tri­bu­tions fall short of the stan­dards of aca­d­e­m­ic inde­pen­dence.”

    The donor pro­vid­ing the $20 mil­lion that Leo’s BH Fund admin­is­ters is “low-pro­file, very wealthy and on the young side,” a source told McClatchy. But he or she is still anony­mous.

    As is the $1 mil­lion donor to Trump’s inau­gu­ra­tion. Anony­mous, that is, to the pub­lic.

    “The pub­lic doesn’t know who is behind this mil­lion-dol­lar dona­tion,” wrote Bren­dan Fis­ch­er, an attor­ney with the non­par­ti­san Cam­paign Legal Cen­ter, “but the Trump admin­is­tra­tion very like­ly does. Spe­cial inter­ests tend to give to an inau­gu­ra­tion in order to buy influ­ence, so whomev­er is behind this $1 mil­lion check pre­sum­ably made their iden­ti­ty known to the incom­ing admin­is­tra­tion.”

    “It is hard to imag­ine,” he went on, “that this anony­mous donor fund­ed the inau­gu­ra­tion sim­ply because they were dying to see 3 Doors Down per­form at the Lin­coln Memo­r­i­al.”

    ————

    “$1 mil­lion mys­tery gift to inau­gu­ra­tion traced to con­ser­v­a­tive legal activists” by Robert Maguire; McClatchy; 05/14/2018

    “The $1 mil­lion inau­gur­al gift came from a North­ern Vir­ginia com­pa­ny called BH Group, LLC. Unlike oth­er gen­er­ous cor­po­rate inau­gur­al donors, like Bank of Amer­i­ca and Dow Chem­i­cal, though, BH Group was a cipher, and like­ly was set up sole­ly to pre­vent dis­clo­sure of the actu­al donor’s name.

    BH Group was a cipher, and like­ly was set up sole­ly to pre­vent dis­clo­sure of the actu­al donor’s name. It’s a key fact to keep to mind. BH Group was like one more lay­er of anonymi­ty beyond the anonymi­ty Well­spring pro­vides. That extra anonymi­ty was pre­sum­ably imposed for a rea­son.

    And these ques­tions of what exact­ly that $750,000 was actu­al­ly used for were qui­et­ly star­ing every­one in the face with the fact that BH Group did­n’t appear to do any pub­lic rela­tions work and Well­spring has a pub­lic rela­tions strat­e­gy of hav­ing no pub­lic face:

    ...
    Anoth­er con­nec­tion to the BH Group was revealed in Novem­ber 2017, when a polit­i­cal­ly active non­prof­it called the Well­spring Com­mit­tee filed tax doc­u­ments show­ing a $750,000 pay­ment to the new­ly-mint­ed firm for “Pub­lic Rela­tions.”

    That’s a sub­stan­tial pay­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en that the BH Group does not appear to have mar­ket­ed itself as a pub­lic rela­tions firm. The group doesn’t seem to have a web­site or any list­ings that adver­tise its ser­vices.

    Sim­i­lar­ly, the Well­spring Com­mit­tee is a noto­ri­ous­ly secre­tive Vir­ginia non­prof­it, with no demon­stra­ble pub­lic-fac­ing oper­a­tions, no web­site for pub­li­ciz­ing them and only three employ­ees.

    It’s also not clear why a group like Well­spring would need cost­ly pub­lic rela­tions assis­tance. Its rep­re­sen­ta­tives did not respond to requests to com­ment for this sto­ry.
    ...

    And if it turns out that $750,000 was for some­thing oth­er than “pub­lic rela­tions”, that’s poten­tial­ly per­jury issue for Well­spring because it will have “inten­tion­al­ly mis­rep­re­sent­ed the pay­ment” on its tax fil­ing. Keep in mind that a lot of the inau­gur­al dona­tions were prob­a­bly made in ear­ly Jan­u­ary 2017, so if this $750,00 in pub­lic rela­tions work reflect­ed off the books dona­tions to Trump, like what Rick Gates want­ed, that’s prob­a­bly the kind of thing that hap­pens a lot in the dark mon­ey world. So it will be inter­est­ing to see if that’s the case:

    ...
    Legal­ly, experts say there would be no prob­lem with the Well­spring Com­mit­tee giv­ing $750,000 to the inau­gur­al com­mit­tee direct­ly or, like­ly, giv­ing it to the BH Group for that pur­pose; it’s not clear that straw donor rules apply to inau­gur­al com­mit­tees.

    How­ev­er, Wellspring’s char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of the pay­ment might raise issues for the non­prof­it, if the check was­n’t in fact for ser­vices ren­dered.

    If Well­spring “inten­tion­al­ly mis­rep­re­sent­ed the pay­ment” on its tax fil­ing, said Lloyd May­er, a tax pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Notre Dame, in an email, “that would in the­o­ry raise per­jury con­cerns.” The IRS, how­ev­er, rarely pur­sues cas­es based on inac­cu­ra­cies in an organization’s tax fil­ings.
    ...

    And the fact that BH Group’s only known employ­ee, Leonard Leo, has a his­to­ry of fund rais­ing for the Cork­ery fam­i­ly’s Well­spring, makes it appear that the only thing BH Group is set up to do is add extra anonymi­ty for the Corkery/leo donor net­work. A net­work, again, with heavy over­lap with the Koch and Rove net­works:

    ...
    At the cen­ter of the con­vo­lut­ed net­work through which the inau­gur­al con­tri­bu­tion flowed is Leonard Leo, the exec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent at the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety, one of the nation’s most influ­en­tial con­ser­v­a­tive legal orga­ni­za­tions — to which some say the White House has out­sourced its judi­cial nom­i­na­tion process.

    For exam­ple, when then-Supreme Court nom­i­nee Neil Gor­such was asked how he had come to Trump’s atten­tion, he wrote, “On about Decem­ber 2, 2016, I was con­tact­ed by Leonard Leo.”

    Steven Cal­abre­si, a Fed­er­al­ist cofounder and board mem­ber, told The Hill last year that Leo’s work offer­ing guid­ance to the White House is sole­ly in his capac­i­ty as an indi­vid­ual cit­i­zen.

    But help­ing him in this task, accord­ing to the New York Times, is lawyer Ann Cork­ery, the wife of Neil Cork­ery, the Well­spring Committee’s pres­i­dent. Ann her­self was pres­i­dent of Well­spring from its found­ing in 2008 until 2015.

    The assis­tance between Leo and the Cork­erys goes both ways. Accord­ing to one source close to the three of them, Leo is direct­ly involved in rais­ing much of the anony­mous mon­ey the Well­spring Com­mit­tee brings in every year.

    Though the source couldn’t con­firm Leo’s role in the BH Group, Leo him­self recent­ly made the con­nec­tion in a cam­paign finance fil­ing report­ed to the Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion: He list­ed “BH Group” as his employ­er.

    It’s unlike­ly that Leo him­self is the source of the $1 mil­lion, but his role at the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety allows him to meet and min­gle with some of the wealth­i­est con­ser­v­a­tive donors in the coun­try. The orga­ni­za­tion counts among its fun­ders con­ser­v­a­tive bil­lion­aires like Charles and David Koch, as well as indus­try groups like the Cham­ber of Com­merce and For­tune 500 com­pa­nies like Wal­mart and Pfiz­er, accord­ing to its 2017 annu­al report.
    ...

    And we know Leo has a par­al­lel group, BH Fund, which was used by the Koch net­work to fun­nel funds to George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty. Dona­tions that the uni­ver­si­ty’s pres­i­dent acknowl­edged “fall short of the stan­dards of aca­d­e­m­ic inde­pen­dence”:

    ...
    Leo and anoth­er vice pres­i­dent at the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety, Jonathan Bunch, are also involved in a non­prof­it called the BH Fund. A pub­lic records request by alum­ni and stu­dents at George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty shows that the BH Fund was set up to enforce a donor agree­ment with GMU’s Antonin Scalia Law School on behalf of an anony­mous donor who pledged $20 mil­lion to the pro­gram, accord­ing to a report last year from Buz­zfeed.

    Last month, GMU’s pres­i­dent Ángel Cabr­era — who has come under pres­sure for allow­ing donors to dic­tate con­di­tions in return for finan­cial gifts — said that some agree­ments the school accept­ed in return for con­tri­bu­tions fall short of the stan­dards of aca­d­e­m­ic inde­pen­dence.”

    The donor pro­vid­ing the $20 mil­lion that Leo’s BH Fund admin­is­ters is “low-pro­file, very wealthy and on the young side,” a source told McClatchy. But he or she is still anony­mous.
    ...

    And while these donors might be anony­mous to the pub­lic, they are almost cer­tain­ly not anony­mous to Trump:

    .
    ...
    As is the $1 mil­lion donor to Trump’s inau­gu­ra­tion. Anony­mous, that is, to the pub­lic.

    “The pub­lic doesn’t know who is behind this mil­lion-dol­lar dona­tion,” wrote Bren­dan Fis­ch­er, an attor­ney with the non­par­ti­san Cam­paign Legal Cen­ter, “but the Trump admin­is­tra­tion very like­ly does. Spe­cial inter­ests tend to give to an inau­gu­ra­tion in order to buy influ­ence, so whomev­er is behind this $1 mil­lion check pre­sum­ably made their iden­ti­ty known to the incom­ing admin­is­tra­tion.”

    “It is hard to imag­ine,” he went on, “that this anony­mous donor fund­ed the inau­gu­ra­tion sim­ply because they were dying to see 3 Doors Down per­form at the Lin­coln Memo­r­i­al.”
    ...

    Is $750,000 for ‘pub­lic rela­tions’ work just a scheme for cov­er­ing a secret cash dona­tion? Or just pay­back for the $1 mil­lion Decem­br 2016 BH Group dona­tion to Trump? If the $750,000 was sent to Trump, we might be look­ing at a pay-to-play dark mon­ey ‘back chan­nel’ between the Corkery/Leo donor net­work and the Trump admin­is­tra­tion? How big or small is that net­work? Might it involve for­eign donors? These are all the kinds of ques­tions the fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tors look­ing into Trump’s inau­gu­ra­tion are report­ed­ly ask­ing them­selves right about now. And as we can see, the Wellspring/BH Group land­scape of ‘non­prof­it’ 501(c)(4)s and LLCs that are set up enable exact­ly those kinds of influ­ence ped­dling trans­ac­tions.

    And regard­less of what the $750,000 was used for, the $1 mil­lion to the Trump inau­gur­al fund in 2016 mere­ly an exam­ple of the flood of dark mon­ey flow­ing into the Trump inau­gur­al fund. It was offi­cial­ly $107 mil­lion. How much unof­fi­cial­ly? We’ll see.

    So it’s going to be worth keep­ing in mind that these ques­tions about whether or not BH Group and Well­spring were run­ning a post-inau­gur­al pay-to-play dark mon­ey back chan­nel with the Trump admin­is­tra­tion are the kinds of ques­tions all Amer­i­can adults should be ask­ing. Not just fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tors. Because it’s hard to think of a sto­ry that bet­ter illus­trates what the Amer­i­can pub­lic hates about mon­ey cor­rupt­ing Amer­i­can pol­i­tics than this sto­ry. It’s like big mon­ey cor­rup­tion dis­tilled. The kind of fla­grant cor­rup­tion that would actu­al­ly require exten­sive pub­lic rela­tions ser­vices for a lot of pow­er­ful inter­ests and cor­po­ra­tions if it was exposed. It was clear­ly a pay-for-play bonan­za.

    And keep in mind that what Rick Gates was propos­ing, mak­ing the dona­tions unof­fi­cial and direct­ly to ven­dors, is the kind of thing any dark mon­ey groups could prob­a­bly do any time to give an unof­fi­cial cash dona­tion to a politi­cian. Buy a ser­vice like ‘pub­lic rela­tions’ that involves noth­ing from a com­pa­ny owned by the recip­i­ent of your dona­tions. It prob­a­bly hap­pens all the time. The kinds of ser­vices dark mon­ey firms employ, like pub­lic rela­tions ser­vices, are the kinds of ser­vices it’s rel­a­tive­ly easy to fake. So the kind of work dark mon­ey firms do to exe­cute their trade is the kind of work that lends itself to ser­vice-laun­der­ing. It’s trag­i­cal­ly fit­ting. And the Trump inau­gu­ra­tion is the ulti­mate exam­ple of that, which is also trag­i­cal­ly fit­ting.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | December 15, 2018, 9:44 pm
  3. Mick Mul­vaney fur­ther solid­i­fied his role as the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s MVP with a new admin­is­tra­tion job: Mul­vaney, the cur­rent chief of the Office of Bud­get Man­age­ment, is once again work­ing mul­ti­ple jobs. He’s no longer also the act­ing head of the Con­sumer Finan­cial Pro­tec­tion Board and back to just one job. But that’s about to change as Mul­vaney takes the role as Trump’s new act­ing Chief of Staff, while he remains act­ing head of OMB. At this point it’s hard to think of some­one more irrere­placa­ble to Trump than Mick Mul­vaney. The guy can under­mine mul­ti­ple gov­ern­ment agen­cies simul­ta­ne­ous­ly.

    Is Mul­vaney just that amaz­ing a Trump admin­is­tra­tion lack­ey that he keeps get­ting picked for more and more roles? Well, in this case it turns out that Mul­vaney had one key qual­i­fi­ca­tion that made him the per­fect can­di­date: he was will­ing to take the job. It’s a qual­i­fi­ca­tion that’s becom­ing more and more cru­cial for Trump admin­is­tra­tion hires as the pile of scan­dals and legal threats con­tin­ues to grow. And it’s also why it should come as no sur­prise to learn that Trump only select­ed Mul­vaney after his first choice turned him down and no one else expressed inter­est.

    Trump’s first choice for Chief of Staff was Nick Ayers, the cur­rent Chief of Staff for Vice Pres­i­dent Mike Pence. As we’re going to see, much like Nicole Schlinger, Ayers is a dark mon­ey Sith lord and makes a lot of mon­ey doing it. And that’s the world he wants to return to instead of becom­ing Trump’s chief of staff. Specif­i­cal­ly, Ayers wants to go back to lead­ing Amer­i­ca First, a pro-Trump 501(c)(4) co-found­ed by Ayers and a series of close Trump cam­paign offi­cials. And who knows what else. The world of dark mon­ey ser­vices allows for all sorts of dif­fer­ent clients. And Ayers wants to return to that world and make a ton of mon­ey:

    Talk­ing Points Memo
    Edi­tor’s Blog

    Fast Times in User Land

    By Josh Mar­shall
    Decem­ber 10, 2018 10:15 am

    Mike Pence’s Chief of Staff sur­prised every­one this week­end – none more than Don­ald Trump it seems – when he turned down Trump’s offer to suc­ceed John Kel­ly as Trump’s third Chief of Staff. An overea­ger Trump couldn’t wait to announce Kelly’s depar­ture this week­end and now he’s run­ning through an increas­ing­ly des­per­ate and com­i­cal list of poten­tial chiefs of staff after Ayers turned him down. What hap­pened here?

    Part of the equa­tion must be that it’s a good time to get out of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion. All the signs are there of a slow­ing econ­o­my and quite pos­si­bly a sharp reces­sion timed to hit dur­ing 2020. (I don’t think peo­ple get just how crit­i­cal the surg­ing econ­o­my has been to keep­ing Trump just deeply unpop­u­lar as opposed to cat­a­stroph­i­cal­ly unpop­u­lar.) More dra­mat­i­cal­ly, it’s not just Pres­i­dent Trump’s legal vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty that is increas­ing­ly clear. It is per­son­al­ly per­ilous to be near him and his fam­i­ly.

    But there’s anoth­er part of the equa­tion with Ayers that seems just as clear to me.

    For that we have to go back to the late 2017 fed­er­al dis­clo­sure fil­ings that showed Ayers, a 36 year old man with no appar­ent inher­it­ed wealth, was worth between $12.2 and $54.8 mil­lion.

    Most or all of that mon­ey appears to come out of Ayers’ work as a cam­paign oper­a­tive in the increas­ing­ly lucra­tive world of dark mon­ey pol­i­tics. There are lots of ways a guy like Ayers gets that mon­ey. But the cen­tral one is TV adver­tis­ing. If you con­trol the ad bud­gets, you get a large slice of the cash for your­self, usu­al­ly by own­ing or hav­ing a stake in the com­pa­ny that the cam­paign has place the ads. Report­ing from Axios and oth­er out­lets last night says that Ayers is plan­ning to run the main pro-Trump out­side group Amer­i­ca First, which he helped found last year. It seems like it was that gig that made Ayers refuse to give Trump more than a three month com­mit­ment.

    Put it all togeth­er and you see that Ayers is a guy who has already accu­mu­lat­ed a stag­ger­ing per­son­al for­tune on polit­i­cal work. Giv­en the inher­ent­ly lucra­tive nature of that kind of work and the nose-bleed high tol­er­ance for cor­rup­tion in the Trump world, run­ning the big unreg­u­lat­ed mon­ey stream for the President’s reelec­tion cam­paign is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to rake in an almost unimag­in­able amount of mon­ey. In per­fect­ly Trumpian fash­ion, Ayers appears to have stiffed his boss in a rich­ly humil­i­at­ing way so that he could cash in big time on his name and polit­i­cal move­ment.

    ———–

    “Fast Times in User Land” by Josh Mar­shall; Talk­ing Points Memo; 12/10/2018

    “Put it all togeth­er and you see that Ayers is a guy who has already accu­mu­lat­ed a stag­ger­ing per­son­al for­tune on polit­i­cal work. Giv­en the inher­ent­ly lucra­tive nature of that kind of work and the nose-bleed high tol­er­ance for cor­rup­tion in the Trump world, run­ning the big unreg­u­lat­ed mon­ey stream for the President’s reelec­tion cam­paign is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to rake in an almost unimag­in­able amount of mon­ey. In per­fect­ly Trumpian fash­ion, Ayers appears to have stiffed his boss in a rich­ly humil­i­at­ing way so that he could cash in big time on his name and polit­i­cal move­ment.

    Ayers had to say ‘no’ to Trump because he could­n’t say ‘no’ to the mil­lions he could make run­ning the pro-Trump Amer­i­can First ‘social wel­fare’ orga­ni­za­tion:

    ...
    For that we have to go back to the late 2017 fed­er­al dis­clo­sure fil­ings that showed Ayers, a 36 year old man with no appar­ent inher­it­ed wealth, was worth between $12.2 and $54.8 mil­lion.

    Most or all of that mon­ey appears to come out of Ayers’ work as a cam­paign oper­a­tive in the increas­ing­ly lucra­tive world of dark mon­ey pol­i­tics. There are lots of ways a guy like Ayers gets that mon­ey. But the cen­tral one is TV adver­tis­ing. If you con­trol the ad bud­gets, you get a large slice of the cash for your­self, usu­al­ly by own­ing or hav­ing a stake in the com­pa­ny that the cam­paign has place the ads. Report­ing from Axios and oth­er out­lets last night says that Ayers is plan­ning to run the main pro-Trump out­side group Amer­i­ca First, which he helped found last year. It seems like it was that gig that made Ayers refuse to give Trump more than a three month com­mit­ment.
    ...

    Yep, Ayers is already a mul­ti-mil­lion­aire at the age of 36, and the only expla­na­tion is that he’s already got­ten real­ly rich from his work in the lucra­tive world of right-wing dark mon­ey pol­i­tics. And that world is only going to get more and more lucra­tive as the scope of right-wing dark mon­ey con­tin­ues to explode.

    And as the fol­low­ing arti­cle notes, Amer­i­ca First is look­ing like it could be a par­tic­u­lar­ly influ­en­tial, and there­fore lucra­tive pro-Trump 501(c)(4). Why? Because of who is involved: in addi­tion to Ayers, Amer­i­ca First was found­ed by fig­ures like Rick Gates — who was recent­ly dis­cov­ered to have attempt­ed to arrange for secret dona­tions to Trumps inau­gur­al fund — and Brad Parscale, the head of Trump’s dig­i­tal cam­paign team. Trump deputy cam­paign man­ag­er David Bossie is also a found­ing mem­ber.

    Back when Amer­i­can First was first form­ing in Jan­u­ary of 2017m Parscale claimed the group aims to “build some­thing unique, just like we did with the cam­paign.” Recall how one of the ‘unique’ things Parscale led the 2016 Trump cam­paign in doing was exten­sive use of Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca-style micro-tar­get­ed ads and dis­in­for­ma­tion. And as the arti­cle also notes, both Ayers and Bossie are close to Robert and Rebekah Mer­cer, who were key investors in Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca. So when you fac­tor in that Amer­i­ca First appears to be poised to be one of the major recip­i­ents of out­side dark mon­ey and capa­ble of exe­cut­ing sophis­ti­cat­ed Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca-style adver­tis­ing cam­paigns head­ing into 2020, it’s not hard to see why Nick Ayers had to turn down the Chief of Staff job:

    Asso­ci­at­ed Press

    Trump advis­ers start ‘Amer­i­ca First Poli­cies’ non­prof­it

    By JULIE BYKOWICZ
    Jan­u­ary 30, 2017

    WASHINGTON (AP) — Six of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s top cam­paign aides have band­ed togeth­er to start a non­prof­it called “Amer­i­ca First Poli­cies” to back the White House agen­da.

    The group includes Trump’s dig­i­tal and data direc­tor Brad Parscale, one­time deputy cam­paign man­ag­er Rick Gates and two cam­paign advis­ers to Vice Pres­i­dent Mike Pence, Nick Ayers and Mar­ty Obst.

    David Bossie, anoth­er Trump deputy cam­paign man­ag­er, and Kat­ri­na Pier­son, a senior advis­er on the cam­paign com­mu­ni­ca­tions team, also will be involved, accord­ing to a state­ment announc­ing the group.

    “Some of the same like-mind­ed indi­vid­u­als who put their ener­gy into get­ting Mr. Trump elect­ed are now going to be part of a grass­roots group to go out there and help with the agen­da, help the White House be suc­cess­ful,” Parscale said.

    The large — and so far unnamed — group of founders is aimed at quelling reports of dis­sention among cam­paign advis­ers who did not go into the White House. Repub­li­can donors Robert and Rebekah Mer­cer, who finance a data research shop called Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca, have been mulling start­ing a sep­a­rate non­prof­it.

    Ayers and Bossie have close ties to the Mer­cers.

    Parscale said the group aims to “build some­thing unique, just like we did with the cam­paign.”

    Amer­i­ca First Poli­cies will con­duct research into pub­lic poli­cies and pro­mote Trump’s favored caus­es, such as dis­man­tling and replac­ing Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s health care law and chang­ing immi­gra­tion poli­cies.

    One of its first tasks is like­ly to be advo­ca­cy for Trump’s Supreme Court nom­i­nee, whom the pres­i­dent said he would announce Tues­day night. The group doesn’t have yet have a pub­lic web­site, but its founders said to expect dig­i­tal and tele­vi­sion adver­tis­ing around issues.

    “This goes beyond Trump sup­port­ers,” Gates said. “We’re try­ing to cap­ture all peo­ple who believe in the Trump agen­da.”

    Oba­ma also start­ed a non­prof­it group, called Orga­niz­ing for Action, to back his poli­cies. Some Democ­rats say that group under­cut the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty by siphon­ing away donors and keep­ing sep­a­rate Obama’s con­tact list for mil­lions of his sup­port­ers.

    Many of the details of the new Trump-themed ini­tia­tive have yet to be final­ized.

    Non­prof­its do not legal­ly have to dis­close their donors, although Obama’s group did so vol­un­tar­i­ly on a quar­ter­ly basis. There’s no word yet on whether Amer­i­ca First Poli­cies will do that.

    ...

    ———-

    “Trump advis­ers start ‘Amer­i­ca First Poli­cies’ non­prof­it” by JULIE BYKOWICZ; Asso­ci­at­ed Press; 01/30/2017

    “The group includes Trump’s dig­i­tal and data direc­tor Brad Parscale, one­time deputy cam­paign man­ag­er Rick Gates and two cam­paign advis­ers to Vice Pres­i­dent Mike Pence, Nick Ayers and Mar­ty Obst.”

    Brad Parscale, Rick Gates, and Nick Ayers want to “build some­thing unique, just like we did with the cam­paign.” Omi­nous words:

    ...
    Parscale said the group aims to “build some­thing unique, just like we did with the cam­paign.”

    Amer­i­ca First Poli­cies will con­duct research into pub­lic poli­cies and pro­mote Trump’s favored caus­es, such as dis­man­tling and replac­ing Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s health care law and chang­ing immi­gra­tion poli­cies.
    ...

    Omi­nous words from omi­nous peo­ple. Peo­ple with close ties to Robert and Rebekah Mer­cer:

    ...
    David Bossie, anoth­er Trump deputy cam­paign man­ag­er, and Kat­ri­na Pier­son, a senior advis­er on the cam­paign com­mu­ni­ca­tions team, also will be involved, accord­ing to a state­ment announc­ing the group.

    ...

    The large — and so far unnamed — group of founders is aimed at quelling reports of dis­sention among cam­paign advis­ers who did not go into the White House. Repub­li­can donors Robert and Rebekah Mer­cer, who finance a data research shop called Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca, have been mulling start­ing a sep­a­rate non­prof­it.

    Ayers and Bossie have close ties to the Mer­cers.
    ...

    So it’s look­ing like Amer­i­ca First is going to be very well fund­ed and staffed with the peo­ple who know how to exe­cute wide scale media manip­u­la­tion cam­paigns from mass media adver­tis­ing to micro-tar­get­ed per­son­al­ized dis­in­for­ma­tion. And the Mer­cers will prob­a­bly be play­ing at least some sort of role in this.

    And as the fol­low­ing arti­cle reminds us, if it turns out that the Mer­cers do decide to throw mil­lions of dol­lars at Amer­i­ca First, we prob­a­bly won’t know. Because that’s the whole point of the 501(c)(4) dark mon­ey sys­tem Amer­i­ca has con­struct­ed for itself: the donors can remain com­plete secret as long as you have some­one like Nick Ayers who knows the rules of the dark mon­ey sys­tem. It’s a les­son Ayers remind­ed us of when he was charged with break­ing Mis­souri’s cam­paign finance laws while work­ing for for­mer Mis­souri gov­er­nor Eric Gre­it­ens. Recall how Gre­it­ens resign in March after it was revealed that he was hav­ing an affair with a woman he was black­mail­ing after he bound her in leather, pho­tographed her, and threat­ened her with expo­sure of the pho­tos if she ever told any­one.

    It turns out that Nick Ayers was Gre­it­en’s top polit­i­cal con­sul­tant in his 2016 race, and Ayers may have bro­ken Mis­souri’s cam­paign finance laws as part of that work. Specif­i­cal­ly, state laws on the dis­clo­sure of polit­i­cal donors. In this case, it was a donor who should­n’t be donat­ing to Gre­it­ens because the donor “man­ages mon­ey for the state of Mis­souri.” This was revealed in a series of emails between Ayers and Gre­it­en’s lead fundrais­er that repeat­ed­ly refer to the restrict­ed donor and the use of 501(c)(4)s. Two days after a June 2016 email talk­ing about how the donor “man­ages mon­ey for the state of Mis­souri” and the use of 501(c)(4)s, a $500,000 dona­tion from a Texas-based non­prof­it, Free­dom Fron­tiers group, came in to Kansas-based polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee, LG PAC, that car­ried out the attacks on Gre­it­en­s’s oppo­nents. It was the first of over $4 mil­lion in pay­ments from Free­dom Fron­tier to LG PAC in 2016. Free­dom Fron­tier spent $5.9 mil­lion in 2016 and $4.4 of that went to LG PAC, the Kansas-based PAC that car­ried out the attacks, so Free­dom Fron­tier appears to have large­ly been set up to fun­nel mon­ey to LG PAC. In oth­er words, it’s a shell non­prof­it set up to help hide donor iden­ti­ties.

    And as Cit­i­zens for Respon­si­bil­i­ty and Ethics (CREW) point­ed out recent­ly, the fact that almost all of Free­dom Fron­tier’s spend­ing went to attack ads sup­port­ing Gre­it­ens means Free­dom Fron­tier was prob­a­bly break­ing the 50 per­cent spend­ing cap on polit­i­cal attack ads that’s allowed for 501(c)(4)s to main­tain their non­prof­it sta­tus. So Free­dom Fron­tier could be fac­ing legal trou­bles mean­ing we might learn more about who is behind it.

    And as the fol­low­ing arti­cle reveals, Nick Ayers list­ed Free­dom Fron­tier as one of the enti­ties that paid him in 2016 on his tax fil­ings. Specif­i­cal­ly, Ayer­s’s com­pa­ny, Clark Fork Group, was paid $354,000 for “con­sult­ing”. So that’s prob­a­bly Ayer­s’s pay­ment for what­ev­er he did to facil­i­tate this trans­ac­tion. This is pre­sum­ably how he got super rich so fast.

    So Nick Ayers appeared to be paid by the non­prof­it enti­ty that sent the $4.4 mil­lion in dona­tions to the Kansas PAC that attacked Gre­it­en’s oppo­nent and these pay­ments fol­lowed dis­cus­sion of how to use 501(c)(4)s to facil­i­tate dona­tions from a “restrict­ed donor” who han­dled mon­ey for the state Mis­souri.

    So when we’re won­der­ing about who might be financ­ing Amer­i­can First’s dark mon­ey pro­pa­gan­da activ­i­ties head­ing into 2020, the sto­ry of Ayer­s’s exten­sive work arrang­ing for this hid­den dona­tion to Gre­it­en­s’s elec­tion efforts make it clear that Amer­i­can First is going to be well versed in the prac­tice of using 501(c)(4)s for secret dona­tions when the donor def­i­nite­ly does­n’t want to be revealed:

    Kansas City

    Top Pence aide Nick Ayers denies break­ing the law while run­ning Gre­it­ens cam­paign

    By Jason Han­cock

    July 11, 2018 08:29 AM,

    Updat­ed July 11, 2018 04:21 PM

    JEFFERSON CITY

    Vice Pres­i­dent Mike Pence’s chief of staff denies alle­ga­tions in a new­ly filed ethics com­plaint that he vio­lat­ed Mis­souri cam­paign finance laws while help­ing to run for­mer Gov. Eric Gre­it­ens’ 2016 cam­paign.

    Nick Ayers served as Gre­it­ens’ top polit­i­cal con­sul­tant in 2016 and was lat­er paid by Gre­it­ens’ non­prof­it, A New Mis­souri Inc. His pro­tégé, Austin Cham­bers, was Gre­it­ens’ top advis­er dur­ing his 17 months as gov­er­nor.

    In June 2017, Ayers became Pence’s chief of staff. He is con­sid­ered a pos­si­ble replace­ment as Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s chief of staff if John Kel­ly leaves that post.

    In a com­plaint filed Tues­day with the Mis­souri Ethics Com­mis­sion against Gre­it­ens’ cam­paign and non­prof­it, Ayers is accused of help­ing both enti­ties com­mit mul­ti­ple cam­paign finance vio­la­tions — most notably ille­gal­ly work­ing to con­ceal the iden­ti­ty of donors.

    Gre­it­ens resigned from office June 1, fac­ing numer­ous alle­ga­tions of crim­i­nal mis­con­duct. Tues­day’s com­plaint was filed by Repub­li­can Rep. Jay Barnes of Jef­fer­son City, who served as chair­man of the House com­mit­tee that inves­ti­gat­ed Gre­it­ens as a pre­cur­sor to pos­si­ble impeach­ment.

    Among the pieces of evi­dence includ­ed in the com­plaint is a Decem­ber 2015 email dis­cus­sion between Ayers and Mered­ith Gib­bons, Gre­it­ens’ fundrais­er, about a “restrict­ed donor.”

    “There is a restrict­ed donor that we’d like for you to reach out to when you have time,” Gib­bons wrote to Ayers. “I can explain more over the phone.”

    Ayers replied: “Will buzz you soon re: restrict­ed donor.”

    The two nev­er elab­o­rate on what they mean by “restrict­ed donor.”

    But the com­plaint implies the donor could have been legal­ly pro­hib­it­ed from con­tribut­ing to Gre­it­ens’ cam­paign. Barnes points to anoth­er email, this one in June 2016, sent to Gib­bons from an undis­closed “ear­ly sup­port­er and fundrais­er of Gre­it­ens.”

    The email says a poten­tial donor may not be able to give because he “man­ages mon­ey for the state of Mis­souri.”

    “Eric can men­tion the 501(c)(4) if applic­a­ble, but no idea how [redact­ed] will react to that,” the email says.

    Two days after Gib­bons received the email, the com­plaint notes, a Texas-based non­prof­it called Free­dom Fron­tier donat­ed $500,000 to LG PAC, a Kansas-based polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee.

    All told, Free­dom Fron­tier would end up giv­ing $4 mil­lion to LG PAC, which it spent attack­ing Gre­it­ens’ rivals for the 2016 GOP guber­na­to­r­i­al nom­i­na­tion.

    Ayers said on finan­cial dis­clo­sure forms filed last year that he was paid by both Free­dom Fron­tier and the Gre­it­ens cam­paign in 2016.

    Evi­dence gath­ered by the Mis­souri House inves­tiga­tive com­mit­tee, Barnes wrote in the com­plaint “strong­ly sug­gests that Gre­it­ens for Mis­souri engaged in activ­i­ty pur­pose­ful­ly designed to con­ceal donor iden­ti­ties.”

    Alyssa Farah, press sec­re­tary for the vice pres­i­den­t’s office, said Barnes’ com­plaint was lodged “against for­mer clients of Mr. Ayers, who has always com­plied with fed­er­al and state cam­paign finance laws metic­u­lous­ly, and did so in this instance as well.”

    It’s not the first time that Ayers’ con­nec­tion to Free­dom Fron­tier has drawn scruti­ny.

    A lib­er­al gov­ern­ment watch­dog called Cit­i­zens for Respon­si­bil­i­ty and Ethics in Wash­ing­ton filed a com­plaint with the Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion last month alleg­ing that Free­dom Fron­tier vio­lat­ed fed­er­al cam­paign law by direct­ing mon­ey into the 2016 cam­paign in such a way as to delib­er­ate­ly hide the iden­ti­ty of the donors.

    It filed an iden­ti­cal com­plaint against a non­prof­it called Amer­i­can Pol­i­cy Coun­cil, which fun­neled near­ly $2 mil­lion into a polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee called SEALs for Truth, which in turn donat­ed the cash to Gre­it­ens.

    On the day the cam­paign received the con­tri­bu­tion, it made two pay­ments total­ing a lit­tle more than $2 mil­lion to a media-buy­ing firm affil­i­at­ed with Ayers.

    Barnes’ com­plaint also accus­es Gre­it­ens of vio­lat­ing state law by oper­at­ing a shad­ow cam­paign with­out for­mal­ly cre­at­ing a can­di­date com­mit­tee and of cre­at­ing A New Mis­souri Inc. after he was elect­ed gov­er­nor sole­ly for the pur­pose of skirt­ing vot­er-imposed cam­paign dona­tion lim­its and con­ceal­ing the iden­ti­ties of donors.

    Last week, The Star obtained emails that appear to show Gib­bons arrang­ing a meet­ing between a gov­ern­ment offi­cial and a major donor, all while solic­it­ing a con­tri­bu­tion to A New Mis­souri Inc.

    ...

    ———-

    “Top Pence aide Nick Ayers denies break­ing the law while run­ning Gre­it­ens cam­paign” by Jason Han­cock; Kansas City; 07/11/2018

    “Nick Ayers served as Gre­it­ens’ top polit­i­cal con­sul­tant in 2016 and was lat­er paid by Gre­it­ens’ non­prof­it, A New Mis­souri Inc. His pro­tégé, Austin Cham­bers, was Gre­it­ens’ top advis­er dur­ing his 17 months as gov­er­nor.”

    Nick Ayers is a busy guy. And a high­ly expe­ri­enced guy in the dark arts of pol­i­tics, which is prob­a­bly a big rea­son he was talked about as a replace­ment for John Kel­ly in this arti­cle from July. He’s deeply con­nect­ed to the world of Repub­li­can sleaze oper­a­tions so he’s the per­fect for recruit­ing:

    ...
    In June 2017, Ayers became Pence’s chief of staff. He is con­sid­ered a pos­si­ble replace­ment as Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s chief of staff if John Kel­ly leaves that post.
    ...

    But Nick­’s valu­able skills are need­ed else­where, in more lucra­tive areas. Like arrang­ing secret donors to pro-Trump enti­ties like Amer­i­ca First. That’s def­i­nite­ly going to be need­ed and Ayers def­i­nite­ly knows how to do it as his emails about a “restrict­ed donor” from 2015 and 2016 show:

    ...
    In a com­plaint filed Tues­day with the Mis­souri Ethics Com­mis­sion against Gre­it­ens’ cam­paign and non­prof­it, Ayers is accused of help­ing both enti­ties com­mit mul­ti­ple cam­paign finance vio­la­tions — most notably ille­gal­ly work­ing to con­ceal the iden­ti­ty of donors.

    Gre­it­ens resigned from office June 1, fac­ing numer­ous alle­ga­tions of crim­i­nal mis­con­duct. Tues­day’s com­plaint was filed by Repub­li­can Rep. Jay Barnes of Jef­fer­son City, who served as chair­man of the House com­mit­tee that inves­ti­gat­ed Gre­it­ens as a pre­cur­sor to pos­si­ble impeach­ment.

    Among the pieces of evi­dence includ­ed in the com­plaint is a Decem­ber 2015 email dis­cus­sion between Ayers and Mered­ith Gib­bons, Gre­it­ens’ fundrais­er, about a “restrict­ed donor.”

    “There is a restrict­ed donor that we’d like for you to reach out to when you have time,” Gib­bons wrote to Ayers. “I can explain more over the phone.”

    Ayers replied: “Will buzz you soon re: restrict­ed donor.”

    The two nev­er elab­o­rate on what they mean by “restrict­ed donor.”

    ...

    And Ayers lit­er­al­ly got paid by “Free­dom Fron­tiers” ($354,000 for “con­sult­ing”) in 2016, giv­ing us a sense of how Ayers got real­ly rich real­ly fast and why he wants to return to this kind of “con­sult­ing”:

    ...
    But the com­plaint implies the donor could have been legal­ly pro­hib­it­ed from con­tribut­ing to Gre­it­ens’ cam­paign. Barnes points to anoth­er email, this one in June 2016, sent to Gib­bons from an undis­closed “ear­ly sup­port­er and fundrais­er of Gre­it­ens.”

    The email says a poten­tial donor may not be able to give because he “man­ages mon­ey for the state of Mssouri.”.

    “Eric can men­tion the 501(c)(4) if applic­a­ble, but no idea how [redact­ed] will react to that,” the email says.

    Two days after Gib­bons received the email, the com­plaint notes, a Texas-based non­prof­it called Free­dom Fron­tier donat­ed $500,000 to LG PAC, a Kansas-based polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee.

    All told, Free­dom Fron­tier would end up giv­ing $4 mil­lion to LG PAC, which it spent attack­ing Gre­it­ens’ rivals for the 2016 GOP guber­na­to­r­i­al nom­i­na­tion.

    Ayers said on finan­cial dis­clo­sure forms filed last year that he was paid by both Free­dom Fron­tier and the Gre­it­ens cam­paign in 2016.

    Evi­dence gath­ered by the Mis­souri House inves­tiga­tive com­mit­tee, Barnes wrote in the com­plaint “strong­ly sug­gests that Gre­it­ens for Mis­souri engaged in activ­i­ty pur­pose­ful­ly designed to con­ceal donor iden­ti­ties.”

    Alyssa Farah, press sec­re­tary for the vice pres­i­den­t’s office, said Barnes’ com­plaint was lodged “against for­mer clients of Mr. Ayers, who has always com­plied with fed­er­al and state cam­paign finance laws metic­u­lous­ly, and did so in this instance as well.”
    ...

    So as the Amer­i­ca First pro-Trump polit­i­cal cam­paign for 2020 unfolds, keep in mind that if any “restrict­ed donors” decide they want to make an indi­rect dona­tion to Trump’s reelec­tion efforts they’ll have Nick Ayer­s’s exper­tise to make that hap­pen. For a hefty “con­sult­ing” fee.

    And that’s all why Nick Ayers is so rich. He’s a full ser­vice dark mon­ey oper­a­tive, includ­ing ser­vices for “restrict­ed donors”. He was actu­al­ly a remark­ably appro­pri­ate sleaze mer­chant choice for Trump’s Chief of Staff. He could have staffed the admin­is­tra­tion with dark mon­ey net­work indus­try peo­ple and donors, tak­ing the polit­i­cal ‘pay-to-play’ sys­tem to the next lev­el.

    But Ayers wants to chase that sweet sweet dark mon­ey cash instead. And he’s prob­a­bly not inter­est­ed in the legal dan­gers that comes with being Trumps Chief of Staff. And no one else will take the job. Hence, Mick Mul­vaney, Trump’s liv­ing Plan B, gets the job. And that’s why Mick Mul­vaney real­ly is Trump’s MVP. He’s like the staff and chief of staff in one per­son.

    Although, in relat­ed news, video of Mick Mul­vaney call­ing Trump a ter­ri­ble per­son in 2016 just sur­faced. So don’t be super sur­prised if the White House has some severe staffing issues in the near future.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | December 16, 2018, 11:54 pm
  4. Here’s an quick fol­lowup on the sto­ry of the Well­spring Com­mit­tee, the 501(c)(4) at the heart of a grow­ing scan­dal involv­ing the Trump inau­gu­ra­tion fund. A net­work with close ties to the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety and includes a num­ber orga­ni­za­tions that were heav­i­ly involved in the pro­pa­gan­da push­es to sell the Amer­i­can pub­lic on Don­ald Trump’s Supreme Court picks and sell the pub­lic on the idea of refus­ing Barack Oba­ma’s Supreme Court pick in 2016.

    And as we saw, Well­spring is was set up and is large­ly financed by the Cork­ery fam­i­ly. So here’s an arti­cle from back in 2016, when the Cork­erys’ 501(c)(4)s like the Judi­cial Cri­sis Net­work (JCN) were busy pro­mot­ing the idea that Barack Oba­ma should­n’t be allowed to appoint a Supreme Court jus­tice because it was his last year in office. Not only was Well­spring the pri­ma­ry fun­der of the JCN, giv­ing it $7 mil­lion a year, but Niel Cork­ery is JCN’s trea­sur­er.

    As the arti­cle describes, when Well­spring was first set up in 2008, it it was actu­al­ly found­ed by the Koch broth­ers. The group also raised $10 mil­lion from the Koch donor net­work right after its found­ing and pro­ceed­ed to give out $7.8 mil­lion that year to groups that includ­ed Koch net­work orga­ni­za­tions like Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty. So it was either hand­ed off to the Cork­erys or is still being secret­ly run by the Kochs.

    Well­spring worked close­ly with the Repub­li­can estab­lish­ment too. In that sense Well­spring fol­lowed a path sim­i­lar to Amer­i­can Future Fund, which also start­ed off in 2008 as a Koch enti­ty until it was caught vio­lat­ing the 501(c)(4) rules in 2012 and was kicked out of the Koch net­work and forced to find new clients like Karl Rove and the Repub­li­can Par­ty and can­di­dates.

    But unlike AFF, which saw its Koch net­work funds go down to a rel­a­tive trick­le in 2013, it’s unclear to what extent Well­spring ever real­ly stopped oper­at­ing as an arm of the ‘Kochto­pus’. Fol­low­ing the 2008 elec­tions, the Kochs focused on build­ing their known Koch enti­ties like Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty and Cen­ter to Pro­tect Patient Rights (CPPR). On the sur­face, Well­spring appeared to have left the Koch orbit fol­low­ing the 2008 elec­tions, rais­ing $24 mil­lion from 2008–2011 from unknown donors. Might those unknown donors have been the Koch donor net­work? Who knows, but it turns out 10 of the recip­i­ents of Well­spring’s dona­tions dur­ing that peri­od also received mon­ey from CPPR. Recall how CPPR was one of the Kochs’ major ‘shad­ow mon­ey mail­box­es’ that oper­at­ed on dark mon­ey repos­i­to­ries that did lit­tle else oth­er than receive dona­tions and hand them out to oth­er Koch net­work enti­ties. Also, Well­spring works with con­sul­tants who used to work with Koch Indus­tries. So based on cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence, it seems like­ly that Well­spring is effec­tive­ly oper­at­ing as a stealth arm of the Koch net­work. In oth­er words, Well­spring may be pri­ma­ry a crea­ture of the Cork­erys, but it should still be seen as an arm of the Kochto­pus too.

    The arti­cle also points out that all of that mon­ey spent by JCN on pro­pa­gan­diz­ing the pub­lic about Supreme Court nom­i­nees does­n’t count towards the 50 per­cent cap on polit­i­cal spend­ing that 501(c)(4)s. It’s not “polit­i­cal activ­i­ty”, allow­ing JCN to effec­tive­ly spend 100 per­cent of its mon­ey on polit­i­cal ads.

    Oh, and it turns out the Cork­erys are asso­ci­at­ed with Opus Dei. So the orga­ni­za­tion that was act­ing as a lead 501(c)(4) dark mon­ey enti­ty in Supreme Court polit­i­cal bat­tles of recent years is run by a bil­lion­aire cou­ple asso­ci­at­ed with a far right fas­cist Catholic sect.

    In addi­tion, Ann Cork­ery is for­mer direc­tor of Bill Donohue’s Catholic League and a board mem­ber of Hob­by Lobby’s law firm. So she’s prob­a­bly real­ly good at rais­ing mon­ey from hard-right Catholics.

    And that’s all part of why the sto­ry of Well­spring, like the sto­ry of AFF, is one of those sto­ries that tells us a lot about what has gone wrong with Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. When you ‘fol­low the mon­ey’, it usu­al­ly goes back to dark mon­ey enti­ties work­ing for right-wing bil­lion­aires all work­ing togeth­er to secret­ly pro­pa­gan­dize the hell out of the Amer­i­can pub­lic. And some of those bil­lion­aires net­work with both the Kochs and Opus Dei:

    The Dai­ly Beast

    Bil­lion­aires Try to Buy the Supreme Court

    Repub­li­cans say ‘let the peo­ple decide’ the next jus­tice, but 1 per­centers are help­ing them block Mer­rick Gar­land so they can place a con­ser­v­a­tive on the bench.

    Jay Michael­son
    03.29.16 1:00 AM ET

    “Let the peo­ple decide” is the refrain of Repub­li­cans opposed to hold­ing hear­ings for Supreme Court nom­i­nee Judge Mer­rick Gar­land, but they’re being bankrolled by an anony­mous col­lec­tion of billionaires—1 per­centers so cow­ard­ly that they’re hid­ing behind tax laws to avoid reveal­ing their iden­ti­ties.

    Case in point: the “Judi­cial Cri­sis Net­work,” the right-wing front orga­ni­za­tion doing ad buys across the coun­try to oppose Judge Gar­land get­ting a hear­ing. JCN is one of many 501(c)(4) “social wel­fare” orga­ni­za­tions on the right and the left, and C4s don’t have to dis­close their donors.That is the major rea­son that polit­i­cal spend­ing by C4s increased more than 8,000 per­cent between 2004 and 2012.

    That doesn’t mean we don’t know any­thing about C4’s like JCN, how­ev­er. Thanks to a 2015 inves­ti­ga­tion by the non-par­ti­san Cen­ter for Respon­sive Pol­i­tics, we do know it was start­ed in 2005 (as the “Judi­cial Con­fir­ma­tion net­work” meant to pro­mote Bush’s judi­cial appointees) by a group of arch-con­ser­v­a­tives includ­ing Ann Cork­ery. Cork­ery isn’t list­ed on the JCN’s web­site, per­haps because the group doesn’t want “the peo­ple” to know she is also mem­ber of the far-right, lit­er­al­ly self-fla­gel­lat­ing Catholic order Opus Dei; a for­mer direc­tor of Bill Donohue’s ultra-right Catholic League; and a board mem­ber of Hob­by Lobby’s law firm, The Beck­et Fund, although her bio has been removed from Becket’s web­site too.

    Con­ve­nient­ly, Cork­ery also directs JCN’s lead­ing fun­der, the Well­spring Com­mit­tee.

    Who funds the Well­spring Com­mit­tee? Well, here’s where things get inter­est­ing.

    Turns out, Well­spring was found­ed in 2008 by none oth­er than the infa­mous Charles and David Koch, togeth­er with their polit­i­cal Sven­gali, Richard Fink. Accord­ing to Ken­neth Vogel, author of the book Big Mon­ey: 2.5 Bil­lion Dol­lars, One Sus­pi­cious Vehi­cle, and a Pimp, Well­spring raised $10 mil­lion from atten­dees at the Kochs’ donor sem­i­nars, right after it was found­ed.

    How much and from whom we don’t know.

    And that’s pre­cise­ly the point. Indeed, so secre­tive is the Well­spring Com­mit­tee that Jane Mayer’s mas­ter­ful 449-page tome on the Kochs, Scaifes, and oth­er mega-donors doesn’t even men­tion it. One insid­er told Vogel, “Well­spring would nev­er have put their name on any­thing.”

    And these are the peo­ple say­ing “let the peo­ple decide.”

    From the begin­ning, Well­spring was set up as a dark-mon­ey con­duit, effec­tive­ly laun­der­ing bil­lion­aire dona­tions so no one would have to be account­able for them. Well­spring donat­ed $7.8 mil­lion in 2008, for exam­ple, in part to oth­er Koch-fund­ed fronts like Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty.

    But Well­spring was dif­fer­ent in one key respect. Unlike most of the lib­er­tar­i­an “Kochtopus”—which would even­tu­al­ly fund the Astro­turf Tea Par­ty movement—Wellspring worked close­ly with the Repub­li­can estab­lish­ment. Cork­ery her­self was a co-chair of the Nation­al Women for Mitt Finance Com­mit­tee. The oper­a­tions were ini­tial­ly run by Rick Wiley, a for­mer Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee offi­cial. Well­spring also coor­di­nat­ed with Repub­li­can mega-donors, includ­ing Shel­don Adelson’s Freedom’s Watch.

    The mar­riage didn’t last long, though. After the 2008 elec­tion loss, the Koch broth­ers turned back to their roots, fund­ing front groups like Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty and Cen­ter to Pro­tect Patient Rights to oppose Oba­macare and the Tea Par­ty move­ment to oppose main­stream Repub­li­cans.

    From 2008 to 2011, Well­spring raised $24 mil­lion but not one donor’s name is known. (There are rumors that its fun­ders now include the Tem­ple­ton Foun­da­tion and hedge fund mogul Paul Singer, both con­tacts of Corkery’s.) Intrigu­ing­ly, how­ev­er, 10 of Wellspring’s grantees (in the peri­od 2008-11) also received mon­ey from the Koch-fund­ed Cen­ter to Pro­tect Patient Rights, and Well­spring works with con­sul­tants who used to work with Koch Indus­tries.

    Who­ev­er is pay­ing for it, we do know that Well­spring is giv­ing JCN $7 mil­lion a year, the lion’s share of that group’s bud­get, and that Corkery’s hus­band Neil is JCN’s trea­sur­er. JCN, in turn, announced a $3 mil­lion cam­paign to oppose any Supreme Court con­fir­ma­tion hearings—just the lat­est of its big spends on judi­cial bat­tles across the coun­try.

    In oth­er words, the lead­ing oppo­nents of Judge Garland’s con­fir­ma­tion aren’t cit­i­zens con­cerned about democ­ra­cy, but a front orga­ni­za­tion start­ed by a secre­tive reli­gious extrem­ist and fund­ed by anony­mous mem­bers of the Koch broth­ers’ net­work. Let the peo­ple decide, indeed.

    Oh, and by the way, C4s like Well­spring and JCN can only spend up to 49.9 per­cent of their expen­di­tures on pol­i­tics: the rest is sup­posed to pro­mote “social wel­fare.” But since a judi­cial cam­paign isn’t tech­ni­cal­ly a polit­i­cal cam­paign, these expen­di­tures actu­al­ly count as Wellspring’s non-polit­i­cal “social wel­fare” expens­es. Because of course this has noth­ing to do with pol­i­tics.

    The fur­ther one digs into this mias­ma of hypocrisy, wealth, and secre­cy, the more inces­tu­ous it all becomes. For exam­ple, it turns out, accord­ing to the Cen­ter for Respon­sive Pol­i­tics, that Neil Cork­ery, in addi­tion to JCN, was also “pres­i­dent of its allied Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project, and exec­u­tive direc­tor of a char­i­ty called the Sudan Relief Fund, all of which paid him salaries; but he also drew pay­checks from at least four oth­er orga­ni­za­tions: the anti-gay union Nation­al Orga­ni­za­tion for Mar­riage, ActRight Action, the Catholic Asso­ci­a­tion Foun­da­tion, and Catholic Voic­es. His total earn­ings were almost $450,000 and his week­ly work­load was 105 hours in the first half of 2012.” He also linked to the C4 group called the Annu­al Fund, itself launched in 2010 with a $2.4 mil­lion grant from Well­spring.

    Some­times the “vast, right-wing con­spir­a­cy” isn’t real­ly that vast.

    It is, how­ev­er, deeply hyp­o­crit­i­cal. If the mantra of the anti-Gar­land crowd is “let the peo­ple decide,” why won’t they let the peo­ple know who they are? Why the lay­ers of obfus­ca­tion and secre­cy? If the Well­spring Com­mit­tee fun­ders real­ly care about democ­ra­cy, they’ll stop hid­ing behind tax reg­u­la­tions and shell cor­po­ra­tions, and proud­ly dis­close who they are and what they want to do.

    ...

    ———-

    “Bil­lion­aires Try to Buy the Supreme Court” by Jay Michael­son; The Dai­ly Beast; 03/29/2016

    “Case in point: the “Judi­cial Cri­sis Net­work,” the right-wing front orga­ni­za­tion doing ad buys across the coun­try to oppose Judge Gar­land get­ting a hear­ing. JCN is one of many 501(c)(4) “social wel­fare” orga­ni­za­tions on the right and the left, and C4s don’t have to dis­close their donors.That is the major rea­son that polit­i­cal spend­ing by C4s increased more than 8,000 per­cent between 2004 and 2012.

    Thanks to donor secre­cy rules for 501(c)(4)s we saw an 8,000 per­cent explo­sion in 501(c)(4) polit­i­cal spend­ing between 2004 and 2012. But in the spir­it of free­dom, it’s worth remind­ing our­selves that it was­n’t just those rule changes that caused this flood of mon­ey. It was also the fact that right-wing bil­lion­aires like the Kochs and Cork­erys got orga­nized and exer­cised their free­doms to flood the polit­i­cal sys­tem with dark mon­ey for pro­pa­gan­da and polit­i­cal pay offs (like dark mon­ey pay­ments to the Trump inau­gur­al fund). They got orga­nized to a greater extent than before and cre­at­ed a dark mon­ey right-wing bil­lion­aire union that works togeth­er to keep their activ­i­ties as anony­mous as pos­si­ble. They had the free­dom to do that and they are cur­rent­ly abus­ing the hell out of that free­dom. That deci­sion to abuse the hell out of the sys­tem and cre­ate a mas­sive dark mon­ey polit­i­cal pro­pa­gan­da net­work designed to cir­cum­vent polit­i­cal finance laws and give donors max­i­mum secre­cy played a major role in the 8,000 per­cent explo­sion of 501(c)(4) polit­i­cal spend­ing from 2004–2012 in US elec­tion and the ongo­ing explo­sion. Right-wing bil­lion­aires abus­ing their free­doms is play­ing a big role in what is going wrong in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics.

    But despite the anonymi­ty that the donors to these bil­lion­aire shad­ow mon­ey net­works get, we still know some­thing about who is run­ning these net­works. The Kochs, Karl Rove, and more obscure peo­ple like Nicole Schlinger of AFF. What we know about the peo­ple who can’t hide their iden­ti­ties (because some­one has to be the pub­lic face of these groups) is large­ly what we get to know about the kinds of donors they’re going to court. In the case of Well­spring and JCN, we know the Cork­erys are play­ing a major role so the friends and asso­ciates of the Cork­erys are like­ly to be the major fun­ders. And that’s going to include a lot of peo­ple asso­ci­at­ed with Opus Dei and oth­er far right Catholic orga­ni­za­tions. So in addi­tion to peo­ple asso­ci­at­ed with the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety, the JCN’s donors are like­ly to include a lot of very right-wing Catholic wealthy donors. It’s a note­wor­thy fun fact about the dark mon­ey net­works behind the pub­lic mes­sag­ing cam­paigns Amer­i­ca’s Supreme Court fights:

    ...
    That doesn’t mean we don’t know any­thing about C4’s like JCN, how­ev­er. Thanks to a 2015 inves­ti­ga­tion by the non-par­ti­san Cen­ter for Respon­sive Pol­i­tics, we do know it was start­ed in 2005 (as the “Judi­cial Con­fir­ma­tion net­work” meant to pro­mote Bush’s judi­cial appointees) by a group of arch-con­ser­v­a­tives includ­ing Ann Cork­ery. Cork­ery isn’t list­ed on the JCN’s web­site, per­haps because the group doesn’t want “the peo­ple” to know she is also mem­ber of the far-right, lit­er­al­ly self-fla­gel­lat­ing Catholic order Opus Dei; a for­mer direc­tor of Bill Donohue’s ultra-right Catholic League; and a board mem­ber of Hob­by Lobby’s law firm, The Beck­et Fund, although her bio has been removed from Becket’s web­site too.

    Con­ve­nient­ly, Cork­ery also directs JCN’s lead­ing fun­der, the Well­spring Com­mit­tee.

    ...

    Who­ev­er is pay­ing for it, we do know that Well­spring is giv­ing JCN $7 mil­lion a year, the lion’s share of that group’s bud­get, and that Corkery’s hus­band Neil is JCN’s trea­sur­er. JCN, in turn, announced a $3 mil­lion cam­paign to oppose any Supreme Court con­fir­ma­tion hearings—just the lat­est of its big spends on judi­cial bat­tles across the coun­try.

    In oth­er words, the lead­ing oppo­nents of Judge Garland’s con­fir­ma­tion aren’t cit­i­zens con­cerned about democ­ra­cy, but a front orga­ni­za­tion start­ed by a secre­tive reli­gious extrem­ist and fund­ed by anony­mous mem­bers of the Koch broth­ers’ net­work. Let the peo­ple decide, indeed.
    ...

    But the Opus Dei/Catholic League/Hobby Lob­by ties are just one aspect of Well­spring. There’s also it’s appar­ent role as an arm of the Koch net­work. Well­spring was start­ed by the Kochs, and appears to be coor­di­nat­ing fre­quent­ly with the Kochs. Well­spring also works with the Repub­li­can Par­ty and Shel­don Adel­son’s Free­dom’s Watch. Much like AFF, Well­spring appears to work across the spec­trum of the ‘vast right-wing con­spir­a­cy’:

    ...
    Who funds the Well­spring Com­mit­tee? Well, here’s where things get inter­est­ing.

    Turns out, Well­spring was found­ed in 2008 by none oth­er than the infa­mous Charles and David Koch, togeth­er with their polit­i­cal Sven­gali, Richard Fink. Accord­ing to Ken­neth Vogel, author of the book Big Mon­ey: 2.5 Bil­lion Dol­lars, One Sus­pi­cious Vehi­cle, and a Pimp, Well­spring raised $10 mil­lion from atten­dees at the Kochs’ donor sem­i­nars, right after it was found­ed.

    How much and from whom we don’t know.

    And that’s pre­cise­ly the point. Indeed, so secre­tive is the Well­spring Com­mit­tee that Jane Mayer’s mas­ter­ful 449-page tome on the Kochs, Scaifes, and oth­er mega-donors doesn’t even men­tion it. One insid­er told Vogel, “Well­spring would nev­er have put their name on any­thing.”

    And these are the peo­ple say­ing “let the peo­ple decide.”

    From the begin­ning, Well­spring was set up as a dark-mon­ey con­duit, effec­tive­ly laun­der­ing bil­lion­aire dona­tions so no one would have to be account­able for them. Well­spring donat­ed $7.8 mil­lion in 2008, for exam­ple, in part to oth­er Koch-fund­ed fronts like Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty.

    But Well­spring was dif­fer­ent in one key respect. Unlike most of the lib­er­tar­i­an “Kochtopus”—which would even­tu­al­ly fund the Astro­turf Tea Par­ty movement—Wellspring worked close­ly with the Repub­li­can estab­lish­ment. Cork­ery her­self was a co-chair of the Nation­al Women for Mitt Finance Com­mit­tee. The oper­a­tions were ini­tial­ly run by Rick Wiley, a for­mer Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee offi­cial. Well­spring also coor­di­nat­ed with Repub­li­can mega-donors, includ­ing Shel­don Adelson’s Freedom’s Watch.

    The mar­riage didn’t last long, though. After the 2008 elec­tion loss, the Koch broth­ers turned back to their roots, fund­ing front groups like Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty and Cen­ter to Pro­tect Patient Rights to oppose Oba­macare and the Tea Par­ty move­ment to oppose main­stream Repub­li­cans.

    From 2008 to 2011, Well­spring raised $24 mil­lion but not one donor’s name is known. (There are rumors that its fun­ders now include the Tem­ple­ton Foun­da­tion and hedge fund mogul Paul Singer, both con­tacts of Corkery’s.) Intrigu­ing­ly, how­ev­er, 10 of Wellspring’s grantees (in the peri­od 2008-11) also received mon­ey from the Koch-fund­ed Cen­ter to Pro­tect Patient Rights, and Well­spring works with con­sul­tants who used to work with Koch Indus­tries.
    ...

    And as a reminder of the far­ci­cal nature of the 501(c)(4) rules when it comes to pre­tend­ing that bla­tant­ly polit­i­cal activ­i­ty by 501(c)(4)s are actu­al­ly “social wel­fare” activ­i­ty that does­n’t count towards the 50 per­cent lim­it rule on polit­i­cal activ­i­ty (a rule that is absurd), we learn that all that spend­ing on ads by JCN try­ing to con­vince the Amer­i­can pub­lic that no Oba­ma Supreme Court nom­i­nees should be allowed for his last year in office did­n’t count as polit­i­cal spend­ing by JCN. It was “social wel­fare”:

    ...

    Oh, and by the way, C4s like Well­spring and JCN can only spend up to 49.9 per­cent of their expen­di­tures on pol­i­tics: the rest is sup­posed to pro­mote “social wel­fare.” But since a judi­cial cam­paign isn’t tech­ni­cal­ly a polit­i­cal cam­paign, these expen­di­tures actu­al­ly count as Wellspring’s non-polit­i­cal “social wel­fare” expens­es. Because of course this has noth­ing to do with pol­i­tics.
    ...

    So that’s all part of what we know about Well­spring and the Cork­erys con­tri­bu­tion to the dark mon­ey net­work. And because Well­spring is the enti­ty that appeared to be behind the BH Group LLC that was used to donate $1 mil­lion to the Trump inau­gur­al fund and may have been used to ille­gal­ly hide dona­tions to Trump under the direc­tion of Rick Gates, the back­ground of the Cork­erys and the role they play in this dark mon­ey net­work is now part of that Trump inau­gu­ra­tion foun­da­tion sto­ry. So it’s going to be worth observ­ing how the Cork­erys con­nect many of the var­i­ous dif­fer­ent major right-wing dark mon­ey net­works: the Kochs, the Repub­li­can Par­ty, and the hard-right Catholic mega-donors are all cov­ered. And that makes this inau­gu­ra­tion fund scan­dal a won­der­ful­ly teach­able moment. A teach­able moment that includes the rich his­to­ry of the rise of the right-wing bil­lion­aire dark mon­ey empire and the fact that the Koch and Rove net­works are going to have have a lot of small­er allied enti­ties like the Cork­ery net­work to fur­ther help obfus­cate the mon­ey flows and max­i­mize donor anonymi­ty. Well­spring’s abil­i­ty to work with a broad spec­trum of the right-wing mega-donor net­work make it per­fect for the job of anony­mous­ly rais­ing mon­ey for Trump’s record-break­ing inau­gu­ra­tion fund that’s now under crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion. And that’s a very teach­able moment kind of thing these days.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | December 21, 2018, 11:21 pm
  5. There’s a new scan­dal bub­bling up in the Trump admin­is­tra­tion regard­ing the use and undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers at one of Pres­i­dent Trump’s golf cours­es. Specif­i­cal­ly, there are alle­ga­tions that the man­age­ment at Trump’s Gar­den State golf in New Jer­sey was know­ing­ly hir­ing undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants for years, includ­ing for the work­ers who clean Trump’s pri­vate res­i­dence there. It’s an unfold­ing scan­dal and we don’t know the extent to which it could impli­cate Trump him­self. But the evi­dence so far sug­gests that the Trump Orga­ni­za­tion was like­ly aware of this prac­tice. Both of the employ­ees bring­ing these charges for­ward cleaned Trump’s per­son­al res­i­dence at the golf club.

    In addi­tion, it appears that Trump’s New Jer­sey club neglect­ed to use the E‑Verify sys­tem for check­ing to see whether or not employ­ee doc­u­ments were fake, which makes sense giv­en that it appears that man­agers at the club were not only know­ing­ly hir­ing undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers but actu­al­ly help­ing to pro­vide them with fake work doc­u­ments. But as the New York Times arti­cle points out below, Trump’s golf clubs in states that require E‑Verify do actu­al­ly use the sys­tem.

    And while that’s cer­tain­ly a bad look for Trump that his golf cours­es appar­ent­ly only use E‑Verify when they’re legal­ly man­dat­ed, it’s also a bad look for the rest of the GOP. And not just for the obvi­ous hypocrisy of Trump employ­ing undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers. It’s also a bad look for the GOP because Trump cam­paigned on mak­ing E‑Verify a fed­er­al­ly man­dat­ed rule, so states like New Jer­sey can’t leave E‑Verify as option­al for employ­ers, and as we’re going to see, one of the biggest obsta­cles stand­ing in the way of a fed­er­al E‑Verify man­date is the Repub­li­can par­ty. Spe­cial­ly, the wing of the Repub­li­can Par­ty doing the bid­ding of the agri­cul­tur­al and restaurant/hotel indus­tries. And if the US polit­i­cal debate over ille­gal hir­ing of ille­gal immi­grants ever start­ed focus­ing on the employ­ers that know­ing­ly hire them — employ­ers like Trump Org, it would seem — that could become quite per­ilous for the GOP. It’s a lot hard­er for the GOP to make immi­gra­tion a polit­i­cal cud­gel when it involves putting employ­ers at legal risk (espe­cial­ly if those employ­ers include a lot of promi­nent Repub­li­cans).

    Inter­est­ing­ly, when the GOP opposed E‑Verify back in 2011, it was the House ‘Free­dom Cau­cus’ and the Tea Partiers that fought against E‑Verify man­dates. Flash for­ward to 2018, the hard­line fac­tion of the GOP House cau­cus put for­ward an immi­gra­tion bill that would have man­dat­ed E‑Verify, but that bill could­n’t get enough Repub­li­can sup­port. When that hard­line GOP bill failed, the Repub­li­can House lead­er­ship put for­ward a “com­pro­mise” immi­gra­tion bill. The com­pro­mise bill did­n’t ini­tial­ly include an E‑Verify man­date, but when it failed to get enough Repub­li­can sup­port to pass, the Repub­li­can House lead­er­ship offered to add E‑Verify to the leg­is­la­tion to entice the hard­line hold­outs to sup­port the bill. But when that offer to add E‑Verify was made, mod­er­ate Repub­li­cans from agri­cul­tur­al dis­tricts start­ed sug­gest­ing that they might drop their sup­port for the bill if a fed­er­al E‑Verify man­date was added. Ulti­mate­ly, the “com­pro­mise” GOP immi­gra­tion bill did not include the E‑Verify fed­er­al man­date. So the Repub­li­can Par­ty has had a knack for find­ing rea­sons to oppose E‑Verify at the last minute when it actu­al­ly has the pow­er to pass leg­is­la­tion, mak­ing this a par­tic­u­lar­ly polit­i­cal­ly dan­ger­ous top­ic for the GOP since it high­lights how the par­ty is only inter­est­ed in demo­niz­ing ille­gal immi­grants for polit­i­cal pur­pos­es. Solu­tions like focus­ing on the employ­ers who know­ing­ly hire undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers ulti­mate­ly fail because the Repub­li­can Par­ty is ulti­mate­ly the par­ty of busi­ness inter­ests and busi­ness inter­ests in the Unit­ed States like hav­ing access to cheap, exploitable labor.

    And while that all obvi­ous­ly makes this a high­ly top­i­cal scan­dal in the con­text of the cur­rent Trump-led fed­er­al gov­ern­ment shut­down show­down over fund­ing for ‘the Wall’, it’s going to be worth keep­ing in mind the num­ber of par­al­lels to the scan­dal sur­round­ing GOP promi­nent fundrais­ers Nicole Schlinger and Eric Lang, and their know­ing employ­ment of Cristhi­an Bahena Rivera, the alleged mur­der­er of Mol­lie Tib­betts. The farm owned by Schlinger and Lang gave Rivera and 10 oth­ers hous­ing rent free at the farm. And when they were asked if Rivera was work­ing there legal­ly, Schlinger and Lang’s farm first claimed they had used E‑Verify and con­firmed he was a legal work­er, but lat­er back­tracked and acknowl­edged they had­n’t used E‑Verify while insist­ing that Rivera had used fake doc­u­ments and a fake name to gain employ­ment there.

    Also recall how Schlinger has been work­ing as a con­sul­tant for some of the most anti-immi­grant Repub­li­cans around like Ted Cruz and Corey Stew­art.

    So the fact that Pres­i­dent Trump like­ly runs a busi­ness that was know­ing­ly hir­ing undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants and Trump still went to become one of the most anti-immi­grant politi­cians in mod­ern Amer­i­can his­to­ry is the kind of scan­dal with explo­sive poten­tial sim­ply because it can effec­tive­ly draw atten­tion to all sorts of relat­ed GOP scan­dals that nev­er got much pub­lic atten­tion.

    And as the fol­low­ing arti­cle points out, the lawyer for the two gold club employ­ees who are mak­ing these alle­ga­tions ini­tial­ly actu­al­ly took his sto­ry to none oth­er than Robert Mueller’s legal team, fear­ing that Trump’s jus­tice depart­ment would dis­miss the case. And Mueller’s team, in turn, referred the mat­ter to the FBI, which sent agents to meet with the lawyer. So at the same time Pres­i­dent Trump is wag­ing a gov­ern­ment shut­down over fund­ing for ‘the Wall’, it’s pos­si­ble the FBI might already be involved in the inves­ti­ga­tion in addi­tion to the New Jer­sey state inves­ti­ga­tors:

    New York Dai­ly News

    New Jer­sey AG has obtained evi­dence of pos­si­ble crimes at Trump’s golf club — and Mueller, FBI are involved in probe

    By Chris Som­mer­feldt
    Dec 29, 2018 | 6:00 AM

    New Jer­sey pros­e­cu­tors have col­lect­ed evi­dence that super­vi­sors at Pres­i­dent Trump’s Gar­den State golf club may have com­mit­ted fed­er­al immi­gra­tion crimes — and the FBI as well as spe­cial coun­sel Robert Mueller have played part in the inquiry, the Dai­ly News has learned.

    Ani­bal Romero, a Newark attor­ney who rep­re­sents sev­er­al undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants who used to work at the Trump Nation­al Golf Club in Bed­min­ster, said Fri­day he recent­ly met with inves­ti­ga­tors from the state attor­ney general’s office and hand­ed over fraud­u­lent green cards and Social Secu­ri­ty num­bers that man­age­ment at the club alleged­ly pro­cured and gave his clients, Vic­to­ri­na Morales and San­dra Diaz.

    Before he met with the state pros­e­cu­tors, Romero said he reached out to Mueller’s office because, while he want­ed to con­tact fed­er­al author­i­ties, he was con­cerned about loop­ing in the Jus­tice Depart­ment, which was head­ed by Jeff Ses­sions at the time.

    “I wasn’t sure, one, if they’d take me seri­ous­ly and, two, if this could back­fire on my clients,” Romero told The News, ref­er­enc­ing the Trump administration’s aggres­sive immi­gra­tion agen­da.

    Mueller’s office, which is sep­a­rate­ly inves­ti­gat­ing Trump’s cam­paign for pos­si­ble col­lu­sion with Rus­sians dur­ing the 2016 elec­tion, made con­tact and informed Romero the mat­ter was not with­in their juris­dic­tion.

    A few weeks lat­er, an FBI agent in New Jer­sey called Romero.

    “He said to me that he had received a refer­ral from Robert Mueller’s office and that he already knew the specifics and that he want­ed to meet with me in per­son,” Romero said.

    Romero then met with two agents at a fed­er­al office in Branch­burg, N.J., and out­lined the same evi­dence he had already giv­en the AG pros­e­cu­tors. The agents said they would “coor­di­nate” with the AG’s office, accord­ing to Romero.

    Romero said he’s stayed in touch with the FBI and the attor­ney general’s office but declined to con­firm whether either of the agen­cies have for­mal­ly opened inves­ti­ga­tions.

    “I’m con­fi­dent that fed­er­al and state author­i­ties will con­duct a com­plete and thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tion,” Romero said.

    ...

    Morales, a Guatemalan nation­al who is still employed at the club but has stopped going to work, and Diaz, a Cos­ta Rican nation­al who used to work there and has since obtained legal sta­tus, are among at least five undoc­u­ment­ed house­keep­ers at the club who allege they were set up with fraud­u­lent doc­u­ments and sub­ject­ed to abuse and racial harass­ment.

    Morales and Diaz first came for­ward with their alle­ga­tions in inter­views with The New York Times ear­li­er this month.

    Both women allege man­age­ment at the Trump club knew they were undoc­u­ment­ed and set them up with fake work doc­u­ments.

    In Morales’ case, Romero said a super­vi­sor com­piled all of her infor­ma­tion and then took her pho­to in the laun­dry room of the club.

    A few days lat­er, the boss — who’s not being named by The News — told Morales he had received her fake doc­u­ments and said he would hold on to them.

    “This was a prac­tice and pat­tern,” Romero said. “My clients felt like they were trapped and they felt like the fake doc­u­ments could be used against them.”

    A spokes­woman for the Trump Orga­ni­za­tion did not return mul­ti­ple requests for com­ment.

    Romero said Morales under­stands her com­ing for­ward could result in legal reper­cus­sions but says she is moti­vat­ed to speak out because of the bla­tant hypocrisy in Trump employ­ing undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants at his golf club while at the same time demo­niz­ing them from his Oval Office pul­pit.

    Har­ry Sandick, a for­mer assis­tant U.S. attor­ney for the South­ern Dis­trict of New York, said the undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers may have com­mit­ted immi­gra­tion fraud by know­ing­ly using fake doc­u­ments — a fed­er­al offense that could result in prison time, hefty fines and depor­ta­tion.

    Sandick also said the super­vi­sor who alleged­ly pro­cured the fake doc­u­ments — as well as any­one else involved in the process — could be charged with the same crime. Con­sid­er­ing the high-pro­file nature of the case, Sandick said pros­e­cu­tors may try to send a mes­sage by indict­ing the super­vi­sor.

    “Immi­gra­tion crimes are hard to pros­e­cute so the gov­ern­ment may see some­thing like this as a pos­si­ble deter­rent case,” Sandick said. “To show that even some­one who works at the President’s golf club is under the micro­scope is very impres­sive and tells you that any­one can be charged.”

    Romero said his clients have not been giv­en any assur­ances but said charg­ing them with any crimes would be miss­ing the point.

    “They are the vic­tims here,” Romero said. “Any attempt at charg­ing them would ignore the real prob­lem.”

    ———-

    “New Jer­sey AG has obtained evi­dence of pos­si­ble crimes at Trump’s golf club — and Mueller, FBI are involved in probe” by Chris Som­mer­feldt; New York Dai­ly News; 12/29/2018

    “New Jer­sey pros­e­cu­tors have col­lect­ed evi­dence that super­vi­sors at Pres­i­dent Trump’s Gar­den State golf club may have com­mit­ted fed­er­al immi­gra­tion crimes — and the FBI as well as spe­cial coun­sel Robert Mueller have played part in the inquiry, the Dai­ly News has learned.”

    So the FBI and Robert Mueller’s inves­ti­ga­tion team are both already some­what involved. The lawyer for two of the Trump Nation­al Golf Club employ­ees, Ani­bal Romero, told reporters that he recent­ly met with New Jer­sey state offi­cials to hand over evi­dence of the fake work doc­u­ments pro­vid­ed to his clients by the Trump club man­age­ment, but before he was in touch with state inves­ti­ga­tors he got in con­tact with Mueller’s inves­ti­ga­tion which referred it to the FBI. And the FBI did meet with Romero:

    ...
    Ani­bal Romero, a Newark attor­ney who rep­re­sents sev­er­al undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants who used to work at the Trump Nation­al Golf Club in Bed­min­ster, said Fri­day he recent­ly met with inves­ti­ga­tors from the state attor­ney general’s office and hand­ed over fraud­u­lent green cards and Social Secu­ri­ty num­bers that man­age­ment at the club alleged­ly pro­cured and gave his clients, Vic­to­ri­na Morales and San­dra Diaz.

    Before he met with the state pros­e­cu­tors, Romero said he reached out to Mueller’s office because, while he want­ed to con­tact fed­er­al author­i­ties, he was con­cerned about loop­ing in the Jus­tice Depart­ment, which was head­ed by Jeff Ses­sions at the time.

    “I wasn’t sure, one, if they’d take me seri­ous­ly and, two, if this could back­fire on my clients,” Romero told The News, ref­er­enc­ing the Trump administration’s aggres­sive immi­gra­tion agen­da.

    Mueller’s office, which is sep­a­rate­ly inves­ti­gat­ing Trump’s cam­paign for pos­si­ble col­lu­sion with Rus­sians dur­ing the 2016 elec­tion, made con­tact and informed Romero the mat­ter was not with­in their juris­dic­tion.

    A few weeks lat­er, an FBI agent in New Jer­sey called Romero.

    “He said to me that he had received a refer­ral from Robert Mueller’s office and that he already knew the specifics and that he want­ed to meet with me in per­son,” Romero said.

    Romero then met with two agents at a fed­er­al office in Branch­burg, N.J., and out­lined the same evi­dence he had already giv­en the AG pros­e­cu­tors. The agents said they would “coor­di­nate” with the AG’s office, accord­ing to Romero.

    Romero said he’s stayed in touch with the FBI and the attor­ney general’s office but declined to con­firm whether either of the agen­cies have for­mal­ly opened inves­ti­ga­tions.

    “I’m con­fi­dent that fed­er­al and state author­i­ties will con­duct a com­plete and thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tion,” Romero said.
    ...

    Fas­ci­nat­ing­ly, a for­mer assis­tant U.S. attor­ney points out that not only did the undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers who use the fake doc­u­ments to gain employ­ment poten­tial­ly com­mit a fed­er­al immi­gra­tion fraud crime — which can result in impris­on­ment, large fines, and depor­ta­tion — but any of the man­age­ment and oth­ers at the Trump orga­ni­za­tion to facil­i­tat­ed this may have also com­mit­ted fed­er­al crimes. And this for US attor­ney sus­pects pros­e­cu­tors could even make an exam­ple out of these Trump club man­agers. It would be an incred­i­ble devel­op­ment:

    ...
    Har­ry Sandick, a for­mer assis­tant U.S. attor­ney for the South­ern Dis­trict of New York, said the undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers may have com­mit­ted immi­gra­tion fraud by know­ing­ly using fake doc­u­ments — a fed­er­al offense that could result in prison time, hefty fines and depor­ta­tion.

    Sandick also said the super­vi­sor who alleged­ly pro­cured the fake doc­u­ments — as well as any­one else involved in the process — could be charged with the same crime. Con­sid­er­ing the high-pro­file nature of the case, Sandick said pros­e­cu­tors may try to send a mes­sage by indict­ing the super­vi­sor.

    “Immi­gra­tion crimes are hard to pros­e­cute so the gov­ern­ment may see some­thing like this as a pos­si­ble deter­rent case,” Sandick said. “To show that even some­one who works at the President’s golf club is under the micro­scope is very impres­sive and tells you that any­one can be charged.”

    Romero said his clients have not been giv­en any assur­ances but said charg­ing them with any crimes would be miss­ing the point.

    “They are the vic­tims here,” Romero said. “Any attempt at charg­ing them would ignore the real prob­lem.”
    ...

    The fact that the employ­ers who facil­i­tate immi­gra­tion fraud crimes could face fed­er­al charges is worth keep­ing in mind regard­ing the GOP’s track record on fed­er­al E‑Verify man­dates and the fact that high-pro­file GOP fundrais­ers like Nicole Schlinger and Eric Lang appear to be fac­ing no con­se­quences for appear­ing to know­ing­ly hire and house undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers with fake doc­u­ments. The Repub­li­can Par­ty is a hard­line par­ty when it comes to ille­gal immi­grants but remark­ably soft when it comes to the employ­ers who hire and exploit these same peo­ple and this emerg­ing Trump scan­dal could make this fact much more obvi­ous to the Amer­i­can pub­lic.

    Now let’s take a look at the New York Times arti­cle from ear­li­er in Decem­ber that ini­tial­ly made these charges pub­lic. As we’re going to see, the two women work­ing ille­gal­ly for Trump’s New Jer­sey golf club were both work­ing in Trump’s per­son­al res­i­dence at the club and both are charg­ing that the club man­age­ment knew they were undoc­u­ment­ed and actu­al­ly helped them get the fake doc­u­ments:

    The New York Times

    Mak­ing Pres­i­dent Trump’s Bed: A House­keep­er With­out Papers

    At the president’s New Jer­sey golf course, an undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grant has worked as a maid since 2013. She said she nev­er imag­ined she “would see such impor­tant peo­ple close up.”

    By Miri­am Jor­dan

    Dec. 6, 2018

    BEDMINSTER, N.J. — Dur­ing more than five years as a house­keep­er at the Trump Nation­al Golf Club in Bed­min­ster, N.J., Vic­to­ri­na Morales has made Don­ald J. Trump’s bed, cleaned his toi­let and dust­ed his crys­tal golf tro­phies. When he vis­it­ed as pres­i­dent, she was direct­ed to wear a pin in the shape of the Amer­i­can flag adorned with a Secret Ser­vice logo.

    Because of the “out­stand­ing” sup­port she has pro­vid­ed dur­ing Mr. Trump’s vis­its, Ms. Morales in July was giv­en a cer­tifi­cate from the White House Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Agency inscribed with her name.

    Quite an achieve­ment for an undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grant house­keep­er.

    Ms. Morales’s jour­ney from cul­ti­vat­ing corn in rur­al Guatemala to fluff­ing pil­lows at an exclu­sive golf resort took her from the south­west bor­der, where she said she crossed ille­gal­ly in 1999, to the horse coun­try of New Jer­sey, where she was hired at the Trump prop­er­ty in 2013 with doc­u­ments she said were pho­ny.

    She said she was not the only work­er at the club who was in the coun­try ille­gal­ly.

    San­dra Diaz, 46, a native of Cos­ta Rica who is now a legal res­i­dent of the Unit­ed States, said she, too, was undoc­u­ment­ed when she worked at Bed­min­ster between 2010 and 2013. The two women said they worked for years as part of a group of house­keep­ing, main­te­nance and land­scap­ing employ­ees at the golf club that includ­ed a num­ber of undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers, though they could not say pre­cise­ly how many. There is no evi­dence that Mr. Trump or Trump Orga­ni­za­tion exec­u­tives knew of their immi­gra­tion sta­tus. But at least two super­vi­sors at the club were aware of it, the women said, and took steps to help work­ers evade detec­tion and keep their jobs.

    “There are many peo­ple with­out papers,” said Ms. Diaz, who said she wit­nessed sev­er­al peo­ple being hired whom she knew to be undoc­u­ment­ed.

    Mr. Trump has made bor­der secu­ri­ty and the fight to pro­tect jobs for Amer­i­cans a cor­ner­stone of his pres­i­den­cy, from the bor­der wall he has pledged to build to the work­place raids and pay­roll audits that his admin­is­tra­tion has car­ried out.

    Dur­ing the pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, when the Trump Inter­na­tion­al Hotel opened for busi­ness in Wash­ing­ton, Mr. Trump boast­ed that he had used an elec­tron­ic ver­i­fi­ca­tion sys­tem, E‑Verify, to ensure that only those legal­ly enti­tled to work were hired.

    “We didn’t have one ille­gal immi­grant on the job,” Mr. Trump said then.

    But through­out his cam­paign and his admin­is­tra­tion, Ms. Morales, 45, has been report­ing for work at Mr. Trump’s golf course in Bed­min­ster, where she is still on the pay­roll. An employ­ee of the golf course dri­ves her and a group of oth­ers to work every day, she says, because it is known that they can­not legal­ly obtain driver’s licens­es.

    A diminu­tive woman with only two years of edu­ca­tion who came to the Unit­ed States speak­ing no Eng­lish, Ms. Morales has had an unusu­al win­dow into one of the president’s favorite retreats: She has cleaned the president’s vil­la while he watched tele­vi­sion near­by; she stood on the side­lines when poten­tial cab­i­net mem­bers were brought in for inter­views and when the White House chief of staff, John Kel­ly, arrived to con­fer with the pres­i­dent.

    “I nev­er imag­ined, as an immi­grant from the coun­try­side in Guatemala, that I would see such impor­tant peo­ple close up,” she said.

    But Ms. Morales said she has been hurt by Mr. Trump’s pub­lic com­ments since he became pres­i­dent, includ­ing equat­ing Latin Amer­i­can immi­grants with vio­lent crim­i­nals. It was that, she said, along with abu­sive com­ments from a super­vi­sor at work about her intel­li­gence and immi­gra­tion sta­tus, that made her feel that she could no longer keep silent.

    “We are tired of the abuse, the insults, the way he talks about us when he knows that we are here help­ing him make mon­ey,” she said. “We sweat it out to attend to his every need and have to put up with his humil­i­a­tion.”

    Ms. Morales and Ms. Diaz approached The New York Times through their New Jer­sey lawyer, Ani­bal Romero, who is rep­re­sent­ing them on immi­gra­tion mat­ters. Ms. Morales said that she under­stood she could be fired or deport­ed as a result of com­ing for­ward, though she has applied for pro­tec­tion under the asy­lum laws. She is also explor­ing a law­suit claim­ing work­place abuse and dis­crim­i­na­tion.

    In sep­a­rate, hours­long inter­views in Span­ish, Ms. Morales and Ms. Diaz pro­vid­ed detailed accounts of their work at the club and their inter­ac­tions with man­age­ment, includ­ing Mr. Trump. Both women described the pres­i­dent as demand­ing but kind, some­times offer­ing hefty tips.

    While they were often unclear on pre­cise dates of when events occurred, they appeared to rec­ol­lect key events and con­ver­sa­tions with pre­ci­sion.

    Ms. Morales has had deal­ings with Mr. Trump that go back years, and her hus­band has con­firmed that she would on occa­sion come home jubi­lant because the club own­er had paid her a com­pli­ment, or bestowed on her a $50 or some­times a $100 tip.

    To ascer­tain that she was in fact an employ­ee of the club, The Times reviewed Ms. Morales’s pay stubs and W‑2 forms, which list the golf course as her employ­er. She also made avail­able her Indi­vid­ual Tax­pay­er Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, a nine-dig­it num­ber that is issued by the Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice to for­eign­ers to enable them to file tax­es with­out being per­ma­nent res­i­dents of the Unit­ed States. Hav­ing a num­ber does not con­fer eli­gi­bil­i­ty to work.

    The Times also exam­ined the doc­u­ments Ms. Morales pre­sent­ed as proof that she was enti­tled to work — a per­ma­nent res­i­dent card, or green card, and a Social Secu­ri­ty card, both of which she said she pur­chased from some­one in New Jer­sey who pro­duced coun­ter­feit doc­u­ments for immi­grants.

    The Times ran Ms. Morales’s pur­port­ed Social Secu­ri­ty num­ber through sev­er­al pub­lic records data­bas­es and none pro­duced a match, which is often an indi­ca­tion that the num­ber is not valid. The num­ber on the back of the green card that Ms. Morales has on file at the golf course does not cor­re­spond to the for­mat of num­bers used on most legit­i­mate res­i­dent cards. For exam­ple, it includes ini­tials that do not match those of any immi­gra­tion ser­vice cen­ters that issue the cards.

    Ms. Diaz pro­duced sim­i­lar doc­u­ments, though since she has gained legal res­i­dence she has been issued a gen­uine Social Secu­ri­ty card and green card.

    The Trump Orga­ni­za­tion, which owns the golf course, did not com­ment specif­i­cal­ly on Ms. Morales or Ms. Diaz. “We have tens of thou­sands of employ­ees across our prop­er­ties and have very strict hir­ing prac­tices,” Aman­da Miller, the company’s senior vice pres­i­dent for mar­ket­ing and cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions, said in a state­ment. “If an employ­ee sub­mit­ted false doc­u­men­ta­tion in an attempt to cir­cum­vent the law, they will be ter­mi­nat­ed imme­di­ate­ly.”

    ...

    That Ms. Morales appeared able to secure employ­ment with what she said were fake doc­u­ments is not sur­pris­ing: An esti­mat­ed eight mil­lion unau­tho­rized immi­grants are in the labor force, and it is an open secret that many busi­ness­es, espe­cial­ly in the ser­vice sec­tor, hire them.

    Mr. Trump has a long his­to­ry of rely­ing on immi­grants at his golf and hotel prop­er­ties. Though he signed a “Buy Amer­i­can, Hire Amer­i­can” exec­u­tive order in 2017 tight­en­ing the con­di­tions for visas for for­eign work­ers, his com­pa­nies have hired hun­dreds of for­eign­ers on guest-work­er visas.

    In hir­ing work­ers who are already in the Unit­ed States, employ­ers are required to exam­ine iden­ti­ty and work autho­riza­tion doc­u­ments and record them on an employ­ment eli­gi­bil­i­ty form. But com­pa­nies are not required in most cas­es to take addi­tion­al steps to ver­i­fy the authen­tic­i­ty of doc­u­ments. Because fal­si­fy­ing these doc­u­ments is so easy, E‑Verify, which is required in 22 states, goes the extra step of check­ing them against records kept by the Social Secu­ri­ty Admin­is­tra­tion and the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty.

    The fed­er­al list post­ed online of employ­ers who use the E‑Verify sys­tem includes Mr. Trump’s golf club in North Car­oli­na, a state that requires it, but the Bed­min­ster club in New Jer­sey, where it is not required under state law, does not appear on the list.

    Dur­ing his cam­paign, Mr. Trump called for expand­ing the pro­gram to work­places around the coun­try. So far, that has not hap­pened.

    Mr. Trump opened his tro­phy club in the afflu­ent horse coun­try of Som­er­set Coun­ty, N.J., in 2004. After buy­ing the 504-acre prop­er­ty from a group of investors in 2002, Mr. Trump plant­ed a sweep­ing colon­nade of maple trees at the entrance and built two 18-hole golf cours­es, their design inspired by the gar­dens of Ver­sailles. The mem­ber­ship ini­ti­a­tion fee is more than $100,000.

    The prop­er­ty has an esti­mat­ed 40 to 80 employ­ees, depend­ing on the sea­son; the bulk of the basic ser­vice work­ers are for­eign-born. Immi­grants keep the greens watered and man­i­cured. They clean and main­tain the cot­tages and suites that sur­round the junior Olympic-size heat­ed pool.

    The pres­i­dent has spent all or part of about 70 days at Bed­min­ster since tak­ing office. He has a two-sto­ry res­i­dence on the prop­er­ty; his daugh­ter Ivan­ka Trump and her hus­band, Jared Kush­n­er, were mar­ried at the club in 2009, and also have a cot­tage.

    The job at Bed­min­ster, at which Ms. Morales earns $13 an hour, is one of sev­er­al she said she has held since arriv­ing in the Unit­ed States in 1999, cross­ing unde­tect­ed into Cal­i­for­nia after a jour­ney of near­ly six weeks by bus and on foot.

    After she first arrived in Los Ange­les, a con­tact pro­vid­ed her with a false Social Secu­ri­ty num­ber and an iden­ti­fi­ca­tion card that she was told would enable her to secure employ­ment. She then flew to New Jer­sey, where she joined her hus­band, who had arrived months ear­li­er.

    In ear­ly 2013, a friend who worked at the Trump golf club told her that man­age­ment was look­ing for house­keep­ers.

    Ms. Morales was keen: The pay would be $10 an hour, high­er than the $8.25 that she was earn­ing clean­ing guest rooms at a hotel.

    Accord­ing to her account, when she arrived for her inter­view, the house­keep­ing super­vi­sor showed her around and asked her to demon­strate how she cleaned. The super­vi­sor asked her to report to work the next morn­ing at 6 a.m. — with her doc­u­ments.

    Ms. Morales said she told her she had no legal work­ing doc­u­ments. “I told her I don’t have good papers. She told me to bring what I used at the hotel,” Ms. Morales recalled.

    By the time Ms. Morales was hired, Ms. Diaz had been work­ing at the club since 2010 and had the job of clean­ing Mr. Trump’s res­i­dence.

    She said she washed and ironed Mr. Trump’s white box­ers, golf shirts and kha­ki trousers, as well as his sheets and tow­els. Every­thing belong­ing to Mr. Trump, his wife, Mela­nia, and their son, Bar­ron, was washed with spe­cial deter­gent in a small­er, sep­a­rate wash­ing machine, she said.

    “He is extreme­ly metic­u­lous about every­thing. If he arrives sud­den­ly, every­one runs around like crazy” because Mr. Trump inspects every­thing close­ly, Ms. Diaz said.

    She recalled a ner­vous moment in 2012, when Mr. Trump approached her and asked her to fol­low him to the club­house, a ren­o­vat­ed 1930s Geor­gian manor, where he pro­ceed­ed to run his fin­gers around the edges of frames on the wall and over table sur­faces to check for dust.

    “You did a real­ly great job,” she said he told her, and hand­ed her a $100 bill.

    That same year, she said, Mr. Trump had an out­burst over some orange stains on the col­lar of his white golf shirt, which Ms. Diaz described as stub­born rem­nants of his make­up, which she had dif­fi­cul­ty remov­ing.

    When Ms. Morales joined the house­keep­ing team in 2013, Ms. Diaz was in charge of train­ing her, and began to take her to tend to Mr. Trump’s house. In Novem­ber of that year, when Ms. Diaz quit, Ms. Morales and the house­keep­ing super­vi­sor took on the job of clean­ing Mr. Trump’s house togeth­er.

    Ms. Morales said she will nev­er for­get the day Mr. Trump pulled up to the pro shop in his cart as she was wash­ing its large, arched win­dows. Notic­ing that Ms. Morales, who is shy of five feet tall, could not reach the top, he said, “Excuse me,” grabbed her rag and wiped the upper por­tion of the glass.

    Mr. Trump then asked Ms. Morales her name and where she was from, she recalled. “I said, ‘I am from Guatemala.’ He said, ‘Guatemalans are hard-work­ing peo­ple.’” The pres­i­dent then reached into his pock­et and hand­ed her a $50 bill.

    “I told myself, ‘God bless him.’ I thought, he’s a good per­son,” Ms. Morales recalled.

    Soon after Mr. Trump launched his cam­paign for the pres­i­den­cy, in June 2015, Ms. Morales recalled, one of the man­agers sum­moned her to tell her that she could no longer work inside Mr. Trump’s house.

    Around the same time, she said, sev­er­al work­ers, who she said were also work­ing ille­gal­ly, had their work days shaved from five days to three days. “The work­ers pan­icked. A lot of peo­ple just left,” she said.

    Two months after Mr. Trump’s inau­gu­ra­tion, in March 2017, Ms. Morales said that she and oth­er work­ers received a new employ­ee hand­book.

    Under a sec­tion titled “Immi­gra­tion Com­pli­ance,” the hand­book stat­ed that employ­ees were required to present doc­u­ments spec­i­fied by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. “Those that are found to have fal­si­fied infor­ma­tion will not be eli­gi­ble for employ­ment,” the hand­book stat­ed.

    Ms. Morales said she was giv­en a new employ­ment form to sign. She could not under­stand the form, she said, but her lawyer, Mr. Romero, said it was like­ly an updat­ed I‑9 employ­ment eli­gi­bil­i­ty doc­u­ment — a form that, like the pre­vi­ous one, ref­er­enced her fal­si­fied doc­u­ments.

    Some­time last year, she said, one of the man­agers told her she must get both a new green card and new Social Secu­ri­ty card because there were prob­lems with her cur­rent ones.

    Ms. Morales pro­vid­ed a detailed account of what tran­spired, but it was not pos­si­ble to inde­pen­dent­ly con­firm what hap­pened. Accord­ing to her rec­ol­lec­tion, she told the man­ag­er that she did not know how to obtain new forg­eries.

    “I don’t know where to get them,’ ” she said she told him.

    The man­ag­er, she said, sug­gest­ed she speak with a main­te­nance employ­ee who he said knew where to acquire new doc­u­ments. When the main­te­nance employ­ee told her that the new papers would cost $165, Ms. Morales told the man­ag­er that she did not have the mon­ey. “He said, ‘don’t wor­ry. I will lend you the mon­ey,’” she said.

    Ms. Morales said the main­te­nance work­er drove her to a house in Plain­field, N.J., where she wait­ed in his car while he met with some­one inside. Ms. Morales said that she had no record or rec­ol­lec­tion of the address.

    The next day, she said, the main­te­nance work­er brought her a new Social Secu­ri­ty card and a real­is­tic-look­ing green card to replace the one that had “expired.” She said the man­ag­er made copies of them for files kept at the club’s admin­is­tra­tive head­quar­ters.

    Now that Mr. Trump was pres­i­dent, there was more than the usu­al excite­ment when­ev­er he arrived. Ms. Morales was still asked to clean Mr. Trump’s res­i­dence on occa­sion, and had to wear a Secret Ser­vice pin when­ev­er the pres­i­dent was on site, she said, most like­ly iden­ti­fy­ing her as an employ­ee, though the pins did not mean employ­ees had a secu­ri­ty clear­ance.

    As the months went on, she and oth­er employ­ees at the golf club became increas­ing­ly dis­turbed about Mr. Trump’s com­ments, which they felt demeaned immi­grants from Mex­i­co and Cen­tral Amer­i­ca. The president’s tone seemed to embold­en oth­ers to make neg­a­tive com­ments, Ms. Morales said. The house­keep­ing super­vi­sor fre­quent­ly made remarks about the employ­ees’ vul­ner­a­ble legal sta­tus when cri­tiquing their work, she said, some­times call­ing them “stu­pid ille­gal immi­grants” with less intel­li­gence than a dog.

    Ms. Morales expects she will have to leave her job as soon as her name and work sta­tus are made pub­lic. She under­stands she could be deport­ed. On Thurs­day, she spent the day with her lawyer, and as news of her dis­clo­sures spread, she did not answer a phone call from her super­vi­sor at the golf course. She said she did not expect to return to work.

    She said she is cer­tain that her employ­ers — per­haps even Mr. Trump — knew of her unlaw­ful sta­tus all along.

    “I ask myself, is it pos­si­ble that this señor thinks we have papers? He knows we don’t speak Eng­lish,” Ms. Morales said. “Why wouldn’t he fig­ure it out?”

    ———-

    “Mak­ing Pres­i­dent Trump’s Bed: A House­keep­er With­out Papers” by Miri­am Jor­dan; The New York Times; 12/06/2018

    Mr. Trump has a long his­to­ry of rely­ing on immi­grants at his golf and hotel prop­er­ties. Though he signed a “Buy Amer­i­can, Hire Amer­i­can” exec­u­tive order in 2017 tight­en­ing the con­di­tions for visas for for­eign work­ers, his com­pa­nies have hired hun­dreds of for­eign­ers on guest-work­er visas.”

    Yep, Trump has a long his­to­ry of rely­ing on immi­grants at his golf and hotel prop­er­ties. And as this sto­ry hint at, it’s a long his­to­ry that like­ly involved rely­ing on undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants for that labor. Includ­ing work at the Trump per­son­al res­i­dences at these prop­er­ties. In this case, Trump has a two-sto­ry res­i­dence at the golf club, and both Ms. Dias and Ms. Morales were work­ing there:

    ...
    The pres­i­dent has spent all or part of about 70 days at Bed­min­ster since tak­ing office. He has a two-sto­ry res­i­dence on the prop­er­ty; his daugh­ter Ivan­ka Trump and her hus­band, Jared Kush­n­er, were mar­ried at the club in 2009, and also have a cot­tage.

    ...

    By the time Ms. Morales was hired, Ms. Diaz had been work­ing at the club since 2010 and had the job of clean­ing Mr. Trump’s res­i­dence.

    She said she washed and ironed Mr. Trump’s white box­ers, golf shirts and kha­ki trousers, as well as his sheets and tow­els. Every­thing belong­ing to Mr. Trump, his wife, Mela­nia, and their son, Bar­ron, was washed with spe­cial deter­gent in a small­er, sep­a­rate wash­ing machine, she said.

    ...

    The prop­er­ty has an esti­mat­ed 40 to 80 employ­ees, depend­ing on the sea­son; the bulk of the basic ser­vice work­ers are for­eign-born. Immi­grants keep the greens watered and man­i­cured. They clean and main­tain the cot­tages and suites that sur­round the junior Olympic-size heat­ed pool.

    ...

    When Ms. Morales joined the house­keep­ing team in 2013, Ms. Diaz was in charge of train­ing her, and began to take her to tend to Mr. Trump’s house. In Novem­ber of that year, when Ms. Diaz quit, Ms. Morales and the house­keep­ing super­vi­sor took on the job of clean­ing Mr. Trump’s house togeth­er.

    Ms. Morales said she will nev­er for­get the day Mr. Trump pulled up to the pro shop in his cart as she was wash­ing its large, arched win­dows. Notic­ing that Ms. Morales, who is shy of five feet tall, could not reach the top, he said, “Excuse me,” grabbed her rag and wiped the upper por­tion of the glass.

    Mr. Trump then asked Ms. Morales her name and where she was from, she recalled. “I said, ‘I am from Guatemala.’ He said, ‘Guatemalans are hard-work­ing peo­ple.’” The pres­i­dent then reached into his pock­et and hand­ed her a $50 bill.

    “I told myself, ‘God bless him.’ I thought, he’s a good per­son,” Ms. Morales recalled.
    ...

    And in the case of Ms. Morales, she has attend­ed to Trump’s pri­vate res­i­dence while Trump was there con­duct­ing busi­ness as the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States:

    ...
    Dur­ing more than five years as a house­keep­er at the Trump Nation­al Golf Club in Bed­min­ster, N.J., Vic­to­ri­na Morales has made Don­ald J. Trump’s bed, cleaned his toi­let and dust­ed his crys­tal golf tro­phies. When he vis­it­ed as pres­i­dent, she was direct­ed to wear a pin in the shape of the Amer­i­can flag adorned with a Secret Ser­vice logo.

    Because of the “out­stand­ing” sup­port she has pro­vid­ed dur­ing Mr. Trump’s vis­its, Ms. Morales in July was giv­en a cer­tifi­cate from the White House Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Agency inscribed with her name.

    Quite an achieve­ment for an undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grant house­keep­er.

    Ms. Morales’s jour­ney from cul­ti­vat­ing corn in rur­al Guatemala to fluff­ing pil­lows at an exclu­sive golf resort took her from the south­west bor­der, where she said she crossed ille­gal­ly in 1999, to the horse coun­try of New Jer­sey, where she was hired at the Trump prop­er­ty in 2013 with doc­u­ments she said were pho­ny.

    She said she was not the only work­er at the club who was in the coun­try ille­gal­ly.

    ...

    A diminu­tive woman with only two years of edu­ca­tion who came to the Unit­ed States speak­ing no Eng­lish, Ms. Morales has had an unusu­al win­dow into one of the president’s favorite retreats: She has cleaned the president’s vil­la while he watched tele­vi­sion near­by; she stood on the side­lines when poten­tial cab­i­net mem­bers were brought in for inter­views and when the White House chief of staff, John Kel­ly, arrived to con­fer with the pres­i­dent.

    “I nev­er imag­ined, as an immi­grant from the coun­try­side in Guatemala, that I would see such impor­tant peo­ple close up,” she said.
    ...

    And while there’s no evi­dence, yet, that Trump was aware of his club was employ­ing undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants, Diaz and Morales are very con­fi­dent that at least two man­agers knew about it because these man­age­ments lit­er­al­ly helped the two women with the process of fak­ing their immi­gra­tion doc­u­men­ta­tion:

    ...
    San­dra Diaz, 46, a native of Cos­ta Rica who is now a legal res­i­dent of the Unit­ed States, said she, too, was undoc­u­ment­ed when she worked at Bed­min­ster between 2010 and 2013. The two women said they worked for years as part of a group of house­keep­ing, main­te­nance and land­scap­ing employ­ees at the golf club that includ­ed a num­ber of undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers, though they could not say pre­cise­ly how many. There is no evi­dence that Mr. Trump or Trump Orga­ni­za­tion exec­u­tives knew of their immi­gra­tion sta­tus. But at least two super­vi­sors at the club were aware of it, the women said, and took steps to help work­ers evade detec­tion and keep their jobs.

    “There are many peo­ple with­out papers,” said Ms. Diaz, who said she wit­nessed sev­er­al peo­ple being hired whom she knew to be undoc­u­ment­ed.

    ...

    In ear­ly 2013, a friend who worked at the Trump golf club told her that man­age­ment was look­ing for house­keep­ers.

    Ms. Morales was keen: The pay would be $10 an hour, high­er than the $8.25 that she was earn­ing clean­ing guest rooms at a hotel.

    Accord­ing to her account, when she arrived for her inter­view, the house­keep­ing super­vi­sor showed her around and asked her to demon­strate how she cleaned. The super­vi­sor asked her to report to work the next morn­ing at 6 a.m. — with her doc­u­ments.

    Ms. Morales said she told her she had no legal work­ing doc­u­ments. “I told her I don’t have good papers. She told me to bring what I used at the hotel,” Ms. Morales recalled.
    ...

    But it does­n’t look like it was just these two man­agers who were aware of the undoc­u­ment­ed sta­tus of these employ­ees. There was even a club employ­ee that would dri­ve Morales and oth­er undoc­u­ment­ed employ­ees to work every­day because it’s rec­og­nized that they can’t legal­ly obtain dri­ver’s licens­es:

    ...
    But through­out his cam­paign and his admin­is­tra­tion, Ms. Morales, 45, has been report­ing for work at Mr. Trump’s golf course in Bed­min­ster, where she is still on the pay­roll. An employ­ee of the golf course dri­ves her and a group of oth­ers to work every day, she says, because it is known that they can­not legal­ly obtain driver’s licens­es.

    ...

    That Ms. Morales appeared able to secure employ­ment with what she said were fake doc­u­ments is not sur­pris­ing: An esti­mat­ed eight mil­lion unau­tho­rized immi­grants are in the labor force, and it is an open secret that many busi­ness­es, espe­cial­ly in the ser­vice sec­tor, hire them.
    ...

    And when Trump launched his pres­i­den­tial cam­paign in 2015, the golf club sud­den­ly pulled the undoc­u­ment­ed employ­ees out of places like work­ing in trump’s pri­vate res­i­dence and reduced their hours. It’s appar­ent­ly how the orga­ni­za­tion decid­ed to bal­ance the polit­i­cal dan­gers of know­ing­ly employ­ing undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers with the desire to con­tin­ue exploit­ing them:

    ...
    Soon after Mr. Trump launched his cam­paign for the pres­i­den­cy, in June 2015, Ms. Morales recalled, one of the man­agers sum­moned her to tell her that she could no longer work inside Mr. Trump’s house.

    Around the same time, she said, sev­er­al work­ers, who she said were also work­ing ille­gal­ly, had their work days shaved from five days to three days. “The work­ers pan­icked. A lot of peo­ple just left,” she said.
    ...

    And when Trump won the pres­i­den­cy, the club man­age­ment forced Ms. Morales to get new a green card and Social Secu­ri­ty card. Then the man­age­ment referred her to a main­te­nance employ­ee to who pro­vid­ed her with new fake doc­u­ments for a fee. So the prac­tice of pro­vid­ing undoc­u­ment­ed employ­ees with the fake doc­u­men­ta­tion they need con­tin­ued even after Trump won on a plat­form of demo­niz­ing ille­gal immi­grants:

    ...
    Two months after Mr. Trump’s inau­gu­ra­tion, in March 2017, Ms. Morales said that she and oth­er work­ers received a new employ­ee hand­book.

    Under a sec­tion titled “Immi­gra­tion Com­pli­ance,” the hand­book stat­ed that employ­ees were required to present doc­u­ments spec­i­fied by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. “Those that are found to have fal­si­fied infor­ma­tion will not be eli­gi­ble for employ­ment,” the hand­book stat­ed.

    Ms. Morales said she was giv­en a new employ­ment form to sign. She could not under­stand the form, she said, but her lawyer, Mr. Romero, said it was like­ly an updat­ed I‑9 employ­ment eli­gi­bil­i­ty doc­u­ment — a form that, like the pre­vi­ous one, ref­er­enced her fal­si­fied doc­u­ments.

    Some­time last year, she said, one of the man­agers told her she must get both a new green card and new Social Secu­ri­ty card because there were prob­lems with her cur­rent ones.

    Ms. Morales pro­vid­ed a detailed account of what tran­spired, but it was not pos­si­ble to inde­pen­dent­ly con­firm what hap­pened. Accord­ing to her rec­ol­lec­tion, she told the man­ag­er that she did not know how to obtain new forg­eries.

    “I don’t know where to get them,’ ” she said she told him.

    The man­ag­er, she said, sug­gest­ed she speak with a main­te­nance employ­ee who he said knew where to acquire new doc­u­ments. When the main­te­nance employ­ee told her that the new papers would cost $165, Ms. Morales told the man­ag­er that she did not have the mon­ey. “He said, ‘don’t wor­ry. I will lend you the mon­ey,’” she said.

    Ms. Morales said the main­te­nance work­er drove her to a house in Plain­field, N.J., where she wait­ed in his car while he met with some­one inside. Ms. Morales said that she had no record or rec­ol­lec­tion of the address.

    The next day, she said, the main­te­nance work­er brought her a new Social Secu­ri­ty card and a real­is­tic-look­ing green card to replace the one that had “expired.” She said the man­ag­er made copies of them for files kept at the club’s admin­is­tra­tive head­quar­ters.

    ...

    Now that Mr. Trump was pres­i­dent, there was more than the usu­al excite­ment when­ev­er he arrived. Ms. Morales was still asked to clean Mr. Trump’s res­i­dence on occa­sion, and had to wear a Secret Ser­vice pin when­ev­er the pres­i­dent was on site, she said, most like­ly iden­ti­fy­ing her as an employ­ee, though the pins did not mean employ­ees had a secu­ri­ty clear­ance.
    ...

    And yet, despite the club man­age­ment get­ting these women fake doc­u­ments, it was­n’t very hard to deter­mine they were fake. Even the New York Times could eas­i­ly deter­mine that the Social Secu­ri­ty num­bers used by these women weren’t valid. It’s an aspect of this sto­ry that makes the Repub­li­can par­ty’s inabil­i­ty to get behind a nation­al E‑Verify man­date is such a polit­i­cal­ly potent issue:

    ...
    To ascer­tain that she was in fact an employ­ee of the club, The Times reviewed Ms. Morales’s pay stubs and W‑2 forms, which list the golf course as her employ­er. She also made avail­able her Indi­vid­ual Tax­pay­er Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, a nine-dig­it num­ber that is issued by the Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice to for­eign­ers to enable them to file tax­es with­out being per­ma­nent res­i­dents of the Unit­ed States. Hav­ing a num­ber does not con­fer eli­gi­bil­i­ty to work.

    The Times also exam­ined the doc­u­ments Ms. Morales pre­sent­ed as proof that she was enti­tled to work — a per­ma­nent res­i­dent card, or green card, and a Social Secu­ri­ty card, both of which she said she pur­chased from some­one in New Jer­sey who pro­duced coun­ter­feit doc­u­ments for immi­grants.

    The Times ran Ms. Morales’s pur­port­ed Social Secu­ri­ty num­ber through sev­er­al pub­lic records data­bas­es and none pro­duced a match, which is often an indi­ca­tion that the num­ber is not valid. The num­ber on the back of the green card that Ms. Morales has on file at the golf course does not cor­re­spond to the for­mat of num­bers used on most legit­i­mate res­i­dent cards. For exam­ple, it includes ini­tials that do not match those of any immi­gra­tion ser­vice cen­ters that issue the cards.

    Ms. Diaz pro­duced sim­i­lar doc­u­ments, though since she has gained legal res­i­dence she has been issued a gen­uine Social Secu­ri­ty card and green card.

    ...

    Mr. Trump has made bor­der secu­ri­ty and the fight to pro­tect jobs for Amer­i­cans a cor­ner­stone of his pres­i­den­cy, from the bor­der wall he has pledged to build to the work­place raids and pay­roll audits that his admin­is­tra­tion has car­ried out.

    Dur­ing the pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, when the Trump Inter­na­tion­al Hotel opened for busi­ness in Wash­ing­ton, Mr. Trump boast­ed that he had used an elec­tron­ic ver­i­fi­ca­tion sys­tem, E‑Verify, to ensure that only those legal­ly enti­tled to work were hired.

    “We didn’t have one ille­gal immi­grant on the job,” Mr. Trump said then.

    ...

    In hir­ing work­ers who are already in the Unit­ed States, employ­ers are required to exam­ine iden­ti­ty and work autho­riza­tion doc­u­ments and record them on an employ­ment eli­gi­bil­i­ty form. But com­pa­nies are not required in most cas­es to take addi­tion­al steps to ver­i­fy the authen­tic­i­ty of doc­u­ments. Because fal­si­fy­ing these doc­u­ments is so easy, E‑Verify, which is required in 22 states, goes the extra step of check­ing them against records kept by the Social Secu­ri­ty Admin­is­tra­tion and the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty.

    The fed­er­al list post­ed online of employ­ers who use the E‑Verify sys­tem includes Mr. Trump’s golf club in North Car­oli­na, a state that requires it, but the Bed­min­ster club in New Jer­sey, where it is not required under state law, does not appear on the list.

    Dur­ing his cam­paign, Mr. Trump called for expand­ing the pro­gram to work­places around the coun­try. So far, that has not hap­pened.
    ...

    “Dur­ing his cam­paign, Mr. Trump called for expand­ing the pro­gram to work­places around the coun­try. So far, that has not hap­pened.

    The Repub­li­can Par­ty had com­plete con­trol of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment for two years after cam­paign­ing on a plat­form of demo­niz­ing immi­grants and yet it could­n’t even mean­ing­ful­ly put for­ward leg­is­la­tion that would man­date employ­ers use E‑Verify, let alone pass that leg­is­la­tion. And now we learn that the pres­i­den­t’s gold clubs in states that don’t require E‑Verify are appar­ent­ly pro­vid­ing their ille­gal work­ers with fake doc­u­ments. At least that’s how it is at Trump’s club in New Jer­sey. Who knows what the sit­u­a­tion is like at oth­er Trump prop­er­ties in states that don’t require E‑Verify. Hope­ful­ly inves­ti­ga­tors will look into that too.

    Of course, one of the key things to also keep in mind in all of this is that the GOP should­n’t actu­al­ly be heav­i­ly crit­i­cized for not being able to uni­fy behind an E‑Verify bill. Because, as the fol­low­ing arti­cle form Jan­u­ary of 2018, when the Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans were in the mid­dle of nego­ti­at­ing a com­pro­mise on the ‘Dream­ers’ makes clear, man­dat­ing E‑Verify at the nation­al lev­el is a wild­ly com­pli­cat­ed act that would have pro­found ram­i­fi­ca­tions on the US econ­o­my. As the arti­cle also makes clear, the Repub­li­cans rec­og­nize how wild­ly com­pli­cat­ed an issue it it. And that high­lights one of the most impor­tant lessons to keep in mind dur­ing this gov­ern­ment shut­down show­down over ‘the Wall’: the fact that GOP can’t eas­i­ly pass an E‑Verify bill can’t be held against it. The fact that the GOP mind­less slo­ga­neers about immi­gra­tion issues and uses it as a polit­i­cal cud­gel to inflame pas­sions and get votes when the par­ty clear­ly knows that it’s actu­al­ly a very com­pli­cat­ed issue can be held against it:

    CNN

    Once a cor­ner­stone of Trump cam­paign, E‑Verify makes a DACA deal far more com­pli­cat­ed

    By Lau­ren Fox and Tal Kopan, CNN

    Updat­ed 3:52 PM ET, Fri Jan­u­ary 12, 2018

    Wash­ing­ton (CNN)Republicans may give hun­dreds of thou­sands of immi­grants a path to cit­i­zen­ship in upcom­ing weeks, beg­ging a decades-old ques­tion: What are they going to demand in return?

    A path to cit­i­zen­ship even for a lim­it­ed pop­u­la­tion like recip­i­ents of the Deferred Action for Child­hood Arrivals pro­gram is forc­ing Repub­li­cans to reck­on with whether now is also the time to push for E‑Verify trig­gers, which could make a nar­row bill more com­pre­hen­sive and there­fore more com­pli­cat­ed.

    For sev­er­al months, a group of bipar­ti­san sen­a­tors led by Demo­c­rat Dick Durbin of Illi­nois and Repub­li­can Lind­sey Gra­ham of South Car­oli­na have qui­et­ly worked on a way to pre­serve DACA in exchange for bol­stered bor­der secu­ri­ty — but not E‑Verify, a nation­al data­base that is used by employ­ers to ver­i­fy the immi­gra­tion sta­tus of indi­vid­u­als they hire.

    ...

    Inter­nal enforce­ment has long been a con­tentious polit­i­cal issue, not just because of schisms between Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats but also because of dif­fer­ences with­in the GOP, busi­ness sec­tors and unions — and E‑Verify may be one of the most con­tro­ver­sial. On pro­grams like E‑Verify, the tra­di­tion­al pol­i­tics are scram­bled: Unions can find them­selves on the same side as con­ser­v­a­tives, and agri­cul­tur­al and restau­ran­teurs have been on the same side as Democ­rats. How­ev­er, the Nation­al Restau­rant Asso­ci­a­tion has sup­port­ed leg­is­la­tion like the Legal Work­force Act, that includes E‑Verify because they argue the nation­al law would make it fair­er then the cur­rent patch­work of state laws.

    Even with­in the GOP, vast dif­fer­ences about how to tack­le inter­nal enforce­ment exist. Inter­est groups in the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor — a key con­stituen­cy for Repub­li­cans who hail from rur­al states — argue that they have a short­age of work­ers. They are opposed to expand­ing E‑Verify with­out an over­haul to the coun­try’s guest work­er pro­gram, and mem­bers of Con­gress say they’re very famil­iar with those con­cerns.

    “The bot­tom line is I do have to rep­re­sent the farm­ers and agri­cul­ture in my dis­trict, and E‑Verify sounds good and all, but there’s got to be some secu­ri­ty for these grow­ers and these ranch­ers that they’re going to be able to have the labor to keep their busi­ness­es going,” Rep. Tom Rooney, a Repub­li­can from Flori­da, told CNN.

    Even a con­ser­v­a­tive recent pro­pos­al from an all-Repub­li­can immi­gra­tion reform group led by Sens. Chuck Grass­ley of Iowa and John Cornyn of Texas only bol­stered the exist­ing use of the data­base, rather than mak­ing it manda­to­ry.

    A group of House con­ser­v­a­tives have grabbed that third rail, nev­er­the­less, on Wednes­day intro­duc­ing a bill that would make E‑Verify manda­to­ry across the board, in exchange for a guest visa pro­gram for agri­cul­ture work­ers. That pro­pos­al from the House Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee almost did­n’t pass the com­mit­tee last year, get­ting no votes from staunch immi­gra­tion hard-lin­ers like Reps. Steve King and Louie Gohmert, who seem­ing­ly agreed with Demo­c­ra­t­ic argu­ments that the agri­cul­ture bill would actu­al­ly accom­plish the oppo­site of what Repub­li­cans argue for and allow employ­ers to hire for­eign labor below aver­age Amer­i­can wage lev­els. And the bills had to move as a pack­age deal to get sup­port from the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty for the E‑Verify piece.

    “The esti­mates vary but basi­cal­ly 50 to 70% of migrant work­ers are here in an undoc­u­ment­ed fash­ion,” said Will Rodger, the direc­tor of pol­i­cy com­mu­ni­ca­tions at the Amer­i­can Farm Bureau Fed­er­a­tion. “What (E‑Verify) would mean is that peo­ple who are here ille­gal­ly would not be able to work.”

    But tack­ling an over­haul of a guest work­er pro­gram along­side DACA and in addi­tion to chain migra­tion, a rework­ing of the lot­tery sys­tem and more bor­der secu­ri­ty — all things the White House has asked for — would force law­mak­ers into work­ing on a more com­pre­hen­sive immi­gra­tion pack­age than many believe there is time for right now.

    “It’s not a per­fect sys­tem. There’s obvi­ous­ly some resis­tance and if you have too much resis­tance, you don’t have enough votes for it, you can’t enact it,” said Sen. Ron John­son, a Repub­li­can from Wis­con­sin, who added, “Right now we don’t have enough work­ers.”

    Democ­rats are quick to point out that although pro­vi­sions like E‑Verify gar­nered Demo­c­ra­t­ic votes in 2013, the scope of the deal was much larg­er. Try­ing to jam those ele­ments in now, they say, great­ly dis­torts the trade they’re get­ting for DACA — which would affect only rough­ly 1 mil­lion undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants of the esti­mat­ed 11 mil­lion in the coun­try.

    “I don’t know how you count to a major­i­ty with E‑Verify in the Sen­ate or in the House,” said Rep. Pete Aguilar, a Demo­c­rat and whip for the Con­gres­sion­al His­pan­ic Cau­cus. “I think that is incred­i­bly prob­lem­at­ic. So I think folks who want to add it to this process — again, I think Repub­li­cans are try­ing to add in every­thing that they have or that they nego­ti­at­ed for com­pre­hen­sive immi­gra­tion reform for a DACA fix, which is much nar­row­er than that. So maybe it’s a nego­ti­at­ing strat­e­gy, I don’t think it’s based in real­i­ty, though.”

    In 2013, reimag­in­ing the agri­cul­tur­al work­er pro­gram alone was an ardu­ous part of the nego­ti­a­tions. Key nego­tia­tors enlist­ed out­side groups to cut deals among them­selves, and even that took months. Repub­li­cans who feel a sense of urgency to pro­tect DACA recip­i­ents now say that find­ing that kind of con­sen­sus in a mat­ter of days or weeks sim­ply isn’t pos­si­ble.

    But there are still many Repub­li­cans in the House and Sen­ate who believe that not address­ing inter­nal enforce­ment now, when Trump is Pres­i­dent and there is an immi­gra­tion bill before them, is anath­e­ma to their decades-long cam­paign promis­es.

    “E‑Verify is the most effec­tive deter­rent to ille­gal immi­gra­tion because it shuts off the jobs mag­net and saves jobs for hard­work­ing Amer­i­cans,” Rep. Lamar Smith, a Repub­li­can from Texas, said on the House floor Wednes­day.

    And the fact is that on the pres­i­den­tial cam­paign trail, E‑Verify became a com­mon refrain for Trump — and almost every oth­er Repub­li­can in the field.

    “We will ensure that E‑Verify is used to the fullest extent pos­si­ble under exist­ing law, and we will work with Con­gress to strength­en and expand its use across the coun­try,” Trump declared in an August 2016 stump speech.

    But more mod­er­ate Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats also warn that tack­ling inter­nal enforce­ment along­side DACA is cru­el to young immi­grants who may final­ly find them­selves pro­tect­ed by Con­gress while mem­bers of their fam­i­ly who are in the coun­try ille­gal­ly sud­den­ly become more at risk of depor­ta­tion. Repub­li­can Col­orado Rep. Mike Coff­man, who comes from a dis­trict with a heavy immi­grant pop­u­la­tion, said the key in this deal is to pass DACA, some bor­der secu­ri­ty mea­sures and maybe a few oth­er things — but leave inte­ri­or enforce­ment for the big­ger deal down the road.

    “The next piece is what to do with adults who know­ing­ly broke the law but haven’t vio­lat­ed oth­er crim­i­nal laws,” Coff­man said. “What I would like to see is the bar­gain­ing chip for them is inte­ri­or enforce­ment, E‑Verify. I have a very con­ser­v­a­tive vision on what that ought to look like, but if you do it before you give them an oppor­tu­ni­ty to come out of the shad­ows, you just make those lives of those fam­i­lies just hard­er than they already are. ... You just push them under­ground fur­ther.”

    ———-

    “Once a cor­ner­stone of Trump cam­paign, E‑Verify makes a DACA deal far more com­pli­cat­ed” by Lau­ren Fox and Tal Kopan; CNN; 01/12/2018

    ““The next piece is what to do with adults who know­ing­ly broke the law but haven’t vio­lat­ed oth­er crim­i­nal laws,” Coff­man said. “What I would like to see is the bar­gain­ing chip for them is inte­ri­or enforce­ment, E‑Verify. I have a very con­ser­v­a­tive vision on what that ought to look like, but if you do it before you give them an oppor­tu­ni­ty to come out of the shad­ows, you just make those lives of those fam­i­lies just hard­er than they already are. ... You just push them under­ground fur­ther.”

    That sen­ti­ment, plead­ing for com­pas­sion for peo­ple whose only crime has been being here ille­gal­ly, and giv­ing them a chance to come out of the shad­ows, remark­ably came from a Repub­li­can con­gress­man. It’s remark­able because you don’t nor­mal­ly hear that sen­ti­ment from Repub­li­cans. At least not on the cam­paign trail. Instead, on the cam­paign trail we heard almost every oth­er Repub­li­can who was run­ning for the White House in 2016 make E‑Verify one of their slo­gans on immi­gra­tion issues. Kick­ing undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers out of their jobs is pop­u­lar to cam­paign on, not ask­ing us to think about what hap­pens to the peo­ple who are about to be kicked out of those jobs and dri­ven poten­tial­ly fur­ther under­ground:

    ...
    And the fact is that on the pres­i­den­tial cam­paign trail, E‑Verify became a com­mon refrain for Trump — and almost every oth­er Repub­li­can in the field.

    “We will ensure that E‑Verify is used to the fullest extent pos­si­ble under exist­ing law, and we will work with Con­gress to strength­en and expand its use across the coun­try,” Trump declared in an August 2016 stump speech.
    ...

    And note how Repub­li­can Lamar Smith called E‑Verify “the most effec­tive deter­rent to ille­gal immi­gra­tion because it shuts off the jobs mag­net”:

    ...
    But there are still many Repub­li­cans in the House and Sen­ate who believe that not address­ing inter­nal enforce­ment now, when Trump is Pres­i­dent and there is an immi­gra­tion bill before them, is anath­e­ma to their decades-long cam­paign promis­es.

    “E‑Verify is the most effec­tive deter­rent to ille­gal immi­gra­tion because it shuts off the jobs mag­net and saves jobs for hard­work­ing Amer­i­cans,” Rep. Lamar Smith, a Repub­li­can from Texas, said on the House floor Wednes­day.
    ...

    It high­lights some­thing that makes this issue poten­tial­ly quite inter­est­ing in the con­text of ‘the Wall’ and the shut­down show­down: if nation­al enforce­ment of E‑Verify effec­tive­ly made ille­gal work­ers much much rar­er in Amer­i­ca, the biggest jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for ‘the Wall’ would with­er away. The jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for ‘the Wall’ were always poor, but they would col­lapse com­plete­ly if there was a work­ing E‑Verify sys­tem in place that works.

    But as the arti­cle made clear, nation­al enforce­ment of E‑Verify basi­cal­ly requires address­ing a host of oth­er major immi­gra­tion reforms. All of the dif­fer­ent pieces have to shift at the same time or you end up with dis­as­ters like sud­den­ly kick­ing mil­lions of peo­ple out of their jobs in deep­er under­ground with­out human com­pas­sion. And the ‘Dream­ers’ would sud­den­ly be at enhanced risk of depor­ta­tion to coun­tries they basi­cal­ly don’t know. E‑Verify requires com­pre­hen­sive immi­gra­tion reform. And that won’t be easy.

    But with Democ­rats tak­ing con­trol of the House in Jan­u­ary, com­pre­hen­sive immi­gra­tion reform is arguably eas­i­er than it was before. And com­pre­hen­sive immi­gra­tion reform has to hap­pen even­tu­al­ly in the Unit­ed States. The ‘Dream­er’ issue alone is mak­ing it increas­ing­ly press­ing. And if com­pre­hen­sive immi­gra­tion reform can hap­pen in a way that involves a nation­al E‑Verify man­date, ‘the Wall’ sud­den­ly becomes lit­tle more than a giant boon­dog­gle and a sym­bol of the pow­er of cyn­i­cal polit­i­cal slo­ga­neer­ing and the poor pol­i­cy-mak­ing that fol­lows. And that all makes the cur­rent gov­ern­ment shut­down show­down a mas­sive sym­bol of the need to for Con­gress to pass some sort of com­pre­hen­sive immi­gra­tion reform bill. Com­pre­hen­sive immi­gra­tion reform that will hope­ful­ly final­ly put an end to demands for ‘the Wall’. And hope­ful­ly final­ly put an end to the Pres­i­den­t’s exploita­tive hir­ing prac­tices.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | December 31, 2018, 4:54 am
  6. Fol­low­ing up on the sto­ry of the undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers employed at Pres­i­dent Trump’s New Jer­sey golf club and the role the club man­age­ment played in know­ing­ly help­ing those work­ers obtain false doc­u­men­ta­tion, here’s a sto­ry that should be echoed every time Trump pro­claims that ‘the Wall’ is need­ed to keep out dan­ger­ous ille­gal immi­grants who are com­ing to Amer­i­ca to com­mit crimes: It turns out the man­age­ment at Trump’s golf club was help­ing those undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers avoid screen­ing by the Secret Ser­vice. That’s the claim of Emma Tor­res, an undoc­u­ment­ed work­er who pre­pared food at the club.

    This isn’t the first instance of one of the undoc­u­ment­ed employ­ees at this club claim­ing that the man­age­ment went out of its way to avoid scruti­ny by the Secret Ser­vice. As the arti­cle reminds us, the ini­tial New York Times arti­cle about this sto­ry includ­ed a claim by Vic­to­ri­na Morales that she was direct­ed to wear a pin with the Secret Ser­vice logo when Trump vis­it­ed the prop­er­ty.

    Accord­ing to Tor­res, in 2016, when Trump was in the mid­dle of the cam­paign, the club man­age­ment request infor­ma­tion like Social Secu­ri­ty num­bers from all of the club employ­ees to be hand­ed over to the Secret Ser­vice for review. Alarmed, Tor­res told her man­ag­er that she did­n’t have legal doc­u­men­ta­tion. The man­ag­er told her this was ok and sim­ply crossed Tor­res off the list of employ­ees who would be reviewed by the Secret Ser­vice. The man­ag­er also asked Tor­res for the names of oth­er work­ers in the kitchen who used fake doc­u­men­ta­tion.

    It also turns out that Tor­res pre­pared food for Secret Ser­vice employ­ees and Trump when he was at the prop­er­ty. So at the same time he was in the mid­dle of a cam­paign that was root­ed in the demo­niza­tion of ille­gal immi­grants, Trump had his food pre­pared by ille­gal immi­grants his own com­pa­ny know­ing­ly hired. It’s some­thing to keep in mind when he’s mali­cious­ly fear­mon­ger­ing about the mor­tal dan­gers poor peo­ple from Latin Amer­i­ca pose to the Unit­ed States:

    The New York Times

    Undoc­u­ment­ed Work­er Says Trump Resort Shield­ed Her From Secret Ser­vice

    By Miri­am Jor­dan

    Jan. 3, 2019

    A for­mer employ­ee of the Trump Nation­al Golf Club in New Jer­sey said that her name was removed from a list of work­ers to be vet­ted by the Secret Ser­vice after she remind­ed man­age­ment that she was unlaw­ful­ly in the Unit­ed States, the lat­est work­er to assert that super­vi­sors at the elite resort were aware that some mem­bers of their work force were undoc­u­ment­ed.

    The Bed­min­ster golf club has recent­ly ter­mi­nat­ed sev­er­al work­ers who were deter­mined to be inel­i­gi­ble to work in the coun­try, accord­ing to sev­er­al peo­ple famil­iar with the mat­ter, fol­low­ing a New York Times report that revealed that immi­grants who pre­sent­ed false doc­u­ments were know­ing­ly kept on the pay­roll, some­times for years.

    A lawyer rep­re­sent­ing the women has met with inves­ti­ga­tors from the New Jer­sey attor­ney general’s office and the Fed­er­al Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion, pre­sent­ing what he said was evi­dence that man­agers at the golf club knew that some work­ers were in the coun­try ille­gal­ly, and that at least one super­vi­sor helped an employ­ee obtain forged work­ing doc­u­ments.

    In the lat­est rev­e­la­tion, Emma Tor­res, an undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grant from Ecuador who pre­pared food at the club, said that mem­bers of the kitchen staff were asked in 2016, as Don­ald J. Trump was in the midst of his cam­paign for the White House, to write their names, address­es and oth­er details, includ­ing their Social Secu­ri­ty num­bers, on a list of employ­ees that would be sub­mit­ted to the Secret Ser­vice for clear­ance.

    The golf club has been a favorite venue for vaca­tion and busi­ness meet­ings for Mr. Trump.

    “When I learned this is for the Secret Ser­vice to see the records of every­one because they are giv­ing pro­tec­tion to Mr. Trump, I rushed to human resources,” Ms. Tor­res said in an inter­view. “I thought, God, what will I do?” Ms. Tor­res said she had used a fake Social Secu­ri­ty num­ber when she applied for her job.

    She said that she told a human resources employ­ee, whose name she does not know, that she did not have legal sta­tus. She said that the woman replied, “‘It’s O.K. No prob­lem.’ She scratched me off the list.”

    The woman then asked Ms. Tor­res for names of oth­er kitchen work­ers who might be undoc­u­ment­ed, which Ms. Tor­res said she pro­vid­ed.

    There is no evi­dence that Mr. Trump knew of the unlaw­ful sta­tus of employ­ees at the club. But halt­ing ille­gal immi­gra­tion, by stanch­ing the influx across the bor­der and deport­ing immi­grants liv­ing inside the coun­try have been core pri­or­i­ties of his admin­is­tra­tion. Mr. Trump has demand­ed $5 bil­lion in fund­ing to erect a wall along the Unit­ed States-Mex­i­co bor­der to help block the flow of immi­grants, lead­ing to a stale­mate with Democ­rats that has result­ed in a par­tial shut­down of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment.

    ...

    Man­agers at the golf club and at Trump Inter­na­tion­al did not respond to requests for com­ment on Ms. Torres’s account. A Secret Ser­vice spokes­woman, Cathy L. Mil­hoan, said she could not dis­cuss what mea­sures the agency took to vet employ­ees at the golf club. “The U.S. Secret Ser­vice does not com­ment on our pro­tec­tive oper­a­tions to include the admin­is­tra­tion of our name check pro­gram,” she said in a state­ment.

    Ms. Tor­res said she believes the undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers she iden­ti­fied to man­age­ment also had their names removed from the list giv­en to the Secret Ser­vice, but all of them, she said, remained on staff at the resort.

    At least one oth­er undoc­u­ment­ed employ­ee at the resort, Vic­to­ri­na Morales, a native of Guatemala who had been ille­gal­ly in the Unit­ed States since 1999, said she was giv­en a Secret Ser­vice pin to wear when the pres­i­dent was in res­i­dence at the club. Secret Ser­vice offi­cials said the pin did not sig­ni­fy that she had passed any secu­ri­ty clear­ance.

    Ms. Tor­res, 43, said she was hired to work at the resort in ear­ly 2015 using a fal­si­fied Social Secu­ri­ty num­ber and Per­ma­nent Res­i­dent Card. She had informed a man­ag­er dur­ing her job inter­view that both were pho­ny, she said, and the doc­u­ments were pho­to­copied for club files when she start­ed work­ing there.

    After a few months work­ing as a house­keep­er, Ms. Tor­res said she com­plained to man­age­ment about what she felt was abu­sive treat­ment by the house­keep­ing super­vi­sor and was moved to the kitchen, where she start­ed as a dish­wash­er. She said she worked her way up to assis­tant to the chef, earn­ing $14.50 an hour.

    Among oth­er tasks, Ms. Tor­res not­ed that she made sand­wich­es for Secret Ser­vice agents when they began vis­it­ing the prop­er­ty. She also pre­pared food for Mr. Trump.

    Mr. Trump had praised her work and tipped her when she was in house­keep­ing, Ms. Tor­res recalled. But she and oth­er for­mer employ­ees who have spo­ken with The Times said they grew increas­ing­ly uncom­fort­able with Mr. Trump’s deroga­to­ry com­ments about immi­grants dur­ing his cam­paign. “When he won the elec­tion, fear took over me,” Ms. Tor­res said. “I felt I was in the lion’s den. I had to leave.”

    Ms. Tor­res quit in ear­ly 2017, after find­ing anoth­er job.

    Since The Times’s ini­tial report that the golf club employed undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants, three addi­tion­al immi­grants have come for­ward, say­ing that they used fraud­u­lent doc­u­ments to secure jobs there and that man­age­ment was aware of their ille­gal sta­tus.

    Ms. Morales was still work­ing at the club when The Times pub­lished its report, but has not returned to work since. She said that when her ini­tial fraud­u­lent green card expired, a man­ag­er at the club arranged for her to be dri­ven to a place where she could obtain new coun­ter­feit doc­u­ments. She said he lent her mon­ey to pur­chase them.

    Since the arti­cle was pub­lished, the Trump Orga­ni­za­tion has been qui­et­ly scram­bling to bring its golf club work force into com­pli­ance, accord­ing to for­mer employ­ees who have been in con­tact with col­leagues at the club. Check­ing whether employ­ees are autho­rized to work in the Unit­ed States has result­ed in the ter­mi­na­tion of about a dozen peo­ple, accord­ing to these work­ers and anoth­er source famil­iar with the organization’s work­ings, though man­age­ment at the club has not con­firmed their accounts.

    More broad­ly, the com­pa­ny is review­ing its staff at many prop­er­ties to ensure they are autho­rized to work in the coun­try, accord­ing to a per­son briefed on the mat­ter who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty.

    ...

    ———-

    “Undoc­u­ment­ed Work­er Says Trump Resort Shield­ed Her From Secret Ser­vice” by Miri­am Jor­dan; The New York Times; 01/03/2019

    “In the lat­est rev­e­la­tion, Emma Tor­res, an undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grant from Ecuador who pre­pared food at the club, said that mem­bers of the kitchen staff were asked in 2016, as Don­ald J. Trump was in the midst of his cam­paign for the White House, to write their names, address­es and oth­er details, includ­ing their Social Secu­ri­ty num­bers, on a list of employ­ees that would be sub­mit­ted to the Secret Ser­vice for clear­ance.”

    So in the mid­dle of the 2016 cam­paign the focused on the demo­niza­tion of ille­gal immi­grants, Trump’s New Jer­sey golf club was left in the awk­ward sit­u­a­tion of hav­ing to hand over employ­ee names for Secret Ser­vice review when many of those employ­ees were ille­gal­ly employed. So it appar­ent­ly decid­ed to just not have those employ­ees reviewed while keep­ing them employed. It’s a sign of just how much the busi­ness val­ued these employ­ees:

    ...
    The golf club has been a favorite venue for vaca­tion and busi­ness meet­ings for Mr. Trump.

    “When I learned this is for the Secret Ser­vice to see the records of every­one because they are giv­ing pro­tec­tion to Mr. Trump, I rushed to human resources,” Ms. Tor­res said in an inter­view. “I thought, God, what will I do?” Ms. Tor­res said she had used a fake Social Secu­ri­ty num­ber when she applied for her job.

    She said that she told a human resources employ­ee, whose name she does not know, that she did not have legal sta­tus. She said that the woman replied, “‘It’s O.K. No prob­lem.’ She scratched me off the list.”

    The woman then asked Ms. Tor­res for names of oth­er kitchen work­ers who might be undoc­u­ment­ed, which Ms. Tor­res said she pro­vid­ed.

    ...

    Ms. Tor­res said she believes the undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers she iden­ti­fied to man­age­ment also had their names removed from the list giv­en to the Secret Ser­vice, but all of them, she said, remained on staff at the resort.
    ...

    And Vic­to­ri­na Morales told the New York Times in its pre­vi­ous report, she was giv­en a pin with the Secret Ser­vice logo when Trump was on the prop­er­ty. So that was appar­ent­ly part of how they shield­ed these employ­ees from scruti­ny:

    ...
    At least one oth­er undoc­u­ment­ed employ­ee at the resort, Vic­to­ri­na Morales, a native of Guatemala who had been ille­gal­ly in the Unit­ed States since 1999, said she was giv­en a Secret Ser­vice pin to wear when the pres­i­dent was in res­i­dence at the club. Secret Ser­vice offi­cials said the pin did not sig­ni­fy that she had passed any secu­ri­ty clear­ance.
    ...

    And these unscreened employ­ees weren’t sim­ply still work­ing at the golf club when Trump was in town. Ms. Tor­res pre­pared food for the both the Secret Ser­vice agents and Trump. It’s a notable act of trust in these employ­ees con­sid­ered Trump was in the mid­dle of a nation­al cam­paign focused on paint­ing peo­ple exact­ly like Morales and Tor­res as mor­tal dan­gers to Amer­i­cans:

    ...
    Ms. Tor­res, 43, said she was hired to work at the resort in ear­ly 2015 using a fal­si­fied Social Secu­ri­ty num­ber and Per­ma­nent Res­i­dent Card. She had informed a man­ag­er dur­ing her job inter­view that both were pho­ny, she said, and the doc­u­ments were pho­to­copied for club files when she start­ed work­ing there.

    After a few months work­ing as a house­keep­er, Ms. Tor­res said she com­plained to man­age­ment about what she felt was abu­sive treat­ment by the house­keep­ing super­vi­sor and was moved to the kitchen, where she start­ed as a dish­wash­er. She said she worked her way up to assis­tant to the chef, earn­ing $14.50 an hour.

    Among oth­er tasks, Ms. Tor­res not­ed that she made sand­wich­es for Secret Ser­vice agents when they began vis­it­ing the prop­er­ty. She also pre­pared food for Mr. Trump.

    ...

    And don’t for­get that this is a sto­ry just about one of Trump’s many prop­er­ties. Prop­er­ties in the hos­pi­tal­i­ty indus­try that is noto­ri­ous for hir­ing undoc­u­ment­ed labor. So while we don’t know who wide­spread this was across Trump’s busi­ness empire, it seems like a very rea­son­able bet to assume that this is wide­spread. Espe­cial­ly since it sounds like the Trump Orga­ni­za­tion is only now review­ing the legal sta­tus of its many employ­ees across all of the var­i­ous prop­er­ties:

    ...
    Since the arti­cle was pub­lished, the Trump Orga­ni­za­tion has been qui­et­ly scram­bling to bring its golf club work force into com­pli­ance, accord­ing to for­mer employ­ees who have been in con­tact with col­leagues at the club. Check­ing whether employ­ees are autho­rized to work in the Unit­ed States has result­ed in the ter­mi­na­tion of about a dozen peo­ple, accord­ing to these work­ers and anoth­er source famil­iar with the organization’s work­ings, though man­age­ment at the club has not con­firmed their accounts.

    More broad­ly, the com­pa­ny is review­ing its staff at many prop­er­ties to ensure they are autho­rized to work in the coun­try, accord­ing to a per­son briefed on the mat­ter who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty.
    ...

    It lit­er­al­ly took these New York Times reports to prompt this review by the Trump. Trump cam­paign on an ille­gal immi­grant cam­paign and then becom­ing pres­i­dent appar­ent­ly was­n’t rea­son enough.

    So it’s clear that Trump’s New Jer­sey gold club real­ly, real­ly, real­ly want­ed to keep its undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers. And giv­en the obvi­ous polit­i­cal risk that busi­ness deci­sion entailed, the fact that the golf club man­age­ment went out of its way to keep these employ­ees demon­strates a per­ceived need for these employees...presumably a per­ceived need to keep labor costs at a min­i­mum. And that per­ceived need pre­sum­ably per­me­ates the entire Trump orga­ni­za­tion. Not just this one golf club.

    And that all rais­es an inter­est­ing ques­tion about Trump’s fix­a­tion on ‘the Wall’: Giv­en that ‘the Wall’ is like­ly to do very lit­tle to actu­al­ly keep peo­ple out of the US — they can go around the wall, over the wall, under the wall in a tun­nel, take a boat, take a plane, come in from Cana­da, etc — and giv­en that Trump is treat­ing ‘the Wall’ as the solu­tion to ille­gal immi­gra­tion in Amer­i­ca, you have to won­der if Trump qui­et­ly views ‘the Wall’ as a means of polit­i­cal­ly address­ing ille­gal immi­gra­tion with­out actu­al­ly cut­ting off the sup­ply of undoc­u­ment­ed peo­ple avail­able for employ­ment.

    Don’t for­get that Trump’s busi­ness is just one of many busi­ness­es in the US that is high­ly depen­dent at this point on undoc­u­ment­ed labor, and it’s hard to imag­ine those oth­er busi­ness­es aren’t qui­et­ly lob­by­ing the hell out of Trump to not cut off their sup­ply of exploitable cheap labor and it’s hard to imag­ine Trump isn’t lis­ten­ing. And it’s not like Democ­rats would­n’t be will­ing to do some sort of com­pre­hen­sive immi­gra­tion reform that does­n’t involve ‘the Wall’ which would like­ly be polit­i­cal­ly pop­u­lar. But Trump is mak­ing a wall the top pri­or­i­ty to the point of shut­ting the gov­ern­ment down over it. So who knows, per­haps fix­at­ing on ‘the Wall’ is Trump’s way to have a ‘fix’ for ille­gal immi­gra­tion that does­n’t actu­al­ly fix any­thing. Put anoth­er way, ‘the Wall’ could be a great way for Trump to ‘have his undoc­u­ment­ed-work­er-pre­pared cake and eat it too’.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | January 3, 2019, 10:06 pm
  7. Huz­zah! The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment shut­down show­down end­ed. For about three weeks if we take Trump’s threats of resum­ing the shut­down if he does­n’t get his wall fund­ing seri­ous­ly. And that means it’s back to work for all of those fur­loughed fed­er­al work­ers! For about three weeks. It’s unam­bigu­ous­ly good-ish news for those fed­er­al work­ers.

    For the many undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers of Pres­i­dent Trump’s golf cours­es, how­ev­er, this shut­down peri­od actu­al­ly end­ed in their per­ma­nent fir­ings. We’ve already heard reports about the fir­ings of undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers at the Trump Nation­al Golf Club in New Jer­sey fol­low­ing reports of the exten­sive use of undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers from Latin Amer­i­ca work­ing there for years at the golf club with the the man­age­ment not only being aware of their ille­gal sta­tus for help­ing them find fake doc­u­men­ta­tion.

    And now we’ve learned about a new wave of fir­ings at a dif­fer­ent Trump-owned golf club. This time it’s at a Trump golf club in New York: the Trump Nation­al Golf Club in Westch­ester Coun­ty. The sit­u­a­tion sound very sim­i­lar to the New Jer­sey club. Undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers from Latin Amer­i­ca made up a large por­tion of the staff and the man­age­ment was well aware of this. And sim­i­lar to how the undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers were main­tain­ing the Trump pri­vate res­i­dent at the New Jer­sey club, they also main­tain Eric Trump’s res­i­dence at the New York club. One of the peo­ple fired who was inter­view explained that he had worked there since 2005. So what per­cent­age of the club’s staff was fired? It sounds like about half of the win­ter­time staff were just let go:

    The Wash­ing­ton Post

    Trump’s golf course employed undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers — and then fired them amid show­down over bor­der wall

    By Joshua Part­low and David A. Fahren­thold
    Jan­u­ary 26, 2019 at 3:17 PM

    OSSINING, N.Y — They had spent years on the staff of Don­ald Trump’s golf club, win­ning employ­ee-of-the-month awards and receiv­ing glow­ing let­ters of rec­om­men­da­tion.

    Some were trust­ed enough to hold the keys to Eric Trump’s week­end home. They were expe­ri­enced enough to know that when Don­ald Trump ordered chick­en wings they were to serve him two orders on one plate.

    But on Jan. 18, about a dozen employ­ees at Trump Nation­al Golf Club in Westch­ester Coun­ty, N.Y., were sum­moned, one by one, to talk with a human resources exec­u­tive from Trump head­quar­ters.

    Dur­ing the meet­ings, they were fired because they are undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants, accord­ing to inter­views with the work­ers and their attor­ney. The fired work­ers are from Latin Amer­i­ca.

    The sud­den fir­ings — which were pre­vi­ous­ly unre­port­ed — fol­low last year’s rev­e­la­tions of undoc­u­ment­ed labor at a Trump club in New Jer­sey, where employ­ees were sub­se­quent­ly dis­missed. The fir­ings show Trump’s busi­ness was rely­ing on undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers even as the pres­i­dent demand­ed a bor­der wall to keep out such immi­grants.

    Trump’s demand for bor­der wall fund­ing led to the gov­ern­ment shut­down that end­ed Fri­day after near­ly 35 days.

    In Westch­ester Coun­ty, work­ers were told Trump’s com­pa­ny had just audit­ed their immi­gra­tion doc­u­ments — the same ones they had sub­mit­ted years ear­li­er — and found them to be fake.

    “Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this means the club must end its employ­ment rela­tion­ship with you today,” the Trump exec­u­tive said, accord­ing to a record­ing that one work­er made of her fir­ing.

    “I start­ed to cry,” said Gabriel Sedano, a for­mer main­te­nance work­er from Mex­i­co who was among those fired. He had worked at the club since 2005. “I told them they need­ed to con­sid­er us. I had worked almost 15 years for them in this club, and I’d giv­en the best of myself to this job.”

    “I’d nev­er done any­thing wrong, only work and work,” he added. “They said they did­n’t have any com­ments to make.”

    The fir­ings at the New York golf club — which work­ers said elim­i­nat­ed about half of the club’s win­ter­time staff — fol­low a sto­ry in the New York Times last year that fea­tured an undoc­u­ment­ed work­er at anoth­er Trump club in Bed­min­ster, N.J. After that sto­ry, Trump’s com­pa­ny fired undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers at the Bed­min­ster club, accord­ing to for­mer work­ers there.

    Pres­i­dent Trump still owns his busi­ness­es, which include 16 golf cours­es and 11 hotels around the world. He has giv­en day-to-day con­trol of the busi­ness­es to his sons Don­ald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump.

    In an emailed state­ment, Eric Trump said, “We are mak­ing a broad effort to iden­ti­fy any employ­ee who has giv­en false and fraud­u­lent doc­u­ments to unlaw­ful­ly gain employ­ment. Where iden­ti­fied, any indi­vid­ual will be ter­mi­nat­ed imme­di­ate­ly.”

    He added that it is one of the rea­sons “my father is fight­ing so hard for immi­gra­tion reform. The sys­tem is bro­ken.”

    Eric Trump did not respond to spe­cif­ic ques­tions about how many undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers had been fired at oth­er Trump prop­er­ties and whether the com­pa­ny had, in the past, made sim­i­lar audits of its employ­ees’ immi­gra­tion paper­work. He also did not answer whether exec­u­tives had pre­vi­ous­ly been aware that they employed undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers.

    This Trump golf club does not appear in the government’s list of par­tic­i­pants in the E‑Verify sys­tem, which allows employ­ers to con­firm their employ­ees are in the coun­try legal­ly. Eric Trump did not answer a ques­tion about whether the club would join the sys­tem.

    ...

    The fir­ings high­light a stark ten­sion between Trump’s pub­lic stance on immi­gra­tion and the pri­vate con­duct of Trump’s busi­ness.

    In pub­lic, Trump has argued that undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants have harmed Amer­i­can work­ers by dri­ving down wages. That was part of why Trump demand­ed a bor­der wall and con­tem­plat­ed declar­ing a nation­al emer­gency to get it.

    But, in Westch­ester Coun­ty, Trump seems to have ben­e­fit­ed from the same dynam­ic he denounces. His undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers said they pro­vid­ed Trump with cheap labor. In return, they got steady work and few ques­tions.

    “They said absolute­ly noth­ing. They nev­er said, ‘Your social secu­ri­ty num­ber is bad’ or ‘Some­thing is wrong,’?” said Mar­gari­ta Cruz, a house­keep­ing employ­ee from Mex­i­co who was fired after eight years at the club. “Noth­ing. Noth­ing. Until right now.”

    In June 2016, Trump gave a cam­paign speech at the Westch­ester club and recount­ed how he had hugged moth­ers and fathers whose chil­dren had been mur­dered by ille­gal immi­grants.

    “On immi­gra­tion pol­i­cy, ‘Amer­i­ca First’ means pro­tect­ing the jobs, wages and secu­ri­ty of Amer­i­can work­ers, whether first or 10th gen­er­a­tion,” Trump said in his speech. “No mat­ter who you are, we’re going to pro­tect your job because, let me tell you, our jobs are being stripped from our coun­try like we’re babies.”

    To doc­u­ment the fir­ings at the golf course, The Wash­ing­ton Post spoke with 16 cur­rent and for­mer work­ers at the course — which sits among ritzy homes in Bri­ar­cliff Manor, N.Y., 27 miles north of Man­hat­tan. Post reporters met with for­mer employ­ees for hours of inter­views in a cramped apart­ment in Ossin­ing, N.Y., a hard­scrab­ble town next door, whose chief land­mark is the Sing Sing state prison.

    Among those work­ers, six said they had been fired on Jan. 18. They and their attor­ney con­firmed the oth­er ter­mi­na­tions.

    Anoth­er work­er said he was still employed at the club at the time of the purge despite the fact that his papers were fake. His reprieve did not last long, how­ev­er. His attor­ney lat­er said he was fired that night.

    The work­ers brought pay stubs and employ­ee awards and uni­forms to back up their claims. They said they were going pub­lic because they felt dis­card­ed: After work­ing so long for Trump’s com­pa­ny, they said they were fired with no warn­ing and no sev­er­ance.

    “Keep us in mind,” Cruz said, address­ing Trump and the coun­try.

    The inter­views were orga­nized by an attor­ney, Ani­bal Romero, who is also rep­re­sent­ing undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers from Trump’s club in Bed­min­ster.

    The Trump Orga­ni­za­tion has shown “a pat­tern and prac­tice of hir­ing undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants, not only in New Jer­sey, but also in New York,” Romero said. “We are demand­ing a full and thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tion from fed­er­al author­i­ties.”

    The work­ers were large­ly from Mex­i­co, with a few from oth­er coun­tries. Most said they crossed the Unit­ed States’ south­ern bor­der on foot and pur­chased fake immi­gra­tion doc­u­ments lat­er. Many bought theirs in Queens, N.Y.

    They said Trump Orga­ni­za­tion boss­es did not seem to scru­ti­nize these doc­u­ments close­ly when they were hired.

    Edmun­do Moro­cho, an Ecuado­ran main­te­nance work­er, said he was hired around 2000 with a green card and social secu­ri­ty card that he said he pur­chased in Queens for about $50. The green card he showed The Post says it expired in 2002, but a decade passed before the Trump club told him that he need­ed to replace it, he said.

    Moro­cho bought a new card, he said. It had a dif­fer­ent birth date than the first one, but he said the Trump club didn’t raise ques­tions. The Post viewed both cards. It was unclear if they were forged or stolen.

    “The accoun­tant took copies and said, ‘Okay, it’s fine,’?” Moro­cho recalled. “He didn’t say any­thing more.” Eric Trump did not respond to a ques­tion ask­ing about the club’s process for review­ing employ­ees’ immi­gra­tion doc­u­ments.

    Anoth­er employ­ee — Jesus Lira, a ban­quet chef from Mex­i­co — said that, on two occa­sions in 2008, an accoun­tant at the Trump club reject­ed his fake doc­u­ments and told him to go obtain bet­ter ones.

    “She said, ‘I can’t accept this, go back and tell them to do a bet­ter job,’?” Lira recalled. He said he returned to Queens a third time and found doc­u­ments that the club accept­ed. Eric Trump did not respond to a ques­tion about Lira’s account.

    The Post spoke to two for­mer man­agers from the club about the employ­ees’ accounts. One for­mer man­ag­er, who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss the club’s inter­nal prac­tices, said the club relied on its account­ing depart­ment to scru­ti­nize the immi­gra­tion doc­u­ments and that the depart­ment reject­ed about 20 per­cent of appli­cants because of immi­gra­tion ques­tions.

    The oth­er for­mer man­ag­er said the broad­er Trump Orga­ni­za­tion placed far more empha­sis on find­ing cheap labor than it placed on root­ing out undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers. The for­mer man­ag­er char­ac­ter­ized the atti­tude at the club as “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

    “It didn’t mat­ter. They didn’t care [about immi­gra­tion sta­tus],’?” said the for­mer man­ag­er, who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to pre­serve ties with cur­rent Trump exec­u­tives. “It was, ‘Get the cheap­est labor pos­si­ble.’?” The for­mer man­ag­er said the assump­tion at the club was that immi­gra­tion author­i­ties were not like­ly to tar­get golf clubs for mass raids.

    At the club, undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers said they resent­ed the unspo­ken under­stand­ing that they would nev­er be pro­mot­ed to man­age­ment. But many had fond mem­o­ries of inter­ac­tions with Trump fam­i­ly mem­bers, who vis­it­ed the club for par­ties and week­ends.

    Sedano, the main­te­nance work­er from Mex­i­co, said he had a set of keys for a home that Eric Trump used at the course, because Sedano was respon­si­ble for tak­ing out the trash there and mak­ing repairs.

    ...

    ———-

    “Trump’s golf course employed undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers — and then fired them amid show­down over bor­der wall” y Joshua Part­low and David A. Fahren­thold; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 01/26/2019

    “Some were trust­ed enough to hold the keys to Eric Trump’s week­end home. They were expe­ri­enced enough to know that when Don­ald Trump ordered chick­en wings they were to serve him two orders on one plate.”

    Just as we saw at the New Jer­sey club, the undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers at the New York club in Westch­ester club were so trust­ed they were main­tain­ing Eric Trump’s week­end home and would serve Don­ald Trump food while he was there. Recall how the man­age­ment at the New Jer­sey club helped the undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers about the secret ser­vice screen­ings after Trump got secret ser­vice pro­tec­tions and some of these work­ers served the secret ser­vice food when Trump there. That lev­el of trust in these these work­ers appears to extend to the New York club.

    So it should be no sur­prise to learn that some of them have been work­ing there for almost 15 years:

    ...
    In Westch­ester Coun­ty, work­ers were told Trump’s com­pa­ny had just audit­ed their immi­gra­tion doc­u­ments — the same ones they had sub­mit­ted years ear­li­er — and found them to be fake.

    “Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this means the club must end its employ­ment rela­tion­ship with you today,” the Trump exec­u­tive said, accord­ing to a record­ing that one work­er made of her fir­ing.

    “I start­ed to cry,” said Gabriel Sedano, a for­mer main­te­nance work­er from Mex­i­co who was among those fired. He had worked at the club since 2005. “I told them they need­ed to con­sid­er us. I had worked almost 15 years for them in this club, and I’d giv­en the best of myself to this job.”

    “I’d nev­er done any­thing wrong, only work and work,” he added. “They said they did­n’t have any com­ments to make.”
    ...

    It should also come as no sur­prise that this ille­gal work­er purge appears to have elim­i­nat­ed about half of the club’s win­ter­time staff:

    ...
    The fir­ings at the New York golf club — which work­ers said elim­i­nat­ed about half of the club’s win­ter­time staff — fol­low a sto­ry in the New York Times last year that fea­tured an undoc­u­ment­ed work­er at anoth­er Trump club in Bed­min­ster, N.J. After that sto­ry, Trump’s com­pa­ny fired undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers at the Bed­min­ster club, accord­ing to for­mer work­ers there.
    ...

    And it should obvi­ous­ly come as no sur­prise that, as we saw with the New Jer­sey club, the New York club also does­n’t use the E‑Verify sys­tem:

    ...
    This Trump golf club does not appear in the government’s list of par­tic­i­pants in the E‑Verify sys­tem, which allows employ­ers to con­firm their employ­ees are in the coun­try legal­ly. Eric Trump did not answer a ques­tion about whether the club would join the sys­tem.
    ...

    And as we saw with the New Jer­sey club, the man­age­ment was ful­ly aware these work­ers were giv­ing them fake doc­u­men­ta­tion and even request­ed bet­ter fake doc­u­men­ta­tion at times to keep them employed:

    ...
    In pub­lic, Trump has argued that undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants have harmed Amer­i­can work­ers by dri­ving down wages. That was part of why Trump demand­ed a bor­der wall and con­tem­plat­ed declar­ing a nation­al emer­gency to get it.

    But, in Westch­ester Coun­ty, Trump seems to have ben­e­fit­ed from the same dynam­ic he denounces. His undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers said they pro­vid­ed Trump with cheap labor. In return, they got steady work and few ques­tions.

    “They said absolute­ly noth­ing. They nev­er said, ‘Your social secu­ri­ty num­ber is bad’ or ‘Some­thing is wrong,’?” said Mar­gari­ta Cruz, a house­keep­ing employ­ee from Mex­i­co who was fired after eight years at the club. “Noth­ing. Noth­ing. Until right now.”

    ...

    The work­ers were large­ly from Mex­i­co, with a few from oth­er coun­tries. Most said they crossed the Unit­ed States’ south­ern bor­der on foot and pur­chased fake immi­gra­tion doc­u­ments lat­er. Many bought theirs in Queens, N.Y.

    They said Trump Orga­ni­za­tion boss­es did not seem to scru­ti­nize these doc­u­ments close­ly when they were hired.

    Edmun­do Moro­cho, an Ecuado­ran main­te­nance work­er, said he was hired around 2000 with a green card and social secu­ri­ty card that he said he pur­chased in Queens for about $50. The green card he showed The Post says it expired in 2002, but a decade passed before the Trump club told him that he need­ed to replace it, he said.

    Moro­cho bought a new card, he said. It had a dif­fer­ent birth date than the first one, but he said the Trump club didn’t raise ques­tions. The Post viewed both cards. It was unclear if they were forged or stolen.

    “The accoun­tant took copies and said, ‘Okay, it’s fine,’?” Moro­cho recalled. “He didn’t say any­thing more.” Eric Trump did not respond to a ques­tion ask­ing about the club’s process for review­ing employ­ees’ immi­gra­tion doc­u­ments.

    Anoth­er employ­ee — Jesus Lira, a ban­quet chef from Mex­i­co — said that, on two occa­sions in 2008, an accoun­tant at the Trump club reject­ed his fake doc­u­ments and told him to go obtain bet­ter ones.

    “She said, ‘I can’t accept this, go back and tell them to do a bet­ter job,’?” Lira recalled. He said he returned to Queens a third time and found doc­u­ments that the club accept­ed. Eric Trump did not respond to a ques­tion about Lira’s account.
    ...

    As one for­mer employ­ee described it, the man­age­ment took an atti­tude of “don’t ask, don’t tell”. That and “Get the cheap­est labor pos­si­ble.”:

    ...
    The Post spoke to two for­mer man­agers from the club about the employ­ees’ accounts. One for­mer man­ag­er, who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss the club’s inter­nal prac­tices, said the club relied on its account­ing depart­ment to scru­ti­nize the immi­gra­tion doc­u­ments and that the depart­ment reject­ed about 20 per­cent of appli­cants because of immi­gra­tion ques­tions.

    The oth­er for­mer man­ag­er said the broad­er Trump Orga­ni­za­tion placed far more empha­sis on find­ing cheap labor than it placed on root­ing out undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers. The for­mer man­ag­er char­ac­ter­ized the atti­tude at the club as “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

    “It didn’t mat­ter. They didn’t care [about immi­gra­tion sta­tus],’?” said the for­mer man­ag­er, who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to pre­serve ties with cur­rent Trump exec­u­tives. “It was, ‘Get the cheap­est labor pos­si­ble.’?” The for­mer man­ag­er said the assump­tion at the club was that immi­gra­tion author­i­ties were not like­ly to tar­get golf clubs for mass raids.
    ...

    Mass fir­ings of work­ers so trust­ed that they main­tained the Trump res­i­dences. That’s what just hap­pened at the Trump New York and New Jer­sey golf clubs and it seems like a safe bet it’s hap­pen­ing across all of his prop­er­ties. Giv­en the polit­i­cal cli­mate that demo­nizes these work­ers as dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals invad­ing the US and com­mit­ting all sorts of crimes, this sto­ry is a poignant reminder that these ‘ille­gals’ are by and large decent peo­ple in very tough cir­cum­stances try­ing to get by.

    And as the fol­low­ing Decem­ber 2016 piece by Lise Nel­son — an aca­d­e­m­ic who stud­ied the role US employ­er demand for undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers plays as a dri­ving force behind the ille­gal immi­gra­tion that tran­spired over the last two and a half decades — it’s been US employ­ers, like Trump, who have found that the threat of depor­ta­tion made these ille­gal work­ers become loy­al “com­pli­ant worka­holics” who pro­vide cheap and flex­i­ble labor. And employ­ers found this so seduc­tive that they effec­tive­ly recruit­ed the mil­lions of undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers who flowed into the US from the mid-90’s until 2008. It was only the 2008 finan­cial cri­sis that end­ed flow and lev­els have been large­ly neu­tral ever since. The many pre­vi­ous attempts by the US gov­ern­ment to stem this flow by beef­ing up bor­der secu­ri­ty were use­less giv­en the demand US employ­ers had for this labor, high­light­ing how a wall is unlike­ly to with­stand the lure of employ­ers like the Trump Org who are ready and will­ing to give these work­ers a job in exchange for loy­al cheap ‘com­pli­ant work­holism’:

    UPI

    Don­ald Trump’s wall ignores the eco­nom­ic log­ic of undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grant labor

    By Lise Nel­son, Penn­syl­va­nia State Uni­ver­si­ty
    Oct. 26, 2016 / 12:34 PM

    In the final weeks of his cam­paign, Don­ald Trump has reit­er­at­ed his call to build a wall between Mex­i­co and the Unit­ed States. A Pew Research sur­vey shows his sup­port­ers are unit­ed by, per­haps more than any oth­er issue, anti-immi­grant sen­ti­ment.

    To him, like many of his sup­port­ers, this wave of invad­ing “crim­i­nals” sup­port­ed and abet­ted by the Mex­i­can gov­ern­ment is a dire threat to the nation.

    Put aside for a moment the racist dimen­sions of this rhetoric. The wall argu­ment assumes the cause of undoc­u­ment­ed migra­tion orig­i­nates in Mex­i­co, in the Mex­i­can gov­ern­ment or in the crim­i­nal intent of migrants. A bor­der wall makes intu­itive sense if you assume the cause of undoc­u­ment­ed migra­tion is exter­nal to the Unit­ed States.

    This is a belief that ignores not only the ease of breach­ing such a wall, but more fun­da­men­tal­ly the eco­nom­ics of low-wage, undoc­u­ment­ed labor migra­tion that gen­er­at­ed these flows in the first place.

    Over the last two decades, U.S. recruit­ment of work­ers with­out doc­u­men­ta­tion has drawn mil­lions over the bor­der even as we have invest­ed bil­lions in polic­ing, bar­ri­cades and sur­veil­lance on that same bor­der.

    My research, like that of oth­ers, sheds light on the day-to-day incen­tives employ­ers have for recruit­ing undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers. The cumu­la­tive effect of these recruit­ment prac­tices, which occur in near­ly every geo­graph­ic region of the coun­try, is to invite large-scale migra­tion across the U.S.-Mexico bor­der. It is a draw that is high­ly resis­tant to our efforts to stop it. From this per­spec­tive, the ori­gins of the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion, in which 6.4 per­cent of our work­force lacks doc­u­men­ta­tion, lie north of the bor­der as much as south of it.

    A pref­er­ence for the undoc­u­ment­ed

    My col­leagues and I have con­duct­ed research in U.S. com­mu­ni­ties where undoc­u­ment­ed Lati­no immi­grants live and work, includ­ing inter­views with their employ­ers. We focused on small busi­ness­es in rur­al Col­orado and Geor­gia. We inves­ti­gat­ed how and why entre­pre­neurs in con­struc­tion, land­scap­ing and low-wage ser­vice indus­tries began active­ly seek­ing to hire undoc­u­ment­ed Lati­no immi­grants start­ing in the mid-1990s even though immi­grant work­ers were large­ly absent from these places pri­or to that time.

    What start­ed for many as a short-term solu­tion to fill a labor gap turned into a pref­er­ence for hir­ing undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers. Recruit­ment efforts thus inten­si­fied, caus­ing a sig­nif­i­cant growth in the Lati­no immi­grant pop­u­la­tion in both places. In a rur­al Geor­gia coun­ty, the Lati­no pop­u­la­tion increased 1,760 per­cent between 1990 and 2010, due to the increase in these recruit­ment efforts by busi­ness­es involved in con­struc­tion, land­scap­ing, clean­ing and food pro­vi­sion.

    ...

    In inter­views, employ­ers describe the undoc­u­ment­ed Lati­no immi­grants they hire as among the most reli­able, hon­est and hard­work­ing employ­ees they have ever had. As one Geor­gia employ­er described it:

    “I think about, if I had to get rid of the nine His­pan­ics that I’ve got tomor­row and replace them with locals, to get the same amount of out­put, I would have to hire 15 instead of nine and I’d prob­a­bly have to pay them $1 an hour more each, and that fig­ures up quick. And there’s some­times that you just can’t find peo­ple to do the work.”

    Most employ­ers we inter­viewed began by the late 1990s to orga­nize their busi­ness­es around the pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and dis­ci­pline offered by an undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grant work­force.

    This view not only con­tra­dicts Trump’s assump­tions about undoc­u­ment­ed low-wage immi­grants’ “crim­i­nal” char­ac­ter, it sheds light on their role in a range of eco­nom­ic sec­tors across the coun­try. Over the past two decades, low-wage indus­tries across the Unit­ed States have increas­ing­ly recruit­ed and relied on immi­grant work­ers, many of whom lack doc­u­men­ta­tion.

    The eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits cre­at­ed by the pres­ence of low-wage, undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grant work­ers are expe­ri­enced not only by the Amer­i­can busi­ness­es that hire them, but also by con­sumers. Where our research was con­duct­ed, con­sumers enjoyed low­er-cost hous­ing and a range of cheap­er restau­rant, land­scap­ing and clean­ing ser­vices due to their pres­ence. These kinds of eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits explain why Don­ald Trump hired undoc­u­ment­ed Pol­ish work­ers to help build Trump Tow­er.

    The ‘ide­al’ work­er

    Peo­ple who enter the Unit­ed States with­out doc­u­ments are usu­al­ly moti­vat­ed by pro­found eco­nom­ic need, a need that ani­mates them to embark on a dan­ger­ous and uncer­tain jour­ney. Pover­ty places them in a posi­tion of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty that often proves to be an asset to their U.S. employ­ers. Eager for employ­ment, they often accept dif­fi­cult, irreg­u­lar and low-pay­ing jobs they can do with­out being flu­ent in Eng­lish.

    The threat of depor­ta­tion adds an addi­tion­al lay­er of inse­cu­ri­ty and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. Undoc­u­ment­ed res­i­dents live in fear. That applies even to those who are rais­ing cit­i­zen chil­dren, who are gain­ful­ly employed over many years, who have no crim­i­nal record and who pay sales, prop­er­ty and income tax­es. They live with a con­stant threat of depor­ta­tion and a deep sense of being viewed with sus­pi­cion by some in the com­mu­ni­ties where they live. It is a sus­pi­cion often tied to racial ani­mos­i­ty. Lati­no res­i­dents are fre­quent­ly pro­filed as “ille­gal” – regard­less of their actu­al legal sta­tus or nation­al­i­ty, a trend that affects not only labor mar­kets but whole com­mu­ni­ties.

    The com­bi­na­tion of pover­ty and fear of depor­ta­tion inspires most undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants to tie them­selves close­ly to their employ­ers. They work hard and avoid pub­lic spaces. In the words of soci­ol­o­gists Jill Har­ri­son (Uni­ver­si­ty of Col­orado-Boul­der) and Jen­nifer Lloyd (Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin-Madi­son), undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers become “com­pli­ant worka­holics” in order to sur­vive. Employ­ers in low-wage indus­tries have found this dis­ci­plined, loy­al and flex­i­ble work­force very attrac­tive.

    The eco­nom­ic pow­er of this process is resis­tant to bor­der con­trol and phys­i­cal bar­ri­ers installed over the last two decades – pre­cur­sors to the fan­ta­sy of an impen­e­tra­ble wall. It is telling that the steady growth of the undoc­u­ment­ed work­force between the mid-1990s through the mid-2000s hap­pened despite a near­ly con­stant growth of spend­ing on bor­der patrol, new bar­ri­ers and sur­veil­lance. Only in the wake of the 2008 eco­nom­ic crash, which dra­mat­i­cal­ly slowed recruit­ment process­es, did the unau­tho­rized Mex­i­can work­force in the Unit­ed State start to decline.

    Trump, of course, pairs his call for a huge wall with a promise to enforce mass depor­ta­tion. This is equal­ly unre­al­is­tic in eco­nom­ic terms. Econ­o­mists have esti­mat­ed that if Trump were suc­cess­ful in remov­ing all undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers, our GDP would fall by 5.7 per­cent. This is in addi­tion to the cost of such a depor­ta­tion effort, which is esti­mat­ed at requir­ing $400 bil­lion in new fed­er­al spend­ing. Final­ly, there is the human cost of this plan giv­en that in 2012 4.5 mil­lion U.S. cit­i­zen chil­dren have one or more undoc­u­ment­ed par­ents.

    While there is a clear eco­nom­ic log­ic to the pres­ence of mil­lions of undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers in the Unit­ed States, a log­ic that I believe we mis­un­der­stand at our per­il, the cur­rent sys­tem does not pro­vide jus­tice nor a decent life for low-wage immi­grant or non-immi­grant work­ers.

    I believe com­pre­hen­sive immi­gra­tion reform would make it pos­si­ble for undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers to legal­ize, a place from which they could demand bet­ter wages and work­ing con­di­tions. Their improved sit­u­a­tion would actu­al­ly help lev­el the play­ing field – elim­i­nat­ing the unfair advan­tage of ille­gal sta­tus in the labor mar­ket – for non-immi­grant work­ers. Legal­iza­tion and a path to cit­i­zen­ship not only pro­vide a eth­i­cal path out of our cur­rent sit­u­a­tion, they make eco­nom­ic sense as well.

    ———-

    “Don­ald Trump’s wall ignores the eco­nom­ic log­ic of undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grant labor” By Lise Nel­son; UPI; 10/26/2016

    “My research, like that of oth­ers, sheds light on the day-to-day incen­tives employ­ers have for recruit­ing undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers. The cumu­la­tive effect of these recruit­ment prac­tices, which occur in near­ly every geo­graph­ic region of the coun­try, is to invite large-scale migra­tion across the U.S.-Mexico bor­der. It is a draw that is high­ly resis­tant to our efforts to stop it. From this per­spec­tive, the ori­gins of the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion, in which 6.4 per­cent of our work­force lacks doc­u­men­ta­tion, lie north of the bor­der as much as south of it.”

    As long as US employ­ers like the Trump Org are active­ly recruit­ing an undoc­u­ment­ed work­force it’s going to be very hard to imag­ine some sort of phys­i­cal bar­ri­er stop­ping peo­ple from get­ting here to fill those jobs. It’s an impor­tant les­son about ‘the Wall’ that Trump’s golf clubs do a great job high­light­ing. Con­trary to the fix­a­tion on ‘car­a­vans’ of asy­lum seek­ers, Ille­gal immi­gra­tion has long been a demand-dri­ven US phe­nom­e­na:

    ...
    To him, like many of his sup­port­ers, this wave of invad­ing “crim­i­nals” sup­port­ed and abet­ted by the Mex­i­can gov­ern­ment is a dire threat to the nation.

    Put aside for a moment the racist dimen­sions of this rhetoric. The wall argu­ment assumes the cause of undoc­u­ment­ed migra­tion orig­i­nates in Mex­i­co, in the Mex­i­can gov­ern­ment or in the crim­i­nal intent of migrants. A bor­der wall makes intu­itive sense if you assume the cause of undoc­u­ment­ed migra­tion is exter­nal to the Unit­ed States.

    This is a belief that ignores not only the ease of breach­ing such a wall, but more fun­da­men­tal­ly the eco­nom­ics of low-wage, undoc­u­ment­ed labor migra­tion that gen­er­at­ed these flows in the first place.

    Over the last two decades, U.S. recruit­ment of work­ers with­out doc­u­men­ta­tion has drawn mil­lions over the bor­der even as we have invest­ed bil­lions in polic­ing, bar­ri­cades and sur­veil­lance on that same bor­der.
    ...

    And for some indus­tries, US employ­ers effec­tive­ly recruit­ed as many undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers as they could. That’s what Nel­son and her col­leagues inves­ti­gat­ed: how and why entre­pre­neurs in con­struc­tion, land­scap­ing and low-wage ser­vice indus­tries began active­ly seek­ing to hire undoc­u­ment­ed Lati­no immi­grants start­ing in the mid-1990s even though immi­grant work­ers were large­ly absent from these places pri­or to that time. And they found that what start­ed as short-term hir­ing of undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers in the 90’s turned into the mass recruit­ing after employ­ers found that undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers were actu­al­ly extreme­ly loy­al and flex­i­ble and ded­i­cat­ed. Because their employ­ers can have them deport­ed:

    ...
    A pref­er­ence for the undoc­u­ment­ed

    My col­leagues and I have con­duct­ed research in U.S. com­mu­ni­ties where undoc­u­ment­ed Lati­no immi­grants live and work, includ­ing inter­views with their employ­ers. We focused on small busi­ness­es in rur­al Col­orado and Geor­gia. We inves­ti­gat­ed how and why entre­pre­neurs in con­struc­tion, land­scap­ing and low-wage ser­vice indus­tries began active­ly seek­ing to hire undoc­u­ment­ed Lati­no immi­grants start­ing in the mid-1990s even though immi­grant work­ers were large­ly absent from these places pri­or to that time.

    What start­ed for many as a short-term solu­tion to fill a labor gap turned into a pref­er­ence for hir­ing undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers. Recruit­ment efforts thus inten­si­fied, caus­ing a sig­nif­i­cant growth in the Lati­no immi­grant pop­u­la­tion in both places. In a rur­al Geor­gia coun­ty, the Lati­no pop­u­la­tion increased 1,760 per­cent between 1990 and 2010, due to the increase in these recruit­ment efforts by busi­ness­es involved in con­struc­tion, land­scap­ing, clean­ing and food pro­vi­sion.

    ...

    In inter­views, employ­ers describe the undoc­u­ment­ed Lati­no immi­grants they hire as among the most reli­able, hon­est and hard­work­ing employ­ees they have ever had. As one Geor­gia employ­er described it:

    “I think about, if I had to get rid of the nine His­pan­ics that I’ve got tomor­row and replace them with locals, to get the same amount of out­put, I would have to hire 15 instead of nine and I’d prob­a­bly have to pay them $1 an hour more each, and that fig­ures up quick. And there’s some­times that you just can’t find peo­ple to do the work.”

    Most employ­ers we inter­viewed began by the late 1990s to orga­nize their busi­ness­es around the pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and dis­ci­pline offered by an undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grant work­force.

    This view not only con­tra­dicts Trump’s assump­tions about undoc­u­ment­ed low-wage immi­grants’ “crim­i­nal” char­ac­ter, it sheds light on their role in a range of eco­nom­ic sec­tors across the coun­try. Over the past two decades, low-wage indus­tries across the Unit­ed States have increas­ing­ly recruit­ed and relied on immi­grant work­ers, many of whom lack doc­u­men­ta­tion.
    ...

    So for about 20 years now, US busi­ness have relied much more heav­i­ly on undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers than in pri­or decades. There was about 10 years, until 2008, when mil­lions flowed into the US to fill that employ­er demand. Then the 2008 cri­sis hap­pened and lev­els have large­ly remained neu­tral (peo­ple flow in and out). And now Trump is pres­i­dent and fan­ning the flames of xeno­pho­bia and demo­niz­ing ille­gal immi­grants for polit­i­cal gain as the role US busi­ness played in this sit­u­a­tion is sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly ignored. And these mil­lions of work­ers have large­ly been loy­al “com­pli­ant worka­holics” the entire time. It high­lights the impor­tance of com­pre­hen­sive immi­gra­tion reform that includes a whole bunch of reforms at once. Because if the US is going to crack down on employ­ers like Trump who know­ing­ly recruit cheap undoc­u­ment­ed labor by requir­ing sys­tems like E‑Verify, it’s going to be crit­i­cal to keep in mind that a mil­lions of peo­ple who have large­ly been employ­er-cap­tured “com­pli­ant worka­holics” for decades are peo­ple who real­ly don’t deserve to be screwed over with mass fir­ings and depor­ta­tions. Wide­spread abu­sive cheap employ­ment should def­i­nite­ly be end­ed in the US, but there’s a twist­ed cru­el­ty to not some­how find­ing either a path to cit­i­zen­ship or some sort of per­ma­nent res­i­dence sta­tus for the peo­ple who spent years being Amer­i­ca’s cheap­est, most exploit­ed labor force:

    ...
    The ‘ide­al’ work­er

    Peo­ple who enter the Unit­ed States with­out doc­u­ments are usu­al­ly moti­vat­ed by pro­found eco­nom­ic need, a need that ani­mates them to embark on a dan­ger­ous and uncer­tain jour­ney. Pover­ty places them in a posi­tion of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty that often proves to be an asset to their U.S. employ­ers. Eager for employ­ment, they often accept dif­fi­cult, irreg­u­lar and low-pay­ing jobs they can do with­out being flu­ent in Eng­lish.

    The threat of depor­ta­tion adds an addi­tion­al lay­er of inse­cu­ri­ty and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. Undoc­u­ment­ed res­i­dents live in fear. That applies even to those who are rais­ing cit­i­zen chil­dren, who are gain­ful­ly employed over many years, who have no crim­i­nal record and who pay sales, prop­er­ty and income tax­es. They live with a con­stant threat of depor­ta­tion and a deep sense of being viewed with sus­pi­cion by some in the com­mu­ni­ties where they live. It is a sus­pi­cion often tied to racial ani­mos­i­ty. Lati­no res­i­dents are fre­quent­ly pro­filed as “ille­gal” – regard­less of their actu­al legal sta­tus or nation­al­i­ty, a trend that affects not only labor mar­kets but whole com­mu­ni­ties.

    The com­bi­na­tion of pover­ty and fear of depor­ta­tion inspires most undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants to tie them­selves close­ly to their employ­ers. They work hard and avoid pub­lic spaces. In the words of soci­ol­o­gists Jill Har­ri­son (Uni­ver­si­ty of Col­orado-Boul­der) and Jen­nifer Lloyd (Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin-Madi­son), undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers become “com­pli­ant worka­holics” in order to sur­vive. Employ­ers in low-wage indus­tries have found this dis­ci­plined, loy­al and flex­i­ble work­force very attrac­tive.
    ...

    And despite all the ear­li­er attempts to put up phys­i­cal bar­ri­ers to stem the flow, it was the 2008 finan­cial cri­sis, which dried up employ­er demand, that actu­al­ly end­ed up, under­scor­ing how it real­ly is an employ­er-demand phe­nom­e­na:

    ...
    The eco­nom­ic pow­er of this process is resis­tant to bor­der con­trol and phys­i­cal bar­ri­ers installed over the last two decades – pre­cur­sors to the fan­ta­sy of an impen­e­tra­ble wall. It is telling that the steady growth of the undoc­u­ment­ed work­force between the mid-1990s through the mid-2000s hap­pened despite a near­ly con­stant growth of spend­ing on bor­der patrol, new bar­ri­ers and sur­veil­lance. Only in the wake of the 2008 eco­nom­ic crash, which dra­mat­i­cal­ly slowed recruit­ment process­es, did the unau­tho­rized Mex­i­can work­force in the Unit­ed State start to decline.
    ...

    And while Trump and the GOP are rou­tine­ly try­ing to dri­ve a wedge between Amer­i­ca’s poor cit­i­zens and the exploit­ed undoc­u­ment­ed labor force, it’s impor­tant to keep in mind that the part of the ille­gal work­er phe­nom­e­na that sup­press­es wages for poor US cit­i­zens is being dri­ven by US employ­ers active­ly recruit­ing undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers. It’s not the fault of the undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers who got recruit­ed. In oth­er words, the plight of US low wage work­ers is pri­mar­i­ly a a con­se­quence of US pol­i­cy and the col­lec­tive actions of US busi­ness own­ers, not the pres­ence of the undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers those employ­ers demand­ed. So a com­pre­hen­sive immi­gra­tion reform pack­age that includes some­thing like a fed­er­al E‑Verify require­ment com­bined with an amnesty and path to cit­i­zen­ship pro­gram for the mil­lions of work­ers who have been com­pli­ant worka­holics for employ­ers like Trump Org for decades is net a very good deal for low wage US work­ers:

    ...
    Trump, of course, pairs his call for a huge wall with a promise to enforce mass depor­ta­tion. This is equal­ly unre­al­is­tic in eco­nom­ic terms. Econ­o­mists have esti­mat­ed that if Trump were suc­cess­ful in remov­ing all undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers, our GDP would fall by 5.7 per­cent. This is in addi­tion to the cost of such a depor­ta­tion effort, which is esti­mat­ed at requir­ing $400 bil­lion in new fed­er­al spend­ing. Final­ly, there is the human cost of this plan giv­en that in 2012 4.5 mil­lion U.S. cit­i­zen chil­dren have one or more undoc­u­ment­ed par­ents.

    While there is a clear eco­nom­ic log­ic to the pres­ence of mil­lions of undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers in the Unit­ed States, a log­ic that I believe we mis­un­der­stand at our per­il, the cur­rent sys­tem does not pro­vide jus­tice nor a decent life for low-wage immi­grant or non-immi­grant work­ers.

    I believe com­pre­hen­sive immi­gra­tion reform would make it pos­si­ble for undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers to legal­ize, a place from which they could demand bet­ter wages and work­ing con­di­tions. Their improved sit­u­a­tion would actu­al­ly help lev­el the play­ing field – elim­i­nat­ing the unfair advan­tage of ille­gal sta­tus in the labor mar­ket – for non-immi­grant work­ers. Legal­iza­tion and a path to cit­i­zen­ship not only pro­vide a eth­i­cal path out of our cur­rent sit­u­a­tion, they make eco­nom­ic sense as well.
    ...

    So while Trump threat­ens to shut the gov­ern­ment down again in a few weeks if he does­n’t get fund­ing for his wall, it’s going to be worth keep­ing in mind that the loy­al­ty, ded­i­ca­tion, and basic human­i­ty of the work­ers that just got mass fired by Trump’s golf clubs high­lights how this fight for ‘the Wall’ is actu­al­ly a giant dis­trac­tion from the respon­si­bil­i­ty of work­ing out some sort of com­pre­hen­sive immi­gra­tion reform deal. A com­pre­hen­sive immi­gra­tion reform pack­age that simul­ta­ne­ous­ly stops employ­ers like Trump from sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly exploit­ing cheap loy­al “com­pli­ant worka­holics” and treats the kind of peo­ple that Trump’s golf clubs just mass fired with actu­al com­pas­sion.

    It looks like we found the one area where Trump is con­struc­tive­ly help­ing the US immi­gra­tion debate: by being a won­der­ful­ly illus­tra­tive exam­ple of what actu­al­ly needs to be fixed and why it needs to be done with a sense of decen­cy.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | January 26, 2019, 10:04 pm
  8. The top­ic of dirty pol­i­tics and ger­ry­man­der­ing, redis­trict­ing, and reap­por­tion­ment is sud­den­ly in the news. And not just because the next round of redis­trict­ing, and reap­por­tion­ment in the US is com­ing up after the 2020 elec­tions. There’s a new GOP scan­dal that has it in the news, of course. The top­ic of the par­ti­san draw­ing of con­gres­sion­al dis­tricts is one of those top­ics that should be reg­u­lar­ly cov­ered in US pol­i­tics since it’s an issue that is both pro­found­ly unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic and has a mas­sive impact on how actu­al pow­er in wield­ed in the coun­try. So it’s always nice when top­ics like ger­ry­man­der­ing and redis­trict­ing sud­den­ly become topical...except for the fact that it almost always becomes top­i­cal only after some sort of rev­e­la­tion about Repub­li­can dirty tricks.

    This time the new top­i­cal GOP dirty trick cen­ters around the push by the GOP to add a new ques­tion about cit­i­zen­ship to the upcom­ing 2020 cen­sus. Accord­ing to the work­ing of the US Con­sti­tu­tion, the cen­sus is specif­i­cal­ly intend­ed to count the num­ber of peo­ple, not just cit­i­zens, in a giv­en area for deter­min­ing that region’s pop­u­la­tion. In recent years, the Repub­li­can Par­ty has been anx­ious about adding a ques­tion of cit­i­zen­ship (how many cit­i­zens or non-cit­i­zens are in this house­hold?) to the 2020 cen­sus. Experts have under­stand­ably long sus­pect­ed was designed to sup­pressed the num­ber of Lati­nos and non-cit­i­zen immi­grants from answer­ing the cen­sus at all under the premise that house­holds were non-cit­i­zens reside (whether legal­ly in the US or not) are going to be less inclined to answer the cen­sus at all if there’s a cit­i­zen­ship ques­tion out of fear of attract­ing the gov­ern­men­t’s atten­tion over pos­si­ble undoc­u­ment­ed peo­ple. And if immi­grant and minor­i­ty house­holds are sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly dis­cour­aged from answer­ing the cen­sus that will inevitably lead to a rel­a­tive boost in rep­re­sen­ta­tion for the Repub­li­can Par­ty in Con­gress because con­gres­sion­al seats are reap­por­tioned between the states and dis­tricts redrawn with­in each state every decade based on the respons­es to the cen­sus and the mea­sured pop­u­la­tion lev­els from the cen­sus play a big role in that process. The Repub­li­can Par­ty has con­sis­tent­ly and laugh­ably denied that this was the motive for the cit­i­zen­ship ques­tion dri­ve.

    And, lo and behold, it turns out the cyn­i­cal experts were absolute­ly cor­rect. Last week, the pri­vate doc­u­ments of Thomas Hofeller, the Repub­li­can Par­ty go-to expert on ger­ry­man­der­ing who died last year, were recent­ly dis­cov­ered by Hofeller’s estranged daugh­ter on a hard dri­ve. In the doc­u­ments found on the hard dri­ve, Hofeller explic­it­ly describes how he viewed the addi­tion of the cit­i­zen­ship ques­tion as “advan­ta­geous to Repub­li­cans and non-His­pan­ic Whites.” Hofeller had been com­mis­sioned by a GOP-mega donor to study the impact of adding the cit­i­zen­ship ques­tion to the cen­sus on elec­tions. That’s the con­text of Hofeller pre­dict­ing that adding the cit­i­zen­ship ques­tion would help Repub­li­cans. Hofeller also worked on the Trump tran­si­tion team. It’s sort of a ‘case closed’ find­ing in terms of deter­min­ing whether or not there was a par­ti­san motive for the dri­ve.

    And it turns out there is an legal case brought the ACLU chal­leng­ing the addi­tion of the cit­i­zen­ship ques­tion to the cen­sus that had already reached the Supreme Court when these doc­u­ments were dis­cov­ered last week. The dis­cov­ered doc­u­ments also revealed that Hofeller gave his report to John Gore, the Jus­tice Depart­ment offi­cial who played a key role in adding the cit­i­zen­ship ques­tion to the cen­sus. Gore had pre­vi­ous­ly tes­ti­fied that he received no out­side advise on that deci­sion so the ACLU accused Gore of giv­ing false tes­ti­mo­ny after these doc­u­ments were released. The US Depart­ment of Jus­tice, the defen­dant in the case, has dis­missed Hofeller’s dis­cov­ered hard dri­ve as ‘11th hour evi­dence’ and is com­plete­ly deny­ing all of the ACLU’s new asser­tions about John Gore giv­ing false tes­ti­mo­ny and con­tin­ue to assert that Hofeller’s study played no role in Gore’s deci­sion and he was unaware of the study...despite what the doc­u­ments unam­bigu­ous­ly make clear. The DOJ has sub­se­quent­ly declared that accu­sa­tions stem­ming from the new­ly dis­cov­ered doc­u­ments are “mer­it­less” and “inflam­ma­to­ry” and that any insin­u­a­tion of sim­i­lar­i­ties between Gore’s 2017 DOJ request to add the cit­i­zen­ship ques­tion and Hofeller’s study were false. Yep, don’t believe your lying eyes or basic pat­tern recog­ni­tion skills. That’s the DOJ’s stance on the top­ic as of now.

    So we appear to have what should be a ger­ry­man­der­ing dirty-tricks mega-scan­dal emerg­ing thanks to Thomas Hofeller’s estranged daugh­ter. And that’s what makes the fol­low­ing arti­cle extra top­i­cal: It’s about an old GOP ger­ry­man­der­ing dirty-tricks scan­dal. It’s not that old. It’s from 2010, when the last cen­sus and redistricting/gerrymandering bonan­za took place. But it’s still top­i­cal because, as the arti­cle notes, when this was first report­ed on by Politi­co in 2014 it did­n’t real­ly get much atten­tion so it’s large­ly unknown. It’s new-ish old news.

    As the arti­cle also notes, it’s top­i­cal old news because Alaba­ma just passed one of the most extreme abor­tion restric­tion bills in US his­to­ry and some­thing like that could­n’t have hap­pened before the GOP’s wild suc­cess in tak­ing con­trols of Alaba­ma’s state gov­ern­ment in 2010 and sub­se­quent ger­ry­man­der­ing. The actu­al scan­dal was­n’t specif­i­cal­ly relat­ed to ger­ry­man­der­ing. The scan­dal is that evi­dence strong­ly indi­cates that the Repub­li­can State Lead­er­ship Com­mit­tee (RSLC) ille­gal­ly fun­neled more than $1 mil­lion in dark mon­ey into Alaba­ma’s state elec­tions that year. What makes an ille­gal dark mon­ey con­tri­bu­tion by the RSLC into Alaba­ma’s elec­tions that year ger­ry­man­der­ing relat­ed? Because the RSLC was home the Redis­trict­ing Major­i­ty Project (REDMAP), the GOP’s nation­al redis­trict­ing project that took ger­ry­man­der­ing to a lev­el nev­er seen before. And the RSLC was spend­ing more than $30 mil­lion that year on a hand­ful of state leg­is­la­ture races intend­ed to max­i­mize the GOP’s redis­trict­ing options in as many states as pos­si­ble. So if the RSLC was ille­gal­ly pump­ing dark mon­ey into Alaba­ma it was part of the larg­er sto­ry of REDMAP. That’s THE meta-sto­ry at work here. The sto­ry of the GOP tak­ing ger­ry­man­der­ing and cheat­ing to unprece­dent­ed lev­els at a nation­al scale.

    The par­tic­u­lar dark mon­ey scheme involved rais­ing mon­ey that was crit­i­cal for financ­ing an ad cam­paign that helped pro­pel the Alaba­ma GOP’s his­toric 2010 takeover of the Alaba­ma state gov­ern­ment from the Democ­rats for the first time in 135 years. Mike Hub­bard, then the chair­man of the Alaba­ma GOP, was the archi­tect behind the cam­paign and the financ­ing behind it. Hub­bard real­ized he could raise hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars from the Porch Creek Native Amer­i­can tribe, who owned a casi­no but he could­n’t accept the mon­ey direct­ly because casi­no mon­ey would be polit­i­cal­ly tox­ic in Alaba­ma. This is where the dark mon­ey comes in. The REDMAP project had­n’t real­ly be count­ing on the GOP tak­ing con­trol of Alaba­ma that year but Hub­bard was con­vinced it could be done. Hub­bard approached the RSLC with his plan for rais­ing the tribe mon­ey and run­ning it through the RSLC to run his envi­sioned ad cam­paign. That’s exact­ly what hap­pened. The Alaba­ma donors gave the mon­ey to the RSLC and the RSLC gave the mon­ey, almost dol­lar-for-dol­lar, to can­di­dates at Hub­bard’s request. This is all accord­ing to doc­u­ments pro­vid­ed by the RSLC’s own lawyers so much like Hofellers dis­cov­ered hard dri­ve this is all pret­ty unde­ni­able.

    The Alaba­ma GOP won that 2010 elec­tion in an his­toric land­slide and Hub­bard was made speak­er of the Alaba­ma House and imme­di­ate­ly veered the state’s pol­i­tics to the hard-right. Lat­er, the RSLC hired the law­firm Bak­er­Hostetler to con­duct an inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion of pos­si­ble wrong-doing involved with this scheme. Bak­er­Hostetler con­clud­ed that this arrange­ment with Hub­bard was pos­si­bly crim­i­nal and warned that the crimes could that could “ulti­mate­ly threat­en the organization’s con­tin­ued exis­tence”. No one was ever charged. Hub­bard did lat­er get con­vict­ed to four years in prison on 12 counts of ethics vio­la­tions:

    Salon

    How a dark-mon­ey scam cre­at­ed Alaba­ma’s hard-right leg­is­la­ture — and the abor­tion ban
    Mike Hub­bard’s mon­ey-laun­der­ing scheme turned Alaba­ma deep red in 2010. He may go to prison, but the dam­age is done

    David Daley
    June 2, 2019 4:00PM (UTC)

    As the 2010 elec­tions neared, Mike Hub­bard had a huge dream and an even big­ger dilem­ma. The chair­man of Alabama’s Repub­li­can Par­ty want­ed to end the Democ­rats’ 136-year ham­mer­lock over the state leg­is­la­ture. If Hub­bard could surf an anti-Barack Oba­ma wave and cap­ture con­trol of Mont­gomery, he thought, it would be the most “mon­u­men­tal pub­lic achieve­ment” in Alabama’s mod­ern polit­i­cal his­to­ry.

    But eras­ing a 60–43 Demo­c­ra­t­ic edge in Alabama’s House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and a 20–15 advan­tage in the state Sen­ate would cost mil­lions. All that cash would not be easy to raise in a poor state, let alone one that wasn’t high on the nation­al party’s list of midterm elec­tions pri­or­i­ties. Unless, that is, he found some way to evade Alabama’s cam­paign finance laws. Not unex­pect­ed­ly, Hub­bard found his loop­hole.

    When Alaba­ma joined Ohio, Geor­gia and oth­er states this month in enact­ing the most restric­tive new abor­tion bans in decades, many polit­i­cal observers men­tioned the cru­cial role that par­ti­san ger­ry­man­der­ing played in cre­at­ing leg­is­la­tures — and entrench­ing leg­is­la­tors — that are much more con­ser­v­a­tive than the state’s cit­i­zens. And like so much in our pol­i­tics, Alabama’s abor­tion law does have its roots in redis­trict­ing.

    Alabama’s sto­ry, how­ev­er, might be more sor­did and cor­rupt than any oth­er state. That fall, Alaba­ma Repub­li­cans cap­tured those his­toric super­ma­jori­ties in the state leg­is­la­ture, thanks to ads that pro­claimed: “After 136 years, the Democ­rats have brought us Oba­ma, Pelosi, gov­ern­ment health care, lib­er­al poli­cies, high­er tax­es, and waste­ful spend­ing.” Hub­bard became speak­er of the house and imme­di­ate­ly pushed the state’s pol­i­tics hard right.

    Much of the nec­es­sary fund­ing, how­ev­er — more than $1 mil­lion — arrived through an uncon­ven­tion­al arrange­ment of ques­tion­able legal­i­ty with the Repub­li­can State Lead­er­ship Com­mit­tee. The RSLC was home to the GOP’s nation­al redis­trict­ing strat­e­gy. These were the oper­a­tives behind a plan called REDMAP — short for the Redis­trict­ing Major­i­ty Project — that dropped $30 mil­lion into a hand­ful of state leg­isla­tive races that fall, seek­ing to ensure GOP con­trol of the 2011 redis­trict­ing cycle in as many states as pos­si­ble.

    Alaba­ma had not been high on that list: Accord­ing to an inter­nal Repub­li­can Pow­er­Point that I obtained called “Redis­trict­ing 2010 Prepar­ing for Suc­cess,” the state was not part of ear­ly GOP think­ing for that midterm cycle at all. Then Hub­bard approached par­ty strate­gists with a plan.

    It worked like this, accord­ing to a detailed time­line revealed by the RSLC’s own lawyers: Hub­bard real­ized he could raise hun­dreds of thou­sands from the Poarch Creek Indi­ans, an Alaba­ma tribe with casi­no gam­ing inter­ests, and a lob­by­ist with long­stand­ing ties to the tribe. But that mon­ey, Hub­bard also knew, would be polit­i­cal­ly tox­ic in Alaba­ma, where gam­bling mon­ey is seen as deeply con­tro­ver­sial, espe­cial­ly among reli­gious con­ser­v­a­tives. So he had his Alaba­ma donors fun­nel that mon­ey to the RSLC. The RSLC, in turn, qui­et­ly gave that mon­ey back, almost dol­lar for dol­lar, to can­di­dates sup­port­ed by Hub­bard or polit­i­cal action groups that he con­trolled.

    These details emerged years after the elec­tion — with the Repub­li­can super­ma­jori­ties safe­ly installed in Mont­gomery — when that inter­nal RSLC inves­ti­ga­tion by the law firm Bak­er­Hostetler sound­ed alarms about “pos­si­ble crim­i­nal penal­ties” that could “ulti­mate­ly threat­en the organization’s con­tin­ued exis­tence.” Accord­ing to the pri­vate Bak­er­Hostetler memo — first dis­cov­ered by Politi­co in 2014 but not picked up by the nation’s polit­i­cal press, which had yet to under­stand the impor­tance of REDMAP and redis­trict­ing — “the path of the Alaba­ma mon­ey could trip over a state law that bans ‘mak­ing or accept­ing a con­tri­bu­tion by one per­son in the name of anoth­er.’”

    To put this more direct­ly: The lawyers’ report sug­gest­ed that the RSLC had served as a mon­ey-laun­der­ing pass-through for tox­ic cam­paign dona­tions from casi­no inter­ests, wash­ing the mon­ey clean and then return­ing it to Mike Hub­bard for use in flip­ping Alabama’s leg­is­la­ture from blue to red.

    ...

    No one was charged in that par­tic­u­lar case. But Hub­bard was lat­er con­vict­ed on 12 counts of ethics vio­la­tions in Alaba­ma, includ­ing improp­er­ly solic­it­ing lob­by­ists for con­sult­ing con­tracts and using his office to ben­e­fit clients. He was sen­tenced to four years in prison. His final appeal will be heard by the Alaba­ma Supreme Court next month. The RSLC cut ties with sev­er­al for­mer lead­ers after the Bak­er­Hostetler inves­ti­ga­tion con­clud­ed; they have all main­tained inno­cence of any wrong­do­ing.

    The Bak­er­Hostetler report is a par­tic­u­lar­ly damn­ing and excep­tion­al­ly rare view inside the sor­did world of dark mon­ey. At one point the lawyers dis­cov­ered that $100,000 had been trans­ferred from the RSLC to a PAC his­tor­i­cal­ly tied to the dis­graced Wash­ing­ton lob­by­ist Jack Abramoff. The report details how the RSLC part­ner­ship allowed Hub­bard to evade cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions lim­its at home and sneak around Alabama’s cam­paign finance laws.

    Why revis­it this sto­ry now? Because Alaba­ma seems like such a sol­id red state in 2019 that it’s easy to for­get that when Repub­li­cans cap­tured the state house in 2010, they broke a run of Demo­c­ra­t­ic con­trol that extend­ed all the way back to 1874. For much of that time, to be sure, the state was con­trolled by con­ser­v­a­tive white Democ­rats, many of them overt racists and seg­re­ga­tion­ists. But that had become much less true in recent decades. Pow­er­ful black leg­is­la­tors lost their chair­man­ships after the 2010 elec­tion, end­ing an era in which black Alaba­ma cit­i­zens had gained more polit­i­cal pow­er than at any time since Recon­struc­tion.

    Now the leg­is­la­ture seat­ed as a result of ger­ry­man­der­ing — and all that dubi­ous mon­ey laun­der­ing — has passed the strictest abor­tion ban in the nation since Roe v. Wade legal­ized the pro­ce­dure more than 45 years ago. Doc­tors who per­form an abor­tion would risk a 99-year jail sen­tence. So the anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic and seem­ing­ly ille­gal man­ner in which Repub­li­cans gained their leg­isla­tive major­i­ty in Alaba­ma mat­ters. It starts with dirty mon­ey. It’s fol­lowed by an ugly racial ger­ry­man­der. Now it has pro­gressed to an extreme pol­i­cy that polls show is too con­ser­v­a­tive even for Alaba­ma. Only 31 per­cent of the state’s vot­ers backed abor­tion lim­its like this one, which fail to pro­vide any excep­tion in the case of rape or incest.

    The archi­tect of this entire scheme, Mike Hub­bard, now faces years in prison. Those who live in this state where democ­ra­cy has been so grotesque­ly dis­tort­ed by back­room ger­ry­man­der­ing and mon­ey laun­der­ing face a future just as unfree: Under the thumb of a leg­is­la­ture that can enforce its hard-right agen­da regard­less of the peo­ples’ will.

    ———-

    “How a dark-mon­ey scam cre­at­ed Alaba­ma’s hard-right leg­is­la­ture — and the abor­tion ban” by David Daley; Salon; 06/02/2019

    It worked like this, accord­ing to a detailed time­line revealed by the RSLC’s own lawyers: Hub­bard real­ized he could raise hun­dreds of thou­sands from the Poarch Creek Indi­ans, an Alaba­ma tribe with casi­no gam­ing inter­ests, and a lob­by­ist with long­stand­ing ties to the tribe. But that mon­ey, Hub­bard also knew, would be polit­i­cal­ly tox­ic in Alaba­ma, where gam­bling mon­ey is seen as deeply con­tro­ver­sial, espe­cial­ly among reli­gious con­ser­v­a­tives. So he had his Alaba­ma donors fun­nel that mon­ey to the RSLC. The RSLC, in turn, qui­et­ly gave that mon­ey back, almost dol­lar for dol­lar, to can­di­dates sup­port­ed by Hub­bard or polit­i­cal action groups that he con­trolled.

    The scheme was pret­ty clear: Hub­bard need­ed mon­ey for his planned ad cam­paign. He found his donors. But he could­n’t accept their mon­ey direct­ly because Native Amer­i­can casi­no tribe mon­ey is appar­ent­ly polit­i­cal­ly tox­ic in reli­gious Alaba­ma. So Hub­bard, the chair­man of the GOP, con­tacts the RSLC and lays out his plan for using the RSLC as the donor mon­ey mid­dle-man and con­vinced them that Alaba­ma is a viable tar­get in the larg­er REDMAP project. They go with the plan and it’s a wild suc­cess. Hub­bard becomes Alaba­ma’s speak­er of the house:

    ...
    Alabama’s sto­ry, how­ev­er, might be more sor­did and cor­rupt than any oth­er state. That fall, Alaba­ma Repub­li­cans cap­tured those his­toric super­ma­jori­ties in the state leg­is­la­ture, thanks to ads that pro­claimed: “After 136 years, the Democ­rats have brought us Oba­ma, Pelosi, gov­ern­ment health care, lib­er­al poli­cies, high­er tax­es, and waste­ful spend­ing.” Hub­bard became speak­er of the house and imme­di­ate­ly pushed the state’s pol­i­tics hard right.

    Much of the nec­es­sary fund­ing, how­ev­er — more than $1 mil­lion — arrived through an uncon­ven­tion­al arrange­ment of ques­tion­able legal­i­ty with the Repub­li­can State Lead­er­ship Com­mit­tee. The RSLC was home to the GOP’s nation­al redis­trict­ing strat­e­gy. These were the oper­a­tives behind a plan called REDMAP — short for the Redis­trict­ing Major­i­ty Project — that dropped $30 mil­lion into a hand­ful of state leg­isla­tive races that fall, seek­ing to ensure GOP con­trol of the 2011 redis­trict­ing cycle in as many states as pos­si­ble.

    Alaba­ma had not been high on that list: Accord­ing to an inter­nal Repub­li­can Pow­er­Point that I obtained called “Redis­trict­ing 2010 Prepar­ing for Suc­cess,” the state was not part of ear­ly GOP think­ing for that midterm cycle at all. Then Hub­bard approached par­ty strate­gists with a plan.
    ...

    And just like with Hofeller’s recent­ly dis­cov­ered hard dri­ve of incrim­i­nat­ing doc­u­ments, the evi­dence for this scheme from the RSLC itself after it hired Bak­er­Hostetler to con­duct an inves­ti­ga­tion into alleged wrong­do­ing by RSLC offi­cials with the scheme and the law firm con­clud­ed that the scheme may have vio­lat­ed Alaba­ma’s cam­paign dona­tion laws about accept­ing a con­tri­bu­tion by one per­son in the name of a anoth­er and the crimes threat­ened the con­tin­ued exis­tence of the RSLC. Keep in mind that it appears that it was com­plete­ly 100 per­cent obvi­ous that they were break­ing Alaba­ma’s laws when they did this so that might be why the law firm con­clud­ed it could threat­en the con­tin­ued exis­tence of the RSLC. It was bla­tant­ly ille­gal:

    ...

    These details emerged years after the elec­tion — with the Repub­li­can super­ma­jori­ties safe­ly installed in Mont­gomery — when that inter­nal RSLC inves­ti­ga­tion by the law firm Bak­er­Hostetler sound­ed alarms about “pos­si­ble crim­i­nal penal­ties” that could “ulti­mate­ly threat­en the organization’s con­tin­ued exis­tence.” Accord­ing to the pri­vate Bak­er­Hostetler memo — first dis­cov­ered by Politi­co in 2014 but not picked up by the nation’s polit­i­cal press, which had yet to under­stand the impor­tance of REDMAP and redis­trict­ing — “the path of the Alaba­ma mon­ey could trip over a state law that bans ‘mak­ing or accept­ing a con­tri­bu­tion by one per­son in the name of anoth­er.’

    To put this more direct­ly: The lawyers’ report sug­gest­ed that the RSLC had served as a mon­ey-laun­der­ing pass-through for tox­ic cam­paign dona­tions from casi­no inter­ests, wash­ing the mon­ey clean and then return­ing it to Mike Hub­bard for use in flip­ping Alabama’s leg­is­la­ture from blue to red.

    ...

    No one was charged in that par­tic­u­lar case. But Hub­bard was lat­er con­vict­ed on 12 counts of ethics vio­la­tions in Alaba­ma, includ­ing improp­er­ly solic­it­ing lob­by­ists for con­sult­ing con­tracts and using his office to ben­e­fit clients. He was sen­tenced to four years in prison. His final appeal will be heard by the Alaba­ma Supreme Court next month. The RSLC cut ties with sev­er­al for­mer lead­ers after the Bak­er­Hostetler inves­ti­ga­tion con­clud­ed; they have all main­tained inno­cence of any wrong­do­ing.
    ...

    There was even a Jack Abramoff-con­nect­ed PAC that received the laun­dered mon­ey from the RSLC. That’s how sleazy this was. And don’t for­get it was Hub­bard who was direct­ing where the RSLC mon­ey went and he was chair­man of the Alaba­ma Repub­li­can Par­ty at the time. It was Hub­bard’s choice to include an Abramoff-linked PAC in this:

    ...
    The Bak­er­Hostetler report is a par­tic­u­lar­ly damn­ing and excep­tion­al­ly rare view inside the sor­did world of dark mon­ey. At one point the lawyers dis­cov­ered that $100,000 had been trans­ferred from the RSLC to a PAC his­tor­i­cal­ly tied to the dis­graced Wash­ing­ton lob­by­ist Jack Abramoff. The report details how the RSLC part­ner­ship allowed Hub­bard to evade cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions lim­its at home and sneak around Alabama’s cam­paign finance laws.
    ...

    That’s the old news that was hid­den from the pub­lic in 2010 and large­ly ignored in 2014 when it was first report­ed. Will Alaba­ma’s vot­ers care in 2019 now that it’s sud­den­ly top­i­cal again? Let’s hope so. And let’s hope vot­ers around the US hear about this sto­ry too. Because it does a great job of illus­trat­ing how dark mon­ey and projects like REDMAP are part of the larg­er sto­ry of the GOP’s strate­gic reliance on cheat­ing and con­stant­ly tak­ing the cheat­ing to the next lev­el to main­tain its grip on pow­er. That’s the kind of sto­ry that’s always top­i­cal, espe­cial­ly for peo­ple tar­get­ed by the GOP’s dirty tricks and won­der­ing whether they should answer the cen­sus next year.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | June 3, 2019, 10:22 pm
  9. Here’s a rare bit of good news about US cam­paign finance laws: There’s a case mak­ing its way through the courts that could end up chal­leng­ing Cit­i­zens Unit­ed at the Supreme Court thanks to rul­ing in Alas­ka a few weeks ago that upheld Alaska’s state-lev­el cam­paign finance lim­its on out of state dona­tions.

    The Alaskan law­suit was brought by Equal Cit­i­zens, a group found­ed by Lawrence Lessig. The case cen­tered on an Alaskan state law passed in 1996 that imposed a $500 con­tri­bu­tion lim­it for out of state donors to “inde­pen­dent expen­di­ture groups”, which func­tion like super PACs in Alas­ka where they advo­cate and raise mon­ey for a can­di­date while remain­ing unaf­fil­i­at­ed with the can­di­date. The law was passed by the Alaskan state leg­is­la­ture and upheld with 73 per­cent of the vote in a 2006 bal­lot mea­sure. So the $500 con­tri­bu­tion lim­it is a law that the vot­ers of Alaskan over­whelm­ing want in place.

    But then the Supreme Court’s con­ser­v­a­tive major­i­ty made its 2010 Cit­i­zens Unit­ed rul­ing, which put the legal­i­ty of that Alaskan state law in ques­tion and in 2012 the The Alas­ka Pub­lic Offices Com­mis­sion (APOC) advised that the $500 lim­it was like­ly uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. This APOC rul­ing led to legal chal­lenges to get the $500 lim­it rein­stat­ed. A dis­trict court did end up rul­ing that the $500 lim­it should be reim­posed and this rul­ing was upheld by the 9th Cir­cuit court in 2016 in Thomp­son v. Heb­don. But the APOC ignored that rul­ing 9th Cir­cuit rul­ing and refused to rein­state the $500 lim­it, which is what the cur­rent law­suit by Equal Cit­i­zens is all about. So if the cur­rent case that Equal Cit­i­zens just won ends up going to the Supreme Court it’s going to effec­tive­ly be a legal chal­lenge to the unlim­it­ed cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions enabled by Cit­i­zens Unit­ed which is why this was poten­tial­ly such a big deal:

    KTUU

    Anchor­age judge orders Alas­ka cam­paign con­tri­bu­tion lim­it to be rein­stat­ed

    By Sean Maguire |
    Post­ed: Wed 3:20 PM, Nov 06, 2019 |
    Updat­ed: Wed 4:34 PM, Nov 06, 2019

    ANCHORAGE (KTUU) — An Anchor­age judge has ruled that con­tri­bu­tion lim­its should be enforced to inde­pen­dent expen­di­ture groups, the Alas­ka equiv­a­lent of super PACs.

    The case was brought for­ward by Equal Cit­i­zens, a non­prof­it based out of Wash­ing­ton D.C., on behalf of three Alaskans. The non­prof­it aims to end the influ­ence of super PACs in pol­i­tics and hopes the case will make its way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

    In Alas­ka, inde­pen­dent expen­di­ture groups func­tion like super PACs do across the coun­try: as groups that advo­cate and raise mon­ey for a can­di­date while remain­ing unaf­fil­i­at­ed with the can­di­date.

    On Oct. 28, Anchor­age Supe­ri­or Court Judge William F. Morse sided with Equal Cit­i­zens, rul­ing that an annu­al per-per­son $500 con­tri­bu­tion lim­it to inde­pen­dent expen­di­ture groups that exists under Alas­ka statute should be rein­stat­ed.

    Strict cam­paign finance laws were passed by the Alas­ka Leg­is­la­ture in 1996 and sup­port­ed by 73% of Alas­ka vot­ers in a 2006 bal­lot mea­sure.

    The Alas­ka Pub­lic Offices Com­mis­sion, the body that admin­is­ters finan­cial dis­clo­sure laws for cam­paigns and can­di­dates, issued an advi­so­ry opin­ion in 2012 that said the $500 con­tri­bu­tion lim­it was like­ly uncon­sti­tu­tion­al.

    ...

    The basis of that APOC deci­sion was the land­mark 2010 U.S. Supreme Court deci­sion Cit­i­zens Unit­ed v. Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion, a rul­ing made on First Amend­ment grounds that lift­ed restric­tions on groups mak­ing dona­tions to super PACs.

    Jason Har­row, the lead attor­ney for Equal Cit­i­zens, believes that Cit­i­zens Unit­ed has been mis­in­ter­pret­ed by low­er courts, par­tic­u­lar­ly on its impli­ca­tions for polic­ing poten­tial cor­rup­tion.

    Dr. Ger­ald McBeath, a Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus of Polit­i­cal Sci­ence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Alas­ka Fair­banks, who appeared as an expert dur­ing pro­ceed­ings for a sim­i­lar fed­er­al case, said that Alas­ka is unique­ly at-risk from cor­rup­tion.

    McBeath told the court that Alas­ka has a rel­a­tive­ly small leg­isla­tive body and a reliance on oil for state rev­enue.

    “Con­se­quent­ly, the incen­tive to buy a vote, and the chances of suc­cess­ful­ly doing so, are there­fore high­er in Alas­ka than in states with larg­er leg­isla­tive bod­ies,” read the dis­trict court’s rul­ing that called for the $500 lim­it to be restored.

    The Ninth Cir­cuit affirmed the rul­ing in the 2016 case Thomp­son v. Heb­don.

    Despite that rul­ing from a fed­er­al court, APOC did not revise its enforce­ment prac­tices. In his rul­ing, Judge Morse said that was wrong.

    For Equal Cit­i­zens, the hope now is that the Alas­ka case makes its way to the U.S. Supreme Court to clar­i­fy aspects of Cit­i­zens Unit­ed and how lim­its are enforced on con­tri­bu­tions made to polit­i­cal groups.

    ”It’s Alas­ka or bust,” said Har­row on the nonprofit’s hope to make a cam­paign finance case nation­al.

    For oppo­nents of Alaska’s $500 con­tri­bu­tion lim­it, Thomp­son v. Heb­don is a threat against free­dom of speech. The Cato Insti­tute, a Koch broth­ers-backed think tank, is now peti­tion­ing the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse the Ninth Circuit’s rul­ing.

    “This is one of the low­est lim­its in the coun­try, and it is 50 per­cent low­er than the low­est con­tri­bu­tion lim­it ever upheld by the Supreme Court,” read an arti­cle post­ed on the Cato Institute’s web­site in August.

    On Mon­day, attor­neys for the Alas­ka Depart­ment of Law, appear­ing on behalf of APOC, appealed for the Alas­ka Supreme Court to rehear the case. The peti­tion claims that Morse mis­con­strued the impli­ca­tions and impor­tance of Thomp­son v. Heb­don and that APOC has been right not to enforce the $500 con­tri­bu­tion lim­it.

    ———-

    “Anchor­age judge orders Alas­ka cam­paign con­tri­bu­tion lim­it to be rein­stat­ed” by Sean Maguire; KTUU; 11/06/2019

    “On Oct. 28, Anchor­age Supe­ri­or Court Judge William F. Morse sided with Equal Cit­i­zens, rul­ing that an annu­al per-per­son $500 con­tri­bu­tion lim­it to inde­pen­dent expen­di­ture groups that exists under Alas­ka statute should be rein­stat­ed.”

    It was a poten­tial­ly his­toric rul­ing because it real­ly could go to the Supreme Court and force a revis­it­ing of Cit­i­zens Unit­ed. And note how the argu­ments used by the plain­tiffs in both Thomp­son vs Heb­don and the cur­rent Equal Cit­i­zens case hinge on cam­paign finance lim­its as an anti-cor­rup­tion tool. The cor­rupt­ing influ­ence of large sums of mon­ey in pol­i­tics and the right of states to attempt to reg­u­late it is at the heart of this case:

    ...
    Jason Har­row, the lead attor­ney for Equal Cit­i­zens, believes that Cit­i­zens Unit­ed has been mis­in­ter­pret­ed by low­er courts, par­tic­u­lar­ly on its impli­ca­tions for polic­ing poten­tial cor­rup­tion.

    Dr. Ger­ald McBeath, a Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus of Polit­i­cal Sci­ence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Alas­ka Fair­banks, who appeared as an expert dur­ing pro­ceed­ings for a sim­i­lar fed­er­al case, said that Alas­ka is unique­ly at-risk from cor­rup­tion.

    McBeath told the court that Alas­ka has a rel­a­tive­ly small leg­isla­tive body and a reliance on oil for state rev­enue.

    “Con­se­quent­ly, the incen­tive to buy a vote, and the chances of suc­cess­ful­ly doing so, are there­fore high­er in Alas­ka than in states with larg­er leg­isla­tive bod­ies,” read the dis­trict court’s rul­ing that called for the $500 lim­it to be restored.

    The Ninth Cir­cuit affirmed the rul­ing in the 2016 case Thomp­son v. Heb­don.

    Despite that rul­ing from a fed­er­al court, APOC did not revise its enforce­ment prac­tices. In his rul­ing, Judge Morse said that was wrong.
    ...

    Of course, even if this case does man­age to rise to the Supreme Court, it’s extreme­ly pos­si­ble the con­ser­v­a­tive major­i­ty will strike it down in the end. And with the Koch-fund­ed Cato Insti­tute peti­tion­ing the Supreme Court to reverse the 2016 Thomp­son v. Heb­don 9th cir­cuit rul­ing that the cur­rent case is based on, it’s pos­si­ble we’ll see the Supreme Court’s con­ser­v­a­tive major­i­ty effec­tive­ly end this chal­lenge before it reach­es the Supreme Court:

    ...
    For oppo­nents of Alaska’s $500 con­tri­bu­tion lim­it, Thomp­son v. Heb­don is a threat against free­dom of speech. The Cato Insti­tute, a Koch broth­ers-backed think tank, is now peti­tion­ing the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse the Ninth Circuit’s rul­ing.

    “This is one of the low­est lim­its in the coun­try, and it is 50 per­cent low­er than the low­est con­tri­bu­tion lim­it ever upheld by the Supreme Court,” read an arti­cle post­ed on the Cato Institute’s web­site in August.
    ...

    So we’ll see if this case does actu­al­ly make it to the Supreme Court. And if it does, we’ll see how the Supreme Court rules. It’s hard to see why we should nec­es­sar­i­ly be opti­mistic giv­en the cur­rent make­up of the court.

    But at least each legal chal­lenge that gets struck down by the con­ser­v­a­tive major­i­ty serves as a pow­er­ful reminder to the pub­lic that the deeply cor­rupt­ing influ­ence of big mon­ey in pol­i­tics is cur­rent­ly sanc­tioned in the US. One of the basic chal­lenges fac­ing the Amer­i­can pub­lic these days is the sheer vol­ume of scan­dal and cor­rup­tion ema­nat­ing DC fol­low­ing the Repub­li­can Par­ty’s trans­for­ma­tion into a pirat­ic mer­ce­nary force for the rich and pow­er­ful. So it’s easy for aver­age Amer­i­cans to for­get that one of the biggest sources of cor­rup­tion in the US polit­i­cal sys­tem is the mas­sive role big mon­ey dona­tions play in elec­tions. There’s too many oth­er scan­dals. Plus, The issue of cam­paign finance reform as an anti-cor­rup­tion tool in US pol­i­tics is a bat­tle that appeared lost with the 2010 Cit­i­zens Unit­ed rul­ing. Reminders of the impor­tance of cam­paign finance law like this legal chal­lenge real­ly are impor­tant. It’s a meta issue when it comes to cor­rup­tion and yet a large­ly for­got­ten issue.

    So even if this law­suit ulti­mate­ly fails, this legal chal­lenge at least serves to remind the pub­lic that bad cam­paign finance laws are a major source of sys­temic cor­rup­tion in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics and this could be addressed with cam­paign finance laws if the Supreme Court’s con­ser­v­a­tive major­i­ty had­n’t made them uncon­sti­tu­tion­al with Cit­i­zens Unit­ed. Cit­i­zens Unit­ed real­ly should be a major polit­i­cal issue in 2020 and con­tin­ue being a major issue until it’s fixed because it’s like a meta-issue when it comes to cor­rup­tion in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. Unlim­it­ed anony­mous dona­tions makes buy­ing politi­cians too obscene­ly easy and this legal chal­lenge is going to force the con­ser­v­a­tive major­i­ty to make anoth­er absurd Cit­i­zens Unit­ed-style rul­ing.

    The legal chal­lenge also serves as a reminder that the Supreme Court’s con­ser­v­a­tive major­i­ty is arguably a more cor­rupt­ing force in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics these days than all the polit­i­cal mon­ey it enabled. Which should also be a 2020 issue.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | November 17, 2019, 11:29 pm
  10. With impeach­ment pro­ceed­ings over #UkraineGate now ful­ly under­way in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, it’s prob­a­bly worth not­ing that this scan­dal — which cen­ters around the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s extort­ing the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment into influ­enc­ing the US 2020 elec­tion by pub­licly open­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion into Joe Biden — rep­re­sents a great oppor­tu­ni­ty to point out to the Amer­i­can pub­lic that the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ments mas­sive vic­to­ry at the Supreme Court in 2010 with the Cit­i­zens Unit­ed rul­ing was basi­cal­ly an open invi­ta­tion for for­eign influ­ence of US elec­tions. Espe­cial­ly secret for­eign influ­ence of US elec­tion. Per­haps that for­eign influ­ence is com­ing from a cor­po­ra­tion. But as Jus­tice John Paul Steven wrote in his scathing defense at the time, “If tak­en seri­ous­ly, our col­leagues’ assump­tion that the iden­ti­ty of a speak­er has no rel­e­vance to the Government’s abil­i­ty to reg­u­late polit­i­cal speech would lead to some remark­able con­clu­sions. Such an assump­tion would have accord­ed the pro­pa­gan­da broad­casts to our troops by ‘Tokyo Rose’ dur­ing World War II the same pro­tec­tion as speech by Allied com­man­ders.” Yep, Tokyo Rose’s pro­pa­gan­da broad­casts would get that same pro­tec­tion of speech in US elec­tions as Allied com­man­ders under the Cit­i­zens Unit­ed inter­pre­ta­tion.

    It’s a reminder that Cit­i­zens Unit­ed was­n’t just a mas­sive vic­to­ry for US oli­garchs like the Koch broth­ers (now just Koch broth­er). It was a mas­sive vic­to­ry for oli­garchs any­where in the world. Or for­eign gov­ern­ments and pret­ty much any­one with a lot of mon­ey and resources any­where giv­en the donor secre­cy the rul­ing allows. And the GOP and the right-wing major­i­ty on the Supreme Court is absolute­ly com­mit­ted to ensur­ing that does­n’t change. So unless the GOP decides to renounce Cit­i­zens Unit­ed and call for its repeal, the par­ty implic­it­ly backs for­eign influ­ence in US elec­tions. Secret for­eign influ­ence in US elec­tions:

    Politi­co

    Deci­sion may mean more for­eign cash

    By JOSH GERSTEIN
    01/21/2010 10:28 PM EST

    Thurs­day’s Supreme Court rul­ing clear­ing the way for cor­po­ra­tions and unions to spend mon­ey in U.S. polit­i­cal cam­paigns will allow for­eign­ers a greater role in Amer­i­can elec­tions and could lead to a flood of for­eign mon­ey into the sys­tem, ana­lysts said.

    On its face, the 5–4 rul­ing appears to per­mit the U.S. sub­sidiaries of for­eign com­pa­nies to take out or sup­port ads for or against can­di­dates, just as oth­er U.S. cor­po­ra­tions may now do.

    In oth­er words, even if Sony Corp. in Japan couldn’t spend mon­ey direct­ly for or against a can­di­date, the elec­tron­ics company’s Amer­i­can-based sub­sidiaries could. And that’s got some con­ser­v­a­tives upset, fear­ful of the influ­ence of for­eign mon­ey on U.S. pol­i­tics.

    “The court has, in effect, legal­ized for­eign gov­ern­ments and for­eign cor­po­ra­tions to par­tic­i­pate in our elec­toral pol­i­tics,” said Pat Choate, an author and for­mer Reform Par­ty can­di­date for vice pres­i­dent. “It’ll hap­pen instan­ta­neous­ly. It’ll hap­pen in the 2010 elec­tions. … The Japan­ese cor­po­ra­tions, the Euro­pean cor­po­ra­tions will do it instant­ly through Amer­i­can sub­sidiaries.”

    Sev­er­al oth­er ana­lysts, how­ev­er, cau­tioned that the fear was being overblown and that for­eign com­pa­nies would be reluc­tant to dab­ble in U.S. pol­i­tics for the same rea­son some Amer­i­can com­pa­nies steer clear, to avoid anger­ing con­sumers.

    “It is a plau­si­ble infer­ence from the court’s opin­ion that [for­eign] mon­ey can’t be restrict­ed,” said Michael Dorf, a Cor­nell law pro­fes­sor who has backed giv­ing for­eign­ers the right to con­tribute to U.S. cam­paigns. “For me, that’s not such a ter­ri­ble thing.”

    Dorf said it was unlike­ly that large multi­na­tion­al com­pa­nies would want to weigh in in most elec­tions. “If I’m the CEO of a major cor­po­ra­tion, I’m going to be very leery of direct­ly sup­port­ing or oppos­ing a can­di­date. ... It’s just not good busi­ness to alien­ate poten­tial cus­tomers,” he said.

    Jus­tice Antho­ny Kennedy’s major­i­ty opin­ion sug­gests there could be an argu­ment for “lim­it­ing for­eign influ­ence over our polit­i­cal process,” but he con­cludes that is not an ade­quate rea­son to allow the gov­ern­ment to impose an across-the-board ban on direct expen­di­tures by cor­po­ra­tions in cam­paigns.

    How­ev­er, the main dis­sent, authored by Jus­tice John Paul Stevens, argues that the majority’s log­ic throws into ques­tion exist­ing fed­er­al bans on polit­i­cal activ­i­ty by for­eign­ers.

    “If tak­en seri­ous­ly, our col­leagues’ assump­tion that the iden­ti­ty of a speak­er has no rel­e­vance to the Government’s abil­i­ty to reg­u­late polit­i­cal speech would lead to some remark­able con­clu­sions. Such an assump­tion would have accord­ed the pro­pa­gan­da broad­casts to our troops by ‘Tokyo Rose’ dur­ing World War II the same pro­tec­tion as speech by Allied com­man­ders,” Stevens wrote. “More per­ti­nent­ly, it would appear to afford the same pro­tec­tion to multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions con­trolled by for­eign­ers as to indi­vid­ual Amer­i­cans.”

    In an appar­ent dig at the orig­i­nal­ists in the major­i­ty, Stevens said throw­ing U.S. polit­i­cal cam­paigns open to for­eign­ers would have upset the Found­ing Fathers. “The notion that Con­gress might lack the author­i­ty to dis­tin­guish for­eign­ers from cit­i­zens in the reg­u­la­tion of elec­tion­eer­ing would cer­tain­ly have sur­prised the Framers, whose ‘obses­sion with for­eign influ­ence derived from a fear that for­eign pow­ers and indi­vid­u­als had no basic invest­ment in the well-being of the coun­try,’” Stevens wrote, quot­ing a law review arti­cle from Ford­ham pro­fes­sor Zephyr Tea­chout.

    Stevens also sug­gest­ed some of his col­leagues were refus­ing to address the green light the opin­ion could give to polit­i­cal activ­i­ty by huge glob­al enter­pris­es. “The major­i­ty nev­er uses a multi­na­tion­al busi­ness cor­po­ra­tion in its hypo­thet­i­cals,” the jus­tice wrote.

    Anoth­er pos­si­bil­i­ty raised by Thursday’s rul­ing is that wealthy for­eign­ers, who are cur­rent­ly banned by statute from spend­ing “direct­ly or indi­rect­ly” on U.S. elec­tions, might start cor­po­ra­tions in the U.S. sole­ly or pri­mar­i­ly to fun­nel mon­ey in to spend on U.S. elec­tions.

    Some ana­lysts said such fears are exag­ger­at­ed. “If it is a sit­u­a­tion with a shell cor­po­ra­tion, you won’t be able to do an end run around the rules,” said Ken­neth Gross, a for­mer Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion lawyer. “Peo­ple are work­ing over­time inter­pret­ing this opin­ion beyond its bound­aries.”

    Today’s Supreme Court opin­ion left in place the U.S. government’s abil­i­ty to require dis­clo­sure of donors — a require­ment that might scare off some would-be for­eign con­trib­u­tors.

    The court’s major move today towards dereg­u­la­tion of the cam­paign finance sys­tem also points up a divide in the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment. While the law­suit that led to the jus­tices’ deci­sion was brought by a con­ser­v­a­tive group, Cit­i­zens’ Unit­ed, the loud­est com­plaints about for­eign dona­tions to U.S. cam­paigns have often come from con­ser­v­a­tives.

    When Democ­rats were accused of tak­ing mil­lions in ille­gal dona­tions from Chi­nese and Indone­sian inter­ests in 1996, Repub­li­cans warned of the dan­gers of for­eign influ­ence. In 2003, the lib­er­al group MoveOn.org came under fire for efforts by some for­eign­ers to encour­age dona­tions to the group as part of efforts to defeat Pres­i­dent George W. Bush. MoveOn lat­er banned for­eign dona­tions, though it said such gifts were not ille­gal. In 2008, reports about alleged ille­gal for­eign dona­tions to Barack Obama’s pres­i­den­tial cam­paign got exten­sive play on con­ser­v­a­tive sites like Newsmax.com.

    Choate, who has long warned about the influ­ence of for­eign mon­ey in U.S. pol­i­tics, believes con­ser­v­a­tive groups now face a moment of truth where they must decide whether they tru­ly favor com­plete dereg­u­la­tion of polit­i­cal financ­ing, includ­ing an end to all lim­its on for­eign cash.

    “It’s one of the basic tenets of the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment to want to keep the elec­toral process lim­it­ed to Amer­i­cans. You can’t have it both ways,” Choate said. He said he favors a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment mak­ing explic­it Congress’s right to reg­u­late polit­i­cal dona­tions and hopes that Tea Par­ty activists will take up the cause. Indeed, while the GOP estab­lish­ment tout­ed the court’s deci­sion as a tri­umph of free­dom, some tea par­ty fig­ures sound­ed notably less enthu­si­as­tic about the court’s vin­di­ca­tion of the rights of cor­po­ra­tions.

    ...

    ———–

    “Deci­sion may mean more for­eign cash” by JOSH GERSTEIN; Politi­co; 01/21/2010

    “Jus­tice Antho­ny Kennedy’s major­i­ty opin­ion sug­gests there could be an argu­ment for “lim­it­ing for­eign influ­ence over our polit­i­cal process,” but he con­cludes that is not an ade­quate rea­son to allow the gov­ern­ment to impose an across-the-board ban on direct expen­di­tures by cor­po­ra­tions in cam­paigns.”

    That’s right, even Jus­tice Kennedy, who ruled in favor of Cit­i­zens Unit­ed, agreed that the rul­ing could open US elec­tions for for­eign influ­ence, but he did­n’t see that as a big enough con­cern to allow Con­gress to lim­it cor­po­rate dona­tions. The US right-wing has been casu­al­ly open to for­eign influ­ence in US elec­tions for years. It’s espe­cial­ly iron­ic giv­en the way the right-wing major­i­ty on the Supreme Court likes to fan­cy them­selves as a group of Con­sti­tu­tion­al ‘orig­i­nal­ists’. As Jus­tice Stevens point out, one of the biggest issues the US Found­ing Fathers were con­cerned about was for­eign influ­ence in domes­tic pol­i­tics:

    ...
    How­ev­er, the main dis­sent, authored by Jus­tice John Paul Stevens, argues that the majority’s log­ic throws into ques­tion exist­ing fed­er­al bans on polit­i­cal activ­i­ty by for­eign­ers.

    “If tak­en seri­ous­ly, our col­leagues’ assump­tion that the iden­ti­ty of a speak­er has no rel­e­vance to the Government’s abil­i­ty to reg­u­late polit­i­cal speech would lead to some remark­able con­clu­sions. Such an assump­tion would have accord­ed the pro­pa­gan­da broad­casts to our troops by ‘Tokyo Rose’ dur­ing World War II the same pro­tec­tion as speech by Allied com­man­ders,” Stevens wrote. “More per­ti­nent­ly, it would appear to afford the same pro­tec­tion to multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions con­trolled by for­eign­ers as to indi­vid­ual Amer­i­cans.”

    In an appar­ent dig at the orig­i­nal­ists in the major­i­ty, Stevens said throw­ing U.S. polit­i­cal cam­paigns open to for­eign­ers would have upset the Found­ing Fathers. “The notion that Con­gress might lack the author­i­ty to dis­tin­guish for­eign­ers from cit­i­zens in the reg­u­la­tion of elec­tion­eer­ing would cer­tain­ly have sur­prised the Framers, whose ‘obses­sion with for­eign influ­ence derived from a fear that for­eign pow­ers and indi­vid­u­als had no basic invest­ment in the well-being of the coun­try,’” Stevens wrote, quot­ing a law review arti­cle from Ford­ham pro­fes­sor Zephyr Tea­chout.

    Stevens also sug­gest­ed some of his col­leagues were refus­ing to address the green light the opin­ion could give to polit­i­cal activ­i­ty by huge glob­al enter­pris­es. “The major­i­ty nev­er uses a multi­na­tion­al busi­ness cor­po­ra­tion in its hypo­thet­i­cals,” the jus­tice wrote.

    Anoth­er pos­si­bil­i­ty raised by Thursday’s rul­ing is that wealthy for­eign­ers, who are cur­rent­ly banned by statute from spend­ing “direct­ly or indi­rect­ly” on U.S. elec­tions, might start cor­po­ra­tions in the U.S. sole­ly or pri­mar­i­ly to fun­nel mon­ey in to spend on U.S. elec­tions.
    ...

    So how much for­eign mon­ey has been influ­enc­ing US elec­tions since that 2010 rul­ing? We don’t know. That’s the whole point of Cit­i­zens Unit­ed. Donors can spend as much as they want and remain anony­mous. That’s part of what made so absurd the dis­missal of con­cerns about for­eign spend­ing by some of the peo­ple in the above arti­cle because for­eign enti­ties would fear the pub­lic back­lash. There’s no back­lash when it’s a secret. And while we don’t know pre­cise­ly how much for­eign spend­ing has already tak­en place over the last decade of US elec­tions, giv­en the explo­sion of dark mon­ey spend­ing we can be pret­ty sure that some of it is com­ing from out­side the US. And giv­en the nature of the #UkraineGate scan­dal we should prob­a­bly sus­pect at leave some of that for­eign mon­ey is be active­ly solicit­ed by Repub­li­cans in an extortive ‘quid pro quo’ man­ner. Per­haps this #UkraineGate impeach­ment pro­ceed­ing would be a good time to point all this out.

    It might also be a good time to take anoth­er look at that whole ‘ille­gal for­eign dona­tions to Trump’s inau­gur­al com­mit­tee’ sto­ry.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | December 12, 2019, 9:48 pm
  11. Here’s a very inter­est­ing pos­si­bil­i­ty that’s only going to become more and more pos­si­ble as the US obses­sion with for­eign inter­fer­ence in elec­tions con­tin­ues to play out: As was clear back in 2010 when the right-wing Supreme Court major­i­ty made its his­toric 5–4 Cit­i­zens Unit­ed rul­ing, when unlim­it­ed dark mon­ey is allowed into elec­tions that’s inevitably going to include for­eign mon­ey. How much for­eign mon­ey? We have no idea. That’s the point. So the cur­rent US focus on for­eign influ­ence real­ly should include an updat­ed exam­i­na­tion of the impact of Cit­i­zens Unit­ed on US pol­i­tics and pol­i­cy.

    But any exam­i­na­tion of Cit­i­zen Unit­ed’s impact obvi­ous­ly should­n’t just include the poten­tial influ­ence of for­eign cor­po­ra­tions and enti­ties. The influ­ence of domes­tic cor­po­ra­tions and wealthy indi­vid­u­als is also clear­ly a huge issue even if it’s large­ly been for­got­ten in the post Cit­i­zens Unit­ed era. It’s easy to for­get that the influ­ence of US cor­po­ra­tions on domes­tic pol­i­tics used to actu­al­ly be a source of major pub­lic in US pol­i­tics.

    And as the fol­low­ing arti­cle reminds us, in the age of multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions and exten­sive cross-bor­der own­ern­ship of stocks, it’s not actu­al­ly easy to dis­tin­guish between for­eign owned and domes­tic cor­po­ra­tions any­more, at least for large cor­po­ra­tions. And that’s where things get real­ly inter­est­ing regard­ing pos­si­ble pol­i­cy solu­tions to address not just the abil­i­ty of for­eign cor­po­ra­tions and enti­ties to eas­i­ly spend mon­ey in US elec­tion but also address the much larg­er prob­lem of domes­tic cor­po­ra­tions rou­tine­ly and secret­ly spend­ing wild sums of mon­ey in US elec­tions. The left-lean­ing Cen­ter for Amer­i­can Progress (CAP) put for­ward a pro­pos­al last month designed to min­i­mize for­eign influ­ence in US elec­tions.

    But the CAP pro­pos­al does­n’t tar­get for­eign cor­po­ra­tions. Instead, it acknowl­edges that cor­po­ra­tions can have domes­tic and for­eign share­hold­ers and sets a thresh­old of for­eign own­er­ship that would ban a cor­po­ra­tion from elec­tion spend­ing. They pro­posed three sep­a­rate thresh­olds:

    * A sin­gle for­eign­er owns or con­trols 1 per­cent or more of the cor­po­ra­tion’s equi­ty.

    * For­eign share­hold­ers com­bine to own or con­trol 5 per­cent or more of the cor­po­ra­tion’s equi­ty.

    * Any for­eign enti­ty par­tic­i­pates in the cor­po­ra­tion’s deci­sion-mak­ing process about elec­tion spend­ing.

    While a 1 per­cent thresh­old for a sin­gle share­hold­er might seem exces­sive­ly low, keep in mind that 1 per­cent own­er­ship is going to con­fer a large influ­ence with the board of a large cor­po­ra­tions that is heav­i­ly owned by the pub­lic and is effec­tive­ly owned by mil­lions of peo­ple. Being wealthy enough to own 1 per­cent of a large cor­po­ra­tion is anoth­er way the ‘1 per­cent’ are the ‘1 per­cent’. That’s a lot of stock in big com­pa­nies.

    And if a 5 per­cent own­er­ship for the total for­eign own­er­ship seems exces­sive­ly low, keep in mind that the US Secu­ri­ties and Exchange Com­mis­sion ruled in 2010 that any share­hold­ing group with at least 3 per­cent of own­er­ship for 3 years has the right to put their can­di­dates up for share­hold­er votes. That’s a sig­nif­i­cant abil­i­ty to influ­ence cor­po­rate behav­ior. When it comes to large multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions where no sin­gle enti­ty owns a major­i­ty share, the peo­ple who own a few per­cent are among the largest and most influ­en­tial share­hold­ers.

    So the the CAP pro­pos­al basi­cal­ly tar­gets cor­po­ra­tions where there’s a poten­tial­ly sig­nif­i­cant for­eign influ­ence in the cor­po­ra­tion board­room. And it turns out that almost all For­tune 500 large cor­po­ra­tions and a quar­ter of small­er com­pa­nies exceed these thresh­olds accord­ing to the CAP’s esti­mates, mak­ing this it a way to remove almost all large cor­po­rate spend­ing in US elec­tions. Because you can’t have the glob­al­iza­tion of cor­po­rate own­er­ship and unlim­it­ed secret cor­po­rate spend­ing in US elec­tions with­out unlim­it­ed secret for­eign owned/influenced cor­po­rate spend­ing in US elec­tions. That’s part of the CAP’s rea­son­ing: the only way to min­i­mize for­eign influ­ence in US elec­tions through for­eign influ­enced cor­po­ra­tions in an age of unlim­it­ed secret polit­i­cal spend­ing is to ban vir­tu­al all cor­po­rate spend­ing. So, at a min­i­mum, the pro­pos­al is use­ful for edu­cat­ing the pub­lic about how Cit­i­zens Unit­ed opened up US elec­tions to unlim­it­ed secret spend­ing in US elec­tions from any­one any­where for any rea­son. Even awful rea­sons.
    Eliz­a­beth War­ren has already come out in sup­port of this pro­pos­al. So this isn’t just a left-wing pipe dream. One of the like­li­est peo­ple at this point to be in the White House in 2021 already backed this pro­pos­al. A pro­pos­al that should be pret­ty pop­u­lar.

    Of course, as the arti­cle notes, there’s still going to be a hand­ful of large cor­po­ra­tions that don’t exceed these thresh­olds and will remain free to spend unlim­it­ed sums influ­enc­ing US elec­tions. So if the US pub­lic real­ly does want to tran­si­tion to a form of democ­ra­cy that’s not dom­i­nat­ed by big mon­ey, there real­ly does be to be com­pre­hen­sive cam­paign finance law that sim­ply bans large cor­po­rate cam­paign spend­ing and lim­its oth­er big mon­ey sources. For­eign of domes­tic. But this CAP pro­pos­al that bans almost all large cor­po­ra­tions cer­tain­ly sounds like a great start:

    The Ful­crum

    How to end for­eign mon­ey in pol­i­tics? Pro­gres­sive group has a bold idea.

    Sara Swann
    Nov. 22, 2019

    For­eign elec­tion inter­fer­ence is among the most trou­ble­some chal­lenges con­fronting democ­ra­cy now — and not just by Amer­i­ca’s adver­saries who hack votes and spread dis­in­for­ma­tion. Fed­er­al law is writ­ten to pre­vent allies and ene­mies alike from spend­ing for­eign mon­ey to influ­ence Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. But the loop­holes are ample and they’ve been exploit­ed for decades.

    The Cen­ter for Amer­i­can Progress, one of the coun­try’s most promi­nent pro­gres­sive pub­lic pol­i­cy advo­ca­cy groups, has stepped for­ward with a solu­tion — albeit a lofty one. On Thurs­day it out­lined an ambi­tious pro­pos­al to vir­tu­al­ly elim­i­nate spend­ing on U.S. cam­paigns by busi­ness­es under even min­i­mal for­eign influ­ence.

    ...

    The pro­posed leg­is­la­tion unveiled by CAP would pro­hib­it elec­tion spend­ing by cor­po­ra­tions that meet any of three thresh­olds for over­seas invest­ment:

    * A sin­gle for­eign­er owns or con­trols 1 per­cent or more of the cor­po­ra­tion’s equi­ty.
    * For­eign share­hold­ers com­bine to own or con­trol 5 per­cent or more of the cor­po­ra­tion’s equi­ty.
    * Any for­eign enti­ty par­tic­i­pates in the cor­po­ra­tion’s deci­sion-mak­ing process about elec­tion spend­ing.

    Under these restric­tions, CAP esti­mates, 98 per­cent of the nation’s 500 biggest pub­licly trad­ed com­pa­nies would cur­rent­ly be barred from polit­i­cal spend­ing — leav­ing few­er than a dozen busi­ness­es in the S&P 500 index free to con­tribute to can­di­dates and spe­cial-inter­est cam­paigns at will. The group esti­mates that slight­ly more than a quar­ter of small­er pub­lic com­pa­nies would be sim­i­lar­ly pushed out of the cam­paign financ­ing world.

    Just 5 per­cent of cor­po­rate stock in Amer­i­ca was for­eign-owned four decades ago, but that share has bal­looned sev­en­fold to 35 per­cent as of 2017, CAP reports. For instance, Sau­di Ara­bia owns about 10 per­cent of Uber, yet the ride-shar­ing com­pa­ny still spends mil­lions to sway elec­tions and bal­lot mea­sures in every elec­tion.

    In the decade since the Supreme Court, in the land­mark Cit­i­zens Unit­ed case, struck down fed­er­al lim­its on cor­po­rate and union inde­pen­dent polit­i­cal spend­ing as vio­lat­ing the First Amend­ment, such spend­ing has set new records in each two-year elec­tion cycle, accord­ing to the Cen­ter for Respon­sive Pol­i­tics, which advo­cates for tighter cam­paign finance rules. And much of this spend­ing is shroud­ed in mys­tery due to cor­po­ra­tions using “dark mon­ey” groups — non­prof­its that spend most of their mon­ey on polit­i­cal endeav­ors — to evade donor dis­clo­sure require­ments.

    Because many cor­po­ra­tions spend on elec­tions through these orga­ni­za­tions, it’s hard to deter­mine just how much for­eign influ­ence there is. So the hope of pol­i­cy pro­pos­als such as CAP’s is that restrict­ing cor­po­rate spend­ing will address some aspects of for­eign inter­fer­ence.

    In her plan to “get big mon­ey out of pol­i­tics,” Sen. Eliz­a­beth War­ren of Mass­a­chu­setts backs these stan­dards put forth by CAP. She’s the only Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, so far, with a plan to imple­ment such a pro­pos­al.

    “It’s time for law­mak­ers to close the loop­hole that allows for­eign enti­ties to use U.S. cor­po­ra­tions to influ­ence our elec­tions. Impos­ing strict for­eign own­er­ship thresh­olds will help ensure that our elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives are account­able to Amer­i­cans, not to cor­po­rate CEOs who are look­ing out for their for­eign investors,” said Michael Sozan, a senior fel­low at CAP and author of the report.

    ———-

    “How to end for­eign mon­ey in pol­i­tics? Pro­gres­sive group has a bold idea.” by Sara Swann; The Ful­crum; 11/22/2019

    Just 5 per­cent of cor­po­rate stock in Amer­i­ca was for­eign-owned four decades ago, but that share has bal­looned sev­en­fold to 35 per­cent as of 2017, CAP reports. For instance, Sau­di Ara­bia owns about 10 per­cent of Uber, yet the ride-shar­ing com­pa­ny still spends mil­lions to sway elec­tions and bal­lot mea­sures in every elec­tion.”

    35 per­cent of cor­po­rate stock is Amer­i­ca was for­eign owned in 2017. It’s pre­sum­ably high­er now. Hmmm...might there be some for­eign influ­ence in the unlim­it­ed record-set­ting secret cor­po­rate spend­ing on US elec­tions? And that’s why any plan that’s designed to get big mon­ey out of pol­i­tics, like Eliz­a­beth War­ren’s plan, real­ly does need to just ban the unlim­it­ed secret cor­po­rate spend­ing enabled by Cit­i­zens Unit­ed:

    ...
    In her plan to “get big mon­ey out of pol­i­tics,” Sen. Eliz­a­beth War­ren of Mass­a­chu­setts backs these stan­dards put forth by CAP. She’s the only Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, so far, with a plan to imple­ment such a pro­pos­al.
    ...

    So let’s hope a War­ren pres­i­den­cy can involve some major gen­uine­ly pop­ulist sys­temic reforms that go a long ways to “get­ting big mon­ey out of pol­i­tics”. It’s going to take a lot more than just a War­ren admin­is­tra­tion to do that. The Rea­gan Rev­o­lu­tion rot has been accel­er­at­ing for decades and metas­ta­sized into this Trumpian orgy of cor­rup­tion and dys­func­tion. Get­ting big mon­ey out of pol­i­tics is a gen­er­a­tional project. But the elim­i­na­tion of big cor­po­rate spend­ing in US pol­i­tics is a cru­cial first step towards address the big mon­ey rot and as Eliz­a­bether War­ren reminds us, that’s a read­i­ly avail­able option. We can just do things like ban major cor­po­rate spend­ing in elec­tions if that’s what the pub­lic wants. At least in the­o­ry. If a democ­ra­cy can’t restrain ‘Big Mon­ey’, it’s not real­ly a democ­ra­cy. Which is why the Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy is more the­o­ret­i­cal these days.

    Of course, the Supreme Court has ruled pro­posed like the CAP plan uncon­sti­tu­tion­al in Cit­i­zens Unit­ed. That’s anoth­er part of the rea­son it’s going to take more than just a pair of War­ren terms to address big mon­ey and for­eign influ­ences in elec­tions. The Supreme Court needs to be shift­ed into a left-lean­ing major­i­ty for the first time in decades. So part of get­ting rid of the influ­ence ‘Big Mon­ey’ (for­eign and domes­tic) in pol­i­tics involves vot­ing for Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­dents for a long enough time just to give mul­ti­ple Demo­c­ra­t­ic admin­is­tra­tions the oppor­tu­ni­ty to tip the courts back into a rel­a­tive­ly sane bal­ance because the right-wing jus­tices of the Supreme Court are almost all young. This is going to take a while.

    Also recall how the threat of for­eign influ­ence in domes­tic elec­tions came up in Jus­tice Kennedy’s 2010 major­i­ty opin­ion in the Cit­i­zens Unit­ed case when he acknowl­edged that there is an argu­ment for “lim­it­ing for­eign influ­ence over our polit­i­cal process,” but con­clud­ed that it was­n’t an ade­quate enough rea­son to allow the gov­ern­ment to impose an across-the-board ban on direct cam­paign spend­ing by cor­po­ra­tions. Jus­tice Stevens coun­tered that exist­ing fed­er­al law already banned for­eign spend­ing in US elec­tions so it’s absurd to use the idea that sep­a­rate for­eign vs domes­tic speech reg­u­la­tions could be imposed by the gov­ern­ment. That’s what already was hap­pen­ing. So Kennedy applied a some­what con­fused exam­ple of for­eign med­dling in his major­i­ty Cit­i­zens Unit­ed opin­ion. And yet here we are ten years lat­er and and we have Eliz­a­beth War­ren get­ting behind the idea of a near across-the-board cor­po­rate spend­ing ban that’s jus­ti­fied under the ban­ner of lim­it­ing for­eign influ­ence and part of the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion is the impos­si­bil­i­ty of stop­ping for­eign spend­ing due to the unlim­it­ed cor­po­rate spend­ing cre­at­ed by Cit­i­zens Unit­ed. It’s kind of iron­ic. And stu­pid.

    So let’s hope there’s more recog­ni­tion that US elec­tions are a dark mon­ey free for all where the best financed and/or sneaki­est play­ers can strate­gi­cal­ly change the minds of the Amer­i­can pub­lic. It might be spend­ing by for­eign gov­ern­ments. It might be far right bil­lion­aires like the Mer­cers run­ning Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca oper­a­tions to psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly pro­file and micro-tar­get mil­lions. But it’s clear at this point that there’s a glob­al demand for US elec­tion med­dling and the authors of Cit­i­zens Unit­ed explic­it­ly accept­ed the con­se­quence of all that spend­ing in their deci­sions. Which is anoth­er rea­son Cit­i­zens Unit­ed was such a sucky deci­sion.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | December 14, 2019, 12:36 am
  12. The Sen­ate impeach­ment tri­al of Don­ald Trump is ready to get under­way fol­low­ing the House han­dover of arti­cles of impeach­ment over the #UkraineGate scan­dal last week. And that’s inevitably going to cre­ate an even greater focus on the whole sor­did tale of how Rudy Giu­liani hooked up with two unlike­ly part­ners like Lev Par­nas and Igor Fru­man to engage in an out­landish­ly cor­rupt scheme. A scheme that includ­ed cor­rupt nation­al gas deals and a shake­down attempt to force a pub­lic Ukrain­ian announce­ment of an inves­ti­ga­tion of Joe and Hunter Biden. It’s such a sor­did mess that one of the biggest risks is that the cor­rup­tion is too messy for the the Amer­i­can pub­lic to keep track up and con­vo­lut­ed details of the cor­rup­tion just end up mak­ing the pub­lic’s eyes glaze over.

    So per­haps for the sake of mak­ing this con­vo­lut­ed sto­ry a bit sim­pler to under­stand, it’s going to be worth empha­siz­ing to the pub­lic right off the bat how it was that Par­nas and Fru­man ingra­ti­at­ed them­selves with­in Trump’s inner cir­cle in the first place: polit­i­cal dona­tions. That’s was pret­ty much it.

    It start­ed off with a $50,000 dona­tion to Trump’s cam­paign in 2016, which appears to have result­ed in Par­nas meet­ing with then Pres­i­dent-elect Trump in Decem­ber of 2016. But it was­n’t that dona­tion alone that placed Par­nas and Fru­man in Trump’s inner cir­cle. There was also a $325,000 con­tri­bu­tion by Par­nas and Fru­man to a Trump Super PAC, Amer­i­ca First Action, in ear­ly 2018 that appears to have been what sud­den­ly got these two involved in the #UkraineGate scheme. The con­tri­bu­tion that got Par­nas and Fru­man an inti­mate din­ner with Pres­i­dent Trump in April of 2018, along with anoth­er dozen top donors. And it was at that din­ner that Par­nas alleged­ly brought up the top­ic of Trump fir­ing then-US ambas­sador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. Accord­ing to pros­e­cu­tors, Par­nas and Fru­man were push­ing for Yovanovitch’s removal “to advance their per­son­al finan­cial inter­ests and the polit­i­cal inter­ests of at least one Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment offi­cial with whom they were work­ing.”

    And that’s what makes this sto­ry of #UkraineGate more than just the sto­ry about this par­tic­u­lar cor­rupt scheme. It’s also a case study of Amer­i­ca’s sys­tem of legal­ized bribery. Because that’s how it’s one in Amer­i­ca today. Just give a bunch of a mon­ey to a super­PAc and, who knows, you too might meet the pres­i­dent and end up shak­ing down a gov­ern­ment with Giu­liani while you wage a for-prof­it pri­vate for­eign pol­i­cy.

    It was that $325,000 dona­tion that led to the charges fac­ing Par­nas and Fru­man. Because they fun­neled the con­tri­bu­tion through an ener­gy com­pa­ny they recent­ly cre­at­ed (keep in mind get­ting con­tracts from Ukraine’s state-owned Naftgaz ener­gy com­pa­ny was a major part of this fias­co) but pros­e­cu­tors say that dona­tion was actu­al­ly from Par­nas and Fru­man paid for by a pri­vate loan Fru­man took out against a Mia­mi con­do, not their com­pa­ny which had no busi­ness or rev­enues. And obscur­ing the iden­ti­ty of dona­tion by using this com­pa­ny as a front was a vio­la­tion of US cam­paign finance law. As the TPM piece below notes, if Par­nas and Fru­man had sim­ply made the $325,000 dona­tion in their own names every­thing would have been legal. So they man­aged to make a cam­paign finance vio­la­tion under a sys­tem where unlim­it­ed polit­i­cal bribery is effec­tive­ly legal as long as you stick to the rules. It’s anoth­er aspect of this sto­ry: Trump picked incom­pe­tent crim­i­nals to car­ry out his pri­va­tized secret for­eign pol­i­cy.

    Oh, and as the fol­low­ing TPM arti­cle also notes, the fact that Par­nas’s $325,000 dona­tion to a pro-Trump super PAC earned him a din­ner with Trump is also tech­ni­cal­ly a vio­la­tion of cam­paign finance law. Because as we’ve seen, part of the legal jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for super PACs spend­ing unlim­it­ed amounts of mon­ey in US elec­tions is the pre­tense that super PACs aren’t coor­di­nat­ing with the can­di­dates they sup­port. The behav­ior of a super PACs is sup­posed to be inde­pen­dent of a can­di­date’s cam­paign. That pre­tense was always a far­ci­cal joke jus­ti­fi­ca­tion but it’s still a nec­es­sary pre­tense to keep this form of legal­ized polit­i­cal bribery legal. And Pres­i­dent Trump com­plete­ly vio­lat­ed that rule by hav­ing a pri­vate din­ner with Par­nas and oth­er big donors to the Amer­i­ca First Action super PAC. It’s one of the crimes that’s been large­ly for­got­ten in the whirl­wind of crim­i­nal­i­ty around this sto­ry but it’s a crime that’s in many ways one of the most impor­tant because it gets at exact­ly the kind of thing that makes ‘the Swamp’ so swampy.

    As the fol­low­ing Wash­ing­ton Post arti­cle describes, it was around the time of their $325,000 dona­tion in ear­ly 2018 that they also made an effort to recruit Rudy Giu­liani to work as the pitch man for their com­pa­ny Fraud Guar­an­tee that promised to shield investors from finan­cial fraud. Because in addi­tion to being the pres­i­den­t’s lay­er, Giu­liani offers all sorts of oth­er ser­vices to ran­dom clients like being a pitch­man. Par­nas arranged for Giu­liani to be paid $500,000 from anoth­er Fraud Guar­an­tee investor. Soon the found them­selves swept up into Giu­lian­i’s orbit, spend­ing four to five nights a week hang­ing out with Giu­liani late into the night at var­i­ous exclu­sive restau­rants and bars. Par­nas claims he now sus­pects Giu­liani was recruit­ing him­self and Fru­man for their Ukraine con­nec­tions as part of Giu­lian­i’s quest to cre­ate some sort of pro-Trump scan­dal out of the Ukraine sit­u­a­tion and its prox­im­i­ty to the #Rus­si­a­Gate mess.

    So while get­ting pri­vate din­ners with Trump for a $325,000 dona­tion might be a reg­u­lar aspect of this sto­ry of legal­ized bribery, get­ting recruit­ed for an inter­na­tion­al cor­rupt fias­co that involves extort­ing a gov­ern­ment is one of the high­ly irreg­u­lar aspects of this sto­ry that has to do with Par­nas and Fru­man’s con­nec­tions to Ukraine and the util­i­ty that had for Giu­lian­i’s pre-exist­ing schemes. Most big donors just get the pri­vate din­ners were they explain what pol­i­cy changes they want to see hap­pen. That’s the nor­mal ‘swamp’. Par­nas and Fru­man got sucked into Trump’s Stranger Things ‘swamp’, where Rudy Giu­liani trav­els the world solv­ing cor­rupt cor­rup­tion alle­ga­tions by com­mit­ting much greater crimes. Most mega-donors don’t have to deal with that. They just get the nor­mal pay-to-play cor­rup­tion. In that sense, Par­nas and Fru­man are rel­a­tive­ly sym­pa­thet­ic char­ac­ters com­pared to the rest of the cul­prits in this sto­ry. They’re the clos­est thing to every­men in this sto­ry. Par­nas and Fru­man came for the reg­u­lar swamp cor­rup­tion and got swept up by Giu­liani into Trump’s secret pri­vate pres­i­den­tial deep-cor­rup­tion.

    Now, it’s impor­tant to note that Par­nas and Fru­man appar­ent­ly lob­bied Trump to fire ambas­sador Yovanovitch dur­ing the April 2018 pri­vate din­ner they got from the $325,000 dona­tion and that high­lights the fact that Par­nas and Fru­man were appar­ent­ly already act­ing as emis­saries for Ukrain­ian inter­ests who became impor­tant in the Trump/Giuliani secret pri­vate for­eign pol­i­cy at that point in 2018. It’s unclear which Ukrain­ian inter­est may have ulti­mate­ly want­ed Yovanovitch fired, but we’re told by pros­e­cu­tors that they want­ed Yovanovitch fired to advance their own per­son­al finan­cial inter­ests and Yovanovitch was seen as an obsta­cle to their Naftogaz scheme. We’re also told that they were advo­cat­ing for Yovanovitch’s fir­ing on behalf of at least one Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment offi­cial, so that’s prob­a­bly Yuri Lut­senko, the for­mer pros­e­cu­tor gen­er­al and end­ed up get­ting deeply involved with this scheme with Giu­liani.

    Par­nas and Fru­man were the mid­dle-men for Ukrain­ian inter­ests Trump and Giu­liani want­ed to col­lude with and that’s why Giu­liani decid­ed to sud­den­ly become their best friend after they hired him to be a pitch­man for Fraud Guar­an­tee. So it’s not like they just hap­pened to know the Ukrain­ian indi­vid­u­als Giu­liani want­ed to talk to in devel­op­ing his schemes and got wran­gled into this by Giu­liani. They were act­ing as diplo­mats for those Ukrain­ian inter­ests and that’s what put them in con­tact with Giu­liani. At least that appears to be what’s going on here. Still, when Par­nas and Fru­man signed up to be the emis­saries of some Ukrain­ian inter­est when they met with Trump and lob­bied for Yovanovitch’s dis­missal in April of 2018, they could­n’t pos­si­bly have sus­pect­ed things would get as crazy as they did. The shake­down of Ukrain­ian oli­garch Ihor Kol­moisky that Par­nas and Fru­man engaged in where they demand­ed $250,000 to get Mike Pence to show up to then-Pres­i­dent-elect Zelen­sky’s inau­gu­ra­tion was some­thing the two prob­a­bly weren’t expect­ed to do when they first agreed to act as some Ukrain­ian inter­est’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives in the US to bribe Trump and the GOP. They just want want­ed to grease some hands and whis­per in ears. And then they became use­ful to Trump and Rudy and their worlds turned upside down. Trump and Giu­liani are the the cor­rupt­ing influ­ences in this tale. Par­nas and Fru­man were small time cor­rupt and it was Trump and Giu­liani who brought them into the the big leagues of cor­rup­tion.

    Ok, first, here’s the Talk­ing Points Memo piece that describes the mul­ti­ple cam­paign finances laws that were vio­lat­ed in by not just Par­nas and Fru­man but also Trump, who was reward­ing big Amer­i­ca First Action donors with pri­vate din­ners. Trump was mak­ing the swamp swampi­er while break­ing already super-lax cam­paign finance laws. And thats how he learned that Par­nas and Fru­man were friends with pow­er­ful Ukraini­ans who did­n’t like ambas­sador Yovanovitch because that’s what they lob­bied Trump about in April of 2018 when they met with Trump at the din­ner. The din­ner that vio­lat­ed cam­paign finance law because it demon­strat­ed the super PAC was­n’t inde­pen­dent of Trump:

    Talk­ing Points Memo
    Cafe

    How America’s Sys­tem Of Legal­ized Cor­rup­tion Brought Us To The Brink Of Impeach­ment

    By Bren­dan Fis­ch­er
    Decem­ber 5, 2019 1:08 p.m.

    Our bro­ken cam­paign finance sys­tem allowed two Sovi­et-born men to use laun­dered polit­i­cal con­tri­bu­tions to buy an audi­ence with the pres­i­dent, and to make the case for warp­ing for­eign pol­i­cy to advance pri­vate per­son­al and polit­i­cal for­tunes.

    This lit­tle-noticed com­po­nent of the impeach­ment inquiry offers a snap­shot of how wealthy spe­cial inter­ests use mon­ey to make their voic­es heard. And it fur­ther illus­trates how the U.S. Supreme Court got it wrong in deci­sions like Cit­i­zens Unit­ed that made this big mon­ey polit­i­cal spend­ing pos­si­ble.

    In April of 2018, the two men, Lev Par­nas and Igor Fru­man, had an inti­mate din­ner with Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump at the Trump Inter­na­tion­al Hotel in Wash­ing­ton D.C. They turned the con­ver­sa­tion to Ukraine, and urged the Pres­i­dent to fire the U.S. ambas­sador to that coun­try, Marie Yovanovitch.

    Par­nas and Fru­man were indict­ed on crim­i­nal cam­paign finance charges last month.

    Accord­ing to pros­e­cu­tors, the pair were push­ing for Yovanovitch’s removal “to advance their per­son­al finan­cial inter­ests and the polit­i­cal inter­ests of at least one Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment offi­cial with whom they were work­ing.” Ambas­sador Yovanovitch was report­ed­ly viewed as an obsta­cle to Par­nas’ and Fruman’s cor­rupt plans to restruc­ture the state gas com­pa­ny to advance a nat­ur­al gas import scheme.

    So how did this self-inter­est­ed pair, who have a his­to­ry of failed busi­ness­es and con­nec­tions to Euro­pean orga­nized crime, score a per­son­al audi­ence with the Pres­i­dent to make this pitch?

    They promised a six-fig­ure dona­tion to Pres­i­dent Trump’s super PAC, Amer­i­ca First Action.

    Amer­i­ca First Action arranged the April 2018 din­ner, where Par­nas, Fru­man, and a dozen oth­er top donors “dined and chat­ted about their pet issues with the Pres­i­dent for about 90 min­utes.” This was not a one-off event. It was part of a series of face-to-face meet­ings that the Pres­i­dent has grant­ed to big super PAC donors that have con­tin­ued through today: just a few weeks ago, for exam­ple, Pres­i­dent Trump host­ed a “pri­vate round­table” with donors who gave six fig­ures to his sup­pos­ed­ly inde­pen­dent super PAC.

    To be sure, not every big donor is buy­ing access to push a cor­rupt geo-polit­i­cal scheme to under­mine U.S. for­eign pol­i­cy. Some donors just want to pay less in tax­es. Oth­ers push more parochial mat­ters.

    But a sys­tem that trades six-fig­ure polit­i­cal dona­tions for access means that only the wealth­i­est few can afford to make their voic­es heard. The vast major­i­ty of Amer­i­cans will nev­er have hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars to give to the President’s super PAC – and as a result, they’ll nev­er have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to meet face-to-face with the Pres­i­dent to describe how, for exam­ple, the cost of pre­scrip­tion drugs impacts their fam­i­ly.

    In this par­tic­u­lar case, Par­nas and Fru­man bought access with ille­gal funds. They laun­dered their $325,000 super PAC con­tri­bu­tion through a shell cor­po­ra­tion, trig­ger­ing Cam­paign Legal Center’s July 2018 com­plaint, which helped lead to their arrest last month. But if the pair had just giv­en to the super PAC in their own names, their pur­chase of a Pres­i­den­tial audi­ence would nev­er have drawn pros­e­cu­tors’ scruti­ny.

    The cash-for-access trans­ac­tion itself was per­fect­ly legal, and far too com­mon­place in our big mon­ey-dom­i­nat­ed polit­i­cal sys­tem.

    What’s more, the big mon­ey that bought din­ner with the Pres­i­dent went to a super PAC that was sup­pos­ed­ly inde­pen­dent of his cam­paign. Remem­ber, when the U.S. Supreme Court paved the way for cor­po­rate-fund­ed super PACs in its Cit­i­zens Unit­ed deci­sion, it did so under the assump­tion that they’d be “inde­pen­dent” of can­di­dates, and promised that such inde­pen­dence guard­ed against any risk of actu­al or per­ceived cor­rup­tion. But when Pres­i­dent Trump affords direct access to those six-fig­ure donors who give to his “approved” super PAC, that super PAC is any­thing but inde­pen­dent.

    ...

    ***

    Bren­dan Fis­ch­er is the direc­tor of the fed­er­al reform pro­gram at the Cam­paign Legal Cen­ter.

    ———–

    “How America’s Sys­tem Of Legal­ized Cor­rup­tion Brought Us To The Brink Of Impeach­ment” by Bren­dan Fis­ch­er; Talk­ing Points Memo; 12/05/2019

    “In April of 2018, the two men, Lev Par­nas and Igor Fru­man, had an inti­mate din­ner with Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump at the Trump Inter­na­tion­al Hotel in Wash­ing­ton D.C. They turned the con­ver­sa­tion to Ukraine, and urged the Pres­i­dent to fire the U.S. ambas­sador to that coun­try, Marie Yovanovitch.

    Par­nas and Fru­man pay $325,000 to get din­ner with Trump and they talk about fir­ing ambas­sador Marie Yovanovitch. All indi­ca­tions are that this has to do with Yovanovitch’s oppo­si­tion their Naftogaz schemes, but it also appears to be at the behest of a Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment offi­cial. So Par­nas and Fru­man were part of a Ukrain­ian backchan­nel out­reach to the Trump admin­is­tra­tion to get Yovanovitch fired. A backchan­nel that got turned into a con­duit for a scan­dal that got the pres­i­dent impeached and con­tin­ues to grow. Because that’s how cor­rupt Trump and Giu­liani are: Their antics made Ukraine’s pol­i­tics more cor­rupt:

    ...
    Accord­ing to pros­e­cu­tors, the pair were push­ing for Yovanovitch’s removal “to advance their per­son­al finan­cial inter­ests and the polit­i­cal inter­ests of at least one Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment offi­cial with whom they were work­ing.” Ambas­sador Yovanovitch was report­ed­ly viewed as an obsta­cle to Par­nas’ and Fruman’s cor­rupt plans to restruc­ture the state gas com­pa­ny to advance a nat­ur­al gas import scheme.

    ...

    Amer­i­ca First Action arranged the April 2018 din­ner, where Par­nas, Fru­man, and a dozen oth­er top donors “dined and chat­ted about their pet issues with the Pres­i­dent for about 90 min­utes.” This was not a one-off event. It was part of a series of face-to-face meet­ings that the Pres­i­dent has grant­ed to big super PAC donors that have con­tin­ued through today: just a few weeks ago, for exam­ple, Pres­i­dent Trump host­ed a “pri­vate round­table” with donors who gave six fig­ures to his sup­pos­ed­ly inde­pen­dent super PAC.

    ...

    In this par­tic­u­lar case, Par­nas and Fru­man bought access with ille­gal funds. They laun­dered their $325,000 super PAC con­tri­bu­tion through a shell cor­po­ra­tion, trig­ger­ing Cam­paign Legal Center’s July 2018 com­plaint, which helped lead to their arrest last month. But if the pair had just giv­en to the super PAC in their own names, their pur­chase of a Pres­i­den­tial audi­ence would nev­er have drawn pros­e­cu­tors’ scruti­ny.
    ...

    And the very fact that Trump was at these din­ners for big mon­ey super PAC donors high­lights what a joke the pre­tense of inde­pen­dence is that’s used to jus­ti­fy Cit­i­zens Unit­ed. The Amer­i­ca First Action super PAC pret­ty obvi­ous­ly isn’t inde­pen­dent of the Trump cam­paign if Trump is doing din­ner with the high donors but that’s just how it is in the swamp. The swamp knows the swamp is cor­rupt:

    ...
    What’s more, the big mon­ey that bought din­ner with the Pres­i­dent went to a super PAC that was sup­pos­ed­ly inde­pen­dent of his cam­paign. Remem­ber, when the U.S. Supreme Court paved the way for cor­po­rate-fund­ed super PACs in its Cit­i­zens Unit­ed deci­sion, it did so under the assump­tion that they’d be “inde­pen­dent” of can­di­dates, and promised that such inde­pen­dence guard­ed against any risk of actu­al or per­ceived cor­rup­tion. But when Pres­i­dent Trump affords direct access to those six-fig­ure donors who give to his “approved” super PAC, that super PAC is any­thing but inde­pen­dent.
    ...

    Ok, now here’s a WAsh­ing­ton Post arti­cle about Lev Par­nas’s sto­ry for how he end­ed up in Trump’s inner cir­cle and effec­tive­ly became Rudy Giu­lian­i’s side­kick as this Ukrain­ian scheme was play­ing out. As the arti­cle describes, Par­nas made $50,000 in dona­tions to the Trump cam­paign and Repub­li­can Par­ty about a month before the 2016. That $50,000 appears to have got­ten him a vis­it with then-Pres­i­dent-elect Trump a cou­ple of months lat­er in Decem­ber of 2016. A pho­to of that vis­it was released by Par­nas’s lawyer in response to Trump’s asser­tions that he had nev­er met Par­nas. The arti­cle also men­tions the $325,000 dona­tion made in 2018. That’s the dona­tion that led to the arrest and pros­e­cu­tion of Par­nas because they did it through a shell com­pa­ny. And it was around this time that they met Rudy Giu­liani. Soon, they were spend­ing 4–5 nights a week with him and Par­nas now feels like it was Rudy who recruit­ed and used him:

    The Wash­ing­ton Post

    ‘Once this is over, we’ll be kings’: How Lev Par­nas worked his way into Trump’s world — and now is rat­tling it

    By Ros­alind S. Hel­der­man and Paul Sonne
    Jan. 18, 2020 at 6:27 p.m. CST

    Last Sun­day, a New York lawyer post­ed pho­tographs of the shin­ing dome of the U.S. Capi­tol on Twit­ter, announc­ing that he had just vis­it­ed Wash­ing­ton to give Con­gress con­tents of an ­iPhone belong­ing to a one­time asso­ciate of Pres­i­dent Trump’s per­son­al attor­ney, Rudolph W. Giu­liani.

    It would be a few days before the impli­ca­tions of his lim­it­ed mes­sage became clear: The Lev Par­nas hur­ri­cane was about to hit.

    It was the week when the pomp and cir­cum­stance of the third pres­i­den­tial impeach­ment tri­al in U.S. his­to­ry was sup­posed to take cen­ter stage in Wash­ing­ton. The House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives for­mal­ly vot­ed to send the Sen­ate charges that Trump abused his office by pres­sur­ing Ukraine to help his reelec­tion bid. John G. Roberts Jr., the chief jus­tice of the Unit­ed States, arrived in the Sen­ate cham­bers to pre­side over the president’s tri­al and the swear­ing-in of 100 sen­a­tors.

    But over­shad­ow­ing that weighty moment was a cas­cade of rev­e­la­tions by a fast-talk­ing, Ukraine-born busi­ness­man sport­ing an ankle bracelet who — speak­ing for the first time since his Octo­ber arrest on cam­paign finance charges — direct­ly impli­cat­ed the pres­i­dent in the Ukraine scheme.

    “Pres­i­dent Trump knew exact­ly what was going on,” Par­nas said in an inter­view with MSNBC’s Rachel Mad­dow on Wednes­day that earned the cable news show the high­est rat­ings of its 11-year his­to­ry.

    “That’s the secret that they were try­ing to keep,” he added. “I was on the ground doing their work.”

    Fuel­ing his account were hun­dreds of pages of text mes­sages, doc­u­ments and pho­tos released by the House that doc­u­ment­ed his inter­ac­tions with Giu­liani and a coterie of Ukraini­ans who claimed to have infor­ma­tion about for­mer vice pres­i­dent Joe Biden and a debunked con­spir­a­cy that their coun­try con­spired with Democ­rats in the 2016 elec­tion.

    Par­nas, with his Brook­lyn-by-way-of-Odessa accent, has sought to fash­ion him­self as the Joe Pesci ver­sion of John Dean — the for­mer White House coun­sel who was star wit­ness in the impeach­ment pro­ceed­ings against Pres­i­dent Richard Nixon — cast­ing him­self an avowed­ly repen­tant par­tic­i­pant in a rogue oper­a­tion.

    Some of his most explo­sive claims that Trump, Vice Pres­i­dent Pence and Attor­ney Gen­er­al William P. Barr knew of his activ­i­ties remain unsub­stan­ti­at­ed and dis­put­ed. The president’s allies say his asser­tions are not cred­i­ble, not­ing the seri­ous crim­i­nal charges he faces.

    “These alle­ga­tions are being made by a man who is cur­rent­ly out on bail for fed­er­al crimes and is des­per­ate to reduce his expo­sure to prison,” White House press sec­re­tary Stephanie ­Grisham said this past week.

    Still, the bliz­zard of new details in the doc­u­ments Par­nas had turned over raised a host of ques­tions about Trump’s efforts in Ukraine — ratch­et­ing up the pres­sure on Sen­ate Repub­li­cans to allow wit­ness­es to be called dur­ing the com­ing tri­al.

    In his chore­o­graphed trans­for­ma­tion from a self­ie-snap­ping Trump devo­tee to a self-described truth-teller embraced by many on the left, Par­nas has blazed a path sim­i­lar to that of Michael Cohen, the long­time Trump fix­er who last year turned on the pres­i­dent in the face of crim­i­nal charges.

    As a legal strat­e­gy, it’s risky, experts agreed: Par­nas has been indict­ed in New York for alleged­ly fun­nel­ing for­eign mon­ey into U.S. polit­i­cal cam­paigns. (He has plead­ed not guilty). Pros­e­cu­tors have said in court that they are con­sid­er­ing bring­ing addi­tion­al crim­i­nal counts against him, a per­ilous sit­u­a­tion that defense attor­neys gen­er­al­ly advise requires extreme cau­tion — and silence.

    Parnas’s attor­ney, Joseph A. Bondy, has been agi­tat­ing for weeks for Con­gress to call Par­nas as a wit­ness, an effort large­ly viewed as a bid to get House Democ­rats to extend him immu­ni­ty. But then his client spoke out with­out any such pro­tec­tion.

    In inter­views, Par­nas has said he felt aban­doned and betrayed after his arrest, when Trump dis­avowed him and Giu­liani failed to force­ful­ly defend him.

    His about-face has left him cast out of the elite realm he briefly occu­pied with Giu­liani, a man he reg­u­lar­ly called “my broth­er” who had swept him into a world of wealth and inter­na­tion­al ­pow­er-bro­ker­ing.

    The for­mer New York may­or ini­tial­ly stood by Par­nas and his one­time busi­ness part­ner Igor Fru­man after their arrests. “I cer­tain­ly am not going to dis­avow them,” he said at the time, adding: “Every­thing I’ve known about them says they would not com­mit a crime.”

    Since then, his tone has changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly. This past week, Giu­liani said he would not respond to Parnas’s alle­ga­tions, writ­ing in a text that “he has no cred­i­bil­i­ty.”

    “He’s burn­ing out and best to stay out of his way,” he added acid­ly.

    For his part, Par­nas said he now feels lib­er­at­ed.

    In an inter­view with The Wash­ing­ton Post, he com­pared him­self to some­one emerg­ing from a “cult,” with fresh per­spec­tive on the dizzy­ing events of the past two years.

    “That arrest saved my life,” he said.

    ‘I idol­ized him’

    Two years ago, Par­nas was fend­ing off cred­i­tors in obscu­ri­ty in Boca Raton, Fla. He shot to the table­side of the president’s clos­est allies and fam­i­ly mem­bers with a few well-placed cam­paign dona­tions, a die-hard loy­al­ty to Trump and some good old-fash­ioned chutz­pah.

    Par­nas, 47, was born in Ukraine but moved with his fam­i­ly to the Unit­ed States as a child and grew up in Brook­lyn. He told The Post in an inter­view con­duct­ed before his arrest that he got his start in real estate, at one point sell­ing Trump con­dos for Don­ald Trump’s father, Fred, and then worked in trad­ing goods with the for­mer Sovi­et Union before becom­ing a secu­ri­ties trad­er. He moved to Flori­da in the mid-1990s.

    He bar­reled into Trump cir­cles with a $50,000 dona­tion to Trump’s cam­paign and the Repub­li­can Par­ty less than a month before the 2016 elec­tion.

    “I was real­ly pas­sion­ate about the pres­i­dent,” he said last fall before his arrest. “I start­ed real­ly believ­ing that he could real­ly make a change and make it hap­pen.”

    “I tell you hon­est­ly, I think he’s going to go down as one of the great­est pres­i­dents ever, even with all this neg­a­tiv­i­ty and every­thing that’s going on,” he said then.

    Par­nas told MSNBC last week that he was so pas­sion­ate about Trump that he had pho­tos of him all over his house. After his arrest, he said, his wife was embar­rassed because the FBI told her that “I had a shrine to him.”

    “I idol­ized him,” he said. “I mean, I thought he was the sav­ior.”

    In his inter­view with The Post, Par­nas said he was able to rise quick­ly in Trump’s world because he dis­cov­ered a “kink in the sys­tem”: the super PAC, which, unlike a can­di­date com­mit­tee, can accept unlim­it­ed funds.

    In May 2018, the pro-Trump super PAC Amer­i­ca First Action report­ed receiv­ing a $325,000 dona­tion from an ener­gy com­pa­ny Par­nas and Fru­man had recent­ly formed.

    Pros­e­cu­tors have said the mon­ey did not come from their fledg­ling com­pa­ny, which had no busi­ness or rev­enue, but from a pri­vate loan Fru­man took out against a Mia­mi con­do.

    Giu­liani met the two men around the same time, through a lawyer and friend who referred the duo to him, he has said.

    Par­nas said he sought out the for­mer New York may­or to be a paid pitch­man for a com­pa­ny he co-found­ed called Fraud Guar­an­tee that claimed to shield investors from finan­cial fraud. He arranged for Giu­liani to be paid $500,000 by a Long Island lawyer who was an investor in Fraud Guar­an­tee. He assumed their rela­tion­ship would be a dis­tant one, Par­nas said this past week.

    Instead, Par­nas said, he was shocked and delight­ed to find him­self con­stant­ly at the side of the president’s per­son­al lawyer.

    Before he knew it, Giu­liani was invit­ing him and Fru­man to hang out four to five nights a week, he said. They were zip­ping around the coun­try to attend Trump ral­lies, and then trav­el­ing around Europe to gath­er infor­ma­tion about Ukraine.

    There were long nights at exclu­sive cig­ar bars and fre­quent strat­e­gy ses­sions at Trump’s hotel in Wash­ing­ton; a vis­it to a a palace out­side Madrid owned by a Venezue­lan ener­gy exec­u­tive; and a hud­dle at a lux­u­ry Parisian club. Par­nas joined Giu­liani in the dugout to meet the New York Yan­kees dur­ing a spe­cial over­seas base­ball game in Lon­don. He accom­pa­nied the for­mer New York may­or to a spe­cial annu­al com­mem­o­ra­tion of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and to the state funer­al of for­mer pres­i­dent George H.W. Bush at Wash­ing­ton Nation­al Cathe­dral.

    Par­nas said liv­ing in Giuliani’s world was a heady expe­ri­ence. “I looked up to him. I grew up in New York and he was a leg­end. And here I was sit­ting with him, every night,” he said.

    At night, he would call his wife, Svet­lana, and tell her about the pow­er­ful peo­ple he was meet­ing with Giu­liani and the swanky fundrais­ers they were attend­ing. “You won’t believe this!” he would exclaim.

    ‘The per­fect storm’

    Par­nas acknowl­edged that he had ambi­tions to use the con­nec­tions he was mak­ing through Giu­liani to improve his busi­ness prospects. He said he grew up in Brighton Beach with lit­tle mon­ey and an absent father. In recent years, he said, his career had been “up and down.”

    ...

    Court fil­ings show he has been dogged by debts. When he met Giu­liani, he was being pur­sued for more than $500,000 in Flori­da courts by invest­ing in a movie deal gone bad.

    In his new envi­rons, Par­nas said, sud­den­ly any­thing appeared pos­si­ble: “I fig­ured, once this is over, we’ll be kings.”

    Still, he said, he under­stood from the start that he and Fru­man, who often wore T‑shirts paired with gold chains, did not fit in Giuliani’s cir­cle.

    “No one under­stood it,” Par­nas said of their con­stant pres­ence by his side. “I didn’t under­stand it.”

    But at the time, he said, he believed Giu­liani enjoyed their com­pa­ny — and that Giu­liani appre­ci­at­ed that the duo were a solic­i­tous entourage, will­ing to drop any­thing to join him at his favorite haunts, stay out late while he drank scotch and pick up the tab.

    Now Par­nas believes that the president’s lawyer drew the two Sovi­et-born men close after he real­ized they had con­nec­tions in Ukraine, a Giu­liani obses­sion. The for­mer New York may­or was con­vinced Ukraini­ans had worked against Trump in the 2016 elec­tion and were in pos­ses­sion of evi­dence of Biden’s cor­rup­tion.

    “I think we were recruit­ed,” Par­nas said. “It was the per­fect storm.”

    Giu­liani has said he began look­ing at Ukraine after he signed on as Trump’s per­son­al attor­ney in April 2018, tasked with defend­ing him in the inves­ti­ga­tion by spe­cial coun­sel Robert S. Mueller III.

    That Novem­ber, Giu­liani has said he was approached by a for­mer col­league who said a Ukrain­ian pros­e­cu­tor had infor­ma­tion to share about Biden and the Democ­rats with U.S. author­i­ties.

    Soon, Par­nas and Fru­man became Giuliani’s point men for his Ukraine oper­a­tion.

    The cache of records released by the House this past week made clear that Par­nas was act­ing on Giuliani’s behalf and in close coor­di­na­tion him. The mate­ri­als ranged the gamut, from pho­tos of Par­nas sport­ing a bul­let­proof vest for unknown rea­sons to exten­sive com­mu­ni­ca­tions with top Ukrain­ian offi­cials — includ­ing mem­bers of the country’s cab­i­net and key aides to its lead­ers.

    The mate­ri­als sharply under­cut the notion pushed by the president’s sup­port­ers that the activ­i­ties in Ukraine were about U.S. anti-cor­rup­tion pol­i­cy — rather than defeat­ing Biden.

    The out­lines of the scheme were even scrib­bled in blunt terms on sta­tionery from Vienna’s Ritz-Carl­ton Hotel — notes Par­nas took as he spoke to Giu­liani by phone dur­ing a June vis­it to the Aus­tri­an cap­i­tal, accord­ing to his attor­ney.

    “Get Zalenksy to Annouce that the Biden case will be Inves­ti­gat­ed,” Par­nas wrote, refer­ring to the effort to pres­sure Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­sky to announce inves­ti­ga­tions relat­ed to the for­mer vice pres­i­dent.

    The new­ly released doc­u­ments showed that Ukraine’s top pros­e­cu­tor explic­it­ly offered to help in the effort against Biden and the Democ­rats in exchange for the removal of the U.S. ambas­sador to Ukraine, as well as a meet­ing with Barr and oth­er actions that would poten­tial­ly help his boss, then-Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Petro Poroshenko, who was in a fight for his polit­i­cal life in Ukraine’s pres­i­den­tial elec­tion.

    And the mate­ri­als laid out how Giuliani’s star wit­ness in his cam­paign against Biden — for­mer Ukrain­ian pros­e­cu­tor gen­er­al Vik­tor Shokin — was promised help with a visa to the Unit­ed States that the embassy in Kyiv was block­ing.

    At one point, in a text mes­sage to Par­nas, Giu­liani wrote that he had got­ten “no 1” involved in the effort to secure Shokin a visa — a ref­er­ence, Par­nas said this past week, to Trump.

    Oth­er text mes­sages show exten­sive con­tact between Par­nas and Derek Har­vey, an aide to Rep. Devin Nunes, the rank­ing Repub­li­can on the House Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee — indi­cat­ing that Nunes’s office sought to use the infor­ma­tion Par­nas was gath­er­ing. A Nunes spokesman and Har­vey did not respond to requests for com­ment.

    A hint of more to come

    In Decem­ber, Bondy began agi­tat­ing to be allowed to pro­vide Con­gress with Parnas’s mate­r­i­al, which had been seized by pros­e­cu­tors after his arrest. The fed­er­al judge pre­sid­ing over the case in New York agreed to allow Bondy to share the mate­r­i­al the day before he made his deliv­ery to the House.

    The doc­u­ments filled in gaps in the nar­ra­tive of the Ukraine pres­sure cam­paign. For Democ­rats who have been push­ing for the Sen­ate to call wit­ness­es in its upcom­ing tri­al, the new infor­ma­tion sup­port­ed their argu­ments that there is still more evi­dence to gath­er.

    The pub­lic cache of Parnas’s mate­ri­als is not exhaus­tive. The House has released no mes­sages, for instance, between him and his pri­ma­ry part­ner, Fru­man.

    And some Democ­rats have coun­seled cau­tion in the face of his alle­ga­tions, not­ing that he is accused of seri­ous felonies.

    “Par­nas is some­one whose evi­dence, whose tes­ti­mo­ny should be ques­tioned, chal­lenged, like any oth­er wit­ness,” Sen. Edward J. Markey (D‑Mass.) told CNN, adding, “but he should be a wit­ness.”

    Pros­e­cu­tors have hint­ed in court that more of Parnas’s activ­i­ties have not come to light yet. This past month, they revealed that he received a mys­te­ri­ous $1 mil­lion loan in Sep­tem­ber from a lawyer for Dmytro Fir­tash, a Ukrain­ian gas tycoon fac­ing bribery charges in the Unit­ed States. In court, Bondy said the loan was made to Parnas’s wife and had been intend­ed to help the cou­ple buy a home. He said that Fir­tash had cut all ties to Par­nas after it start­ed to become clear Par­nas intend­ed to assist the impeach­ment probe. He and Par­nas have declined to com­ment fur­ther.

    Mean­while, Parnas’s pro­lif­ic pho­to­graph­ic doc­u­men­ta­tion of his time in elite GOP cir­cles has giv­en him ample mate­r­i­al to taunt his detrac­tors, often through social media posts his lawyer has set to catchy music. Last Tues­day, hours before his client’s evi­dence became pub­lic, the lawyer tweet­ed a mon­tage of pho­tos of Par­nas pos­ing with Trump and dif­fer­ent mem­bers of the president’s fam­i­ly, set to the tune of Sis­ter Sledge’s “We Are Fam­i­ly.”

    When Trump advis­er Kellyanne Con­way told CNN that “I don’t know Lev Par­nas,” Bondy tweet­ed a close-up of Par­nas and Con­way, their heads lean­ing toward one anoth­er, both smil­ing wide­ly. “#Lev­Re­mem­bers,” his lawyer wrote.

    When Trump announced that for­mer Flori­da attor­ney gen­er­al Pam Bon­di was join­ing his legal team, his lawyer tweet­ed a pho­to of Par­nas and Bon­di seat­ed at a table togeth­er, their arms around each other’s shoul­ders.

    When Trump him­self told reporters on Thurs­day that he didn’t “know who this man is” — an asser­tion he had also made short­ly after Par­nas was arrest­ed — his lawyer post­ed a video of Par­nas chat­ting with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Decem­ber 2016.

    The video shows Par­nas at the front of a crowd, intro­duc­ing the pres­i­dent-elect to a broad-shoul­dered man who, accord­ing to Bondy, was then serv­ing as the top tax offi­cial of Ukraine.

    In inter­views, Par­nas has said he is con­vinced pros­e­cu­tors work­ing for Barr have pur­sued the crim­i­nal case against him to keep him qui­et about Trump’s work in Ukraine. He said he believes trans­paren­cy is now his best pro­tec­tion against fur­ther crim­i­nal action.

    This past week, he told CNN’s Ander­son Coop­er his goal is to make Trump under­stand “he’s not a king.”

    “And I think it’s impor­tant for the coun­try to find out the truth,” he said, “exact­ly what hap­pened.”

    ————

    “‘Once this is over, we’ll be kings’: How Lev Par­nas worked his way into Trump’s world — and now is rat­tling it” by Ros­alind S. Hel­der­man and Paul Sonne; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 01/18/2020

    “In his inter­view with The Post, Par­nas said he was able to rise quick­ly in Trump’s world because he dis­cov­ered a “kink in the sys­tem”: the super PAC, which, unlike a can­di­date com­mit­tee, can accept unlim­it­ed funds.

    A kink in the sys­tem. That’s how Par­nas described the abil­i­ty to give unlim­it­ed polit­i­cal dona­tions in the US. And that kink was what got Par­nas the din­ner with Trump in April of 2018 where he and Igor Fru­man were allowed to lob­by for the removal of Marie Yovanovitch on behalf of their own Naftogaz scheme and on behalf of the mys­tery Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment offi­cial who is prob­a­bly Yuri Lut­senko:

    ...
    Par­nas, 47, was born in Ukraine but moved with his fam­i­ly to the Unit­ed States as a child and grew up in Brook­lyn. He told The Post in an inter­view con­duct­ed before his arrest that he got his start in real estate, at one point sell­ing Trump con­dos for Don­ald Trump’s father, Fred, and then worked in trad­ing goods with the for­mer Sovi­et Union before becom­ing a secu­ri­ties trad­er. He moved to Flori­da in the mid-1990s.

    He bar­reled into Trump cir­cles with a $50,000 dona­tion to Trump’s cam­paign and the Repub­li­can Par­ty less than a month before the 2016 elec­tion.

    ...

    In May 2018, the pro-Trump super PAC Amer­i­ca First Action report­ed receiv­ing a $325,000 dona­tion from an ener­gy com­pa­ny Par­nas and Fru­man had recent­ly formed.

    Pros­e­cu­tors have said the mon­ey did not come from their fledg­ling com­pa­ny, which had no busi­ness or rev­enue, but from a pri­vate loan Fru­man took out against a Mia­mi con­do.

    ...

    When Trump him­self told reporters on Thurs­day that he didn’t “know who this man is” — an asser­tion he had also made short­ly after Par­nas was arrest­ed — his lawyer post­ed a video of Par­nas chat­ting with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Decem­ber 2016.

    The video shows Par­nas at the front of a crowd, intro­duc­ing the pres­i­dent-elect to a broad-shoul­dered man who, accord­ing to Bondy, was then serv­ing as the top tax offi­cial of Ukraine.

    In inter­views, Par­nas has said he is con­vinced pros­e­cu­tors work­ing for Barr have pur­sued the crim­i­nal case against him to keep him qui­et about Trump’s work in Ukraine. He said he believes trans­paren­cy is now his best pro­tec­tion against fur­ther crim­i­nal action.
    ...

    And it was around this time that they had the mega-donor din­ner with Trump that Par­nas and Fru­man also start­ing their rela­tion­ship with Rudy Giu­liani. A rela­tion­ship that would soon turn them into Rudy’s close part­ners in crime. Crime that includ­ed extort­ing a gov­ern­ment:

    ...
    Giu­liani met the two men around the same time, through a lawyer and friend who referred the duo to him, he has said.

    Par­nas said he sought out the for­mer New York may­or to be a paid pitch­man for a com­pa­ny he co-found­ed called Fraud Guar­an­tee that claimed to shield investors from finan­cial fraud. He arranged for Giu­liani to be paid $500,000 by a Long Island lawyer who was an investor in Fraud Guar­an­tee. He assumed their rela­tion­ship would be a dis­tant one, Par­nas said this past week.

    Instead, Par­nas said, he was shocked and delight­ed to find him­self con­stant­ly at the side of the president’s per­son­al lawyer.

    Before he knew it, Giu­liani was invit­ing him and Fru­man to hang out four to five nights a week, he said. They were zip­ping around the coun­try to attend Trump ral­lies, and then trav­el­ing around Europe to gath­er infor­ma­tion about Ukraine.

    There were long nights at exclu­sive cig­ar bars and fre­quent strat­e­gy ses­sions at Trump’s hotel in Wash­ing­ton; a vis­it to a a palace out­side Madrid owned by a Venezue­lan ener­gy exec­u­tive; and a hud­dle at a lux­u­ry Parisian club. Par­nas joined Giu­liani in the dugout to meet the New York Yan­kees dur­ing a spe­cial over­seas base­ball game in Lon­don. He accom­pa­nied the for­mer New York may­or to a spe­cial annu­al com­mem­o­ra­tion of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and to the state funer­al of for­mer pres­i­dent George H.W. Bush at Wash­ing­ton Nation­al Cathe­dral.

    ...

    Now Par­nas believes that the president’s lawyer drew the two Sovi­et-born men close after he real­ized they had con­nec­tions in Ukraine, a Giu­liani obses­sion. The for­mer New York may­or was con­vinced Ukraini­ans had worked against Trump in the 2016 elec­tion and were in pos­ses­sion of evi­dence of Biden’s cor­rup­tion.

    “I think we were recruit­ed,” Par­nas said. “It was the per­fect storm.”

    Giu­liani has said he began look­ing at Ukraine after he signed on as Trump’s per­son­al attor­ney in April 2018, tasked with defend­ing him in the inves­ti­ga­tion by spe­cial coun­sel Robert S. Mueller III.

    That Novem­ber, Giu­liani has said he was approached by a for­mer col­league who said a Ukrain­ian pros­e­cu­tor had infor­ma­tion to share about Biden and the Democ­rats with U.S. author­i­ties.

    Soon, Par­nas and Fru­man became Giuliani’s point men for his Ukraine oper­a­tion.

    The cache of records released by the House this past week made clear that Par­nas was act­ing on Giuliani’s behalf and in close coor­di­na­tion him. The mate­ri­als ranged the gamut, from pho­tos of Par­nas sport­ing a bul­let­proof vest for unknown rea­sons to exten­sive com­mu­ni­ca­tions with top Ukrain­ian offi­cials — includ­ing mem­bers of the country’s cab­i­net and key aides to its lead­ers.
    ...

    And while we don’t know which Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment offi­cial hired Par­nas and Fru­man to push for Yovanow­itch’s removal, the new­ly released cache of doc­u­ments indi­cate that Ukraine’s top pros­e­cu­tor at the time, Yuri Lut­senko, explic­it­ly offered to assist Trump in declar­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion into the Bidens, so if it was Lut­senko who was request­ing the fir­ing of Yovanovitch it’s impor­tant to keep in mind that he had a sig­nif­i­cant pay­ment he could offer Trump for that in the form of the inves­ti­ga­tion into the Bidens:

    ...
    The new­ly released doc­u­ments showed that Ukraine’s top pros­e­cu­tor explic­it­ly offered to help in the effort against Biden and the Democ­rats in exchange for the removal of the U.S. ambas­sador to Ukraine, as well as a meet­ing with Barr and oth­er actions that would poten­tial­ly help his boss, then-Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Petro Poroshenko, who was in a fight for his polit­i­cal life in Ukraine’s pres­i­den­tial elec­tion.

    And the mate­ri­als laid out how Giuliani’s star wit­ness in his cam­paign against Biden — for­mer Ukrain­ian pros­e­cu­tor gen­er­al Vik­tor Shokin — was promised help with a visa to the Unit­ed States that the embassy in Kyiv was block­ing.

    At one point, in a text mes­sage to Par­nas, Giu­liani wrote that he had got­ten “no 1” involved in the effort to secure Shokin a visa — a ref­er­ence, Par­nas said this past week, to Trump.

    Oth­er text mes­sages show exten­sive con­tact between Par­nas and Derek Har­vey, an aide to Rep. Devin Nunes, the rank­ing Repub­li­can on the House Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee — indi­cat­ing that Nunes’s office sought to use the infor­ma­tion Par­nas was gath­er­ing. A Nunes spokesman and Har­vey did not respond to requests for com­ment.
    ...

    And that’s all why the #UkraineGate scan­dal is, in part, a scan­dal about the legal­ized bribery built into the US cam­paign finance sys­tem. We have two fig­ures, Par­nas and Fru­man, buy­ing their way into din­ners with the pres­i­dent to push a scheme involv­ing get­ting the ambas­sador fired and they end up get­ting recruit­ed by Giu­liani and agents of a larg­er scheme being ulti­mate­ly run by Trump. And that sug­gests we’ve hit a point in the US where the gov­ern­ment no longer has to wor­ry about the cor­rupt­ing influ­ence of lob­by­ists as much as the lob­by­ists need to wor­ry about the cor­rupt­ing influ­ence of the gov­ern­ment. Specif­i­cal­ly Rudy. Don’t try to lob­by Rudy even if he claims to be rep­re­sent­ing the gov­ern­ment. Influ­ence will be ped­dled in all direc­tions. Inno­cence will be lost. A lot of inno­cence.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | January 20, 2020, 12:18 am
  13. Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Mitch McConnell did it again. He said some­thing total­ly shock­ing and yet entire­ly pre­dictable. When asked how or if the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment should assist states fac­ing eco­nom­ic cat­a­stro­phes as a con­se­quence of the COVID-19 eco­nom­ic lock­down Mitch McConnell made clear he has a par­tic­u­lar solu­tion in mind: Force the states into bank­rupt­cy pro­ceed­ings. Specif­i­cal­ly, force the Demo­c­ra­t­ic-run states into bank­rupt­cy pro­ceed­ings so pub­lic pen­sions can be gut­ted.

    As the fol­low­ing piece by David Frum in the Atlantic points out, part of what makes this an utter­ly unsur­pris­ing stance by McConnell is that the GOP has been push­ing for state bank­rupt­cies for years. Don’t for­get that Frum was a speech­writer for George W. Bush so he’s some­one who would be pret­ty famil­iar with con­tem­po­rary GOP think­ing. In 2011, Jeb Bush and Newt Gin­grich pub­lished a op-ed call­ing for bank­rupt­cy as a solu­tion for Cal­i­for­ni­a’s bud­get woes. Gin­grich fur­ther pro­mot­ed the idea dur­ing his 2012 pres­i­den­tial run. In 2012, a Jeb + Newt com­bo back­ing a pol­i­cy would have indi­cat­ed it’s an idea with broad back­ing by the GOP mega-donor net­work.

    So why are they so keen on bank­rupt­cy for states? Because as Frum points out, state bank­rupt­cies are a process that would be han­dled by fed­er­al courts and thanks to the GOP’s dom­i­na­tion of the Sen­ate the fed­er­al courts are dom­i­nat­ed by right-wing judges. So forc­ing states into bank­rupt­cy pro­ceed­ings is a recipe for hand­ing over the futures of these states to con­ser­v­a­tive fed­er­al judges who will be high­ly inclined to pri­or­i­tize pen­sion cuts over tax hikes to ensure bond­hold­ers are paid back.

    Final­ly, as Frum cru­cial­ly points out, while part of Mitch McConnel­l’s motive for push­ing for state bank­rupt­cies is sim­ply that it is in keep­ing with the GOP’s long-stand­ing desire to do what­ev­er is required to destroy ‘Blue’ state pub­lic pen­sions, we also can’t rule out the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Mitch McConnell and all sorts of oth­er ‘Red state’ Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors are qui­et­ly being direct­ly bought off by ‘Blue state’ con­ser­v­a­tive bil­lion­aires who also want to see their states’ pub­lic pen­sions slashed because that’s the nature of the US cam­paign finance sys­tem: any bil­lion­aire can buy off any Sen­a­tor. Anony­mous­ly. With unlim­it­ed dol­lars. Or not anony­mous­ly. It’s pub­lic knowl­edge that the biggest donors to Ken­tucky Sen­a­tor Mitch McConnel­l’s 2020 reelec­tion com­mit­tee is a bunch of out of state PACs and cor­po­ra­tions. But we know there’s an ocean of anony­mous dona­tions to McConnell and oth­er elect­ed offi­cials that we don’t get to know about. It’s the kind of set up that makes dona­tions to the GOP an even more tan­ta­liz­ing for, say, fas­cist bil­lion­aires in Cal­i­for­nia or New York who want to see Cal­i­for­ni­a’s state gov­ern­ment hol­lowed out. It’s also the per­fect for­mu­la for those same fas­cist bil­lion­aires in New York or Cal­i­for­nia to want to see their states fall into bank­rupt­cy. In oth­er words, state bank­rupt­cy is the ‘Blue state’ fas­cist mil­lion­aire and bil­lion­aire anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic pow­er play using the GOP’s anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic cap­ture of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment as the vehi­cle:

    The Atlantic

    Why Mitch McConnell Wants States to Go Bank­rupt

    The Sen­ate major­i­ty leader is pri­or­i­tiz­ing the Repub­li­can Par­ty rather than the Amer­i­can peo­ple dur­ing this cri­sis.

    David Frum
    Staff writer at The Atlantic
    April 25, 2020

    Amer­i­can states are abrupt­ly fac­ing their worst fis­cal cri­sis since the Great Depres­sion. The Cen­ter on Bud­get and Pol­i­cy Pri­or­i­ties esti­mates that more than 25 per­cent of state rev­enues have evap­o­rat­ed because of the pan­dem­ic. Demands on state health-care bud­gets, state unem­ploy­ment sys­tems, and state social-wel­fare ben­e­fits are surg­ing. By the sum­mer of 2022, the state bud­get gap could total half a tril­lion dol­lars.

    States need help. Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Mitch McConnell does not want to pro­vide it. On The Hugh Hewitt Show on April 23, McConnell pro­posed anoth­er idea. Instead of more fed­er­al aid, states should cut their spend­ing by declar­ing bank­rupt­cy:

    I would cer­tain­ly be in favor of allow­ing states to use the bank­rupt­cy route. It saves some cities. And there’s no good rea­son for it not to be avail­able. My guess is their first choice would be for the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to bor­row mon­ey from future gen­er­a­tions to send it down to them now so they don’t have to do that. That’s not some­thing I’m going to be in favor of.”

    McConnell expand­ed on the state-bank­rupt­cy con­cept lat­er that same day in a phone inter­view with Fox News’s Bill Hem­mer:

    We’re not inter­est­ed in solv­ing their pen­sion prob­lems for them. We’re not inter­est­ed in res­cu­ing them from bad deci­sions they’ve made in the past, we’re not going to let them take advan­tage of this pan­dem­ic to solve a lot of prob­lems that they cre­at­ed them­selves [with] bad deci­sions in the past.

    McConnell’s words instant­ly attract­ed atten­tion, crit­i­cism, even some deri­sion. New York Gov­er­nor Andrew Cuo­mo blast­ed the idea as “dumb,” “irre­spon­si­ble,” and “pet­ty”:

    How do you think this is going to work? And then to sug­gest we’re con­cerned about the econ­o­my, states should declare bank­rupt­cy. That’s how you’re going to bring this nation­al econ­o­my back? By states declar­ing bank­rupt­cy? You want to see that mar­ket fall through the cel­lar? … I mean, if there’s ever a time for human­i­ty and decen­cy, now is the time.

    Cuomo’s fer­vent rebut­tal grabbed the cam­eras. It did not set­tle the issue. State bank­rupt­cy is not some pass­ing fan­cy. Repub­li­cans have been advanc­ing the idea for more than a decade. Back in 2011, Jeb Bush and Newt Gin­grich pub­lished a joint­ly bylined op-ed advo­cat­ing state bank­rupt­cy as a solu­tion for the state of Cal­i­for­nia. The Tea Par­ty Con­gress elect­ed in 2010 explored the idea of state bank­rupt­cy in House hear­ings and Sen­ate debates. Newt Gin­grich pro­mot­ed it it in his run for the 2012 Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion.

    To under­stand why Repub­li­cans want state bank­rupt­cy, it’s nec­es­sary to under­stand what bank­rupt­cy is—and what it is not.

    A bank­rupt­cy is not a default. States have default­ed on their debts before; that is not new. Arkansas default­ed in the depres­sion year of 1933. Eight states default­ed on canal and rail­way debt with­in a sin­gle year, 1841. The Four­teenth Amend­ment required for­mer Con­fed­er­ate states to repu­di­ate their Civ­il War debts.

    A default is a sov­er­eign act. A default­ing sov­er­eign can decide for itself which—if any—debts to pay in full, which to repay in part, which debts to not pay at all.

    Bank­rupt­cy, by con­trast, is a legal process in which a judge decides which debts will be paid, in what order, and in what amount. Under the Con­sti­tu­tion, bank­rupt­cy is a pow­er entire­ly reserved to the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. An Amer­i­can bank­rupt­cy is over­seen in fed­er­al court, by a fed­er­al judge, accord­ing to fed­er­al law. That’s why fed­er­al law can allow U.S. cities to go bank­rupt, as many have done over the years. That’s why the finan­cial restruc­tur­ing of Puer­to Rico can be over­seen by a fed­er­al con­trol board. Cities and ter­ri­to­ries are not sov­er­eigns. Under the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion, U.S. states are.

    Under­stand that, and you begin to under­stand the appeal of state bank­rupt­cy to Repub­li­can leg­is­la­tors in the post-2010 era.

    ...

    First, the country’s wealth­i­est and most pro­duc­tive states are over­whelm­ing­ly blue. Of the 15 states least reliant on fed­er­al trans­fers, 11 are led by Demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nors. Of the 15 states most reliant on fed­er­al trans­fers, 11 have Repub­li­can gov­er­nors.

    Sec­ond, Con­gress is dom­i­nat­ed by Repub­li­cans. Repub­li­cans con­trolled the House for eight of the last 10 years; the Sen­ate for six. Because of the Repub­li­can hold on the Sen­ate, the fed­er­al judi­cia­ry has like­wise shift­ed in con­ser­v­a­tive and Repub­li­can direc­tions.

    A state bank­rupt­cy process would thus enable a Repub­li­can Par­ty based in the poor­er states to use its fed­er­al ascen­dan­cy to impose its pri­or­i­ties upon the bud­gets of the rich­er states.

    When Cuo­mo protest­ed McConnell’s bank­rupt­cy idea, the New York gov­er­nor raised the risk of chaos in finan­cial mar­kets. But McConnell does not advo­cate state bank­rupt­cy in order to sub­ject state bond­hold­ers to hard­ship. Obvi­ous­ly not! When McConnell spoke to Hewitt about fis­cal­ly trou­bled states, he did not address their bond debt. He addressed their pen­sion debt. State bank­rupt­cy is a project to shift hard­ship onto pen­sion­ers while pro­tect­ing bondholders—and, even more than bond­hold­ers, tax­pay­ers.

    Repub­li­can plans for state bank­rupt­cy sed­u­lous­ly pro­tect state tax­pay­ers. The Bush-Gin­grich op-ed of 2011 was explic­it on this point. A fed­er­al law of state bank­rupt­cy “must explic­it­ly for­bid any fed­er­al judge from man­dat­ing a tax hike,” they wrote. You might won­der: Why? If a Repub­li­can Sen­ate major­i­ty leader from Ken­tucky is will­ing to squeeze Illi­nois state pen­sion­ers, why would he care about shield­ing Illi­nois state tax­pay­ers? The answer is found in the third of the three facts of Amer­i­can fis­cal fed­er­al­ism.

    Unit­ed States sen­a­tors from small­er, poor­er red states do not only rep­re­sent their states. Often, they do not even pri­mar­i­ly rep­re­sent their states. They rep­re­sent, more often, the rich­est peo­ple in big­ger, rich­er blue States who find it more eco­nom­i­cal to invest in less expen­sive small-state races. The biggest con­trib­u­tor to Mitch McConnell’s 2020 cam­paign and lead­er­ship com­mit­tee is a PAC head­quar­tered in Engle­wood, New Jer­sey. The sec­ond is a con­duit for funds from real-estate investors. The third is the tobac­co com­pa­ny Altria. The fourth is the par­cel deliv­ery ser­vice UPS. The fifth is the Eli Lil­ly phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal cor­po­ra­tion. The sixth is the home health-care com­pa­ny, LHC Group. The sev­enth is the Black­stone hedge fund. And so on and on.

    A fed­er­al bank­rupt­cy process for state finances could thus enable wealthy indi­vid­u­als and inter­est groups in rich states to lever­age their clout in the anti-majori­tar­i­an fed­er­al sys­tem to reverse polit­i­cal defeats in the more majori­tar­i­an polit­i­cal sys­tems of big, rich states like Cal­i­for­nia, New York, and Illi­nois.

    No ques­tion, many states face seri­ous prob­lems with their unfund­ed lia­bil­i­ties to state retirees. Illinois’s lia­bil­i­ty nears $140 bil­lion, and its munic­i­pal­i­ties are liable for addi­tion­al bil­lions. California’s state and local unfund­ed lia­bil­i­ties amount to $1.5 tril­lion.

    Those lia­bil­i­ties are often described as “pen­sion” lia­bil­i­ties, but they are dri­ven above all by faster-than-expect­ed increas­es in retiree health-care costs. They need to be addressed, and address­ing them will be a tough pol­i­cy chal­lenge. It will be a tough legal chal­lenge, too, since those lia­bil­i­ties are often—as in Illinois—inscribed into the state’s con­sti­tu­tion.

    Dif­fi­cult and impor­tant as these prob­lems are, they are not urgent prob­lems. They exist­ed 24 months ago; they will remain 24 months from now. From a strict­ly eco­nom­ic point of view, McConnel­l’s schemes for state bank­rupt­cy are utter­ly irrel­e­vant to the present cri­sis. Reduc­ing future pen­sion lia­bil­i­ties will not replen­ish lost rev­enues or reduce sud­den­ly crush­ing social-wel­fare bur­dens.

    But McConnell seems to be fol­low­ing the rule “Nev­er let a good cri­sis go to waste.” He’s real­is­tic enough to rec­og­nize that the pan­dem­ic prob­a­bly means the end not only of the Trump pres­i­den­cy, but of his own major­i­ty lead­er­ship. He’s got until Jan­u­ary to refash­ion the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment in ways that will con­strain his suc­ces­sors. That’s what the state-bank­rupt­cy plan is all about.

    ...

    ———–

    “Why Mitch McConnell Wants States to Go Bank­rupt” by David Frum; The Atlantic; 04/25/2020

    “Cuomo’s fer­vent rebut­tal grabbed the cam­eras. It did not set­tle the issue. State bank­rupt­cy is not some pass­ing fan­cy. Repub­li­cans have been advanc­ing the idea for more than a decade. Back in 2011, Jeb Bush and Newt Gin­grich pub­lished a joint­ly bylined op-ed advo­cat­ing state bank­rupt­cy as a solu­tion for the state of Cal­i­for­nia. The Tea Par­ty Con­gress elect­ed in 2010 explored the idea of state bank­rupt­cy in House hear­ings and Sen­ate debates. Newt Gin­grich pro­mot­ed it it in his run for the 2012 Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion.”

    State bank­rupt­cy isn’t all of a sud­den on Mitch McConnel­l’s mind as a result of the COVID mega-cri­sis. The GOP has been talk­ing about this for over a decade. And it’s no mys­tery why. It’s the ulti­mate pow­er play: using the GOP’s cap­ture of the fed­er­al courts to impose far right poli­cies on Demo­c­ra­t­ic states:

    ...
    To under­stand why Repub­li­cans want state bank­rupt­cy, it’s nec­es­sary to under­stand what bank­rupt­cy is—and what it is not.

    A bank­rupt­cy is not a default. States have default­ed on their debts before; that is not new. Arkansas default­ed in the depres­sion year of 1933. Eight states default­ed on canal and rail­way debt with­in a sin­gle year, 1841. The Four­teenth Amend­ment required for­mer Con­fed­er­ate states to repu­di­ate their Civ­il War debts.

    A default is a sov­er­eign act. A default­ing sov­er­eign can decide for itself which—if any—debts to pay in full, which to repay in part, which debts to not pay at all.

    Bank­rupt­cy, by con­trast, is a legal process in which a judge decides which debts will be paid, in what order, and in what amount. Under the Con­sti­tu­tion, bank­rupt­cy is a pow­er entire­ly reserved to the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. An Amer­i­can bank­rupt­cy is over­seen in fed­er­al court, by a fed­er­al judge, accord­ing to fed­er­al law. That’s why fed­er­al law can allow U.S. cities to go bank­rupt, as many have done over the years. That’s why the finan­cial restruc­tur­ing of Puer­to Rico can be over­seen by a fed­er­al con­trol board. Cities and ter­ri­to­ries are not sov­er­eigns. Under the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion, U.S. states are.

    ...

    Sec­ond, Con­gress is dom­i­nat­ed by Repub­li­cans. Repub­li­cans con­trolled the House for eight of the last 10 years; the Sen­ate for six. Because of the Repub­li­can hold on the Sen­ate, the fed­er­al judi­cia­ry has like­wise shift­ed in con­ser­v­a­tive and Repub­li­can direc­tions.

    A state bank­rupt­cy process would thus enable a Repub­li­can Par­ty based in the poor­er states to use its fed­er­al ascen­dan­cy to impose its pri­or­i­ties upon the bud­gets of the rich­er states.

    When Cuo­mo protest­ed McConnell’s bank­rupt­cy idea, the New York gov­er­nor raised the risk of chaos in finan­cial mar­kets. But McConnell does not advo­cate state bank­rupt­cy in order to sub­ject state bond­hold­ers to hard­ship. Obvi­ous­ly not! When McConnell spoke to Hewitt about fis­cal­ly trou­bled states, he did not address their bond debt. He addressed their pen­sion debt. State bank­rupt­cy is a project to shift hard­ship onto pen­sion­ers while pro­tect­ing bondholders—and, even more than bond­hold­ers, tax­pay­ers.
    ...

    And notice how this bank­rupt­cy loop­hole for impos­ing far right poli­cies on Demo­c­ra­t­ic states makes it even more prof­itable for ‘Blue state’ mega-donors to invest­ment in GOP Sen­ate races nation­al­ly. There were already plen­ty of oth­er incen­tives but if a wave ‘Blue state’ bank­rupt­cies was some­thing the GOP has been plan­ning on for a while now that would make nation­al inter-state large cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions even more ben­e­fi­cial in the end for those Blue state mega-donors. But only if the Blue states do go bank­rupt:

    ...
    Unit­ed States sen­a­tors from small­er, poor­er red states do not only rep­re­sent their states. Often, they do not even pri­mar­i­ly rep­re­sent their states. They rep­re­sent, more often, the rich­est peo­ple in big­ger, rich­er blue States who find it more eco­nom­i­cal to invest in less expen­sive small-state races. The biggest con­trib­u­tor to Mitch McConnell’s 2020 cam­paign and lead­er­ship com­mit­tee is a PAC head­quar­tered in Engle­wood, New Jer­sey. The sec­ond is a con­duit for funds from real-estate investors. The third is the tobac­co com­pa­ny Altria. The fourth is the par­cel deliv­ery ser­vice UPS. The fifth is the Eli Lil­ly phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal cor­po­ra­tion. The sixth is the home health-care com­pa­ny, LHC Group. The sev­enth is the Black­stone hedge fund. And so on and on.

    A fed­er­al bank­rupt­cy process for state finances could thus enable wealthy indi­vid­u­als and inter­est groups in rich states to lever­age their clout in the anti-majori­tar­i­an fed­er­al sys­tem to reverse polit­i­cal defeats in the more majori­tar­i­an polit­i­cal sys­tems of big, rich states like Cal­i­for­nia, New York, and Illi­nois.
    ...

    And since the ‘Blue states’ tend to be the wealth­i­est states you can be assured there’s going to be a con­cen­tra­tion of fas­cist mil­lion­aires and bil­lion­aires in those states. That’s where the mon­ey is. So as the ‘Blue states’ face the prospects of COVID-induced state bank­rupt­cies it’s going to be even more tempt­ing for Blue state mega-donors to invest in GOP sen­ate races nation­al­ly as the grand prize of over­haul­ing their home state’s poli­cies via in the fed­er­al bank­rupt­cy courts looms large. The stars are aligned for far right grand plays like the gut­ting of state pen­sions and every oth­er aus­ter­i­ty pol­i­cy that would be imposed on states in GOP-dom­i­nat­ed fed­er­al courts.

    It’s all a reminder that the Repub­li­can Par­ty isn’t the par­ty of the ‘Red States’. It’s the par­ty of all the states...specifically the fas­cist bil­lion­aires in all the states. Each race is a nation­al effort. Along with all the inter­na­tion­al fas­cists who are no doubt mak­ing dark mon­ey invest­ments in all of these races too. Thanks to the dark mon­ey sys­tem the GOP gets to be an extra ‘big tent’ par­ty, geo­graph­i­cal­ly. That’s long been the case and now there’s a new big rea­son for new rea­son for Blue state mega-donors to invest in Red state sen­ate races: so they can cut their tax­es by send­ing their states to fed­er­al bank­rupt­cy court and gut­ting pen­sions and oth­er pro­grams.

    It’s ‘Democ­ra­cy in Action’ 2020-Amer­i­can oli­garch style. Bil­lion­aire ‘Democ­ra­cy in Action’ that strong­ly resem­bles a hos­tile takeover. And a shake­down. It’s a hor­ri­ble style.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | May 2, 2020, 9:07 pm
  14. There was a recent arti­cle about the dona­tions to pro-Trump and pro-Biden super PACs over the past cou­ple of months that includes a fun fact that points to some­thing gen­er­al­ly over­looked in US pol­i­tics: When Richard Mel­lon Scaife died in 2014 that did­n’t mean there was an end to Mel­lon fam­i­ly patron­age of right-wing pol­i­tics. Bil­lion­aire Tim­o­thy Mel­lon, who owns a rail­road empire with a his­to­ry of spar­ring with Amtrak, has been mak­ing sub­stan­tial con­tri­bu­tions to the Repub­li­can par­ty for years. Like Scaife, Tim­o­thy Mel­lon is fre­quent­ly described as a “recluse”. But don’t call him that. He once sued a jour­nal­ist for call­ing him reclu­sive but lost the case. And in April, it was Tim­o­thy Mel­lon’s dona­tion that com­prised almost all of the mon­ey raised by the pro-Trump super PAC, Amer­i­ca First Action. Amer­i­ca First Action tech­ni­cal­ly isn’t run direct­ly by Trump’s cam­paign but it’s close­ly algined.

    As the fol­low­ing Wash­ing­ton Post arti­cle describes, of the $11.6 mil­lion in dona­tions to the pro-Trump super PAC, Amer­i­ca First Action, in April, $10 mil­lion of it came from Tim Mel­lon. It’s described as Mel­lon’s first major con­tri­bu­tion to Trump’s reelec­tion efforts. Recall how Amer­i­ca First Action was involved with #UkraineGate because it was Lev Par­nas’s and Igor Fru­man’s $325,000 in dona­tions to the super PAC that allowed them to meet Trump. Those din­ners Trump had with Amer­i­ca First large donors is part of what made the dona­tions ille­gal because super PACs aren’t sup­posed to coor­di­nate direct­ly with the can­di­date’s cam­paign. Trump him­self attend­ing a din­ner for donors to the PAC is a clear vio­la­tion of those rules. And that’s where he met Par­nas and Fru­man. So if $325,000 in dona­tions got Par­nas and Fru­man invit­ed to a group din­ner with Trump before becom­ing co-con­spir­a­tors in shak­ing down Ukraine, you have to won­der what Mel­lon’s $10 mil­lion dona­tion in April got him. $10 mil­lion dur­ing a month when almost no one else was con­tri­bu­tion appar­ent­ly. What kind of spe­cial event with Trump do you get out of that? Air Force One? What’s the quo on $10 mil­lion quid?

    Inter­est­ing­ly, Mel­lon donat­ed the max­i­mum $2,800 to Tul­si Gab­bard dur­ing the 2020 Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry sea­son. In 2018, Mel­lon donat­ed $10 mil­lion to Repub­li­cans and $2,700 to Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez. It’s hard to know how to inter­pret mak­ing the max­i­mum per­son­al dona­tions to Gab­bard and AOC. At a min­i­mum it’s trolling. The ques­tion is whether or not it’s the kind of trolling that indi­cates he’s the type of Repub­li­can mega-donor who likes to get involved in Demo­c­ra­t­ic races or oth­er sorts of dirty-tricks oper­a­tions. Keep in mind that 2020 is bound to be one of the dirt­i­est in US his­to­ry and Trump’s reelec­tion cam­paign is large­ly going to rely on dirty trick. That’s part of what makes this $10 mil­lion dona­tion by Mel­lon so note­wor­thy.

    Anoth­er $1 mil­lion of that $11.6 mil­lion came from Jef­frey Sprech­er, chair­man of the New York Stock Exchange who hap­pens to be mar­ried to Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor Kel­ly Loef­fler. Loef­fler is, of course, one of the Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors cur­rent­ly under scruti­ny for insid­er-trad­ing after it was dis­cov­ered she start­ed sell­ing off her stock port­fo­lio on the same day she and oth­er sen­a­tors were briefed by the White House on the state of the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic. It’s a dif­fer­ent kind of dirty trick. The arti­cle notes that Sprech­er was on a con­fer­ence call with Trump and Vice Pres­i­dent Pence for some of Wall Streets lead­ers to dis­cuss the impact of the pan­dem­ic of the virus in March. So the Loeffler/Sprecher house­hold has had quite a few insid­er tips about the direc­tion of the econ­o­my.

    So of the $11.6 mil­lion tak­en in by one of he main pro-Trump super PACs in April, 9% came from the chair­man of the New York Stock Exchange who also hap­pens to be hus­band a GOP Sen­a­tor under inves­ti­ga­tion for engag­ing in covid-relat­ed insid­er-trad­ing and 86% came from Tim­o­thy Mel­lon. Are dona­tions typ­i­cal­ly that con­cen­trat­ed in a hand­ful of major donors each month or is this a reflec­tion of the pan­dem­ic chang­ing nor­mal donor pat­terns? Biden’s cam­paign appears to have tak­en in much less in dona­tions in April.

    Final­ly, we’re also told that the super PAC paid an unusu­al­ly large $1.3 mil­lion in legal fees in April asso­ci­at­ed with the inves­ti­ga­tion of the ille­gal dona­tions made by Lev Par­nas and Igor Fru­man that bought their way into Trump’s orbit and paved the way for their involve­ment in #UkraineGate. Are new legal issues brew­ing on that front? Either way, Amer­i­ca First Action clear­ly has the cash to spare on any future legal bills thanks to Repub­li­can mega-donor Tim Mel­lon:

    The Wash­ing­ton Post

    Pro-Trump super PAC spent $1.3 mil­lion on legal fees in April, an unusu­al­ly high amount for a super PAC
    Amer­i­ca First Action spent more than half of its oper­at­ing expens­es on legal fees, new fil­ings show

    By Michelle Ye Hee Lee and Anu Narayan­swamy
    May 21, 2020 at 12:38 a.m. CDT

    Pro-Trump super PAC Amer­i­ca First Action poured more than half of its oper­at­ing costs into legal fees last month, spend­ing $1.3 mil­lion on legal con­sult­ing — an unusu­al­ly high amount for a super PAC.

    The pay­ments were made pub­lic Wednes­day night in new Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion fil­ings, and the reports do not dis­close detailed rea­sons for each legal pay­ment. By com­par­i­son, the group paid about $450,000 in legal fees in the first three months of 2020 com­bined, fil­ings show.

    In a high-pro­file case last fall, the Jus­tice Depart­ment inves­ti­gat­ed dona­tions made to the super PAC by Lev Par­nas and Igor Fru­man, two asso­ciates of Rudolph W. Giu­liani who were accused of con­spir­a­cy and mak­ing false state­ments to the FEC. Par­nas and Fru­man have plead­ed not guilty.

    Amer­i­ca First Action has said it fol­lows the law and had reached out to fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tors, offer­ing to coop­er­ate vol­un­tar­i­ly with the inves­ti­ga­tion by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the South­ern Dis­trict of New York. The super PAC did not imme­di­ate­ly respond to a request for com­ment Wednes­day night.

    In Octo­ber, the Jus­tice Depart­ment charged that Par­nas and Fru­man dis­guised the source of a $325,000 dona­tion to the super PAC by giv­ing the mon­ey under the name of a com­pa­ny that inves­ti­ga­tors said was used as a front to dis­guise the funds’ true source. The 2018 dona­tion was made in the name of Glob­al Ener­gy Pro­duc­ers (GEP), a pur­port­ed liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas com­pa­ny that the two men con­trolled.

    Fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tors were explor­ing a wide range of poten­tial crimes involv­ing the pair’s inter­ac­tions with the president’s per­son­al lawyer and the super PAC, includ­ing wire fraud and fail­ure to reg­is­ter as a for­eign agent, The Wash­ing­ton Post report­ed in Novem­ber.

    Among Amer­i­ca First Action’s biggest legal pay­ments last month were to Texas-based tri­al lawyer Daniel Hagood and Molo­Lamken, a D.C. law firm han­dling com­plex lit­i­ga­tion, fil­ings show.

    In April, Amer­i­ca First Action raised near­ly $11.6 mil­lion, the vast major­i­ty of it com­ing from a sin­gle donor: a $10 mil­lion dona­tion by Tim­o­thy Mel­lon, the chair­man of Pan Am Sys­tems, a New Hamp­shire-based trans­porta­tion com­pa­ny and a long­time GOP donor.

    The April dona­tion by Mel­lon, an investor in Wyoming who has giv­en heav­i­ly to Repub­li­cans, was one of his first promi­nent con­tri­bu­tions to Pres­i­dent Trump’s reelec­tion effort. In the 2020 pres­i­den­tial pri­maries, Mel­lon pre­vi­ous­ly gave the max­i­mum dona­tion of $2,800 in sup­port of the White House bid of Rep. Tul­si Gab­bard (D‑Hawaii). In 2018, Mel­lon also gave a dona­tion to now-Rep. Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez (D‑N.Y.).

    Anoth­er $1 mil­lion came in April from Jef­frey Sprech­er, chair­man of the New York Stock Exchange. He is mar­ried to Sen. Kel­ly Loef­fler ®, who has been fac­ing crit­i­cism after she sold mil­lions of dol­lars in stock fol­low­ing a closed-door Sen­ate ses­sion about the nov­el coro­n­avirus.

    Sprech­er has been a not­ed Wall Street fig­ure amid the eco­nom­ic tur­moil sparked by the pan­dem­ic. In late March, he par­tic­i­pat­ed in a call with Trump and Vice Pres­i­dent Pence that was arranged for some of the most promi­nent Wall Street lead­ers, to dis­cuss the impact of the virus on the econ­o­my, accord­ing to peo­ple famil­iar with the call.

    On the Demo­c­ra­t­ic side, the super PACs sup­port­ing pre­sump­tive pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee Joe Biden strug­gled to keep up with their fundrais­ing pace in April, after stay-at-home orders over the coro­n­avirus halt­ed major cam­paign fundrais­ing efforts for a few weeks.

    Pri­or­i­ties USA Action, the main Demo­c­ra­t­ic super PAC back­ing the for­mer vice pres­i­dent, raised $2.9 mil­lion in April — less than the $4 mil­lion it raised in March. The biggest con­tri­bu­tion to the super PAC in April was a $1.7 mil­lion trans­fer from the group’s non­prof­it arm that does not dis­close its donors, fil­ings show.

    Unite the Coun­try, a super PAC back­ing Biden, raised about $723,000, com­pared with the $10 mil­lion in March when the group gen­er­at­ed a flur­ry of dona­tions as Biden cleared a path to the nom­i­na­tion. The group said that it has been wary of fundrais­ing while Amer­i­cans are suf­fer­ing dur­ing the pan­dem­ic and that it was cog­nizant of efforts by the Biden cam­paign and the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty to strike a deal in April to allow wealthy donors to give six fig­ures in sup­port of Biden.

    ...

    ————

    “Pro-Trump super PAC spent $1.3 mil­lion on legal fees in April, an unusu­al­ly high amount for a super PAC” by Michelle Ye Hee Lee and Anu Narayan­swamy; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 05/21/2020

    Fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tors were explor­ing a wide range of poten­tial crimes involv­ing the pair’s inter­ac­tions with the president’s per­son­al lawyer and the super PAC, includ­ing wire fraud and fail­ure to reg­is­ter as a for­eign agent, The Wash­ing­ton Post report­ed in Novem­ber.”

    Yep, Amer­i­ca First Action has a lot on its plate. Not only does it need to wage a dark mon­ey pro­pa­gan­da bat­tle but it also needs to fight a legal defense relat­ed to the Par­nas and Fru­man dona­tions. Dona­tions that bought their way into Trump’s inner-cir­cle and helped grease the cor­rupt wheels end­ed up merg­ing the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s shake­down of the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment over inves­ti­gat­ing Joe Biden with Par­nas and Fru­man’s scheme to take over the Ukraine nat­ur­al gas sec­tor. It’s as if Amer­i­ca First Action was run­ning a cor­rup­tion match-mak­er ser­vice for the Trump admin­is­tra­tion.

    But that $1.3 mil­lion on legal defense spend­ing was dwarfed by the $10 mil­lion from long­time GOP donor Tim­o­thy Mel­lon. It’s report­ed­ly one of his first promi­nent con­tri­bu­tions to Trump’s reelec­tion effort which sug­gests the expec­ta­tions are that he’s going mak­ing a lot more dona­tions major dona­tions. But it’s Mel­lon’s pre­vi­ous dona­tions to Democ­rats Tul­si Gab­bard and Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez that that are per­haps more inter­est­ing sim­ply because it indi­cates an inter­est in spend­ing on polit­i­cal dirty tricks. What type of dirty tricks spend­ing has Mel­lon been up to? Well, thanks to Amer­i­ca’s dark mon­ey sys­tem we don’t get to know. Just because we’ve learned about this $10 mil­lion dona­tion to Amer­i­ca First Action does­n’t mean we nec­es­sar­i­ly get to know about all all of Mel­lon’s polit­i­cal expen­di­tures. There could be all sorts of dona­tions to 501©4s orga­ni­za­tions or super PACs that received mon­ey from Mel­lon for all sorts of rea­sons that he can keep hid­den if he wants. Because that’s how Amer­i­ca’s dark mon­ey sys­tem works:

    ...
    In April, Amer­i­ca First Action raised near­ly $11.6 mil­lion, the vast major­i­ty of it com­ing from a sin­gle donor: a $10 mil­lion dona­tion by Tim­o­thy Mel­lon, the chair­man of Pan Am Sys­tems, a New Hamp­shire-based trans­porta­tion com­pa­ny and a long­time GOP donor.

    The April dona­tion by Mel­lon, an investor in Wyoming who has giv­en heav­i­ly to Repub­li­cans, was one of his first promi­nent con­tri­bu­tions to Pres­i­dent Trump’s reelec­tion effort. In the 2020 pres­i­den­tial pri­maries, Mel­lon pre­vi­ous­ly gave the max­i­mum dona­tion of $2,800 in sup­port of the White House bid of Rep. Tul­si Gab­bard (D‑Hawaii). In 2018, Mel­lon also gave a dona­tion to now-Rep. Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez (D‑N.Y.).
    ...

    So Tim­o­thy Mel­lon should clear­ly be rec­og­nized as a major Repub­li­can donor who is going to be play­ing a role in 2020. How big a role? Again, we don’t real­ly ever get to know.

    And then there’s $1 mil­lion from the hus­band of the GOP sen­a­tor fac­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion over insid­er-trad­ing:

    ...
    Anoth­er $1 mil­lion came in April from Jef­frey Sprech­er, chair­man of the New York Stock Exchange. He is mar­ried to Sen. Kel­ly Loef­fler ®, who has been fac­ing crit­i­cism after she sold mil­lions of dol­lars in stock fol­low­ing a closed-door Sen­ate ses­sion about the nov­el coro­n­avirus.

    Sprech­er has been a not­ed Wall Street fig­ure amid the eco­nom­ic tur­moil sparked by the pan­dem­ic. In late March, he par­tic­i­pat­ed in a call with Trump and Vice Pres­i­dent Pence that was arranged for some of the most promi­nent Wall Street lead­ers, to dis­cuss the impact of the virus on the econ­o­my, accord­ing to peo­ple famil­iar with the call.
    ...

    What’s the quo for that quid? Sen­a­tor Loef­fler has already had to hand over finan­cial doc­u­ments to Jus­tice Depart­ment inves­ti­ga­tors so there’s no doubt plen­ty of stuff Sprech­er would have to dis­cuss with Trump if he ever got the oppor­tu­ni­ty. Did he get that oppor­tu­ni­ty? $1 mil­lion to Amer­i­ca First Action should get you din­ner with Trump, right? Lev Par­nas and Igor Fru­man became co-con­spir­a­tors with Trump and Rudy Giu­liani after mak­ing just $325,000 in dona­tions in Amer­i­ca First Action and get­ting to whis­per in Trump’s ear over din­ner. So $1 mil­lion would have you get you din­ner with Trump too, right? At least assum­ing Trump is still bla­tant­ly coor­di­nat­ing with the super PAC by hav­ing din­ner with large donors. Is he still doing that? Secret donor din­ners? We don’t know but there were nev­er any appar­ent con­se­quences for Trump hav­ing those din­ners with Par­nas and Fru­man that were clear­ly in vio­la­tion of cam­paign finance law. So it’s hard to see what Trump would stop doing what he was already doing if he was­n’t forced to stop before. He’s Trump. There are no con­se­quences to what he does so why would he stop? That’s why we should prob­a­bly assume he’s still giv­ing secret din­ners with large Amer­i­ca First Action donors. Maybe that super PAC is like the place you donate to if you want to talk with Trump in a pri­vate set­ting and the pri­vate din­ners with Trump are just assumed for donors over a cer­tain thresh­old. So, again, what does a $1 mil­lion or $10 mil­lion dona­tion to this super PAC get you? Din­ner and a movie at least, right?

    What’s the quo for that quid? What’s the going rate for a Trump par­don? Sen­a­tor Loef­fler has already had to hand over finan­cial doc­u­ments to Jus­tice Depart­ment inves­ti­ga­tors so there’s no doubt plen­ty of stuff Sprech­er would have to dis­cuss with Trump if he ever got the oppor­tu­ni­ty. Did he get that oppor­tu­ni­ty? $1 mil­lion to Amer­i­ca First Action should get you din­ner with Trump, right? Lev Par­nas and Igor Fru­man became co-con­spir­a­tors with Trump and Rudy Giu­liani after mak­ing just $325,000 in dona­tions in Amer­i­ca First Action and get­ting to whis­per in Trump’s ear over din­ner. So $1 mil­lion would have you get you din­ner with Trump too, right? At least assum­ing Trump is still bla­tant­ly coor­di­nat­ing with the super PAC by hav­ing din­ner with large donors. Is he still doing that? Secret donor din­ners? We don’t know but there were nev­er any appar­ent con­se­quences for Trump hav­ing those din­ners with Par­nas and Fru­man that were clear­ly in vio­la­tion of cam­paign finance law. So it’s hard to see what Trump would stop doing what he was already doing if he was­n’t forced to stop before. He’s Trump. There are no con­se­quences to what he does so why would he stop? That’s why we should prob­a­bly assume he’s still giv­ing secret din­ners with large Amer­i­ca First Action donors. Maybe that super PAC is like the place you donate to if you want to talk with Trump in a pri­vate set­ting and the pri­vate din­ners with Trump are just assumed for donors over a cer­tain thresh­old. So, again, what does a $1 mil­lion or $10 mil­lion dona­tion to this super PAC get you? Din­ner and a movie at least, right?

    What­ev­er that quo hap­pens to be, Tim­o­thy Mel­lon is clear­ly going to get a major ver­sion of it from the Trump White House in exchange for a dona­tion of that size to this clear­ly Trump-con­nect­ed super PAC. And that dona­tion is like­ly just the first to Trump from Mel­lon this year. He’s mak­ing a big invest­ment in Trump and he’s expect­ing a return on that invest­ment. A return that’s pre­sum­ably more than just din­ner and a movie.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | May 25, 2020, 1:14 am
  15. The Office of the Direc­tor of Nation­al Intel­li­gence (ODNI) just issued a sur­prise announce­ment regard­ing for­eign elec­tion inter­fer­ence. A not very sur­pris­ing sur­prise announce­ment: The Direc­tor of Nation­al Intel­li­gence John Rat­cliffe will no longer be giv­ing in-per­son brief­in­gs to Con­gress about for­eign elec­tion inter­fer­ence.

    Why the sud­den move? Well, as the fol­low­ing arti­cle notes, one obvi­ous rea­son would be that the White House wants to avoid sub­ject­ing ODNI staff to kind of direct back and forth scruti­ny that led to the pre­vi­ous Direc­tors of Nation­al Intel­li­gence, notably Joseph Maguire, get­ting fired by Trump back in Feb­ru­ary fol­low­ing reports that Trump became livid with Maguire after ODNI staffers informed House law­mak­ers that Rus­sia was try­ing to fix the elec­tion to ensure Trump’s vic­to­ry in Novem­ber.

    The Trump him­self pro­vid­ed a dif­fer­ent expla­na­tion: stop­ping leaks. Trump was appar­ent­ly very upset about leaks from past ODNI Con­gres­sion­al brief­in­gs, telling reporters, “So, he wants to do it in a dif­fer­ent form because you have leak­ers on the com­mit­tee, obvi­ous­ly, leak­ers that are doing bad things, prob­a­bly not even legal to leak, but we’ll look into that sep­a­rate­ly”. It’s not clear why pro­vid­ing writ­ten answers instead of in-per­son answers will help stop leaks. If any­thing, hav­ing writ­ten doc­u­ments kinds of makes leak­ing eas­i­er. The doc­u­ments are all ready for leak­ing. Although lim­it­ing the brief­in­gs to writ­ten reports would stop leaks in the sense that writ­ten answers slow down the process of ask­ing ques­tions and get­ting leak-wor­thy answers.

    As the fol­low­ing arti­cle notes, the most to end in-per­son brief­in­gs also fol­lowed and intel­li­gence report say­ing Chi­na, Rus­sia, and Iran are seek­ing to inter­fere in the 2020 elec­tion. And of course there con­tin­ues to be no men­tion at all of the actu­al estab­lished for­eign elec­tion attempt from 2016 ema­nat­ing from the UAE, Sau­di Ara­bia, and like­ly Israel via the “Psy­Group” offer made to the Trump cam­paign on behalf of the Sau­di and UAE gov­ern­ments by Erik Prince and George Nad­er. That entire estab­lished chap­ter of for­eign elec­tion inter­fer­ence con­tin­ues to be sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly ignored four years lat­er and thanks to these new rules on con­gres­sion­al brief­in­gs it will be that much eas­i­er to ignore it:

    CNN

    Top intel­li­gence office informs con­gres­sion­al com­mit­tees it’ll no longer brief in-per­son on elec­tion secu­ri­ty

    By Jake Tap­per and Zachary Cohen, CNN
    Updat­ed 10:04 PM ET, Sat August 29, 2020

    (CNN)The Office of the Direc­tor of Nation­al Intel­li­gence has informed the House and Sen­ate Select Com­mit­tees on Intel­li­gence that it’ll no longer be brief­ing in-per­son on elec­tion secu­ri­ty issues, accord­ing to let­ters obtained by CNN. Instead, ODNI will pri­mar­i­ly pro­vide writ­ten updates to the con­gres­sion­al pan­els, a senior admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial said.

    The offi­cial added that oth­er agen­cies sup­port­ing elec­tion secu­ri­ty, includ­ing the Depart­ment of Jus­tice, Depart­ment of Defense and Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty, intend to con­tin­ue brief­ing Con­gress.

    Still, the abrupt announce­ment is a change that runs counter to the pledge of trans­paren­cy and reg­u­lar brief­in­gs on elec­tion threats by the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty.

    It also comes after the top intel­li­gence offi­cial on elec­tion secu­ri­ty issued a state­ment ear­li­er this month say­ing Chi­na, Rus­sia and Iran are seek­ing to inter­fere in the 2020 US elec­tion, a warn­ing that prompt­ed some back­lash from Democ­rats on Capi­tol Hill who have con­tin­ued to push for the pub­lic release of more infor­ma­tion about the nature of those efforts.

    US offi­cials charged with pro­tect­ing the 2020 elec­tion also said last week that they have “no infor­ma­tion or intel­li­gence” for­eign coun­tries, includ­ing Rus­sia, are attempt­ing to under­mine any part of the mail-in vot­ing process, con­tra­dict­ing Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, who has repeat­ed­ly pushed false claims that for­eign adver­saries are tar­get­ing mail bal­lots as part of a “rigged” pres­i­den­tial race.

    Specif­i­cal­ly, a senior intel­li­gence offi­cial dis­count­ed the pos­si­bil­i­ty of for­eign actors mass pro­duc­ing fake bal­lots to inter­fere in the Novem­ber elec­tions, again break­ing with Trump who has con­tin­ued to insist that mail-in vot­ing pos­es a sig­nif­i­cant threat to elec­tion secu­ri­ty.

    “We have no infor­ma­tion or intel­li­gence that any nation state threat actor is engag­ing in activ­i­ty ... to under­mine any part of the mail-in vote or bal­lots,” the offi­cial told reporters on Wednes­day.

    Trump said Sat­ur­day that Direc­tor of Nation­al Intel­li­gence John Rat­cliffe “got tired of” infor­ma­tion leak­ing “so, he wants to do it in a dif­fer­ent form.”

    “Direc­tor Rat­cliffe brought infor­ma­tion into the com­mit­tee, and the infor­ma­tion leaked,” Trump said at an event in Texas.

    “So, he wants to do it in a dif­fer­ent form because you have leak­ers on the com­mit­tee, obvi­ous­ly, leak­ers that are doing bad things, prob­a­bly not even legal to leak, but we’ll look into that sep­a­rate­ly,” Trump said.

    In response to Trump’s accu­sa­tions about leaks, House Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee Chair­man Adam Schiff tweet­ed, “As usu­al, Pres­i­dent Trump is lying and pro­ject­ing. Trump fired the last DNI for brief­ing Con­gress on Russ­ian efforts to help his cam­paign. Now he’s end­ing brief­in­gs alto­geth­er. Trump does­n’t want the Amer­i­can peo­ple to know about Rus­si­a’s efforts to aid his re-elec­tion.”

    ...

    Frus­tra­tion over leaks

    Intel­li­gence offi­cials have pre­vi­ous­ly expressed frus­tra­tion over infor­ma­tion pre­sent­ed in clas­si­fied ses­sions with con­gres­sion­al com­mit­tees leak­ing to the press but offered no indi­ca­tion of a com­ing change to the brief­ing for­mat.

    “In an elec­tion year, we rec­og­nize that no mat­ter what the U.S. Intel­li­gence Com­mu­ni­ty says on this issue, it will be parsed, spun and like­ly crit­i­cized in the U.S. polit­i­cal ecosys­tem. The bot­tom line is that this rep­re­sents the most cur­rent, accu­rate and objec­tive elec­tion threat infor­ma­tion the Intel­li­gence Com­mu­ni­ty has to offer the pub­lic at this time,” an ODNI offi­cial told CNN ear­li­er this month.

    “The steps we have tak­en thus far to inform the pub­lic and oth­er key stake­hold­ers on threats to the elec­tion ... are unprece­dent­ed for the Intel­li­gence Com­mu­ni­ty. We will con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing elec­tion threat updates to the Amer­i­can pub­lic, the pres­i­den­tial cam­paigns, polit­i­cal com­mit­tees, and mem­bers of Con­gress,” the ODNI offi­cial added.

    Last month, the top intel­li­gence offi­cial for elec­tion secu­ri­ty, Bill Evan­i­na, also reit­er­at­ed a com­mit­ment to pro­vid­ing “robust intel­li­gence-based brief­in­gs on elec­tion secu­ri­ty” to key stake­hold­ers that include Con­gress, along with the polit­i­cal par­ties and pres­i­den­tial cam­paigns.

    A shift to writ­ten brief­in­gs will undoubt­ed­ly lim­it law­mak­ers’ abil­i­ty to ask ques­tions of intel­li­gence offi­cials in real time, accord­ing to for­mer Direc­tor of Nation­al Intel­li­gence James Clap­per.

    “With a writ­ten release or a writ­ten report, you avoid the back-and-forth of ques­tions, some of which could be quite prob­ing. And I think, I think the DNI would like to avoid that and avoid the risk of say­ing some­thing that might incur the wrath of the Pres­i­dent,” Clap­per said on Sat­ur­day.

    “I think this is a ter­ri­ble thing with respect to the need to inform the elec­torate about what for­eign nations are doing to inter­fere in our polit­i­cal process, most notably the Rus­sians,” added Clap­per, a CNN con­trib­u­tor.

    CNN has reached out to com­mit­tee offi­cials for com­ment.

    Intel­li­gence offi­cials warned Rus­sia seek­ing to ‘den­i­grate’ Biden

    Ear­li­er this month, Evan­i­na released an unprece­dent­ed state­ment say­ing Chi­na “prefers” an out­come where Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump is not reelect­ed in Novem­ber and Rus­sia is work­ing to “den­i­grate” Biden’s White House bid.

    “We assess that Chi­na prefers that Pres­i­dent Trump — whom Bei­jing sees as unpre­dictable — does not win reelec­tion,” he wrote. “Chi­na has been expand­ing its influ­ence efforts ahead of Novem­ber 2020 to shape the pol­i­cy envi­ron­ment in the Unit­ed States, pres­sure polit­i­cal fig­ures it views as opposed to Chi­na’s inter­ests, and deflect and counter crit­i­cism of Chi­na.”

    “We assess that Rus­sia is using a range of mea­sures to pri­mar­i­ly den­i­grate for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Biden and what it sees as an anti-Rus­sia ‘estab­lish­ment.’ This is con­sis­tent with Moscow’s pub­lic crit­i­cism of him when he was Vice Pres­i­dent for his role in the Oba­ma Admin­is­tra­tion’s poli­cies on Ukraine and its sup­port for the anti-Putin oppo­si­tion inside Rus­sia,” Evan­i­na added.

    Evan­i­na also stat­ed that Iran is seek­ing to “under­mine US demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions, Pres­i­dent Trump, and to divide the coun­try.”

    At the time, Pelosi and Schiff said Evan­i­na’s state­ment improved on the pre­vi­ous warn­ing about for­eign elec­tion inter­fer­ence he issued in July, but “still treats three actors of dif­fer­ing intent and capa­bil­i­ty as equal threats to our demo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tions.”

    In a joint state­ment, the top Repub­li­can and Demo­c­rat on the Sen­ate Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee, Rubio and Warn­er, thanked Evan­i­na for pro­vid­ing the addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion about the threats and encour­aged the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty to “con­tin­ue to make this infor­ma­tion avail­able.”

    ————

    “Top intel­li­gence office informs con­gres­sion­al com­mit­tees it’ll no longer brief in-per­son on elec­tion secu­ri­ty” by Jake Tap­per and Zachary Cohen; CNN; 08/29/2020

    ““With a writ­ten release or a writ­ten report, you avoid the back-and-forth of ques­tions, some of which could be quite prob­ing. And I think, I think the DNI would like to avoid that and avoid the risk of say­ing some­thing that might incur the wrath of the Pres­i­dent,” Clap­per said on Sat­ur­day.”

    The move may not avoid leaks, but it does avoid back-and-forth ques­tions. And that’s real­ly the only thing the move pre­vents since writ­ten answers can obvi­ous­ly be leaked any­way. So there’s clear­ly some back-and-forth ques­tions the White House would real­ly like to avoid. Or rather, con­tin­ue avoid­ing. Because as the fol­low­ing TPM piece from back in March reminds us, they ditched these in-per­son meet­ings after Joseph Maguire was fired, a fir­ing that was prompt­ed by Trump’s anger over the answers ODNI staffers gave dur­ing an in-per­son brief­ing. So the return of in-per­son meet­ings is clear­ly irk­ing the White House once again, which rais­es the ques­tion of which con­gres­sion­al ques­tions are doing the most irk­ing:

    Talk­ing Points Memo
    News

    Act­ing DNI Ditch­es Con­gres­sion­al Brief­ing On For­eign Elec­tion Inter­fer­ence

    By Cristi­na Cabr­era
    March 10, 2020 3:19 p.m.

    Act­ing Direc­tor of Nation­al Intel­li­gence Richard Grenell chose not to appear at a con­gres­sion­al brief­ing on for­eign elec­tion med­dling on Tues­day because he report­ed­ly did not want to dis­cuss issues that make Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump angry.

    Law­mak­ers were told on Mon­day that Grenell would par­tic­i­pate in the meet­ing, accord­ing to a memo obtained by the Wash­ing­ton Post.

    Sev­er­al unnamed sources told the Post that he declined to attend the brief­ing because he feared ques­tions from Democ­rats regard­ing Russia’s efforts to med­dle in U.S. elec­tions.

    How­ev­er, an Office of the Direc­tor of Nation­al Intel­li­gence (ODNI) spokesper­son com­bat­ted the Post’s report­ing when reached by TPM. Spokes­woman Mau­ra Beard said in an emailed state­ment that the office “did not com­mu­ni­cate to Con­gress at any point” that Grenell would be there.

    The issue of Russ­ian elec­tion inter­fer­ence is an infa­mous source of rage for Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, who fre­quent­ly rails against and attempts to dis­cred­it the intel­li­gence community’s find­ings that the Krem­lin hacked the 2016 U.S. elec­tion on his behalf and plans to do so again in 2020.

    In fact, it’s what cost Grenell’s pre­de­ces­sor, Joseph Maguire, his job in Feb­ru­ary: The New York Times and Wash­ing­ton Post report­ed that Trump became livid with Maguire after ODNI staffers informed House law­mak­ers, includ­ing Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee Chair Adam Schiff (D‑CA), that Rus­sia was try­ing to fix the elec­tion to ensure Trump’s vic­to­ry in Novem­ber.

    ————

    “Act­ing DNI Ditch­es Con­gres­sion­al Brief­ing On For­eign Elec­tion Inter­fer­ence” by Cristi­na Cabr­era; Talk­ing Points Memo; 03/10/2020

    In fact, it’s what cost Grenell’s pre­de­ces­sor, Joseph Maguire, his job in Feb­ru­ary: The New York Times and Wash­ing­ton Post report­ed that Trump became livid with Maguire after ODNI staffers informed House law­mak­ers, includ­ing Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee Chair Adam Schiff (D‑CA), that Rus­sia was try­ing to fix the elec­tion to ensure Trump’s vic­to­ry in Novem­ber.”

    So the word from unnamed sources back in March was that Grenell skipped the hear­ings specif­i­cal­ly because he fear ques­tions about alleged Russ­ian inter­fer­ence efforts. Or rather, he feared Trump’s wrath over the answers he would have to give. Answers that would like­ly have to be rehash­es of the US intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty’s ongo­ing assess­ment that Rus­sia rep­re­sents the great­est threat to elec­toral interference...an ongo­ing assess­ment that con­tin­ues the cha­rade of 2016 that sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly deflect­ed atten­tion away from the real­i­ty that the Repub­li­can Par­ty and its glob­al far right allies rep­re­sent by far the great­est threat to US elec­tion inter­fer­ence and con­tin­ues the cha­rade the the vast major­i­ty of activ­i­ties attrib­uted to Rus­sia could eas­i­ly be car­ried out by a myr­i­ad of actors.

    And that threat of for­eign inter­fer­ence that extend far beyond the absur­dist Rus­sia-fix­a­tion of the US intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty is a big part of what makes the sto­ry about the ODNI’s sud­den re-refusal to con­duct in-per­son con­gres­sion­al brief­in­gs on for­eign elec­tion inter­fer­ence: con­trary to the US intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty’s strate­gic obses­sion on Rus­sia and Russ­ian inter­fer­ence, the real­i­ty is that bad actors all around the world can eas­i­ly inter­fere in US elec­tions and thanks to the open gross cor­rup­tion of Trump and the Repub­li­can Par­ty almost all of those bad actors are now heav­i­ly incen­tivized to assist Trump and the Repub­li­cans. If they’re ene­mies of the US they have an incen­tive to assist Trump and the GOP because that will help accel­er­ate the devo­lu­tion of the Unit­ed States and if they’re just oppor­tunis­tic bad actors they still have an incen­tive to assist Trump and the Repub­li­cans because that’s the pow­er fac­tion in the US most open to bla­tant cor­rup­tion. It’s open sea­son.

    Open sea­son that’s even more open thanks to a rul­ing made back in May by the Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice to cease col­lect­ing the on cam­paign finance spend­ing that could have revealed secret for­eign spend­ing. Yes, under new rules pub­lished by the IRS and Trea­sury Depart­ment in May, non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tions — includ­ing 501©4 groups — are no longer required to report the names and address­es of their donors. This is a rever­sal of decades-old rules that required orga­ni­za­tions to report the iden­ti­ties of their donors giv­ing $5,000 or more to the agency on Sched­ule B of 990 forms. Donor names and address­es were redact­ed before the records were released to the pub­lic but they were at least known by the IRS so bla­tant for­eign elec­tion inter­fer­ence could be iden­ti­fied. That pol­i­cy qui­et­ly came to an end in May, which was effec­tive­ly an open invi­ta­tion for unlim­it­ed for­eign spend­ing in the 2020 elec­tion.

    So what was the IRS’s jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for this move: They argue that the IRS was­n’t autho­rized to enforce cam­paign finance laws. Which is a lie, of course. As we’ll see in the final arti­cle excerpt below, the Fed­er­al Elec­tions Com­mis­sion (FEC) is the pri­ma­ry enti­ty in charge of over­see­ing elec­tion finance laws but the Depart­ment of Jus­tice (DOJ) and IRS are still part of the process. So the IRS basi­cal­ly invit­ed unchecked for­eign elec­tion spend­ing and jus­ti­fied it by lying about its respon­si­bil­i­ties:

    Sludge

    Trump Admin Final­izes Rule That Could Pro­tect For­eign Dark Mon­ey in Elec­tions

    The rule, which takes effect today, allows dark mon­ey non­prof­its to cease report­ing infor­ma­tion to the IRS that the gov­ern­ment would need to enforce cam­paign finance laws.

    By Don­ald Shaw
    Edit­ed by David Moore
    Pub­lished on May 28, 2020 10:08AM EDT

    Start­ing today, the Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice will cease to col­lect infor­ma­tion from polit­i­cal non­prof­its that is need­ed for the gov­ern­ment to dis­cov­er and inves­ti­gate pos­si­ble cam­paign finance vio­la­tions, such as the ille­gal fun­nel­ing of for­eign mon­ey into U.S. elec­tions.

    Under a reg­u­la­tion from the IRS and the Trea­sury Depart­ment that was pub­lished in the Fed­er­al Reg­is­ter today, non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tions, includ­ing 501(c)(4)s and 501(c)(6)s that are allowed to spend mon­ey on elec­tions with­out reveal­ing their donors, will no longer be required to report the names and address­es of their donors to the IRS. For decades, the orga­ni­za­tions had been required to report the iden­ti­ties of their donors giv­ing $5,000 or more to the agency on Sched­ule B of 990 forms, though donors’ names and address­es were redact­ed before the forms were made avail­able to the pub­lic.

    Dur­ing the rule­mak­ing process, mul­ti­ple orga­ni­za­tions filed com­ments express­ing con­cerns that the rule would make it impos­si­ble for the gov­ern­ment to detect dona­tions from enti­ties that are pro­hib­it­ed from spend­ing mon­ey on U.S. elec­tions under fed­er­al elec­tion law, includ­ing for­eign gov­ern­ments and fed­er­al con­trac­tors. The IRS and Trea­sury Depart­ment dis­miss these con­cerns in their reg­u­la­to­ry guid­ance doc­u­ment, stat­ing that the IRS is not autho­rized to enforce cam­paign finance laws and that com­menters favor­ing the change argued that enti­ties try­ing to dodge cam­paign finance laws are unlike­ly to report incrim­i­nat­ing infor­ma­tion on Sched­ule B forms any­ways.

    “For years, those oppos­ing more robust trans­paren­cy poli­cies to pre­vent for­eign­ers from fun­nel­ing mon­ey into U.S. elec­tions through 501© non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tions have shame­less­ly argued new rules are unnec­es­sary because the IRS already col­lects this infor­ma­tion,” said Mered­ith McGe­hee, exec­u­tive direc­tor of cam­paign finance watch­dog group Issue One said in a state­ment. “It is deeply con­cern­ing that many of those same orga­ni­za­tions have now helped con­vince the IRS that col­lect­ing detailed infor­ma­tion about the donors to polit­i­cal­ly active non­prof­its is unnec­es­sary, even as dark mon­ey groups pump huge sums of secret mon­ey into our elec­tions.”

    Non­prof­its that do not dis­close their donors have become a promi­nent fea­ture of the cam­paign finance land­scape since the Supreme Court ruled in Cit­i­zens Unit­ed v. Fed­er­al Elec­tions Com­mis­sion that cor­po­ra­tions and unions can spend unlim­it­ed amounts of mon­ey on pol­i­tics. In the last pres­i­den­tial elec­tion cycle, 501(c)(4) groups spent $149 mil­lion on pol­i­tics, accord­ing to the Cen­ter for Respon­sive Pol­i­tics.

    Dark mon­ey groups have been call­ing for the IRS to elim­i­nate the Sched­ule B report­ing require­ment for sev­er­al years. In 2016, Free­dom Part­ners Cham­ber of Com­merce, a 501(c)(6) that serves as a hub for the polit­i­cal net­work tied to Charles Koch, backed a bill to elim­i­nate Sched­ule B report­ing that was intro­duced in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives by for­mer Rep. Peter Roskam (R‑Ill.). The group’s chair­man Mark Hold­en, who is also gen­er­al coun­sel for Koch Indus­tries, said in a state­ment that the bill was “an impor­tant first step toward reaf­firm­ing Amer­i­cans’ right to free speech.” At the time, the Koch-affil­i­at­ed non­prof­it Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty was involved in a legal bat­tle with California’s attor­ney gen­er­al, Sen. Kamala Har­ris (D‑Calif.), who sought access to the group’s donors to ensure that it was com­ply­ing with Cal­i­for­nia laws.

    The IRS and Trea­sury Depart­ment orig­i­nal­ly pro­posed elim­i­nat­ing the Sched­ule B require­ments in 2018, but a fed­er­al judge blocked their effort because they did not fol­low a prop­er reg­u­la­to­ry rule­mak­ing process.

    Trans­paren­cy advo­cates are call­ing on Con­gress to take action to reverse the rule change. In March 2019, House Democ­rats passed the land­mark ethics pack­age, H.R. 1, which includes many pro­vi­sions of the DISCLOSE Act, designed to com­bat dark mon­ey by requir­ing cov­ered orga­ni­za­tions to file reports dis­clos­ing elec­tion spend­ing of $10,000 or more with the Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion with­in 24 hours. While the Repub­li­can-con­trolled Sen­ate is unlike­ly to take up H.R. 1 this year, the DISCLOSE Act was intro­duced as a stand­alone bill in the Sen­ate by Sen. Shel­don White­house (D‑R.I.) and the House by Rep. David Cicilline (D‑R.I.).

    ...

    ————

    “Trump Admin Final­izes Rule That Could Pro­tect For­eign Dark Mon­ey in Elec­tions” By Don­ald Shaw; Sludge; 05/28/2020

    “Dark mon­ey groups have been call­ing for the IRS to elim­i­nate the Sched­ule B report­ing require­ment for sev­er­al years. In 2016, Free­dom Part­ners Cham­ber of Com­merce, a 501(c)(6) that serves as a hub for the polit­i­cal net­work tied to Charles Koch, backed a bill to elim­i­nate Sched­ule B report­ing that was intro­duced in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives by for­mer Rep. Peter Roskam (R‑Ill.). The group’s chair­man Mark Hold­en, who is also gen­er­al coun­sel for Koch Indus­tries, said in a state­ment that the bill was “an impor­tant first step toward reaf­firm­ing Amer­i­cans’ right to free speech.” At the time, the Koch-affil­i­at­ed non­prof­it Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty was involved in a legal bat­tle with California’s attor­ney gen­er­al, Sen. Kamala Har­ris (D‑Calif.), who sought access to the group’s donors to ensure that it was com­ply­ing with Cal­i­for­nia laws.

    Score one more for the Kochto­pus. They did it. After years of efforts they’ve final­ly got­ten rid of those donor report­ing require­ments for dona­tions over $5,000. That’s why it’s impor­tant to keep in mind that while this rule change may be a major boost to Trump’s reelec­tion efforts in the short-run it also rep­re­sents the cul­mi­na­tion of a decades-long effort by the Koch mega-donor net­work to make US elec­tions as vul­ner­a­ble as pos­si­ble to secret manip­u­la­tion by the super-rich. And now that includes secret manip­u­la­tion by the glob­al super-rich. It’s a par­ty and every­one is invit­ed:

    ...
    Dur­ing the rule­mak­ing process, mul­ti­ple orga­ni­za­tions filed com­ments express­ing con­cerns that the rule would make it impos­si­ble for the gov­ern­ment to detect dona­tions from enti­ties that are pro­hib­it­ed from spend­ing mon­ey on U.S. elec­tions under fed­er­al elec­tion law, includ­ing for­eign gov­ern­ments and fed­er­al con­trac­tors. The IRS and Trea­sury Depart­ment dis­miss these con­cerns in their reg­u­la­to­ry guid­ance doc­u­ment, stat­ing that the IRS is not autho­rized to enforce cam­paign finance laws and that com­menters favor­ing the change argued that enti­ties try­ing to dodge cam­paign finance laws are unlike­ly to report incrim­i­nat­ing infor­ma­tion on Sched­ule B forms any­ways.

    “For years, those oppos­ing more robust trans­paren­cy poli­cies to pre­vent for­eign­ers from fun­nel­ing mon­ey into U.S. elec­tions through 501© non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tions have shame­less­ly argued new rules are unnec­es­sary because the IRS already col­lects this infor­ma­tion,” said Mered­ith McGe­hee, exec­u­tive direc­tor of cam­paign finance watch­dog group Issue One said in a state­ment. “It is deeply con­cern­ing that many of those same orga­ni­za­tions have now helped con­vince the IRS that col­lect­ing detailed infor­ma­tion about the donors to polit­i­cal­ly active non­prof­its is unnec­es­sary, even as dark mon­ey groups pump huge sums of secret mon­ey into our elec­tions.”
    ...

    Also note how this real­ly could become a cam­paign issue in 2020 because while the White House clear­ly has the pow­er to gut these reg­u­la­tions Con­gress still has the option of pass­ing laws that force the IRS to reverse these changes and the Demo­c­rat-con­trolled House has already passed a bill to do just that. A bill that has no hope of pass­ing a Repub­li­can-con­trol Sen­ate:

    ...
    Trans­paren­cy advo­cates are call­ing on Con­gress to take action to reverse the rule change. In March 2019, House Democ­rats passed the land­mark ethics pack­age, H.R. 1, which includes many pro­vi­sions of the DISCLOSE Act, designed to com­bat dark mon­ey by requir­ing cov­ered orga­ni­za­tions to file reports dis­clos­ing elec­tion spend­ing of $10,000 or more with the Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion with­in 24 hours. While the Repub­li­can-con­trolled Sen­ate is unlike­ly to take up H.R. 1 this year, the DISCLOSE Act was intro­duced as a stand­alone bill in the Sen­ate by Sen. Shel­don White­house (D‑R.I.) and the House by Rep. David Cicilline (D‑R.I.).
    ...

    Final­ly, here’s an arti­cle from back in Feb­ru­ary about a lit­tle-noticed report released by the Gov­ern­ment Account Office (GAO) about the bro­ken nature of the US cam­paign finance sys­tem. The report describes an over­sight sys­tem with vague­ly defined respon­si­bil­i­ties shared by the FEC, DOJ, and IRS. It described a sys­tem ripe for for­eign mon­ey mak­ing its way into US elec­tion using sim­ple tech­niques like spread­ing mon­ey through mul­ti­ple indi­vid­u­als, using their names wit­ting­ly or unwit­ting­ly. Yes, ran­dom Amer­i­cans might get unwit­ting­ly list­ed as the donors as part of a for­eign elec­tion finance scheme and these cas­es were almost impos­si­ble to detect because the vic­tim would be high­ly unlike­ly to report it. And there was no evi­dence that the FEC or DOJ was engag­ing in any sys­tem­at­ic effort to iden­ti­fy cam­paign finance fraud schemes like this. The IRS was the only one of the three enti­ties involved in in cam­paign finance over­sight that employed some sort of sys­tem­at­ic search for vio­la­tions. Did those sys­tem­at­ic search­es for fraud car­ried out by the IRS rely on donor names and address? It’s hard to imag­ine that infor­ma­tion would­n’t have been includ­ed and now it’s no longer going to be avail­able thanks to the IRS rule change in May:

    The Hill

    Cam­paign finance: Inmates run­ning the asy­lum?

    By John M. DeMag­gio, opin­ion con­trib­u­tor — 02/09/20 10:30 AM EST
    The views expressed by con­trib­u­tors are their own and not the view of The Hill

    Do politi­cians have free rein to run amok with cam­paign financ­ing?

    In the last week the nation’s news media has been con­sumed with dra­ma of the pres­i­den­tial impeach­ment, the spec­ta­cle of the Super Bowl, the point and coun­ter­point of the State of the Union Address, the lat­est num­bers on the Coro­n­avirus and the politician’s deba­cle sur­round­ing the Iowa cau­cus.

    Dis­tract­ed by these events divert­ing the public’s atten­tion — and large­ly ignored by the main stream media — the Gov­ern­ment Account­abil­i­ty Office (GAO) on Feb. 3, 2020 issued GAO-26–66P “Cam­paign Finance: Fed­er­al Frame­work, Agency Roles and Respon­si­bil­i­ties, and Per­spec­tives,” a dis­tress­ing report on Cam­paign Finance enforce­ment.

    The report cov­ers the two-year peri­od between Jan. 1, 2017 and Dec. 31, 2018 — account­ing for $8.6 bil­lion raised to influ­ence fed­er­al elec­tions. The report states: “With such large sums of mon­ey involved, con­cerns about lim­it­ing the poten­tial for polit­i­cal cor­rup­tion and pro­vid­ing trans­paren­cy to vot­ers, while pro­tect­ing free speech, have been at the heart of cam­paign finance law.” It exam­ines the over­sight func­tion of the Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion (FEC), the Depart­ment of Jus­tice (DOJ) and to a less­er extent the Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice (IRS) in their shared respon­si­bil­i­ty to enforce these cam­paign finance laws.

    GAO reports that the sys­tem for over­sight of cam­paign financ­ing is con­vo­lut­ed, with mul­ti­ple steps depen­dent on par­ty loy­al­ties, no clear guid­ance and what appears to be an unwill­ing­ness to hold any­one account­able.

    Accord­ing to the report, “FEC offi­cials not­ed that com­mit­tee and can­di­date reg­is­tra­tion forms some­times include false or fic­ti­tious infor­ma­tion, such as fic­ti­tious or satir­i­cal names of a can­di­date, com­mit­tee, or a committee’s trea­sur­er…” The DOJ can pros­e­cute these under Title 18 USC 1001, False Offi­cial State­ments which states that sub­mit­ting false, fic­ti­tious or fraud­u­lent doc­u­ments shall be fined and impris­oned for up to 5 years. But yet the report reflects “…that the inci­dence of such fil­ings has increased since the 2016 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion cycle.”

    The FEC Office of Gen­er­al Counsel’s Enforce­ment Divi­sion expe­ri­enced a 30 per­cent reduc­tion staff over eight years while enforce­ment mat­ters more than tripled. That result­ed in the indi­vid­ual work­load more than qua­dru­pling, adding sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the back­log.

    The DOJ/FBI stat­ed that typ­i­cal fraud cas­es rely on a vic­tim report­ing, but in cam­paign finance vio­la­tions there is no com­plain­ing vic­tim.

    In one scheme, offend­ers may exceed con­tri­bu­tion lim­its by spread­ing the mon­ey through mul­ti­ple indi­vid­u­als, using their names, either wit­ting­ly or unwit­ting­ly. This mech­a­nism can also be used to fun­nel for­eign con­tri­bu­tions into cam­paigns. With­out a com­plaint, the con­tri­bu­tions appear to be legit­i­mate. There was no evi­dence that there were any data ana­lyt­ics used by the DOJ or the FEC to iden­ti­fy cam­paign finance vio­la­tions or fraud­u­lent pat­terns, although the IRS does use this to iden­ti­fy poten­tial vio­la­tions with­in their juris­dic­tion.

    The 13 steps required for the civ­il inves­ti­ga­tion, called Mat­ters under Review, through the Fed­er­al Elec­tion Commission’s (FEC) Tra­di­tion­al Enforce­ment Process are out­lined in the report. The aver­age time for this review between 2002 through 2017 ranged from 304 days to 787 days. The aver­age elec­tion cycle for a mem­ber of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives is 730 days.

    The elec­tion may well be over before any action is tak­en on a Mat­ter under Review.

    But to progress through each step requires the affir­ma­tive vote of at least four of the six FEC Com­mis­sion­ers. Yet, cur­rent­ly, there are only three com­mis­sion­ers. So no action can be tak­en on “Mat­ters under Review,” FEC inves­ti­ga­tions — effec­tive­ly elim­i­nat­ing any enforce­ment or admin­is­tra­tion actions of the cam­paign finance laws by the FEC.

    The report reflects that DOJ, FEC and IRS offi­cials find the rules so con­vo­lut­ed, lack­ing guid­ance and clar­i­ty that “…peo­ple may be gen­uine­ly unaware of the rules…” mak­ing it impos­si­ble to prove crim­i­nal intent for crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tions. Would not sub­mis­sion of “false,” “fic­ti­tious” or espe­cial­ly “satir­i­cal” names suf­fice to prove intent?

    A review of the “Report On The Inves­ti­ga­tion Into Russ­ian Inter­fer­ence In The 2016 Pres­i­den­tial Elec­tion” (redact­ed), the so called Mueller Report, a two year inves­ti­ga­tion into Russ­ian cam­paign inter­fer­ence con­duct­ed under the aus­pices of DOJ, failed to iden­ti­fy any of the above FEC, DOJ, IRS or GAO report­ed exploitable issues as prob­lems result­ing in the inef­fec­tive imple­men­ta­tion of the Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion Act (FECA).

    The GAO report paints a bro­ken cam­paign finance enforce­ment sys­tem pro­vid­ing min­i­mal chance of detect­ing these fraud­u­lent schemes and even less prob­a­bil­i­ty of expo­sure to civ­il or crim­i­nal enforce­ment.

    ...

    John M. DeMag­gio is a retired Spe­cial Agent in Charge for the U.S. Postal Ser­vice Inspec­tor Gen­er­al. He is also a retired Cap­tain in the U.S. Navy, where he served in Naval Intel­li­gence. The above is the opin­ion of the author and is not meant to reflect the opin­ion of the U.S. Navy or the U.S. Gov­ern­ment.

    ————

    “Cam­paign finance: Inmates run­ning the asy­lum?” by John M. DeMag­gio; The Hill; 02/09/2020

    “The report cov­ers the two-year peri­od between Jan. 1, 2017 and Dec. 31, 2018 — account­ing for $8.6 bil­lion raised to influ­ence fed­er­al elec­tions. The report states: “With such large sums of mon­ey involved, con­cerns about lim­it­ing the poten­tial for polit­i­cal cor­rup­tion and pro­vid­ing trans­paren­cy to vot­ers, while pro­tect­ing free speech, have been at the heart of cam­paign finance law.” It exam­ines the over­sight func­tion of the Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion (FEC), the Depart­ment of Jus­tice (DOJ) and to a less­er extent the Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice (IRS) in their shared respon­si­bil­i­ty to enforce these cam­paign finance laws.

    Yes, con­trary to the IRS’s claims about not actu­al­ly being involved in cam­paign finance over­sight, the GAO’s report described a sys­tem of shared over­sight between the FEC, DOJ, and IRS. Shared vague­ly defined over­sight that no one seems to real­ly under­stand. And any­one who under­stands this state of affairs will also known how to eas­i­ly get around for­eign cam­paign finance laws using tech­niques that would be high­ly unlike­ly to be dis­cov­ered with­out some sort of data ana­lyt­ics approach to iden­ti­fy­ing fraud. But of the three agen­cies with this shared over­sight, only the IRS actu­al­ly engages in any sort of anti-fraud ana­lyt­ics:

    ...
    GAO reports that the sys­tem for over­sight of cam­paign financ­ing is con­vo­lut­ed, with mul­ti­ple steps depen­dent on par­ty loy­al­ties, no clear guid­ance and what appears to be an unwill­ing­ness to hold any­one account­able.

    ...

    The FEC Office of Gen­er­al Counsel’s Enforce­ment Divi­sion expe­ri­enced a 30 per­cent reduc­tion staff over eight years while enforce­ment mat­ters more than tripled. That result­ed in the indi­vid­ual work­load more than qua­dru­pling, adding sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the back­log.

    The DOJ/FBI stat­ed that typ­i­cal fraud cas­es rely on a vic­tim report­ing, but in cam­paign finance vio­la­tions there is no com­plain­ing vic­tim.

    In one scheme, offend­ers may exceed con­tri­bu­tion lim­its by spread­ing the mon­ey through mul­ti­ple indi­vid­u­als, using their names, either wit­ting­ly or unwit­ting­ly. This mech­a­nism can also be used to fun­nel for­eign con­tri­bu­tions into cam­paigns. With­out a com­plaint, the con­tri­bu­tions appear to be legit­i­mate. There was no evi­dence that there were any data ana­lyt­ics used by the DOJ or the FEC to iden­ti­fy cam­paign finance vio­la­tions or fraud­u­lent pat­terns, although the IRS does use this to iden­ti­fy poten­tial vio­la­tions with­in their juris­dic­tion.
    ...

    How will those IRS anti-fraud ana­lyt­ics do with­out donor names and address­es? Prob­a­bly not very well, which was pre­sum­ably the point. And every for­eign gov­ern­ment or group with sub­stan­tial resources is going to be well aware of these new rules. Rules set up to make the rules unen­force­able. So if for­eign elec­tion inter­fer­ence does become a sig­nif­i­cant elec­tion issue as looks like­ly, let’s hope that includes the utter­ly bro­ken cam­paign finance laws that open­ly invite this for­eign inter­fer­ence and the Repub­li­can refusal to fix them. #TheSwamp­Wel­comesY­our­For­eign­Do­na­tions

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | August 30, 2020, 5:55 pm
  16. There was a ‘bet­ter late than nev­er’ type of sto­ry last month when Charles Koch gave an inter­view to the Wall Street Jour­nal where he expressed regret for spend­ing decades fund­ing deeply par­ti­san and divi­sive polit­i­cal move­ments and announced that he is turn­ing his atten­tion to issues like pover­ty, addic­tion, gang vio­lence, home­less­ness and recidi­vism. Of course, there’s no mean­ing­ful indi­ca­tion that the Charles Koch is doing any­thing of the sort, which makes this the kind of ‘bet­ter late than nev­er’ sto­ry that’s actu­al­ly a ‘bet­ter late than never...assuming this isn’t just pub­lic rela­tions white wash­ing stunt which it prob­a­bly is’ kind of sto­ry. The kind of sto­ry we’ll prob­a­bly be hear a lot more of as Charles creeps clos­er to the grave, join­ing his broth­er David who died last year.

    And that brings us to a pair of fas­ci­nat­ing recent series of reports by the Cen­ter for Media and Democ­ra­cy reveal­ing some of the Dark Mon­ey activ­i­ties of Donors Trust (DonorsTrust), one of the pri­ma­ry Dark Mon­ey funds that’s been of favorite of not just the Koch broth­ers but oth­er major right-wing mega-donors like the Mer­cer and DeVos fam­i­lies. But unlike super PACs and oth­er 501©4s, Donors Trust is a 501©3 char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tion, which makes the con­tri­bu­tions tax deductible but with high­er pub­lic dis­clo­sure require­ments. It’s part of what makes the fol­low­ing so scan­dalous: it was going to be pub­lic. It’s like drop­ping the mask.

    As we’ll see, Donors Trust and its sis­ter orga­ni­za­tion, Donors Cap­i­tal Fund, dis­trib­uted $165 mil­lion in 2019 alone. That’s how much mon­ey this group was hand­ing out dur­ing a non-elec­tion year. As a result of that mas­sive off-year spend­ing. That’s why Donors Trust is known as the “The Dark Mon­ey ATM of the Con­ser­v­a­tive Move­ment”.

    The Cen­ter for Media and Democ­ra­cy’s ini­tial report on Donor’s Trust, released on Decem­ber 3rd, was fol­lowed up with the fol­low­ing two reports below about two reveal­ing recip­i­ents of Donors Trust’s largesse. The kind of recip­i­ents that should, in the­o­ry, fill Charles Koch with much regret right now over their remark­able divi­sive­ness and hyper-par­ti­san­ship.

    First, we’ve learned that Donors Trust gave ~249k to the Fed­er­al­ist right-wing online pub­li­ca­tion (not the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety) in 2019. The Fed­er­al­ist is the kind of garbage blind pro-Trump hyper-par­ti­san out­let that is cur­rent­ly warp­ing the minds of Amer­i­can con­ser­v­a­tives. It actu­al­ly had a “black crime” tag for arti­cles until it was called out for it in 2017. If Koch had any­thing to do with its fund­ing he real­ly should be filled with regret. And sure enough we now learn that his donor net­work is sub­si­diz­ing this out­let with $250k in in 2019 alone. We have no idea about past dona­tions. The only rea­son we’re learn­ing now is because, in March of 2019, the Fed­er­al­ist’s FDRLST Media Foun­da­tion was cer­ti­fied as a 501©3 char­i­ty by the IRS, which made con­tri­bu­tions tax-deductible but with those extra dis­clo­sure require­ments. So if any non­prof­its, like Donors Trust, give to the Fed­er­al­ist now they have to dis­close it.

    Anoth­er major donor to the FDRLST Media Foun­da­tion dis­cov­ered by the Cen­ter for Media and Democ­ra­cy is bil­lion­aire ship­ping mag­nate and major GOP mega-donor Richard Uih­lein, a ship­ping bil­lion­aire who also hap­pens to be an heir to the Schlitz brew­ing for­tune. In June of 2018, the New York Times ran an arti­cle describ­ing the Uih­leins as a cou­ple seen on the right-wing as a poten­tial replace­ment for the Mer­cers in terms of fund­ing fig­ures like Steve Ban­non. And now we learn that Richard gave the Fed­er­al­ist around $400k in 2019. It’s a glimpse at the hid­den sub­si­dies that pow­er the right-wing media mega-phone ped­dling the sto­ry that Trump and Repub­li­can Par­ty are fight­ing the ‘elites’. Far right deeply anti-pop­ulist pro­pa­gan­da that mas­quer­ades as pop­ulism isn’t free. Right-wing garbage media does­n’t write itself (yet).

    Here’s the incred­i­bly scan­dalous part that’s almost like Donors Trust ‘drop­ping the mask’ because this was bound to become pub­lic: Donors Trust picked up two new char­i­ta­ble recip­i­ents in 2019. VDARE and Amer­i­can Renais­sance. Yep, Donors Trust — one of the pri­ma­ry vehi­cles for Repub­li­can mega-donor activ­i­ties — start­ed mak­ing major donors to VDARE and Amer­i­can Renais­sance, two of the most influ­en­tial open­ly white nation­al­ist orga­ni­za­tions. Donors Trust gave $10,500 to the New Cen­tu­ry Foun­da­tion, the non­prof­it that finances Amer­i­can Renais­sance. But far more sig­nif­i­cant was its dona­tion to VDARE, which received $1.5 mil­lion in 2019. You have to won­der if David Koch’s death was some­how con­nect­ed to the large dona­tion.

    Here’s where it gets absurd­ly scan­dalous: The $1.5 mil­lion VDARE dona­tion near­ly tripled VDARE’s entire 2018 bud­get. So this was­n’t just a dona­tion to keep VDARE afloat. It was a dona­tion clear­ly intend­ed to expand VDARE’s oper­a­tions, which is exact­ly what VDARE very did by using that $1.5 mil­lion dona­tion to buy a cas­tle. It’s a his­toric cas­tle in Berke­ley Springs, West Vir­ginia, that VDARE bought for $1.4 mil­lion in Feb­ru­ary of 2020 with­out requir­ing a loan. As the fol­low­ing report notes, its loca­tion is quite con­ve­nient for net­work­ing with peo­ple in the DC area, so it’s like a white nation­al­ist net­work­ing cas­tle. Donors Trust lit­er­al­ly bought VDARE a DC-area cas­tle this year and this was bound to become pub­lic. Have fun with that sym­bol­ism.

    Why are we learn­ing this now? Well, part of this is based on the infor­ma­tion in the pub­lic por­tion Donors Trust 2019 tax returns, which is part of the sto­ry here: Donors Trust made these large white nation­al­ist dona­tions appar­ent­ly know­ing full well it would be pub­licly revealed in its tax returns. For exam­ple, you can see the dona­tion to the New Cen­tu­ry Foun­da­tion, which han­dles dona­tions to Amer­i­can Renais­sance, by doing a search for “New Cen­tu­ry Foun­da­tion” or “VDARE” in the Donors Trust 2019 tax returns avail­able online. The Cen­ter for Media and Democ­ra­cy reports are also part­ly based on a 2019 Donors Trust progress report that they some­how obtained. Final­ly, in March of 2019, the Fed­er­al­ist’s FDRLST Media Foun­da­tion made that change to become a 501©3 char­i­ty by the IRS so all of a sud­den a ‘char­i­ty’ like Donors Trust was going to have to pub­licly report that $249k sub­sidy in garbage right-wing hyper-divi­sive media that’s designed to tear Amer­i­can soci­ety apart and rad­i­cal­ize con­ser­v­a­tive audi­ences.

    And that’s why any gen­uine change of heart Charles Koch has had must have been very recent. Because with­in a few weeks of Charles Koch gives his ‘sor­ry for all the divi­sive­ness I caused’ inter­view, we learn that one of the biggest chan­nels for the Kochs’ polit­i­cal spend­ing has not only been a fund­ing the hyper-divi­sive Fed­er­al­ist web­site but also bought VDARE a real cas­tle. Ear­li­er this year. And this was­n’t even real­ly hid­den from the pub­lic:

    Exposed
    by Cen­ter for Media and Democ­ra­cy

    “Dark Mon­ey ATM of the Con­ser­v­a­tive Move­ment” Gives $1.5 Mil­lion to White Nation­al­ist Hate Group

    By Alex Kotch
    Decem­ber 4th, 2020 at 11:37 AM (CST)

    At a 2017 con­fer­ence host­ed by the white nation­al­ist hate group Amer­i­can Renais­sance, Peter Brimelow, spoke about Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s immi­gra­tion poli­cies.

    “Crime in this coun­try is eth­ni­cal­ly var­ie­gat­ed,” claimed Brimelow, pres­i­dent of the white nation­al­ist hate group the VDARE Foun­da­tion. “There’s eth­nic spe­cial­iza­tion in crime. And His­pan­ics do spe­cial­ize in rape, par­tic­u­lar­ly of chil­dren. They’re very prone to it, com­pared to oth­er groups.”

    Bla­tant­ly racist state­ments like these are com­mon­place for Brimelow and for Jared Tay­lor, pres­i­dent of Amer­i­can Renais­sance, two of the most noto­ri­ous white nation­al­ist lead­ers in the Unit­ed States.

    Two years after the con­fer­ence, for the first time, a promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tive char­i­ty would fund both VDARE and the non­prof­it behind Amer­i­can Renais­sance. DonorsTrust, a donor-advised fund spon­sor that man­ages and dis­pers­es wealthy con­ser­v­a­tives’ char­i­ta­ble funds anony­mous­ly, gave over $1.5 mil­lion to the VDARE Foun­da­tion in 2019, accord­ing to tax records obtained by the Cen­ter for Media and Democ­ra­cy (CMD). That amount is near­ly three times larg­er than VDARE’s total 2018 rev­enue, mean­ing that, with DonorsTrust’s help, the hate group was poised to sig­nif­i­cant­ly expand its oper­a­tions last year.

    DonorsTrust also gave $10,500 to the New Cen­tu­ry Foun­da­tion, the non­prof­it that finances Amer­i­can Renais­sance, which pub­lish­es a web­site, videos, and pod­casts and puts on annu­al con­fer­ences that draw a coterie of the country’s most promi­nent white nation­al­ists. That dona­tion appears to be DonorsTrust’s first to the group.

    “DonorsTrust is a com­mu­ni­ty of donors devot­ed to cre­at­ing a bet­ter future,” states the group’s 2019 donor prospec­tus. “Our donors sup­port char­i­ties they believe pro­tect our nation’s con­sti­tu­tion­al lib­er­ties and strength­en civ­il soci­ety through pri­vate insti­tu­tions rather than with gov­ern­ment pro­grams.”

    DonorsTrust and its sis­ter non­prof­it, Donors Cap­i­tal Fund, are favorite fund­ing vehi­cles of Repub­li­can bil­lion­aire fam­i­lies such as the DeVos­es, Kochs, and Mer­cers. Donors deposit mon­ey into indi­vid­ual accounts, man­aged by DonorsTrust or Donors Cap­i­tal Fund, and direct the fund man­agers to deliv­er their mon­ey to the non­prof­its of their choos­ing, a process that shields the donors’ iden­ti­ties from the pub­lic. Donor-advised funds offer a “dou­ble tax ben­e­fit” to the wealthy; when donat­ing appre­cia­ble assets like stock or busi­ness shares into their indi­vid­ual funds, donors get a cap­i­tal gains tax break as well as the typ­i­cal char­i­ta­ble tax deduc­tion.

    DonorsTrust and Donors Cap­i­tal Fund dis­trib­uted $165 mil­lion in total grants last year, $90 mil­lion of which went to sup­port right-wing think tanks, advo­ca­cy groups, lit­i­ga­tion cen­ters, media out­lets, extrem­ists, and cli­mate deniers, CMD found.

    Law­son Bad­er, pres­i­dent and CEO of DonorsTrust and Donors Cap­i­tal Fund, told CMD, “DonorsTrust–like the vast major­i­ty of donor-advised funds–allows its donor-advi­sors and not the DAF itself, to cre­ate a list of pre­ferred and legal­ly rec­og­nized char­i­ta­ble and pub­lic-inter­est orga­ni­za­tions that they indi­vid­u­al­ly wish to sup­port.”

    How­ev­er, the organization’s donor prospec­tus states, “Grants from accounts are made upon request to board-approved char­i­ties.” This indi­cates that the DonorsTrust board must review and approve of each poten­tial recip­i­ent. That board con­sists of Bad­er and mul­ti­ple oth­ers with close ties to con­ser­v­a­tive advo­ca­cy groups and aca­d­e­m­ic pro­grams fund­ed in part by Charles Koch.

    Bad­er did not respond to fol­low-up ques­tions about the approval process and why he and the board approved two white nation­al­ist groups.

    As he defend­ed his organization’s sub­stan­tial fund­ing of white nation­al­ist hate groups, Bad­er invoked a 1958 court case that pro­tect­ed the iden­ti­ties of donors to the Black civ­il rights group the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion for the Advance­ment of Col­ored Peo­ple (NAACP).

    “The Supreme Court has made it clear that releas­ing names of pri­vate givers pos­es a direct threat of retal­i­a­tion,” Bad­er said. “This occurred most notably in 1968 (sic) when the court struck down Alabama’s attempts to gain access to the NAACP’s donor list dur­ing the hey­day of the civ­il rights move­ment.”

    “We are extreme­ly trou­bled by the find­ings in your report,” Michael Edi­son Hay­den, a senior inves­tiga­tive reporter at the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter (SPLC), told CMD. “Here, you have extreme­ly wealthy activist donors fun­nel­ing mon­ey into white nation­al­ist groups. These are groups that traf­fic in the type of dehu­man­iz­ing racist pseu­do­science that has inspired both ter­ror­ism and gov­ern­ment-sanc­tioned hor­rors, like so-called child sep­a­ra­tion.”

    ...

    “The sick joke, of course, is that the white nation­al­ist move­ment in the U.S. pos­es as if they are fight­ing against elites,” said Hay­den. “Now we know that elites are fight­ing along­side white nation­al­ists, putting the lives of every­day peo­ple in dan­ger.”

    A White Nation­al­ist Cas­tle

    It is like­ly that DonorsTrust’s 2019 dona­tion of $1.5 mil­lion helped VDARE pur­chase an his­toric cas­tle in Berke­ley Springs, West Vir­ginia for $1.4 mil­lion with­out a loan in Feb­ru­ary 2020. As the SPLC doc­u­ment­ed, local res­i­dents were dis­turbed by VDARE’s pres­ence and feared that it would rein­force neg­a­tive stereo­types of West Vir­ginia, which is 95 per­cent white and one of the least diverse states in the coun­try.

    “The cas­tle gives VDARE close access to Wash­ing­ton, D.C., where they have White House allies like [senior pol­i­cy advis­er] Stephen Miller and [com­mu­ni­ca­tions offi­cer] Julia Hahn,” said Hay­den. “These dona­tions help to explain where they might have got­ten that kind of mon­ey.”

    Brimelow came to promi­nence in 1995, when he pub­lished Alien Nation, a book that argued that Amer­i­ca has his­tor­i­cal­ly been dom­i­nat­ed by white peo­ple and should remain that way. In 1999, he found­ed what would become the VDARE Foun­da­tion.

    For years, VDARE has attacked immi­grants and peo­ple of col­or in the U.S., and it has also traf­ficked in anti­semitism.

    “The [Jew­ish] objec­tive has been con­trol of eco­nom­ic resources and polit­i­cal pow­er,” wrote anti­semite Kevin Mac­Don­ald on VDARE’s web­site in 2006. “One exam­ple: over­whelm­ing Jew­ish sup­port for non-tra­di­tion­al immi­gra­tion, which has the effect of weak­en­ing America’s his­toric white major­i­ty.”

    Mac­Don­ald was describ­ing a clas­sic tenet of white nation­al­ism around the world: that Jews destroy white soci­ety by facil­i­tat­ing immi­gra­tion by peo­ple of col­or, a trope often referred to as “white geno­cide.”

    Writ­ing on VDARE.com two years lat­er, Amer­i­can Renaissance’s Jared Tay­lor, who per­son­al­ly avoids overt anti­semitism, echoed this gen­er­al sen­ti­ment, claim­ing that “our rulers and elites wel­come replace­ment by aliens,” and “this is a dis­ease that is killing us.”

    In recent years, VDARE has con­tin­ued its tox­ic influ­ence on the coun­try.

    “VDARE in par­tic­u­lar defend­ed the dead­ly Unite the Right ral­ly staged in Char­lottesville, Vir­ginia in August of 2017 and has expressed sym­pa­thies for the writ­ings of white suprema­cist mur­der­ers, like the man who killed 23 peo­ple in an El Paso Wal­Mart in 2019,” said Hay­den. “Addi­tion­al­ly, VDARE pub­lished vile, racist con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries relat­ed to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, help­ing to fuel the chaos we see now across our coun­try.”

    On YouTube, VDARE appeared to defend the racist man­i­festo pub­lished by the El Paso shoot­er. YouTube per­ma­nent­ly banned the chan­nel in August 2020.

    Brimelow and Tay­lor have a close rela­tion­ship and are both affil­i­at­ed with the racist “alt-right” and its fig­ure­head, Richard Spencer. And Brimelow has ties to the Trump admin­is­tra­tion beyond Miller and Hahn; Trump’s eco­nom­ic advis­er Lar­ry Kud­low host­ed Brimelow at his home for his birth­day par­ty in 2018.

    The “Black-on-White Crime” Myth

    Taylor’s racist ideas have inspired dead­ly hate crimes.

    He and Amer­i­can Renais­sance cre­at­ed the “black-on-white crime” myth, a the­o­ry pop­u­lar among white nation­al­ists that, in recent years, spread online and inspired dead­ly ter­ror attacks, includ­ing Dylan Roof’s 2015 mur­der of nine Black parish­ioners at a South Car­oli­na church. Roof read about the myth via the web­site of the Coun­cil of Con­ser­v­a­tive Cit­i­zens, anoth­er white nation­al­ist group with close ties to Tay­lor.

    This myth is premised on a false argu­ment, as stat­ed by Tay­lor, that,: “The Unit­ed States has nei­ther a unique ‘cul­ture of vio­lence’ nor inad­e­quate gun laws. It has a high rate of vio­lent crime because it has a large num­ber of vio­lent black crim­i­nals.”

    “Tay­lor is at the cen­ter of white suprema­cist pro­pa­gan­da,” Hei­di Beirich, the for­mer head of SPLC’s Intel­li­gence Project, told this author in 2019. “He is THE pur­vey­or of the black-on-white crime myth that has inspired so much vio­lence. His ideas led to Dylann Roof and lord only knows how much more hate crime.”

    After Roof’s ter­ror attack, Tay­lor con­demned the mur­ders but defend­ed both the Coun­cil of Con­ser­v­a­tive Cit­i­zens and his organization’s hate­ful pro­pa­gan­da, say­ing, “Our site edu­cat­ed [Roof]. Our site told him the truth about inter­ra­cial crime.”

    Reporters have revealed few dona­tions to the New Cen­tu­ry Foun­da­tion, a rel­a­tive­ly small non­prof­it that took in $381,000 in 2018 and less than that the year before. But Sludge exposed over $100,000 in con­tri­bu­tions by Fideli­ty Char­i­ta­ble Gift Fund, a donor-advised fund spon­sor affil­i­at­ed with Fideli­ty Invest­ments, over the 2016 to 2018 fis­cal years.

    This year, the New Cen­tu­ry Foun­da­tion got some extra help from tax­pay­ers. Accord­ing to Accountable.us, the non­prof­it received $51,600 in Pay­check Pro­tec­tion Pro­gram funds, which were approved by Con­gress to help busi­ness­es dur­ing the pan­dem­ic-caused reces­sion.

    Past Dona­tions to Hate Groups

    While its recent dona­tions to white nation­al­ist groups are new, DonorsTrust has a his­to­ry of fund­ing groups that the SPLC con­sid­ers anti-immi­grant, anti-Mus­lim, anti-LGBTQ hate groups.

    In 2019 alone, DonorsTrust donat­ed $916,000 to the anti-Mus­lim Cen­ter for Secu­ri­ty Pol­i­cy, $163,000 to the anti-Mus­lim David Horowitz Free­dom Cen­ter, and $50,000 to the anti-immi­grant Cen­ter for Immi­gra­tion Stud­ies, among oth­er con­tri­bu­tions to hate groups and oth­er dis­crim­i­na­to­ry orga­ni­za­tions. In the five years pri­or, DonorsTrust DonorsTrust and Donors Cap­i­tal Fund gave over $13 mil­lion to orga­ni­za­tions that express anti-Mus­lim, anti-immi­grant, or anti-LGBTQ sen­ti­ments, includ­ing more than $2.7 mil­lion to non­prof­its con­sid­ered hate groups by SPLC.

    The Nation­al Chris­t­ian Foun­da­tion has giv­en the most mon­ey to hate groups of any promi­nent donor-advised fund spon­sor. Sev­er­al donor-advised funds that are not asso­ci­at­ed with any par­tic­u­lar polit­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy or reli­gion, includ­ing Fideli­ty Char­i­ta­ble and Van­guard Char­i­ta­ble, which is linked to invest­ment firm Van­guard, have also been fund­ing hate groups for years.

    ————

    ““Dark Mon­ey ATM of the Con­ser­v­a­tive Move­ment” Gives $1.5 Mil­lion to White Nation­al­ist Hate Group” by Alex Kotch; Exposed by CMD; 12/04/2020

    “Two years after the con­fer­ence, for the first time, a promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tive char­i­ty would fund both VDARE and the non­prof­it behind Amer­i­can Renais­sance. DonorsTrust, a donor-advised fund spon­sor that man­ages and dis­pers­es wealthy con­ser­v­a­tives’ char­i­ta­ble funds anony­mous­ly, gave over $1.5 mil­lion to the VDARE Foun­da­tion in 2019, accord­ing to tax records obtained by the Cen­ter for Media and Democ­ra­cy (CMD). That amount is near­ly three times larg­er than VDARE’s total 2018 rev­enue, mean­ing that, with DonorsTrust’s help, the hate group was poised to sig­nif­i­cant­ly expand its oper­a­tions last year.

    The sin­gle $1.5 mil­lion Donors Trust 2019 dona­tion was near­ly three times VDARE’s entire 2018 bud­get. And it just hap­pened to be a lit­tle more than the $1.4 mil­lion VDARE paid for an actu­al his­toric cas­tle in 2020. A cas­tle that gives them con­ve­nient access to the DC area and yet is remote enough that pow­er­ful peo­ple, like Trump’s eco­nom­ic advis­er Lar­ry Kud­low, can make dis­crete trips to net­work with white nation­al­ists with­out attract­ing too much atten­tion:

    ...
    It is like­ly that DonorsTrust’s 2019 dona­tion of $1.5 mil­lion helped VDARE pur­chase an his­toric cas­tle in Berke­ley Springs, West Vir­ginia for $1.4 mil­lion with­out a loan in Feb­ru­ary 2020. As the SPLC doc­u­ment­ed, local res­i­dents were dis­turbed by VDARE’s pres­ence and feared that it would rein­force neg­a­tive stereo­types of West Vir­ginia, which is 95 per­cent white and one of the least diverse states in the coun­try.

    The cas­tle gives VDARE close access to Wash­ing­ton, D.C., where they have White House allies like [senior pol­i­cy advis­er] Stephen Miller and [com­mu­ni­ca­tions offi­cer] Julia Hahn,” said Hay­den. “These dona­tions help to explain where they might have got­ten that kind of mon­ey.”
    ...

    And note how, while Donors Trust acts a mid­dle-man for its mega-donors that helps them hide their iden­ti­ties from the pub­lic, the donors still get to give a list of pre­ferred groups and caus­es, withe Donors Trust board ulti­mate­ly decid­ing where the mon­ey goes. And that just hap­pens to be stacked with fig­ures close to Kochs. It’s an exam­ple of how, while the Koch broth­ers aren’t the only mega-donors in their donor net­work and pow­er is some­what shared, they’re still the top mega-donors and real­ly do have the most con­trol over this net­work. At least until Charles dies:

    ...
    DonorsTrust and its sis­ter non­prof­it, Donors Cap­i­tal Fund, are favorite fund­ing vehi­cles of Repub­li­can bil­lion­aire fam­i­lies such as the DeVos­es, Kochs, and Mer­cers. Donors deposit mon­ey into indi­vid­ual accounts, man­aged by DonorsTrust or Donors Cap­i­tal Fund, and direct the fund man­agers to deliv­er their mon­ey to the non­prof­its of their choos­ing, a process that shields the donors’ iden­ti­ties from the pub­lic. Donor-advised funds offer a “dou­ble tax ben­e­fit” to the wealthy; when donat­ing appre­cia­ble assets like stock or busi­ness shares into their indi­vid­ual funds, donors get a cap­i­tal gains tax break as well as the typ­i­cal char­i­ta­ble tax deduc­tion.

    DonorsTrust and Donors Cap­i­tal Fund dis­trib­uted $165 mil­lion in total grants last year, $90 mil­lion of which went to sup­port right-wing think tanks, advo­ca­cy groups, lit­i­ga­tion cen­ters, media out­lets, extrem­ists, and cli­mate deniers, CMD found.

    Law­son Bad­er, pres­i­dent and CEO of DonorsTrust and Donors Cap­i­tal Fund, told CMD, “DonorsTrust–like the vast major­i­ty of donor-advised funds–allows its donor-advi­sors and not the DAF itself, to cre­ate a list of pre­ferred and legal­ly rec­og­nized char­i­ta­ble and pub­lic-inter­est orga­ni­za­tions that they indi­vid­u­al­ly wish to sup­port.”

    How­ev­er, the organization’s donor prospec­tus states, “Grants from accounts are made upon request to board-approved char­i­ties.” This indi­cates that the DonorsTrust board must review and approve of each poten­tial recip­i­ent. That board con­sists of Bad­er and mul­ti­ple oth­ers with close ties to con­ser­v­a­tive advo­ca­cy groups and aca­d­e­m­ic pro­grams fund­ed in part by Charles Koch.

    Bad­er did not respond to fol­low-up ques­tions about the approval process and why he and the board approved two white nation­al­ist groups.
    ...

    And note the twist response Donors Trust’s pres­i­dent and CEO, Law­son Bad­er, gave in response to ques­tions of their dona­tion to VDARE. Bad­er appeared to take offense to the fact that Donors Trust’s dona­tions were revealed at all and cit­ed the 1958 Supreme Court court case, NAACP v. Alaba­ma. As we’ll recall, that case was one of the ear­li­er Supreme Court rul­ings that, tak­en togeth­er, cre­at­ed the col­lec­tions of rules and loop­holes that allowed for near­ly unlim­it­ed anony­mous Dark Mon­ey polit­i­cal spend­ing in the US before Cit­i­zens Unit­ed for­mal­ized it in 2010. And NAACP v. Alaba­ma was a case that cen­tered on the ques­tion of whether the iden­ti­ties of peo­ple who donat­ed to the NAACP would be pro­tect­ed due giv­en the obvi­ous neg­a­tive reper­cus­sions that reveal­ing their iden­ti­ty could have and how that all plays into the idea of what is tru­ly pro­tect­ing ‘free speech’. So one of the most wealthy and pow­er­ful polit­i­cal net­work in the world was asked about its recent dona­tions to mul­ti­ple over­ly white nation­al­ist orga­ni­za­tions and in defense they cit­ed a Supreme Court case about pro­tect­ing the rights of oppressed Black NAACP polit­i­cal donors. In addi­tion to being some major league trolling, it’s the kind of response that’s also a big reminder that pro­tect­ing real ‘free speech’ is fun­da­men­tal­ly about pro­tect­ing the rights of pow­er­less from the pow­er­ful:

    ...
    As he defend­ed his organization’s sub­stan­tial fund­ing of white nation­al­ist hate groups, Bad­er invoked a 1958 court case that pro­tect­ed the iden­ti­ties of donors to the Black civ­il rights group the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion for the Advance­ment of Col­ored Peo­ple (NAACP).

    “The Supreme Court has made it clear that releas­ing names of pri­vate givers pos­es a direct threat of retal­i­a­tion,” Bad­er said. “This occurred most notably in 1968 (sic) when the court struck down Alabama’s attempts to gain access to the NAACP’s donor list dur­ing the hey­day of the civ­il rights move­ment.”

    ...

    “The sick joke, of course, is that the white nation­al­ist move­ment in the U.S. pos­es as if they are fight­ing against elites,” said Hay­den. “Now we know that elites are fight­ing along­side white nation­al­ists, putting the lives of every­day peo­ple in dan­ger.”
    ...

    But Donors Trust isn’t just buy­ing white nation­al­ists cas­tles last year. The ‘char­i­ty’ was also financ­ing much of the right-wing polit­i­cal infra­struc­ture pow­er and orga­niz­ing the Repub­li­can Par­ty and US con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment (although Trump now threat­ens to take con­trol of that). And that includes financ­ing hyper-divi­sive garbage sites like the Fed­er­al­ist. How many oth­er garbage sites is Donors Trust sub­si­diz­ing? We don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly get to know. We only get to know about this 2019 Fed­er­al­ist dona­tion because Donors Trust is alleged­ly a non­prof­it ‘char­i­ty’ and the Fed­er­al­ist decid­ed in 2019 that it’s a char­i­ty too:

    Exposed
    by Cen­ter for Media and Democ­ra­cy

    Who Funds the Fed­er­al­ist? Final­ly, We Know.

    By Alex Kotch
    Decem­ber 9th, 2020 at 4:24 PM (CST)

    For years, the fund­ing behind the right-wing, pro-Trump pub­li­ca­tion The Fed­er­al­ist has been a total mys­tery. Many Twit­ter users have asked the website’s lead­ers, repeat­ed­ly, “Who funds The Fed­er­al­ist?” only to be blocked by the likes of pub­lish­er Ben Domenech, co-founder Sean Davis, or senior edi­tor Mol­lie Hem­ing­way. (This author is blocked by all three.)

    Last year, Hem­ing­way char­ac­ter­ized the ques­tion as “a kind of a veiled threat” and a “clear, coor­di­nat­ed attempt to silence The Fed­er­al­ist.

    How­ev­er, a few months ear­li­er, The Federalist’s affil­i­at­ed non­prof­it, FDRLST Media Foun­da­tion, had been cer­ti­fied as a 501(c)(3) char­i­ty by the Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice, mean­ing that donors could begin mak­ing tax-deductible con­tri­bu­tions to the foun­da­tion. If the donor was a non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion like a fam­i­ly foun­da­tion or trade asso­ci­a­tion, its grants to the FDRLST Media Foun­da­tion would even­tu­al­ly be part of the pub­lic record. Hem­ing­way is a direc­tor and “gov­er­nor” of the foun­da­tion.

    Last week, CMD obtained the 2019 tax records of two right-wing fun­ders who donat­ed to the FDRLST Media Foun­da­tion that year: GOP megadonor and ship­ping sup­ply bil­lion­aire Richard Uih­lein and DonorsTrust, a donor-advised fund man­ag­er that has been dubbed “the dark mon­ey ATM” of the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment.

    The Uih­leins

    The Fed­er­al­ist may have once had a “nev­er Trump” image, but the con­ser­v­a­tive pub­li­ca­tion moved quick­ly right­ward as Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump became pres­i­dent and took over the Repub­li­can Par­ty. The out­let is now known for vig­or­ous­ly defend­ing Trump, for its trolling and con­spir­a­cy-laden posts, and for attack­ing lib­er­al media. Some­times traf­fick­ing in racism, The Fed­er­al­ist had a “black crime” tag until some­one exposed the tag on Twit­ter.

    It’s unclear when Uih­lein, the Illi­nois-based founder of ship­ping sup­ply com­pa­ny Uline, began fund­ing The Fed­er­al­ist, but it makes sense that his foun­da­tion, the Ed Uih­lein Fam­i­ly Foun­da­tion, donat­ed $400,000 to the FDRLST Media Foun­da­tion last year. Uih­lein and his wife, Liz, are influ­en­tial Trump donors and among the Repub­li­can Party’s biggest fun­ders; Uih­lein is the fifth-biggest donor to out­side polit­i­cal spend­ing groups of the 2020 fed­er­al elec­tions, hav­ing doled out over $63 mil­lion to super PACs such as the pro-Trump Amer­i­can First Action, Club for Growth Action, the Sen­ate Lead­er­ship Fund, and Restora­tion PAC, which he fund­ed near­ly exclu­sive­ly.

    The New York Times report­ed in August that, based on inter­views, Richard Uih­lein was a donor to The Fed­er­al­ist, but his foundation’s 2019 tax return is the first evi­dence of his finan­cial sup­port to be made pub­lic.

    As The Fed­er­al­ist pub­lished sto­ry after sto­ry deny­ing sci­ence and oppos­ing mask wear­ing dur­ing the coro­n­avirus pandemic—including one sto­ry alleged­ly writ­ten by an anony­mous small-town may­or claim­ing that health offi­cials order mask man­dates for polit­i­cal, not sci­en­tif­ic, reasons—Liz Uih­lein min­i­mized the virus, call­ing it “over­hyped,” and endan­gered Uline work­ers by alleged­ly using lax safe­ty prac­tices and ini­tial­ly dis­cour­ag­ing employ­ees from work­ing from home. Liz Uih­lein, the pres­i­dent and CEO of Uline, got an exemp­tion from Canada’s quar­an­tine require­ment to vis­it a Uline facil­i­ty in the coun­try, which she reached via pri­vate jet. The Uih­leins would even­tu­al­ly con­tract COVID-19 in Novem­ber.

    The Uih­leins have endorsed fringe can­di­dates such as Roy Moore, the far-right Alaba­man who ran for Sen­ate in 2017 and was cred­i­bly accused of sex­u­al mis­con­duct with minors by mul­ti­ple women. Liz Uih­lein was a mem­ber of the 2016 Trump campaign’s eco­nom­ic coun­cil.

    The Ed Uih­lein Foun­da­tion gave to addi­tion­al right-wing media out­lets in 2019, includ­ing The Dai­ly Caller News Foun­da­tion ($25,000), the Media Research Cen­ter ($275,000), and the Real Clear Foun­da­tion ($350,000), which has ties to The Fed­er­al­ist (see below). It also donat­ed $400,000 to the Cen­ter for Secu­ri­ty Pol­i­cy, an anti-Mus­lim hate group. Its largest 2019 con­tri­bu­tion, $3.2 mil­lion, went to the Foun­da­tion for Gov­ern­ment Account­abil­i­ty, a State Pol­i­cy Net­work mem­ber that advo­cat­ed kick­ing peo­ple off of Med­ic­aid this year dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. Since 2014, the Uih­leins have giv­en the Foun­da­tion for Gov­ern­ment Account­abil­i­ty over $11 mil­lion.

    The “Dark Mon­ey ATM” of the Con­ser­v­a­tive Move­ment

    One of the polit­i­cal right’s biggest fund­ing vehi­cles, DonorsTrust, gave $249,000 to the FDRLST Media Foun­da­tion in 2019. CMD was first to report on DonorsTrust’s 2019 tax records and on the group’s major dona­tion to the white nation­al­ist hate group VDARE, as well as a small­er amount to the New Cen­tu­ry Foun­da­tion, the non­prof­it behind the white nation­al­ist pub­li­ca­tion Amer­i­can Renais­sance.

    DonorsTrust also gave $1,350,000 to the Real Clear Foun­da­tion and near­ly $400,000 to the Media Research Cen­ter in 2019, part of $15 mil­lion in grants to con­ser­v­a­tive media oper­a­tions that year.

    DonorsTrust is a donor-advised fund spon­sor, mean­ing that it man­ages indi­vid­ual char­i­ta­ble accounts of its wealthy clients, who have includ­ed GOP megadonors such the DeVos, Koch, and Mer­cer Fam­i­lies. These clients can donate appre­cia­ble assets into their accounts and score a dou­ble tax ben­e­fit: they get both a cap­i­tal gains tax break and a char­i­ta­ble tax deduc­tion. Clients then direct DonorsTrust to donate their mon­ey to the non­prof­its of their choice, as long as the DonorsTrust board approves the pro­posed recip­i­ent. Donor-advised fund man­agers allow their clients to remain anony­mous, as the man­ag­er legal­ly owns and dis­pers­es the mon­ey.

    DonorsTrust and its sis­ter orga­ni­za­tion, Donors Cap­i­tal Fund, dis­trib­uted $165 mil­lion in grants in 2019, much of it going to right-wing think tanks, advo­ca­cy groups, lit­i­ga­tion cen­ters, media out­lets, extrem­ists, and cli­mate deniers.

    Past Clues

    The Uih­lein and DonorsTrust grants are the first known dona­tions to The Fed­er­al­ist, but one finan­cial tie was already pub­lic. Jour­nal­ist Andrew Perez found that the George E. Cole­man Jr. Foun­da­tion is an investor in FDRLST Media, LLC, the com­pa­ny behind The Fed­er­al­ist. In 2018, the Cole­man Foun­da­tion had $148,000 invest­ed in FDRLST Media. The foundation’s trustee, Daniel Oliv­er, is a for­mer Rea­gan offi­cial who was once exec­u­tive edi­tor of the con­ser­v­a­tive Nation­al Review, which receives sig­nif­i­cant fund­ing from DonorsTrust through its affil­i­at­ed Nation­al Review Insti­tute.

    In advance of a 2019 Buz­zfeed News arti­cle that cit­ed the Cole­man Foun­da­tion invest­ment, Domenech, The Federalist’s pub­lish­er, refused to com­ment but tweet­ed that this impend­ing rev­e­la­tion of pub­lic infor­ma­tion amount­ed to “doxxing” an investor. “They will do this because they want to shut us down,” he claimed.

    Fed­er­al tax records for the FDRLST Media Foun­da­tion are not yet pub­lic, but the Wash­ing­ton, D.C. sec­re­tary of state has pub­lic records of the foun­da­tion. David DesRosiers, the pub­lish­er of Real Clear Pol­i­tics and the for­mer exec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent of the Uih­lein-fund­ed Man­hat­tan Insti­tute, is a direc­tor. Hem­ing­way is both a direc­tor and a “gov­er­nor.” Attor­ney Alan P. Dye is the third direc­tor.

    ...

    In Sep­tem­ber 2017, FDRLST Media filed an offer­ing of debt secu­ri­ties with the Secu­ri­ties and Exchange Com­mis­sion. At the time, $200,000 of the $750,000 offered had been sold. List­ed as a direc­tor of FDRLST Media was John McIn­tyre, pres­i­dent and CEO of Real Clear Media. Some­one named Jenn McIn­tyre was also list­ed as a direc­tor and an exec­u­tive offi­cer. The fil­ing locat­ed FDRLST Media at the same Chica­go address as Real Clear Pol­i­tics, the main pub­li­ca­tion of Real Clear Media.

    Real Clear has tak­en a “sharp right turn” in recent years, like­ly due to its increased fund­ing from right-wing donors and its reac­tion to Trump’s takeover of the Repub­li­can par­ty. A CMD report showed that at least 99 per­cent of the 2015 to 2018 rev­enue of the Real Clear Foun­da­tion, which funds the outlet’s inves­tiga­tive sto­ries, came from right-wing fun­ders, includ­ing DonorsTrust, Donors Cap­i­tal Fund, the Uih­lein Foun­da­tion, and two foun­da­tions of Charles Koch.

    “As the admin­is­tra­tion lurched from one cri­sis after anoth­er,” wrote The New York Times’ Jere­my Peters last month, “Real Clear became one of the most promi­nent plat­forms for ele­vat­ing unver­i­fied and reck­less sto­ries about the president’s polit­i­cal oppo­nents, through a mix of its own con­tent and arti­cles from across con­ser­v­a­tive media.”

    ———–

    “Who Funds the Fed­er­al­ist? Final­ly, We Know.” by Alex Kotch; Exposed by CMD; 12/09/2020

    “The Fed­er­al­ist may have once had a “nev­er Trump” image, but the con­ser­v­a­tive pub­li­ca­tion moved quick­ly right­ward as Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump became pres­i­dent and took over the Repub­li­can Par­ty. The out­let is now known for vig­or­ous­ly defend­ing Trump, for its trolling and con­spir­a­cy-laden posts, and for attack­ing lib­er­al media. Some­times traf­fick­ing in racism, The Fed­er­al­ist had a “black crime” tag until some­one exposed the tag on Twit­ter.

    Start­ed in 2013, the Fed­er­al­ist is the kind of right-wing rag that was caught run­ning a “black crime” tag in 2017, a year when flash­ing white nation­al­ist sym­bol­ism was pop­u­lar with right-wing media out­lets. How much did Donors Trust give to the Fed­er­al­ist in 2017? We don’t get to know because such a dis­clo­sure was­n’t required until 2019 when the IRS grant­ed the Fed­er­al­ist non­prof­it sta­tus. It’s a fit­ting sit­u­a­tion that both Donors Trust and the Fed­er­al­ist decid­ed to pre­tend to be tax-deductible non­prof­it enti­ties act­ing in the pub­lic good and that’s the rea­son they have to pub­licly dis­close this sleazy right-wing pro­pa­gan­da sub­sidy:

    ...
    How­ev­er, a few months ear­li­er, The Federalist’s affil­i­at­ed non­prof­it, FDRLST Media Foun­da­tion, had been cer­ti­fied as a 501(c)(3) char­i­ty by the Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice, mean­ing that donors could begin mak­ing tax-deductible con­tri­bu­tions to the foun­da­tion. If the donor was a non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion like a fam­i­ly foun­da­tion or trade asso­ci­a­tion, its grants to the FDRLST Media Foun­da­tion would even­tu­al­ly be part of the pub­lic record. Hem­ing­way is a direc­tor and “gov­er­nor” of the foun­da­tion.
    ...

    And it’s not just Donors Trust that got caught up in this. The Ed Uih­lein Fam­i­ly Foun­da­tion, run by ship­ping bil­lion­aire Richard Uih­lein who has become a major Repub­li­can donor and big Trump boost­er. $400k for the Fed­er­al­ist in 2019 is just a frac­tion of the $63 mil­lion he donat­ed to super PACs alone in 2020. The Fed­er­al­ist is just one of the many right-wing media out­lets that get that Uih­lein ‘char­i­ty’:

    ...
    It’s unclear when Uih­lein, the Illi­nois-based founder of ship­ping sup­ply com­pa­ny Uline, began fund­ing The Fed­er­al­ist, but it makes sense that his foun­da­tion, the Ed Uih­lein Fam­i­ly Foun­da­tion, donat­ed $400,000 to the FDRLST Media Foun­da­tion last year. Uih­lein and his wife, Liz, are influ­en­tial Trump donors and among the Repub­li­can Party’s biggest fun­ders; Uih­lein is the fifth-biggest donor to out­side polit­i­cal spend­ing groups of the 2020 fed­er­al elec­tions, hav­ing doled out over $63 mil­lion to super PACs such as the pro-Trump Amer­i­can First Action, Club for Growth Action, the Sen­ate Lead­er­ship Fund, and Restora­tion PAC, which he fund­ed near­ly exclu­sive­ly.

    ...

    The Uih­leins have endorsed fringe can­di­dates such as Roy Moore, the far-right Alaba­man who ran for Sen­ate in 2017 and was cred­i­bly accused of sex­u­al mis­con­duct with minors by mul­ti­ple women. Liz Uih­lein was a mem­ber of the 2016 Trump campaign’s eco­nom­ic coun­cil.

    The Ed Uih­lein Foun­da­tion gave to addi­tion­al right-wing media out­lets in 2019, includ­ing The Dai­ly Caller News Foun­da­tion ($25,000), the Media Research Cen­ter ($275,000), and the Real Clear Foun­da­tion ($350,000), which has ties to The Fed­er­al­ist (see below). It also donat­ed $400,000 to the Cen­ter for Secu­ri­ty Pol­i­cy, an anti-Mus­lim hate group. Its largest 2019 con­tri­bu­tion, $3.2 mil­lion, went to the Foun­da­tion for Gov­ern­ment Account­abil­i­ty, a State Pol­i­cy Net­work mem­ber that advo­cat­ed kick­ing peo­ple off of Med­ic­aid this year dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. Since 2014, the Uih­leins have giv­en the Foun­da­tion for Gov­ern­ment Account­abil­i­ty over $11 mil­lion.
    ...

    Let’s hope Richard Uih­lein is hav­ing the same kind of regrets over his financ­ing of the hyper-par­ti­san pol­i­tics that Charles Koch is appar­ent­ly now feel­ing a smidge guilty about. There’s no indi­ca­tion so far but we’ll have to keep our fin­gers crossed. Either way, it’s all a reminder that Amer­i­ca’s obscene Dark Mon­ey has­n’t just pol­lut­ed Amer­i­ca’s pol­i­tics would a flood of anony­mous oli­garch spend­ing. Dark Mon­ey can pol­lute the media land­scape too with anony­mous oli­garch pro­pa­gan­da.

    It’s also a reminder that much of the giant right-wing media noise machine that has long dom­i­nat­ed Amer­i­can pol­i­tics is in large part an adver­tise­ment. A most regret­ful adver­tise­ment in the form of sub­si­dized media out­lets ded­i­cat­ed to ped­dling the idea that far right poli­cies are good for the com­mon man, paid for by some of the wealth­i­est and most pow­er­ful and influ­en­tial peo­ple on the plan­et.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | December 14, 2020, 2:01 am
  17. Here’s a sto­ry that’s easy to pass by in the midst of the Trump White House­’s insur­rec­tionary melt-down and a sec­ond impeach­ment hear­ing. But it’s the kind of sto­ry that could be a sig­nif­i­cant fac­tor as the broad­er melt-down pow­er-strug­gle tak­ing place with­in the GOP right now plays out:

    Repub­li­can mega-donor Shel­don Adel­son just died. With the excep­tion of Charles Koch, it’s hard to think of some­one who con­sis­tent­ly gave the kind of mega-bucks to the GOP in elec­tion after elec­tion like Adel­son gave. He was a major mega donor for the GOP.

    How much did Adel­son give? Well, here’s a Guardian excerpt from Feb­ru­ary of 2020 about his plans to donate anoth­er $100 mil­lion to Trump and the Repub­li­cans. It gives a nice sum­ma­ry of Adel­son’s past dona­tions, includ­ing the fact that Adel­son gave more than $100 mil­lion in the each of the last two pres­i­den­tial cycles (2012 and 2016). And as the arti­cle notes, these are just the pub­licly avail­able dona­tions that don’t include dark mon­ey con­tri­bu­tions that are believed to be many mil­lions more.

    One source was spec­u­lat­ing that Adel­son was on track to spend more than $200 mil­lion in the 2020 cycle. Did he? We don’t real­ly know. That’s the point of dark mon­ey. Although we do know that Polit­co report­ed in August that Trump was upset that Adel­son was­n’t giv­ing more mon­ey to his cam­paign and was focus­ing on con­gres­sion­al races instead. And in mid-Octo­ber we got reports that Adel­son and his wife gave anoth­er $75 mil­lion to a pro-Trump super PAC for a last-minute cash infu­sion.

    Adel­son was unde­ni­ably a GOP whale even by mega donor stan­dards, which bought him real pow­er in influ­enc­ing Repub­li­can pol­i­cy. And while he’s pre­sum­ably left a foun­da­tion that will be mak­ing more GOP dona­tions for years to come, Adel­son’s foun­da­tions will also pre­sum­ably not be the kind of shad­ow force with­in the GOP that Adel­son was when alive.

    So with talk of Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Mitch McConnell sup­port­ing the idea of impeach­ing Trump at the same time sup­port for Trump remains large­ly intact among the GOP base and the cult of per­son­al­i­ty around him, it’s actu­al­ly a pret­ty notable event that one of the major behind-the-scenes GOP movers and shak­ers will no longer be mov­ing and shak­ing. There’s a his­toric GOP pow­er strug­gle under­way and one of the chief shad­ow mon­ey king-mak­ers just died:

    The Guardian

    Shel­don Adel­son to donate $100m to Trump and Repub­li­cans, fundrais­ers say

    Bil­lion­aire casi­no mag­nate, a staunch­ly pro-Israel con­ser­v­a­tive, expect­ed to give to Super Pacs and ‘dark mon­ey’ groups

    Peter Stone in Wash­ing­ton
    Mon 10 Feb 2020 04.00 EST

    Last mod­i­fied on Tue 15 Dec 2020 09.33 EST

    The bil­lion­aire casi­no own­er Shel­don Adel­son, an ardent pro-Israel con­ser­v­a­tive, is expect­ed to donate at least $100m to boost Don­ald Trump’s 2020 re-elec­tion efforts and Repub­li­can con­gres­sion­al can­di­dates this fall, say three Repub­li­can fundrais­ers famil­iar with Adelson’s ini­tial plans.

    Adelson’s hefty checks are expect­ed to be writ­ten to sev­er­al Super Pacs – polit­i­cal groups that have to dis­close their donors – as well as “dark mon­ey” not-for-prof­it orga­ni­za­tions that can keep their donors secret, say the fundrais­ers.

    One source pre­dict­ed that Adel­son, who in tan­dem with his Israeli-born wife, Miri­am, donat­ed more than $100m to Super Pacs and dark mon­ey groups in each of the last two pres­i­den­tial cycles, could wind up con­tribut­ing close to $200m in 2020 giv­en their recent spend­ing pat­terns and appre­ci­a­tion for Trump’s poli­cies.

    Adel­son and his wife have been open­ing their wal­lets wider in the Trump era.

    The Adel­sons, who typ­i­cal­ly give some of their big­ger checks towards the end of cam­paigns, in 2018 spent a per­son­al record of $124m – just in pub­licly dis­closed dona­tions to Super Pacs, cam­paign com­mit­tees and can­di­dates, accord­ing to the Cen­ter for Respon­sive Pol­i­tics.

    Ever since the 2016 cam­paign, Adel­son and Trump have court­ed one anoth­er, bond­ing more close­ly as Trump has tilt­ed US poli­cies on Israel to favor goals in sync with Adel­son and oth­er big con­ser­v­a­tive donors and activists in the Jew­ish and evan­gel­i­cal worlds.

    With a net worth that Forbes pegs at $39bn, Adel­son has long cham­pi­oned sev­er­al of the hard­line pro-Israel moves that Trump has made, includ­ing relo­cat­ing the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and ditch­ing the Iran nuclear deal signed by the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion.

    Last month, the Adel­sons were at the White House for the unveil­ing of Trump’s Mid­dle East peace plan, which Pales­tini­ans and most Arab coun­tries reject­ed as too favor­able to Israel but Trump dubbed the “deal of the cen­tu­ry”.

    Before the offi­cial cer­e­mo­ny, Adel­son met briefly with Trump, accord­ing to one source. Dur­ing his pres­i­den­cy, Adel­son has had oth­er meet­ings with Trump in Wash­ing­ton and Las Vegas, and peri­od­i­cal­ly they talk by phone, say sources.

    At least a hand­ful of Super Pacs and not-for-prof­it groups are expect­ed to receive sev­en-fig­ure Adel­son checks in 2020, includ­ing sev­er­al he has backed heav­i­ly in recent cycles that are aimed at help­ing Trump and con­gres­sion­al can­di­dates.

    For instance, Adel­son has been a major fun­der and board mem­ber of the Repub­li­can Jew­ish Coali­tion, a pro-Israel lob­by­ing group that plans a record $10m-plus dri­ve to woo more Jew­ish vot­ers in key swing states includ­ing Flori­da, Ohio and Penn­syl­va­nia, which Trump is hop­ing to win again as he did in 2016, say RJC donors.

    ...

    In 2018, accord­ing to the non-par­ti­san Cen­ter for Respon­sive Pol­i­tics, the Adel­sons gave a whop­ping $55m to the Con­gres­sion­al Lead­er­ship Fund, which spent a total of $138m in the last elec­tions in an unsuc­cess­ful effort to hold on to the Repub­li­can House major­i­ty.

    In 2016, the Adel­sons gave $82m over­all to Super Pacs and com­mit­tees that backed Trump and Repub­li­can can­di­dates, includ­ing the Super Pac Future 45, which received $25m from Adel­son to run ads against Hillary Clin­ton, accord­ing to pub­lic reports. The Adel­sons donat­ed tens of mil­lions more to some dark mon­ey groups, say Repub­li­can donors.

    At an inau­gur­al gala, Trump praised the Adel­sons, thank­ing them for pony­ing up $120m to help his cam­paign and oth­er GOP can­di­dates in 2016, say two atten­dees at the event.

    Trump has also rec­og­nized Adelson’s largesse in some pri­vate meet­ings and peri­od­ic phone talks.

    The day before Trump announced in May 2018 that the US was pulling out of the nuclear accord with Iran, Adel­son flew into DC from his home in Las Vegas and met pri­vate­ly with Trump and a few top aides, includ­ing the vice-pres­i­dent, Mike Pence, and the then nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er, John Bolton, with whom Adel­son had strong ties.

    A few days lat­er, Adel­son was in Jerusalem with a few dozen fel­low board mem­bers of the RJC and some top Trump aides, includ­ing Jared Kush­n­er, to cel­e­brate the offi­cial cer­e­mo­ny mark­ing the US embassy move to Jerusalem, a top pri­or­i­ty for Adel­son and the RJC.

    The vet­er­an GOP fundrais­er Mel Sem­bler, who also sits on the RJC board, thinks Adelson’s input was sig­nif­i­cant in Trump’s deci­sions to move the embassy and pull out of the Iran­ian nuclear deal. “Adel­son was an impor­tant fac­tor in all these deci­sions,” Sem­bler told McClatchy in May 2018.

    ...

    Miri­am Adel­son, a physi­cian, has also gar­nered atten­tion from Trump. In Novem­ber 2018, Trump named her one of sev­en recip­i­ents of the Pres­i­den­tial Medal of Free­dom at a DC cer­e­mo­ny, just days after her hus­band attend­ed a White House par­ty with Trump to view the elec­tion results.

    The president’s court­ing of the Adel­sons con­tra­dicts his claims in 2016, when Trump donned a pop­ulist man­tle and pledged to “drain the swamp” of big mon­ey and lob­by­ing.

    “I don’t need anybody’s mon­ey,” Trump said in mid-June 2015. “I’m using my own mon­ey. I’m not using the lob­by­ists. I’m not using the donors. I don’t care. I’m real­ly rich.”

    ———–

    “Shel­don Adel­son to donate $100m to Trump and Repub­li­cans, fundrais­ers say” by Peter Stone; The Guardian; 02/10/2020

    “One source pre­dict­ed that Adel­son, who in tan­dem with his Israeli-born wife, Miri­am, donat­ed more than $100m to Super Pacs and dark mon­ey groups in each of the last two pres­i­den­tial cycles, could wind up con­tribut­ing close to $200m in 2020 giv­en their recent spend­ing pat­terns and appre­ci­a­tion for Trump’s poli­cies.”

    A 2020 polit­i­cal splurge. That’s what was fore­cast for Shel­don Adel­son by peo­ple close to him and famil­iar with his polit­i­cal spend­ing pat­terns. And by all accounts he met those expec­ta­tions. The mid-Octo­ber $75 mil­lion last minute infu­sion into a pro-Trump super-PAC brought the com­bined pub­licly dona­tions for Shel­don and his wife Miri­am to $172.7, set­ting a new record for dona­tions for indi­vid­u­als in a sin­gle elec­tion cycle. And that does­n’t include the dark mon­ey dona­tions we don’t get to know about:

    ...
    The Adel­sons, who typ­i­cal­ly give some of their big­ger checks towards the end of cam­paigns, in 2018 spent a per­son­al record of $124m – just in pub­licly dis­closed dona­tions to Super Pacs, cam­paign com­mit­tees and can­di­dates, accord­ing to the Cen­ter for Respon­sive Pol­i­tics.

    ...

    In 2018, accord­ing to the non-par­ti­san Cen­ter for Respon­sive Pol­i­tics, the Adel­sons gave a whop­ping $55m to the Con­gres­sion­al Lead­er­ship Fund, which spent a total of $138m in the last elec­tions in an unsuc­cess­ful effort to hold on to the Repub­li­can House major­i­ty.

    In 2016, the Adel­sons gave $82m over­all to Super Pacs and com­mit­tees that backed Trump and Repub­li­can can­di­dates, includ­ing the Super Pac Future 45, which received $25m from Adel­son to run ads against Hillary Clin­ton, accord­ing to pub­lic reports. The Adel­sons donat­ed tens of mil­lions more to some dark mon­ey groups, say Repub­li­can donors.
    ...

    The GOP was already in the mid­dle of a The Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s sedi­tious death spasm has cer­tain­ly trig­gered the kind of rolling earth­quake with­in the GOP that threat­ens to engulf not just Trump but much of GOP estab­lish too. A mas­sive reshuf­fling of the deck could be in store for the GOP in com­ing years, and now Shel­don Adel­son — him­self an entire wing of the GOP ‘estab­lish­ment’ — dies, set­ting off a mas­sive reshuf­fling in the Repub­li­can mega-donor estab­lish­ment too.

    That’s part of why Adel­son’s death is so sig­nif­i­cant: the par­ty that sells its soul on prin­ci­ple is look­ing for investors again right in the mid­dle of this his­to­ry pow­er strug­gle between a grow­ing pro/an­ti-Trump divide. It does­n’t which side ends up win­ning. The GOP infra­struc­ture will be there to col­lect mon­ey from donors and turn it into their desired poli­cies. It could end up being new Trumpian donors or more tra­di­tion­al Koch-like donors. But some­one needs to replace Shel­don’s deep pock­ets and who­ev­er that is gets a big say in GOP pol­i­cy. Any donor is fine as long as their checks cash. Bil­lion­aires need only apply.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | January 13, 2021, 12:10 am
  18. Here’s a pair of arti­cles that serve as a reminder of one of the key ways the ‘dark mon­ey’ rules of US pol­i­tics facil­i­tates bad gov­ern­ment: By mak­ing it eas­i­er con­tin­ue financ­ing orga­ni­za­tions doing your bid­ding even after these orga­ni­za­tions, and your bid­ding, have become polit­i­cal­ly tox­ic.

    There are reports that cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca is increas­ing tepid about open­ly sup­port­ing Repub­li­can can­di­dates fol­low­ing the Jan­u­ary 6 insur­rec­tion at that Capi­tol. Already, more than a dozen cor­po­rate giants — includ­ing AT&T, Nike, Com­cast, Dow, Mar­riott, Wal­mart and Ver­i­zon — have pledged to pull sup­port for any Repub­li­can law­mak­ers who vot­ed to reject the out­come of the elec­tion in Ari­zona or Penn­syl­va­nia. And yet one of the Repub­li­cans who did indeed vote to reject the votes of Ari­zona and Penn­syl­va­nia was Flori­da Sen­a­tor Rick Scott, the new­ly select­ed chair of the Nation­al Repub­li­can Sen­a­to­r­i­al Com­mit­tee (NRSC). And as chair of the NRSC, Scott is the pub­lic face of the Repub­li­cans fundrais­ing in the Sen­ate.

    So is the GOP tru­ly fac­ing the risk of being cut­off from cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca’s dona­tions? Maybe in some cas­es. But it’s kind of hard to believe that cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca is sim­ply going to aban­don the par­ty that more or less exists for the pur­pose of increas­ing cor­po­rate pow­er and prof­its. And with exist­ing cam­paign finance laws, there’s noth­ing stop­ping these com­pa­nies from sim­ply mak­ing those future dona­tions via ‘dark mon­ey’ vehi­cles that allow donors to keep their iden­ti­ties anony­mous. It’s a big part of why these promis­es of respon­si­ble anti-insur­rec­tionary cor­po­rate behav­ior in response to the Repub­li­can Par­ty’s insur­rec­tionary fer­vor are prob­a­bly lit­tle more than just announce­ments that a lot more cor­po­rate dark mon­ey is going to used going for­ward:

    Asso­ci­at­ed Press

    Donor back­lash fuels GOP alarm about Sen­ate fundrais­ing

    By BRIAN SLODYSKO
    Sat Jan 16 2021, 08:17:08 CST

    WASHINGTON (AP) — Repub­li­cans are wor­ried that a cor­po­rate back­lash stirred by the dead­ly Capi­tol insur­rec­tion could crimp a vital stream of cam­paign cash, com­pli­cat­ing the party’s prospects of retak­ing the Sen­ate in the next elec­tion.

    The GOP already faces a dif­fi­cult Sen­ate map in 2022, when 14 Demo­c­ra­t­ic-held seats and 20 Repub­li­can ones will be on the bal­lot. That includes at least two open seats that Repub­li­cans will be defend­ing because of the retire­ments of GOP Sens. Pat Toomey of Penn­syl­va­nia and Richard Burr of North Car­oli­na.

    But some in the par­ty say the prob­lem may be big­ger than the map. Eight Repub­li­can sen­a­tors vot­ed to reject Elec­toral Col­lege votes for Pres­i­dent-elect Joe Biden, even after the ran­sack­ing of the Capi­tol by a mob of Don­ald Trump sup­port­ers who were exhort­ed by the pres­i­dent to stop Con­gress from cer­ti­fy­ing Biden’s vic­to­ry. Five peo­ple died in the may­hem, includ­ing a Capi­tol Police offi­cer.

    Recrim­i­na­tions were swift, with more than a dozen cor­po­rate giants — includ­ing AT&T, Nike, Com­cast, Dow, Mar­riott, Wal­mart and Ver­i­zon — pledg­ing to with­hold dona­tions to Repub­li­can law­mak­ers who vot­ed to reject the out­come of the elec­tion in Ari­zona or Penn­syl­va­nia. One of those law­mak­ers, Flori­da Sen. Rick Scott, is the new chair of the Nation­al Repub­li­can Sen­a­to­r­i­al Com­mit­tee, a post that makes him the pub­lic face of the Sen­ate Repub­li­can fundrais­ing efforts.

    “That’s the crux of the issue: Is this a storm that will blow over, or is ... chal­leng­ing (Biden’s) Elec­toral Col­lege cer­ti­fi­ca­tion a scar­let ‘A’?” said Repub­li­can donor Dan Eber­hart, who has con­tributed at least $115,000 to Sen­ate Repub­li­can efforts in recent years.

    The lost con­tri­bu­tions aren’t dis­as­trous on their own. Polit­i­cal action com­mit­tees con­trolled by cor­po­ra­tions and indus­try groups are lim­it­ed to giv­ing $5,000 to a can­di­date per year, a sliv­er of the typ­i­cal fundrais­ing haul for most Sen­ate can­di­dates.

    But two senior Repub­li­can strate­gists involved in Sen­ate races say the cumu­la­tive effect of the com­pa­nies’ deci­sions could have a big­ger impact.

    Both of the strate­gists, who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss inter­nal par­ty delib­er­a­tions, say com­pa­nies that sus­pend­ed polit­i­cal giv­ing are also send­ing a pow­er­ful sig­nal to their exec­u­tives, board mem­bers and employ­ees about whom they should donate to. And with Scott at the helm of the NRSC, that could affect the committee’s cash flow, they said.

    Adding to the wor­ries, oth­er pil­lars of GOP fundrais­ing — includ­ing the U.S. Cham­ber of Com­merce, the Nation­al Rifle Asso­ci­a­tion and groups tied to the Koch broth­ers — can no longer be count­ed on for robust finan­cial sup­port.

    The NRA announced Fri­day that it had filed for bank­rupt­cy after years of prof­li­gate spend­ing and insid­er deal­ing by top lead­ers. The Cham­ber of Com­merce, which angered some Repub­li­cans when it recent­ly start­ed donat­ing to Democ­rats, announced this week that it will with­hold con­tri­bu­tions from some Repub­li­cans over their actions. And the Koch net­work, too, announced it will scru­ti­nize whom it gives to fol­low­ing the insur­rec­tion, as first report­ed by The Wall Street Jour­nal.

    “There are some mem­bers who by their actions will have for­feit­ed the sup­port of the U.S. Cham­ber of Com­merce,” Neil Bradley, the chamber’s chief pol­i­cy offi­cer, said this week. “Our PAC will con­tin­ue to sup­port those can­di­dates who demon­strate that type of com­mit­ment to gov­ern­ing and demo­c­ra­t­ic norms and our pri­or­i­ties.”

    More con­cern­ing still, one of the most influ­en­tial Repub­li­can megadonors, Shel­don Adel­son, died in recent days. That puts more pres­sure on the NRSC and the lead­ing Sen­ate Repub­li­can out­side group, Sen­ate Lead­er­ship Fund, to cov­er the dif­fer­ence.

    Even before the last week’s vio­lence, Repub­li­can Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Haw­ley of Mis­souri drew wide­spread ire for lead­ing efforts to chal­lenge Biden’s win. Since the assault on the Capi­tol, both have come under even harsh­er crit­i­cism from edi­to­r­i­al boards and influ­en­tial donors, includ­ing calls to resign. Both are seen as like­ly 2024 White House con­tenders.

    Then there’s Scott, a wealthy busi­ness­man and for­mer Flori­da gov­er­nor. He also vot­ed to object to Biden’s win.

    “Dai­ly reminder, Sen­ate Repub­li­cans have cho­sen one of the hand­ful of Sen­a­tors who sup­port­ed the big lie AFTER death and destruc­tion in the Capi­tol to be their polit­i­cal leader,” tweet­ed for­mer Mis­souri Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Demo­c­rat who was oust­ed by Haw­ley. “Rick Scott is in charge of the orga­ni­za­tion that tries to elect R’s.”

    Scott’s new posi­tion as NRSC chair is wide­ly viewed as a pre­lude to a poten­tial 2024 run and one that will bring him into close con­tact with a nation­al net­work of the Repub­li­can Party’s biggest donors.

    On Wednes­day, Scott released a video mes­sage after tak­ing over the NRSC that was heavy on his biog­ra­phy and light on his plan to help Repub­li­cans win. That irked some Repub­li­cans, who believe Scott took over the NRSC to help build a nation­al donor net­work for an expect­ed pres­i­den­tial bid, accord­ing to three Repub­li­can strate­gists.

    “I’ve won four statewide elec­tions. All the races were close. In the process, I’ve raised a lot of mon­ey and spent a for­tune of my own,” Scott said in the video. “I can say this with con­fi­dence: I will nev­er ask a poten­tial donor to con­tribute more than I have already giv­en.”

    In a state­ment, Chris Hart­line, an NRSC spokesper­son and aide to the sen­a­tor, said Scott was the party’s “best fundrais­er” and the com­mit­tee had “no inter­est in engag­ing with non­sense from D.C. con­sul­tants who have no idea what they’re talk­ing about.”

    “Sen­a­tor Scott has been clear that if folks want high­er tax­es, more reg­u­la­tion, big­ger gov­ern­ment and nation­al­ized health care, they should feel free to give to Democ­rats,” Hart­line said.

    Some say it’s too ear­ly to tell if the cor­po­rate back­lash will tru­ly hurt Repub­li­cans. They note that with elec­tions just held this is a peri­od when there is typ­i­cal­ly lit­tle fundrais­ing activ­i­ty. And some are con­fi­dent that, as Wash­ing­ton comes under uni­fied Demo­c­ra­t­ic con­trol, busi­ness groups will find com­mon cause with Repub­li­cans once again.

    “A lot of this talk is pre­ma­ture and short­sight­ed,” said Scott Reed, a long­time Repub­li­can strate­gist. “A re-reg­u­la­tion crowd is tak­ing over Con­gress and the White House. This is a deci­sion many will regret by mid­sum­mer.”

    ...

    ———–

    “Donor back­lash fuels GOP alarm about Sen­ate fundrais­ing” by BRIAN SLODYSKO; Asso­ci­at­ed Press; 01/16/2021

    Recrim­i­na­tions were swift, with more than a dozen cor­po­rate giants — includ­ing AT&T, Nike, Com­cast, Dow, Mar­riott, Wal­mart and Ver­i­zon — pledg­ing to with­hold dona­tions to Repub­li­can law­mak­ers who vot­ed to reject the out­come of the elec­tion in Ari­zona or Penn­syl­va­nia. One of those law­mak­ers, Flori­da Sen. Rick Scott, is the new chair of the Nation­al Repub­li­can Sen­a­to­r­i­al Com­mit­tee, a post that makes him the pub­lic face of the Sen­ate Repub­li­can fundrais­ing efforts.

    Cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca may love Repub­li­can tax cuts and dereg­u­la­tions, but they aren’t lov­ing the insur­rec­tionary taint. Will this all blow over or might we see cor­po­rate board­rooms steer­ing their exec­u­tives away from Repub­li­can dona­tions? And note that, while indus­try groups are lim­it­ed to $5,000 in con­tri­bu­tions to can­di­dates per year, that only applies to direct con­tri­bu­tion. Con­tri­bu­tions to dark mon­ey groups that end up help­ing those can­di­dates can be unlim­it­ed and anony­mous. In oth­er words, the cor­po­rate pledges we’re hear­ing are real­ly just pledges to avoid mak­ing pub­licly dis­closed direct con­tri­bu­tions to pro-insur­rec­tion Repub­li­cans that were capped at $5,000 any­way. So it’s real­ly just a pledge by cor­po­ra­tions to not pub­licly taint them­selves. After all, should we real­ly expect cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca to aban­don the par­ty that exists to do cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca’s bid­ding? Of course not. The GOP is cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca’s pup­pet. So if there real­ly is a big drop in cor­po­rate dona­tions to right-wing groups don’t be sur­prised if there’s a surge in dona­tions to new mid­dman-man dark-mon­ey orga­ni­za­tions that effect finance these same groups while laun­der­ing the taint:

    ...
    “That’s the crux of the issue: Is this a storm that will blow over, or is ... chal­leng­ing (Biden’s) Elec­toral Col­lege cer­ti­fi­ca­tion a scar­let ‘A’?” said Repub­li­can donor Dan Eber­hart, who has con­tributed at least $115,000 to Sen­ate Repub­li­can efforts in recent years.

    The lost con­tri­bu­tions aren’t dis­as­trous on their own. Polit­i­cal action com­mit­tees con­trolled by cor­po­ra­tions and indus­try groups are lim­it­ed to giv­ing $5,000 to a can­di­date per year, a sliv­er of the typ­i­cal fundrais­ing haul for most Sen­ate can­di­dates.

    But two senior Repub­li­can strate­gists involved in Sen­ate races say the cumu­la­tive effect of the com­pa­nies’ deci­sions could have a big­ger impact.

    Both of the strate­gists, who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss inter­nal par­ty delib­er­a­tions, say com­pa­nies that sus­pend­ed polit­i­cal giv­ing are also send­ing a pow­er­ful sig­nal to their exec­u­tives, board mem­bers and employ­ees about whom they should donate to. And with Scott at the helm of the NRSC, that could affect the committee’s cash flow, they said.

    ...

    Some say it’s too ear­ly to tell if the cor­po­rate back­lash will tru­ly hurt Repub­li­cans. They note that with elec­tions just held this is a peri­od when there is typ­i­cal­ly lit­tle fundrais­ing activ­i­ty. And some are con­fi­dent that, as Wash­ing­ton comes under uni­fied Demo­c­ra­t­ic con­trol, busi­ness groups will find com­mon cause with Repub­li­cans once again.

    “A lot of this talk is pre­ma­ture and short­sight­ed,” said Scott Reed, a long­time Repub­li­can strate­gist. “A re-reg­u­la­tion crowd is tak­ing over Con­gress and the White House. This is a deci­sion many will regret by mid­sum­mer.”
    ...

    Then there’s the warn­ing from groups like the US Cham­ber of Com­merce and groups tied to the Koch broth­ers (now just Charles Koch) donor net­work that they might not be as gen­er­ous to Repub­li­cans in the future. Which, again, is a com­plete joke. The idea that the Koch net­work — which has spent decades push­ing to min­i­mize gov­ern­ment over­sight of busi­ness, which is real­ly demo­c­ra­t­ic over­sight — is some­how con­cerned about the Repub­li­can Par­ty’s lat­est assault on democ­ra­cy is beyond absurd. But that’s the spin we’re get­ting at the moment:

    ...
    Adding to the wor­ries, oth­er pil­lars of GOP fundrais­ing — includ­ing the U.S. Cham­ber of Com­merce, the Nation­al Rifle Asso­ci­a­tion and groups tied to the Koch broth­ers — can no longer be count­ed on for robust finan­cial sup­port.

    The NRA announced Fri­day that it had filed for bank­rupt­cy after years of prof­li­gate spend­ing and insid­er deal­ing by top lead­ers. The Cham­ber of Com­merce, which angered some Repub­li­cans when it recent­ly start­ed donat­ing to Democ­rats, announced this week that it will with­hold con­tri­bu­tions from some Repub­li­cans over their actions. And the Koch net­work, too, announced it will scru­ti­nize whom it gives to fol­low­ing the insur­rec­tion, as first report­ed by The Wall Street Jour­nal.

    “There are some mem­bers who by their actions will have for­feit­ed the sup­port of the U.S. Cham­ber of Com­merce,” Neil Bradley, the chamber’s chief pol­i­cy offi­cer, said this week. “Our PAC will con­tin­ue to sup­port those can­di­dates who demon­strate that type of com­mit­ment to gov­ern­ing and demo­c­ra­t­ic norms and our pri­or­i­ties.”

    ...

    So regard­ing the Koch net­work’s asser­tions that its donors were seri­ous­ly per­turbed by the Repub­li­can Par­ty’s anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic actions and would be scru­ti­niz­ing its recip­i­ents, first, recall how we recent­ly learned that Donors Trust — one of the key dark mon­ey ‘char­i­ties’ used by the Koch net­work — gave $1.5 mil­lion to VDARE, allow­ing the white nation­al­ist group to be real cas­tle in West Vir­ginia last year. It’s not exact­ly the kind of dona­tion that sug­gests the Koch net­work of mega-donors is very con­cerned about the state of US democ­ra­cy. But as the fol­low­ing arti­cle also points out, Donors Trust gave a lot of mon­ey in 2019 to many of the same groups that today are aggres­sive­ly push­ing the idea that the elec­tion was stolen from Trump, so if they do stay true to their pledge to scru­ti­nize their recip­i­ents they will have to cut ties with a lot of their cur­rent recip­i­ents.

    Groups like Turn­ing Point USA which received $850,000 from Donors Trust in 2019. The group’s founder, Char­lie Kirk, has been one of the biggest right-wing pro­mot­ers of idea that the elec­tion was stolen. For exam­ple, Kirk recent­ly called Geor­gia’s Repub­li­can Sec­re­tary of State Brad Raf­fensperg­er a “nation­al secu­ri­ty threat” who “should imme­di­ate­ly be inves­ti­gat­ed” over his refusal to go along with the vot­er fraud alle­ga­tions. Kirk was at the Jan 6 ral­ly, although he claims he did­n’t par­tic­i­pate in the storm­ing of the Capi­tol. And he’s just one exam­ple of the many promi­nent right-wing fig­ures who are both advo­cates of Trump’s stolen elec­tion Lost Cause and recip­i­ents of Koch net­work mon­ey. There’s also recip­i­ents like Project Ver­i­tas and Frank Gaffney’s Cen­ter for Secu­ri­ty Pol­i­cy that have been aggres­sive­ly push­ing the line of mass vot­er fraud. Donors Trust gave at least $20 mil­lion in 2019 to groups that have been push­ing the ‘stolen elec­tion’ line.

    And we have no idea yet which groups Donors Trust gave to in 2020. 2019 is the most recent year we have pub­lic infor­ma­tion on so far. Did Donors Trust buy anoth­er white suprema­cist group a cas­tle last year? We’ll find out lat­er this year. Is Donors Trust going to con­tin­ue mak­ing large con­tri­bu­tions to Turn­ing Point USA in 2021? We’ll find out in 2022. But it’s unclear why we should expect a group like Donors Trust, a ‘non-prof­it’ that exists for the anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic pur­pose of secret­ly pool­ing the resources of the super-rich to build polit­i­cal pow­er and influ­ence, is hon­est­ly inter­est­ed in see the right-wing fix­a­tion on stolen elec­tion claims go unfi­nanced. A big lie about a stolen elec­tion all seems rough­ly in line with val­ues of Donors Trust. Again, they bought white nation­al­ists a cas­tle. And have been financ­ing the decades-long right-ward lurch of the Repub­li­can Par­ty and right-wing media that cre­at­ed the con­di­tions that allowed for Trump to arise in the first place. And don’t for­get how Cle­ta Mitchell, the right-wing attor­ney who was help­ing Trump when made his shake-down phone call to Raf­fensperg­er, was the fea­ture speak­er at Free­dom­Work­s’s Octo­ber 2020 Elec­tion Pro­tec­tion Sum­mit. If any­thing, the Repub­li­can Par­ty’s gen­er­al embrace of the stolen elec­tion Big Lie should be seen as a Donors Trust long-term accom­plish­ment. The cul­mi­na­tion of the kind of lie-heavy poi­son­ing of pol­i­tics that right-wing mega-donor groups have been financ­ing for years. Before Trump’s end­less lies and weaponized mis­in­for­ma­tion we had the end­less lies and mis­in­for­ma­tion pump out by the Donors Trust net­work of recip­i­ent orga­ni­za­tions. Donors Trust rep­re­sents the mega-donor net­work that built and con­tin­ue to finance the US right-wing Big Lie machine. When it comes to push­ing fake elec­tion fraud claims, the Donors Trust donors are like­ly either giv­ing advice or tak­ing notes. And that’s all why these attempts by Koch net­work to dis­tance itself from the Repub­li­can politi­cians and groups cur­rent­ly cham­pi­oning Trump’s stolen val­or are like­ly to be less about cut­ting off fund­ing for the groups wag­ing a war on democ­ra­cy and more about mak­ing their financ­ing of the destruc­tion of democ­ra­cy go ‘dark’:

    CNBC

    Dark-mon­ey GOP fund fun­neled mil­lions of dol­lars to groups that pushed vot­er fraud claims

    Bri­an Schwartz
    Pub­lished Wed, Jan 13 2021 12:27 PM EST Updat­ed Wed, Jan 13 2021 2:36 PM EST

    * A dark-mon­ey group used by Repub­li­can donors fun­neled mil­lions of dol­lars to high-pro­file con­ser­v­a­tive orga­ni­za­tions that pushed or inves­ti­gat­ed claims of elec­tion fraud before and after Joe Biden defeat­ed Pres­i­dent Trump.
    * That group, the Donors Trust, is offi­cial­ly labeled as a non­prof­it. The des­ig­na­tion allows financiers to give to the orga­ni­za­tion anony­mous­ly. That mon­ey is then chan­neled to oth­er dark-mon­ey groups.
    * Among the pro-Trump groups that have received mon­ey from the Donors Fund are pro-Trump stu­dents orga­ni­za­tion Turn­ing Point USA and an anti-immi­gra­tion orga­ni­za­tion that has been called a hate group.

    A dark-mon­ey group used by Repub­li­can donors fun­neled mil­lions of dol­lars toward high-pro­file con­ser­v­a­tive orga­ni­za­tions that pushed and in some cas­es inves­ti­gat­ed claims of elec­tion fraud either before or after Joe Biden defeat­ed Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump in Novem­ber.

    Many of these stances matched points that Trump and his team made as they attempt­ed to under­mine the elec­tion.

    Almost all of the groups men­tioned in this sto­ry denied to CNBC they were attempt­ing to under­mine the elec­tion with their own claims of fraud and vot­ing irreg­u­lar­i­ties. State and fed­er­al offi­cials, includ­ing the for­mer attor­ney gen­er­al, have said there was no wide­spread elec­tion fraud dur­ing the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion.

    That fund­ing group, the Donors Trust, is offi­cial­ly labeled as a 501(c)(3) non­prof­it. The des­ig­na­tion allows financiers to give to the orga­ni­za­tion anony­mous­ly. That mon­ey is then chan­neled to oth­er dark-mon­ey groups.

    Among the recent pro-Trump groups that have received mon­ey from the Donors Trust are:

    * pro-Trump stu­dents orga­ni­za­tion Turn­ing Point USA
    * an anti-immi­gra­tion orga­ni­za­tion that has been labeled a hate group
    * Project Ver­i­tas, a con­ser­v­a­tive out­fit that spe­cial­izes in “sting” videos
    * a group found­ed by a man who pushed false con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries about for­mer Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma

    “A donor-advised fund account allows you to have char­i­ta­ble dol­lars ready to put into action on your own sched­ule. It works like a char­i­ta­ble sav­ings account,” the Donors Trust web­site says. Such asso­ci­a­tions are labeled as “dark mon­ey” because they do not pub­licly dis­close their donors.

    In 2019, the Donors Trust gave over $20 mil­lion to at least a dozen orga­ni­za­tions that would go on to ques­tion the integri­ty of the elec­tion process, accord­ing to the group’s 990 tax return. They have sup­port­ed many of these orga­ni­za­tions in pri­or years, as well. The 2020 fil­ings won’t be made avail­able until lat­er this year, so it is not yet clear whether Donors Trust gave mon­ey to these groups last year.

    Donors Trust fin­ished 2019 rais­ing over $300 mil­lion, just under dou­ble the amount they raised the pri­or year. It gave a total of over $160 mil­lion in grants in 2019. The group’s top anony­mous donor gave over $150 mil­lion. Non­prof­its often release their finan­cial infor­ma­tion a full year after their cov­er­age dates.

    In a lengthy state­ment to CNBC, Donors Trust CEO Law­son Bad­er said these orga­ni­za­tions rep­re­sent only a frac­tion of those see­ing their donor funds and he con­demns last week’s vio­lence in Wash­ing­ton.

    “The grants described were made in 2019 for gen­er­al oper­a­tions. These list­ed orga­ni­za­tions are but a few of the many hun­dreds of dif­fer­ent pub­lic char­i­ties that Donors Trust account hold­ers sup­port­ed that same year,” Bad­er said Tues­day. “Con­tri­bu­tions made through a DonorsTrust DAF (Donor-Advised Funds) are made only to IRS rec­og­nized char­i­ta­ble and edu­ca­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions. Donors Trust, like all donor-advised fund providers, does not make grants to 501(c)(4) orga­ni­za­tions. Fur­ther, Donors Trust con­demns vio­lence of any kind. Espous­ing vio­lence vio­lates the ideas of per­son­al respon­si­bil­i­ty and free exchange which we sup­port whol­ly,” he added.

    “I was appalled by the actions tak­en by pro­tes­tors last week to vio­late the Capi­tol build­ing and phys­i­cal­ly threat­en law­mak­ers. Whether against pub­lic or pri­vate prop­er­ty, such actions are not only offen­sive, dan­ger­ous and ille­gal, but dam­age an already frag­ile civic dis­course and embar­rass the rep­u­ta­tion of the Unit­ed States as a place where polit­i­cal tran­si­tions hap­pen with­in the con­text of the Con­sti­tu­tion.”

    Aligned with Trump

    ...

    Sev­er­al pro-Trump groups were involved with plan­ning the ral­ly, which was held near the White House. Trump encour­aged peo­ple who attend­ed the ral­ly to march on the U.S. Capi­tol. Crit­ics, includ­ing sev­er­al Repub­li­cans, accused him of incit­ing the vio­lence. On Tues­day, Trump said the com­ments were “total­ly appro­pri­ate.”

    Groups with the same 501(c)(3) sta­tus as Donors Trust are pro­hib­it­ed under tax reg­u­la­tions from sup­port­ing spe­cif­ic can­di­dates. How­ev­er, they can skirt those rules by sup­port­ing and pro­mot­ing poli­cies that align with a par­tic­u­lar politi­cian. In the case of Trump-fueled unrest, sev­er­al groups his­tor­i­cal­ly backed by Donors Trust mon­ey aligned them­selves with Trump’s false claims about wide­spread elec­tion fraud.

    Turn­ing Point USA, a non­prof­it found­ed by staunch Trump ally Char­lie Kirk, received over $850,000 from the Donors Trust. Kirk has con­tin­ued to par­rot the president’s attacks on the elec­tion, false­ly claim­ing Biden’s vic­to­ry was fraud­u­lent.

    “I will say it very blunt­ly. This elec­tion was stolen from Pres­i­dent Trump. And the changes to the elec­tion, to the bal­lot ques­tions, to the vot­er reg­is­tra­tion, to the access prob­lems in these states” Kirk said in Decem­ber.

    Kirk’s affil­i­at­ed 501(c)(4) Turn­ing Point Action was list­ed as a par­tic­i­pant in last week’s “March to Save Amer­i­ca” ral­ly, which pre­ced­ed the attack on Capi­tol Hill. Pri­or to the ral­ly, in a tweet he lat­er delet­ed, Kirk said the group would be involved with send­ing over 80 bus­es to the ral­ly. CNBC cap­tured a screen­shot of tweet before it was delet­ed.

    Kirk recent­ly said on his pod­cast that those from Turn­ing Point got back on their bus­es and left fol­low­ing the con­clu­sion of the ral­ly.

    A Turn­ing Point Action spokesper­son said the group did not include a march to the Capi­tol on its itin­er­ary.

    “Turn­ing Point Action (TPA) did bus some stu­dents to the Jan­u­ary 6th ral­ly, which includ­ed a speech from the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States. Fol­low­ing the president’s remarks, TPA then bused those stu­dents imme­di­ate­ly out of the area,” the spokesper­son said. “The march to the Capi­tol Build­ing was nev­er part of TPA’s itin­er­ary, nor did TPA encour­age par­tic­i­pa­tion in the march. TPA’s lead­er­ship con­demns polit­i­cal vio­lence and imme­di­ate­ly did so as soon as news broke of the inci­dent at the Capi­tol Build­ing. ”

    The New York Times report­ed that the group end­ed up send­ing only sev­en bus­es to the ral­ly from New Jer­sey, North Car­oli­na and oth­er loca­tions.

    Oth­er con­nec­tions

    The 85 Fund, a group with ties to long­time Trump judi­cial advi­sor Leonard Leo, received over $10 mil­lion from the Donors Trust in 2019. Accord­ing to a report by The Guardian and the non­par­ti­san Cen­ter for Respon­sive Pol­i­tics, it was once known as The Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project. It was run by Car­rie Sev­eri­no, who also is in charge of the Leo-affil­i­at­ed Judi­cial Cri­sis Net­work. Severino’s Judi­cial Cri­sis Net­work active­ly cam­paigned in sup­port of Trump’s nom­i­nees to the Supreme Court.

    The Donors Trust lists an address for the 85 Fund in Wash­ing­ton that match­es the address on The Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project’s 2018 990 form. Leo also told Axios that the 85 Fund would be one of the groups used to fun­nel mil­lions of dol­lars into con­ser­v­a­tive bat­tles around the coun­try.

    The Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project, though, has anoth­er alias, accord­ing to the report: the Hon­est Elec­tions Project. The orga­ni­za­tion claims to be non­par­ti­san and says that “through pub­lic engage­ment, advo­ca­cy, and pub­lic-inter­est lit­i­ga­tion, the Hon­est Elec­tions Project will defend the fair, rea­son­able, com­mon sense mea­sures that vot­ers want in place to pro­tect the integri­ty of the vot­ing process.”

    A review of adver­tise­ments and lit­i­ga­tion reveals that, in some cas­es, the group is aligned with claims about elec­tion fraud that are sim­i­lar to Trump’s. The group lists two Michi­gan-relat­ed law­suits linked to Repub­li­cans that took place before the Novem­ber elec­tion.

    In Sep­tem­ber, The Detroit News report­ed on one of those law­suits, which fea­tured two for­mer Repub­li­can sec­re­taries of state. The for­mer offi­cials chal­lenged Michigan’s plan to count absen­tee bal­lots that are post­marked before Elec­tion Day but arrive up to 14 days after­ward. Biden went on to win Michi­gan, even though an appeals court did rescind the 14-day exten­sion of mail in bal­lots.

    Fox News report­ed in June on anoth­er suit fea­tur­ing the Hon­est Elec­tions Project. In that case, a Repub­li­can named Tony Daunt claimed that Michi­gan vot­er reg­is­tra­tion rates in some coun­ties are too high because their vot­ing records have not been updat­ed to remove inel­i­gi­ble vot­ers, such as those who have died or con­vict­ed of crimes.

    A leader of the Hon­est Elec­tions Project told CNBC that the group con­clud­ed after the elec­tion that no wide­spread vot­er fraud occurred and they did not get involved with any post-elec­tion legal chal­lenges. It also con­demned the vio­lence on Capi­tol Hill.

    “HEP was cre­at­ed to make it easy to vote and hard to cheat. Before the elec­tion, HEP fought to pre­serve the rule of law as left-wing groups, includ­ing the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, filed over 200 law­suits to chal­lenge exist­ing elec­tion laws,” Hon­est Elec­tions Project exec­u­tive direc­tor Jason Snead said in a state­ment. “After the elec­tion, HEP con­clud­ed that there was no wide­spread fraud and did not chal­lenge or sup­port any chal­lenge to the results of the 2020 elec­tion. The vio­lent insur­rec­tion at the Capi­tol was a heinous attack against democ­ra­cy, the rule of law, and the elec­tion sys­tem HEP was cre­at­ed to defend.”

    For­mer U.S. Attor­ney Gen­er­al William Barr said in Decem­ber that the Depart­ment of Jus­tice has found no evi­dence of vot­er fraud.

    The anti-immi­gra­tion VDARE Foun­da­tion, which the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter labeled a hate group, received just under $2 mil­lion from the Donors Trust in 2019. The foun­da­tion is run by Peter Brimelow, some­body the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter says is a “lead­ing anti-immi­gra­tion activist.”

    Brimelow did not return a request for com­ment.

    Since the riot last week, VDARE has become a plat­form for sev­er­al writ­ers stand­ing with Trump and peo­ple who attend­ed the ral­ly.

    “I believe Trump won the elec­tion and I believe that this mat­ters,” says an arti­cle on the foundation’s site. The writer also says he believes the anti-fas­cist pro­test­ers and fre­quent Trump tar­gets known as antifa were “amongst the crowd.” Ken Kohl, a senior offi­cial in the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office, recent­ly said that inves­ti­ga­tors saw no indi­ca­tion of antifa being part of the riot.

    Anoth­er writer on VDARE’s site admit­ted to cheer­ing on the Capi­tol inva­sion. “I’m going to open with a con­fes­sion here: watch­ing those pro­tes­tors ram­pag­ing through the halls of Con­gress on Wednes­day after­noon, there was a part of me that was cheer­ing them on,” the arti­cle says.

    Project Ver­i­tas, an activist group found­ed by inves­ti­ga­tor James O’Keefe, received over $4 mil­lion in 2019 from the Donors Trust. In August, The New Repub­lic report­ed that Project Ver­i­tas was secret­ly mov­ing ahead with sting oper­a­tions that would “under­mine the integri­ty of absen­tee and mail-in bal­lot counts.”

    Jered Ede, chief legal offi­cer for Project Ver­i­tas, told CNBC that the group con­demns the vio­lence at the Capi­tol and pushed back on the idea their inves­ti­ga­tions are attempts to under­mine the elec­tion. He also said Project Ver­i­tas has proved at least two instances of fraud and irreg­u­lar­i­ties, includ­ing in New Hamp­shire and Texas.

    “Project Ver­i­tas has been expos­ing vot­er fraud and elec­tion integri­ty sto­ries for near­ly a decade. We did so pri­or to 2020, we did so pri­or to 2019, we did so pri­or to Mr. Trump announc­ing his can­di­da­cy, and we will con­tin­ue to do so for as long as we are around,” Ede said in part of his lengthy respons­es to CNBC. “Nei­ther our donors nor any politi­cian con­trol or direct what sto­ries we cov­er. We have and will con­tin­ue to cov­er these sto­ries because vot­ers deserve to know the truth and have faith in their elec­toral sys­tem.”

    Project Ver­i­tas pushed a Penn­syl­va­nia postal worker’s claim about mail-in bal­lots that the Trump cam­paign would cite in a law­suit that even­tu­al­ly went nowhere, accord­ing to The Wash­ing­ton Post.

    The Cen­ter for Secu­ri­ty Pol­i­cy received over $800,000 from Donors Trust in 2019. It was found­ed by Frank Gaffney, who pushed con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries about Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s admin­is­tra­tion and the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. In the buildup to the riot, Gaffney ques­tioned the results of the elec­tion.

    Fred Fleitz, pres­i­dent of the Cen­ter for Secu­ri­ty Pol­i­cy, told CNBC late Tues­day that the group acknowl­edges that Biden is going to be the new pres­i­dent. He said Gaffney was no longer run­ning the orga­ni­za­tion. The web­site lists Gaffney as exec­u­tive chair­man.

    “Cen­ter for Secu­ri­ty Pol­i­cy accepts Joe Biden as the legal Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States,” Fleitz said. “It’s time to move on. We are an orga­ni­za­tion that is going to focus on hold­ing Biden account­able when it comes to nation­al secu­ri­ty. Gaffney does not run the orga­ni­za­tion. He’s not the pres­i­dent of the orga­ni­za­tion, I am,” Fleitz added.

    In a post on the group’s web­site, Gaffney him­self claimed in Decem­ber the media is push­ing a “false nar­ra­tive” that “there’s no evi­dence of elec­toral lar­ce­ny in the 2020 pres­i­den­tial race — or at least none that would have made a dif­fer­ence,” he said. Gaffney also wrote that “the online resource EveryLegalVote.com makes clear that elec­tion integri­ty was sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly com­pro­mised.”

    In Jan­u­ary, a Cen­ter for Secu­ri­ty Pol­i­cy arti­cle claimed there are 10 truths about elec­tion fraud, includ­ing that elec­tion fraud has become “more sin­is­ter and sophis­ti­cat­ed.”

    An arti­cle on Jan. 5, a day before the riot, is head­lined “Exer­cis­ing your First Amend­ment rights? How to avoid Antifa vio­lence at the upcom­ing Jan­u­ary 6th protests.” Then arti­cle then goes on to give pro­test­ers tips on how to avoid fights with antifa.

    Gaffney’s own con­dem­na­tion of the vio­lence after the protest includ­ed him call­ing for a hear­ing that would show “evi­dence of elec­toral grand lar­ce­ny.”

    ...

    —————

    “Dark-mon­ey GOP fund fun­neled mil­lions of dol­lars to groups that pushed vot­er fraud claims” by Bri­an Schwartz; CNBC; 01/13/2020

    In 2019, the Donors Trust gave over $20 mil­lion to at least a dozen orga­ni­za­tions that would go on to ques­tion the integri­ty of the elec­tion process, accord­ing to the group’s 990 tax return. They have sup­port­ed many of these orga­ni­za­tions in pri­or years, as well. The 2020 fil­ings won’t be made avail­able until lat­er this year, so it is not yet clear whether Donors Trust gave mon­ey to these groups last year.”

    How did Donors Trust give in 2020 to the groups push­ing the stolen elec­tion mes­sage? We’ll see, but if it was $20 mil­lion in 2019 it was almost cer­tain­ly more than $20 dur­ing an elec­tion year like 2020. Is Donors Trust going to cut off dona­tions to the con­ser­v­a­tive var­i­ous cur­rent­ly push­ing stolen elec­tion claims? Per­haps for a short peri­od at most. But it’s very hard to believe some­thing like Donors Trust will actu­al­ly stand by that. Then against, maybe Donors Trust real­ly will cut off funds to groups like Turn­ing Point USA. Because there’s noth­ing stop­ping them from set­ting up a dif­fer­ent non-prof­it that did­n’t make such a pledge and just have Donors Trust give to that non-prof­it instead or some oth­er dark mon­ey trick­ery.

    The sim­ple fact of the mat­ter is the GOP sold itself to Cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca, Wall Street, and mega-donors a long time ago. The thing Trump took over was built by them. All of the Trumpian cul­ture war stuff is just the win­dow dress­ing for get­ting votes to ensure there’s enough Repub­li­cans to pass a mega-donor agen­da. This has been one of Amer­i­ca’s grim polit­i­cal real­i­ties for decades. Most of these groups, like Turn­ing Point USA, tout­ing stolen elec­tion claims financed by Donors Trust are the pro­pa­gan­da arm of the mega-donors that keep this mar­riage of big mon­ey and right-wing ‘pop­ulism’ intact. The mega-donors that built the right-wing polit­i­cal and media infra­struc­ture that’s cur­rent­ly sup­port­ing the stolen elec­tion Big Lie aren’t going to aban­don their cre­ation now. It’s doing what they built it to do. But the mega-donors def­i­nite­ly might want to hide their sup­port of this Big Lie machine and that’s like­ly what we’re see­ing when we have these reports that the Koch net­work is going to be scru­ti­niz­ing its recip­i­ents more. If any­thing they’re going to scru­ti­nize the groups and give the ones shout­ing stolen elec­tion more mon­ey. More mon­ey in prepa­ra­tion for the 2022 ‘stolen elec­tion’ claims that the GOP mega-donors will be sure to tsk-tsk their many recip­i­ents about.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | January 17, 2021, 11:03 pm
  19. Here’s a typ­i­cal sto­ry about US dark mon­ey spend­ing with an atyp­i­cal twist. It also relates to the grow­ing evi­dence of Mer­cer fam­i­ly mon­ey help­ing to finance the plan­ning and exe­cu­tion of the Jan­u­ary 6 storm­ing of the Capi­tol:

    The Black Con­ser­v­a­tives Fund PAC has been iden­ti­fied as one of the pro-Trump groups that was pro­mot­ing the Jan­u­ary 6 pro-Trump ral­ly that mor­phed into what appears to be a planned insur­rec­tion. And since the ques­tion of who exact­ly did the plan­ning and paid for that insur­rec­tion remains a some­what open ques­tion, the ques­tion of who is behind the Black Con­ser­v­a­tives Fund has become part of the inves­ti­ga­tion into the ori­gins of a now month-old coup attempt.

    So what do we know about the Black Con­ser­v­a­tives Fund? Well, we know it received its largest dona­tion in 2014, when Robert Mer­cer gave $150,000 to the group. We’re told that the rest of the dona­tions to the group were small dona­tions large­ly from retirees. And yet the groups has spent around $1 mil­lion since 2014. Was the rest of that mon­ey raised from small donors? Did the Mer­cer make addi­tion­al secret dona­tions?

    We also know that the group did­n’t report receiv­ing or spend­ing any mon­ey in 2020, although it was active­ly pro­mot­ing Trump ral­lies. And that rais­es the ques­tion: did the Black Con­ser­v­a­tives Fund actu­al­ly not spend or receive any mon­ey in 2020? Did it report no spend­ing and dona­tions because it engaged in the kind of activ­i­ties that the peo­ple behind it would rather nobody notice? Or were the dona­tions from pre­vi­ous years large enough to guar­an­tee the group was still going to be active­ly car­ry­ing out the bid­ding of the donors with­out fur­ther dona­tions? That all remains an open ques­tion.

    Along with the open ques­tion of who is actu­al­ly run­ning the group. Yes, the per­son run­ning the group remains a mys­tery. But there is one per­son involved with run­ning the group that is pub­licly known. The trea­sur­er list­ed on the group’s web­site is Patrick Kra­son, a West Vir­ginia polit­i­cal con­sul­tant. But when emailed, Kra­son claims he has no involve­ment in run­ning the group and refused to dis­close who is run­ning it.

    So we know Robert Mer­cer made a siz­able dona­tion in 2014, but that’s all we know oth­er than the name of the trea­sur­er. Did we hit a dead end? Not quite. Because it also turns out Kra­son set up a Stop the Steal PAC in Novem­ber, fol­low­ing the 2020 elec­tion. The PAC was described at the time as a “scam PAC”, indi­cat­ing that observers sus­pect­ed it was more about rais­ing and pock­et­ing mon­ey than any­thing else. Kra­son con­test the char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of the group as a scam. At the same time, when asked about his rela­tion­ship to Stop the Steal PAC, Kra­son told reporters that he was­n’t involved with run­ning the group and refused to say who was actu­al­ly behind it.

    Final­ly, we’re going to see that the per­son who does appear to be behind both the Stop the Steal PAC and the Black Con­ser­v­a­tives Fund is Ali Alexan­der, the Roger Stone acolyte and one of the cen­tral fig­ures behind the orga­niz­ing of the ‘Stop the Steal’ move­ment. But that still does­n’t answer the ques­tion of who has been fund­ing the group. All we know is the major past dona­tions came from the Mer­cers, but thanks to Amer­i­ca’s dark mon­ey laws we can’t say for cer­tain if that gen­er­ous finan­cial sup­port con­tin­ued. So there’s still a mys­tery here. But it’s not entire­ly a mys­tery. There are plen­ty of clues here. All point­ing back to a Mer­cer role in the plan­ning and financ­ing of the Jan 6 insur­rec­tion:

    CNBC

    Shad­owy PAC once fund­ed by Trump ally Mer­cer pro­mot­ed Capi­tol Hill march that led to riot

    Bri­an Schwartz
    Pub­lished Mon, Jan 11 2021 1:52 PM EST
    Updat­ed Mon, Jan 11 2021 2:17 PM EST

    * A mys­te­ri­ous group once fund­ed by con­ser­v­a­tive mil­lion­aire Robert Mer­cer pro­mot­ed both the ral­ly fea­tur­ing Pres­i­dent Trump and the ensu­ing march on Capi­tol Hill that led to a dead­ly riot last week.
    * The Black Con­ser­v­a­tives Fund, which has more than 80,000 fol­low­ers on Face­book, called on peo­ple to come to the ral­ly on Wednes­day as well as the ensu­ing march on Capi­tol Hill.
    * Last year, the group didn’t spend mon­ey after back­ing Black GOP can­di­dates such as Sen. Tim Scott in pre­vi­ous elec­tion cycles.

    A mys­te­ri­ous polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee once fund­ed by con­ser­v­a­tive mil­lion­aire Robert Mer­cer pro­mot­ed both the ral­ly fea­tur­ing Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump and the ensu­ing march on Capi­tol Hill that led to a dead­ly riot last week.

    The PAC, called the Black Con­ser­v­a­tives Fund, pro­motes itself as “com­mit­ted to turn­ing out the black vote and elect black con­ser­v­a­tives at every lev­el of gov­ern­ment.” The PAC didn’t raise or spend any mon­ey in 2020, accord­ing to the non­par­ti­san Cen­ter for Respon­sive Pol­i­tics. It has shift­ed pri­mar­i­ly to encour­age its fol­low­ers to attend pro-Trump ral­lies, and it’s not clear who runs the group.

    Through social media posts, the com­mit­tee pushed tens of thou­sands of its fol­low­ers to attend the ral­ly in front of the White House on Wednes­day and then to par­tic­i­pate in the march on Capi­tol Hill that led to a riot, leav­ing at least five peo­ple dead, includ­ing a police offi­cer.

    It is the lat­est Trump-aligned polit­i­cal group shown to be involved with encour­ag­ing or orga­niz­ing Wednesday’s ral­ly.

    Dozens have already been arrest­ed in con­nec­tion with the attack on the Capi­tol. While the Jus­tice Depart­ment has said Trump him­self is not expect­ed to be charged, act­ing D.C. U.S. Attor­ney Michael Sher­win had pre­vi­ous­ly acknowl­edged he’s “look­ing at all actors” who had a role in the inva­sion.

    The Black Con­ser­v­a­tives Fund’s biggest pre­vi­ous dona­tion came from Mer­cer in 2014. He gave more than $150,000 to the com­mit­tee at the time.

    The Mer­cer fam­i­ly has deep ties to Trump. Robert and his daugh­ter Rebekah spent mil­lions back­ing his first run for pres­i­dent. The two fund­ed Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca, a now-defunct data gath­er­ing site that was used by Trump’s 2016 cam­paign. It was lat­er dis­cov­ered that the com­pa­ny was col­lect­ing people’s per­son­al Face­book data.

    Rebekah Mer­cer recent­ly announced that she co-found­ed Par­ler, a social media site that fea­tured pro-Trump lead­ers encour­ag­ing the march on the U.S. Capi­tol. Par­ler is cur­rent­ly offline after Ama­zon, Google and Apple with­drew their sup­port.

    ...

    Since Mercer’s con­tri­bu­tion, the PAC has raised mon­ey off a mix of small­er checks, rang­ing from around $200 to more than $2,000. Those who have giv­en in recent years includes retirees, CRP data shows. The PAC has spent near­ly $1 mil­lion since 2014.

    Of the Black con­ser­v­a­tive can­di­dates the group backed, some have gone on to win their respec­tive races. The suc­cess­ful 2014 cam­paign of Sen. Tim Scott, R‑S.C., saw a $4,500 con­tri­bu­tion from the PAC, data from CRP shows. For­mer House Rep. Mia Love, R‑Utah, saw at least $5,000 from the com­mit­tee in 2014 and 2016. Love won both of those races.

    In recent months, the PAC focused more on reg­u­lar­ly pro­mot­ing ral­lies on its Face­book page. Recent­ly it pro­mot­ed ral­lies in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., and Geor­gia to encour­age the “Stop the Steal” con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry effort, which false­ly claims that Pres­i­dent-elect Joe Biden defeat­ed Trump through fraud.

    The Black Con­ser­v­a­tives Fund, which has more than 80,000 fol­low­ers on Face­book, called on peo­ple to come to the ral­ly on Wednes­day as well as the ensu­ing march on Capi­tol Hill. The Face­book post was pub­lished on its page Jan. 5, a day before the ral­ly that led to a dead­ly riot at the U.S. Capi­tol.

    The post dis­ap­peared from the group’s Face­book page after CNBC reached out to the com­mit­tee last week through its gen­er­al email address. CNBC cap­tured a screen shot of it.

    It says: “D.C. becomes FORT TRUMP start­ing today. Fight to #StopTheSteal with Pres­i­dent Trump.” It then shows a list of loca­tions of ral­lies start­ing Jan. 5 and car­ry­ing through Jan. 6, the day of the riot. One of those loca­tions is the Capi­tol build­ing.

    It is unclear who runs the com­mit­tee.

    The group’s list­ed trea­sur­er is Patrick Kra­son, a long­time polit­i­cal con­sul­tant from West Vir­ginia. Its web­site does not say who runs the orga­ni­za­tion.

    In an email to CNBC, Kra­son said he has no involve­ment in run­ning the PACs. He would not say who heads the Black Con­ser­v­a­tives Fund.

    “My com­pa­ny pro­vides FEC Com­pli­ance Ser­vices to Con­ser­v­a­tive / Repub­li­can can­di­dates and PACs nation­wide. This includes Trea­sur­er Ser­vices, book­keep­ing, bank rec­on­cil­i­a­tions, data entry and fil­ing FEC reports,” Kra­son said Mon­day. “The com­pa­ny is not involved in the day to day oper­a­tions or mes­sag­ing of the PACs we work with, nor do we con­trol any of the social media. Per com­pa­ny pol­i­cy, I don’t dis­cuss client specifics with oth­ers.”

    Kra­son said he would for­ward CNBC’s ques­tions to the Black Con­ser­v­a­tives Fund. CNBC then fol­lowed up with the gen­er­al email address and has yet to hear back.

    Kra­son report­ed­ly has ties to anoth­er PAC that has pro­mot­ed the con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry of the elec­tion being stolen. Salon report­ed in Novem­ber that he works for a PAC called Stop the Steal, some­thing the out­let points out could be a scam. Kra­son pushed back on the PAC being con­sid­ered a scam.

    “I believe my work speaks for itself. I have many hap­py clients going back years and a very good record with the FEC. It is easy to throw around the term scam PAC. I don’t believe the pub­lic record sup­ports the accu­sa­tion of such,” he said.

    The Arkansas Demo­c­rat-Gazette report­ed in 2019 that Kra­son was linked to the Draft Sarah Huck­abee Sanders for Arkansas Polit­i­cal Action Com­mit­tee. Sanders was once Trump’s White House press sec­re­tary.

    Her father, for­mer Repub­li­can Arkansas Gov. Mike Huck­abee, said at the time that donors should be giv­ing their mon­ey to oth­er groups and not the PAC try­ing to recruit his daugh­ter to run for gov­er­nor.

    ———–

    “Shad­owy PAC once fund­ed by Trump ally Mer­cer pro­mot­ed Capi­tol Hill march that led to riot” by Bri­an Schwartz; CNBC; 01/11/2021

    “The PAC, called the Black Con­ser­v­a­tives Fund, pro­motes itself as “com­mit­ted to turn­ing out the black vote and elect black con­ser­v­a­tives at every lev­el of gov­ern­ment.” The PAC didn’t raise or spend any mon­ey in 2020, accord­ing to the non­par­ti­san Cen­ter for Respon­sive Pol­i­tics. It has shift­ed pri­mar­i­ly to encour­age its fol­low­ers to attend pro-Trump ral­lies, and it’s not clear who runs the group.

    Who runs the Black Con­ser­v­a­tives Fund. It remained a mys­tery days after the Capi­tol insur­rec­tion, with the pri­ma­ry clue being a 2014 $150,000 dona­tion from Robert Mer­cer. And yet we’re told the group has spent neal­ry $1 mil­lion since then. Was the oth­er $850,000 spent over the last six years raised through small dona­tions? Or did this group start off as an overt Mer­cer proxy group and even­tu­al­ly shift into the role of a covert Mer­cer orga­ni­za­tion tasked with obscur­ing fur­ther Mer­cer dona­tions? We still don’t know:

    ...
    The Black Con­ser­v­a­tives Fund’s biggest pre­vi­ous dona­tion came from Mer­cer in 2014. He gave more than $150,000 to the com­mit­tee at the time.

    ...

    Since Mercer’s con­tri­bu­tion, the PAC has raised mon­ey off a mix of small­er checks, rang­ing from around $200 to more than $2,000. Those who have giv­en in recent years includes retirees, CRP data shows. The PAC has spent near­ly $1 mil­lion since 2014.
    ...

    Adding to the mys­tery is the refusal of the group to say who runs it. It’s not exact­ly an inno­cent look. But we do know that the trea­sur­er, Patrick Kra­son, helped set up the Stop the Steal PAC in Novem­ber, which is a pret­ty big clue since “Stop the Steal” is the slo­gan of the Roger Stone-found­ed move­ment that orga­nized the Jan­u­ary 6 ral­ly that imme­di­ate­ly pre­ced­ed the storm­ing of the Capi­tol:

    ...
    It is unclear who runs the com­mit­tee.

    The group’s list­ed trea­sur­er is Patrick Kra­son, a long­time polit­i­cal con­sul­tant from West Vir­ginia. Its web­site does not say who runs the orga­ni­za­tion.

    In an email to CNBC, Kra­son said he has no involve­ment in run­ning the PACs. He would not say who heads the Black Con­ser­v­a­tives Fund.

    ...

    Kra­son report­ed­ly has ties to anoth­er PAC that has pro­mot­ed the con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry of the elec­tion being stolen. Salon report­ed in Novem­ber that he works for a PAC called Stop the Steal, some­thing the out­let points out could be a scam. Kra­son pushed back on the PAC being con­sid­ered a scam.
    ...

    And now here’s a piece in Salon pub­lished a week lat­er that reveals the fig­ure run­ning the Black Con­ser­v­a­tives Fund. It’s exact­ly who we should have expect­ed based on the avail­able evi­dence: Roger Stone’s acolyte Ali Alexan­der, who is cur­rent­ly in hid­ing from fed­er­al author­i­ties over his role in the insur­rec­tion. As the piece also notes, the reg­is­tered agent for Stop the Steal was Daniel Bostic, a long-time asso­ciate of Alexan­der who has work­ing close­ly with him on a num­ber of polit­i­cal scam projects over the years. Video shows Alexan­der and Bostic both climb­ing the steps of the Capi­tol on Jan 6 with Alex Jones. After the insur­rec­tion, Bostic tweet­ed, This could’ve all been avoid­ed if we were shown sig­na­tures and allowed to audit our elec­tions. You can­not expect elec­tions to be con­duct­ed in secret with­out reper­cus­sions. I do not in any way endorse vio­lence, but path has been tra­versed time and time again through­out his­to­ry.” Two days lat­er, Bostic’s name was removed entire­ly from the Stop the Steal web­site.

    So the answer the to the ques­tion of why it is that the lead­er­ship of the Black Con­ser­v­a­tive Fund is kept a mys­tery appears to the same answer to the ques­tion of why it that the Stop the Steal PAC is keep­ing its lead­er­ship a mys­tery: it’s the same peo­ple behind both groups and these peo­ple are now wor­ried about their legal lia­bil­i­ties over foment­ing an insur­rec­tion:

    Salon

    How two friends’ far­ci­cal, failed schemes end­ed with the biggest fail of all: Stop the Steal
    Ali Alexan­der’s sev­en-year friend­ship with aspir­ing actor Daniel Bostic failed upward, all the way to the Capi­tol

    By ROGER SOLLENBERGER
    JANUARY 19, 2021 11:00AM (UTC)

    In Jan­u­ary 2013, a 26-year-old right-wing blog­ger named Ali Akbar joined the cam­paign of Cur­tis Bostic, a for­mer Charleston, South Car­oli­na, city coun­cil­man and Tea Par­ty con­ser­v­a­tive who was run­ning against dis­graced for­mer gov­er­nor Mark San­ford in a Repub­li­can con­gres­sion­al pri­ma­ry. Bostic lost to San­ford (who served two more terms in the House before get­ting pri­maried out in 2018), and the cam­paign dis­as­so­ci­at­ed itself from Akbar, whose his­to­ry as a con­vict­ed felon and hack polit­i­cal oper­a­tive had caught up with him once again.

    But over those first three months of 2013, Akbar — now known to the world as Ali Alexan­der, archi­tect of the 2020 Stop the Steal move­ment — befriend­ed the can­di­date’s son, Daniel Bostic, then a 20-year-old aspir­ing mod­el and actor who over the next eight years would part­ner with Ali in a num­ber of failed ven­tures, includ­ing a cryp­tocur­ren­cy project, a list­less con­sult­ing agency, a defunct MAGA gos­sip blog, and a scam dona­tion project cre­at­ed with right-wing trolls Jacob Wohl and Lau­ra Loomer. The part­ner­ship’s last­ing con­tri­bu­tion to the world, how­ev­er, came ear­li­er this month, when the mas­sive pro-Trump ral­ly they orga­nized on the Nation­al Mall on Jan. 6 turned into a vio­lent siege of the U.S. Capi­tol, defil­ing the seat of Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy and leav­ing half a dozen peo­ple dead, includ­ing two police offi­cers.

    Back in 2013, Akbar (as he was then known), a fast-talk­ing aspir­ing strate­gist from the Dal­las-Fort Worth region, had been cast­ing about for a new gig after Mitt Rom­ney’s 2012 pres­i­den­tial bid failed, tak­ing with it his own efforts to make inroads with main­stream Repub­li­cans. Con­ser­v­a­tives had grown increas­ing­ly wary of Akbar’s felony fraud con­vic­tions and oth­er alle­ga­tions of improp­er con­duct, such as ask­ing donors for per­son­al infor­ma­tion. Akbar’s polit­i­cal jour­nal­ism project, known as Nation­al Blog­gers Club, was strug­gling, too, after its founder’s his­to­ry and con­duct cre­at­ed com­pli­ca­tions for top advis­ers to the Rom­ney cam­paign. (Akbar was first anti-Rom­ney and then pro-Rom­ney.) He claimed the site was a non­prof­it but appar­ent­ly nev­er reg­is­tered it as such with the IRS. Its cur­rent sta­tus is “revoked,” accord­ing to fed­er­al tax records.

    “Akbar was a Lib­er­tar­i­an, a Rea­gan con­ser­v­a­tive, and a Tea Par­ty journo all at the same time,” said free­lance reporter Ron Bry­naert, whose com­pli­cat­ed his­to­ry with Akbar/Alexander stretch­es back more than a decade. “He’s always been a delu­sion­al liar with a mes­si­ah com­plex, who talks out of both sides of his mouth and con­tra­dicts him­self.”

    Under Akbar’s guid­ing hand, Slate award­ed the Bostic cam­paign its “social media fail of the week” dur­ing the pri­ma­ry, specif­i­cal­ly cit­ing one of Akbar’s sites, ViralRead.com, as hav­ing become “a one-stop shop for #SC01 news, with a jaun­diced view of San­ford.” Akbar had also cre­at­ed a hash­tag that got a shout-out from for­mer Repub­li­can sen­a­tor and pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Rick San­to­rum, who had co-spon­sored Akbar’s CPAC “Blog Bash” par­ties two years in a row and flew in to cam­paign with Bostic for a day. Bostic did see a surge, but it was too lit­tle too late.

    Notably, Akbar also cre­at­ed a since-delet­ed dona­tions land­ing page “paid for by the com­mit­tee to elect Cur­tis Bostic,” which was quite like­ly ille­gal, since the cam­paign denied ever offi­cial­ly hir­ing the con­vict­ed felon. After Bostic’s pri­ma­ry defeat, the cam­paign dis­missed Akbar in the press as an overzeal­ous vol­un­teer.

    But Akbar had grown close with Daniel Bostic, who had a cer­tifi­cate in the­ol­o­gy from Appalachi­an Bible Col­lege and a few months expe­ri­ence as staff assis­tant to then-Rep. Tim Scott, R‑S.C., now the state’s junior sen­a­tor. Bostic yearned to be a pro­fes­sion­al actor, but had only land­ed a few region­al ads, such as for Amer­i­can Eagle and Nokia, and some local short films, along with an extra role in an episode of “Army Wives,” which he described as some­thing of a for­ma­tive expe­ri­ence.

    Akbar’s online foot­print dries up a bit after Cur­tis Bostic’s defeat, but he re-entered the polit­i­cal sphere in 2014, with a hybrid PAC called the Black Con­ser­v­a­tives Fund, which took in $150,000 from right-wing financier Robert Mer­cer. But for much of that spring and sum­mer, it seems that Akbar devot­ed much of his time to help­ing Daniel Bostic con­vince peo­ple that he was a celebri­ty with a rabid, obses­sive fan base.

    Oper­a­tion Bostic involved a coor­di­nat­ed line­up of fake Twit­ter fan accounts pro­mot­ing a num­ber of blog sites, inter­views and press releas­es with Bostic fan con­tent, which Bostic and Akbar most like­ly either com­mis­sioned or cre­at­ed them­selves. The pro­file of one Twit­ter account, “Daniel’s Lover,” links out to a Word­Press site called Daniel Bostic Dai­ly, which the account would reg­u­lar­ly pro­mote in hun­dreds of tweets at a time, draw­ing hard­ly any response from the larg­er world. One tweet from May 29, 2013 (“Fans are CRAZY about Daniel’s Twit­ter!”) tags Akbar’s Twit­ter account and links to a Daniel Bostic Dai­ly entry that itself quotes a since-delet­ed tweet from Akbar:

    Few folks have the hon­est joy that @debostic has. It’s fun to watch hap­py pos­i­tive peo­ple online.

    — Ali A. Akbar (@ali) May 28, 2013

    Three days lat­er, the same blog pub­lished anoth­er entry titled, “Eupho­ria for Ladies — Daniel Bostic post­ed a shirt­less pic­ture and became an Insta­gram sen­sa­tion,” which fea­tures said shirt­less self­ie and a quote about it from a web­site called Viral Read.

    The news site VIRAL READ had this to say:

    Walk­ing the fine line between #hotmess and #hot­ness, Bostic wins the day and lands grace­ful­ly in the hot­ness col­umn. Who knew this skin­ny kid had this hid­ing under his bro-tanks? He’s the even­tu­al celebri­ty you’ll love to hate and we intend on watch­ing him close­ly. All of him.

    The now-defunct Viral Read was one of Akbar’s blog sites, which named con­tro­ver­sial right-wing blog­ger Robert Sta­cy McCain as edi­tor-in-chief on March 13, 2013, while Akbar was work­ing in South Car­oli­na. The Viral Read arti­cle on Bostic from May is sim­i­lar­ly titled “Daniel Bostic, Hot­ness or Hotmess?” and begins like this:

    Viral­Read was first intro­duced to the young actor, Daniel Bostic, dur­ing a spe­cial elec­tion run-off in April where his father, Cur­tis Bostic was up against now-Con­gress­man Mark San­ford. Our Pub­lish­er and Edi­tor even trav­eled down to the low­coun­try dis­trict. Sad­ly, they came back with zero pic­tures of him. Epic fail.

    Oth­er Bostic fan sites include “Bosti­holics,” which migrat­ed from the “all­we­wan­tis­daniel” blogspot site. “We are here for one rea­son and one rea­son alone,” reads the Bosti­holics tag line. “We are OBSESSED with Daniel Bostic.” Oth­er Twit­ter accounts include Dan Bostic Is Life and Dan Bostic Dai­ly. It also seems that Akbar helped place Daniel-cen­tric con­tent in oth­er out­lets around that same time. In March 2013 alone, as Cur­tis Bostic was wag­ing a vig­or­ous cam­paign, posts about his fake celebri­ty son appeared on sites called Jakes Take, Dai­ly Enter­tain­ment News and Enter­tain­ment Worlds, as well as in a Newswire press release titled, “Born To Be Dis­tin­guished, Daniel Bostic Has Made A Huge Dif­fer­ence In The World Of Act­ing.”

    “Being young has not deterred this young actor from climb­ing heights in this intri­cate act­ing career,” the release says, then lists “excit­ing films” in which he has “made head­lines”: “From Dark­ness into Light,” “Gone for the Day,” “Crash” (no, not that “Crash”), “Secrets in the Fall.” The release also says Bostic “is much into pol­i­tics” and “a proud cer­ti­fied black belt Tae-Kwon-Do.” His LinkedIn and IMDb pages boast of the 2008 black belt, but for the art of karate.

    Two months lat­er, Bostic fea­tured in anoth­er Newswire press release, titled, “Bostic Calls on His Fans to Sup­port Okla­homa Tor­na­do Vic­tims.” The release is attrib­uted to Mar­ti Youngue, and gives a phone num­ber and address. The address is tied to Cur­tis Bostic’s law firm, but the phone num­ber belongs to Mar­ti Young, for­mer own­er of a Nashville agency called Illu­mi­nat­ing Tal­ent, which at one point rep­re­sent­ed Daniel Bostic. Pre­sent­ed with the press release, Young told Salon in a text mes­sage, “Wow that’s the first time I ever saw this.”

    While the extent of Akbar’s involve­ment in Bostic con­tent cre­ation is unclear, his prints appear to be on some of the self-pro­mot­ing replies, includ­ing those aimed Dana Loesch and Michelle Malkin, who were rel­a­tive­ly obscure at the time but would go on to become big names in right-wing polit­i­cal cir­cles.

    By 2014, how­ev­er, Akbar had moved on from South Car­oli­na’s low coun­try, land­ing him­self a con­sult­ing gig in Louisiana with his new Mer­cer-backed PAC, the Black Con­ser­v­a­tives Fund. Accord­ing to inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist Lamar White Jr., this PAC was most­ly a proxy for for­mer Louisiana State Sen. Elbert Guil­lo­ry, who at the time was putting togeth­er an ulti­mate­ly unsuc­cess­ful bid for lieu­tenant gov­er­nor. CNBC report­ed the PAC dis­trib­uted mon­ey that year to a hand­ful of suc­cess­ful Black con­ser­v­a­tive can­di­dates, includ­ing Rep. Mia Love of Utah, as well as Bostic’s for­mer boss Tim Scott, who won South Car­oli­na’s spe­cial elec­tion to the Sen­ate in 2014.

    Bostic in the mean­time attend­ed Ander­son Uni­ver­si­ty, a pri­vate Chris­t­ian school with both online and in-per­son degrees, even­tu­al­ly earn­ing a BS in inter­na­tion­al busi­ness, accord­ing to his LinkedIn page. He appears to have done some polit­i­cal blog­ging, iden­ti­fy­ing as a nev­er-Trumper in 2016 and becom­ing one of the few donors to for­mer Hewlett-Packard CEO Car­ly Fior­i­na’s ill-fat­ed pres­i­den­tial cam­paign.

    Politi­co report­ed in 2018 that a PAC advised by Akbar had accept­ed $60,000 from Mer­cer just before the 2016 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. After Trump’s vic­to­ry, Akbar popped up again amid the Unite the Right con­tro­ver­sy, and in 2018 tried to help kick­start a Trump-cen­tric alter­na­tive to the annu­al Con­ser­v­a­tive Polit­i­cal Action Con­fer­ence (CPAC) called the Amer­i­can Pri­or­i­ty Con­fer­ence, which col­lapsed in short order.

    After that defeat, Alexan­der (hav­ing dumped his orig­i­nal sur­name at some point) teamed up with long­time Trump con­fi­dant Roger Stone, who first con­ceived of the Stop the Steal move­ment — which, believe it or not, did not orig­i­nate with the 2020 elec­tion. The name and the “move­ment” began with the 2018 midterms, and specif­i­cal­ly with the Flori­da U.S. Sen­ate cam­paign in which then-Gov. Rick Scott nar­row­ly defeat­ed incum­bent Demo­c­rat Bill Nel­son. That was when Roger Stone launched the group as a kind of trib­ute or coda to his infa­mous “Brooks Broth­ers riot” dur­ing the Flori­da recount of 2000.

    Alexan­der signed on to work for the “Stop the Steal” cam­paign, which was aimed at lock­ing down Scot­t’s vic­to­ry over Nel­son. In a Periscope video, as report­ed in Right Wing Watch, Alexan­der said he hoped to moti­vate not just Repub­li­cans, but QAnon fol­low­ers, Democ­rats and “home­less peo­ple in all the adja­cent coun­ties” to keep an eye on the vote count in Broward Coun­ty.

    “Ali Alexan­der is a nox­ious polit­i­cal activist who often ani­mates extrem­ist groups and indi­vid­u­als to ful­fill his activism goals,” Jared Holt, jour­nal­ist and expert in domes­tic extrem­ism, told Salon. “Polit­i­cal groups and orga­ni­za­tions that have turned to him for his work should be embar­rassed and ashamed. The fact that he has a mol­e­cule of influ­ence in GOP orga­niz­ing is a damn­ing indict­ment of the pri­or­i­ties of pro-Trump pol­i­tics.”

    Alexan­der has asso­ci­at­ed with a num­ber of young pro-Trump flunkies who would also seem to fit Holt’s descrip­tion, as with his afore­men­tioned ill-fat­ed 2019 joint ven­ture in Min­neapo­lis with right-wing per­son­al­i­ty Lau­ra Loomer and the recent­ly-indict­ed Jacob Wohl.

    That scam also involved Daniel Bostic. Alexan­der, Loomer and Wohl direct­ed dona­tions to a com­pa­ny called Cys­tra Ven­tures Ltd., which had been cre­at­ed in Bostic’s name just three weeks before the group met up in Min­neso­ta. Cys­tra Ven­tures is appar­ent­ly held under Cys­tra LLC, Bostic’s “con­sult­ing com­pa­ny,” whose web­site does­n’t work (this archived ver­sion does) but which received $14,477 in fed­er­al coro­n­avirus small busi­ness loans this spring — after much appar­ent con­ster­na­tion on Bostic’s part.

    Cys­tra appears to have been designed to get Bostic and Alexan­der in the cryp­tocur­ren­cy game. In late June 2017, less than two months before Unite the Right in Char­lottesville, Alexan­der and Bostic teamed up to pitch a new cryp­tocur­ren­cy “focused heav­i­ly on free speech.” Accord­ing to the pitch, the coin would be “a medi­um of exchange for indi­vid­u­als who val­ue free speech above all else,” and would be exchanged on the Crown plat­form, based on the Dash net­work. “Our project will fea­ture no pre-mine and a decen­tral­ized gov­er­nance with the sole goal of pro­mot­ing free speech,” they claimed.

    Noth­ing came of this ven­ture, shock­ing­ly, but the duo were back at it in 2018, crank­ing out a series of videos pitch­ing the Crown cryp­to plat­form, whose “over­ar­ch­ing goal is to build a com­mu­ni­ty of ded­i­cat­ed users who main­tain a free, legal­ly com­pli­ant, open-access and decen­tral­ized sand­box econ­o­my.” Noth­ing came of that, either.

    Then in 2019, Alexan­der launched a tabloid called Cultt­ture, a right-wing organ that employed a hand­ful of writ­ers to write breath­less gos­sip about MAGA-world’s sec­ond-string celebs, often plug­ging Alexan­der’s tweets and videos in the course of the day. The site’s home­page took a hia­tus the next spring, how­ev­er, cit­ing the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic (“Chi­na’s virus”) for the need to “sim­pli­fy.” Although the home­page still promis­es a steady stream of con­tent, that promise appears not to have mate­ri­al­ized. Twit­ter sus­pend­ed Cultt­ture’s account when it sus­pend­ed Alexan­der, on Jan. 10. Bostic had claimed on his Twit­ter pro­file to be a “lead at Cultt­ture,” but delet­ed that some­time after Jan. 9.

    Alexan­der also still retains con­trol over the Black Con­ser­v­a­tives Fund, and the group reg­u­lar­ly pro­mot­ed Stop the Steal ral­lies to its more than 80,000 Face­book fol­low­ers. One post ahead of the Jan. 6 riots read: “D.C. becomes FORT TRUMP start­ing today. Fight to #StopTheSteal with Pres­i­dent Trump.” It then list­ed ral­ly loca­tions, includ­ing at the Capi­tol build­ing. That post dis­ap­peared from the Face­book page after an inquiry from CNBC.

    That PAC’s trea­sur­er, Patrick Kra­son, also hap­pens to be trea­sur­er for Stop the Steal PAC — the group that ini­tial­ly reg­is­tered in Novem­ber with Bostic as des­ig­nat­ed agent. Dur­ing the two months pri­or to the riot, Bostic, who also list­ed him­self as the media con­tact for Stop the Steal, helped orga­nize ral­lies and some­times addressed crowds briefly him­self.

    On Jan. 6, Bostic was in Wash­ing­ton with Alexan­der. The two can be clear­ly iden­ti­fied in video clips climb­ing the Capi­tol steps with Alex Jones. After the vio­lence, Bostic tweet­ed, “This could’ve all been avoid­ed if we were shown sig­na­tures and allowed to audit our elec­tions. You can­not expect elec­tions to be con­duct­ed in secret with­out reper­cus­sions. I do not in any way endorse vio­lence, but path has been tra­versed time and time again through­out his­to­ry.”

    Two days after the attack, Bostic’s name was removed from the Stop the Steal PAC’s state­ment of orga­ni­za­tion. Bostic told Salon that “some answers are too long for Twit­ter,” adding that “you have slan­dered me, my friends, all to meet your month­ly ad rev­enue quo­ta.”

    Salon then asked Kra­son, the PAC’s trea­sur­er who man­ages com­pli­ance for a num­ber of polit­i­cal com­mit­tees, why Bostic was no longer a list­ed agent. Kra­son out­lined a com­plex but plau­si­ble sce­nario in which he had to change bank accounts. Kra­son would not say what role, if any, Bostic had played in that well-timed change, and would not say whether Bostic had asked to remove his name, or why he had been list­ed as an agent to begin with.

    After Alexan­der went into hid­ing, appar­ent­ly con­cerned about the author­i­ties, Bostic at first made his Twit­ter account pri­vate. He reopened it again this past Fri­day, hav­ing delet­ed all tweets pri­or to Jan. 5 (except for a New Year’s Eve post), as well as a num­ber of tweets from Jan. 6, the day of the riot, includ­ing one that called Michi­gan Gov. Gretchen Whit­mer “evil” for post­ing an image of a Stacey Abrams votive can­dle. Bostic has also removed two tweets that appeared to show live-streamed video which he had cap­tioned “Storm­ing the Capi­tol.” Those tweets are archived here and here, but the media files appear inac­ces­si­ble. He did, how­ev­er post that the chants of “Stop the Steal” that day were “inde­scrib­able.”

    ...

    ————-

    “How two friends’ far­ci­cal, failed schemes end­ed with the biggest fail of all: Stop the Steal” by ROGER SOLLENBERGER; Salon; 01/19/2021

    Alexan­der also still retains con­trol over the Black Con­ser­v­a­tives Fund, and the group reg­u­lar­ly pro­mot­ed Stop the Steal ral­lies to its more than 80,000 Face­book fol­low­ers. One post ahead of the Jan. 6 riots read: “D.C. becomes FORT TRUMP start­ing today. Fight to #StopTheSteal with Pres­i­dent Trump.” It then list­ed ral­ly loca­tions, includ­ing at the Capi­tol build­ing. That post dis­ap­peared from the Face­book page after an inquiry from CNBC.”

    Whether or not Ali Alexan­der is tech­ni­cal­ly the leader of the Black Con­ser­v­a­tives Fund, it sounds like he’s the guy actu­al­ly run­ning it. Which is entire­ly con­sis­tent with every­thing else we’ve seen regard­ing Alexan­der’s role in orga­niz­ing the Stop the Steal move­ment and the role that move­ment played in insur­rec­tion.

    And along­side Alexan­der we find Daniel Bostic, who befriend­ed Alexan­der in 2013, the year before Alexan­der land­ed his job as a con­sul­tant for the new­ly found­ed Black Con­ser­v­a­tives Fund:

    ...
    But over those first three months of 2013, Akbar — now known to the world as Ali Alexan­der, archi­tect of the 2020 Stop the Steal move­ment — befriend­ed the can­di­date’s son, Daniel Bostic, then a 20-year-old aspir­ing mod­el and actor who over the next eight years would part­ner with Ali in a num­ber of failed ven­tures, includ­ing a cryp­tocur­ren­cy project, a list­less con­sult­ing agency, a defunct MAGA gos­sip blog, and a scam dona­tion project cre­at­ed with right-wing trolls Jacob Wohl and Lau­ra Loomer. The part­ner­ship’s last­ing con­tri­bu­tion to the world, how­ev­er, came ear­li­er this month, when the mas­sive pro-Trump ral­ly they orga­nized on the Nation­al Mall on Jan. 6 turned into a vio­lent siege of the U.S. Capi­tol, defil­ing the seat of Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy and leav­ing half a dozen peo­ple dead, includ­ing two police offi­cers.

    ...

    Akbar’s online foot­print dries up a bit after Cur­tis Bostic’s defeat, but he re-entered the polit­i­cal sphere in 2014, with a hybrid PAC called the Black Con­ser­v­a­tives Fund, which took in $150,000 from right-wing financier Robert Mer­cer. But for much of that spring and sum­mer, it seems that Akbar devot­ed much of his time to help­ing Daniel Bostic con­vince peo­ple that he was a celebri­ty with a rabid, obses­sive fan base.

    ...

    By 2014, how­ev­er, Akbar had moved on from South Car­oli­na’s low coun­try, land­ing him­self a con­sult­ing gig in Louisiana with his new Mer­cer-backed PAC, the Black Con­ser­v­a­tives Fund. Accord­ing to inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist Lamar White Jr., this PAC was most­ly a proxy for for­mer Louisiana State Sen. Elbert Guil­lo­ry, who at the time was putting togeth­er an ulti­mate­ly unsuc­cess­ful bid for lieu­tenant gov­er­nor. CNBC report­ed the PAC dis­trib­uted mon­ey that year to a hand­ful of suc­cess­ful Black con­ser­v­a­tive can­di­dates, includ­ing Rep. Mia Love of Utah, as well as Bostic’s for­mer boss Tim Scott, who won South Car­oli­na’s spe­cial elec­tion to the Sen­ate in 2014.
    ...

    In 2016, Alexan­der advis­es anoth­er PAC that received $60,000 from the Mer­cers. In 2018, Alexan­der starts work­ing with Roger Stone on an ear­li­er iter­a­tion of the Stop the Steal cam­paign. Flash for­ward to Novem­ber 2020 and we find Bostic was list­ed as the des­ig­nat­ed agent for the Stop the Steal PAC in Novem­ber and appeared along­side Alexan­der and Alex Jones on the Capi­tol steps right in the mid­dle of the insur­rec­tion. Bostic’s name is removed from Stop the Steal two days lat­er, at the same time Alexan­der removes him­self from pub­lic and goes into hid­ing:

    ...
    Politi­co report­ed in 2018 that a PAC advised by Akbar had accept­ed $60,000 from Mer­cer just before the 2016 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. After Trump’s vic­to­ry, Akbar popped up again amid the Unite the Right con­tro­ver­sy, and in 2018 tried to help kick­start a Trump-cen­tric alter­na­tive to the annu­al Con­ser­v­a­tive Polit­i­cal Action Con­fer­ence (CPAC) called the Amer­i­can Pri­or­i­ty Con­fer­ence, which col­lapsed in short order.

    After that defeat, Alexan­der (hav­ing dumped his orig­i­nal sur­name at some point) teamed up with long­time Trump con­fi­dant Roger Stone, who first con­ceived of the Stop the Steal move­ment — which, believe it or not, did not orig­i­nate with the 2020 elec­tion. The name and the “move­ment” began with the 2018 midterms, and specif­i­cal­ly with the Flori­da U.S. Sen­ate cam­paign in which then-Gov. Rick Scott nar­row­ly defeat­ed incum­bent Demo­c­rat Bill Nel­son. That was when Roger Stone launched the group as a kind of trib­ute or coda to his infa­mous “Brooks Broth­ers riot” dur­ing the Flori­da recount of 2000.

    Alexan­der signed on to work for the “Stop the Steal” cam­paign, which was aimed at lock­ing down Scot­t’s vic­to­ry over Nel­son. In a Periscope video, as report­ed in Right Wing Watch, Alexan­der said he hoped to moti­vate not just Repub­li­cans, but QAnon fol­low­ers, Democ­rats and “home­less peo­ple in all the adja­cent coun­ties” to keep an eye on the vote count in Broward Coun­ty.

    ...

    That PAC’s trea­sur­er, Patrick Kra­son, also hap­pens to be trea­sur­er for Stop the Steal PAC — the group that ini­tial­ly reg­is­tered in Novem­ber with Bostic as des­ig­nat­ed agent. Dur­ing the two months pri­or to the riot, Bostic, who also list­ed him­self as the media con­tact for Stop the Steal, helped orga­nize ral­lies and some­times addressed crowds briefly him­self.

    On Jan. 6, Bostic was in Wash­ing­ton with Alexan­der. The two can be clear­ly iden­ti­fied in video clips climb­ing the Capi­tol steps with Alex Jones. After the vio­lence, Bostic tweet­ed, “This could’ve all been avoid­ed if we were shown sig­na­tures and allowed to audit our elec­tions. You can­not expect elec­tions to be con­duct­ed in secret with­out reper­cus­sions. I do not in any way endorse vio­lence, but path has been tra­versed time and time again through­out his­to­ry.”

    Two days after the attack, Bostic’s name was removed from the Stop the Steal PAC’s state­ment of orga­ni­za­tion. Bostic told Salon that “some answers are too long for Twit­ter,” adding that “you have slan­dered me, my friends, all to meet your month­ly ad rev­enue quo­ta.”

    Salon then asked Kra­son, the PAC’s trea­sur­er who man­ages com­pli­ance for a num­ber of polit­i­cal com­mit­tees, why Bostic was no longer a list­ed agent. Kra­son out­lined a com­plex but plau­si­ble sce­nario in which he had to change bank accounts. Kra­son would not say what role, if any, Bostic had played in that well-timed change, and would not say whether Bostic had asked to remove his name, or why he had been list­ed as an agent to begin with.

    After Alexan­der went into hid­ing, appar­ent­ly con­cerned about the author­i­ties, Bostic at first made his Twit­ter account pri­vate. He reopened it again this past Fri­day, hav­ing delet­ed all tweets pri­or to Jan. 5 (except for a New Year’s Eve post), as well as a num­ber of tweets from Jan. 6, the day of the riot, includ­ing one that called Michi­gan Gov. Gretchen Whit­mer “evil” for post­ing an image of a Stacey Abrams votive can­dle. Bostic has also removed two tweets that appeared to show live-streamed video which he had cap­tioned “Storm­ing the Capi­tol.” Those tweets are archived here and here, but the media files appear inac­ces­si­ble. He did, how­ev­er post that the chants of “Stop the Steal” that day were “inde­scrib­able.”
    ...

    So while we still tech­ni­cal­ly don’t know who has been fund­ing the Black Con­ser­v­a­tives Fund fol­low­ing the ini­tial $150,000 dona­tion by the Mer­cers in 2014, we can make a pret­ty edu­cat­ed guess based on the avail­able evi­dence that the answer to that ques­tion is going to heav­i­ly over­lap with the answer to the ques­tion of who orga­nized the insur­rec­tion. Which, in turn, is going to heav­i­ly over­lap with the answer the ques­tion of who has been pay­ing Ali Alexan­der. We know he’s tak­en Mer­cer mon­ey in the past. And we know he’s been work­ing with Roger Stone’s Stop the Steal oper­a­tion in recent years. So answer­ing the ques­tion of who is behind the Black Con­ser­v­a­tives Fund also rais­es a ques­tion that’s been loom­ing over Amer­i­can pol­i­tics ever since the cam­paign of 2016: to what extent have Roger Stone’s con­tem­po­rary polit­i­cal dirty tricks oper­a­tions been a Mer­cer-financed oper­a­tion? We know Stone start­ed 2015 as a Trump backer while the Mer­cers ini­tial­ly backed Ted Cruz. But once Trump took the GOP nom­i­na­tion in 2016 and the Mer­cers ful­ly threw their weight (and Steve Ban­non and Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca) behind Trump, Stone and the Mer­cers were polit­i­cal­ly aligned in a way they had­n’t real­ly been in the past. And while the Mer­cers pub­lic involve­ment in pol­i­tics appeared to fade some­what after 2016, Stone’s polit­i­cal activ­i­ties have only increased, with an insur­rec­tionary crescen­do on Jan 6. And now we have all these hints of Mer­cer fin­ger­prints on the insur­rec­tion plans. That’s why one of the the major ques­tion about that insur­rec­tion we still have yet to ask, let alone answer, is the ques­tion of whether or not Roger Stone’s dirty tricks oper­a­tions of recent years have been pri­mar­i­ly moti­vat­ed by Stone him­self or if he’s oper­at­ing as a Mer­cer mer­ce­nary now. And as the mys­tery sur­round­ing the finances of the Black Con­ser­v­a­tives Fund makes clear, answer­ing these ques­tions is a lot hard­er than they should be thanks to Amer­i­ca’s dark mon­ey laws.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | February 7, 2021, 9:17 pm
  20. With ‘elec­tion fraud’ the ‘Beng­hazi’ of 2021 for the GOP — a rhetor­i­cal Big Lie strate­gi­cal­ly cho­sen for non-stop rep­e­ti­tion until it becomes right-wing gospel — here’s a pair of arti­cles about a dark mon­ey phe­nom­e­na involv­ing real elec­tion fraud. It does­n’t appear to be a wide-spread phe­nom­e­na. But as we’ll see, it’s not entire­ly clear this form of fraud is actu­al­ly ille­gal and it can poten­tial­ly be financed anony­mous­ly with dark mon­ey. So while the phe­nom­e­na may not be wide-spread yet, the ingre­di­ents are there for much wider abuse in the future:

    Flori­da Repub­li­can for­mer state sen­a­tor Frank Artiles was arrest­ed on Thurs­day on charges of elec­toral fraud in a scheme that revolved around pay­ing a friend, Alex Rodriguez, to run as an inde­pen­dent can­di­date in a close­ly con­test­ed state sen­ate race. The idea behind the scheme is that Rodriguez shared the same last name with the Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date Jose Javier Rodriguez so a few per­cent­age points could be shaved off the Democ­ra­t’s vote by run­ning a same-last-name inde­pen­dent can­di­date. And the plan worked. Alex Rod­griguez received more than 6,000 votes despite not actu­al­ly cam­paign­ing in the race, help­ing to push the Repub­li­can, Ileana Gar­cia, bare­ly over the vic­to­ry line.

    And this scheme appears to be legal. Or at least poten­tial­ly legal. The crim­i­nal charges appear to be root­ed in the fact that Artiles paid off Rodriguez to run a false can­di­da­cy under the guise of mak­ing cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions and those con­tri­bu­tions exceed­ed lim­its. Artiles and Rodriguez were charged with mak­ing or receiv­ing two or more cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions in excess of lim­its, con­spir­a­cy to make or receive two or more cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions in excess of lim­its and false swear­ing in con­nec­tion with vot­ing or elec­tions, all third-degree felonies.

    So it sounds like Artiles and Rodriguez could have poten­tial­ly run a nui­sance cam­paign intend­ed to whit­tle off votes by con­fus­ing vot­ers, but they just did­n’t quite stick to the let­ter of the law. As the Mia­mi-Date Coun­ty state attor­ney Kather­ine Fer­nan­dez Run­dle put it, “Run­ning a ghost can­di­date” is not a crime. “Is it an attack on our democ­ra­cy? Is it a dirty polit­i­cal trick? Absolute­ly,” she said. “What is a crime is mak­ing ille­gal cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions to get a can­di­date to run. … Sad­ly, Frank Artiles knew he could manip­u­late Florida’s elec­tion sys­tem.” So sham can­di­dates are legal but pay­ing them to do it with cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions is the ille­gal part. The part of this scheme involv­ing super PACs anony­mous­ly buy­ing adver­tis­ing cam­paigns to pro­mote these sham can­di­dates is per­fect­ly legal. As long as the groups behind these dirty tricks can fig­ure out legal — or less detectable — means of pay­ing their sham can­di­dates to run, the rest is of the scam is legal and anony­mous. Imag­ine how tempt­ing this kind of tac­tic must be for the mod­ern Repub­li­can Par­ty, the par­ty Roger Stone built.

    And as we’ll see, Rod­griguez was­n’t the only sham can­di­date backed by this effort. On Octo­ber 2, 2020, the Our Flori­da PC PAC, was cre­at­ed and some­one donat­ed $370,000 to it the fol­low­ing day. But it’s still unclear who made the con­tri­bu­tion thanks to the US’s dark mon­ey laws. Ini­tial­ly, Our Flori­da list­ed an Atlanta-based LLC with no con­tact infor­ma­tion as the donor. In Decem­ber, Our Flori­da changed the source of the mon­ey to Col­orado-based Grow Unit­ed, Inc. As we’ll see, back in Octo­ber, Politi­co report­ed Grow Unit­ed donat­ed $180,000 into a a new­ly formed PAC called The Truth, which backed a woman named Jes­tine Ian­not­ti in her state Sen­ate cam­paign against anoth­er sit­ting Demo­c­rat. Like Rodriguez, Ian­not­ti made no effort to cam­paign while the PAC paid for ads clear­ly intend­ed to appeal to Democ­rats and minor­i­ty vot­ers. Ian­not­ti got 2 per­cent of the vote in a race the Repub­li­can won by 3 per­cent.

    So how many nui­sance can­di­dates are being anony­mous­ly financed wotj dark mon­ey? We have no idea. That would require far more exten­sive inves­ti­ga­tions or minor can­di­dates than is fea­si­ble. But the fact that the anony­mous financ­ing of of sham cam­paigns and nui­sance can­di­dates is entire­ly legal — if done cor­rect­ly — is the kind of fun fact that sug­gests there’s a lot more sleaze under this sleazy rock. In par­tic­u­lar Repub­li­can sleaze, because that’s how these things tend to go:

    The News Ser­vice of Flori­da

    Ex-Sen. Frank Artiles Charged In Sham Can­di­date Case In Flori­da Elec­tion

    By The News Ser­vice of Flori­da
    Pub­lished March 19, 2021 at 7:40 AM EDT

    The Mia­mi-Dade Coun­ty state attor­ney has charged for­mer Flori­da Sen. Frank Artiles with elec­tion fraud for alleged­ly prop­ping up a sham can­di­date in a razor-thin Sen­ate con­test in which an incum­bent Demo­c­rat was oust­ed by a Repub­li­can chal­lenger in Novem­ber.

    Artiles is accused of using a third-par­ty can­di­date to “con­fuse vot­ers and siphon votes” from for­mer Sen. Jose Javier Rodriguez, a Mia­mi Demo­c­rat who wound up los­ing to Repub­li­can Ileana Gar­cia by 32 votes.

    State Attor­ney Kather­ine Fer­nan­dez Run­dle accused Artiles — who was forced to resign from the Sen­ate in 2017 —of pay­ing Alex Rodriguez near­ly $45,000 to run as an inde­pen­dent can­di­date and con­fuse vot­ers in the race between Jose Javier Rodriguez and Gar­cia.

    Alex Rodriguez received more than 6,000 votes in the Sen­ate Dis­trict 37 race but did not active­ly cam­paign for the seat.

    Run­dle stressed Thurs­day that her office has “no indi­ca­tion” Gar­cia was involved in Artiles’ alleged plot.

    Accord­ing to an arrest affi­davit, Artiles, a Repub­li­can, orches­trat­ed what Run­dle called a “ghost cam­paign” to oust the Demo­c­ra­t­ic sen­a­tor.

    “Run­ning a ghost can­di­date” is not a crime, how­ev­er, Run­dle said.

    “Is it an attack on our democ­ra­cy? Is it a dirty polit­i­cal trick? Absolute­ly,” she said. “What is a crime is mak­ing ille­gal cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions to get a can­di­date to run. … Sad­ly, Frank Artiles knew he could manip­u­late Florida’s elec­tion sys­tem.”

    Alex Rodriguez, who was also charged with three felonies relat­ed to the elec­tion scheme, con­fessed after being approached by inves­ti­ga­tors in Decem­ber, accord­ing to the affi­davit released by Rundle’s office Thurs­day.

    Artiles, 47, and Alex Rodriguez, 55, were charged with mak­ing or receiv­ing two or more cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions in excess of lim­its, con­spir­a­cy to make or receive two or more cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions in excess of lim­its and false swear­ing in con­nec­tion with vot­ing or elec­tions. Each of the three charges is a third-degree felony.

    ....

    The affi­davit said Artiles con­tact­ed Alex Rodriguez, who had moved to Boca Raton, in May and offered to pay him to run in the Mia­mi-Dade Coun­ty Sen­ate race. Fer­nan­dez said Alex Rodriguez was expe­ri­enc­ing “dire finan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties” at the time.

    “Artiles alleged­ly dis­cussed a, ‘You help me, and I can help you’ sce­nario,” Run­dle said.

    The affi­davit, which includes numer­ous text mes­sages between Alex Rodriguez and Artiles, also alleges that the pair met at Artiles’ Pal­met­to Bay home, where Artiles offered to pay Alex Rodriguez $50,000 — half before the Novem­ber elec­tion and half after — to run as a can­di­date with no par­ty affil­i­a­tion in the Dis­trict 37 race. Artiles knew that Alex Rodriguez did not live in the dis­trict, accord­ing to the affi­davit.

    “Accord­ing to Rodriguez, Artiles explained that the strat­e­gy was sim­ple. Rodriguez would run as an inde­pen­dent can­di­date with the same last name as the incum­bent can­di­date (Jose Javier Rodriguez) in an attempt to con­fuse vot­ers and siphon votes from the incum­bent,” the affi­davit signed by Eutimio Cepero, an inves­ti­ga­tor with Rundle’s office, said.

    Artiles in June gave Alex Rodriguez the paper­work to file as a can­di­date, instruct­ed him to use an old Pal­met­to Bay address that was still on his driver’s license and gave him $2,000 to open a cam­paign bank account. After the account was opened, Artiles told Alex Rodriguez he need­ed to rush to Tal­la­has­see to file the paper­work with the state Divi­sion of Elec­tions.

    ...

    On sev­er­al occa­sions, Alex Rodriguez asked Artiles for mon­ey, and Artiles gave him between $3,000 and $5,000. Artiles took the mon­ey from a safe in his office and asked for 30 per­cent of what­ev­er prof­it Alex Rodriguez made from the deal.

    Artiles kept records of the mon­ey he gave to Alex Rodriguez “on a piece of paper that he kept in a ledger on his desk” that both men ini­tialed.

    One time, Alex Rodriguez asked Artiles to pay for his child’s Catholic school tuition. Artiles paid $6,798.39 to the school using his cred­it card.

    Alex Rodriguez, who knew Artiles for about 20 years, and Artiles also alleged­ly tried to put togeth­er a busi­ness deal for per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment, accord­ing to the affi­davit.

    “No deal ever came to fruition,” it says.

    Alex Rodriguez “deeply regrets allow­ing him­self to be used in this way and hopes that by com­ing forth with the truth he can help to right these wrongs,” his lawyer William Barzee said in an email.

    “Frank Artiles and his co-con­spir­a­tors knew they couldn’t beat Jose Javier Rodriguez in a fair elec­tion so they rigged it. Artiles cyn­i­cal­ly tar­get­ed and used a vul­ner­a­ble ‘friend’ with a great name to run in the race in order to con­fuse vot­ers and steal the elec­tion,” Barzee said.

    Artiles paid Alex Rodriguez more than $55,000, with all but $10,900 attrib­ut­able to the can­di­da­cy, accord­ing to the affi­davit.

    The Dis­trict 37 race was among a hand­ful of high pro­file com­pet­i­tive Sen­ate races last year. Democ­rats had hoped to pick up three seats, but Garcia’s vic­to­ry caused a loss of one seat.

    Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Wilton Simp­son, who was in charge of GOP Sen­ate cam­paigns for the 2020 elec­tion cycle, said Thurs­day that “we don’t have all the facts” in the Artiles case yet.

    “Going back­wards, it’s real­ly easy to say, well, maybe we should have looked into these things,” Simp­son, R‑Trilby, told reporters.

    Fraud “has not been proven yet,” the Sen­ate pres­i­dent said, not­ing that Run­dle had empha­sized that Gar­cia was not involved.

    Artiles, who served three terms in the Flori­da House, joined the Flori­da Sen­ate after defeat­ing a Demo­c­rat in a bit­ter elec­tion in 2016.

    But just months into his Sen­ate term, Artiles was forced to resign amid a Sen­ate inves­ti­ga­tion into reports that he had insult­ed two black col­leagues, and oth­ers, at a mem­bers-only club in the shad­ow of the Capi­tol.

    ———–

    ” Ex-Sen. Frank Artiles Charged In Sham Can­di­date Case In Flori­da Elec­tion”; The News Ser­vice of Flori­da; 03/19/2021

    “State Attor­ney Kather­ine Fer­nan­dez Run­dle accused Artiles — who was forced to resign from the Sen­ate in 2017 —of pay­ing Alex Rodriguez near­ly $45,000 to run as an inde­pen­dent can­di­date and con­fuse vot­ers in the race between Jose Javier Rodriguez and Gar­cia.”

    $45,000 for a fake run. No work required. Just file the papers and let the anony­mous super-PAC buy ads for your fake can­di­da­cy. There’s prob­a­bly not a short­age of peo­ple will­ing to do that. The com­pli­ca­tion comes from accept­ing that $45,000 in the form of ille­gal cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions that exceeds cam­paign con­tri­bu­tion lim­its. It was a pret­ty big flaw with their scheme. Which, again, implic­it­ly demon­strates how wide­spread schemes like this could be. They were care­less:

    ...
    Accord­ing to an arrest affi­davit, Artiles, a Repub­li­can, orches­trat­ed what Run­dle called a “ghost cam­paign” to oust the Demo­c­ra­t­ic sen­a­tor.

    “Run­ning a ghost can­di­date” is not a crime, how­ev­er, Run­dle said.

    “Is it an attack on our democ­ra­cy? Is it a dirty polit­i­cal trick? Absolute­ly,” she said. “What is a crime is mak­ing ille­gal cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions to get a can­di­date to run. … Sad­ly, Frank Artiles knew he could manip­u­late Florida’s elec­tion sys­tem.”

    ...

    Artiles, 47, and Alex Rodriguez, 55, were charged with mak­ing or receiv­ing two or more cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions in excess of lim­its, con­spir­a­cy to make or receive two or more cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions in excess of lim­its and false swear­ing in con­nec­tion with vot­ing or elec­tions. Each of the three charges is a third-degree felony.

    ...

    The Dis­trict 37 race was among a hand­ful of high pro­file com­pet­i­tive Sen­ate races last year. Democ­rats had hoped to pick up three seats, but Garcia’s vic­to­ry caused a loss of one seat.
    ...

    And whether or not this dirty trick was wide­spread before, there’s bound to be more peo­ple look­ing at it how that every­one can see that it clear­ly worked. The Repub­li­can nar­row­ly won as intend­ed. Just as the Repub­li­can won in the oth­er race where a sham can­di­date was paid to run by the very same peo­ple behind Alex Rodriguez’s sham cam­paign:

    Moth­er Jones

    The Arrest of an Ex–Florida State Sen­a­tor Hints at a Broad­er Dark-Mon­ey Scheme
    Frank Artiles recruit­ed at least one can­di­date to run a fake cam­paign against a Demo­c­rat.

    Russ Choma
    March 19, 2021

    Mia­mi police arrest­ed for­mer Repub­li­can state Sen. Frank Artiles on Thurs­day and charged him with orches­trat­ing a plot to siphon votes from a sit­ting Demo­c­ra­t­ic state sen­a­tor by pay­ing a man with a sim­i­lar last name to run a fake cam­paign. The scheme seems to have worked: In Novem­ber, the incum­bent, José Javier Rodríguez, lost his seat by the incred­i­bly thin mar­gin of around 30 votes to his Repub­li­can chal­lenger, Ileana Gar­cia. The man Artiles recruit­ed to run as an independent—an auto parts deal­er named Alex Rodriguez, who didn’t live in the district—picked up more than 6,000 votes. (In his con­ces­sion speech, José Javier Rodríguez called for a full inves­ti­ga­tion into the race.)

    Accord­ing to an arrest affi­davit, Artiles paid Rodriguez, who he’d known for more than 20 years, $50,000 to enter the race. Rodriguez didn’t cam­paign, respond to inquiries from the media, or do any­thing beyond fill­ing out the required forms for his can­di­da­cy. In fact, doing noth­ing in exchange for the cash was part of the pitch Artiles made to Rodriguez, the affi­davit alleges.

    But some­one did cam­paign for Rodriguez. On Octo­ber 2, a Flori­da polit­i­cal com­mit­tee, Our Flori­da PC PAC, was cre­at­ed. The fol­low­ing day, some­one donat­ed $370,000 to the PAC. It’s still unclear who made the con­tri­bu­tionini­tial­ly, Our Flori­da list­ed an Atlanta-based LLC with no con­tact infor­ma­tion as the donor, but in Decem­ber, the PAC revised its paper­work to iden­ti­fy a dif­fer­ent enti­ty as the source of the mon­ey: Col­orado-based Grow Unit­ed, Inc. Days after the con­tri­bu­tion was deposit­ed, it was used to pay for mail­ers sup­port­ing Alex Rodriguez’s can­di­da­cy.

    Inves­ti­ga­tors still don’t know who is behind Grow Unit­ed—its list­ed address is a UPS store—but Alex Rodriguez was not the only mys­te­ri­ous can­di­date sup­port­ed by the com­pa­ny. Grow Unit­ed poured $180,000 into a dif­fer­ent new­ly formed PAC called The Truth, which backed a woman named Jes­tine Ian­not­ti in her state Sen­ate cam­paign against anoth­er sit­ting Demo­c­rat. Like Alex Rodriguez, Ian­not­ti ran as an inde­pen­dent. She also had no pri­or polit­i­cal expe­ri­ence and took no steps to cam­paign, oth­er than fil­ing the paper­work to run. She won 2 per­cent of the vote in Novem­ber; the Repub­li­can chal­lenger pre­vailed in the race by a 3 per­cent mar­gin. Though Ian­not­ti is white, mail­ers sent by the PAC—and paid for with Grow United’s donation—used a stock image of a Black woman. Among oth­er ano­dyne state­ments, the mail­ers said Ian­not­ti would help get “spe­cial inter­est mon­ey out of pol­i­tics.”

    Rodriguez was arrest­ed along with Artiles, and both men are fac­ing felony charges for ille­gal cam­paign dona­tions and con­spir­a­cy. Rodriguez is coop­er­at­ing with inves­ti­ga­tors, accord­ing to his attor­ney. (Ian­not­ti has not been charged with any crime and it’s not clear if her can­di­da­cy is under inves­ti­ga­tion.) Artiles, who served in the Flori­da House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives for six years before get­ting elect­ed to the state Sen­ate in 2016, pre­vi­ous­ly made head­lines in 2017 for a series of bizarre scan­dals. In one inci­dent, he called two Black sen­ate col­leagues racial slurs while meet­ing with them at a bar. He lat­er resigned his Sen­ate seat after it was revealed that his cam­paign com­mit­tee had hired a Hoot­ers cal­en­dar girl and a Play­boy mod­el to work as con­sul­tants.

    ———–

    “The Arrest of an Ex–Florida State Sen­a­tor Hints at a Broad­er Dark-Mon­ey Scheme” by Russ Choma; Moth­er Jones; 03/19/2021

    Inves­ti­ga­tors still don’t know who is behind Grow Unit­ed—its list­ed address is a UPS store—but Alex Rodriguez was not the only mys­te­ri­ous can­di­date sup­port­ed by the com­pa­ny. Grow Unit­ed poured $180,000 into a dif­fer­ent new­ly formed PAC called The Truth, which backed a woman named Jes­tine Ian­not­ti in her state Sen­ate cam­paign against anoth­er sit­ting Demo­c­rat. Like Alex Rodriguez, Ian­not­ti ran as an inde­pen­dent. She also had no pri­or polit­i­cal expe­ri­ence and took no steps to cam­paign, oth­er than fil­ing the paper­work to run. She won 2 per­cent of the vote in Novem­ber; the Repub­li­can chal­lenger pre­vailed in the race by a 3 per­cent mar­gin. Though Ian­not­ti is white, mail­ers sent by the PAC—and paid for with Grow United’s donation—used a stock image of a Black woman. Among oth­er ano­dyne state­ments, the mail­ers said Ian­not­ti would help get “spe­cial inter­est mon­ey out of pol­i­tics.””

    The Repub­li­can won by 3 per­cent in a race where the sham can­di­date snagged 2 per­cent. Of the two races where Grow Unit­ed financed sham can­di­dates, Repub­li­cans won in both races. How many Repub­li­can dirty trick­sters are look­ing at repli­cat­ing this?

    And, again, it looks like this whole oper­a­tion could have be run anony­mous­ly, had it not been for the fact that Alex Rodriguez was being paid to run the sham cam­paign in ille­gal­ly-large cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions by Frank Artiles. Had they not made that mis­take this would remain anoth­er sto­ry about a mys­tery super PAC. For exam­ple, here’s a Politi­co piece from Octo­ber 20, weeks before the 2020 elec­tion day, about the activ­i­ties of Grow Unit­ed and Our Flori­da prop­ping up these sham can­di­dates. But the donors are entire­ly a mys­tery as of the time of the arti­cle was writ­ten, with no men­tion of Frank Artiles. Even when the sham was exposed the peo­ple behind it were pro­tect­ed from expo­sure. Artiles only got caught because he was lazi­ly pay­ing off Rodriguez will ille­gal­ly large cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions and we still don’t know who else was pay­ing for this:

    Politi­co

    Mys­tery Flori­da donor tar­gets key Sen­ate races with mis­lead­ing mail­ers

    By MATT DIXON 10/20/2020 12:42 PM EDT
    Updat­ed 10/20/2020 03:15 PM EDT

    TALLAHASSEE — A mys­tery donor has spent more than $500,000 send­ing mail sup­port­ing can­di­dates with no par­ty affil­i­a­tion in an appar­ent attempt to siphon votes from Democ­rats in key state Sen­ate races.

    In one case, the donor fund­ed polit­i­cal mail­ers used a stock pho­to of a Black woman, even though the can­di­date the mail­er sup­ports is white. In anoth­er, the mail­er also fea­tured stock pho­tos with lan­guage that would seem to appeal to Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers.

    The mail­ers emerged from polit­i­cal com­mit­tees that have become ubiq­ui­tous in Flori­da cam­paigns. The groups can accept unlim­it­ed con­tri­bu­tions, be run direct­ly by can­di­dates, con­sul­tants or out­side groups and serve as the pri­ma­ry means for fund­ing cam­paigns, ads or sim­ply as pass-throughs that obfus­cate who is pay­ing the bills.

    “At a cer­tain point there are groups that do not care how the job gets done,” said state Sen. Bob­by Pow­ell, a Demo­c­rat who chairs the Flori­da Leg­isla­tive Black Cau­cus, refer­ring to the mail piece using the mis­lead­ing stock pho­to. “They will use dis­hon­est or disin­gen­u­ous attacks to per­suade a group of vot­ers they may or may not have any respect for to keep pow­er.”

    The stock image of a Black woman was sent as part of a mail piece in the big-mon­ey race for state Sen­ate Dis­trict 9 between for­mer Repub­li­can state Rep. Jason Brodeur and Demo­c­ra­t­ic attor­ney Patri­cia Sig­man, who are run­ning for the Semi­nole Coun­ty-based seat left vacant by term-lim­it­ed Repub­li­can Sen. David Sim­mons.

    The mail­er pur­ports to back can­di­date Jes­tine Ian­not­ti, who is white accord­ing to her Face­book page, and is not affil­i­at­ed with a par­ty. The mail­er fea­tures a smil­ing Black woman on the phone, and says “Jes­tine Ian­not­ti will always be there for us.” A basic search for stock pho­tos results in the exact same pic­ture that appears on the mail­er. The pic­ture used on the mail piece is titled “smil­ing African Amer­i­can woman talk­ing on the phone.”

    “It’s dis­ap­point­ing,” Pow­ell said. “I don’t know who is behind the ad, I would just be spec­u­lat­ing, how­ev­er, I would say there are peo­ple who clear­ly have some­thing to gain by using tac­tics like this.”

    Ian­not­ti filed paper­work to run for the seat just one week ahead of the June can­di­date fil­ing dead­line. She lists no phone num­ber on her can­di­date page, which is com­mon, has no pub­lic cam­paign pres­ence and has skipped sev­er­al can­di­date forums, accord­ing to local media out­lets.

    Her cam­paign has raised $700 and giv­en itself a $600 loan. Her only cam­paign expens­es are relat­ed to her ini­tial cam­paign fil­ing fee.

    Ian­not­ti has a net worth of neg­a­tive $154,000, accord­ing to finan­cial dis­clo­sure forms. She lists $3,000 in unitem­ized house­hold goods, a $600 check­ing account and a $15,000 Roth IRA as her only assets. She has more than $173,000 in stu­dent loan debt, and dur­ing the last cal­en­dar year claimed income of $1,702 from CCLS Orlan­do, a lan­guage school in that city, and $642 from Semi­nole Coun­ty Pub­lic Schools.

    She did not return a request seek­ing com­ment sent to an email address list­ed on fil­ings with state elec­tion offi­cials.

    Though Ian­not­ti is run­ning as a non­af­fil­i­at­ed can­di­date, the mail piece includes mes­sag­ing clear­ly aimed at Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers. Recruit­ing inde­pen­dent can­di­dates to try and swipe votes from an oppo­nent is a com­mon polit­i­cal strat­e­gy.

    The mail­er says Ian­not­ti will focus on “expand­ing Med­ic­aid to pro­vide health cov­er­age to those in need,” end “tax­pay­er hand­outs to big cor­po­ra­tions” and take “spe­cial inter­est mon­ey out of pol­i­tics.”

    The mail was fund­ed by The Truth polit­i­cal com­mit­tee, which was formed on Oct. 2 and one day lat­er got $180,000 from Pro­cliv­i­ty, an untrace­able donor that lists an Atlanta UPS box as its address.

    On Oct. 5, the com­mit­tee spent all of its mon­ey in one expen­di­ture to Advance Impres­sions LLC for “mail.” POLITICO report­ed Fri­day that Advance lists only a res­i­dence in Semi­nole Coun­ty as its address and has nev­er done any pre­vi­ous polit­i­cal mail work in Flori­da, expen­di­ture reports show. The com­pa­ny is owned by Luis Rodriguez, who could not be reached for com­ment.

    Sig­man cam­paign spokesper­son Anders Croy point­ed the fin­ger at Repub­li­cans, though the donor fund­ing the mail is so far untrace­able.

    “Tal­la­has­see Repub­li­cans know their extreme Trump-style can­di­dates can­not win on their own mer­its, so they’ve resort­ed again to try­ing to trick vot­ers with lies and mis­di­rec­tion,” he said.

    Erin Isaac, a spokesper­son for incom­ing Sen­ate Repub­li­can Leader Wilton Simp­son — who is run­ning Sen­ate GOP cam­paigns and has spent more than $500,000 back­ing Brodeur’s cam­paign — said she knew noth­ing about the mail piece.

    A sec­ond con­tri­bu­tion from Pro­cliv­i­ty, the mys­tery donor that has nev­er pre­vi­ous­ly made polit­i­cal con­tri­bu­tions, is play­ing in anoth­er key bat­tle­ground Flori­da Sen­ate race.

    Pro­cliv­i­ty gave $360,000 on Oct. 3 (the same day as the The Truth con­tri­bu­tion) to Our Flori­da, a com­mit­tee that is fund­ing mail sup­port­ing Alex Rodriguez, the unaf­fil­i­at­ed can­di­date run­ning in state Sen­ate Dis­trict 37, a Mia­mi-based seat fea­tur­ing a race between incum­bent Demo­c­rat Jose Javier Rodriguez and Repub­li­can IIena Gar­cia — the founder of Lati­nas for Trump and a for­mer Trump admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial.

    She was recruit­ed to chal­lenge Rodriguez by Simp­son, who has spent about $90,00 sup­port­ing her cam­paign.

    The pat­tern between the two con­tri­bu­tions is iden­ti­cal: Both Our Flori­da and The Truth, the two com­mit­tees fund­ing the ads, were cre­at­ed Oct. 2 and list UPS stores as their main address­es.

    One day after their cre­ation, Pro­cliv­i­ty gave each com­mit­tee a siz­able con­tri­bu­tion. It’s the only con­tri­bu­tion to each com­mit­tee, and Proclivity’s only two con­tri­bu­tions ever, cam­paign finance records show.

    On Oct. 5, both com­mit­tees spent all of their mon­ey on one expen­di­ture to pur­chase “mail” from Advance Impres­sions LLC, the Semi­nole Coun­ty mail firm that lists a res­i­den­tial address and has nev­er pre­vi­ous­ly done Flori­da polit­i­cal mail­ers.

    The Our Flori­da mail­er, which also includes gener­ic stock pho­tos, includes inde­pen­dent-mind­ed appeals like “the polit­i­cal par­ties have failed us,” along with mes­sag­ing typ­i­cal­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates. The mail piece says Alex Rodriguez, the unaf­fil­i­at­ed can­di­date, will “fight cli­mate change,” “hold the police account­able” and “guar­an­tee a liv­ing wage.”

    His cam­paign has no con­tri­bu­tions beyond a a $2,000 loan from the can­di­date, and its only expense was, like Ian­not­ti, to pay ini­tial qual­i­fy­ing fees. Alex Rodriguez lists a net worth of $690,500, and $115,000 in salary from AA Diesel Ser­vices and Repair, finan­cial dis­clo­sure forms show. When POLITICO called that com­pa­ny, the per­son who answered gave a cell phone num­ber for Rodriguez, but the phone was turned off and not tak­ing calls. A sep­a­rate phone num­ber list­ed on his can­di­date web­page was also turned off and his cam­paign trea­sur­er, Jose Riesco, did not return calls or texts seek­ing com­ment.

    ...

    Pro­cliv­i­ty-fund­ed mail pieces are also hit­ting Mia­mi-based Sen­ate Dis­trict 39, a race fea­tur­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic state Rep. Javier Fer­nan­dez ver­sus Repub­li­can state Rep. Ana Maria Rodriguez. They are run­ning to replace term-lim­it­ed Repub­li­can Anitere Flo­res, in an expen­sive and hot­ly con­test­ed race involv­ing lead­er­ship from both polit­i­cal par­ties.

    In that race, Our Flori­da is fund­ing ads with sim­i­lar Demo­c­ra­t­ic mes­sag­ing in sup­port of Cel­so Alfon­so, the no par­ty affil­i­at­ed can­di­date who also has no pub­lic cam­paign pres­ence. His campaign’s only mon­ey is a $2,000 per­son­al loan, which was used to pay fil­ing fees. It has no oth­er activ­i­ty.

    Alfon­so lists a net worth of $31,691, accord­ing to finan­cial dis­clo­sure forms. He also works at Madi­son Avenue Day Spa in Mia­mi. A woman who answered the phone at that num­ber said he was not avail­able.

    ———–

    “Mys­tery Flori­da donor tar­gets key Sen­ate races with mis­lead­ing mail­ers” by MATT DIXON; Politi­co; 10/20/2020

    The mail­ers emerged from polit­i­cal com­mit­tees that have become ubiq­ui­tous in Flori­da cam­paigns. The groups can accept unlim­it­ed con­tri­bu­tions, be run direct­ly by can­di­dates, con­sul­tants or out­side groups and serve as the pri­ma­ry means for fund­ing cam­paigns, ads or sim­ply as pass-throughs that obfus­cate who is pay­ing the bills.”

    Anony­mous super PACs have become ubiq­ui­tous in Flori­da’s polit­i­cal cam­paigns. Who knows who is pay­ing for it all. The pub­lic does­n’t get to know and that’s by design. It’s the per­fect sys­tem for fos­ter­ing sham can­di­dates. A sys­tem where, in the­o­ry, sham can­di­da­cies can be financed entire­ly anony­mous­ly. Sham can­di­da­cies of ‘inde­pen­dent’ can­di­dates push­ing pro­gres­sive mes­sages. And only a pro­gres­sive mes­sage in the form of sin­gle large ad pur­chas­es by these anony­mous­ly fund­ed super PACs:

    ...
    Sig­man cam­paign spokesper­son Anders Croy point­ed the fin­ger at Repub­li­cans, though the donor fund­ing the mail is so far untrace­able.

    ....

    A sec­ond con­tri­bu­tion from Pro­cliv­i­ty, the mys­tery donor that has nev­er pre­vi­ous­ly made polit­i­cal con­tri­bu­tions, is play­ing in anoth­er key bat­tle­ground Flori­da Sen­ate race.

    Pro­cliv­i­ty gave $360,000 on Oct. 3 (the same day as the The Truth con­tri­bu­tion) to Our Flori­da, a com­mit­tee that is fund­ing mail sup­port­ing Alex Rodriguez, the unaf­fil­i­at­ed can­di­date run­ning in state Sen­ate Dis­trict 37, a Mia­mi-based seat fea­tur­ing a race between incum­bent Demo­c­rat Jose Javier Rodriguez and Repub­li­can IIena Gar­cia — the founder of Lati­nas for Trump and a for­mer Trump admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial.
    ...

    It was all a sto­ry about a mys­tery donor. And all legal. It was only the fact that Rodriguez was paid in the form of an ille­gal­ly large cam­paign con­tri­bu­tion that turned this into a sto­ry where names were named. Frank Artiles could have remained a ‘mys­tery donor’ had he been less care­less. And unlike the elec­toral fraud the GOP is con­stant­ly alleg­ing is hap­pen­ing, this form of elec­toral fraud actu­al­ly hap­pens.

    And that’s all why, if ‘elec­toral fraud’ is going to become to the ‘Beng­hazi’ for the fore­see­able future, we might as well time to make some lemon­ade and point out that if peo­ple want to find real elec­toral fraud they can take a look at these the anony­mous dark mon­ey-financed forms of elec­toral fraud that the US elec­toral sys­tem appears to be designed to encour­age. Not that tak­ing a look would nec­es­sar­i­ly tell us who is doing it unless they were care­less. But it’s a start. A start that’s prob­a­bly a dark mon­ey dead end.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | March 21, 2021, 9:34 pm
  21. Are the US’s dark mon­ey laws about to become even dark­er? While it might not seem pos­si­ble that the US’s cam­paign finance sys­tem could become even less trans­par­ent than it already is, that’s the prospect fac­ing US vot­ers now that a Koch-backed Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty (AFP) law­suit was recent­ly heard by the Supreme Court a cou­ple of weeks ago. In the case, Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty Foun­da­tion v. Bon­ta, the AFP argues that a Cal­i­for­nia state law with stricter donor dis­clo­sure require­ments than fed­er­al law vio­lates the con­sti­tu­tion. The suit cen­ters around the argu­ment that dis­clo­sure laws would make donors less like­ly to donate, there­by sti­fling their First Amende­ment-pro­tect­ed free speech. Recall how sim­i­lar argu­ments about the chill­ing effects that donor dis­clo­sure laws have been made by civ­il rights groups like the NAACP and are part of legal foun­da­tion for the US’s dark mon­ey sys­tem. So we have the Koch mega-donor net­work — arguably the most pow­er­ful net­work in the entire US — using the same argu­ment the NAACP relied on decades ago when there real­ly were very real threats to civ­il rights donors. That how per­verse­ly cyn­i­cal this law­suit is.

    Also note that Cal­i­for­ni­a’s dis­clo­sure law does­n’t actu­al­ly man­date that the donor iden­ti­ties be pub­licly dis­closed. They only need to be dis­closed to the state. So the AFP is basi­cal­ly argu­ing that non-pub­lic state dis­clo­sures has such a chill­ing effect on donors that it vio­lates the First Amend­ment. In oth­er words, it’s either a deeply disin­gen­u­ous argu­ment or these mega-donors are plan­ning on some pret­ty wild­ly scan­dalous dona­tions. So scan­dalous they would be over­whelm­ing­ly embar­rassed to reveal them to state offi­cials.

    And while the Koch team lost in the last appeals court rul­ing, the odds of vic­to­ry at at the Supreme Court are look­ing far more assured giv­en the 6–3 far right major­i­ty that was secured in the final months of the Trump pres­i­den­cy with the ascen­sion of far right zealot Amy Coney Bar­ret to the bench fol­low­ing the death of Jus­tice Ruth Bad­er-Gins­burg. It’s a case with a num­ber of con­flicts-of-inter­est giv­en the real­i­ty that vir­tu­al­ly all of the con­ser­v­a­tive jus­tices on the court could almost be con­sid­ered prod­ucts of deep pock­et­ed inter­ests. Recall how Coney Bar­ret was tapped as a like­ly future Supreme Court jus­tice back while she was still in law school by a net­work of deeply con­ser­v­a­tive Catholic legal schol­ars, who pro­ceed­ed to pro­pel her career in a man­ner observers haven’t seen before. Also recall how vir­tu­al­ly all of the lists of poten­tial Supreme Court nom­i­nees of con­tem­po­rary Repub­li­can White House­’s are derived from a group called the “Judi­cial Cri­sis Net­work”, which, in turn, is effec­tive­ly run by Leonard Leo at the Koch-backed Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety.

    It’s just a sad fact that in 2021, any case involv­ing dark mon­ey at the Supreme Court will implic­it­ly be heard by a major­i­ty of right-wing jus­tices who arguably owe their legal careers and Supreme Court seats to the most orga­nized and pow­er­ful dark mon­ey enti­ties in the US. Which is a bit of a con­flict of inter­est. The kind of con­flict of inter­est that rais­es ques­tions about whether or not any of these jus­tices should be com­pelled to recuse them­selves from the case. And if any jus­tice should recuse her­self it’s obvi­ous­ly Amy Coney Bar­rett, who got on the bench after Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty spent mil­lions of dol­lars on a nation­wide adver­tis­ing cam­paign pro­mot­ing her nom­i­na­tion. She has of course refused to recuse her­self which is part of the rea­son the prospects for Cal­i­for­ni­a’s dis­clo­sure laws are look­ing so dim. But not only has Bar­ret refused to recuse her­self, she’s also refused to even answer a writ­ten request from Sen­ate Democ­rats for an expla­na­tion for why she should­n’t have to do so. She lit­er­al­ly ignored the requests to explain why this con­flict of inter­est isn’t a con­flict. And that’s all why it’s look­ing like Amer­i­ca’s cam­paign finance laws are about to become an even big­ger bought and paid for farce:

    MSNBC

    The Supreme Court may boost Cit­i­zens Unit­ed’s flood of dark mon­ey in pol­i­tics
    A case about donors to non­prof­its may open the door to unrav­el­ing cam­paign finance dis­clo­sure laws.

    April 28, 2021, 4:38 AM CDT / Updat­ed April 28, 2021, 11:30 AM CDT
    By Jes­si­ca Levin­son, MSNBC Opin­ion Colum­nist

    The Supreme Court heard oral argu­ments Mon­day in a case that will deter­mine whether states like Cal­i­for­nia can require non­prof­its to dis­close the iden­ti­ties of their major donors, which sup­port­ers of the law say is vital to pre­vent fraud by non­prof­its.

    This case — which could have a cas­cad­ing impact on the pro­lif­er­a­tion of “dark mon­ey” in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics — may come down to some­thing decid­ed­ly unsexy: the stan­dard of review the court uses when judg­ing Cal­i­for­ni­a’s reg­u­la­tion. After oral argu­ments, it appears like­ly that Cal­i­for­ni­a’s reg­u­la­tion will be struck down. But if the court uses a strict stan­dard of review, it could call into ques­tion whether the cam­paign dis­clo­sure laws the pub­lic relies on are even con­sti­tu­tion­al.

    Those three words, “stan­dards of review,” might not sound super spicy, but laws often live and die by the stan­dard the court uses. In this case, the con­tin­ued valid­i­ty of our dis­clo­sure laws could hinge on which stan­dard the court uses and how broad­ly or nar­row­ly its deci­sion focus­es on elec­tions.

    Under the Cal­i­for­nia rule, non­prof­its that oper­ate in the state — about 100,000 dif­fer­ent groups — must sub­mit copies of their fed­er­al tax returns to the state attor­ney gen­er­al’s office, which over­sees these groups. These tax returns includes infor­ma­tion about the major donors to those non­prof­its, whether the donors reside in Cal­i­for­nia or not.

    The Thomas More Law Cen­ter, a con­ser­v­a­tive pub­lic inter­est law firm based in Michi­gan, and Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty, a con­ser­v­a­tive non­prof­it cor­po­ra­tion with ties to con­ser­v­a­tive megadonor Charles Koch, are chal­leng­ing the reg­u­la­tion, claim­ing that Cal­i­for­ni­a’s rule chills donors’ First Amend­ment rights of free speech and asso­ci­a­tion. In their log­ic, would-be donors will be reluc­tant to donate if they know their iden­ti­ties might be dis­closed to the pub­lic because of a secu­ri­ty breach.

    The chal­lengers won in a fed­er­al tri­al court, lost in the court of appeals and have now appealed to the Supreme Court.

    That brings us to the “stan­dard of review,” which refers to how heav­i­ly the court scru­ti­nizes the law or reg­u­la­tion in ques­tion. On one side of the spec­trum, we have some­thing called ratio­nal basis review. This is used for laws or restric­tions about which the court basi­cal­ly trusts and/or will defer to the gov­ern­ment. Under the ratio­nal basis stan­dard, the gov­ern­ment must show only that a law or a rule serves a legit­i­mate gov­ern­men­tal pur­pose and that there is a ratio­nal con­nec­tion between the law and the way it fur­thers the state’s pur­pose.

    On the oth­er side, we have strict scruti­ny. This is typ­i­cal­ly used when restric­tions impli­cate fun­da­men­tal rights and when the court is more sus­pi­cious of the gov­ern­men­t’s actions. Under the strict scruti­ny stan­dard, the gov­ern­ment must show that the law or reg­u­la­tion fur­thers a “com­pelling gov­ern­men­tal inter­est” and that it is “nar­row­ly tai­lored” to fur­ther that inter­est (mean­ing there real­ly isn’t anoth­er way to achieve the gov­ern­men­t’s goal). Once a court decides to employ strict scruti­ny, it is often the death knell for a restric­tion. Sim­ply put, a true appli­ca­tion of strict scruti­ny will typ­i­cal­ly lead to an inval­i­da­tion of the law or restric­tion.

    The Thomas More Law Cen­ter argues that the court must use strict scruti­ny. Cal­i­for­nia argues that the court should use a low­er stan­dard of review called exact­ing scruti­ny, basi­cal­ly one rung down from strict scruti­ny. Under the exact­ing scruti­ny stan­dard, the gov­ern­ment must show that it has a suf­fi­cient­ly impor­tant gov­ern­men­tal inter­est and that there is a sub­stan­tial rela­tion­ship between the law or the reg­u­la­tion and the gov­ern­men­t’s inter­est.

    What does all of this have to do with mon­ey in pol­i­tics? In 2010’s land­mark Cit­i­zens Unit­ed case, the Supreme Court con­clud­ed that cor­po­ra­tions have a First Amend­ment right to spend unlim­it­ed sums to sup­port or oppose can­di­dates. But in a less well-known part of the case, the court employed exact­ing scruti­ny — the low­er stan­dard of review — to uphold the dis­clo­sure require­ments.

    Chal­lengers here argue that out­side of the elec­tion con­text, the court should require that dis­clo­sure laws or reg­u­la­tions sat­is­fy strict scruti­ny. One big prob­lem with this approach is that it is not always clear what spend­ing is actu­al­ly about elec­tions.

    For exam­ple: Imag­ine an adver­tise­ment dur­ing an elec­tion cam­paign that says, “Call Con­gress­woman Pene­lope and tell her to stop allow­ing peo­ple in her dis­trict to destroy the envi­ron­ment.” Is this best described as an adver­tise­ment that advo­cates Con­gress­woman Penelope’s defeat? Or is it an adver­tise­ment about the envi­ron­ment? If the adver­tise­ment is the equiv­a­lent of elec­tion­eer­ing, then the dis­clo­sure require­ments would be sub­ject to a rel­a­tive­ly relaxed stan­dard of review. But if the adver­tise­ment is seen as an issue adver­tise­ment out­side the elec­tion con­text, it could be sub­ject to strict scruti­ny.

    The issues relat­ed to cam­paign dis­clo­sure are not the­o­ret­i­cal. About $1 bil­lion of dark mon­ey has been spent in the last decade, accord­ing to the Cen­ter for Respon­sive Pol­i­tics. While polit­i­cal com­mit­tees must dis­close their donors, many non­prof­it groups, includ­ing char­i­ties, do not have to. Donors to a non­prof­it that spends mon­ey to influ­ence elec­tions can essen­tial­ly cloak their iden­ti­ties.

    Say Jane Doe does not want the world to know that she sup­ports con­ser­v­a­tive caus­es. Instead of giv­ing direct­ly to a polit­i­cal com­mit­tee that spends mon­ey in elec­tions, Jane gives mon­ey first to a non­prof­it in Cal­i­for­nia; let’s call it Dark­ness. Dark­ness then gives to a polit­i­cal com­mit­tee that we will call Rain­bows. When Rain­bows dis­clos­es its donor list, all the pub­lic sees is the dona­tion from Dark­ness. Jane Gray remains anony­mous — but not on Dark­ness’ tax forms, hence the fight at the Supreme Court.

    ...

    ———-

    “The Supreme Court may boost Cit­i­zens Unit­ed’s flood of dark mon­ey in pol­i­tics” By Jes­si­ca Levin­son; MSNBC; 04/28/2021

    “This case — which could have a cas­cad­ing impact on the pro­lif­er­a­tion of “dark mon­ey” in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics — may come down to some­thing decid­ed­ly unsexy: the stan­dard of review the court uses when judg­ing Cal­i­for­ni­a’s reg­u­la­tion. After oral argu­ments, it appears like­ly that Cal­i­for­ni­a’s reg­u­la­tion will be struck down. But if the court uses a strict stan­dard of review, it could call into ques­tion whether the cam­paign dis­clo­sure laws the pub­lic relies on are even con­sti­tu­tion­al.

    It’s not look­ing good for Cal­i­for­ni­a’s donor dis­clo­sure laws. That’s the assess­ment from observers after the oral argu­ments, which means the Koch broth­ers and their net­work of right-wing mega-donors are poised to score a major vic­to­ry. A major vic­to­ry that would be a lot less like­ly if the Supreme Court was­n’t stacked with a far right major­i­ty that owes its exis­tences to the orga­nized polit­i­cal mus­cle of the Koch net­work:

    ...
    Under the Cal­i­for­nia rule, non­prof­its that oper­ate in the state — about 100,000 dif­fer­ent groups — must sub­mit copies of their fed­er­al tax returns to the state attor­ney gen­er­al’s office, which over­sees these groups. These tax returns includes infor­ma­tion about the major donors to those non­prof­its, whether the donors reside in Cal­i­for­nia or not.

    The Thomas More Law Cen­ter, a con­ser­v­a­tive pub­lic inter­est law firm based in Michi­gan, and Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty, a con­ser­v­a­tive non­prof­it cor­po­ra­tion with ties to con­ser­v­a­tive megadonor Charles Koch, are chal­leng­ing the reg­u­la­tion, claim­ing that Cal­i­for­ni­a’s rule chills donors’ First Amend­ment rights of free speech and asso­ci­a­tion. In their log­ic, would-be donors will be reluc­tant to donate if they know their iden­ti­ties might be dis­closed to the pub­lic because of a secu­ri­ty breach.
    ...

    And that’s why this entire case does­n’t just have the appear­ance of a judi­cial farce. It has the appear­ance of being a polit­i­cal pay­back and mutu­al back-scratch­ing:

    Salon

    Amy Coney Bar­rett refus­es to recuse her­self from dark mon­ey case of Koch-fund­ed group

    The right-wing Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty spent over $1 mil­lion on ads boost­ing Bar­rett to the Supreme Court bench

    By Jon Skol­nik
    April 27, 2021 9:03PM (UTC)

    On Mon­day, Jus­tice Amy Coney Bar­rett refused to recuse her­self from a Supreme Court case involv­ing a dark mon­ey group that sup­port­ed her, despite demands from top Democ­rats to do so because of her appar­ent con­flict of inter­est.

    The case, Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty Foun­da­tion v. Bon­ta, was brought by the con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal advo­ca­cy group Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty Foun­da­tion, which is argu­ing against the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of Cal­i­for­nia law that would com­pel the group to pro­duce a list of its donors for state offi­cials, accord­ing to Forbes. Last year, the Koch-backed Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty Foun­da­tion launched a sev­en-fig­ure ad cam­paign urg­ing the Sen­ate to quick­ly con­firm Bar­rett fol­low­ing the death of the late Jus­tice Ruth Bad­er Gins­burg.

    Bar­ret­t’s refusal comes in spite of calls from top Democ­rats to remove her­self from the case over fears that her per­son­al con­nec­tion to Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty Foun­da­tion would sway her judg­ment. Sen. Shel­don White­house, D‑R.I., Sen. Richard Blu­men­thal, D‑Conn., and Rep. Hank John­son, D‑Ga., recent­ly penned a per­son­al mis­sive to Bar­rett urg­ing the jus­tice to extri­cate her­self from the case – or at the very least, make pub­lic her rea­sons for refus­ing to do so.

    “Statute, con­sti­tu­tion­al case law, and com­mon sense all would seem to require your recusal from [the case],” the Sen­a­tors wrote last week. “At a min­i­mum, there should be a pub­lic expla­na­tion as to why you think recusal is not required under fed­er­al law, since your par­tic­i­pa­tion in the case on these facts would appear to both con­flict with 28 U.S.C. § 455 and effec­tive­ly over­turn [rel­e­vant case law]. Under­stand­ing this deter­mi­na­tion will also aid Con­gress in its ongo­ing con­sid­er­a­tion of judi­cial ethics and trans­paren­cy rules.”

    ...

    Accord­ing to Forbes, Bar­rett did not respond to the let­ter.

    “Jus­tice Bar­rett is ignor­ing impor­tant eth­i­cal stan­dards to rule on a case that could open our democ­ra­cy to fur­ther infil­tra­tion by dark-mon­ey influ­ence, per­haps per­ma­nent­ly,” White­house told Forbes. “Her choice to press for­ward in spite of recusal laws also cre­ates a trou­bling new prece­dent, and under­mines pub­lic con­fi­dence in the integri­ty of the Court.”

    At the heart of the case is whether manda­to­ry dis­clo­sure laws for dark mon­ey groups – which are allowed to raise unlim­it­ed amounts of mon­ey from undis­closed sources – would vio­late the First Amend­ment. Oppo­nents of manda­to­ry dis­clo­sure laws have argued that such require­ments would make donors vul­ner­a­ble to harass­ment and coer­cion from out­side forces.

    “Amer­i­cans should­n’t have to choose between stay­ing safe or speak­ing up,” said Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty Foun­da­tion CEO Emi­ly Sei­del. “His­to­ry shows us the abil­i­ty to main­tain pri­va­cy makes it pos­si­ble for peo­ple to join togeth­er on caus­es and in move­ments. That was the case for the Civ­il Rights move­ment, mar­riage equal­i­ty, and is still the case today. Espe­cial­ly in a polar­ized cli­mate, the work of address­ing injus­tice and advo­cat­ing for change is hard enough with­out peo­ple fac­ing fear of harass­ment and retal­i­a­tion from the gov­ern­ment and from poten­tial­ly vio­lent oppo­si­tion.”

    On Mon­day, Chief Jus­tice John Roberts expressed con­cern for manda­to­ry dis­clo­sure laws sur­round­ing con­tro­ver­sial char­i­ties, accord­ing to Slate. “Peo­ple have said they will make life mis­er­able for any­body who sup­ports that char­i­ty,” he argued. “They’ll pick­et out­side their house. They will boy­cott any­body doing busi­ness with them.”

    It should be not­ed, how­ev­er, that boy­cotts and pick­ets are exam­ples of con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly pro­tect­ed speech under the First Amend­ment. As Mark Joseph Stern put in Slate: “[Con­ser­v­a­tive jus­tices] are favor­ing the osten­si­ble free speech rights to big donors to give mon­ey in secret over the free speech rights of the pub­lic to crit­i­cize those dona­tions.”

    More than this, the case mere­ly con­cerns dis­clo­sure laws that would turn dona­tion records over to state offi­cials; they would not make such records pub­lic, sig­nif­i­cant­ly less­en­ing the chances of pub­lic threat.

    The 6–3 con­ser­v­a­tive major­i­ty in the judi­cia­ry is like­ly to spell a win for Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty Foun­da­tion, as mul­ti­ple con­ser­v­a­tive jus­tices on Mon­day pushed back against Cal­i­for­nia attor­neys argu­ing for manda­to­ry dis­clo­sure laws. A win would main­tain the sta­tus quo around dark mon­ey, which has seen hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars influ­ence the make­up of every branch of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment.

    ———–

    “Amy Coney Bar­rett refus­es to recuse her­self from dark mon­ey case of Koch-fund­ed group” by Jon Skol­nik; Salon; 04/27/2021

    “The case, Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty Foun­da­tion v. Bon­ta, was brought by the con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal advo­ca­cy group Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty Foun­da­tion, which is argu­ing against the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of Cal­i­for­nia law that would com­pel the group to pro­duce a list of its donors for state offi­cials, accord­ing to Forbes. Last year, the Koch-backed Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty Foun­da­tion launched a sev­en-fig­ure ad cam­paign urg­ing the Sen­ate to quick­ly con­firm Bar­rett fol­low­ing the death of the late Jus­tice Ruth Bad­er Gins­burg.

    The AFP spent mil­lions on a pub­lic mes­sag­ing cam­paign to pave the way for Bar­rett (and Gor­such and Kavanaugh) and now the AFP wants Bar­rett and the rest of its pet jus­tices to ensure that the less-pub­lic com­po­nents of the mega-donor net­works can con­tin­ue secret­ly spend­ing hun­dreds of mil­lions more in elec­tion-cycle after elec­tion-cycle. Because if bil­lion­aire mega-donors can’t secret­ly run large-scale pro­pa­gan­da cam­paigns with­out avoid­ing pub­lic back­lash there is no real free­dom of speech. The fact that the Cal­i­for­nia law does­n’t even require pub­lic dis­clo­sure, but only dis­clo­sure to state offi­cials, is appar­ent­ly beside the point:

    ...
    At the heart of the case is whether manda­to­ry dis­clo­sure laws for dark mon­ey groups – which are allowed to raise unlim­it­ed amounts of mon­ey from undis­closed sources – would vio­late the First Amend­ment. Oppo­nents of manda­to­ry dis­clo­sure laws have argued that such require­ments would make donors vul­ner­a­ble to harass­ment and coer­cion from out­side forces.

    ...

    On Mon­day, Chief Jus­tice John Roberts expressed con­cern for manda­to­ry dis­clo­sure laws sur­round­ing con­tro­ver­sial char­i­ties, accord­ing to Slate. “Peo­ple have said they will make life mis­er­able for any­body who sup­ports that char­i­ty,” he argued. “They’ll pick­et out­side their house. They will boy­cott any­body doing busi­ness with them.”

    It should be not­ed, how­ev­er, that boy­cotts and pick­ets are exam­ples of con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly pro­tect­ed speech under the First Amend­ment. As Mark Joseph Stern put in Slate: “[Con­ser­v­a­tive jus­tices] are favor­ing the osten­si­ble free speech rights to big donors to give mon­ey in secret over the free speech rights of the pub­lic to crit­i­cize those dona­tions.”

    More than this, the case mere­ly con­cerns dis­clo­sure laws that would turn dona­tion records over to state offi­cials; they would not make such records pub­lic, sig­nif­i­cant­ly less­en­ing the chances of pub­lic threat.
    ...

    It’s that shod­dy legal rea­son­ing, and the fact that this shod­dy legal rea­son­ing is on the path to vic­to­ry at the Supreme Court, that makes the ques­tions about con­flicts of inter­est para­mount. Which is why Judge Bar­ret­t’s refusal to even acknowl­edge the ques­tions about her poten­tial con­flicts of inter­est rings so loud: it’s the much feared judi­cial per­fect storm of rank far right crony­ism on open dis­play:

    ...
    Bar­ret­t’s refusal comes in spite of calls from top Democ­rats to remove her­self from the case over fears that her per­son­al con­nec­tion to Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty Foun­da­tion would sway her judg­ment. Sen. Shel­don White­house, D‑R.I., Sen. Richard Blu­men­thal, D‑Conn., and Rep. Hank John­son, D‑Ga., recent­ly penned a per­son­al mis­sive to Bar­rett urg­ing the jus­tice to extri­cate her­self from the case – or at the very least, make pub­lic her rea­sons for refus­ing to do so.

    “Statute, con­sti­tu­tion­al case law, and com­mon sense all would seem to require your recusal from [the case],” the Sen­a­tors wrote last week. “At a min­i­mum, there should be a pub­lic expla­na­tion as to why you think recusal is not required under fed­er­al law, since your par­tic­i­pa­tion in the case on these facts would appear to both con­flict with 28 U.S.C. § 455 and effec­tive­ly over­turn [rel­e­vant case law]. Under­stand­ing this deter­mi­na­tion will also aid Con­gress in its ongo­ing con­sid­er­a­tion of judi­cial ethics and trans­paren­cy rules.”

    ...

    Accord­ing to Forbes, Bar­rett did not respond to the let­ter.
    ...

    And that open dis­play of judi­cial crony­ism is why we should­n’t just expect the mega-donors to ulti­mate­ly pre­vail in Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty Foun­da­tion v. Bon­ta. We should also expect any remain­ing finan­cial dis­clo­sure laws to even­tu­al­ly be shot down under future Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty Foun­da­tion v. [insert tar­get here] cas­es. And pret­ty much any oth­er right-wing mega-donor donor pet issue. Because why not? Now is the time when the bil­lion­aire mega-donors who put this con­ser­v­a­tive major­i­ty in place can win vir­tu­al­ly any case they bring before it. They did­n’t spend bil­lions of dol­lars build­ing a polit­i­cal machine for char­i­ta­ble pur­pos­es. Well, ok, accord­ing to their legal argu­ments in Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty Foun­da­tion v. Bon­ta they did actu­al­ly build this polit­i­cal machine for char­i­ta­ble pur­pos­es and that’s why they need to be allowed to con­tin­ue to do so in secret. It’s a very spe­cial form of char­i­ty.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | May 9, 2021, 7:34 pm
  22. House Speak­er Nan­cy Pelosi announced the for­ma­tion of a House selec­tion com­mit­tee to inves­ti­gate the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol insur­rec­tion this week. True to form, this is one month after the GOP blocked an effort to cre­ate an inde­pen­dent bipar­ti­san com­mis­sion in the Sen­ate. So it’s an inves­ti­ga­tion that starts off with a GOP con­gres­sion­al cov­er up. And it’s no sur­prise why. As evi­dence con­tin­ues to make clear, the GOP was deeply enmeshed in the insur­rec­tion plot. It was­n’t just a Trump Org oper­a­tion. In oth­er words, clas­sic.

    But as the fol­low­ing pair of arti­cles that were pub­lished just days after the insur­rec­tion remind us, one of the big ques­tions about what tran­spired is the ques­tion of the role played by the GOP mega-donor dark mon­ey com­plex. We know at least some bil­lion­aires played a direct role like Pub­lix heiress Julie Jenk­ins Fan­cel­li. But that still leaves open the ques­tion of that vast right-wing mega-donor dark mon­ey com­plex. What role did that play, direct or indi­rect? It’s got a lot to lose.

    Recall how cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence strong­ly points towards Roger Stone play­ing a sig­nif­i­cant role in coor­di­nat­ing the Women for Amer­i­ca First’s post-elec­tion efforts. It was Novem­ber 4, 2020, when the Stop the Steal Face­book group was launched by Amy Kre­mer, the chair of Women for Amer­i­ca First. Kre­mer has pre­vi­ous­ly start­ed a super-PAC with Roger Stone’s ex-wife called Women Vote Trump. It was one of many strong hints that the entire post-elec­tion Big Lie about a stolen elec­tion was a Roger Stone-guid­ed oper­a­tion from the begin­ning. And why not. The guy has expe­ri­ence in these mat­ters.

    But there’s always been the open ques­tion about who else is financ­ing what amounts to an anti-democ­ra­cy coup. Dirty tricks aren’t free. And thanks to the US’s dark mon­ey laws, the anony­mous financ­ing of those dirty-tricks is eas­i­er than ever. It’s part of what makes this arti­cle from Jan­u­ary 9, three days after the insur­rec­tion, still relavent today, over five months lat­er after every­thing we’ve learned about the iden­ti­ties of the peo­ple involved with the plan­ning and financ­ing of that event. No mat­ter how much we’ve learned, there’s still the real­i­ty that the US’s dark mon­ey rules allowed for the anony­mous financ­ing of much of the GOP’s pre-insur­rec­tion pro-insur­rec­tion activ­i­ty:

    CNBC

    Pro-Trump dark mon­ey groups orga­nized the ral­ly that led to dead­ly Capi­tol Hill riot

    * The ral­ly, offi­cial­ly known as the “March to Save Amer­i­ca,” was large­ly orga­nized by a 501(c)(4) group known as Women for Amer­i­ca First.
    * Women for Amer­i­ca First’s Face­book pages show they were call­ing on sup­port­ers to be part of what they described as a “car­a­van” to Wash­ing­ton for the event.

    Bri­an Schwartz
    Pub­lished Sat, Jan 9 2021
    10:58 AM EST Updat­ed Fri, Apr 9 2021 2:52 PM EDT

    A web of pro-Trump dark mon­ey groups helped orga­nize the ral­ly that led to a dead­ly riot on Capi­tol Hill.

    Dur­ing the ral­ly on Wednes­day, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump encour­aged his sup­port­ers to march to the steps of Con­gress to protest the results of the Elec­toral Col­lege vote that cer­ti­fied Joe Biden as the win­ner of the 2020 elec­tion.

    “We’re going to walk down to the Capi­tol and we’re going to cheer on our brave sen­a­tors and con­gress­men and women and we’re prob­a­bly not going to be cheer­ing so much for some of them,” Trump said at the ral­ly just in front of the White House before the riot start­ed. After the ral­ly, Trump sup­port­ers marched to the steps of Con­gress and broke into the U.S. Capi­tol build­ing.

    ...

    The ral­ly, offi­cial­ly known as the “March to Save Amer­i­ca,” was large­ly orga­nized by a 501(c)(4) group known as Women for Amer­i­ca First. The orga­ni­za­tion was cer­ti­fied by the Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice as a non­prof­it that can engage in lim­it­ed polit­i­cal activ­i­ties. These groups are known as dark mon­ey orga­ni­za­tions as they do not pub­licly dis­close their donors.

    How­ev­er, Amer­i­ca First Poli­cies, a pro-Trump pol­i­cy advo­ca­cy dark mon­ey group, did dis­close in 2019 that they con­tributed to Women for Amer­i­ca First. Amer­i­ca First’s 990 dis­clo­sure form from that year shows they con­tributed $25,000 to Women for Amer­i­ca First.

    Amer­i­ca First Poli­cies, which is also a 501(c)(4) that does not dis­close its donors, is chaired by Lin­da McMa­hon, a long­time Trump ally and for­mer head of the Small Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion. The 2019 fil­ing shows Amer­i­ca First Poli­cies end­ed up rais­ing over $30 mil­lion. They were not involved with the plan­ning of the ral­ly itself.

    Women for Amer­i­ca First is chaired by Amy Kre­mer, a long­time polit­i­cal oper­a­tive that was once the head of the Tea Par­ty Express, an orga­ni­za­tion that was cre­at­ed to sup­port the con­ser­v­a­tive Tea Par­ty move­ment. Kylie Jane Kre­mer, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of Women for Amer­i­ca First, is named on the rally’s per­mit as the per­son in charge. The per­mit was first obtained by The Wash­ing­ton­ian.

    The per­mit for the event says that the antic­i­pat­ed num­ber of atten­dees was 5,000 peo­ple. Yet, in Women for Amer­i­ca First’s denun­ci­a­tion of the vio­lence that took place on Capi­tol Hill, they say that “hun­dreds of thou­sands of Amer­i­cans” came to Wash­ing­ton to attend their ral­ly.

    Women for Amer­i­ca First’s Face­book pages show they were call­ing on sup­port­ers to be part of what they described as a “car­a­van” to Wash­ing­ton for the event. A recent post says to meet at an address in Vir­ginia on Jan. 5, the day before the now infa­mous ral­ly, to “join the car­a­van to D.C.” There’s a pic­ture of a bus with their logo on it and, though it notes they are not pro­vid­ing trans­porta­tion, they encour­age peo­ple to fol­low the bus.

    A post on Jan. 5 shows a video of what appears to be from with­in a bus part of the “car­a­van.” In the post, a woman says they had an escort going into Wash­ing­ton D.C. and called on peo­ple to attend the upcom­ing ral­ly.

    “Send the word. We’re ral­ly­ing tomor­row. It’s in front of the White House... that way they don’t have to go far to see us, ” the woman hold­ing the cam­era says. “It’s going to be epic,” she adds.

    Women for Amer­i­ca First’s exec­u­tive direc­tor pro­mot­ed the ral­ly through a Twit­ter post that has been retweet­ed over 16,000 times and, she notes that it was shared by the pres­i­dent him­self. Trump had over 80 mil­lion fol­low­ers before he was per­ma­nent­ly banned from Twit­ter on Fri­day.

    The cal­vary is com­ing, Mr. President!JANUARY 6th | Wash­ing­ton, DChttps://t.co/kyp7WF8o5r ????????????????????#March­ForTrump #StopTheSteal pic.twitter.com/A6VkNZPlPx— Kylie Jane Kre­mer (@KylieJaneKremer) Decem­ber 19, 2020

    Both lead­ers and a spokesman for the group did not return requests for com­ment.

    The per­mits also give a glimpse into the expense of the event.

    From Jan. 2 through Jan. 5, orga­niz­ers were involved with set­ting up light­ing, tents, floor­ing, bike racks, chairs and decor, all for Trump’s speech on Jan. 6. The list­ed pro­duc­tion ven­dor was Event Strate­gies, a com­pa­ny that was found­ed by Tim Unes. On the com­pa­ny web­site, Unes is cred­it­ed with pro­duc­ing Trump’s 2015 “cam­paign announce­ment tour” and lat­er joined the cam­paign as a deputy direc­tor of advance.

    On their list of clients is the Trump cam­paign, the exec­u­tive office of the White House and oth­er pres­i­den­tial cam­paigns, includ­ing Sen. Mitt Romney’s, R‑Utah.

    Data from the non­par­ti­san Cen­ter for Respon­sive Pol­i­tics shows that Trump’s reelec­tion cam­paign paid Event Strate­gies over $1 mil­lion through­out the 2020 elec­tion cycle. Oth­er pro-Trump groups also paid for the ven­dors pro­duc­tion ser­vices.

    Women for Amer­i­ca First were involved with set­ting up a back­stage area, the per­mit says. Accord­ing to video obtained by CNBC, those back­stage includ­ed the pres­i­dent, Don­ald Trump Jr., his girl­friend and Trump cam­paign advi­sor Kim­ber­ly Guil­foyle, his broth­er Eric Trump and White House chief of staff Mark Mead­ows. Many behind the scenes were laugh­ing and danc­ing before the fes­tiv­i­ties ensued.

    Beyond Women for Amer­i­ca First, there were oth­er out­side groups involved in encour­ag­ing peo­ple to go to the ral­ly.

    NBC News report­ed that the pol­i­cy arm of the Repub­li­can Attor­neys Gen­er­al Asso­ci­a­tion, the Rule of Law Defense Fund, sent out robo­calls encour­ag­ing peo­ple to march on the U.S. Capi­tol.

    “At 1 p.m., we will march to the Capi­tol build­ing and call on Con­gress to stop the steal,” said the voice on the record­ing, accord­ing to NBC. The calls did not call for vio­lence.

    Alaba­ma Attor­ney Gen­er­al Steve Mar­shall, who leads the pol­i­cy arm, has said the calls were made with­out his go-ahead and that he’s ini­ti­at­ed an inter­nal review.

    The Repub­li­can Attor­neys Gen­er­al Asso­ci­a­tion raised over $18 mil­lion in 2020.

    ————-

    “Pro-Trump dark mon­ey groups orga­nized the ral­ly that led to dead­ly Capi­tol Hill riot” by Bri­an Schwartz; CNBC; 01/09/2021

    “The ral­ly, offi­cial­ly known as the “March to Save Amer­i­ca,” was large­ly orga­nized by a 501(c)(4) group known as Women for Amer­i­ca First. The orga­ni­za­tion was cer­ti­fied by the Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice as a non­prof­it that can engage in lim­it­ed polit­i­cal activ­i­ties. These groups are known as dark mon­ey orga­ni­za­tions as they do not pub­licly dis­close their donors.

    The “March to Save Amer­i­ca” was large­ly orga­nized by Women for Amer­i­ca First, a 501©4 dark mon­ey group that does­n’t have to pub­licly dis­close its donors. It’s one of the key fun facts about the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol insur­rec­tion. We still don’t know the iden­ti­ties of every­one who played a sig­nif­i­cant role in spon­sor­ing that ral­ly. But what we do know by now is that the ral­ly was effec­tive­ly the start of a the planned provo­ca­tion. The plan was to march from the ral­ly to the Capi­tol and demand an end to the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the vote. How exact­ly those demands for an end to the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion have always remained strate­gi­cal­ly vague, but that was the plan. March to the Capi­tol and some­how force Mike Pence and Con­gress to end the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process. Some­how. Who knows how.

    And what was also know is that Women for Amer­i­ca First is the recip­i­ent of at least some mon­ey from major dark mon­ey PAC like Amer­i­ca First Poli­cies. We know that because Amer­i­ca First Poli­cies pub­licly dis­closed in 2019 that they donat­ed $25,000 to Women for Amer­i­ca First dur­ing a year the PAC took in $30 mil­lion (or at least dis­closed that much). How much did they donate to Women for Amer­i­ca First and not pub­licly dis­close in 2019? We have no idea. Just as we have no idea how much they may have donat­ed in 2020. It’s up to them to dis­close what they’re up to:

    ...
    How­ev­er, Amer­i­ca First Poli­cies, a pro-Trump pol­i­cy advo­ca­cy dark mon­ey group, did dis­close in 2019 that they con­tributed to Women for Amer­i­ca First. Amer­i­ca First’s 990 dis­clo­sure form from that year shows they con­tributed $25,000 to Women for Amer­i­ca First.

    Amer­i­ca First Poli­cies, which is also a 501(c)(4) that does not dis­close its donors, is chaired by Lin­da McMa­hon, a long­time Trump ally and for­mer head of the Small Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion. The 2019 fil­ing shows Amer­i­ca First Poli­cies end­ed up rais­ing over $30 mil­lion. They were not involved with the plan­ning of the ral­ly itself.
    ...

    And note how Event Strate­gies founder To, Unes is cred­it­ed with pro­duc­ing Trump’s 2015 “cam­paign announce­ment tour” and lat­er joined the cam­paign as a deputy direc­tor of advance, was involved with the event. Trump’s announce­ment tour. Trump’s rela­tion­ship with Event Strate­gies appar­ent­ly goes back a ways:

    ...
    The per­mits also give a glimpse into the expense of the event.

    From Jan. 2 through Jan. 5, orga­niz­ers were involved with set­ting up light­ing, tents, floor­ing, bike racks, chairs and decor, all for Trump’s speech on Jan. 6. The list­ed pro­duc­tion ven­dor was Event Strate­gies, a com­pa­ny that was found­ed by Tim Unes. On the com­pa­ny web­site, Unes is cred­it­ed with pro­duc­ing Trump’s 2015 “cam­paign announce­ment tour” and lat­er joined the cam­paign as a deputy direc­tor of advance.

    On their list of clients is the Trump cam­paign, the exec­u­tive office of the White House and oth­er pres­i­den­tial cam­paigns, includ­ing Sen. Mitt Romney’s, R‑Utah.

    Data from the non­par­ti­san Cen­ter for Respon­sive Pol­i­tics shows that Trump’s reelec­tion cam­paign paid Event Strate­gies over $1 mil­lion through­out the 2020 elec­tion cycle. Oth­er pro-Trump groups also paid for the ven­dors pro­duc­tion ser­vices.
    ...

    But per­haps far more fas­ci­nat­ing than any­thing involv­ing Roger Stone or Steve Ban­non is the involve­ment of the Repub­li­can Attor­neys Gen­er­al Asso­ci­a­tion (RAGA) and its Rule of Law Defense Fund (a dark mon­ey enti­ty) in send­ing out robo­calls encour­ag­ing peo­ple to attend the march on the Cap­i­tal. Not just attend the Stop the Steal ral­ly. Attend the march on the Capi­tol after the ral­ly. Specif­i­cal­ly, march at 1 p.m., which was when the ral­ly was sched­uled to end. Those were robo­calls to march on the Capi­tol, sent out by the Repub­li­can Attor­neys Gen­er­al Asso­ci­a­tion’s polit­i­cal wing That’s scan­dalous even by the Trumpi­fied debased stan­dards of mod­ern day DC. So of course the RAGA and even the head of the PAC itself is deny­ing the it was doing what it was doing. Denial is what the GOP does best. Well, denial and pro­jec­tion. It’s inter­twined:

    ...
    Beyond Women for Amer­i­ca First, there were oth­er out­side groups involved in encour­ag­ing peo­ple to go to the ral­ly.

    NBC News report­ed that the pol­i­cy arm of the Repub­li­can Attor­neys Gen­er­al Asso­ci­a­tion, the Rule of Law Defense Fund, sent out robo­calls encour­ag­ing peo­ple to march on the U.S. Capi­tol.

    At 1 p.m., we will march to the Capi­tol build­ing and call on Con­gress to stop the steal,” said the voice on the record­ing, accord­ing to NBC. The calls did not call for vio­lence.

    Alaba­ma Attor­ney Gen­er­al Steve Mar­shall, who leads the pol­i­cy arm, has said the calls were made with­out his go-ahead and that he’s ini­ti­at­ed an inter­nal review.

    The Repub­li­can Attor­neys Gen­er­al Asso­ci­a­tion raised over $18 mil­lion in 2020.
    ...

    And when we hear the RAGA denials that it was in any way aware that its PAC was robo­call­ing peo­ple to march on the Capi­tol, notes that it’s not just that the RAGA dark mon­ey polit­i­cal wing was send­ing out robo­calls for to peo­ple to march on the Capi­tol after the ral­ly. As the fol­low­ing arti­cle notes, these robo­calls were sent out lit­er­al­ly the day before the march. It was very appar­ent on Jan­u­ary 5 that it was going to be a giant Trumpian clusterf*ck the next day and the RAGA was still fuel­ing those flames.

    Beyond that, Alaba­ma Attor­ney Gen­er­al Steve Mar­shall, the Repub­li­can Attor­ney Gen­er­al who actu­al­ly runs the Rule of Law Defense Fund PAC on behalf of RAGA, assumed that role on Novem­ber 10, 2020, a week after the elec­tion and right when it was clear the entire GOP was gear­ing up to over­turn the elec­tion. So was are expect­ed to believe that the guy who was made the new head of the RAGA PAC at the mo the GOP was col­lect­ing tran­si­tion­ing to coup-mode was­n’t aware of the robo­calls made the day before the GOP’s coup attempt. That’s the sto­ry we are being asked to believe. Which is the kind of cov­er sto­ry that sug­gests there’s a very inter­est­ing real sto­ry beneath it:

    NBC News

    Repub­li­can AGs group sent robo­calls urg­ing march to the Capi­tol
    “At 1 p.m., we will march to the Capi­tol build­ing and call on Con­gress to stop the steal,” said the voice on the record­ing, which was obtained by NBC News.

    Jan. 8, 2021, 7:36 PM CST
    By Lau­ra Strick­ler and Lisa Cavazu­ti

    An arm of the Repub­li­can Attor­neys Gen­er­al Asso­ci­a­tion, a nation­al group rep­re­sent­ing the top law enforce­ment offi­cers in their states, sent out robo­calls encour­ag­ing peo­ple to march to the U.S. Capi­tol the day before the build­ing was stormed by a pro-Trump mob.

    “At 1 p.m., we will march to the Capi­tol build­ing and call on Con­gress to stop the steal,” said the voice on the record­ing, which was obtained by NBC News.

    The calls, which did not advo­cate vio­lence or sug­gest the build­ing should be breached, was sent out by the Rule of Law Defense Fund, a fundrais­ing arm of the Repub­li­can Attor­neys Gen­er­al Asso­ci­a­tion. The groups share fund­ing, staff and office space in Wash­ing­ton, D.C.

    In a state­ment to NBC News, Alaba­ma Attor­ney Gen­er­al Steve Mar­shall, who runs the fund, said the calls were sent out with­out his knowl­edge.

    “I was unaware of unau­tho­rized deci­sions made by RLDF staff with regard to this week’s ral­ly,” said Mar­shall, who assumed his role Nov. 10. “Despite cur­rent­ly tran­si­tion­ing into my role as the new­ly elect­ed chair­man of RLDF, it is unac­cept­able that I was nei­ther con­sult­ed about nor informed of those deci­sions. I have direct­ed an inter­nal review of this mat­ter.”

    A web­site set up to pro­mote the ral­ly that pre­ced­ed the Capi­tol incur­sion lists the Rule of Law Defense Fund as one of the par­tic­i­pat­ing orga­ni­za­tions. The site has since been tak­en down.

    Adam Piper, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Repub­li­can Attor­neys Gen­er­al Asso­ci­a­tion, and Peter Bis­bee, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the fundrais­ing arm, did not return requests for com­ment about the robo­calls, which were first report­ed by the watch­dog group Doc­u­ment­ed.

    A spokesper­son for Geor­gia Attor­ney Gen­er­al Chris Carr, the chair­man of the Repub­li­can Attor­neys Gen­er­al Asso­ci­a­tion, said he “had no knowl­edge or involve­ment in this deci­sion.”

    “Attor­ney Gen­er­al Carr has been work­ing dili­gent­ly to deter­mine how this sit­u­a­tion occurred and ensure that it does not hap­pen again,” said spokesper­son Katie Byrd. “The stance of the pro­tes­tors was not con­sis­tent with Attor­ney Gen­er­al Carr’s posi­tion on elec­tion fraud. And, as he has been say­ing since moments after see­ing news break, the vio­lence and destruc­tion we saw at the U.S. Capi­tol is unac­cept­able and un-Amer­i­can.”

    The Repub­li­can Attor­neys Gen­er­al Asso­ci­a­tion raised more than $18 mil­lion in 2020 from sev­er­al top cor­po­ra­tions, includ­ing Pep­si, Microsoft, JPMor­gan Chase and Com­cast, the par­ent com­pa­ny of NBC News. Its sup­port­ers also include inter­est groups such as the NRA and the U.S. Cham­ber of Com­merce, which was its top donor in 2020 with a $750,000 con­tri­bu­tion.

    Many com­pa­nies that donat­ed to the Repub­li­can Attor­neys Gen­er­al Asso­ci­a­tion also gave to the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty equiv­a­lent. Sev­er­al told NBC News that spend­ing mon­ey on this kind of recruit­ment for protest runs counter to the pur­pose of their dona­tion.

    Reached for com­ment, the Cham­ber of Com­merce pro­vid­ed a state­ment from Harold Kim, pres­i­dent of the U.S. Cham­ber Insti­tute for Legal Reform.

    “We are appalled at Wednes­day’s incur­sion into the Cap­i­tal, and did not sup­port any efforts by the Rule of Law Defense Fund,” he said. “We do not sup­port any sim­i­lar activ­i­ties now, and will not in the future.”

    A Microsoft spokesper­son said: “We con­demn the actions tak­en by the RLDF and are rais­ing our con­cerns direct­ly with RAGA. Ear­li­er this week, we spoke out along­side oth­ers in the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty regard­ing the vio­lence that unfold­ed at the U.S. Capi­tol.”

    A JPMor­gan spokesper­son said its polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee donat­ed $25,000 to the attor­neys gen­er­al group and none of it went to the Rule of Law Defense Fund.

    “Our PAC con­tri­bu­tions to both the Repub­li­can and Demo­c­ra­t­ic Attor­neys Gen­er­al asso­ci­a­tions were used strict­ly for attor­neys gen­er­als’ cam­paign pur­pos­es,” the spokesper­son said in a state­ment.

    The Chero­kee Nation Busi­ness­es LLC, which donat­ed $150,000 in 2020, said it has request­ed an imme­di­ate refund of its spon­sor­ship to the Repub­li­can Attor­neys Gen­er­al Asso­ci­a­tion, and the orga­ni­za­tion oblig­ed.

    “We had no knowl­edge of RAGA’s asso­ci­a­tion with the Rule of Law fund or any con­nec­tion in the Jan­u­ary 6 insur­rec­tion­ists’ storm on the U.S. Capi­tol,” spokesper­son Bran­don Scott said in a state­ment. “Chero­kee Nation Busi­ness­es does not con­done these actions and strong­ly con­demns the insur­rec­tion­ists and all those who insti­gat­ed the dis­rup­tion of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment through their words and actions.”

    Melaleu­ca, an online well­ness shop­ping club, gave $290,000 to the Repub­li­can Attor­neys Gen­er­al Asso­ci­a­tion in 2020.

    “We are appalled at the events that cul­mi­nat­ed in the storm­ing of the U.S. Capi­tol,” the com­pa­ny said in a state­ment. “We have nev­er con­tributed to Rule of Law Defense Fund. We have been assured by RAGA that none of our con­tri­bu­tions to RAGA were giv­en to the Rule of Law Defense Fund.”

    In a state­ment, Com­cast said: “We have long sup­port­ed Demo­c­ra­t­ic and Repub­li­can asso­ci­a­tions of attor­neys gen­er­al. We are appalled and con­demn these actions in the strongest pos­si­ble terms and have com­mu­ni­cat­ed that to RAGA. We were very clear with RAGA that we could not con­tin­ue our rela­tion­ship unless we had assur­ances that they take steps to ensure that noth­ing like this would hap­pen again.”

    Pep­si and the NRA did not respond to requests for com­ment.

    A spokesper­son for the Repub­li­can Attor­neys Gen­er­al Asso­ci­a­tion did not address ques­tions about the robo­call but sought to dis­tance the orga­ni­za­tion from the event.

    “The Repub­li­can Attor­neys Gen­er­al Asso­ci­a­tion and Rule of Law Defense Fund had no involve­ment in the plan­ning, spon­sor­ing, or the orga­ni­za­tion of Wednesday’s event,” the spokesper­son said. “No Repub­li­can AG autho­rized the staff’s deci­sion to ampli­fy a col­league speak­ing at the event. Orga­ni­za­tion­al­ly and indi­vid­u­al­ly, we strong­ly con­demn and dis­avow the events which occurred.”

    One of its mem­bers, Texas Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton, attend­ed the ral­ly and spoke to the crowd, say­ing, “We will not quit fight­ing.”

    Fol­low­ing the Capi­tol inva­sion, he tweet­ed, “I am sore­ly dis­ap­point­ed today in the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the elec­tion, but I don’t believe vio­lence is the answer.”

    ...

    ———–

    “Repub­li­can AGs group sent robo­calls urg­ing march to the Capi­tol” By Lau­ra Strick­ler and Lisa Cavazu­ti; NBC News; 01/08/2021

    “The calls, which did not advo­cate vio­lence or sug­gest the build­ing should be breached, was sent out by the Rule of Law Defense Fund, a fundrais­ing arm of the Repub­li­can Attor­neys Gen­er­al Asso­ci­a­tion. The groups share fund­ing, staff and office space in Wash­ing­ton, D.C.

    RAGA and its PAC share fund­ing, staff, and office space. But RAGA had no idea its PAC was robo­call­ing in sup­port of the GOP’s Jan 6 ‘march’/coup. At least that’s what the guy who was put in charge of the PAC a week after the elec­tion wants us to believe. It was all an hon­est mis­take:

    ...
    In a state­ment to NBC News, Alaba­ma Attor­ney Gen­er­al Steve Mar­shall, who runs the fund, said the calls were sent out with­out his knowl­edge.

    “I was unaware of unau­tho­rized deci­sions made by RLDF staff with regard to this week’s ral­ly,” said Mar­shall, who assumed his role Nov. 10. “Despite cur­rent­ly tran­si­tion­ing into my role as the new­ly elect­ed chair­man of RLDF, it is unac­cept­able that I was nei­ther con­sult­ed about nor informed of those deci­sions. I have direct­ed an inter­nal review of this mat­ter.”

    A web­site set up to pro­mote the ral­ly that pre­ced­ed the Capi­tol incur­sion lists the Rule of Law Defense Fund as one of the par­tic­i­pat­ing orga­ni­za­tions. The site has since been tak­en down.

    ...

    A spokesper­son for the Repub­li­can Attor­neys Gen­er­al Asso­ci­a­tion did not address ques­tions about the robo­call but sought to dis­tance the orga­ni­za­tion from the event.

    “The Repub­li­can Attor­neys Gen­er­al Asso­ci­a­tion and Rule of Law Defense Fund had no involve­ment in the plan­ning, spon­sor­ing, or the orga­ni­za­tion of Wednesday’s event,” the spokesper­son said. “No Repub­li­can AG autho­rized the staff’s deci­sion to ampli­fy a col­league speak­ing at the event. Orga­ni­za­tion­al­ly and indi­vid­u­al­ly, we strong­ly con­demn and dis­avow the events which occurred.”

    One of its mem­bers, Texas Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton, attend­ed the ral­ly and spoke to the crowd, say­ing, “We will not quit fight­ing.”

    Fol­low­ing the Capi­tol inva­sion, he tweet­ed, “I am sore­ly dis­ap­point­ed today in the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the elec­tion, but I don’t believe vio­lence is the answer.”
    ...

    And note one of the oth­er rea­sons the RAGA’s role in the insur­rec­tion is so scan­dalous: Its a major recip­i­ent of cor­po­rate dark mon­ey. One of the default recip­i­ents of what has become the stan­dard ‘cost of doing busi­ness’ in Amer­i­ca for large com­pa­nies. If you’re going to pay off politi­cians to get your law-relat­ed issues addressed by state gov­ern­ments, pay­ing off enti­ties like RAGA is a great way to make that hap­pen. So A LOT of major cor­po­ra­tions have donat­ed to it. And that cre­ates exact­ly the kind of sit­u­a­tion that could make A LOT of those same cor­po­ra­tions feel pres­sured to demand that mon­ey back now that it’s know it was used to foment a coup. It’s part of what makes this scan­dal so scan­dalous. Some­day, belat­ed­ly, the con­se­quences of the GOP’s gross pub­lic malfea­sance could cas­cade to the point where cor­po­ra­tions are just too embar­rassed to donate to the par­ty and its enti­ties. It threat­ens a core foun­da­tion of the grift. You don’t give back the mon­ey:

    ...
    The Repub­li­can Attor­neys Gen­er­al Asso­ci­a­tion raised more than $18 mil­lion in 2020 from sev­er­al top cor­po­ra­tions, includ­ing Pep­si, Microsoft, JPMor­gan Chase and Com­cast, the par­ent com­pa­ny of NBC News. Its sup­port­ers also include inter­est groups such as the NRA and the U.S. Cham­ber of Com­merce, which was its top donor in 2020 with a $750,000 con­tri­bu­tion.

    ...

    The Chero­kee Nation Busi­ness­es LLC, which donat­ed $150,000 in 2020, said it has request­ed an imme­di­ate refund of its spon­sor­ship to the Repub­li­can Attor­neys Gen­er­al Asso­ci­a­tion, and the orga­ni­za­tion oblig­ed.

    “We had no knowl­edge of RAGA’s asso­ci­a­tion with the Rule of Law fund or any con­nec­tion in the Jan­u­ary 6 insur­rec­tion­ists’ storm on the U.S. Capi­tol,” spokesper­son Bran­don Scott said in a state­ment. “Chero­kee Nation Busi­ness­es does not con­done these actions and strong­ly con­demns the insur­rec­tion­ists and all those who insti­gat­ed the dis­rup­tion of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment through their words and actions.”
    ...

    How many oth­er RAGA donors demand­ed a refund? It’s a rel­e­vant ques­tion. RAGA isn’t being taint­ed by its GOP asso­ci­a­tion. It was a direct par­tic­i­pant in the coup attempt, lend­ing an air of legal cred­i­bil­i­ty to the whole thing. An out­law Attor­neys Gen­er­al asso­ci­a­tion. Do com­pa­nies want to be asso­ci­at­ed with an enti­ty like that?

    So as the inves­ti­ga­tion into the insur­rec­tion plays out, it’s going to be impor­tant to keep in mind that a top pri­or­i­ty for the right-wing polit­i­cal mega-donor infra­struc­ture is going to be the pro­tec­tion of the still unrec­og­nized dark mon­ey role played by that same right-wing polit­i­cal mega-donor infra­struc­ture in the financ­ing and orga­ni­za­tion of the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol insur­rec­tion. Which will also pre­sum­ably be a high­er pri­or­i­ty than pro­tect­ing Trump’s obvi­ous role in the whole thing, which is part of what makes it all so inter­est­ing as the inves­ti­ga­tion plays out. Fin­gers have to point some­where. And there are clear­ly a lot of fin­gers.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | June 27, 2021, 12:07 am
  23. The issue of cor­po­rate dona­tions to the GOP has become scan­dalous­ly top­i­cal of late, with Toy­ota announc­ing last week that its polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee would no long make dona­tions to Repub­li­can mem­bers of Con­gress who object­ed to cer­ti­fy­ing the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion results in Jan­u­ary fol­low­ing reports of sub­stan­tial dona­tions to exact­ly those law­mak­ers. And as we’ve seen, part of what makes this top­ic so touchy for the GOP is the dan­ger that what Toy­ota just did could catch on. As the GOP increas­ing­ly acts like a pari­ah par­ty, donat­ing to the GOP is going to be an increas­ing­ly con­tro­ver­sial act. Espe­cial­ly with the iden­ti­ties of the peo­ple who financed the insur­rec­tion still large­ly secret thanks to the US’s dark-mon­ey laws. And yet the need to make con­tri­bu­tions to the GOP isn’t going away. The par­ty is poised to cheat its way back into pow­er in the House and maybe the Sen­ate in 2022 and lock in anoth­er decade of stolen pow­er after the next round of hyper-ger­ry­man­dered redis­trict­ing. Cor­po­ra­tions are going to need to find a way to keep that cam­paign cash flow­ing to the GOP one way or anoth­er. The GOP is too pow­er­ful and cor­rupt not to bribe.

    And too cor­po­ratist not to bribe. The con­tem­po­rary GOP basi­cal­ly exists to exe­cute a fas­cist cor­po­ratist agen­da. As we all learned when the GOP passed its bud­get-bust­ing 2017 tax cut for big cor­po­ra­tions and the super-rich, the Trump­ist nativism is still for the rubes from a pol­i­cy per­spec­tive. Of course big cor­po­ra­tions are going to have to find a way to keep donat­ing. This is the cost of doing busi­ness. You can’t sole­ly ger­ry­man­der your way to vic­to­ry each elec­tion cycle. Keep­ing the GOP in pow­er so it can exe­cute that cor­po­ratist agen­da requires pro­pa­gan­da and that isn’t free. The dona­tions must con­tin­ue. So here’s a quick reminder from back in March that Toy­ota is far the only cor­po­ra­tion with a now-secret rela­tion­ship with the GOP:

    The Dai­ly Beast

    These Mega-Busi­ness­es Are Already Back to Bankrolling Insur­rec­tion­ists

    They said they wouldn’t be giv­ing to Repub­li­cans who vot­ed to over­turn the 2020 elec­tion. They’re already donat­ing again.

    Roger Sol­len­berg­er
    Polit­i­cal Reporter
    Updat­ed Mar. 29, 2021 12:19PM ET / Pub­lished Mar. 25, 2021 5:00AM ET

    After the Jan. 6 insur­rec­tion, more than 120 cor­po­ra­tions swift­ly vowed to sus­pend cam­paign dona­tions to Repub­li­cans who object­ed to cer­ti­fy­ing the 2020 elec­tion.

    “In the wake of last week’s vio­lent and unlaw­ful attack on the U.S. Capi­tol, we feel it is impor­tant to rein­force that Pfiz­er PAC sup­ports indi­vid­u­als who are guid­ed by the prin­ci­ples that mir­ror Pfizer’s core val­ues,” an inter­nal email read in mid-Jan­u­ary.

    “We have made the deci­sion that for the next six months, Pfiz­er PAC will not con­tribute to any of the 147 Mem­bers of Con­gress who vot­ed against cer­ti­fy­ing the Elec­toral Col­lege results after the vio­lence that we all wit­nessed,” the email also said. “After six months, we will review our deci­sion and report back to you.”

    But it took less than two months for Pfiz­er to break that pledge. Their PAC gave $15,000 to the Nation­al Repub­li­can Sen­a­to­r­i­al Com­mit­tee, led by one of eight GOP Sen­a­tors who vot­ed to decer­ti­fy elec­tion results—Rick Scott of Florida—on Feb. 23.

    In total, The Dai­ly Beast iden­ti­fied four com­pa­nies that appear to have gone back on their sus­pen­sion of dona­tions to GOP elec­tion objec­tors: AT&T, Cigna Health, Ford Motors, and Pfiz­er.

    In the weeks fol­low­ing the Jan. 6th riot, more than 120 com­pa­nies said—to vary­ing degrees—they would be reeval­u­at­ing their polit­i­cal spend­ing, accord­ing to data The Dai­ly Beast aggre­gat­ed from CNN and the Cen­ter for Respon­sive Pol­i­tics. Some said they’d be halt­ing all polit­i­cal dona­tions. Some said they’d pause giv­ing to any of the 147 who vot­ed to over­turn the elec­tion results for a cer­tain time peri­od. But all of these com­pa­nies want­ed to rebuke these Repub­li­cans, in some small way, for their role in stok­ing the Capi­tol insur­rec­tion and then still pro­ceed­ing to vote for decer­ti­fy­ing elec­tion results in the hours after the attack.

    The Dai­ly Beast reviewed Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion fil­ings for all com­pa­nies who made a pledge. And while none of the five com­pa­nies who seem to have reversed them­selves have giv­en direct­ly to offi­cial can­di­date com­mit­tees, three of the companies—AT&T, Ford, and Pfizer—gave to lead­er­ship PACs belong­ing to mem­bers who chal­lenged votes. Addi­tion­al­ly, Cigna and Pfiz­er gave to the NRSC, which, again, is con­trolled by Scott, who vot­ed to over­turn the elec­tion.

    The NRSC also has dis­cre­tion to spend mon­ey on any Sen­ate can­di­date they want, mean­ing the integri­ty of their pledge only exists in as much as they want to claim their spe­cif­ic dol­lars didn’t go toward help­ing one of the GOP Sen­a­tors who vot­ed to decer­ti­fy the Elec­toral Col­lege.

    Fed­er­al law bars com­pa­nies from giv­ing direct­ly to can­di­dates, so the vast major­i­ty of cor­po­rate dona­tions go through employ­ee-fund­ed Polit­i­cal Action Com­mit­tees.

    On Jan. 12, Cigna’s chief human resources office, John Mura­bito, informed employ­ees that the health­care com­pa­ny would “dis­con­tin­ue sup­port of any elect­ed offi­cial who encour­aged or sup­port­ed vio­lence, or oth­er­wise hin­dered the peace­ful tran­si­tion of pow­er.”

    “Some issues are so foun­da­tion­al to our core fiber that they tran­scend all oth­er mat­ters of pub­lic pol­i­cy,” Mura­bito said in a memo, obtained by CNBC. “There is nev­er any jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for vio­lence or destruc­tion of the kind we saw at the U.S. Capitol—the build­ing that [is] such a pow­er­ful sym­bol of the very democ­ra­cy that makes our nation strong.”

    But less than a month lat­er, on Feb. 4, Cigna donat­ed $15,000 to the NRSC. Lat­er that month, the com­pa­ny gave $15,000 to the House coun­ter­part, the Nation­al Repub­li­can Con­gres­sion­al Com­mit­tee. (Those dona­tions were first report­ed by Judd Legum, who runs the web­site Pop­u­lar Infor­ma­tion.)

    In response to The Dai­ly Beast’s inquiry, a Cigna rep­re­sen­ta­tive said they had not “wavered from our com­mit­ment to dis­qual­i­fy elect­ed offi­cials that incit­ed vio­lence” from Cig­na­PAC con­tri­bu­tions fol­low­ing the Jan­u­ary 6 attack.

    “Our stan­dard elim­i­nates direct con­tri­bu­tions to any fed­er­al or state elect­ed offi­cial who encour­aged or sup­port­ed vio­lence or oth­er­wise hin­dered a peace­ful tran­si­tion of pow­er on that day, or who do so in the future,” a spokesper­son said. “Cig­na­PAC, which is employ­ee-fund­ed, will con­tin­ue to sup­port orga­ni­za­tions, can­di­dates, and elect­ed offi­cials who will help cham­pi­on more afford­able, pre­dictable, and sim­ple health care – includ­ing the nation­al cam­paign com­mit­tees of both par­ties.”

    Ford Motors issued a press state­ment five days after the attack say­ing it would pause all dona­tions indef­i­nite­ly. “Events over the past year have under­scored the need for a broad­er, ongo­ing dis­cus­sion about oth­er rel­e­vant con­sid­er­a­tions when it comes to our employ­ee PAC,” Ford said. But 19 days lat­er, the PAC gave $5,000 to the lead­er­ship PAC for Rep. Deb­bie Din­gle (D‑MI), and on Feb. 2, it donat­ed $1,000 to the lead­er­ship PAC belong­ing to objec­tor Rep. Richard Hud­son (R‑NC), one of the House Repub­li­cans who vot­ed to over­turn the elec­tion.

    ...

    On Feb. 15, tele­com com­pa­ny AT&T donat­ed $5,000 to the House Con­ser­v­a­tives Fund, the lead­er­ship PAC belong­ing to elec­tion objec­tor Mike John­son (R‑LA). A mem­ber of the ultra-con­ser­v­a­tive House Free­dom Cau­cus, John­son played a key role in the effort to over­turn the elec­tion, urg­ing House Repub­li­cans to sign onto a let­ter in sup­port of a Texas ami­cus brief to the Supreme Court look­ing to sue oth­er states for cer­ti­fy­ing their own elec­tions.

    In a state­ment to The Dai­ly Beast, an AT&T spokesper­son said their employ­ees PACs con­tin­ue to fol­low the pol­i­cy adopt­ed after the Jan. 6th attack to sus­pend con­tri­bu­tions to mem­bers of Con­gress who vot­ed to over­turn elec­tion results. The state­ment added that the com­pa­ny had “been assured that none of the employ­ee PAC’s con­tri­bu­tions will go toward the re-elec­tion of any of those mem­bers of Con­gress. Any future con­tri­bu­tions to mul­ti-can­di­date PACs will require such con­sis­ten­cy with the pol­i­cy sus­pend­ing indi­vid­ual con­tri­bu­tions.”

    But lead­er­ship PACs, noto­ri­ous for being used as per­son­al slush funds, dis­trib­ute dona­tions to oth­er can­di­dates from a sin­gle pool of mon­ey. In 2020, Johnson’s PAC bankrolled 105 of the 138 oth­er House Repub­li­cans who stood with him. Their argu­ment relies on look­ing at Johnson’s dona­tions to Repub­li­cans who didn’t vote to over­turn the elec­tion, and in effect say­ing, ‘That was our mon­ey,’ while dis­re­gard­ing dona­tions to the Repub­li­cans who did vote to decer­ti­fy, and say­ing, ‘No, that wasn’t us.’

    It’s an argu­ment dis­re­gard­ing the fun­gi­bil­i­ty of mon­ey.

    Despite mul­ti­ple requests from The Dai­ly Beast, AT&T also would not offer evi­dence that John­son agreed to with­hold dona­tions from the com­pa­ny to Repub­li­cans who objected—including himself—nor did the spokesper­son say whether John­son explained how such seg­re­ga­tion was pos­si­ble.

    Robert Maguire, who inves­ti­gates polit­i­cal con­tri­bu­tions for the gov­ern­ment watch­dog Cit­i­zens for Respon­si­bil­i­ty and Ethics in Wash­ing­ton, called the veiled threats and sub­se­quent dona­tions an “egre­gious and infu­ri­at­ing” exam­ple of “how bro­ken our cam­paign finance sys­tem is.”

    “It doesn’t mat­ter if they’re giv­ing to com­mit­tees who haven’t held their mem­bers account­able and will con­tin­ue to give them finan­cial sup­port,” Maguire said. “They’re still cir­cum­vent­ing their com­mit­ments.”

    ————

    “These Mega-Busi­ness­es Are Already Back to Bankrolling Insur­rec­tion­ists” by Roger Sol­len­berg­er; The Dai­ly Beast; 03/29/2021

    “In total, The Dai­ly Beast iden­ti­fied four com­pa­nies that appear to have gone back on their sus­pen­sion of dona­tions to GOP elec­tion objec­tors: AT&T, Cigna Health, Ford Motors, and Pfiz­er.”

    So by the end of March, the Dai­ly Beast was already able to find 4 out of 120 com­pa­nies that had already back­tracked on their pub­lic pledges to rebuke the GOP over its sup­port for the insur­rec­tion and ongo­ing under­min­ing of the valid­i­ty of the 2020 elec­tion. How many of the remain­ing 116 of those com­pa­nies have fol­lowed suit since then?

    ...
    In the weeks fol­low­ing the Jan. 6th riot, more than 120 com­pa­nies said—to vary­ing degrees—they would be reeval­u­at­ing their polit­i­cal spend­ing, accord­ing to data The Dai­ly Beast aggre­gat­ed from CNN and the Cen­ter for Respon­sive Pol­i­tics. Some said they’d be halt­ing all polit­i­cal dona­tions. Some said they’d pause giv­ing to any of the 147 who vot­ed to over­turn the elec­tion results for a cer­tain time peri­od. But all of these com­pa­nies want­ed to rebuke these Repub­li­cans, in some small way, for their role in stok­ing the Capi­tol insur­rec­tion and then still pro­ceed­ing to vote for decer­ti­fy­ing elec­tion results in the hours after the attack.

    The Dai­ly Beast reviewed Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion fil­ings for all com­pa­nies who made a pledge. And while none of the five com­pa­nies who seem to have reversed them­selves have giv­en direct­ly to offi­cial can­di­date com­mit­tees, three of the companies—AT&T, Ford, and Pfizer—gave to lead­er­ship PACs belong­ing to mem­bers who chal­lenged votes. Addi­tion­al­ly, Cigna and Pfiz­er gave to the NRSC, which, again, is con­trolled by Scott, who vot­ed to over­turn the elec­tion.
    ...

    And note that the Dai­ly Beast dis­cov­ered these four com­pa­nies mak­ing these dona­tions because they were part of the com­pa­ny’s Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion fil­ings and made to var­i­ous lead­er­ship PACs. Dona­tions the com­pa­nies had no rea­son to hide from the FEC since those PACs receiv­ing the dona­tions would have been forced to dis­close their donors any­way. But super­PACs aren’t 501©4s, which aren’t required to dis­close their donors to the FEC. It’s a reminder that 501c4s could become even more impor­tant for the GOP as it becomes an increas­ing­ly scan­dalous par­ty to donate to as hid­ing GOP dona­tions from the pub­lic becomes more and more impor­tant for a com­pa­ny’s pub­lic image. Insur­rec­tion isn’t great for the brand. So when­ev­er we get updates on the num­ber of com­pa­nies that have already reneged on their post-insur­rec­tion dona­tion pledges (it’s up to 10 of them based on recent FEC fil­ings), keep in mind that we’re only see­ing the dona­tions made in a man­ner that could­n’t be hid­den from the pub­lic. There are pre­sum­ably a lot more hid­den dona­tions from these com­pa­nies going on.

    So with all that in mind, remem­ber when Amy Coney Bar­rett refused to recuse her­self from the Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty Foun­da­tion v. Bon­ta case a few months ago, mak­ing it clear that the Cal­i­for­nia state law requir­ing the dis­clo­sure — to the state and not the pub­lic — of the iden­ti­ties of major non-prof­it donors — the same infor­ma­tion that was already required to be hand­ed over to fed­er­al tax offi­cials — was like­ly doomed? Well, we got the inevitable rul­ing and it turns out it did­n’t mat­ter if she recused her­self. It was that lop-sided: In a 6–3 con­ser­v­a­tive vs lib­er­al split, the court ruled that the state’s donor dis­clo­sure require­ments posed an uncon­sti­tu­tion­al bur­den that sti­fles the free speech of those donors. Because of course that’s how they ruled. This is the con­tem­po­rary Supreme Court under John Roberts. And if there’s one prin­ci­ple the Roberts Court val­ues above all oth­ers, it is the prin­ci­ple that the con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of bil­lion­aire mega-donors are the most pro­tect­ed rights. Mega-donors über alles.

    But part of what makes this recent rul­ing by the Supreme Court’s right-wing major­i­ty so sig­nif­i­cant is the rel­a­tive­ly new and evolv­ing polit­i­cal con­text that this this rul­ing was made in. That being the con­text of a grow­ing right-wing move­ment to get for­mer Pres­i­dent Trump rein­stat­ed as pres­i­dent under the premise of the ‘stolen elec­tion’ Big Lie. And as we’ve seen, that grow­ing right-wing move­ment hap­pens to be heav­i­ly financed by a num­ber of wealthy indi­vid­u­als and is also focused on get­ting indi­vid­ual states to over­turn their elec­tion elec­tion results. So now that the Supreme Court has ruled that states effec­tive­ly have no right to require non-prof­its oper­at­ing in the state to pri­vate­ly dis­close their donors, it’s going to be increas­ing­ly impor­tant to keep in mind that any inves­ti­ga­tions into the financ­ing of groups involved with the efforts to foment past and future insur­rec­tions are going to be be heav­i­ly reliant on the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment now that the Supreme Court just offi­cial­ly blind­ed the states:

    Politi­co

    Supreme Court nix­es Cal­i­for­nia dis­clo­sure law in blow to dark-mon­ey oppo­nents

    The high court ruled a state law requir­ing not-for-prof­it orga­ni­za­tions that raise mon­ey in Cal­i­for­nia to dis­close their donors vio­lat­ed the donors’ First Amend­ment rights.

    By JOSH GERSTEIN and ZACH MONTELLARO
    07/01/2021 11:36 AM EDT

    The Supreme Court dealt a blow Thurs­day to efforts to rein in so-called dark mon­ey polit­i­cal groups, issu­ing a rul­ing strik­ing down California’s pol­i­cy of demand­ing donor lists from non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tions.

    The high court split 6–3 along ide­o­log­i­cal lines in its deci­sion on a pair of cas­es chal­leng­ing that Cal­i­for­nia require­ment, which forced non-prof­its rais­ing mon­ey in Cal­i­for­nia to give the state copies of fed­er­al tax forms con­tain­ing donor infor­ma­tion.

    Chief Jus­tice John Roberts, who wrote the major­i­ty opin­ion for the court, ruled that California’s “blan­ket demand” for that infor­ma­tion “is facial­ly uncon­sti­tu­tion­al.”

    “When it comes to the free­dom of asso­ci­a­tion, the pro­tec­tions of the First Amend­ment are trig­gered not only by actu­al restric­tions on an individual’s abil­i­ty to join with oth­ers to fur­ther shared goals. The risk of a chill­ing effect on asso­ci­a­tion is enough,” Roberts wrote for the court.

    The rul­ing could have a polit­i­cal impact, com­pli­cat­ing donor-dis­clo­sure require­ments for groups that often pour large sums into elec­tions but stop just short of the “express advo­ca­cy” for or against can­di­dates that trig­gers stricter rules on reveal­ing the sources of dona­tions.

    The court ruled that the Cal­i­for­nia man­date for groups to turn over donor infor­ma­tion to the state, even if kept con­fi­den­tial, was over­ly broad.

    “The point is that a rea­son­able assess­ment of the bur­dens imposed by dis­clo­sure should begin with an under­stand­ing of the extent to which the bur­dens are unnec­es­sary, and that requires nar­row tai­lor­ing,” Roberts wrote.

    Roberts’ rul­ing did not address the fed­er­al government’s author­i­ty to require the fil­ing of donor infor­ma­tion with the Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice. Most char­i­ties are still required to file lists of donors giv­ing over $5,000 in a giv­en year, but in 2018 the IRS dropped the require­ment for some polit­i­cal­ly-ori­ent­ed groups.

    The jus­tices’ rul­ing Thurs­day addressed law­suits filed by two polit­i­cal­ly active, con­ser­v­a­tive non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tions in 2015. The Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty Foun­da­tion, backed by polit­i­cal megadonors Charles Koch and the late David Koch, brought one of the suits. The oth­er was filed by the Thomas More Law Cen­ter, a Michi­gan-based legal orga­ni­za­tion active on behalf of Catholic caus­es that was bankrolled by Tom Mon­aghan, founder of Domino’s Piz­za.

    Both orga­ni­za­tions argued that Cal­i­for­nia rules requir­ing fil­ing of donor lists with state offi­cials vio­late the First Amend­ment by dis­cour­ag­ing indi­vid­u­als from giv­ing and by expos­ing them to threats and harass­ment.

    In 2016, AFP per­suad­ed a fed­er­al judge in Los Ange­les to issue a per­ma­nent injunc­tion against the require­ment. The judge said the state rarely used the infor­ma­tion, but often dis­closed it acci­den­tal­ly with char­i­ties’ pub­lic tax fil­ings.

    How­ev­er, two years lat­er, a 9th Cir­cuit Court of Appeals pan­el unan­i­mous­ly reversed that rul­ing, hold­ing that the state had a legit­i­mate need for the data and that the Koch-found­ed group had not shown a sig­nif­i­cant bur­den on donors.

    It’s unclear how the Supreme Court’s con­clu­sions will impact sim­i­lar donor-dis­clo­sure require­ments at the fed­er­al lev­el. The Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice has gen­er­al­ly done a bet­ter job of keep­ing fil­ings it receives con­fi­den­tial.

    Part of Roberts’ opin­ion does, how­ev­er, open the door to chal­lenges to oth­er dis­clo­sure require­ments: “While exact­ing scruti­ny does not require that dis­clo­sure regimes be the least restric­tive means of achiev­ing their ends, it does require that they be nar­row­ly tai­lored to the government’s assert­ed inter­est,” he wrote.

    Jus­tice Sonia Sotomay­or, writ­ing in dis­sent and joined by the two oth­er lib­er­al-lean­ing jus­tices, did how­ev­er pre­dict that the deci­sion would open the flood­gates to weak­en­ing dis­clo­sure require­ments.

    “Today’s analy­sis marks report­ing and dis­clo­sure require­ments with a bull’s‑eye,” she wrote. “Reg­u­lat­ed enti­ties who wish to avoid their oblig­a­tions can do so by vague­ly wav­ing toward First Amend­ment ‘pri­va­cy con­cerns.’”

    The high court rul­ings could have a broad­er impact on efforts by Democ­rats to broad­en and increase dis­clo­sure require­ments, par­tic­u­lar­ly for groups that run ads that men­tion fed­er­al can­di­dates while stop­ping short of explic­it­ly endors­ing or oppos­ing them.

    The For the Peo­ple Act, con­gres­sion­al Democ­rats’ mas­sive cam­paign and ethics reform leg­is­la­tion that is stalled in the Sen­ate amid Demo­c­ra­t­ic infight­ing and a suc­cess­ful Repub­li­can fil­i­buster last week, also con­tains pro­vi­sions that would remake cam­paign finance dis­clo­sure law if enact­ed.

    Amid the hun­dreds of pages of the bill is a long-fought-over pro­pos­al that would dra­mat­i­cal­ly expand which orga­ni­za­tions are required to dis­close donors and expen­di­tures if they spend a nom­i­nal amount on com­mu­ni­ca­tions that broad­ly men­tion fed­er­al can­di­dates.

    Repub­li­cans are now broad­ly opposed to such mea­sures, a turn­about from two decades ago when promi­nent GOP lead­ers backed robust dis­clo­sure rules as an alter­na­tive to attempts to restrict dona­tions to cam­paigns and out­side groups.

    ...

    While AFP and the Thomas More Law Cen­ter unsur­pris­ing­ly gar­nered sup­port for their legal chal­lenges from oth­er con­ser­v­a­tive orga­ni­za­tions, sev­er­al lib­er­al groups and First Amend­ment advo­cates also urged the Supreme Court to rule in favor of donor pri­va­cy in the cas­es.

    The NAACP Legal Defense & Edu­ca­tion­al Fund, the Amer­i­can Civ­il Lib­er­ties Union, the LGBTQ rights advo­ca­cy group Human Rights Cam­paign and oth­ers argued that the jus­tices should hold that California’s fail­ure to keep the donor infor­ma­tion con­fi­den­tial vio­lat­ed the con­ser­v­a­tive groups’ rights.

    How­ev­er, the lib­er­al orga­ni­za­tions’ brief — which drew sig­nif­i­cant inter­est from con­ser­v­a­tive jus­tices at oral argu­ments — pushed the court toward a nar­row deci­sion that would not upset dis­clo­sure require­ments for polit­i­cal cam­paigns or address the rights of reg­u­la­tors with a bet­ter track record for con­fi­den­tial­i­ty to gath­er donor infor­ma­tion.

    ———–

    “Supreme Court nix­es Cal­i­for­nia dis­clo­sure law in blow to dark-mon­ey oppo­nents” by JOSH GERSTEIN and ZACH MONTELLARO; Politi­co; 07/01/2021

    “The high court split 6–3 along ide­o­log­i­cal lines in its deci­sion on a pair of cas­es chal­leng­ing that Cal­i­for­nia require­ment, which forced non-prof­its rais­ing mon­ey in Cal­i­for­nia to give the state copies of fed­er­al tax forms con­tain­ing donor infor­ma­tion.

    Dis­clos­ing to the states the exact same donor infor­ma­tion they dis­close to the IRS is an uncon­sti­tu­tion­al bur­den that sti­fles free speech. It’s the only rul­ing we could have real­is­ti­cal­ly expect­ed from the Roberts Court. Going for­ward, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is the only enti­ty with access to that donor infor­ma­tion. States can just guess or some­thing:

    ...
    The rul­ing could have a polit­i­cal impact, com­pli­cat­ing donor-dis­clo­sure require­ments for groups that often pour large sums into elec­tions but stop just short of the “express advo­ca­cy” for or against can­di­dates that trig­gers stricter rules on reveal­ing the sources of dona­tions.

    The court ruled that the Cal­i­for­nia man­date for groups to turn over donor infor­ma­tion to the state, even if kept con­fi­den­tial, was over­ly broad.

    “The point is that a rea­son­able assess­ment of the bur­dens imposed by dis­clo­sure should begin with an under­stand­ing of the extent to which the bur­dens are unnec­es­sary, and that requires nar­row tai­lor­ing,” Roberts wrote.

    Roberts’ rul­ing did not address the fed­er­al government’s author­i­ty to require the fil­ing of donor infor­ma­tion with the Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice. Most char­i­ties are still required to file lists of donors giv­ing over $5,000 in a giv­en year, but in 2018 the IRS dropped the require­ment for some polit­i­cal­ly-ori­ent­ed groups.

    ...

    It’s unclear how the Supreme Court’s con­clu­sions will impact sim­i­lar donor-dis­clo­sure require­ments at the fed­er­al lev­el. The Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice has gen­er­al­ly done a bet­ter job of keep­ing fil­ings it receives con­fi­den­tial.
    ...

    And while we still have no idea what the impli­ca­tions of this rul­ing could be on that remain­ing fed­er­al dis­clo­sure require­ment. Except we can be pret­ty con­fi­dent that this rul­ing is going to be encour­ag­ing future chal­lenges to those remain­ing fed­er­al dis­clo­sure rules. In oth­er words, it’s the kind of bad-faithed rul­ing that sig­nals there’s plen­ty more bad-faith where that came from:

    ...
    Part of Roberts’ opin­ion does, how­ev­er, open the door to chal­lenges to oth­er dis­clo­sure require­ments: “While exact­ing scruti­ny does not require that dis­clo­sure regimes be the least restric­tive means of achiev­ing their ends, it does require that they be nar­row­ly tai­lored to the government’s assert­ed inter­est,” he wrote.

    Jus­tice Sonia Sotomay­or, writ­ing in dis­sent and joined by the two oth­er lib­er­al-lean­ing jus­tices, did how­ev­er pre­dict that the deci­sion would open the flood­gates to weak­en­ing dis­clo­sure require­ments.

    “Today’s analy­sis marks report­ing and dis­clo­sure require­ments with a bull’s‑eye,” she wrote. “Reg­u­lat­ed enti­ties who wish to avoid their oblig­a­tions can do so by vague­ly wav­ing toward First Amend­ment ‘pri­va­cy con­cerns.’”
    ...

    So let’s hope this lat­est attack by the Supreme Court’s right-wing major­i­ty on what lit­tle remains of the US’s cam­paign finance laws end­ed up instill­ing the fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tors into the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol insur­rec­tion — and any ongo­ing plots for future insur­rec­tions — with a new sense of urgency. Because the peo­ple inter­est­ed in financ­ing Amer­i­ca’s next coup attempt are pre­sum­ably feel­ing a sense of opti­mism-based urgency right now. Burst­ing with it. They should be. Vir­tu­al­ly the entire GOP ral­lied behind both cov­er­ing up the insur­rec­tion and but­tress­ing the stolen elec­tion Big Lie. The next coup attempt is just a mat­ter of time now and next time it’s going to be a much more uni­fied par­ty affair. The GOP is a post-democ­ra­cy par­ty. The next right-wing coup attempt is in the ‘when’, not ‘if’, cat­e­go­ry at this point.

    And thanks to the US’s dark mon­ey laws, the GOP’s cor­po­rate dona­tion gravy train can con­tin­ue unabat­ed. The only polit­i­cal price the GOP paid so far in the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol insur­rec­tion is the oppor­tu­ni­ty cost of not suc­ceed­ing. They could be liv­ing in a post-democ­ra­cy fas­cist utopia right now run by King Trump. But it did­n’t suc­ceed to that did­n’t get to hap­pen. Yet. That’s the extent of the price paid by the top lev­el coup plot­ters. Not get­ting what could have been. In the six months fol­low­ing the Jan 6 Capi­tol Insur­rec­tion, we’ve already dis­cov­ered that no one but the mili­tia-types who stormed the Capi­tol will face any reper­cus­sions. The Roger Stones and Don­ald Trumps will be fine. The peo­ple who financed it will be fine, and every­thing will return to ‘nor­mal’. The GOP is poised to car­ry out the most extreme ger­ry­man­der­ing in his­to­ry and prob­a­bly retake the House next year. And then the right-wing Supreme Court super-major­i­ty blinds state gov­ern­ments to donor infor­ma­tion while open­ing up dis­clo­sure laws to future attacks. It’s the kind of sequence of events that has undoubt­ed filled the Koch net­work with an abun­dance of urgency. Because there’s noth­ing quite like secret­ly financ­ing an insur­rec­tion with impuni­ty for fos­ter­ing urgent opti­mism.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | July 11, 2021, 9:28 pm
  24. What does Steve Ban­non have to say for him­self? It’s been a dark rhetor­i­cal ques­tion loom­ing over US pol­i­tics for the past half decade. But it’s no longer pure­ly a rhetor­i­cal ques­tion fol­low­ing reports that Steve Ban­non was one of four for­mer Trump admin­is­tra­tion fig­ures sub­poe­naed by the House com­mit­tee invest­ing the Jan­u­ary 6th Capi­tol insur­rec­tion.

    It was always clear Steve Ban­non nev­er real­ly left the Trump White House in the fall of 2017 when Ban­non exit­ed the Trump admin­is­tra­tion in the wake of the Char­lottesville ‘Unite the Right’ ral­ly. But it’s hard to find a sto­ry that bet­ter encap­su­lates Ban­non’s endur­ing influ­ence than the new reports of the role Steve Ban­non was play­ing in days and hours before the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol insur­rec­tion. That’s part of what makes this sub­poe­na so inter­est­ing. Who knows how much we’re going to learn about Ban­non’s strate­gic lead­er­ship role for the Trump 2020 reelec­tion cam­paign, includ­ing all the pre­emp­tive prepa­ra­tions to wage the ‘stolen elec­tion’ post-elec­tion cam­paign that cul­mi­nat­ed in the insur­rec­tion.

    Ban­non real­ly has proven him­self to be the Trump-whis­per­er. And now we’re learn­ing that includ­ed whis­per­ing to Trump about the need to kill the Biden pres­i­den­cy in the crib on Jan­u­ary 6th. That was the pic­ture paint­ed by Bob Wood­ward’s and Robert Costa’s new book Per­il and, remark­ably, Steve Ban­non appeared to con­firm that report­ing dur­ing a seg­ment of his War­room pod­cast where Ban­non dis­cussed Wood­ward and Costa’s new book and seemed to proud­ly con­firm that, yes, he was egging Trump on to car­ry out the insur­rec­tion. “Yeah, because his legit­i­ma­cy,” Ban­non said of Biden. “42% of the Amer­i­can peo­ple think that Biden did not win the pres­i­den­cy legit­i­mate­ly.”

    It’s also impor­tant to keep in mind the recent con­text of Ban­non’s self-con­fir­ma­tion that, yes, he was advis­ing that Trump car­ry out an insur­rec­tion: the recent report­ing on the advice Trump was sim­i­lar­ly get­ting from con­ser­v­a­tive con­sti­tu­tion­al lawyer John East­man, who was rec­om­mend­ing a tac­tic that would end up get­ting the elec­tion thrown to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives where the pres­i­dent would be decid­ed on a one-state-one-vote basis. And as we also saw, East­man has sub­se­quent­ly been open­ly embraced and cel­e­brat­ed by the net­work of right-wing think-tanks like the Clare­mont Insti­tute, where he was invit­ed to sit on a pan­el on “Elec­tion Integri­ty and the Future of Amer­i­can Repub­li­can Gov­ern­ment.” That’s the big­ger pic­ture con­text that any reports of Steve Ban­non’s involve­ment in the insur­rec­tion needs to be viewed. Because Ban­non is, after all, a crea­ture of the rad­i­cal bil­lion­aires who finance his activ­i­ties. Steven Ban­non’s agen­da isn’t pure­ly of his own cre­ation. He’s a hired fas­cist. So if he was whis­per­ing in Trump’s ears about the need for an insur­rec­tion, we have to ask who was pay­ing Ban­non to give that advice.

    And that brings us to the cru­cial piece pub­lished last month by Jane May­er on the pro­found role played by con­ser­v­a­tive main­stream estab­lish­ment think-tanks and foun­da­tions in both aggres­sive­ly pro­mot­ing the ‘mass vot­er fraud’ myths over the past decade. Main­stream groups like the Her­itage Foun­da­tion, the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety, ALEC, Free­dom­Works, and the Bradley Foun­da­tion. As the arti­cle makes clear, every­thing we are see­ing today in the area of GOP efforts to sub­vert elec­tions and rig the rules to ensure GOP vic­to­ries are the fruits of the exten­sive efforts these groups. In par­tic­u­lar, high­ly ‘main­stream’ and ‘respectable’ fig­ures like Cle­ta Mitchell, Hans von Spakovsky, and John East­man have been play­ing key roles in this effort. Unre­pen­tant roles that con­tin­ue to this day.

    So when we read about Steve Ban­non open­ly brag­ging about the role he played in encour­ag­ing Trump to wage that insur­rec­tion and then being sub­poe­naed the next day, it’s going to be impor­tant to keep in mind that Ban­non was just one of the many GOP estab­lish­ment fig­ures who were whis­per­ing in Trump’s ear about how the elec­tion was stolen:

    Raw Sto­ry

    BUSTED: Steve Ban­non admits he helped plot Jan. 6 Trump ral­ly to ‘kill Biden pres­i­den­cy in the crib’

    David Edwards
    Sep­tem­ber 22, 2021

    Con­ser­v­a­tive broad­cast­er Steve Ban­non admit­ted on Wednes­day that he had plot­ted with Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump to “kill the Biden pres­i­den­cy in the crib” ahead of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capi­tol.

    Dur­ing his War­room broad­cast, Ban­non played clips of jour­nal­ist Robert Cos­ta and Bob Wood­ward explain­ing how events unfold­ed pri­or to the Jan. 6 riot.

    “You look at Jan­u­ary 5th, we dis­cov­ered that Steve Ban­non, the for­mer White House strate­gist, was there at the Willard Hotel blocks from the White House with Rudy Giu­liani, hav­ing an almost war-room-type meet­ing with oth­er Trump allies the eve before the Jan­u­ary 6th insur­rec­tion,” Cos­ta recent­ly explained to MSNBC. “And Ban­non had actu­al­ly been in close touch with Pres­i­dent Trump for days before Jan­u­ary 6th. Based on our report­ing, he pri­vate­ly told Pres­i­dent Trump to have a reck­on­ing on Jan­u­ary 6th. And he said to the pres­i­dent, it’s time to kill the Biden pres­i­den­cy in the crib.”

    Ban­non seemed proud to con­firm that the con­ver­sa­tion had tak­en place.

    “Yeah, because his legit­i­ma­cy,” Ban­non said of Biden. “42% of the Amer­i­can peo­ple think that Biden did not win the pres­i­den­cy legit­i­mate­ly.”

    “It killed itself,” he con­tin­ued. “Just look at what this ille­git­i­mate regime is doing. It killed itself. OK? But we told you from the very begin­ning, just expose it, just expose it, nev­er back down, nev­er give up and this thing will implode.”

    ...

    ———–

    “BUSTED: Steve Ban­non admits he helped plot Jan. 6 Trump ral­ly to ‘kill Biden pres­i­den­cy in the crib’ ” by David Edwards; Raw Sto­ry; 09/22/2021

    ““You look at Jan­u­ary 5th, we dis­cov­ered that Steve Ban­non, the for­mer White House strate­gist, was there at the Willard Hotel blocks from the White House with Rudy Giu­liani, hav­ing an almost war-room-type meet­ing with oth­er Trump allies the eve before the Jan­u­ary 6th insur­rec­tion,” Cos­ta recent­ly explained to MSNBC. “And Ban­non had actu­al­ly been in close touch with Pres­i­dent Trump for days before Jan­u­ary 6th. Based on our report­ing, he pri­vate­ly told Pres­i­dent Trump to have a reck­on­ing on Jan­u­ary 6th. And he said to the pres­i­dent, it’s time to kill the Biden pres­i­den­cy in the crib.”

    It’s quite a con­fir­ma­tion. And in the con­text of all the report­ing on the events that led up to the insur­rec­tion, it’s not sim­ply a con­fir­ma­tion that Ban­non him­self was encour­ag­ing Trump to foment an insur­rec­tion. Because as the fol­low­ing cru­cial New York­er piece by Jane May­er describes, Ban­non was far from alone in talk­ing Trump into wag­ing that insur­rec­tion. He had help in per­suad­ing Trump. A LOT of help. Help in the form of a ‘stolen elec­tion’ nar­ra­tive the main­stream estab­lish­ment con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment has been work­ing on for the past decade:

    The New York­er

    The Big Mon­ey Behind the Big Lie

    Don­ald Trump’s attacks on democ­ra­cy are being pro­mot­ed by rich and pow­er­ful con­ser­v­a­tive groups that are deter­mined to win at all costs.

    By Jane May­er
    August 2, 2021

    It was tempt­ing to dis­miss the show unfold­ing inside the Dream City Church in Phoenix, Ari­zona, as an unin­tend­ed com­e­dy. One night in June, a few hun­dred peo­ple gath­ered for the pre­mière of “The Deep Rig,” a film financed by the mul­ti­mil­lion­aire founder of Overstock.com, Patrick Byrne, who is a vocal sup­port­er of for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump. Styled as a doc­u­men­tary, the movie asserts that the 2020 Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion was stolen by sup­port­ers of Joe Biden, includ­ing by Antifa mem­bers who chat­ted about their sin­is­ter plot on a con­fer­ence call. The evening’s pro­gram fea­tured live appear­ances by Byrne and a local QAnon con­spir­acist, BabyQ, who claimed to be receiv­ing mes­sages from his future self. They were joined by the film’s direc­tor, who had pre­vi­ous­ly made an exposé con­tend­ing that the real per­pe­tra­tors of 9/11 were space aliens.

    But the event, for all its absur­di­ties, had a dark sur­prise: “The Deep Rig” repeat­ed­ly quotes Doug Logan, the C.E.O. of Cyber Nin­jas, a Flori­da-based com­pa­ny that con­sults with clients on soft­ware secu­ri­ty. In a voice-over, Logan warns, “If we don’t fix our elec­tion integri­ty now, we may no longer have a democ­ra­cy.” He also sug­gests, with­out evi­dence, that mem­bers of the “deep state,” such as C.I.A. agents, have inten­tion­al­ly spread dis­in­for­ma­tion about the elec­tion. Although it wasn’t the first time that Logan had pro­mot­ed what has come to be known as the Big Lie about the 2020 election—he had tweet­ed unsub­stan­ti­at­ed claims that Trump had been vic­tim­ized by vot­er fraud—the film offered stark con­fir­ma­tion of Logan’s entan­gle­ment in fringe con­spir­a­cies. Nev­er­the­less, the pres­i­dent of the Ari­zona State Sen­ate, Karen Fann, has put Logan’s com­pa­ny in charge of a “foren­sic audit”—an ongo­ing review of the state’s 2020 Pres­i­den­tial vote. It’s an unprece­dent­ed under­tak­ing, with poten­tial­ly explo­sive con­se­quences for Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy.

    Approx­i­mate­ly 2.1 mil­lion Pres­i­den­tial votes were cast in Mari­co­pa Coun­ty, which includes Phoenix and accounts for most of the state’s pop­u­la­tion. In recent years, younger vot­ers and peo­ple of col­or have turned the county’s elec­torate increas­ing­ly Democratic—a shift that helped Biden win the tra­di­tion­al­ly con­ser­v­a­tive state, by 10,457 votes. Since the elec­tion, the coun­ty has become a focus of ire for Trump and his sup­port­ers. By March, when Logan’s com­pa­ny was hired, the coun­ty had already under­gone four elec­tion audits, all of which upheld the out­come. Gov­er­nor Doug Ducey, a Repub­li­can and a for­mer Trump ally, had cer­ti­fied Biden’s vic­to­ry. But Trump’s core sup­port­ers were not assuaged.

    As soon as the Fox News Deci­sion Desk called the state for Biden, at 11:20 p.m. on Novem­ber 3rd, Trump demand­ed that the net­work “reverse this!” When Fox held firm, he declared, “This is a major fraud.” By the time of the “Deep Rig” pre­mière, the stand­off had dragged on for more than half a year. The Cyber Nin­jas audit was sup­posed to con­clude in May, but at the company’s request Fann has repeat­ed­ly extend­ed it. On July 28th, the audi­tors com­plet­ed a hand recount, but they are still demand­ing access to the com­put­er routers used by Mari­co­pa Coun­ty and also want to scru­ti­nize images of mail-in-bal­lot envelopes. The U.S. Depart­ment of Jus­tice has warned that “pri­vate actors who have nei­ther expe­ri­ence nor exper­tise in han­dling” bal­lots could face pros­e­cu­tion for fail­ing to fol­low fed­er­al audit rules. Trump, mean­while, has fix­at­ed on Arizona’s audit, describ­ing it as a step toward his “rein­state­ment.” On July 24th, he appeared in Phoenix for a “Ral­ly to Pro­tect Our Elec­tions,” and said, “I am not the one try­ing to under­mine Amer­i­can democracy—I’m the one try­ing to save Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy.” Pre­dict­ing that the audit would vin­di­cate him, he ram­bled angri­ly for near­ly two hours about hav­ing been cheat­ed, call­ing the elec­tion “a scam—the great­est crime in his­to­ry.”

    In June, I stood in the bleach­ers at the Vet­er­ans Memo­r­i­al Col­i­se­um in Phoenix, where the audit was tak­ing place, and wit­nessed peo­ple exam­in­ing car­ton after car­ton of paper bal­lots cast by Ari­zo­nans last fall. Some inspec­tors used micro­scopes to inves­ti­gate sur­re­al alle­ga­tions: that some bal­lots had been filled out by machines or were Asian coun­ter­feits with tell­tale bam­boo fibres. Oth­er inspec­tors looked for creas­es in mail-in bal­lots, to deter­mine whether they had been legit­i­mate­ly sent in envelopes or—as Trump has alleged—dumped in bulk.

    As the audit has unfold­ed, var­i­ous vio­la­tions of pro­fes­sion­al norms have been observed, includ­ing inspec­tors caught with pens whose ink matched what was used on bal­lots. One audi­tor turned out to have been an unsuc­cess­ful Repub­li­can can­di­date dur­ing the elec­tion. As I watched the pro­ceed­ings, black-vest­ed paid super­vi­sors mon­i­tored the process, but their role was cloaked in secre­cy. The audit is almost entire­ly pri­vate­ly fund­ed, and a coun­ty judge in Ari­zona recent­ly ordered the State Sen­ate to dis­close who is pay­ing for it. Last week, Cyber Nin­jas acknowl­edged hav­ing received $5.7 mil­lion in pri­vate dona­tions, most of it from non­prof­it groups led by Trump allies who live out­side Ari­zona, includ­ing Byrne.

    I was joined in the bleach­ers by Ken Ben­nett, a for­mer Ari­zona sec­re­tary of state and a Repub­li­can, whom the State Sen­ate had des­ig­nat­ed its liai­son to the audit. He acknowl­edged that, if the audi­tors end up claim­ing to have found large dis­crep­an­cies, “that will of course be very inflam­ma­to­ry.” Indeed, a recent incen­di­ary claim by the auditors—that the vote had tal­lied about sev­en­ty thou­sand more mail-in bal­lots than had been postmarked—prompted one Repub­li­can state sen­a­tor to pro­pose a recall of Arizona’s elec­toral votes for Biden. (In fact, the audi­tors mis­un­der­stood what they were count­ing.) Nev­er­the­less, Ben­nett defend­ed the audit process: “It’s impor­tant to prove to both sides that the elec­tion was done accu­rate­ly and fair­ly. If we lurch from one elec­tion to anoth­er with almost half the elec­torate think­ing the elec­tion was a fraud, it’s going to rip our coun­try apart.”

    Many experts on demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nance, how­ev­er, believe that efforts to upend long-set­tled elec­tion prac­tices are what tru­ly threat­en to rip the coun­try apart. Chad Camp­bell, a Demo­c­rat who was the minor­i­ty leader in the Ari­zona House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives until 2014, when he left to become a con­sul­tant in Phoenix, has been shocked by the state’s anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic turn. For sev­er­al years, he sat next to Karen Fann when she was a mem­ber of the House, and in his view she’s gone from being a tra­di­tion­al Repub­li­can law­mak­er to being a mem­ber of “Trump’s cult of per­son­al­i­ty.” He said, “I don’t know if she believes it or not, or which would be worse.” Ari­zona, he added, is in the midst of a “non­vi­o­lent over­throw in some ways—it’s sub­tle, and not in people’s face because it’s not hap­pen­ing with weapons. But it’s still a com­plete over­throw of democ­ra­cy. They’re try­ing to dis­en­fran­chise every­one who is not old­er white guys.”

    Ari­zona is hard­ly the only place where attacks on the elec­toral process are under way: a well-fund­ed nation­al move­ment has been exploit­ing Trump’s claims of fraud in order to pro­mote alter­ations to the way that bal­lots are cast and count­ed in forty-nine states, eigh­teen of which have passed new vot­ing laws in the past six months. Repub­li­can-dom­i­nat­ed leg­is­la­tures have also stripped sec­re­taries of state and oth­er inde­pen­dent elec­tion offi­cials of their pow­er. The chair of Arizona’s Repub­li­can Par­ty, Kel­li Ward, has referred to the state’s audit as a “domi­no,” and has expressed hope that it will inspire sim­i­lar chal­lenges else­where.

    Ralph Neas has been involved in vot­ing-rights bat­tles since the nine­teen-eight­ies, when, as a Repub­li­can, he served as the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Lead­er­ship Con­fer­ence on Civ­il Rights. He has over­seen a study of the Ari­zona audit for the non­par­ti­san Cen­tu­ry Foun­da­tion, and he told me that, though the audit is a “farce,” it may nonethe­less have “extra­or­di­nary con­se­quences.” He said, “The Mari­co­pa Coun­ty audit expos­es exact­ly what the Big Lie is all about. If they come up with an analy­sis that dis­cred­its the 2020 elec­tion results in Ari­zona, it will be repli­cat­ed in oth­er states, fur­ther­ing more chaos. That will enable new leg­is­la­tion. Mil­lions of Amer­i­cans could be dis­en­fran­chised, help­ing Don­ald Trump to be elect­ed again in 2024. That’s the bot­tom line. Mari­co­pa Coun­ty is the prism through which to view every­thing. It’s not so much about 2020—it’s about 2022 and 2024. This is a coör­di­nat­ed nation­al effort to dis­tort not just what hap­pened in 2020 but to regain the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and the Pres­i­den­cy.”

    Richard Hasen, a law pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Irvine, and one of the country’s fore­most elec­tion-law experts, told me, “I’m scared shit­less.” Refer­ring to the array of new laws passed by Repub­li­can state leg­is­la­tures since the 2020 elec­tion, he said, “It’s not just about vot­er sup­pres­sion. What I’m real­ly wor­ried about is elec­tion sub­ver­sion. Elec­tion offi­cials are being put in place who will mess with the count.”

    Arizona’s sec­re­tary of state, Katie Hobbs, whose office has author­i­ty over the admin­is­tra­tion of elec­tions, told me that the con­spir­a­cy-dri­ven audit “looks so com­i­cal you have to laugh at it some­times.” But Hobbs, a Demo­c­rat, who is run­ning for gov­er­nor, warned, “It’s dan­ger­ous. It’s feed­ing the kind of mis­in­for­ma­tion that led to the Jan­u­ary 6th insur­rec­tion.” QAnon fol­low­ers have been cel­e­brat­ing the audit as the begin­ning of a “Great Awak­en­ing” that will eject Biden from the White House. She not­ed, “I’ve got­ten death threats. I’ve had armed pro­tes­tors out­side my house. Every day, there is a total bar­rage of social media to our office. We’ve had to route our phones to voice mail so that no one has to lis­ten to it. It can be real­ly trau­ma­tiz­ing. I feel beat­en up.” She added, “But I’m not going to cave to their tactics—because I think they’re lay­ing the ground­work to steal the 2024 elec­tions.”

    Although the Ari­zona audit may appear to be the prod­uct of local extrem­ists, it has been fed by sophis­ti­cat­ed, well-fund­ed nation­al orga­ni­za­tions whose boards of direc­tors include some of the country’s wealth­i­est and high­est-pro­file con­ser­v­a­tives. Dark-mon­ey orga­ni­za­tions, sus­tained by undis­closed donors, have relent­less­ly pro­mot­ed the myth that Amer­i­can elec­tions are rife with fraud, and, accord­ing to leaked records of their inter­nal delib­er­a­tions, they have draft­ed, sup­port­ed, and in some cas­es tak­en cred­it for state laws that make it hard­er to vote.

    Sen­a­tor Shel­don White­house, a Demo­c­rat from Rhode Island who has tracked the flow of dark mon­ey in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics, told me that a “flotil­la of front groups” once focussed on advanc­ing such con­ser­v­a­tive caus­es as cap­tur­ing the courts and oppos­ing abor­tion have now “more or less shift­ed to work on the vot­er-sup­pres­sion thing.” These groups have cast their cam­paigns as high-mind­ed attempts to main­tain “elec­tion integri­ty,” but White­house believes that they are in fact tam­per­ing with the guardrails of democ­ra­cy.

    One of the movement’s lead­ers is the Her­itage Foun­da­tion, the promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tive think tank in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. It has been work­ing with the Amer­i­can Leg­isla­tive Exchange Coun­cil (alec)—a cor­po­rate-fund­ed non­prof­it that gen­er­ates mod­el laws for state legislators—on ways to impose new vot­ing restric­tions. Among those deep in the fight is Leonard Leo, a chair­man of the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety, the legal orga­ni­za­tion known for its decades-long cam­paign to fill the courts with con­ser­v­a­tive judges. In Feb­ru­ary, 2020, the Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project, a group tied to Leo, qui­et­ly rebrand­ed itself as the Hon­est Elec­tions Project, which sub­se­quent­ly filed briefs at the Supreme Court, and in numer­ous states, oppos­ing mail-in bal­lots and oth­er reforms that have made it eas­i­er for peo­ple to vote.

    Anoth­er new­com­er to the cause is the Elec­tion Integri­ty Project Cal­i­for­nia. And a group called Free­dom­Works, which once con­cen­trat­ed on oppos­ing gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tion, is now demand­ing expand­ed gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tion of vot­ers, with a project called the Nation­al Elec­tion Pro­tec­tion Ini­tia­tive.

    These dis­parate non­prof­its have one thing in com­mon: they have all received fund­ing from the Lyn­de and Har­ry Bradley Foun­da­tion. Based in Mil­wau­kee, the pri­vate, tax-exempt orga­ni­za­tion has become an extra­or­di­nary force in per­suad­ing main­stream Repub­li­cans to sup­port rad­i­cal chal­lenges to elec­tion rules—a tac­tic once rel­e­gat­ed to the far right. With an endow­ment of some eight hun­dred and fifty mil­lion dol­lars, the foun­da­tion funds a net­work of groups that have been stok­ing fear about elec­tion fraud, in some cas­es for years. Pub­lic records show that, since 2012, the foun­da­tion has spent some eigh­teen mil­lion dol­lars sup­port­ing eleven con­ser­v­a­tive groups involved in elec­tion issues.

    It might seem improb­a­ble that a low-pro­file fam­i­ly foun­da­tion in Wis­con­sin has assumed a cen­tral role in cur­rent strug­gles over Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy. But the mod­ern con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment has depend­ed on lever­ag­ing the for­tunes of wealthy reac­tionar­ies. In 1903, Lyn­de Bradley, a high-school dropout in Mil­wau­kee, found­ed what would become the Allen-Bradley com­pa­ny. He was soon joined by his broth­er Har­ry, and they got rich by sell­ing elec­tron­ic instru­ments such as rheostats. Har­ry, a John Birch Soci­ety found­ing mem­ber, start­ed a small fam­i­ly foun­da­tion that ini­tial­ly devot­ed much of its giv­ing to needy employ­ees and to civic caus­es in Mil­wau­kee. In 1985, after the broth­ers’ death, their heirs sold the com­pa­ny to the defense con­trac­tor Rock­well Inter­na­tion­al, for $1.65 bil­lion, gen­er­at­ing an enor­mous wind­fall for the foun­da­tion. The Bradley Foun­da­tion remains small in com­par­i­son with such lib­er­al behe­moths as the Ford Foun­da­tion, but it has become sin­gu­lar­ly pre­oc­cu­pied with wield­ing nation­al polit­i­cal influ­ence. It has fund­ed con­ser­v­a­tive projects rang­ing from school-choice ini­tia­tives to the con­tro­ver­sial schol­ar­ship of Charles Mur­ray, the co-author of the 1994 book “The Bell Curve,” which argues that Blacks are less like­ly than whites to join the “cog­ni­tive elite.” And, at least as far back as 2012, it has fund­ed groups chal­leng­ing vot­ing rights in the name of fight­ing fraud.

    Since the 2020 elec­tion, this move­ment has evolved into a broad­er and more aggres­sive assault on democ­ra­cy. Accord­ing to some sur­veys, a third of Amer­i­cans now believe that Biden was ille­git­i­mate­ly elect­ed, and near­ly half of Trump sup­port­ers agree that Repub­li­can leg­is­la­tors should over­turn the results in some states that Biden won. Jonathan Rauch, of the Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion, recent­ly told The Econ­o­mist, “We need to regard what’s hap­pen­ing now as epis­temic war­fare by some Amer­i­cans on oth­er Amer­i­cans.” Pil­lars of the con­ser­v­a­tive estab­lish­ment, faced with a chang­ing U.S. vot­er pop­u­la­tion that threat­ens their agen­da, are exploit­ing Trump’s con­tempt for norms to devise ways to hold on to pow­er. Sen­a­tor White­house said of the cam­paign, “It’s a mas­sive covert oper­a­tion run by a small group of bil­lion­aire élites. These are pow­er­ful inter­ests with prac­ti­cal­ly unlim­it­ed resources who have moved on to manip­u­lat­ing that most pre­cious of Amer­i­can gifts—the vote.”

    An ani­mat­ing force behind the Bradley Foundation’s war on “elec­tion fraud” is Cle­ta Mitchell, a fierce­ly par­ti­san Repub­li­can elec­tion lawyer, who joined the organization’s board of direc­tors in 2012. Until recent­ly, she was vir­tu­al­ly unknown to most Amer­i­cans. But, on Jan­u­ary 3rd, the Wash­ing­ton Post exposed the con­tents of a pri­vate phone call, record­ed the pre­vi­ous day, dur­ing which Trump threat­ened elec­tion offi­cials in Geor­gia with a “crim­i­nal offense” unless they could “find” 11,780 more votes for him—just enough to alter the results. Also on the call was Mitchell, who chal­lenged the offi­cials to pro­vide records prov­ing that dead peo­ple hadn’t cast votes. The call was wide­ly crit­i­cized as a rogue effort to over­turn the elec­tion, and Foley & Lard­ner, the Mil­wau­kee-based law firm where Mitchell was a part­ner, announced that it was “con­cerned” about her role, and then part­ed ways with her. Trump’s call prompt­ed the dis­trict attor­ney in Ful­ton Coun­ty, Geor­gia, to begin a crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion.

    In a series of e‑mails and phone calls with me, Mitchell adamant­ly defend­ed her work with the Trump cam­paign, and said that in Geor­gia, where she has cen­tered her efforts, “I don’t think we can say with cer­tain­ty who won.” She told me that there were count­less elec­tion “irreg­u­lar­i­ties,” such as vot­ers using post-office box­es as their res­i­dences, in vio­la­tion of state law. “I believe there were more ille­gal votes cast than the mar­gin of vic­to­ry,” she said. “The only rem­e­dy is a new elec­tion.” Georgia’s sec­re­tary of state reject­ed her claims, but Mitchell insists that the deci­sion lacked a rig­or­ous eval­u­a­tion of the evi­dence. With her sup­port, diehard con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists are still lit­i­gat­ing the mat­ter in Ful­ton Coun­ty, which includes most of Atlanta. Because they keep demand­ing that elec­tion offi­cials prove a negative—that cor­rup­tion didn’t happen—their requests to keep inter­ro­gat­ing the results can be repeat­ed almost indef­i­nite­ly. Despite three inde­pen­dent counts of Georgia’s vote, includ­ing a hand recount, all of which con­firmed Biden’s vic­to­ry, Mitchell argues that “Trump nev­er got his day in court,” adding, “There are a lot of mis­car­riages of jus­tice I’ve seen and expe­ri­enced in my life, and this was one of them.”

    Mitchell, who is sev­en­ty, has warm friend­ships with peo­ple in both par­ties, and she often appears grand­moth­er­ly, in pas­tel knit suits and read­ing glass­es. But, like Angela Lans­bury in “The Manchuri­an Can­di­date,” to whom she bears a strik­ing resem­blance, she should not be under­es­ti­mat­ed. She began her polit­i­cal career in Okla­homa, as an out­spo­ken Demo­c­rat and a cham­pi­on of the Equal Rights Amend­ment. She was elect­ed to the state leg­is­la­ture in her twen­ties, but then lost a bid for lieu­tenant gov­er­nor, in 1986. She told me that she sub­se­quent­ly under­went a polit­i­cal con­ver­sion: when her step­son squan­dered the col­lege tuition that she was pay­ing, she turned against the idea of wel­fare in favor of per­son­al respon­si­bil­i­ty, and began read­ing con­ser­v­a­tive cri­tiques of lib­er­al­ism. When I first inter­viewed her for this mag­a­zine, in 1996, she told me that “over­reach­ing gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tion is one of the great scan­dals of our times.”

    On behalf of Repub­li­can can­di­dates and groups, she began to fight lim­its on cam­paign spend­ing. She also rep­re­sent­ed numer­ous right-wing non­prof­its, includ­ing the Nation­al Rifle Asso­ci­a­tion, whose board she joined in the ear­ly two-thou­sands. A for­mer N.R.A. offi­cial recent­ly told the Guardian that Mitchell was the “fringe of the fringe,” and a Repub­li­can vot­ing-rights lawyer said that “she tells clients what they want to hear, regard­less of the law or real­i­ty.”

    In our con­ver­sa­tions, Mitchell mocked what she called the main­stream media’s “nar­ra­tive” of a “vast right-wing con­spir­a­cy to sup­press the vote of Black peo­ple,” and insist­ed that the fraud prob­lem was sig­nif­i­cant. “I actu­al­ly think your read­ers need to hear from peo­ple like me—believe it or not, there are tens of mil­lions of us,” she wrote. “We are not crazy. At least not to us. We are intel­li­gent and edu­cat­ed peo­ple who are very con­cerned about the future of Amer­i­ca. And we are among the vast major­i­ty of Amer­i­cans who sup­port elec­tion-integri­ty mea­sures.” Echo­ing what has become the right’s stan­dard talk­ing point, she declared that her agen­da for elec­tions is “to make it hard­er to cheat.”

    Mitchell told me that the Democ­rats used the pan­dem­ic as a “great pre­text” to “be able to cheat”: they caused “admin­is­tra­tive chaos” by chang­ing rules about ear­ly and absen­tee vot­ing, and they didn’t ade­quate­ly police fraud. She denied that race had moti­vat­ed her actions in Geor­gia. Yet, in an e‑mail to me, she said that Democ­rats are “using black vot­ers as a prop to accom­plish their polit­i­cal objec­tives.”

    Few experts have found Mitchell’s evi­dence con­vinc­ing. On Novem­ber 12, 2020, the Trump Administration’s own elec­tion author­i­ties declared the Pres­i­den­tial vote to be “the most secure in Amer­i­can his­to­ry.” It is true that in many Amer­i­can elec­tions there are small num­bers of ques­tion­able bal­lots. An Asso­ci­at­ed Press inves­ti­ga­tion found that, in 2020, a hun­dred and eighty-two of the 3.4 mil­lion bal­lots cast in Ari­zona were prob­lem­at­ic. Four of the bal­lots have led to crim­i­nal charges. But the con­sen­sus among non­par­ti­san experts is that the amount of fraud, par­tic­u­lar­ly in major races, is neg­li­gi­ble. As Phil Keis­ling, a for­mer sec­re­tary of state in Ore­gon, who pio­neered uni­ver­sal vot­ing by mail, has said, “Vot­ers don’t cast fraud­u­lent bal­lots for the same rea­son coun­ter­feit­ers don’t man­u­fac­ture pennies—it doesn’t pay.”

    What explains, then, the hard­en­ing con­vic­tion among Repub­li­cans that the 2020 race was stolen? Michael Pod­horz­er, a senior advis­er to the pres­i­dent of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., which invest­ed deeply in expand­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic turnout in 2020, sug­gests that the two par­ties now have irrec­on­cil­able beliefs about whose votes are legit­i­mate. “What blue-state peo­ple don’t under­stand about why the Big Lie works,” he said, is that it doesn’t actu­al­ly require proof of fraud. “What ani­mates it is the belief that Biden won because votes were cast by some peo­ple in this coun­try who oth­ers think are not ‘real’ Amer­i­cans.” This anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic belief has been bol­stered by a con­stel­la­tion of estab­lished insti­tu­tions on the right: “white evan­gel­i­cal church­es, leg­is­la­tors, media com­pa­nies, non­prof­its, and even now para­mil­i­tary groups.” Pod­horz­er not­ed, “Trump won white Amer­i­ca by eight points. He won non-urban areas by over twen­ty points. He is the demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed Pres­i­dent of white Amer­i­ca. It’s almost like he rep­re­sents a nation with­in a nation.”

    Alarmism about elec­tion fraud in Amer­i­ca extends at least as far back as Recon­struc­tion, when white South­ern­ers dis­en­fran­chised new­ly empow­ered Black vot­ers and politi­cians by accus­ing them of cor­rup­tion. After the pas­sage of the Vot­ing Rights Act of 1965, some white con­ser­v­a­tives were frank about their hos­til­i­ty to democ­ra­cy. Forty years ago, Paul Weyrich, who helped estab­lish the Her­itage Foun­da­tion and oth­er con­ser­v­a­tive groups, admit­ted, “I don’t want every­body to vote. As a mat­ter of fact, our lever­age in the elec­tions quite can­did­ly goes up as the vot­ing pop­u­lace goes down.”

    Like many con­ser­v­a­tives of her gen­er­a­tion, Cle­ta Mitchell was gal­va­nized by the dis­put­ed 2000 elec­tion, in which George W. Bush and Al Gore bat­tled for weeks over the out­come in Flori­da. She repeat­ed­ly spoke out on behalf of Bush, who won the state by only five hun­dred and thir­ty-sev­en votes. A dis­pute over recounts end­ed up at the Supreme Court.

    Few peo­ple noticed at the time, but in that case, Bush v. Gore, Chief Jus­tice William Rehn­quist, along with Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, hint­ed at a rad­i­cal read­ing of the Con­sti­tu­tion that, two decades lat­er, under­girds many of the court chal­lenges on behalf of Trump. In a con­cur­ring opin­ion, the Jus­tices argued that state leg­is­la­tures have the ple­nary pow­er to run elec­tions and can even pass laws giv­ing them­selves the right to appoint elec­tors. Today, the so-called Inde­pen­dent Leg­is­la­ture Doc­trine has informed Trump and the right’s attempts to use Repub­li­can-dom­i­nat­ed state leg­is­la­tures to over­rule the pop­u­lar will. Nathaniel Persi­ly, an elec­tion-law expert at Stan­ford, told me, “It’s giv­ing intel­lec­tu­al respectabil­i­ty to an oth­er­wise insane, anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic argu­ment.”

    Barack Obama’s elec­tion in 2008 made plain that the vot­ing-rights wars were fuelled, in no small part, by racial ani­mus. Big­ot­ed con­spir­acists, includ­ing Trump, spent years try­ing to under­mine the result by false­ly claim­ing that Oba­ma wasn’t born in Amer­i­ca. Birtherism, which attempt­ed to under­cut a land­mark elec­tion in which the turnout rate among Black vot­ers near­ly matched that of whites, was a prog­en­i­tor of the Big Lie. As Pen­da Hair, a founder of the Advance­ment Project, a pro­gres­sive vot­ing-rights advo­ca­cy group, told me, con­ser­v­a­tives were look­ing at Obama’s vic­to­ry “and say­ing, ‘We’ve got to clamp things down’—they’d always tried to sup­press the Black vote, but it was then that they came up with new schemes.”

    Mitchell was at the fore­front of the right’s offen­sive. In 2010, she accused the Major­i­ty Leader of the Sen­ate, the Demo­c­rat Har­ry Reid, who was run­ning for reëlec­tion in Neva­da, of plan­ning “to steal this elec­tion if he can’t win it out­right.” Her evi­dence was that Democ­rats in the state had pro­vid­ed “clear­ly ille­gal” free food at vot­er-turnout events—a neg­li­gi­ble infrac­tion, giv­en that Reid won by more than forty thou­sand votes.

    A year lat­er, Mitchell suc­cess­ful­ly defend­ed Trump, who had been explor­ing a Pres­i­den­tial bid, against charges that he had tak­en ille­gal cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions. She had been rec­om­mend­ed to Trump by Chris Rud­dy, the founder of the con­ser­v­a­tive media com­pa­ny News­max, which was also a Mitchell client. Lat­er, Rud­dy intro­duced the future Pres­i­dent to Mitchell over din­ner at Mar-a-Lago. (She told me that she found Trump “gra­cious,” and not­ed that, since the 2020 elec­tion, she has talked with him “pret­ty often.”)

    In 2013, the Supreme Court struck down a key sec­tion of the Vot­ing Rights Act, elim­i­nat­ing the Jus­tice Department’s pow­er to screen pro­posed changes to elec­tion pro­ce­dures in states with dis­crim­i­na­to­ry his­to­ries, one of which was Ari­zona. Ter­ry God­dard, a for­mer Ari­zona attor­ney gen­er­al and a Demo­c­rat, told me that “the state has a his­to­ry of vot­er sup­pres­sion, espe­cial­ly against Native Amer­i­cans.” Before Rehn­quist became a Supreme Court Jus­tice, in 1971, he lived in Ari­zona, where he was accused of admin­is­ter­ing lit­er­a­cy tests to vot­ers of col­or. In the mid-two-thou­sands, God­dard recalled, Repub­li­can lead­ers erect­ed many bar­ri­ers aimed at deter­ring Lati­no vot­ers, some of which the courts struck down. But the 2013 Supreme Court rul­ing ini­ti­at­ed a new era of elec­tion manip­u­la­tion.

    Around this time, Mitchell became a direc­tor at the Bradley Foun­da­tion. Among the board mem­bers were George F. Will, the syn­di­cat­ed colum­nist, and Robert George, a Prince­ton polit­i­cal philoso­pher known for his defense of tra­di­tion­al Catholic val­ues. By 2017, Will, who has been a crit­ic of Trump, had stepped down from the Bradley board. But George has con­tin­ued to serve as a direc­tor, even as the foun­da­tion has heav­i­ly fund­ed groups pro­mul­gat­ing the false­hood that elec­tion fraud is wide­spread in Amer­i­ca, par­tic­u­lar­ly in minor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ties, and sow­ing doubt about the legit­i­ma­cy of Biden’s win. The foun­da­tion, mean­while, has giv­en near­ly three mil­lion dol­lars to pro­grams that George estab­lished at Prince­ton. He has writ­ten in praise of Pence’s refusal to decer­ti­fy Biden’s elec­tion, and has lament­ed that so many Amer­i­cans believe, “wrong­ly,” that “the elec­tion was ‘stolen.’ ” But he declined to dis­cuss with me why, then, he serves on the Bradley Foundation’s board.

    The board includes Art Pope, the lib­er­tar­i­an dis­count-store mag­nate, who serves on the board of gov­er­nors at the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na. Pope, who has also acknowl­edged the legit­i­ma­cy of Biden’s vic­to­ry, declined to dis­cuss his role at the foun­da­tion. Anoth­er board mem­ber is Paul Clement, a part­ner at the law firm Kirk­land & Ellis, who is one of the country’s most dis­tin­guished Supreme Court lit­i­ga­tors. He could not be reached for com­ment.

    Mitchell argues that the right spends “a pit­tance” on elec­tion issues com­pared with the left. “Have you looked at the Democ­ra­cy Alliance?” she asked me. The Alliance, whose mem­ber­ship is secret, dis­trib­utes hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars in dark mon­ey to many left-lean­ing caus­es. But, when it comes to influ­enc­ing elec­tions, the con­trast with the Bradley Foun­da­tion is clear. Where­as the Alliance’s efforts have cen­tered on increas­ing vot­er par­tic­i­pa­tion, the Bradley Foun­da­tion has focussed on dis­qual­i­fy­ing osten­si­bly ille­git­i­mate vot­ers.

    Like most pri­vate non­prof­its, the Bradley Foun­da­tion doesn’t dis­close much about its inner work­ings. But in 2016 hack­ers post­ed online some of the group’s con­fi­den­tial doc­u­ments, which showed that, once Mitchell became a direc­tor, she began urg­ing the foun­da­tion to sup­port non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tions polic­ing elec­tion fraud. Mitchell has pro­fes­sion­al ties to sev­er­al of the groups that received mon­ey, although she says that she has abstained from vot­ing on grants to any of those orga­ni­za­tions.

    One recip­i­ent of Bradley mon­ey is True the Vote, a Texas-based group that, among oth­er things, trains peo­ple to mon­i­tor polling sites. Mitchell has served as its legal coun­sel, and hacked doc­u­ments show that she advo­cat­ed to the I.R.S. that the group deserved tax-exempt sta­tus as a char­i­ty. To earn such a des­ig­na­tion, a group must file fed­er­al tax forms promis­ing not to engage in elec­toral pol­i­tics. In a let­ter of sup­port, she assert­ed that “fraud­u­lent vot­ing occurs in the Unit­ed States,” cit­ing a 2010 case in which the F.B.I. arrest­ed nine Florid­i­ans for elec­tion vio­la­tions. But, as with many vot­er-fraud alle­ga­tions, the details of the case were less than adver­tised. The accu­sa­tion involved a school-board elec­tion in a rur­al Black com­mu­ni­ty in which a cam­paign had col­lect­ed dozens of absen­tee bal­lots, in vio­la­tion of the law. The charges were even­tu­al­ly dis­missed. The judge found “no intent to cast a false or fraud­u­lent bal­lot.” True the Vote, which was grant­ed tax-exempt sta­tus, has since been the sub­ject of numer­ous com­plaints from vot­ers, who have accused it of intim­i­da­tion and racism.

    Last year, a Reuters report char­ac­ter­ized Mitchell as one of four lawyers lead­ing the con­ser­v­a­tive war on “elec­tion fraud,” and described True the Vote as one of the movement’s hubs. The sto­ry linked the group and three oth­er con­ser­v­a­tive non­prof­its to at least six­ty-one elec­tion law­suits since 2012. Reuters not­ed that, dur­ing the same peri­od, the four groups, along with two oth­ers devot­ed to elec­tion-integri­ty issues, have received more than three and a half mil­lion dol­lars from the Bradley Foun­da­tion.

    It’s a sur­pris­ing­ly short leap from mak­ing accu­sa­tions of vot­er fraud to call­ing for the nul­li­fi­ca­tion of a sup­pos­ed­ly taint­ed elec­tion. The Pub­lic Inter­est Legal Foun­da­tion, a group fund­ed by the Bradley Foun­da­tion, is lead­ing the way. Based in Indi­ana, it has become a pro­lif­ic source of lit­i­ga­tion; in the past year alone, it has brought nine elec­tion-law cas­es in eight states. It has amassed some of the most vis­i­ble lawyers obsessed with elec­tion fraud, includ­ing Mitchell, who is its chair and sits on its board.

    One of the group’s direc­tors is John East­man, a for­mer law pro­fes­sor at Chap­man Uni­ver­si­ty, in Cal­i­for­nia. On Jan­u­ary 4, 2021, he vis­it­ed the White House, where he spoke with Trump about ways to void the elec­tion. In a nod to the Inde­pen­dent Leg­is­la­ture Doc­trine, East­man and Trump tried to per­suade Vice-Pres­i­dent Mike Pence to halt the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the Elec­toral Col­lege vote, instead throw­ing the elec­tion to the state leg­is­la­tures. Pence was not per­suad­ed.

    Two days lat­er, East­man spoke at Trump’s “Save Amer­i­ca” ral­ly in Wash­ing­ton, hours before the crowds ran­sacked the Capi­tol in an effort to stop Con­gress from cer­ti­fy­ing Biden’s win. “This is big­ger than Pres­i­dent Trump!” East­man declared. “It is the very essence of our repub­li­can form of gov­ern­ment, and it has to be done!” He thun­dered that elec­tion offi­cials had robbed Trump by ille­gal­ly cast­ing bal­lots in the name of non-vot­ers whose records they had extract­ed, after the polls had closed, from a “secret fold­er” in elec­tron­ic vot­ing machines. He told the crowd that the scan­dal was vis­i­ble in “the data.” There is no evi­dence of such malfea­sance, how­ev­er. East­man, who recent­ly retired, under pres­sure, from Chap­man Uni­ver­si­ty, and was stripped of his pub­lic duties at anoth­er post that he held, at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Col­orado Boul­der, told me he still believes that the elec­tion was stolen, and thinks that the audits in Ari­zona and oth­er states will help prove it. The Bradley Foun­da­tion declined to com­ment on him, or on Mitchell, when asked about its role in fund­ing their activ­i­ties.

    Two oth­er Pub­lic Inter­est Legal Foun­da­tion lawyers—its pres­i­dent, J. Chris­t­ian Adams, and anoth­er board mem­ber, Hans von Spakovsky—served in George W. Bush’s Jus­tice Depart­ment, where they began efforts to use the Vot­ing Rights Act, which was designed to pro­tect Black vot­ers, to pros­e­cute pur­port­ed fraud by Black vot­ers and elec­tion offi­cials. Both men have argued stren­u­ous­ly that Amer­i­can elec­tions are rife with seri­ous fraud, and in 2017 they got a rare oppor­tu­ni­ty to make their case, when Trump appoint­ed them to a Pres­i­den­tial com­mis­sion on elec­tion integri­ty. With­in months, after the com­mis­sion was unable to find sig­nif­i­cant evi­dence of elec­tion fraud, it acri­mo­nious­ly dis­band­ed. Adams and von Spakovsky, who are mem­bers of what Roll Call has termed the Vot­er Fraud Brain Trust, have nev­er­the­less con­tin­ued their cru­sade, sus­tained part­ly by Bradley funds. Von Spakovsky now heads the Her­itage Foundation’s Elec­tion Law Reform Ini­tia­tive, which has received grants from the Bradley Foun­da­tion.

    At Her­itage, von Spakovsky has over­seen a nation­al track­ing sys­tem mon­i­tor­ing elec­tion-fraud cas­es. But its data on Ari­zona, the puta­tive cen­ter of the storm, is not exact­ly alarm­ing: of the mil­lions of votes cast in the state from 2016 to 2020, only nine indi­vid­u­als were con­vict­ed of fraud. Each instance involved some­one cast­ing a dupli­cate bal­lot in anoth­er state. There were no record­ed cas­es of iden­ti­ty fraud, bal­lot stuff­ing, vot­ing by non-cit­i­zens, or oth­er nefar­i­ous schemes. The num­bers con­firm that there is some vot­er fraud, or at least con­fu­sion, but not remote­ly enough to affect elec­tion out­comes.

    Even Ben­jamin Gins­berg, a Repub­li­can lawyer who for years led the Party’s elec­tion-law fights, recent­ly con­ced­ed to the Times that “a par­ty that’s increas­ing­ly old and white whose base is a dimin­ish­ing share of the pop­u­la­tion is con­jur­ing up charges of fraud to erect bar­ri­ers to vot­ing for peo­ple it fears won’t sup­port its can­di­dates.”

    The Vot­er Fraud Brain Trust lent sup­port to Trump’s lies from the time he took office. In 2016, when he lost the pop­u­lar vote by near­ly three mil­lion bal­lots, he insist­ed that he had actu­al­ly won it, spu­ri­ous­ly blam­ing ram­pant fraud in Cal­i­for­nia. Soon after­ward, von Spakovsky gave Trump’s false claim cre­dence by pub­lish­ing an essay at Her­itage argu­ing that there was no way to dis­prove the alle­ga­tion, because “we have an elec­tion sys­tem that’s based on the hon­or sys­tem.”

    More than a year before the 2020 elec­tion, Cle­ta Mitchell and her allies sensed polit­i­cal per­il for Trump and began review­ing strate­gies to help keep him in office. Accord­ing to a leaked video of an address that she gave in May, 2019, to the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy, a secre­tive con­ser­v­a­tive soci­ety, she warned that Democ­rats were suc­cess­ful­ly reg­is­ter­ing what she sar­cas­ti­cal­ly referred to as “the dis­en­fran­chised.” She con­tin­ued, “They know that if they tar­get cer­tain com­mu­ni­ties and they can get them reg­is­tered and get them to the polls, then those groups . . . will vote nine­ty per cent, nine­ty-five per cent for Democ­rats.”

    One pos­si­ble coun­ter­move was for con­ser­v­a­tive state leg­is­la­tors to reëngi­neer the way the Elec­toral Col­lege has worked for more than a hun­dred years, in essence by invok­ing the Inde­pen­dent Leg­is­la­ture Doc­trine. The Con­sti­tu­tion gives states the author­i­ty to choose their Pres­i­den­tial elec­tors “in such Man­ner as the Leg­is­la­ture there­of may direct.” Since the late nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, states have del­e­gat­ed that author­i­ty to the pop­u­lar vote. But, arguably, the Con­sti­tu­tion per­mits state leg­is­la­tures to take this author­i­ty back. Leg­is­la­tors could argue that an elec­tion had been com­pro­mised by irreg­u­lar­i­ties or fraud, forc­ing them to inter­vene.

    In August, 2019, e‑mails show, Mitchell co-chaired a high-lev­el work­ing group with Shawn­na Bol­ick, a Repub­li­can state rep­re­sen­ta­tive from Phoenix. Among the top­ics slat­ed for dis­cus­sion was the Elec­toral Col­lege. The work­ing group was con­vened by alec, the cor­po­rate-backed non­prof­it that trans­mits con­ser­v­a­tive pol­i­cy ideas and leg­is­la­tion to state law­mak­ers. The Bradley Foun­da­tion has long sup­port­ed alec, and Mitchell has worked close­ly with it, serv­ing as its out­side coun­sel until recent­ly.

    Mitchell and Bol­ick declined to answer ques­tions about the work­ing group’s focus, but it appears that Bolick’s par­tic­i­pa­tion was pro­duc­tive. After the elec­tion, she signed a res­o­lu­tion demand­ing that Con­gress block the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of Biden’s vic­to­ry and award Arizona’s elec­tors to Trump. Then, ear­ly this year, Bol­ick intro­duced a bill propos­ing a rad­i­cal read­ing of Arti­cle II of the Con­sti­tu­tion, along the lines of the Inde­pen­dent Leg­is­la­ture Doc­trine. It would enable a major­i­ty of the Ari­zona leg­is­la­ture to over­ride the pop­u­lar vote if it found fault with the out­come, and dic­tate the state’s Elec­toral Col­lege votes itself—anytime up until Inau­gu­ra­tion Day. Bol­ick has described her bill as just “a good, demo­c­ra­t­ic check and bal­ance,” but her mea­sure was con­sid­ered so extreme that it died in com­mit­tee, despite Repub­li­can majori­ties in both hous­es of the leg­is­la­ture. Yet, sim­ply by putting forth the idea as leg­is­la­tion, she helped lend legit­i­ma­cy to the auda­cious scheme that the Trump cam­paign des­per­ate­ly pur­sued in the final days before Biden’s Inau­gu­ra­tion: to rely on Repub­li­can-led state leg­is­la­tures to over­turn Elec­toral Col­lege votes. Ian Bassin, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of Pro­tect Democ­ra­cy, who served as an asso­ciate White House coun­sel under Oba­ma, told me, “Insti­tu­tions like the Her­itage Foun­da­tion and alec are pro­vid­ing the grease to turn these attacks on democ­ra­cy into law.”

    Bol­ick has since announced her can­di­da­cy for sec­re­tary of state in Ari­zona. Her hus­band, Clint Bol­ick, is an Ari­zona Supreme Court jus­tice and a leader in right-wing legal cir­cles. Clarence Thomas, one of the three U.S. Supreme Court Jus­tices who signed on to the con­cur­ring opin­ion in Bush v. Gore lay­ing out the Inde­pen­dent Leg­is­la­ture Doc­trine, is the god­fa­ther of one of Clint Bolick’s sons. If Shawn­na Bol­ick wins her race, she will over­see future elec­tions in the state. And, if the Supreme Court faces anoth­er case in which argu­ments about the Inde­pen­dent Leg­is­la­ture Doc­trine come into play, there may now be enough con­ser­v­a­tive Jus­tices to agree with Thomas that there are cir­cum­stances under which leg­is­la­tures, not vot­ers, could have the final word in Amer­i­can elec­tions.

    Months before the 2020 vote, Lisa Nel­son, the C.E.O. of alec, also antic­i­pat­ed con­test­ing the elec­tion results. That Feb­ru­ary, she told a pri­vate gath­er­ing of the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy about a high-lev­el review that her group had under­tak­en of ways to chal­lenge “the valid­i­ty” of the Pres­i­den­tial returns. A video of the pro­ceed­ings was obtained by the inves­tiga­tive group Doc­u­ment­ed, and first report­ed by the Wash­ing­ton Spec­ta­tor. In her speech, Nel­son not­ed that she was work­ing with Mitchell and von Spakovsky.

    Although the law bars char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tions such as the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy from engag­ing in elec­toral pol­i­tics, Nel­son unabashed­ly acknowl­edged, “Obvi­ous­ly, we all want Pres­i­dent Trump to win, and win the nation­al vote.” She went on, “But it’s very clear that, real­ly, what it comes down to is the states, and the state leg­is­la­tors.” One plan, she said, was to urge con­ser­v­a­tive leg­is­la­tors to voice doubt to their respec­tive sec­re­taries of state, ques­tion­ing the election’s out­come and ask­ing, “What did hap­pen that night?”

    By August, 2020, when the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy held anoth­er meet­ing, the pan­dem­ic had hurt Trump’s prospects, and talk with­in the mem­ber­ship about poten­tial Demo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tion fraud had reached a fren­zy. At the meet­ing, Adams, the Pub­lic Inter­est Legal Foundation’s pres­i­dent, echoed Trump’s rag­ing about mail-in bal­lots, describ­ing them as “the No. 1 left-wing agen­da.” He urged con­ser­v­a­tives not to be deterred by crit­i­cism: “Be not afraid of the accu­sa­tions that you’re a vot­er sup­pres­sor, you’re a racist, and so forth.”

    A younger mem­ber of the orga­ni­za­tion, Char­lie Kirk—a founder of Turn­ing Point USA, which pro­motes right-wing ideas on school campuses—injected a note of opti­mism. He sug­gest­ed that the pan­dem­ic, by clos­ing cam­pus­es, would like­ly sup­press vot­ing among col­lege stu­dents, a left-lean­ing bloc. “Please keep the cam­pus­es closed,” he said, to cheers. “Like, it’s a great thing!”

    Five months lat­er, Turn­ing Point Action, a “social wel­fare orga­ni­za­tion” run by Kirk’s group, was one of near­ly a dozen groups behind Trump’s “March to Save Amer­i­ca,” on Jan­u­ary 6th. Short­ly before the ral­ly, Kirk tweet­ed that the groups he leads would send “80+ bus­es full of patri­ots to DC to fight for this pres­i­dent.” His tweet was delet­ed after the crowds assault­ed the Capi­tol.

    Turn­ing Point, which has received small grants from the Bradley Foun­da­tion, is head­quar­tered in Ari­zona, and it has played a sig­nif­i­cant role in the rad­i­cal­iza­tion of the state, in part by ampli­fy­ing fear and anger about vot­er fraud. Turn­ing Point’s chief oper­at­ing offi­cer, Tyler Bowyer, is a mem­ber of the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee and a for­mer chair of the Mari­co­pa Coun­ty Repub­li­can Par­ty. Bowyer’s friend Jake Hoff­man runs an Ari­zona-based dig­i­tal-mar­ket­ing com­pa­ny, Ral­ly Forge, that has been Turn­ing Point’s high­est-com­pen­sat­ed con­trac­tor. In the sum­mer of 2020, Ral­ly Forge helped Turn­ing Point use social media to spread incen­di­ary mis­in­for­ma­tion about the com­ing elec­tions. In Sep­tem­ber, the Wash­ing­ton Post report­ed that Ral­ly Forge, on behalf of Turn­ing Point Action, had paid teen-agers to decep­tive­ly post thou­sands of copy­cat pro­pa­gan­da mes­sages, much as Rus­sia had done dur­ing the 2016 cam­paign. Adult lead­ers had instruct­ed the teens to tweak the word­ing of their posts, to evade detec­tion by tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies. Some mes­sages were post­ed under the teens’ accounts, but oth­ers were sent under assumed per­son­ae. Many posts claimed that mail-in bal­lots would “lead to fraud,” and that Democ­rats planned to steal the Pres­i­den­cy.

    Turn­ing Point Action denied that it ran a troll farm, argu­ing that the teen-age employ­ees were gen­uine, but a study by the Inter­net Obser­va­to­ry at Stanford’s Cyber Pol­i­cy Cen­ter doc­u­ment­ed the scheme, along with oth­er dubi­ous prac­tices by Ral­ly Forge. In 2016, the com­pa­ny fab­ri­cat­ed a politician—complete with a doc­tored photograph—to run as an Inde­pen­dent write-in can­di­date against Andy Big­gs, a far-right Repub­li­can seek­ing an open con­gres­sion­al seat in Ari­zona. The ploy, evi­dent­ly intend­ed to siphon votes from Biggs’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic oppo­nent, didn’t go far, but it was hard­ly the company’s only scam. The Guardian has shown how Ral­ly Forge also cre­at­ed a pho­ny left-wing front group, Amer­i­ca Progress Now, which pro­mot­ed Green Par­ty can­di­dates online in 2018, appar­ent­ly to hurt Democ­rats in sev­er­al races.

    In Octo­ber, 2020, Ral­ly Forge was banned from Face­book, and its pres­i­dent, Hoff­man, was per­ma­nent­ly sus­pend­ed by Twit­ter. Unde­terred, he ran as a pro-Trump Repub­li­can for the Ari­zona House—and won. Remark­ably, the chamber’s Repub­li­can lead­er­ship then appoint­ed him the vice-chair of the Com­mit­tee on Gov­ern­ment and Elec­tions. Since get­ting elect­ed, Hoff­man has chal­lenged the legit­i­ma­cy of Biden’s vic­to­ry, called for elec­tion audits, and, in coör­di­na­tion with the Her­itage Foun­da­tion, used his posi­tion to pro­pose numer­ous bills mak­ing it more dif­fi­cult to vote.

    This past spring, at a pri­vate gath­er­ing out­side Tuc­son, Jes­si­ca Ander­son, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of Her­itage Action—the polit­i­cal­ly active arm of the Her­itage Foundation—singled out Hoff­man for praise. As a leaked video of her remarks revealed, she told sup­port­ers that, with the help of Hoff­man and oth­er state leg­is­la­tors, the non­prof­it group was rewrit­ing America’s elec­tion laws. “In some cas­es, we actu­al­ly draft them for them, or we have a sen­tinel on our behalf give them the mod­el leg­is­la­tion so it has that grass­roots, from-the-bot­tom-up type of vibe,” Ander­son explained. “We’ve got three bills done in Ari­zona!” She con­tin­ued, “We’re mov­ing four more through the state of Ari­zona right now . . . sim­ple bills, all straight from the Her­itage rec­om­men­da­tions.” One of the bills, she not­ed, was “writ­ten and car­ried by Jake Hoff­man,” whom she described as “a long­time friend of the Her­itage Foun­da­tion.”

    Hoffman’s bills have made the Her­itage Foundation’s wish list a real­i­ty. Vot­ing by mail has long been pop­u­lar in Ari­zona, with as many as nine­ty per cent of vot­ers doing so in 2020, but one of Hoffman’s bills made it a felony to send a mail-in bal­lot to res­i­dents who hadn’t request­ed one, unless they were on an offi­cial list of ear­ly vot­ers. Anoth­er bill, which Hoff­man sup­port­ed, will, accord­ing to one esti­mate, push as many as two hun­dred thou­sand peo­ple off the state’s list of ear­ly vot­ers. Oppo­nents say that this leg­is­la­tion will dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly purge Lati­nos, who con­sti­tute twen­ty-four per cent of the state’s eli­gi­ble vot­ers. Anoth­er bill by Hoff­man banned state elec­tion offi­cials from accept­ing out­side dona­tions to help pay for any aspect of elec­tion admin­is­tra­tion, includ­ing vot­er reg­is­tra­tion. (One of the bill’s tar­gets was Mark Zucker­berg, whose foun­da­tion helped coun­ty elec­tion offi­cials in Ari­zona han­dle the pan­dem­ic.) In Feb­ru­ary, at a hear­ing of the Com­mit­tee on Gov­ern­ment and Elec­tions, a wit­ness from the Wash­ing­ton-based Cap­i­tal Research Center—also fund­ed by the Bradley Foundation—testified in sup­port of Hoffman’s leg­is­la­tion. Athena Salman, the rank­ing Demo­c­rat, told me she was incensed that Hoffman—“a guy who paid teen-agers to lie”—was put on the elec­tion com­mit­tee. “It’s the fox guard­ing the hen­house!” she said.

    Ander­son, of Her­itage, declined to respond to ques­tions about the group’s col­lab­o­ra­tions with Hoff­man, instead send­ing a pre­pared state­ment: “After a year when vot­ers’ trust in our elec­tions plum­met­ed, restor­ing that trust should be the top pri­or­i­ty of leg­is­la­tors and gov­er­nors nation­wide. That’s why Her­itage Action is deploy­ing our estab­lished grass­roots net­work for state advo­ca­cy for the first time ever. There is noth­ing more impor­tant than ensur­ing every Amer­i­can is con­fi­dent their vote counts—and we will do what­ev­er it takes to get there.”

    Hoff­man, who for­mer­ly served as a town-coun­cil mem­ber in Queen Creek, a deeply con­ser­v­a­tive part of Mari­co­pa Coun­ty, did not respond to requests for com­ment. Kristin Clark, a Demo­c­rat who mount­ed a write-in cam­paign against him after the news of his troll farm broke, called Hoff­man an “unin­tel­li­gent man who wants to be a big guy.” She told me, “The Repub­li­cans here have changed. They were con­ser­v­a­tive, but now they’ve sold out. It’s mon­ey that’s changed it. All these giant, cor­po­rate groups that are faceless—it’s out­side mon­ey.” In her view, “Jake Hoff­man is but a cog.”

    The spark that ignit­ed the Ari­zona audit was an ama­teur video, tak­en on Elec­tion Night, of an uniden­ti­fied female vot­er out­side a polling place in what Kristin Clark rec­og­nized as Hoffman’s dis­trict. The vot­er claimed that elec­tion work­ers had tried to sab­o­tage her bal­lot by delib­er­ate­ly giv­ing her a Sharpie that the elec­tron­ic scan­ners couldn’t read. Her claim was false: the scan­ners could read Sharpie ink, and the bal­lots had been designed so that the flip side wouldn’t be affect­ed if the ink bled through. Nev­er­the­less, the video went viral. Among the first to spread the Sharp­ie­gate con­spir­a­cy was anoth­er one of Char­lie Kirk’s youth groups, Stu­dents for Trump. The next day, as Trump furi­ous­ly insist­ed he had won an elec­tion that he end­ed up los­ing by rough­ly sev­en mil­lion votes, pro­test­ers staged angry ral­lies in Mari­co­pa Coun­ty, where bal­lots were still being count­ed. Adding an aura of legal cred­i­bil­i­ty to the con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry, Adams, the Pub­lic Inter­est Legal Foun­da­tion pres­i­dent, imme­di­ate­ly filed suit against Mari­co­pa Coun­ty, alleg­ing that a Sharpie-using vot­er he rep­re­sent­ed had been dis­en­fran­chised. The case was soon dis­missed, but not before Adams tweet­ed, “just filed to have our client’s right to #vote upheld. Her #Sharpie bal­lot was can­celled with­out cure.” Arizona’s attor­ney gen­er­al, Mark Brnovich, a Repub­li­can, inves­ti­gat­ed, and his office took only a day to con­clude that the Sharpie sto­ry was non­sense. But, by then, many Trump sup­port­ers no longer trust­ed Arizona’s elec­tion results. Clark, the for­mer Demo­c­ra­t­ic chal­lenger to Hoff­man, told me that she watched in hor­ror as “they took B.S. and made it real!”

    A day after the elec­tion, the office of Katie Hobbs, Arizona’s sec­re­tary of state, report­ed that, based on a rou­tine, bipar­ti­san hand recount of a sam­ple of bal­lots, “no dis­crep­an­cies were found” in Mari­co­pa Coun­ty. With­in days, the main­stream media had called the elec­tion for Biden, based on late returns from Neva­da, Penn­syl­va­nia, and Geor­gia. But Cle­ta Mitchell, who had been dis­patched by Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Mead­ows, to help the Trump cam­paign in Geor­gia, told Fox News, “We’re already dou­ble-check­ing and find­ing dead peo­ple hav­ing vot­ed.” As Geor­gia was rat­i­fy­ing its results with a recount, she tweet­ed that the tal­ly was “FAKE!!!”

    Mean­while, on the con­ser­v­a­tive Web site Town­hall, Hoff­man demand­ed “a full audit of the vote count in swing states,” adding that the elec­tion was “far from over.” He claimed that there had been “count­less vio­la­tions of state elec­tion law, sta­tis­ti­cal anom­alies and elec­tion irreg­u­lar­i­ties in more than a half dozen states,” and argued that state leg­is­la­tures should there­fore have the final say. By Decem­ber, he had joined his friend Bowyer and oth­er mem­bers of the state’s Repub­li­can Par­ty in fil­ing suit against Arizona’s gov­er­nor, call­ing for the state to set aside Arizona’s eleven elec­toral votes and allow the leg­is­la­ture to inter­vene.

    At the same time, anoth­er ver­sion of the Inde­pen­dent Leg­is­la­ture Doc­trine argu­ment was being mount­ed in Penn­syl­va­nia, by the Hon­est Elec­tions Project, the group tied to Leonard Leo, of the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety. Local Repub­li­cans had chal­lenged a state-court rul­ing that adjust­ed vot­ing pro­ce­dures dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. The Hon­est Elec­tions Project filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court argu­ing that the Penn­syl­va­nia court had usurped the legislature’s author­i­ty to over­see elec­tions. The effort didn’t suc­ceed, but Richard Hasen, the elec­tion-law pro­fes­sor, regards such argu­ments as “pow­der kegs” that threat­en Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy. Leo didn’t respond to requests for com­ment, but Hasen believes that Leo is try­ing to pre­serve “minor­i­ty rule” in elec­tions in order to advance his agen­da. Hasen told me, “Mak­ing it hard­er to vote helps them get more Repub­li­can vic­to­ries, which helps them get more con­ser­v­a­tive judges and courts.”

    In the case of Ari­zona, it took only a week for a fed­er­al dis­trict court to dis­miss Hoff­man and Bowyer’s suit, cit­ing an absence of “rel­e­vant or reli­able evi­dence.” The court admon­ished the plain­tiffs that “gos­sip and innu­en­do” can­not “be the basis for upend­ing Arizona’s 2020 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.” Hoff­man and the oth­er plain­tiffs appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to hear the mat­ter, but it wait­ed to do so until March. In the mean­time, elec­tion-fraud con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries in Ari­zona were grow­ing out of con­trol.

    On Novem­ber 12th, Biden was declared the win­ner in Mari­co­pa Coun­ty. Soon after, a Repub­li­can mem­ber of the county’s Board of Super­vi­sors, Bill Gates, was pick­ing up take­out food for his fam­i­ly when the board’s chairman—one of four Repub­li­cans on the five-per­son board—called to warn him to be care­ful going home. Nine­ty angry peo­ple had gath­ered out­side the chairman’s house, and Gates’s place could be next. “We’d all been doxed,” Gates told me. He and his wife are the legal guardians of a teen-ager whose father, a Ugan­dan, was near­ly killed by hench­men for Idi Amin. “It’s chill­ing to see the par­al­lels,” Gates told me. “You’d nev­er think there were any par­al­lels to a strong­man autoc­ra­cy in Africa.” Gates con­sid­ers him­self a polit­i­cal-sci­ence nerd, but, he said, “I had no con­cept that we were head­ing where we were head­ing.”

    ...

    Gates says that Karen Fann, the Ari­zona Senate’s pres­i­dent, con­fid­ed to him that she knew there was “noth­ing to” the fraud charges. (She didn’t respond to requests for com­ment.) Nev­er­the­less, she buck­led under the polit­i­cal pres­sure and autho­rized a sub­poe­na of the county’s bal­lots, for the “foren­sic audit.” At one point, coun­ty super­vi­sors were told that if they didn’t com­ply they would face con­tempt charges and, poten­tial­ly, could be impris­oned. For a time, the offi­cial Twit­ter account for the audit accused the super­vi­sors, with­out evi­dence, of “spo­li­a­tion” of the bal­lots. “I get a lit­tle emo­tion­al when I talk about it,” Gates said. “My daugh­ter called me, fran­ti­cal­ly try­ing to find out whether or not I was going to be thrown in jail.” Trump sup­port­ers set up a guil­lo­tine on a grassy plaza out­side Arizona’s state­house, demand­ing the super­vi­sors’ heads. Inside, Gates recalled, one Repub­li­can mem­ber after anoth­er rose to denounce the coun­ty super­vi­sors.

    A rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the nation­al Repub­li­can Par­ty tried to silence Gates when he spoke out to defend the integri­ty of Arizona’s elec­tion. He told me that Hoffman’s ally Tyler Bowyer, of the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee, paid him a vis­it and warned, “You need to stop it.” Accord­ing to Gates, Bowyer made it clear that “the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee sup­ports this audit.” Andrew Kol­vet, a spokesman for Bowyer, denied that the vis­it was an offi­cial attempt at intim­i­da­tion, call­ing it instead a “per­son­al cour­tesy.”

    Gates said that after he received death threats he fled with his fam­i­ly to an Airbnb. At one point, the sher­iff sent two deputies to guard Gates’s home overnight. Trump sup­port­ers, Gates said, “are basi­cal­ly ask­ing Repub­li­can lead­ers to bow before the altar of the Big Lie—‘You’re will­ing to do it? O.K., great. You’re not? You’re a RINO. You’re a Com­mie. You are not a Repub­li­can.’ It’s been incred­i­bly effec­tive, real­ly, when you think about where we’ve come from Jan­u­ary 6th.”

    ...

    Some of the polit­i­cal pres­sure on elec­tion offi­cials in Ari­zona was exert­ed direct­ly by Trump and his asso­ciates, poten­tial­ly ille­gal­ly. Inter­fer­ing in a fed­er­al elec­tion can be a crime. As the Ari­zona Repub­lic has report­ed, the Pres­i­dent and his legal advis­er Rudy Giu­liani phoned state and local offi­cials, includ­ing Fann. The White House switch­board tried to con­nect Trump with the chair­man of the Mari­co­pa Coun­ty Board of Super­vi­sors, but, even though the chair­man was a Repub­li­can, he ducked the call, lest the Pres­i­dent inter­fere improp­er­ly. Giu­liani called Gates’s cell phone when he was shop­ping at Wal­greens on Christ­mas Eve. Not rec­og­niz­ing the num­ber, Gates didn’t answer. “You can’t make this stuff up,” he told me. Giu­liani left a voice mail say­ing it was a “shame” that two Repub­li­cans couldn’t work things out—he’d come up with a “nice way” to “get this thing fixed up.”

    “I nev­er returned the phone call,” Gates said. A week lat­er, when news broke of Trump’s noto­ri­ous call to offi­cials in Geor­gia, Gates was more relieved than ever that he hadn’t called Giu­liani back. A pan­el of judges in New York has since sus­pend­ed Giuliani’s law license, for threat­en­ing the pub­lic inter­est by mak­ing “demon­stra­bly false and mis­lead­ing state­ments” about the Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion.

    By New Year’s Eve, when Trump tried and failed to reach the chair­man of the Mari­co­pa Coun­ty board, his Admin­is­tra­tion was in extra­or­di­nary tur­moil. Attor­ney Gen­er­al William Barr had resigned from the Jus­tice Depart­ment after declar­ing that it had detect­ed no sig­nif­i­cant elec­tion fraud. Even so, Trump con­tin­ued to demand that the depart­ment inves­ti­gate a vari­ety of loony con­spir­a­cies, includ­ing a plot to erase Trump votes using Ital­ian mil­i­tary satel­lites. Accord­ing to a leaked e‑mail, a Jus­tice Depart­ment attor­ney dis­par­aged the satel­lite the­o­ry as “pure insan­i­ty.” A man sup­pos­ed­ly involved in the plot issued a denial to Reuters, and Ital­ian police sug­gest­ed that the alle­ga­tion was base­less. But the con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry, which became known as Italy­gate, had bub­bled up from the same pools of dark mon­ey that were fund­ing oth­er elec­tion mis­in­for­ma­tion. Records show that Italy­gate was spread by a “social wel­fare orga­ni­za­tion” called Nations in Action, whose direc­tors includ­ed von Spakovsky. When Talk­ing Points Memo con­tact­ed von Spakovsky, he said that he had resigned from the board on Jan­u­ary 8th. But the mon­ey trail remains. Crooks and Liars, a pro­gres­sive inves­tiga­tive-report­ing site, dug up tax fil­ings show­ing that the group’s 501(c)(3) sib­ling, the Nations in Action Glob­al­ly Lift­ing Up Fund, had received thou­sands of dol­lars from the Judi­cial Cri­sis Network—a non­prof­it enter­prise, close­ly tied to Leonard Leo, that also funds Turn­ing Point Action.

    While Jus­tice Depart­ment offi­cials were fend­ing off con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries being spread by tax-exempt char­i­ties in Wash­ing­ton, the pres­sure was even more acute on local offi­cials in Phoenix. Trump tweet­ed relent­less­ly about the audit. He “clear­ly has had a fas­ci­na­tion with this issue, because he thinks it’s the key to his rein­state­ment,” Gates told me. “It’s not about Ari­zona. We’re lit­er­al­ly pawns in this. This is a nation­al effort to dele­git­imize the elec­tion sys­tem.” Gates pre­dict­ed that, if “Ari­zona can ques­tion this, and show that Trump won,” the game will move on to Col­orado, Geor­gia, Penn­syl­va­nia, Michi­gan, and Vir­ginia, all of which have sent Repub­li­can del­e­ga­tions to observe Arizona’s audit. Not­ing that both QAnon fol­low­ers and his own state’s Repub­li­can Par­ty chair had referred to “domi­noes” in con­nec­tion with the audit, Gates said, “We know what that game is, and how it works.”

    ...

    For now, though, con­ser­v­a­tive groups seem to be dou­bling down on their invest­ments in elec­tion-fraud alarmism. In the next two years, Her­itage Action plans to spend twen­ty-four mil­lion dol­lars mobi­liz­ing sup­port­ers and lob­by­ists who will pro­mote “elec­tion integri­ty,” start­ing in eight bat­tle­ground states, includ­ing Ari­zona. It is coör­di­nat­ing its effort with the Elec­tion Trans­paren­cy Ini­tia­tive, a joint ven­ture of two anti-abor­tion groups, the Susan B. Antho­ny List and the Amer­i­can Prin­ci­ples Project. The Elec­tion Trans­paren­cy Ini­tia­tive has set a fund-rais­ing goal of five mil­lion dol­lars. Cle­ta Mitchell, hav­ing left her law firm, has joined Free­dom­Works, the free-mar­ket group, where she plans to lead a ten-mil­lion-dol­lar project on vot­ing issues. She will also head the Elec­tion Integri­ty Net­work at the Con­ser­v­a­tive Part­ner­ship Insti­tute, anoth­er Wash­ing­ton-based non­prof­it. As a senior legal fel­low there, she told the Wash­ing­ton Exam­in­er, she will “help bring all these strings” of con­ser­v­a­tive elec­tion-law activism togeth­er, and she added, “I’ve had my fin­ger in so many dif­fer­ent pieces of the elec­tion-integri­ty pie for so long.”

    Back in Ari­zona, where the audi­tors are demand­ing still more time, Gates believes that the Big Lie has become a “grift” used to moti­vate Repub­li­can vot­ers and donors to sup­port con­ser­v­a­tive can­di­dates and polit­i­cal groups. “The sad thing is that there are prob­a­bly mil­lions of people—hardworking, good Amer­i­cans, maybe retired—who have paid their tax­es, always fol­lowed the law, and they tru­ly believe this, because of what they’ve been fed by their lead­ers,” he said. “And what’s so dispir­it­ing is that the peo­ple who are push­ing it from the top? They know bet­ter.”

    ————

    “The Big Mon­ey Behind the Big Lie” by Jane May­er; The New York­er; 08/02/2021

    “Back in Ari­zona, where the audi­tors are demand­ing still more time, Gates believes that the Big Lie has become a “grift” used to moti­vate Repub­li­can vot­ers and donors to sup­port con­ser­v­a­tive can­di­dates and polit­i­cal groups. “The sad thing is that there are prob­a­bly mil­lions of people—hardworking, good Amer­i­cans, maybe retired—who have paid their tax­es, always fol­lowed the law, and they tru­ly believe this, because of what they’ve been fed by their lead­ers,” he said. “And what’s so dispir­it­ing is that the peo­ple who are push­ing it from the top? They know bet­ter.”

    An extreme­ly well-financed cam­paign of mass decep­tion paid for by peo­ple who know bet­ter. It’s one of the core themes of this whole sto­ry. One seem­ing­ly ‘respectable’ per­son speak­ing with author­i­ty, ped­dling one lie after anoth­er in gross bad faith in an unre­lent­ing cam­paign to cre­ate the kind of pub­lic hys­te­ria required to effec­tive­ly dis­man­tle the fun­da­men­tal mech­a­nisms of democ­ra­cy. This is not a Steve Ban­non project. This is a main­stream estab­lish­ment Repub­li­can elite project. Only the rubes actu­al­ly believe their garbage, but you don’t need true believ­ers to foment a big lie. You just need enough peo­ple will­ing and able to oper­ate in bad faith. Peo­ple like Cle­ta Mitchell, Hans Spakovksy, and John East­man. All thor­ough­ly ‘estab­lish­ment’ fig­ures who have been lay­ing the ground­work for the insur­rec­tion for near­ly a decade now while work­ing for ‘main­stream’ Repub­li­can think-tanks like Freed­Works, ALEC, and the Bradley Foun­da­tion. Steve Ban­non has been work­ing as an agent of the GOP estab­lish­ment.

    An increas­ing­ly open­ly fas­cist GOP estab­lish­ment that includes fig­ures like Leonard Leo of the ‘respectable’ Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety. Recall how the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety recent­ly had to apol­o­gize for try­ing to block the grad­u­a­tion of a Stan­ford law stu­dent who made a joke fly­er high­light­ing how the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety con­tin­ued to back high-pro­file GOP defend­ers of the insur­rec­tion like Josh Haw­ley. It was the kind of inci­dent that under­scores one of the most impor­tant aspects of this sto­ry to keep in mind: the wealth indi­vid­u­als financ­ing this cam­paign to under­cut the demo­c­ra­t­ic social con­tract know what they are doing and don’t want to be caught doing it. There real­ly is gen­uine high lev­el mal­ice at work here being per­pe­trat­ed by some of the most pow­er­ful peo­ple on the plan­et. It’s a key point because it’s a reminder that the inten­tions of this group are prob­a­bly far, far worse than mere­ly destroy­ing democ­ra­cy. They have big plans:

    ...
    One of the movement’s lead­ers is the Her­itage Foun­da­tion, the promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tive think tank in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. It has been work­ing with the Amer­i­can Leg­isla­tive Exchange Coun­cil (alec)—a cor­po­rate-fund­ed non­prof­it that gen­er­ates mod­el laws for state legislators—on ways to impose new vot­ing restric­tions. Among those deep in the fight is Leonard Leo, a chair­man of the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety, the legal orga­ni­za­tion known for its decades-long cam­paign to fill the courts with con­ser­v­a­tive judges. In Feb­ru­ary, 2020, the Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project, a group tied to Leo, qui­et­ly rebrand­ed itself as the Hon­est Elec­tions Project, which sub­se­quent­ly filed briefs at the Supreme Court, and in numer­ous states, oppos­ing mail-in bal­lots and oth­er reforms that have made it eas­i­er for peo­ple to vote.

    Anoth­er new­com­er to the cause is the Elec­tion Integri­ty Project Cal­i­for­nia. And a group called Free­dom­Works, which once con­cen­trat­ed on oppos­ing gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tion, is now demand­ing expand­ed gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tion of vot­ers, with a project called the Nation­al Elec­tion Pro­tec­tion Ini­tia­tive.

    These dis­parate non­prof­its have one thing in com­mon: they have all received fund­ing from the Lyn­de and Har­ry Bradley Foun­da­tion. Based in Mil­wau­kee, the pri­vate, tax-exempt orga­ni­za­tion has become an extra­or­di­nary force in per­suad­ing main­stream Repub­li­cans to sup­port rad­i­cal chal­lenges to elec­tion rules—a tac­tic once rel­e­gat­ed to the far right. With an endow­ment of some eight hun­dred and fifty mil­lion dol­lars, the foun­da­tion funds a net­work of groups that have been stok­ing fear about elec­tion fraud, in some cas­es for years. Pub­lic records show that, since 2012, the foun­da­tion has spent some eigh­teen mil­lion dol­lars sup­port­ing eleven con­ser­v­a­tive groups involved in elec­tion issues.
    ...

    And regard­ing the his­tor­i­cal fun fact that Har­ry Bradley was a found­ing mem­ber of the John Birch Soci­ety, it’s worth recall­ing how Fred Koch was also a found­ing mem­ber. It’s kind of remark­able to think about just how much dam­age to future that orga­ni­za­tion has wrought:

    ...
    It might seem improb­a­ble that a low-pro­file fam­i­ly foun­da­tion in Wis­con­sin has assumed a cen­tral role in cur­rent strug­gles over Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy. But the mod­ern con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment has depend­ed on lever­ag­ing the for­tunes of wealthy reac­tionar­ies. In 1903, Lyn­de Bradley, a high-school dropout in Mil­wau­kee, found­ed what would become the Allen-Bradley com­pa­ny. He was soon joined by his broth­er Har­ry, and they got rich by sell­ing elec­tron­ic instru­ments such as rheostats. Har­ry, a John Birch Soci­ety found­ing mem­ber, start­ed a small fam­i­ly foun­da­tion that ini­tial­ly devot­ed much of its giv­ing to needy employ­ees and to civic caus­es in Mil­wau­kee. In 1985, after the broth­ers’ death, their heirs sold the com­pa­ny to the defense con­trac­tor Rock­well Inter­na­tion­al, for $1.65 bil­lion, gen­er­at­ing an enor­mous wind­fall for the foun­da­tion. The Bradley Foun­da­tion remains small in com­par­i­son with such lib­er­al behe­moths as the Ford Foun­da­tion, but it has become sin­gu­lar­ly pre­oc­cu­pied with wield­ing nation­al polit­i­cal influ­ence. It has fund­ed con­ser­v­a­tive projects rang­ing from school-choice ini­tia­tives to the con­tro­ver­sial schol­ar­ship of Charles Mur­ray, the co-author of the 1994 book “The Bell Curve,” which argues that Blacks are less like­ly than whites to join the “cog­ni­tive elite.” And, at least as far back as 2012, it has fund­ed groups chal­leng­ing vot­ing rights in the name of fight­ing fraud.
    ...

    Now, of all the estab­lish­ment legal foot­sol­diers wag­ing this war on vot­ing, it’s Cle­ta Mitchell who seems to be doing the most aggres­sive work. Includ­ing giv­ing direct advice to then-Pres­i­dent Trump. Mitchell was lit­er­al­ly sit­ting in on the phone call where Trump demand­ed Geor­gia ‘find’ the votes need­ed for him to win the state. And she con­tin­ues to defend her alle­ga­tions of mass vot­er fraud when approached by reporters. Mitchell is absolute­ly throw­ing her­self into the role of gaslighter-in-chief. And, again, she was, until recent­ly, con­sid­ered quite respectable. Mitchell is thor­ough­ly part of the GOP estab­lish­ment and not some par­ty rogue:

    ...
    An ani­mat­ing force behind the Bradley Foundation’s war on “elec­tion fraud” is Cle­ta Mitchell, a fierce­ly par­ti­san Repub­li­can elec­tion lawyer, who joined the organization’s board of direc­tors in 2012. Until recent­ly, she was vir­tu­al­ly unknown to most Amer­i­cans. But, on Jan­u­ary 3rd, the Wash­ing­ton Post exposed the con­tents of a pri­vate phone call, record­ed the pre­vi­ous day, dur­ing which Trump threat­ened elec­tion offi­cials in Geor­gia with a “crim­i­nal offense” unless they could “find” 11,780 more votes for him—just enough to alter the results. Also on the call was Mitchell, who chal­lenged the offi­cials to pro­vide records prov­ing that dead peo­ple hadn’t cast votes. The call was wide­ly crit­i­cized as a rogue effort to over­turn the elec­tion, and Foley & Lard­ner, the Mil­wau­kee-based law firm where Mitchell was a part­ner, announced that it was “con­cerned” about her role, and then part­ed ways with her. Trump’s call prompt­ed the dis­trict attor­ney in Ful­ton Coun­ty, Geor­gia, to begin a crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion.

    In a series of e‑mails and phone calls with me, Mitchell adamant­ly defend­ed her work with the Trump cam­paign, and said that in Geor­gia, where she has cen­tered her efforts, “I don’t think we can say with cer­tain­ty who won.” She told me that there were count­less elec­tion “irreg­u­lar­i­ties,” such as vot­ers using post-office box­es as their res­i­dences, in vio­la­tion of state law. “I believe there were more ille­gal votes cast than the mar­gin of vic­to­ry,” she said. “The only rem­e­dy is a new elec­tion.” Georgia’s sec­re­tary of state reject­ed her claims, but Mitchell insists that the deci­sion lacked a rig­or­ous eval­u­a­tion of the evi­dence. With her sup­port, diehard con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists are still lit­i­gat­ing the mat­ter in Ful­ton Coun­ty, which includes most of Atlanta. Because they keep demand­ing that elec­tion offi­cials prove a negative—that cor­rup­tion didn’t happen—their requests to keep inter­ro­gat­ing the results can be repeat­ed almost indef­i­nite­ly. Despite three inde­pen­dent counts of Georgia’s vote, includ­ing a hand recount, all of which con­firmed Biden’s vic­to­ry, Mitchell argues that “Trump nev­er got his day in court,” adding, “There are a lot of mis­car­riages of jus­tice I’ve seen and expe­ri­enced in my life, and this was one of them.”

    ...

    On behalf of Repub­li­can can­di­dates and groups, she began to fight lim­its on cam­paign spend­ing. She also rep­re­sent­ed numer­ous right-wing non­prof­its, includ­ing the Nation­al Rifle Asso­ci­a­tion, whose board she joined in the ear­ly two-thou­sands. A for­mer N.R.A. offi­cial recent­ly told the Guardian that Mitchell was the “fringe of the fringe,” and a Repub­li­can vot­ing-rights lawyer said that “she tells clients what they want to hear, regard­less of the law or real­i­ty.”

    In our con­ver­sa­tions, Mitchell mocked what she called the main­stream media’s “nar­ra­tive” of a “vast right-wing con­spir­a­cy to sup­press the vote of Black peo­ple,” and insist­ed that the fraud prob­lem was sig­nif­i­cant. “I actu­al­ly think your read­ers need to hear from peo­ple like me—believe it or not, there are tens of mil­lions of us,” she wrote. “We are not crazy. At least not to us. We are intel­li­gent and edu­cat­ed peo­ple who are very con­cerned about the future of Amer­i­ca. And we are among the vast major­i­ty of Amer­i­cans who sup­port elec­tion-integri­ty mea­sures.” Echo­ing what has become the right’s stan­dard talk­ing point, she declared that her agen­da for elec­tions is “to make it hard­er to cheat.”
    ...

    High­light­ing the key role the Bradley Foun­da­tion has played in lay­ing the foun­da­tions for the dis­man­tle­ment of democ­ra­cy, we find that Mitchell became the direc­tor of the Bradley Foun­da­tion in 2013
    . This was three years after she began mak­ing alle­ga­tions of mass Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­er fraud in 2010. What we are see­ing today is the cul­mi­na­tion of a decade of Mitchel­l’s work:

    ...
    Mitchell was at the fore­front of the right’s offen­sive. In 2010, she accused the Major­i­ty Leader of the Sen­ate, the Demo­c­rat Har­ry Reid, who was run­ning for reëlec­tion in Neva­da, of plan­ning “to steal this elec­tion if he can’t win it out­right.” Her evi­dence was that Democ­rats in the state had pro­vid­ed “clear­ly ille­gal” free food at vot­er-turnout events—a neg­li­gi­ble infrac­tion, giv­en that Reid won by more than forty thou­sand votes.

    A year lat­er, Mitchell suc­cess­ful­ly defend­ed Trump, who had been explor­ing a Pres­i­den­tial bid, against charges that he had tak­en ille­gal cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions. She had been rec­om­mend­ed to Trump by Chris Rud­dy, the founder of the con­ser­v­a­tive media com­pa­ny News­max, which was also a Mitchell client. Lat­er, Rud­dy intro­duced the future Pres­i­dent to Mitchell over din­ner at Mar-a-Lago. (She told me that she found Trump “gra­cious,” and not­ed that, since the 2020 elec­tion, she has talked with him “pret­ty often.”)

    In 2013, the Supreme Court struck down a key sec­tion of the Vot­ing Rights Act, elim­i­nat­ing the Jus­tice Department’s pow­er to screen pro­posed changes to elec­tion pro­ce­dures in states with dis­crim­i­na­to­ry his­to­ries, one of which was Ari­zona. Ter­ry God­dard, a for­mer Ari­zona attor­ney gen­er­al and a Demo­c­rat, told me that “the state has a his­to­ry of vot­er sup­pres­sion, espe­cial­ly against Native Amer­i­cans.” Before Rehn­quist became a Supreme Court Jus­tice, in 1971, he lived in Ari­zona, where he was accused of admin­is­ter­ing lit­er­a­cy tests to vot­ers of col­or. In the mid-two-thou­sands, God­dard recalled, Repub­li­can lead­ers erect­ed many bar­ri­ers aimed at deter­ring Lati­no vot­ers, some of which the courts struck down. But the 2013 Supreme Court rul­ing ini­ti­at­ed a new era of elec­tion manip­u­la­tion.

    Around this time, Mitchell became a direc­tor at the Bradley Foun­da­tion. Among the board mem­bers were George F. Will, the syn­di­cat­ed colum­nist, and Robert George, a Prince­ton polit­i­cal philoso­pher known for his defense of tra­di­tion­al Catholic val­ues. By 2017, Will, who has been a crit­ic of Trump, had stepped down from the Bradley board. But George has con­tin­ued to serve as a direc­tor, even as the foun­da­tion has heav­i­ly fund­ed groups pro­mul­gat­ing the false­hood that elec­tion fraud is wide­spread in Amer­i­ca, par­tic­u­lar­ly in minor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ties, and sow­ing doubt about the legit­i­ma­cy of Biden’s win. The foun­da­tion, mean­while, has giv­en near­ly three mil­lion dol­lars to pro­grams that George estab­lished at Prince­ton. He has writ­ten in praise of Pence’s refusal to decer­ti­fy Biden’s elec­tion, and has lament­ed that so many Amer­i­cans believe, “wrong­ly,” that “the elec­tion was ‘stolen.’ ” But he declined to dis­cuss with me why, then, he serves on the Bradley Foundation’s board.

    ...

    For now, though, con­ser­v­a­tive groups seem to be dou­bling down on their invest­ments in elec­tion-fraud alarmism. In the next two years, Her­itage Action plans to spend twen­ty-four mil­lion dol­lars mobi­liz­ing sup­port­ers and lob­by­ists who will pro­mote “elec­tion integri­ty,” start­ing in eight bat­tle­ground states, includ­ing Ari­zona. It is coör­di­nat­ing its effort with the Elec­tion Trans­paren­cy Ini­tia­tive, a joint ven­ture of two anti-abor­tion groups, the Susan B. Antho­ny List and the Amer­i­can Prin­ci­ples Project. The Elec­tion Trans­paren­cy Ini­tia­tive has set a fund-rais­ing goal of five mil­lion dol­lars. Cle­ta Mitchell, hav­ing left her law firm, has joined Free­dom­Works, the free-mar­ket group, where she plans to lead a ten-mil­lion-dol­lar project on vot­ing issues. She will also head the Elec­tion Integri­ty Net­work at the Con­ser­v­a­tive Part­ner­ship Insti­tute, anoth­er Wash­ing­ton-based non­prof­it. As a senior legal fel­low there, she told the Wash­ing­ton Exam­in­er, she will “help bring all these strings” of con­ser­v­a­tive elec­tion-law activism togeth­er, and she added, “I’ve had my fin­ger in so many dif­fer­ent pieces of the elec­tion-integri­ty pie for so long.”
    ...

    And it was short­ly after Mitchell became direc­tor of the Bradley Foun­da­tion that she began urg­ing the foun­da­tion to donate to ‘vot­ing integrity’-related projects. The insur­rec­tion of 2020 real­ly has been a decade-long active project, with ‘main­stream’ Mitchell lead­ing the way:

    ...
    Like most pri­vate non­prof­its, the Bradley Foun­da­tion doesn’t dis­close much about its inner work­ings. But in 2016 hack­ers post­ed online some of the group’s con­fi­den­tial doc­u­ments, which showed that, once Mitchell became a direc­tor, she began urg­ing the foun­da­tion to sup­port non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tions polic­ing elec­tion fraud. Mitchell has pro­fes­sion­al ties to sev­er­al of the groups that received mon­ey, although she says that she has abstained from vot­ing on grants to any of those orga­ni­za­tions.

    One recip­i­ent of Bradley mon­ey is True the Vote, a Texas-based group that, among oth­er things, trains peo­ple to mon­i­tor polling sites. Mitchell has served as its legal coun­sel, and hacked doc­u­ments show that she advo­cat­ed to the I.R.S. that the group deserved tax-exempt sta­tus as a char­i­ty. To earn such a des­ig­na­tion, a group must file fed­er­al tax forms promis­ing not to engage in elec­toral pol­i­tics. In a let­ter of sup­port, she assert­ed that “fraud­u­lent vot­ing occurs in the Unit­ed States,” cit­ing a 2010 case in which the F.B.I. arrest­ed nine Florid­i­ans for elec­tion vio­la­tions. But, as with many vot­er-fraud alle­ga­tions, the details of the case were less than adver­tised. The accu­sa­tion involved a school-board elec­tion in a rur­al Black com­mu­ni­ty in which a cam­paign had col­lect­ed dozens of absen­tee bal­lots, in vio­la­tion of the law. The charges were even­tu­al­ly dis­missed. The judge found “no intent to cast a false or fraud­u­lent bal­lot.” True the Vote, which was grant­ed tax-exempt sta­tus, has since been the sub­ject of numer­ous com­plaints from vot­ers, who have accused it of intim­i­da­tion and racism.

    Last year, a Reuters report char­ac­ter­ized Mitchell as one of four lawyers lead­ing the con­ser­v­a­tive war on “elec­tion fraud,” and described True the Vote as one of the movement’s hubs. The sto­ry linked the group and three oth­er con­ser­v­a­tive non­prof­its to at least six­ty-one elec­tion law­suits since 2012. Reuters not­ed that, dur­ing the same peri­od, the four groups, along with two oth­ers devot­ed to elec­tion-integri­ty issues, have received more than three and a half mil­lion dol­lars from the Bradley Foun­da­tion.
    ...

    Also note how Paul Clement also sits on the Bradley Foun­da­tion board. Recall how Clement was not only the lawyer who argued in favor of unre­strict­ed hyper-par­ti­san ger­ry­man­der­ing before the Supreme Court in Rucho v Com­mon Cause, and won, but he’s also the legal coun­sel for Clearview, the odi­ous com­pa­ny build­ing giant qua­si-legal facial recog­ni­tion data­bas­es of every­one on the plan­et. That’s the kind of ‘respectable’ mem­ber of the legal com­mu­ni­ty Clement hap­pens to be:

    ...
    The board includes Art Pope, the lib­er­tar­i­an dis­count-store mag­nate, who serves on the board of gov­er­nors at the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na. Pope, who has also acknowl­edged the legit­i­ma­cy of Biden’s vic­to­ry, declined to dis­cuss his role at the foun­da­tion. Anoth­er board mem­ber is Paul Clement, a part­ner at the law firm Kirk­land & Ellis, who is one of the country’s most dis­tin­guished Supreme Court lit­i­ga­tors. He could not be reached for com­ment.
    ...

    Then there’s role of main­stream con­ser­v­a­tive lawyer John East­man, who was active­ly push­ing Trump and Pence to get the elec­tion throw to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. This seem­ing­ly respectable estab­lish­ment fig­ure real­ly want­ed to see this nation­al dis­as­ter sce­nario play out. He was ready and will­ing to make those calls:

    ...
    It’s a sur­pris­ing­ly short leap from mak­ing accu­sa­tions of vot­er fraud to call­ing for the nul­li­fi­ca­tion of a sup­pos­ed­ly taint­ed elec­tion. The Pub­lic Inter­est Legal Foun­da­tion, a group fund­ed by the Bradley Foun­da­tion, is lead­ing the way. Based in Indi­ana, it has become a pro­lif­ic source of lit­i­ga­tion; in the past year alone, it has brought nine elec­tion-law cas­es in eight states. It has amassed some of the most vis­i­ble lawyers obsessed with elec­tion fraud, includ­ing Mitchell, who is its chair and sits on its board.

    One of the group’s direc­tors is John East­man, a for­mer law pro­fes­sor at Chap­man Uni­ver­si­ty, in Cal­i­for­nia. On Jan­u­ary 4, 2021, he vis­it­ed the White House, where he spoke with Trump about ways to void the elec­tion. In a nod to the Inde­pen­dent Leg­is­la­ture Doc­trine, East­man and Trump tried to per­suade Vice-Pres­i­dent Mike Pence to halt the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the Elec­toral Col­lege vote, instead throw­ing the elec­tion to the state leg­is­la­tures. Pence was not per­suad­ed.

    Two days lat­er, East­man spoke at Trump’s “Save Amer­i­ca” ral­ly in Wash­ing­ton, hours before the crowds ran­sacked the Capi­tol in an effort to stop Con­gress from cer­ti­fy­ing Biden’s win. “This is big­ger than Pres­i­dent Trump!” East­man declared. “It is the very essence of our repub­li­can form of gov­ern­ment, and it has to be done!” He thun­dered that elec­tion offi­cials had robbed Trump by ille­gal­ly cast­ing bal­lots in the name of non-vot­ers whose records they had extract­ed, after the polls had closed, from a “secret fold­er” in elec­tron­ic vot­ing machines. He told the crowd that the scan­dal was vis­i­ble in “the data.” There is no evi­dence of such malfea­sance, how­ev­er. East­man, who recent­ly retired, under pres­sure, from Chap­man Uni­ver­si­ty, and was stripped of his pub­lic duties at anoth­er post that he held, at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Col­orado Boul­der, told me he still believes that the elec­tion was stolen, and thinks that the audits in Ari­zona and oth­er states will help prove it. The Bradley Foun­da­tion declined to com­ment on him, or on Mitchell, when asked about its role in fund­ing their activ­i­ties.
    ...

    And we can’t leave out Hans von Spakovksy, the GOP’s vot­er fraud ‘guru’ who, like Mitchell, has spent the last decade try­ing to con­vince any­one who will lis­ten that mass Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­er fraud is ram­pant. Again, you can’t call Spakovsky some far right fringe fig­ure. This is the type of per­son who defines the ‘estab­lish­ment’:

    ...
    Two oth­er Pub­lic Inter­est Legal Foun­da­tion lawyers—its pres­i­dent, J. Chris­t­ian Adams, and anoth­er board mem­ber, Hans von Spakovsky—served in George W. Bush’s Jus­tice Depart­ment, where they began efforts to use the Vot­ing Rights Act, which was designed to pro­tect Black vot­ers, to pros­e­cute pur­port­ed fraud by Black vot­ers and elec­tion offi­cials. Both men have argued stren­u­ous­ly that Amer­i­can elec­tions are rife with seri­ous fraud, and in 2017 they got a rare oppor­tu­ni­ty to make their case, when Trump appoint­ed them to a Pres­i­den­tial com­mis­sion on elec­tion integri­ty. With­in months, after the com­mis­sion was unable to find sig­nif­i­cant evi­dence of elec­tion fraud, it acri­mo­nious­ly dis­band­ed. Adams and von Spakovsky, who are mem­bers of what Roll Call has termed the Vot­er Fraud Brain Trust, have nev­er­the­less con­tin­ued their cru­sade, sus­tained part­ly by Bradley funds. Von Spakovsky now heads the Her­itage Foundation’s Elec­tion Law Reform Ini­tia­tive, which has received grants from the Bradley Foun­da­tion.

    At Her­itage, von Spakovsky has over­seen a nation­al track­ing sys­tem mon­i­tor­ing elec­tion-fraud cas­es. But its data on Ari­zona, the puta­tive cen­ter of the storm, is not exact­ly alarm­ing: of the mil­lions of votes cast in the state from 2016 to 2020, only nine indi­vid­u­als were con­vict­ed of fraud. Each instance involved some­one cast­ing a dupli­cate bal­lot in anoth­er state. There were no record­ed cas­es of iden­ti­ty fraud, bal­lot stuff­ing, vot­ing by non-cit­i­zens, or oth­er nefar­i­ous schemes. The num­bers con­firm that there is some vot­er fraud, or at least con­fu­sion, but not remote­ly enough to affect elec­tion out­comes.

    Even Ben­jamin Gins­berg, a Repub­li­can lawyer who for years led the Party’s elec­tion-law fights, recent­ly con­ced­ed to the Times that “a par­ty that’s increas­ing­ly old and white whose base is a dimin­ish­ing share of the pop­u­la­tion is con­jur­ing up charges of fraud to erect bar­ri­ers to vot­ing for peo­ple it fears won’t sup­port its can­di­dates.”

    The Vot­er Fraud Brain Trust lent sup­port to Trump’s lies from the time he took office. In 2016, when he lost the pop­u­lar vote by near­ly three mil­lion bal­lots, he insist­ed that he had actu­al­ly won it, spu­ri­ous­ly blam­ing ram­pant fraud in Cal­i­for­nia. Soon after­ward, von Spakovsky gave Trump’s false claim cre­dence by pub­lish­ing an essay at Her­itage argu­ing that there was no way to dis­prove the alle­ga­tion, because “we have an elec­tion sys­tem that’s based on the hon­or sys­tem.”

    ...

    By New Year’s Eve, when Trump tried and failed to reach the chair­man of the Mari­co­pa Coun­ty board, his Admin­is­tra­tion was in extra­or­di­nary tur­moil. Attor­ney Gen­er­al William Barr had resigned from the Jus­tice Depart­ment after declar­ing that it had detect­ed no sig­nif­i­cant elec­tion fraud. Even so, Trump con­tin­ued to demand that the depart­ment inves­ti­gate a vari­ety of loony con­spir­a­cies, includ­ing a plot to erase Trump votes using Ital­ian mil­i­tary satel­lites. Accord­ing to a leaked e‑mail, a Jus­tice Depart­ment attor­ney dis­par­aged the satel­lite the­o­ry as “pure insan­i­ty.” A man sup­pos­ed­ly involved in the plot issued a denial to Reuters, and Ital­ian police sug­gest­ed that the alle­ga­tion was base­less. But the con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry, which became known as Italy­gate, had bub­bled up from the same pools of dark mon­ey that were fund­ing oth­er elec­tion mis­in­for­ma­tion. Records show that Italy­gate was spread by a “social wel­fare orga­ni­za­tion” called Nations in Action, whose direc­tors includ­ed von Spakovsky. When Talk­ing Points Memo con­tact­ed von Spakovsky, he said that he had resigned from the board on Jan­u­ary 8th. But the mon­ey trail remains. Crooks and Liars, a pro­gres­sive inves­tiga­tive-report­ing site, dug up tax fil­ings show­ing that the group’s 501(c)(3) sib­ling, the Nations in Action Glob­al­ly Lift­ing Up Fund, had received thou­sands of dol­lars from the Judi­cial Cri­sis Network—a non­prof­it enter­prise, close­ly tied to Leonard Leo, that also funds Turn­ing Point Action.
    ...

    And at the cen­ter of this decade-long effort to lay the foun­da­tions for cre­at­ing a sys­tem where the GOP can just over­turn elec­tions at will is the con­cept of the the Inde­pen­dent Leg­is­la­ture Doc­trine: the idea that the con­sti­tu­tion gives states the right to choose their own slates of elec­tors for the pres­i­den­cy. It’s in Ari­zona where we might end up see­ing this legal con­cept put into effect at the state lev­el. In August 2019, Mitchell co-chaired a high-lev­el work­ing group con­vened by ALEC — anoth­er cor­po­rate-financed ‘main­stream’ con­ser­v­a­tive group — with Shawn­na Bol­ick, a Repub­li­can state rep­re­sen­ta­tive from Phoenix. This year, Bol­ick intro­duced leg­is­la­tion that would put the Inde­pen­dent Leg­is­la­ture Doc­trine in effect, allow­ing Ari­zon­a’s state leg­is­la­ture to deter­mine who the state votes for in pres­i­den­tial elec­tions. This is a good time to recall that repeal­ing the 17th Amend­ment, and return­ing the elec­tion of Sen­a­tors to state leg­is­la­tors, is also a con­tem­po­rary GOP pet project. State leg­is­la­tures are going to have a lot of pow­er once the GOP is done with its ‘elec­tion reform’:

    ...
    More than a year before the 2020 elec­tion, Cle­ta Mitchell and her allies sensed polit­i­cal per­il for Trump and began review­ing strate­gies to help keep him in office. Accord­ing to a leaked video of an address that she gave in May, 2019, to the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy, a secre­tive con­ser­v­a­tive soci­ety, she warned that Democ­rats were suc­cess­ful­ly reg­is­ter­ing what she sar­cas­ti­cal­ly referred to as “the dis­en­fran­chised.” She con­tin­ued, “They know that if they tar­get cer­tain com­mu­ni­ties and they can get them reg­is­tered and get them to the polls, then those groups . . . will vote nine­ty per cent, nine­ty-five per cent for Democ­rats.”

    One pos­si­ble coun­ter­move was for con­ser­v­a­tive state leg­is­la­tors to reëngi­neer the way the Elec­toral Col­lege has worked for more than a hun­dred years, in essence by invok­ing the Inde­pen­dent Leg­is­la­ture Doc­trine. The Con­sti­tu­tion gives states the author­i­ty to choose their Pres­i­den­tial elec­tors “in such Man­ner as the Leg­is­la­ture there­of may direct.” Since the late nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, states have del­e­gat­ed that author­i­ty to the pop­u­lar vote. But, arguably, the Con­sti­tu­tion per­mits state leg­is­la­tures to take this author­i­ty back. Leg­is­la­tors could argue that an elec­tion had been com­pro­mised by irreg­u­lar­i­ties or fraud, forc­ing them to inter­vene.

    In August, 2019, e‑mails show, Mitchell co-chaired a high-lev­el work­ing group with Shawn­na Bol­ick, a Repub­li­can state rep­re­sen­ta­tive from Phoenix. Among the top­ics slat­ed for dis­cus­sion was the Elec­toral Col­lege. The work­ing group was con­vened by alec, the cor­po­rate-backed non­prof­it that trans­mits con­ser­v­a­tive pol­i­cy ideas and leg­is­la­tion to state law­mak­ers. The Bradley Foun­da­tion has long sup­port­ed alec, and Mitchell has worked close­ly with it, serv­ing as its out­side coun­sel until recent­ly.

    Mitchell and Bol­ick declined to answer ques­tions about the work­ing group’s focus, but it appears that Bolick’s par­tic­i­pa­tion was pro­duc­tive. After the elec­tion, she signed a res­o­lu­tion demand­ing that Con­gress block the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of Biden’s vic­to­ry and award Arizona’s elec­tors to Trump. Then, ear­ly this year, Bol­ick intro­duced a bill propos­ing a rad­i­cal read­ing of Arti­cle II of the Con­sti­tu­tion, along the lines of the Inde­pen­dent Leg­is­la­ture Doc­trine. It would enable a major­i­ty of the Ari­zona leg­is­la­ture to over­ride the pop­u­lar vote if it found fault with the out­come, and dic­tate the state’s Elec­toral Col­lege votes itself—anytime up until Inau­gu­ra­tion Day. Bol­ick has described her bill as just “a good, demo­c­ra­t­ic check and bal­ance,” but her mea­sure was con­sid­ered so extreme that it died in com­mit­tee, despite Repub­li­can majori­ties in both hous­es of the leg­is­la­ture. Yet, sim­ply by putting forth the idea as leg­is­la­tion, she helped lend legit­i­ma­cy to the auda­cious scheme that the Trump cam­paign des­per­ate­ly pur­sued in the final days before Biden’s Inau­gu­ra­tion: to rely on Repub­li­can-led state leg­is­la­tures to over­turn Elec­toral Col­lege votes. Ian Bassin, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of Pro­tect Democ­ra­cy, who served as an asso­ciate White House coun­sel under Oba­ma, told me, “Insti­tu­tions like the Her­itage Foun­da­tion and alec are pro­vid­ing the grease to turn these attacks on democ­ra­cy into law.”

    Bol­ick has since announced her can­di­da­cy for sec­re­tary of state in Ari­zona. Her hus­band, Clint Bol­ick, is an Ari­zona Supreme Court jus­tice and a leader in right-wing legal cir­cles. Clarence Thomas, one of the three U.S. Supreme Court Jus­tices who signed on to the con­cur­ring opin­ion in Bush v. Gore lay­ing out the Inde­pen­dent Leg­is­la­ture Doc­trine, is the god­fa­ther of one of Clint Bolick’s sons. If Shawn­na Bol­ick wins her race, she will over­see future elec­tions in the state. And, if the Supreme Court faces anoth­er case in which argu­ments about the Inde­pen­dent Leg­is­la­ture Doc­trine come into play, there may now be enough con­ser­v­a­tive Jus­tices to agree with Thomas that there are cir­cum­stances under which leg­is­la­tures, not vot­ers, could have the final word in Amer­i­can elec­tions.
    ...

    Then there’s Jake Hoff­man, the friend of Turn­ing Point USA’s COO Tyler Bow­ers. After get­ting elect­ed to the Ari­zona House, Hoff­man was appoint­ed him the vice-chair of the Com­mit­tee on Gov­ern­ment and Elec­tions, where he has chal­lenged the legit­i­ma­cy of Biden’s vic­to­ry, called for elec­tion audits, and, in coor­di­na­tion with the Her­itage Foun­da­tion, used his posi­tion to push laws that make it hard­er to vote. Hoff­man’s ascen­sion to this posi­tion is entire­ly a GOP estab­lish­ment affair:

    ...
    Turn­ing Point, which has received small grants from the Bradley Foun­da­tion, is head­quar­tered in Ari­zona, and it has played a sig­nif­i­cant role in the rad­i­cal­iza­tion of the state, in part by ampli­fy­ing fear and anger about vot­er fraud. Turn­ing Point’s chief oper­at­ing offi­cer, Tyler Bowyer, is a mem­ber of the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee and a for­mer chair of the Mari­co­pa Coun­ty Repub­li­can Par­ty. Bowyer’s friend Jake Hoff­man runs an Ari­zona-based dig­i­tal-mar­ket­ing com­pa­ny, Ral­ly Forge, that has been Turn­ing Point’s high­est-com­pen­sat­ed con­trac­tor. In the sum­mer of 2020, Ral­ly Forge helped Turn­ing Point use social media to spread incen­di­ary mis­in­for­ma­tion about the com­ing elec­tions. In Sep­tem­ber, the Wash­ing­ton Post report­ed that Ral­ly Forge, on behalf of Turn­ing Point Action, had paid teen-agers to decep­tive­ly post thou­sands of copy­cat pro­pa­gan­da mes­sages, much as Rus­sia had done dur­ing the 2016 cam­paign. Adult lead­ers had instruct­ed the teens to tweak the word­ing of their posts, to evade detec­tion by tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies. Some mes­sages were post­ed under the teens’ accounts, but oth­ers were sent under assumed per­son­ae. Many posts claimed that mail-in bal­lots would “lead to fraud,” and that Democ­rats planned to steal the Pres­i­den­cy.

    ...

    In Octo­ber, 2020, Ral­ly Forge was banned from Face­book, and its pres­i­dent, Hoff­man, was per­ma­nent­ly sus­pend­ed by Twit­ter. Unde­terred, he ran as a pro-Trump Repub­li­can for the Ari­zona House—and won. Remark­ably, the chamber’s Repub­li­can lead­er­ship then appoint­ed him the vice-chair of the Com­mit­tee on Gov­ern­ment and Elec­tions. Since get­ting elect­ed, Hoff­man has chal­lenged the legit­i­ma­cy of Biden’s vic­to­ry, called for elec­tion audits, and, in coör­di­na­tion with the Her­itage Foun­da­tion, used his posi­tion to pro­pose numer­ous bills mak­ing it more dif­fi­cult to vote.

    This past spring, at a pri­vate gath­er­ing out­side Tuc­son, Jes­si­ca Ander­son, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of Her­itage Action—the polit­i­cal­ly active arm of the Her­itage Foundation—singled out Hoff­man for praise. As a leaked video of her remarks revealed, she told sup­port­ers that, with the help of Hoff­man and oth­er state leg­is­la­tors, the non­prof­it group was rewrit­ing America’s elec­tion laws. “In some cas­es, we actu­al­ly draft them for them, or we have a sen­tinel on our behalf give them the mod­el leg­is­la­tion so it has that grass­roots, from-the-bot­tom-up type of vibe,” Ander­son explained. “We’ve got three bills done in Ari­zona!” She con­tin­ued, “We’re mov­ing four more through the state of Ari­zona right now . . . sim­ple bills, all straight from the Her­itage rec­om­men­da­tions.” One of the bills, she not­ed, was “writ­ten and car­ried by Jake Hoff­man,” whom she described as “a long­time friend of the Her­itage Foun­da­tion.”

    ...

    A day after the elec­tion, the office of Katie Hobbs, Arizona’s sec­re­tary of state, report­ed that, based on a rou­tine, bipar­ti­san hand recount of a sam­ple of bal­lots, “no dis­crep­an­cies were found” in Mari­co­pa Coun­ty. With­in days, the main­stream media had called the elec­tion for Biden, based on late returns from Neva­da, Penn­syl­va­nia, and Geor­gia. But Cle­ta Mitchell, who had been dis­patched by Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Mead­ows, to help the Trump cam­paign in Geor­gia, told Fox News, “We’re already dou­ble-check­ing and find­ing dead peo­ple hav­ing vot­ed.” As Geor­gia was rat­i­fy­ing its results with a recount, she tweet­ed that the tal­ly was “FAKE!!!”

    Mean­while, on the con­ser­v­a­tive Web site Town­hall, Hoff­man demand­ed “a full audit of the vote count in swing states,” adding that the elec­tion was “far from over.” He claimed that there had been “count­less vio­la­tions of state elec­tion law, sta­tis­ti­cal anom­alies and elec­tion irreg­u­lar­i­ties in more than a half dozen states,” and argued that state leg­is­la­tures should there­fore have the final say. By Decem­ber, he had joined his friend Bowyer and oth­er mem­bers of the state’s Repub­li­can Par­ty in fil­ing suit against Arizona’s gov­er­nor, call­ing for the state to set aside Arizona’s eleven elec­toral votes and allow the leg­is­la­ture to inter­vene.

    At the same time, anoth­er ver­sion of the Inde­pen­dent Leg­is­la­ture Doc­trine argu­ment was being mount­ed in Penn­syl­va­nia, by the Hon­est Elec­tions Project, the group tied to Leonard Leo, of the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety. Local Repub­li­cans had chal­lenged a state-court rul­ing that adjust­ed vot­ing pro­ce­dures dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. The Hon­est Elec­tions Project filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court argu­ing that the Penn­syl­va­nia court had usurped the legislature’s author­i­ty to over­see elec­tions. The effort didn’t suc­ceed, but Richard Hasen, the elec­tion-law pro­fes­sor, regards such argu­ments as “pow­der kegs” that threat­en Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy. Leo didn’t respond to requests for com­ment, but Hasen believes that Leo is try­ing to pre­serve “minor­i­ty rule” in elec­tions in order to advance his agen­da. Hasen told me, “Mak­ing it hard­er to vote helps them get more Repub­li­can vic­to­ries, which helps them get more con­ser­v­a­tive judges and courts.”

    In the case of Ari­zona, it took only a week for a fed­er­al dis­trict court to dis­miss Hoff­man and Bowyer’s suit, cit­ing an absence of “rel­e­vant or reli­able evi­dence.” The court admon­ished the plain­tiffs that “gos­sip and innu­en­do” can­not “be the basis for upend­ing Arizona’s 2020 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.” Hoff­man and the oth­er plain­tiffs appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to hear the mat­ter, but it wait­ed to do so until March. In the mean­time, elec­tion-fraud con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries in Ari­zona were grow­ing out of con­trol.
    ...

    It’s just pure bad faith. Not only is there no indi­ca­tion that fig­ures like Mitchell or Spakovksy actu­al­ly believe their claims, but we get sto­ries like what Mari­co­pa coun­ty board of Super­vi­sors, Bill Gates, tells us about how Ari­zona Senate’s pres­i­dent con­fid­ed in him that she did­n’t believe the alle­ga­tions but went along with them any­way. Beyond that, the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee paid him a vis­it to inform him that the RNC itself was back­ing the Ari­zona vot­er fraud claims. You can’t get more ‘estab­lish­ment’ than the RNC:

    ...
    On Novem­ber 12th, Biden was declared the win­ner in Mari­co­pa Coun­ty. Soon after, a Repub­li­can mem­ber of the county’s Board of Super­vi­sors, Bill Gates, was pick­ing up take­out food for his fam­i­ly when the board’s chairman—one of four Repub­li­cans on the five-per­son board—called to warn him to be care­ful going home. Nine­ty angry peo­ple had gath­ered out­side the chairman’s house, and Gates’s place could be next. “We’d all been doxed,” Gates told me. He and his wife are the legal guardians of a teen-ager whose father, a Ugan­dan, was near­ly killed by hench­men for Idi Amin. “It’s chill­ing to see the par­al­lels,” Gates told me. “You’d nev­er think there were any par­al­lels to a strong­man autoc­ra­cy in Africa.” Gates con­sid­ers him­self a polit­i­cal-sci­ence nerd, but, he said, “I had no con­cept that we were head­ing where we were head­ing.”

    ...

    Gates says that Karen Fann, the Ari­zona Senate’s pres­i­dent, con­fid­ed to him that she knew there was “noth­ing to” the fraud charges. (She didn’t respond to requests for com­ment.) Nev­er­the­less, she buck­led under the polit­i­cal pres­sure and autho­rized a sub­poe­na of the county’s bal­lots, for the “foren­sic audit.” At one point, coun­ty super­vi­sors were told that if they didn’t com­ply they would face con­tempt charges and, poten­tial­ly, could be impris­oned. For a time, the offi­cial Twit­ter account for the audit accused the super­vi­sors, with­out evi­dence, of “spo­li­a­tion” of the bal­lots. “I get a lit­tle emo­tion­al when I talk about it,” Gates said. “My daugh­ter called me, fran­ti­cal­ly try­ing to find out whether or not I was going to be thrown in jail.” Trump sup­port­ers set up a guil­lo­tine on a grassy plaza out­side Arizona’s state­house, demand­ing the super­vi­sors’ heads. Inside, Gates recalled, one Repub­li­can mem­ber after anoth­er rose to denounce the coun­ty super­vi­sors.

    A rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the nation­al Repub­li­can Par­ty tried to silence Gates when he spoke out to defend the integri­ty of Arizona’s elec­tion. He told me that Hoffman’s ally Tyler Bowyer, of the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee, paid him a vis­it and warned, “You need to stop it.” Accord­ing to Gates, Bowyer made it clear that “the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee sup­ports this audit.” Andrew Kol­vet, a spokesman for Bowyer, denied that the vis­it was an offi­cial attempt at intim­i­da­tion, call­ing it instead a “per­son­al cour­tesy.”

    Gates said that after he received death threats he fled with his fam­i­ly to an Airbnb. At one point, the sher­iff sent two deputies to guard Gates’s home overnight. Trump sup­port­ers, Gates said, “are basi­cal­ly ask­ing Repub­li­can lead­ers to bow before the altar of the Big Lie—‘You’re will­ing to do it? O.K., great. You’re not? You’re a RINO. You’re a Com­mie. You are not a Repub­li­can.’ It’s been incred­i­bly effec­tive, real­ly, when you think about where we’ve come from Jan­u­ary 6th.”
    ...

    Final­ly, was have to point out not only the role Bush v Gore played in lay­ing the judi­cial foun­da­tions for the Inde­pen­dent Leg­is­la­ture Doc­trine pow­er play we’re see­ing today, but also the tim­ing. Think about: in 2000, the right-wing oli­garchs suc­cess­ful­ly stole an elec­tion in a Flori­da case that fun­da­men­tal­ly hinged on the Inde­pen­dent Leg­is­la­ture Doc­trine. The GOP wins the White House again in 2004, but in 2008 Barack Oba­ma man­ages a vic­to­ry. That was the point when the GOP estab­lish­ment got invest­ed in the Inde­pen­dent Leg­is­la­ture Doc­trine because as we saw, by 2010–2012 Cle­ta Mitchell and Hans von Spakovksy were both out there push­ing the ideas that today have com­plete­ly tak­en over the GOP

    ...
    Like many con­ser­v­a­tives of her gen­er­a­tion, Cle­ta Mitchell was gal­va­nized by the dis­put­ed 2000 elec­tion, in which George W. Bush and Al Gore bat­tled for weeks over the out­come in Flori­da. She repeat­ed­ly spoke out on behalf of Bush, who won the state by only five hun­dred and thir­ty-sev­en votes. A dis­pute over recounts end­ed up at the Supreme Court.

    Few peo­ple noticed at the time, but in that case, Bush v. Gore, Chief Jus­tice William Rehn­quist, along with Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, hint­ed at a rad­i­cal read­ing of the Con­sti­tu­tion that, two decades lat­er, under­girds many of the court chal­lenges on behalf of Trump. In a con­cur­ring opin­ion, the Jus­tices argued that state leg­is­la­tures have the ple­nary pow­er to run elec­tions and can even pass laws giv­ing them­selves the right to appoint elec­tors. Today, the so-called Inde­pen­dent Leg­is­la­ture Doc­trine has informed Trump and the right’s attempts to use Repub­li­can-dom­i­nat­ed state leg­is­la­tures to over­rule the pop­u­lar will. Nathaniel Persi­ly, an elec­tion-law expert at Stan­ford, told me, “It’s giv­ing intel­lec­tu­al respectabil­i­ty to an oth­er­wise insane, anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic argu­ment.”
    ...

    The oli­garchs got a taste of how love­ly this kind of Inde­pen­dent Leg­is­la­ture Doc­trine pow­er would be in 2000 and want more. And as we can see, they’ve almost got it. The GOP as a par­ty has been com­plete­ly cap­ture by these ideas. Chang­ing elec­tion law to secure Repub­li­can vic­to­ry is now the key ani­mat­ing issue of the par­ty! And with ger­ry­man­der­ing and redis­trict­ing slat­ed to grant­ed the GOP con­trol of Con­gress in 2022, that per­ma­nent lock on pow­er is look­ing to be just an elec­tion cycle or two away. The log­i­cal con­clu­sion of Bush v Gore has almost been achieved. Steve Ban­non has a lot of fas­cist achieve­ments to be proud of, no doubt. No won­der he’s brag­ging. But it would be a damn shame if Ban­non end up being the only one to share in this fas­cist glo­ry. It was a group effort. And ongo­ing group effort. Hope­ful­ly those House sub­poe­nas end up shed­ding more light on this long-stand­ing main­stream estab­lish­ment ongo­ing fas­cist group effort. There’s undoubt­ed­ly more fas­cist glo­ry to come and it would be a shame if Steve end­ed up hog­ging it all.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | September 23, 2021, 5:37 pm
  25. The US Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion just issued a rul­ing that might sound a lit­tle shock­ing to most mem­bers of the pub­lic, but is appar­ent­ly in keep­ing for fed­er­al cam­paign finance laws: in a 4–2 vote back in July, the FEC com­mis­sion­ers dis­missed a com­plaint against a for­eign min­ing com­pa­ny mak­ing dona­tions to oppose a 2018 Mon­tana bal­lot mea­sure that would have increased state envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tions. Yep, for­eign com­pa­nies have a right to make dona­tions in US elec­tions, as long as it’s a bal­lot mea­sure and not an elec­tion involv­ing an actu­al can­di­date. That’s appar­ent­ly the legal loop­hole here.

    Did the Mon­tana bal­lot mea­sure that would have increased envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tions pass? Nope. It was defeat­ed. So the les­son from this sto­ry isn’t just that for­eign com­pa­nies can inter­vene in US bal­lot mea­sures. The mes­sage is also that it works. The for­eign min­ing com­pa­ny won.

    Anoth­er poten­tial­ly impor­tant detail here is that it’s not just bal­lot mea­sures that are open to for­eign spend­ing. State con­sti­tu­tions are open sea­son too. For­eign spend­ing on state con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments is legal accord­ing to the FEC.

    It’s also worth not­ing that it was the three Repub­li­cans and one Demo­c­rat vot­ed for the dis­missal of the com­plaint. It’s not like this was a uni­fied deci­sion. It’s the kind of out­come that rais­es ques­tions about how durable the rul­ing ulti­mate­ly will be. At the same time, even one of the com­mis­sion­ers who vot­ed in favor of the com­plaint, Ellen Wein­traub, seemed to acknowl­edge that fed­er­al law ulti­mate­ly does allow for for­eign com­pa­nies to make dona­tions for or against bal­lot mea­sures. Wein­traub ulti­mate­ly vot­ed against the dis­missal due to ongo­ing ambi­gu­i­ties regard­ing spe­cial cas­es, like a bal­lot mea­sure that impact­ed how elec­tions are con­duct­ed. But it does­n’t sound like she was tak­ing issue with the gen­er­al idea that for­eign spend­ing on non-can­di­date elec­tions is backed by fed­er­al law. So over­all, it does sound like this rul­ing was a val­i­da­tion of what real­ly is US fed­er­al law. A law that says it’s per­fect­ly fine for for­eign com­pa­nies to spend mon­ey in US elec­tions as long as the elec­tion does­n’t involve an actu­al can­di­date. Sur­prise! Or not, for those famil­iar with fed­er­al elec­tion finance laws:

    The Wash­ing­ton Post

    For­eign nation­als can finance bal­lot ini­tia­tives, FEC affirms
    In a July vote to be made pub­lic this week, com­mis­sion­ers found that bal­lot ini­tia­tives don’t count as elec­tions under fed­er­al law

    By Isaac Stan­ley-Beck­er
    Novem­ber 2, 2021 at 3:21 p.m. EDT

    The Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion has affirmed in a not-yet-pub­lic deci­sion that for­eign nation­als can finance efforts relat­ed to bal­lot ini­tia­tives, decid­ing that the fed­er­al ban on for­eign mon­ey applies only to can­di­date elec­tions.

    In a 4–2 vote in July, com­mis­sion­ers dis­missed a com­plaint against a Cana­di­an sub­sidiary of an Aus­tralian min­ing com­pa­ny that helped finance efforts to defeat a 2018 Mon­tana bal­lot mea­sure that would have beefed up envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tions.

    Fed­er­al law pro­hibits for­eign nation­als from mak­ing con­tri­bu­tions in con­nec­tion with fed­er­al, state or local elec­tions but is silent on spend­ing relat­ed to bal­lot ini­tia­tives, which put pro­posed statutes and, in some instances, con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments up to pop­u­lar vote, accord­ing to an FEC legal analy­sis sent last month to par­ties in the dis­pute and obtained by The Wash­ing­ton Post. Doc­u­ments relat­ed to the case will be made pub­lic this week, accord­ing to a let­ter includ­ed with the analy­sis.

    The deci­sion, which was first report­ed by Axios, is con­sis­tent with estab­lished inter­pre­ta­tions of fed­er­al elec­tion law, cam­paign finance experts said. At the same time, it does not address whether cer­tain types of bal­lot ini­tia­tives that explic­it­ly involve a can­di­date or bear direct­ly on elec­tions, such as redis­trict­ing mea­sures, might trig­ger the fed­er­al ban on for­eign mon­ey, said Ellen Wein­traub, a Demo­c­ra­t­ic FEC com­mis­sion­er.

    “This should not be viewed as open sea­son for for­eign­ers to try to influ­ence bal­lot ini­tia­tives that affect our vot­ing process,” she said in an inter­view, argu­ing that the scope of the rules should be clar­i­fied by fed­er­al statute.

    Wein­traub said she vot­ed against the complaint’s dis­missal but would oth­er­wise not com­ment on the specifics of the vote. Oth­er peo­ple famil­iar with the mat­ter, who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to describe what is still a non­pub­lic mat­ter, said the commission’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic chair­woman, Shana M. Brous­sard, vot­ed with her three Repub­li­can col­leagues. Brous­sard declined to com­ment before the pub­lic release of doc­u­ments in the case, which she said would take place on Fri­day.

    David Brooks, exec­u­tive direc­tor of Mon­tana Trout Unlim­it­ed, one of the com­plainants in the case, expressed sur­prise over the deci­sion, which he said enabled for­eign inter­ests to “exert sig­nif­i­cant influ­ence on Amer­i­can pol­i­cy or statewide pol­i­cy.” His group’s alle­ga­tion was that the Cana­di­an sub­sidiary, Sand­fire Resources, had made ille­gal con­tri­bu­tions to com­mit­tees oppos­ing the bal­lot mea­sure, Mon­tana I‑186, which would have cre­at­ed new require­ments for hard-rock mine per­mits based on water stan­dards. The mea­sure was defeat­ed.

    But Robert K. Kel­ner, who chairs Cov­ing­ton & Burling’s Elec­tion and Polit­i­cal Law Prac­tice Group, said the deci­sion was in line with statu­to­ry law as well as pri­or deter­mi­na­tions by the FEC.

    “I think most mem­bers of the elec­tion bar have assumed that the for­eign nation­al con­tri­bu­tion ban would not apply to bal­lot mea­sure com­mit­tees, and that’s because the ban on its face real­ly only applies to can­di­date elec­tions,” he said.

    ...

    The FEC’s deci­sion speaks only to fed­er­al rules about for­eign con­tri­bu­tions. Sev­en states have passed leg­is­la­tion designed to bar for­eign spend­ing on bal­lot mea­sures, accord­ing to the Cam­paign Legal Cen­ter.

    ————-

    “For­eign nation­als can finance bal­lot ini­tia­tives, FEC affirms” by Isaac Stan­ley-Beck­er; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 11/02/2021

    “Fed­er­al law pro­hibits for­eign nation­als from mak­ing con­tri­bu­tions in con­nec­tion with fed­er­al, state or local elec­tions but is silent on spend­ing relat­ed to bal­lot ini­tia­tives, which put pro­posed statutes and, in some instances, con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments up to pop­u­lar vote, accord­ing to an FEC legal analy­sis sent last month to par­ties in the dis­pute and obtained by The Wash­ing­ton Post. Doc­u­ments relat­ed to the case will be made pub­lic this week, accord­ing to a let­ter includ­ed with the analy­sis.”

    It’s not just bal­lot ini­tia­tives. Con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments up to pop­u­lar votes can be med­dled with too. Isn’t that love­ly. And this rul­ing was more or less what experts expect­ed. That’s how open elec­tion spend­ing is in the Unit­ed States. For­eign com­pa­nies can direct­ly lob­by vot­ers. At least at the fed­er­al lev­el:

    ...
    The deci­sion, which was first report­ed by Axios, is con­sis­tent with estab­lished inter­pre­ta­tions of fed­er­al elec­tion law, cam­paign finance experts said. At the same time, it does not address whether cer­tain types of bal­lot ini­tia­tives that explic­it­ly involve a can­di­date or bear direct­ly on elec­tions, such as redis­trict­ing mea­sures, might trig­ger the fed­er­al ban on for­eign mon­ey, said Ellen Wein­traub, a Demo­c­ra­t­ic FEC com­mis­sion­er.

    ...

    David Brooks, exec­u­tive direc­tor of Mon­tana Trout Unlim­it­ed, one of the com­plainants in the case, expressed sur­prise over the deci­sion, which he said enabled for­eign inter­ests to “exert sig­nif­i­cant influ­ence on Amer­i­can pol­i­cy or statewide pol­i­cy.” His group’s alle­ga­tion was that the Cana­di­an sub­sidiary, Sand­fire Resources, had made ille­gal con­tri­bu­tions to com­mit­tees oppos­ing the bal­lot mea­sure, Mon­tana I‑186, which would have cre­at­ed new require­ments for hard-rock mine per­mits based on water stan­dards. The mea­sure was defeat­ed.

    But Robert K. Kel­ner, who chairs Cov­ing­ton & Burling’s Elec­tion and Polit­i­cal Law Prac­tice Group, said the deci­sion was in line with statu­to­ry law as well as pri­or deter­mi­na­tions by the FEC.

    “I think most mem­bers of the elec­tion bar have assumed that the for­eign nation­al con­tri­bu­tion ban would not apply to bal­lot mea­sure com­mit­tees, and that’s because the ban on its face real­ly only applies to can­di­date elec­tions,” he said.
    ...

    And that just leaves it up to the states. Sev­en states already have law ban­ning for­eign spend­ing on bal­lot mea­sures. 43 to go:

    ...
    The FEC’s deci­sion speaks only to fed­er­al rules about for­eign con­tri­bu­tions. Sev­en states have passed leg­is­la­tion designed to bar for­eign spend­ing on bal­lot mea­sures, accord­ing to the Cam­paign Legal Cen­ter.
    ...

    Keep in mind that the long-stand­ing Koch-backed scheme to trig­ger an Arti­cle V Con­sti­tu­tion­al Con­ven­tion does­n’t actu­al­ly rely on bal­lot ini­tia­tives. It’s the actions of state leg­is­la­tors that deter­mine whether or not that hap­pens. So at least that par­tic­u­lar night­mare sce­nario isn’t being facil­i­tat­ed by this reg­u­la­tion. Just state con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments can poten­tial­ly be pushed, or opposed with for­eign cor­po­rate donors. A large num­ber of less­er night­mares.

    But as the fol­low­ing Esquire piece from Char­lie Pierce from back in Jan­u­ary 2018 reminds us, there is plen­ty of chaos that can be foment­ed with state con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments alone. Chaos like amend­ments to split up Cal­i­for­nia into mul­ti­ple states, or an obscure 2018 pro­pos­al by a state leg­is­la­tor in Nebras­ka. A pro­pos­al to define a low pop­u­la­tion area in the west­ern part of the state, not exceed­ing 36 square miles, extra “sov­er­eign­ty” that would allow the area to become a tax-free dereg­u­lat­ed enti­ty set up for per­haps a 99-year char­ter, out­side the author­i­ty of the Nebras­ka state gov­ern­ment and local. In oth­er words, set up a mini-Kochis­tan. Fed­er­al law would still apply pre­sum­ably, but noth­ing else. As Schu­mach­er put it, “If I were a major busi­ness, I would not want Oma­ha or Lin­coln or Des Moines (Iowa) telling me what to do”. State-lev­el char­ter cities for Nebras­ka. That was the idea. And had Paul Schu­macher’s pro­posed leg­is­la­tion passed the Nebras­ka state leg­is­la­ture, it would have been up for a pop­u­lar vote.

    As Pierce points out, this scheme is high­ly in line with the broad­er Koch Arti­cle V Con­sti­tu­tion­al Con­ven­tion agen­da. An agen­da of per­ma­nent­ly secur­ing cor­po­rate priv­i­leges in the con­sti­tu­tion­al law. Yes, the fed­er­al con­sti­tu­tion is the big prize. But state con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments are the oth­er side of the coin:

    Esquire

    Why Do the Koch Broth­ers Want a Con­ven­tion of States?

    We should’ve learned by now that talk of seces­sion and the 10th amend­ment do not end well.

    By Charles P. Pierce
    Jan 8, 2018

    It was only a small item in The Lin­coln Jour­nal-Star. It con­cerned an idea hatched by a Nebras­ka state sen­a­tor named Paul Schu­mach­er, who rep­re­sents a dis­trict in what Nebraskans call the Uni­cam­er­al in and around the city of Colum­bus, the coun­ty seat of Plat­te Coun­ty. Some­where north of 32,000 peo­ple live in Plat­te Coun­ty, and about 95 per­cent of them are white. Any­way, if you fol­low it close­ly, Schumacher’s notion winds upward through the lev­els of our pol­i­tics. Ulti­mate­ly, it leads to a per­ilous place, and our arrival there as a self-gov­ern­ing repub­lic is per­ilous­ly immi­nent.

    In brief, Schu­mach­er is propos­ing that the Nebras­ka con­sti­tu­tion be amend­ed to grant “sov­er­eign­ty” to thin­ly set­tled areas in the west­ern part of the state. This would allow the area to become a tax-free, dereg­u­lat­ed enti­ty in the hopes of lur­ing indus­try and oth­er forms of eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment.

    That could tempt major enter­pris­es that might be attract­ed by the prospect of no city or state tax­es and no local or state reg­u­la­tions, Schu­mach­er said. A major glob­al com­pa­ny or coali­tion could have their own devel­op­ment in the cen­ter of the coun­try,” he said. “If I were a major busi­ness, I would not want Oma­ha or Lin­coln or Des Moines (Iowa) telling me what to do,” he said…“We’re talk­ing about Nebraska’s future,” he said. “To build out here, you do not have to tear down some­thing. And prop­er­ty is the ulti­mate eco­nom­ic tool.” This presents an oppor­tu­ni­ty, he said, to essen­tial­ly “have your own state.“And, Schu­mach­er said, “nobody else has done it.”

    This is not a unique idea. After all, this is an age in which, with the encour­age­ment of too many politi­cians and too many peo­ple whose wealth insu­lates them from all con­se­quence, the cen­trifu­gal forces built into our con­sti­tu­tion­al order and our nation­al iden­ti­ty have been thrown dan­ger­ous­ly out of bal­ance, and Schumacher’s idea has been pro­posed, in one form or anoth­er, in a num­ber of states.

    In Octo­ber, the idea of Cal­i­for­nia seced­ing from the Union was broached. Since it became a state in 1850, there have been over 200 pro­pos­als to break up Cal­i­for­nia into sev­er­al states and, since 1941, there’s been an idea per­co­lat­ing in the Pacif­ic North­west to carve out por­tions of north­ern Cal­i­for­nia and south­ern Ore­gon to cre­ate a state called Jef­fer­son. In 2013, a ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist named Tim Drap­er spent $5 mil­lion in a failed attempt to put on the bal­lot a mea­sure that would have split Cal­i­for­nia into six dif­fer­ent states, includ­ing one called Sil­i­con Val­ley, the flag of which would depict a pock­et pro­tec­tor, I guess. Draper’s pro­pos­al did not gath­er the required num­ber of valid sig­na­tures to be put on the bal­lot. At the moment, Drap­er is pro­mot­ing a new ref­er­en­dum on the pos­si­bil­i­ty of divid­ing Cal­i­for­nia into three states.

    One of the main crit­i­cisms of the Cal­i­for­nia plans was that they seemed to be designed rad­i­cal­ly to seg­re­gate wealthy areas from poor­er areas, and rur­al areas from them ol’ deb­bil cities. (There also are seri­ous con­sti­tu­tion­al ques­tions, as Vikram Amar points out.) This sounds a bit like what Schu­mach­er is up to when he talks about his dereg­u­lat­ed sov­er­eign area and how it’s for peo­ple who “don’t want Lin­coln, or Oma­ha, or Des Moines” telling them what to do. My guess is that, if Shumacher’s plan were to come to fruition, west­ern Nebras­ka soon would look like the blast­ed eco­log­i­cal hell­spout of north­ern Alber­ta, with a cou­ple of big-box dis­tri­b­u­tion cen­ters and a wage scale a lit­tle north of that of Viet­nam. But that’s because I am cyn­i­cal of the essen­tial patri­o­tism of Amer­i­can cor­po­ra­tions.

    But the larg­er dan­ger is that the idea of dis­union, with­in states and gen­er­al­ly through­out the coun­try, has now become not only a viable top­ic of polit­i­cal dis­cus­sion, but also a viable polit­i­cal strat­e­gy. The whole blue-red thing used to be an easy way to dis­tin­guish on tele­vi­sion which geo­graph­i­cal area vot­ed for what can­di­date. Then, it became short­hand for all man­ner of polit­i­cal dif­fer­ences. It was inex­act and shal­low, but inex­act and shal­low peo­ple found it con­ve­nient, so every­body went along with it. Now, though, those divi­sions are dri­ving pol­i­cy in a way that they rarely have in the past, and when they have, the poli­cies gen­er­al­ly result­ed in ghast­ly con­se­quences.

    For exam­ple, the por­tion of the recent­ly passed tax bill involv­ing the deduc­tion of state and local tax­es is direct­ly aimed at the (large­ly blue) states that are will­ing to pay for a cer­tain qual­i­ty of life for their cit­i­zens through local tax­es. Basi­cal­ly, Mass­a­chu­setts is being penal­ized for decid­ing not to be Mis­sis­sip­pi. The same dynam­ic is at work with Jef­fer­son Beau­re­gard Ses­sions III and his new­ly announced war on decrim­i­nal­ized mar­i­jua­na, in which Col­orado is being penal­ized for not being Alaba­ma. This lat­ter instance has the added pow­er of fed­er­al law enforce­ment behind it, which (the­o­ret­i­cal­ly) puts politi­cians like Col­orado Gov­er­nor John Hick­en­loop­er and Mass­a­chu­setts Attor­ney Gen­er­al Mau­ra Healey at risk. But the use of dis­union as a polit­i­cal tool is exem­pli­fied best by the cam­paign to call a con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion of the states under Arti­cle V of the present Con­sti­tu­tion.

    Right now, the peo­ple push­ing the convention—and we’ll get to them in a minute—have com­mit­ments from 28 state leg­is­la­tures. They need 34 to trig­ger the Constitution’s pro­vi­sion for a “con­ven­tion of the states.” Four states are on the verge of vot­ing on the issue now: South Car­oli­na, Ken­tucky, Mon­tana, and Ida­ho. (South Car­oli­na has an unfor­tu­nate his­to­ry with the con­se­quences of dis­union as a polit­i­cal tac­tic, which it appar­ent­ly has been encour­aged to for­get.) If the con­ven­tion is called, the dis­union that has become a faith in some con­ser­v­a­tive quar­ters will run amok. Eco­nom­ic oli­garchy will be estab­lished in law, and any polit­i­cal check on the pow­ers of busi­ness like­ly will be evis­cer­at­ed.

    As to the for­mer, the Koch Broth­ers and oth­er aspir­ing oli­garchs are the mon­ey behind the move­ment toward a con­ven­tion. As to the lat­ter, the whole thing is being sold under the cam­ou­flage of a desire to enact a Bal­anced Bud­get Amend­ment to the Constitution—aka The Worst Idea In Amer­i­can Pol­i­tics. But even the late Antonin Scalia admit­ted that a con­ven­tion so called can­not be lim­it­ed to one top­ic, and, any­way, a vis­it to the web­site of Con­ven­tion of the States Project, one of the most promi­nent orga­ni­za­tions in favor of the con­ven­tion, reveals that the con­ven­tion is a device for pro­found polit­i­cal sab­o­tage.

    I sup­port the Con­ven­tion of States Project; a nation­al effort to call a con­ven­tion under Arti­cle V of the Unit­ed States Con­sti­tu­tion, restrict­ed to propos­ing amend­ments that will impose fis­cal restraints on the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, lim­it its pow­er and juris­dic­tion, and impose term lim­its on its offi­cials and mem­bers of Con­gress.

    In oth­er words, the con­ven­tion would be “restrict­ed” to rad­i­cal Tenth Amend­ment solu­tions that vir­tu­al­ly would elim­i­nate the gen­er­al government’s abil­i­ty to con­trol any pri­vate enter­prise. Dis­union would be tri­umphant. The final vic­to­ry of move­ment con­ser­vatism would be a return to Gild­ed Age eco­nom­ics tied to a reboot­ed Con­fed­er­ate States of Amer­i­ca.

    ...

    ———-

    “Why Do the Koch Broth­ers Want a Con­ven­tion of States?” by Charles P. Pierce; Esquire; 01/08/2018

    But the larg­er dan­ger is that the idea of dis­union, with­in states and gen­er­al­ly through­out the coun­try, has now become not only a viable top­ic of polit­i­cal dis­cus­sion, but also a viable polit­i­cal strat­e­gy. The whole blue-red thing used to be an easy way to dis­tin­guish on tele­vi­sion which geo­graph­i­cal area vot­ed for what can­di­date. Then, it became short­hand for all man­ner of polit­i­cal dif­fer­ences. It was inex­act and shal­low, but inex­act and shal­low peo­ple found it con­ve­nient, so every­body went along with it. Now, though, those divi­sions are dri­ving pol­i­cy in a way that they rarely have in the past, and when they have, the poli­cies gen­er­al­ly result­ed in ghast­ly con­se­quences.”

    Dis­union is a viable polit­i­cal strat­e­gy. That was obvi­ous­ly the case in Jan­u­ary 2018 when Char­lie Pierce made that obser­va­tion. Three years before the GOP embraced the pol­i­tics of insur­rec­tion. This is 2021. Polit­i­cal dis­uni­ty isn’t just viable. It’s the GOP’s core mes­sage and strat­e­gy at this point. The decades-long Koch-backed project to over­haul the US con­sti­tu­tion is com­ing to fruition at time when a deep and grow­ing sense of dis­uni­ty is the GOP’s uni­fy­ing core belief. That and tax cuts for the rich and dereg­u­la­tions. The stars keep align­ing for the Kochto­pus and its fas­cist fel­low trav­el­ers. And if any of those fas­cist fel­low trav­el­ers hap­pen to be for­eign, even they will be poten­tial­ly invit­ed to par­tic­i­pate in any sorts of future state-lev­el con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments. Like the pro­posed inde­pen­dent “sov­er­eign” ter­ri­to­ry a law­mak­er want­ed to carve out of west­ern Nebras­ka. What are the odds the Koch net­work won’t be cham­pi­oning sim­i­lar schemes in states across the US in the future. In oth­er words, whether or not Schu­mach­er was con­scious­ly act­ing as an agent of the Koch net­work when he float­ed this idea, he was effec­tive­ly act­ing as a Koch agent float­ing a Koch tri­al bal­loon. Because he’s sov­er­eign ter­ri­to­ry scheme is about as Koch-ish an idea as we’re going to find:

    ...
    In brief, Schu­mach­er is propos­ing that the Nebras­ka con­sti­tu­tion be amend­ed to grant “sov­er­eign­ty” to thin­ly set­tled areas in the west­ern part of the state. This would allow the area to become a tax-free, dereg­u­lat­ed enti­ty in the hopes of lur­ing indus­try and oth­er forms of eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment.

    That could tempt major enter­pris­es that might be attract­ed by the prospect of no city or state tax­es and no local or state reg­u­la­tions, Schu­mach­er said. A major glob­al com­pa­ny or coali­tion could have their own devel­op­ment in the cen­ter of the coun­try,” he said. “If I were a major busi­ness, I would not want Oma­ha or Lin­coln or Des Moines (Iowa) telling me what to do,” he said…“We’re talk­ing about Nebraska’s future,” he said. “To build out here, you do not have to tear down some­thing. And prop­er­ty is the ulti­mate eco­nom­ic tool.” This presents an oppor­tu­ni­ty, he said, to essen­tial­ly “have your own state.“And, Schu­mach­er said, “nobody else has done it.”

    This is not a unique idea. After all, this is an age in which, with the encour­age­ment of too many politi­cians and too many peo­ple whose wealth insu­lates them from all con­se­quence, the cen­trifu­gal forces built into our con­sti­tu­tion­al order and our nation­al iden­ti­ty have been thrown dan­ger­ous­ly out of bal­ance, and Schumacher’s idea has been pro­posed, in one form or anoth­er, in a num­ber of states.
    ...

    And as the orig­i­nal Lin­coln Jour­nal Star piece about Schu­macher’s plan describes, the pro­posed con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment would grant the state leg­is­la­ture the right to del­e­gate sov­er­eign­ty for up to 99-years. Who does it del­e­gate it to? That remains unclear. What is clear is that the area is out of the reach of demo­c­ra­t­ic state and local author­i­ty for the next cen­tu­ry. That was the plan. And has Nebraska’s leg­is­la­ture passed it, it would have been up for a vote. A pop­u­lar votes open to for­eign cor­po­rate mon­ey as we just had con­firmed by the FEC:

    Lin­coln Jour­nal Star

    Sen­a­tor pro­pos­es sov­er­eign­ty as a way to eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment

    DON WALTON
    Updat­ed Oct 11, 2018

    Sen. Paul Schu­mach­er of Colum­bus on Thurs­day intro­duced an imag­i­na­tive, out-of-the box leg­isla­tive pro­pos­al designed to attempt to spur major eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment in west­ern Nebras­ka.

    Schu­macher’s res­o­lu­tion (LR269CA) pro­pos­es a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment that would allow the Leg­is­la­ture to del­e­gate com­plete or par­tial sov­er­eign­ty over a des­ig­nat­ed, lim­it­ed and sparse­ly-set­tled area of the state for not to exceed 99 years.

    That could tempt major enter­pris­es that might be attract­ed by the prospect of no city or state tax­es and no local or state reg­u­la­tions, Schu­mach­er said.

    “A major glob­al com­pa­ny or coali­tion could have their own devel­op­ment in the cen­ter of the coun­try,” he said.

    “If I were a major busi­ness, I would not want Oma­ha or Lin­coln or Des Moines (Iowa) telling me what to do,” he said.

    Eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties in Nebras­ka out­side of Oma­ha and Lin­coln have become lim­it­ed, Schu­mach­er said, espe­cial­ly in small­er towns and sparse­ly-set­tled coun­ties that are expe­ri­enc­ing pop­u­la­tion and eco­nom­ic decline.

    His pro­pos­al would con­fine the grant of sov­er­eign­ty to one area of the state not to exceed 36 square miles in area and a pop­u­la­tion den­si­ty of 10 per­sons per square mile.

    Schu­mach­er sees pos­si­bil­i­ties in west­ern Nebras­ka, where there are near­by rail lines, trans­mis­sion lines, fiber-optic cable con­nec­tions, recre­ation sites and an array of trans­porta­tion options.

    “We’re talk­ing about Nebraska’s future,” he said.

    ...

    This presents an oppor­tu­ni­ty, he said, to essen­tial­ly “have your own state.”

    And, Schu­mach­er said, “nobody else has done it.”

    If the Leg­is­la­ture approves the res­o­lu­tion, vot­ers would decide whether to adopt the con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment.

    ———-

    “Sen­a­tor pro­pos­es sov­er­eign­ty as a way to eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment” by DON WALTON; Lin­coln Jour­nal Star; 10/11/2018

    “If the Leg­is­la­ture approves the res­o­lu­tion, vot­ers would decide whether to adopt the con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment.”

    It’s dis­turb­ing to pon­der just how pop­u­lar this idea would be today if put up to a vote. Grant­i­ng the leg­is­la­ture the right to grant 36-square mile 99-year leas­es in remote­ly pop­u­lat­ed areas that would be exempt from local or state reg­u­la­tions. As Schu­mach­er put it, it would be an oppor­tu­ni­ty to essen­tial­ly “have your own state”:

    ...
    Schu­macher’s res­o­lu­tion (LR269CA) pro­pos­es a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment that would allow the Leg­is­la­ture to del­e­gate com­plete or par­tial sov­er­eign­ty over a des­ig­nat­ed, lim­it­ed and sparse­ly-set­tled area of the state for not to exceed 99 years.

    That could tempt major enter­pris­es that might be attract­ed by the prospect of no city or state tax­es and no local or state reg­u­la­tions, Schu­mach­er said.

    ...

    His pro­pos­al would con­fine the grant of sov­er­eign­ty to one area of the state not to exceed 36 square miles in area and a pop­u­la­tion den­si­ty of 10 per­sons per square mile.

    ...

    This presents an oppor­tu­ni­ty, he said, to essen­tial­ly “have your own state.”
    ...

    Keep in mind that if the area is lim­it­ed to 36 square miles, and a pop­u­la­tion den­si­ty of up to 10 per­sons per square mile, that’s an area with up to 360 peo­ple. Why is that rel­e­vant? Because when Schu­mach­er dan­gles the allure of hav­ing “your own state”, he con­ve­nient­ly leaves out who “your” indi­vid­u­als would be in this equa­tion. Would it be those 360 peo­ple liv­ing in this sparse­ly pop­u­lat­ed area mak­ing up the rules for the next 99 years? It does­n’t sound like it. Instead, the pro­pos­al would give the leg­is­la­ture the pow­er to del­e­gate that sov­er­eign­ty. That sounds exact­ly like a char­ter city. So it’s what­ev­er enti­ty that sov­er­eign­ty is del­e­gat­ed to who would get to have their own state.

    And while this scheme nev­er came to fruition, don’t expect this to be the last time we hear about some­thing like that. Again, whether or not Schu­mach­er pro­posed this as part of a Koch-backed ini­tia­tive, it’s about the most Koch-ish thing a state sen­a­tor can do. It’s an idea that’s bound to pop up over and over.

    So while the FEC rul­ings impli­ca­tions on for­eign cor­po­rate spend­ing flood­ing into bal­lot ini­tia­tives is cer­tain­ly quite dis­turb­ing, it’s the poten­tial impli­ca­tions for future state con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments that present per­haps the most alarm­ing aspect of this sto­ry. For­eign cor­po­rate mon­ey can help finance the Koch net­work’s already well-financed end­less dri­ve to gut and cap­ture the US constitution(s). Would any for­eign cor­po­ra­tions like to have access to 99-year char­ter city oper­a­tions in the US? Hmmm...

    On the plus side, thanks to the US’s absurd dark mon­ey sys­tem and the proven abil­i­ty of for­eign cor­po­ra­tions to eas­i­ly side-step elec­tion dis­clo­sure rules and secret­ly par­tic­i­pate in US elec­tion bat­tles any­way, it prob­a­bly does­n’t actu­al­ly mat­ter if the FEC is grant­i­ng for­eign cor­po­ra­tions the right to par­tic­i­pate in US cam­paigns. It’s not actu­al­ly a plus side, but a reminder that things are already so bad in the US’s cam­paign finance sys­tem that it’s unclear if things real­ly can get worse. This is what a reg­u­la­to­ry rock bot­tom looks like. Almost. A few more amend­ments and we’ll get there.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | November 7, 2021, 10:55 pm
  26. Remem­ber the warped, troll­ish response Donor’s Trust gave us when peo­ple start­ed ask­ing ques­tions about its $1.9 mil­lion dona­tion to VDARE in 2019 that was appar­ent­ly used to build a his­toric cas­tle in West Vir­ginia near DC. We have a troll­ish set of updates for all the 2020 white nation­al­ist dona­tions:

    First, recall how, after its 2019 tax doc­u­ments were pub­lished and the VDARE dona­tions exposed exposed fol­low­ing an IRS request by the Cen­ter for Media and Democ­ra­cy, Donors Trust pres­i­dent and CEO, Law­son Bad­er appeared to take offense to the fact that Donors Trust’s dona­tions were revealed at all in response to direct ques­tions about the VDARE dona­tions. And then he cit­ed the 1958 Supreme Court court case, NAACP v. Alaba­ma. It was quite the troll­ish deflec­tion. As we’ll recall, that case was one of the ear­li­er Supreme Court rul­ings that, tak­en togeth­er, cre­at­ed the col­lec­tions of rules and loop­holes that allowed for near­ly unlim­it­ed anony­mous Dark Mon­ey polit­i­cal spend­ing in the US before Cit­i­zens Unit­ed for­mal­ized it in 2010. And NAACP v. Alaba­ma was a case that cen­tered on the ques­tion of whether the iden­ti­ties of peo­ple who donat­ed to the NAACP would be pro­tect­ed due giv­en the obvi­ous neg­a­tive reper­cus­sions that reveal­ing their iden­ti­ty could have and how that all plays into the idea of what is tru­ly pro­tect­ing ‘free speech’. So one of the most wealthy and pow­er­ful polit­i­cal net­work in the world was asked about its recent dona­tions to mul­ti­ple over­ly white nation­al­ist orga­ni­za­tions and in defense they cit­ed a Supreme Court case about pro­tect­ing the rights of oppressed Black NAACP polit­i­cal donors. Total trolling.

    Well, the Donors Trust 2020 IRS report just got pub­lished and more dona­tions that seem to fall under the ‘white nation­al­ist or extrem­ist’ cat­e­go­ry has already been flagged. Rough­ly $2 mil­lion, although only $70,000 went to VDARE. The group does­n’t appear to be get­ting anoth­er GOP mega-donor sug­ar dad­dy cas­tle yet. But, these flagged dona­tions brought the ques­tion up again and the group was forced to answer more ques­tions. Troll­ish­ly answer again. Law­son Bad­er pro­vid­ed a state­ment tout­ing the fund’s finan­cial suc­cess, claim­ing the orga­ni­za­tions they sup­port are “wor­thy caus­es” and that the dona­tions “serve the pub­lic good.”

    Bad­er told reporters, “2020 was a year of great uncer­tain­ty and change. Despite this, donors stepped up to sup­port pub­lic char­i­ties, espe­cial­ly those embroiled in alle­vi­at­ing and address­ing the vast eco­nom­ic and health chal­lenges fac­ing the coun­try,” the state­ment said. “Many account hold­ers held ‘rainy day’ char­i­ta­ble funds in their respec­tive accounts, which made it pos­si­ble for many to extend their gen­eros­i­ty and serves as a reminder about the essen­tial nature of donor-advised fund providers dur­ing times of cri­sis.” Bad­er state­ment went on to say the $186 mil­lion dis­trib­uted last year was “to serve the pub­lic good.” He claimed the group has, since its 2001 incep­tion, “dis­trib­uted more than $1.5 bil­lion to thou­sands of wor­thy caus­es and insti­tu­tions focused on sci­ence, med­i­cine, reli­gion, pub­lic pol­i­cy, the arts, civics and health.”

    A pub­lic rela­tions firm gave a slight­ly more defen­sive answer in response to ques­tions about extrem­ist dona­tions, telling reporters that Donor’s Trust exists to give legit­i­mate groups “a seat at the table” and “not to advance any cause,” includ­ing “those they may dis­agree with.”

    So that’s are the offi­cial Donors Trust answer to the ques­tions about the rough­ly $2 mil­lion in white nation­al­ist 2020 dona­tions: the group serves the good while also exist­ing to give legit­i­mate groups a seat at the table that they may or may not agree with. So the white nation­al­ist recip­i­ents were just legit­i­mate groups who deserve a seat at the table. That’s the answer Donors Trust is giv­ing. For 2020 (And the fore­see­able future if we’re hon­est with our­selves):

    The Dai­ly Beast

    The GOP Dark Mon­ey Group Giv­ing Big to White Suprema­cists
    Unwor­thy Caus­es

    Donors Trust raised $360 mil­lion last year. They’ve been spread­ing around that mon­ey to white suprema­cist orga­ni­za­tions, Jan. 6 orga­niz­ers, con­ser­v­a­tive caus­es, and uni­ver­si­ties.

    Roger Sol­len­berg­er
    Polit­i­cal Reporter
    Updat­ed Nov. 22, 2021 10:30AM ET
    Pub­lished Nov. 21, 2021 4:52AM ET

    Efforts to over­turn the elec­tion. Jan. 6 orga­niz­ers. White suprema­cist groups. And more than a dozen pri­vate and pub­lic uni­ver­si­ties.

    They all have one thing in com­mon: They received anony­mous fund­ing fun­neled through a sin­gle con­ser­v­a­tive dark mon­ey behe­moth.

    That’s the news in the lat­est IRS fil­ing from Donors Trust—a con­ser­v­a­tive, Koch-aligned non­prof­it which does not need to reveal the names of its donors and has been called the “dark mon­ey ATM of the right.”

    The dis­clo­sure, first obtained by CNBC, shows the group chan­neled major sup­port for enti­ties which fought to over­turn Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s 2020 vic­to­ry and orga­nized the Jan. 6 ral­lies in Wash­ing­ton, D.C.

    Donors Trust also gave more than $2 mil­lion to groups linked to white suprema­cists, includ­ing the VDARE Foun­da­tion.

    Norm Eisen, a gov­ern­ment ethics expert and senior fel­low at the Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion, ana­lyzed the fil­ing with col­leagues and remarked that it was “pro­found­ly con­cern­ing for the future of our democ­ra­cy.”

    “The Donors Trust is tak­ing advan­tage of the dan­ger­ous opac­i­ty of our tax and relat­ed laws and reg­u­la­tions to fund alleged white suprema­cist and white nation­al­ist asso­ci­at­ed groups, those who were bad actors in wrong­ly attempt­ing to spread mis­in­for­ma­tion about or over­turn the legit­i­mate 2020 elec­tion results, and even groups that were respon­si­ble for the ral­ly that helped trig­ger the Jan. 6 insur­rec­tion,” he told The Dai­ly Beast.

    But the same vehi­cle that qui­et­ly fuels white suprema­cist rhetoric also fanned mon­ey out to major edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions, includ­ing state pub­lic schools like the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas, Vir­ginia Tech, Michi­gan State Uni­ver­si­ty, and Flori­da State Uni­ver­si­ty. Lead­ing pri­vate col­leges like George­town, Van­der­bilt, and a con­ser­v­a­tive think tank head­quar­tered at Brown Uni­ver­si­ty also drew anony­mous sup­port.

    At the same time, the fund shipped mil­lions of dol­lars to right-wing orga­ni­za­tions agi­tat­ing for edu­ca­tion reform, includ­ing to groups push­ing unfound­ed fears about crit­i­cal race the­o­ry.

    The Donors Trust pri­mar­i­ly funds right-lean­ing, lib­er­tar­i­an, and free-mar­ket advo­cates. It describes itself as “a char­i­ta­ble sav­ings account”—a go-between that allows wealthy donors to deposit mon­ey in lump sums, where it gets invest­ed at tax-free growth. They can lat­er direct con­tri­bu­tions at any time while remain­ing anony­mous.

    These donor-advised funds are com­mon across the ide­o­log­i­cal spec­trum, and “act as a clear­ing­house of donat­ed mon­ey,” accord­ing to Phil Hack­ney, a non­prof­it law expert at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Pitts­burgh School of Law.

    “Donors can con­tribute to these orga­ni­za­tions and take a char­i­ta­ble deduc­tion, and they let the group hold the mon­ey, invest it, and then con­tribute to oth­er char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tions when the donor advis­es them to do so,” Hack­ney explained.

    ...

    Donors Trust post­ed record num­bers in 2020. The group, which has hauled in more than $1 bil­lion since 2016, raised more than $360 mil­lion last year, while spread­ing around $182 mil­lion across 339 orga­ni­za­tions. Donors Trust itself held on to about $174 mil­lion in con­tri­bu­tions, bring­ing its total assets to $607 mil­lion.

    While the group’s 501©3 tax sta­tus affords anonymi­ty, report­ing has iden­ti­fied sev­er­al major con­ser­v­a­tive back­ers over the years, like the Koch and Bradley fam­i­lies. The biggest sin­gle donor this year con­tributed $158 mil­lion, and eight indi­vid­u­als account­ed for $270 mil­lion in donations—75 per­cent of the total.

    Asked about the mon­ey raised for white suprema­cist and anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic groups, Donors Trust pres­i­dent and CEO Law­son Bad­er pro­vid­ed a state­ment tout­ing the fund’s finan­cial suc­cess, claim­ing the orga­ni­za­tions they sup­port are “wor­thy caus­es” and that the dona­tions “serve the pub­lic good.”

    “2020 was a year of great uncer­tain­ty and change. Despite this, donors stepped up to sup­port pub­lic char­i­ties, espe­cial­ly those embroiled in alle­vi­at­ing and address­ing the vast eco­nom­ic and health chal­lenges fac­ing the coun­try,” the state­ment said. “Many account hold­ers held ‘rainy day’ char­i­ta­ble funds in their respec­tive accounts, which made it pos­si­ble for many to extend their gen­eros­i­ty and serves as a reminder about the essen­tial nature of donor-advised fund providers dur­ing times of cri­sis.”

    Bad­er, who pulled a $390,000 salary in 2020, said the $186 mil­lion dis­trib­uted last year was “to serve the pub­lic good.” He claimed the group has, since its 2001 incep­tion, “dis­trib­uted more than $1.5 bil­lion to thou­sands of wor­thy caus­es and insti­tu­tions focused on sci­ence, med­i­cine, reli­gion, pub­lic pol­i­cy, the arts, civics and health.”

    A rep­re­sen­ta­tive from a pub­lic rela­tions firm that serves the com­pa­ny told The Dai­ly Beast that the orga­ni­za­tion exists to give legit­i­mate groups “a seat at the table” and “not to advance any cause,” includ­ing “those they may dis­agree with.”

    But that appears to con­tra­dict with the mis­sion state­ment on the group’s IRS fil­ing, which states that its pur­pose is “to pro­mote lib­er­ty through lim­it­ed gov­ern­ment, per­son­al respon­si­bil­i­ty, and free enter­prise by pro­vid­ing finan­cial sup­port to oth­er pub­licly sup­port­ed char­i­ties that share in its pur­pose.”

    It is unclear from Bader’s state­ment which goals the Donors Trust orga­ni­za­tion shares with some of its “wor­thy caus­es,” includ­ing groups that have been asso­ci­at­ed with white iden­ti­ty and white suprema­cist move­ments, like VDARE, Young Amer­i­cans for Lib­er­ty, and the New Cen­tu­ry Foun­da­tion.

    Accord­ing to the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter, VDARE, which received $70,000 last year and near­ly $2 mil­lion in 2019, “reg­u­lar­ly pub­lish­es arti­cles by white suprema­cists.” YAL, which received $1.3 mil­lion through Donors Trust in 2020, has been affil­i­at­ed with the white nation­al­ist and the neo-Nazi orga­ni­za­tion Iden­ti­ty Evropa. The group removed its pres­i­dent after mul­ti­ple women lev­eled alle­ga­tions of sex­u­al assault in Jan­u­ary. And anoth­er $600,000 went to the New Cen­tu­ry Foun­da­tion, which SPLC, the Anti-Defama­tion League, and aca­d­e­mics con­sid­er a white suprema­cist group.

    The Donor Trust’s self-described efforts to “serve the pub­lic good” includ­ed bankrolling an array of groups which chal­lenged the 2020 elec­tion and seed­ed unsub­stan­ti­at­ed claims of vot­er fraud. Those orga­ni­za­tions received near­ly $10 mil­lion in anony­mous cash last year, accord­ing to an analy­sis of the fil­ing.

    Two of those enti­ties played key roles in the events sur­round­ing Jan. 6. One of them, the Tea Par­ty Patri­ots, was list­ed as a ral­ly orga­niz­er and received $250,000. The sec­ond, Turn­ing Point—the right-wing youth group run by Char­lie Kirk—provided bus­es to D.C. and par­tic­i­pat­ed in the “March to Save Amer­i­ca” ahead of the event. Turn­ing Point groups took in a total $780,000 from trust con­tri­bu­tions in 2020.

    Arti­cles on the VDARE web­site also reject­ed Don­ald Trump’s loss and “cheered on” the riot­ers.

    The Cen­ter for Secu­ri­ty Pol­i­cy, a group found­ed by anti-Mus­lim activist and con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist Frank Gaffney—who also dis­put­ed the elec­tion results—received $1.1 mil­lion. After the riot, CSP told CNBC that Gaffney no longer ran the orga­ni­za­tion. But Gaffney also appears on the board of a Texas-based group called Propter Strate­gies, which was incor­po­rat­ed in June 2020 and raised $5 mil­lion last year through Donors Trust, split even­ly between Propter’s “Delta Project” and the “Inter­nal Secu­ri­ty Project.”

    While plen­ty of the dis­burse­ments went to tra­di­tion­al con­ser­v­a­tive groups, those groups have also increas­ing­ly been voy­ag­ing into far-right caus­es, like “elec­tion integri­ty.”

    Take, for exam­ple, Free­dom­Works, a group that col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Koch net­work to advance the astro­turf Tea Par­ty move­ment.

    But after the elec­tion, the non­prof­it Free­dom­Works report­ed­ly led protests against vot­er fraud. And in the wake of the Capi­tol riot, it part­nered with News­max on a Sun­day show called “Save Our Nation.” Free­dom­Works received rough­ly $1.1 mil­lion in Donor Trust mon­ey last year, includ­ing for the Keep Elec­tions Great Project and an ini­tia­tive iden­ti­fied on the IRS fil­ing as “Save Our Coun­try.”

    Addi­tion­al­ly, Free­dom­Works recent­ly hired attor­ney and con­ser­v­a­tive activist Cle­ta Mitchell, who lost her job at Foley Lard­ner after par­tic­i­pat­ing in Trump’s phone call to Geor­gia Sec­re­tary of State Brad Raf­fensperg­er. Mitchell also now serves on the board at the Con­ser­v­a­tive Part­ner­ship Insti­tute, a think tank which is also now push­ing ide­o­log­i­cal elec­tion reforms and took in more than half a mil­lion dol­lars through Donors Trust last year.

    Anoth­er tra­di­tion­al con­ser­v­a­tive cause—the Thomas More Soci­ety, which is a law firm that rou­tine­ly files suits on behalf of right-wing inter­ests, like abor­tion, gay mar­riage, and now, over­turn­ing the 2020 election—saw more than $2 mil­lion come its way through the dark mon­ey group.

    About $1 mil­lion of that mon­ey was ear­marked for the Amis­tad Project, an aggres­sive ini­tia­tive cre­at­ed in August 2020 which lit­i­gat­ed the elec­tion both before and after votes were cast, includ­ing chal­lenges in five states. Don­ald Trump’s for­mer elec­tion lawyer Jen­na Ellis served as the society’s spe­cial coun­sel at the time.

    And the Gov­ern­ment Account­abil­i­ty Insti­tute, a non­prof­it co-found­ed by Trump loy­al­ist Steve Ban­non and backed by right-wing bil­lion­aire financier Rebekah Mer­cer, raked in $1.6 mil­lion through the fund last year. The GAI has pushed vot­er fraud claims, includ­ing in a “flawed” 2017 report that has since been removed from the White House web­site.

    Still, these groups make up only a small slice of Donor Trust’s grants. The fund, which over the years has received major finan­cial sup­port from Repub­li­can megadonors, backs a panoply of influ­en­tial con­ser­v­a­tive think tanks, non­prof­its, and activists.

    A num­ber of uni­ver­si­ties, which accept anony­mous direct dona­tions, also draw sup­port through the backchan­nel. The top recip­i­ent last year was George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty, a pub­lic insti­tu­tion in Vir­ginia and home to the con­ser­v­a­tive Mer­ca­tus think tank and Antonin Scalia School of Law. GMU pock­et­ed sev­er­al mil­lion dol­lars in anony­mous gifts, and it is unclear whether any donors have inde­pen­dent­ly revealed them­selves to the school.

    “We need a tax and legal sys­tem that pre­vents these kinds of abus­es of secre­cy to under­mine democ­ra­cy,” Eisen said. “If we had a prop­er set of rules that applied to every­one, then the hid­den donors, who­ev­er they may be, would prob­a­bly be ashamed to be asso­ci­at­ed with orga­ni­za­tions that engage in this kind of activ­i­ty. In the absence of those across-the-board fair and rea­son­able prin­ci­ples, we can’t ben­e­fit from the famous Bran­deis max­im that ‘sun­light is said to be the best of dis­in­fec­tants.’”

    The Donors Trust pub­lic rela­tions rep­re­sen­ta­tive also point­ed out that the group only funds “legit” orga­ni­za­tions, who have the bless­ing of the IRS. But last year, Donors Trust gave $1.4 mil­lion to Fair Lines Amer­i­ca, a group that was tar­get­ed in a watch­dog com­plaint that July for mis­lead­ing the IRS about $225,000 in 2018 rev­enue from Donors Trust.

    Still, Donors Trust con­trib­u­tors sup­port a num­ber of small­er and apo­lit­i­cal groups as well. For instance, last year the fund raised $25,100 for the Spe­cial Olympics, and $15,000 for the Insti­tute for the Study of Mon­go­lian Dinosaurs.

    —Updat­ed at 10:30 a.m., 11/22/2021, to clar­i­fy that Free­dom­Works has not direct­ly received mon­e­tary dona­tions from Koch groups

    ———–

    “The GOP Dark Mon­ey Group Giv­ing Big to White Suprema­cists” by Roger Sol­len­berg­er; The Dai­ly Beast; 11/21/2021

    “The Donors Trust pri­mar­i­ly funds right-lean­ing, lib­er­tar­i­an, and free-mar­ket advo­cates. It describes itself as “a char­i­ta­ble sav­ings account”—a go-between that allows wealthy donors to deposit mon­ey in lump sums, where it gets invest­ed at tax-free growth. They can lat­er direct con­tri­bu­tions at any time while remain­ing anony­mous.

    It’s a tax-shel­tered dark-mon­ey machine. First you make an anony­mous dona­tion. Then you let the dona­tion invest­ments grow. Then you anony­mous­ly direct a dona­tion with your invest­ments. It’s all ‘char­i­ty’. And that 501©3 trust fund end­ed the year with over $600 mil­lion in assets. It’s an ever grow­ing tax-shel­tered dark-mon­ey machine:

    ...
    The dis­clo­sure, first obtained by CNBC, shows the group chan­neled major sup­port for enti­ties which fought to over­turn Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s 2020 vic­to­ry and orga­nized the Jan. 6 ral­lies in Wash­ing­ton, D.C.

    ...

    Donors Trust post­ed record num­bers in 2020. The group, which has hauled in more than $1 bil­lion since 2016, raised more than $360 mil­lion last year, while spread­ing around $182 mil­lion across 339 orga­ni­za­tions. Donors Trust itself held on to about $174 mil­lion in con­tri­bu­tions, bring­ing its total assets to $607 mil­lion.
    ...

    And now how 75 per­cent of the total 2020 dona­tions — $270 mil­lion out of $360 mil­lion — was from just 8 donors and $158 mil­lion of that was a sin­gle donor. The mega-donors. Mega-mega-donors. And at least one mega-mega-mega donor:

    ...
    While the group’s 501©3 tax sta­tus affords anonymi­ty, report­ing has iden­ti­fied sev­er­al major con­ser­v­a­tive back­ers over the years, like the Koch and Bradley fam­i­lies. The biggest sin­gle donor this year con­tributed $158 mil­lion, and eight indi­vid­u­als account­ed for $270 mil­lion in donations—75 per­cent of the total.
    ...

    And then there’s the $2 mil­lion spent on white nation­al­ist caus­es. VDARE only got $70,000 in 2020, com­pared to the $1.9 mil­lion dona­tion to VDARE that was seem­ing­ly used to pur­chase a West Vir­ginia Cas­tle near DC, that was made in 2019. Per­haps for cas­tle-upkeep?

    And yet note how Donors Trust is not tak­ing a stance of pure polit­i­cal neu­tral­i­ty as its excuse for these dona­tions. When direct­ly asked about the dona­tions to open white suprema­cists and oth­er extreme groups, the group’s CEO claimed the group sup­port­ed “wor­thy caus­es” that “serv­er the pub­lic good”. A pub­lic rela­tions firm said the fun exists to give legit­i­mate groups “a seat at the table” and “not to advance any cause”. So Donors Trust is now just open­ly offer­ing a ‘seat at the table’ to groups like VDARE. This is going to be an open annu­al thing:

    ...
    Donors Trust also gave more than $2 mil­lion to groups linked to white suprema­cists, includ­ing the VDARE Foun­da­tion.

    ...

    Asked about the mon­ey raised for white suprema­cist and anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic groups, Donors Trust pres­i­dent and CEO Law­son Bad­er pro­vid­ed a state­ment tout­ing the fund’s finan­cial suc­cess, claim­ing the orga­ni­za­tions they sup­port are “wor­thy caus­es” and that the dona­tions “serve the pub­lic good.”

    “2020 was a year of great uncer­tain­ty and change. Despite this, donors stepped up to sup­port pub­lic char­i­ties, espe­cial­ly those embroiled in alle­vi­at­ing and address­ing the vast eco­nom­ic and health chal­lenges fac­ing the coun­try,” the state­ment said. “Many account hold­ers held ‘rainy day’ char­i­ta­ble funds in their respec­tive accounts, which made it pos­si­ble for many to extend their gen­eros­i­ty and serves as a reminder about the essen­tial nature of donor-advised fund providers dur­ing times of cri­sis.”

    Bad­er, who pulled a $390,000 salary in 2020, said the $186 mil­lion dis­trib­uted last year was “to serve the pub­lic good.” He claimed the group has, since its 2001 incep­tion, “dis­trib­uted more than $1.5 bil­lion to thou­sands of wor­thy caus­es and insti­tu­tions focused on sci­ence, med­i­cine, reli­gion, pub­lic pol­i­cy, the arts, civics and health.”

    A rep­re­sen­ta­tive from a pub­lic rela­tions firm that serves the com­pa­ny told The Dai­ly Beast that the orga­ni­za­tion exists to give legit­i­mate groups “a seat at the table” and “not to advance any cause,” includ­ing “those they may dis­agree with.”

    But that appears to con­tra­dict with the mis­sion state­ment on the group’s IRS fil­ing, which states that its pur­pose is “to pro­mote lib­er­ty through lim­it­ed gov­ern­ment, per­son­al respon­si­bil­i­ty, and free enter­prise by pro­vid­ing finan­cial sup­port to oth­er pub­licly sup­port­ed char­i­ties that share in its pur­pose.”

    It is unclear from Bader’s state­ment which goals the Donors Trust orga­ni­za­tion shares with some of its “wor­thy caus­es,” includ­ing groups that have been asso­ci­at­ed with white iden­ti­ty and white suprema­cist move­ments, like VDARE, Young Amer­i­cans for Lib­er­ty, and the New Cen­tu­ry Foun­da­tion.
    ...

    Then there’s Cle­ta Mitchell, the GOP lawyer who long worked with Hans von Spakovsky to devise the GOP’s vot­er sup­pres­sion strate­gies and the legal and polit­i­cal myths those strate­gies would require. Recall how Mitchell was instru­men­tal in orches­trat­ing much of the Trump White House­’s 2020 strate­giz­ing or how to stay in office through any means nec­es­sary. Also recall how Mitchell was the fea­tured speak­er at the Free­dom­Work­s’s Octo­ber 2020 Elec­tion Pro­tec­tion Sum­mit and was con­coct­ing legal strate­gies for states to inter­vene on Trump’s behalf fol­low­ing his loss. Mitchell real­ly is emblem­at­ic of how deeply the GOP estab­lish­ment was involved with both the prepa­ra­tions for Trump’s chal­lenge of the elec­tion results and the actu­al chal­lenge. She was instru­men­tal, and reward­ed with a cushy Free­dom­Works job. They must have loved her 2020 Elec­tion Pro­tec­tion Sum­mit speech:

    ...
    Take, for exam­ple, Free­dom­Works, a group that col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Koch net­work to advance the astro­turf Tea Par­ty move­ment.

    But after the elec­tion, the non­prof­it Free­dom­Works report­ed­ly led protests against vot­er fraud. And in the wake of the Capi­tol riot, it part­nered with News­max on a Sun­day show called “Save Our Nation.” Free­dom­Works received rough­ly $1.1 mil­lion in Donor Trust mon­ey last year, includ­ing for the Keep Elec­tions Great Project and an ini­tia­tive iden­ti­fied on the IRS fil­ing as “Save Our Coun­try.”

    Addi­tion­al­ly, Free­dom­Works recent­ly hired attor­ney and con­ser­v­a­tive activist Cle­ta Mitchell, who lost her job at Foley Lard­ner after par­tic­i­pat­ing in Trump’s phone call to Geor­gia Sec­re­tary of State Brad Raf­fensperg­er. Mitchell also now serves on the board at the Con­ser­v­a­tive Part­ner­ship Insti­tute, a think tank which is also now push­ing ide­o­log­i­cal elec­tion reforms and took in more than half a mil­lion dol­lars through Donors Trust last year.
    ...

    Final­ly, note how the Mer­cers are clear­ly still more than hap­py to throw mil­lions dol­lars at Steve Ban­non, with Ban­non’s Gov­ern­ment Account­abil­i­ty Insti­tute get­ting $1.6 mil­lion from Rebekah Mer­cer, which was used to push fraud­u­lent vot­er-fraud claims dur­ing the Trump admin­is­tra­tion:

    ...

    And the Gov­ern­ment Account­abil­i­ty Insti­tute, a non­prof­it co-found­ed by Trump loy­al­ist Steve Ban­non and backed by right-wing bil­lion­aire financier Rebekah Mer­cer, raked in $1.6 mil­lion through the fund last year. The GAI has pushed vot­er fraud claims, includ­ing in a “flawed” 2017 report that has since been removed from the White House web­site.
    ...

    The GOP estab­lish­ment almost could­n’t be more cul­pa­ble for Trump’s plan­ning and real attempt to steal an elec­tion. And that includes the GOP mega-donor estab­lish­ment. It’s just one of the tales told by the Donors Trust 2020 IRS report. Tales of insur­rec­tion, white nation­al­ism, and pay­ing off elite grifters like Cle­ta Mitchell. All legit­i­mate and in keep­ing with the pub­lic good, appar­ent­ly.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | December 8, 2021, 3:47 am
  27. Here’s a sto­ry about a lit­tle-known area of dark mon­ey abuse that has unfor­tu­nate­ly become a lot more top­i­cal in the era of the far right Supreme Court: It turns out you can use dark mon­ey to hire groups to sub­mit ‘friends of the court’ ami­cus briefs and cre­ate a legal echo cham­ber that can’t be traced back to your side of the case. Like even the courts don’t know you paid for it. Because the dis­clo­sure rules only require that you dis­close who paid for the actu­al prepa­ra­tion of the fil­ing, which is a tech­ni­cal­i­ty that effec­tive­ly means you can shield who ulti­mate­ly paid for the ‘friend­ly’ efforts. A kind of judi­cial astro­turf­ing of the courts and not just the pub­lic.

    The most recent and promi­nent exam­ple of this came through an unex­pect­ed source: alleged Russ­ian hack­ers asso­ci­at­ed with the Evil Corp ran­somware group hit the Nation­al Rifle Asso­ci­a­tion (NRA) and leaked some doc­u­ments that includ­ed evi­dence of exact­ly this kind of judi­cial astro­turf­ing. That case before the Supreme Court, New York State Rifle & Pis­tol Asso­ci­a­tion Inc. (NYSRPA) v. Bru­en, could rad­i­cal­ly expand the scope of the Sec­ond Amend­ment and deeply cur­tail the free­dom of states to reg­u­late firearms. And based on the com­ments the con­ser­v­a­tive jus­tices gave dur­ing last mon­th’s hear­ing, the con­ser­v­a­tive major­i­ty appears ready to rule in favor of the plain­tiffs and expand­ing the Sec­ond Amend­ment. So this case that involve exten­sive astro­turf­ing — at least 100 Koch fund­ed dark-mon­ey groups filed briefs in favor of the plain­tiffs — is poised for pas­sage in the new­ly far right Supreme Court.

    The hack­ers leaked doc­u­ments indi­cat­ing the NRA spent $500,000 for the ser­vices of David Kopel, of the Den­ver-base lib­er­tar­i­an think tank The Inde­pen­dence Insti­tute, who filed an ami­cus along with two oth­er lawyers in July of this year in sup­port of the plain­tiffs in the case. The con­tract rep­re­sent­ed just one of the dozens of astro­turfed ami­cus fil­ings filed on behalf of the plain­tiffs. That’s part of the sig­nif­i­cance of the sto­ry. That $500,000 con­tract was just one cog in a vast Koch-financed net­work of oper­a­tives that com­prise this for-hire judi­cial astro­turf­ing ser­vice.

    Now, should we sus­pect that all this astro­turf­ing actu­al­ly per­suad­ed any of the jus­tices one way or anoth­er on the case? It’s hard to imag­ine since so much of it was prob­a­bly rehash­ings of the same under­ly­ing argu­ments they heard. But the per­sua­sive pow­er of this form of astro­turf­ing isn’t real­ly all that rel­e­vant. It’s the cov­er that this astro­turf­ing pro­vides for bad rul­ings that don’t actu­al­ly have much pub­lic sup­port that’s the big prob­lem here. The NRA can just hire an army of legal advo­ca­cy-for-hire lawyers and cre­ate the pub­lic per­cep­tion of there being large num­bers of par­ties who share the NRA’s views. Look at all the sup­port the NRA has! One ‘friend’ after anoth­er! That’s what makes this kind of judi­cial astro­turf­ing so tox­ic in the era of the cor­rupt Koch-ed up far right Supreme Court.
    A Supreme Court era where spe­cial inter­est reigns supreme, but still needs a cov­er sto­ry:

    The Dai­ly Beast

    How Russ­ian Hack­ers Helped Expose the Right-Wing Dark Mon­ey Cor­rupt­ing Our Courts
    ‘INDEPENDENCE INSTITUTE’

    Paid-for ami­cus briefs are the tip of an ice­berg of wealthy right-wing donors pay­ing to secure in the fed­er­al judi­cia­ry rules they can­not accom­plish through demo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tions.

    Shel­don White­house
    Updat­ed Nov. 16, 2021 10:07AM ET / Pub­lished Nov. 16, 2021 4:46AM ET

    A piece of news that came out on the same day that the Supreme Court heard argu­ments in a case—at the cen­ter of what the NRA has blunt­ly termed the Repub­li­can jus­tices’ “project” to over­turn gun safe­ty— revealed how deep the rot goes.

    The news came from Russ­ian hack­ers on the dark web. Accord­ing to report­ing by The Trace, the hack­ers unearthed a doc­u­ment sug­gest­ing that the NRA paid a lawyer more than $500,000 to advo­cate on its behalf through “the Inde­pen­dence Insti­tute.” This includ­ed fil­ing pro-gun rights “friend of the court,” or ami­cus, briefs in Supreme Court cases—including the one heard ear­li­er this month—brought by the NRA’s New York affil­i­ate. None of these pay­ments were dis­closed to the court or the pub­lic. In essence, the NRA cloned itself to ampli­fy its voice before the court.

    The jus­tices say their rules guard against this kind of mis­chief, but this inci­dent is far from iso­lat­ed. As House Courts Sub­com­mit­tee Chair­man Hank John­son and I have point­ed out repeat­ed­ly, and as I recent­ly detailed for the Yale Law Jour­nal, the court’s rules only require the most imme­di­ate expens­es involved in pro­duc­ing an ami­cus brief to be disclosed—little more than the cost of print­ing the brief for sub­mis­sion. A dark-mon­ey group or big indus­try front, such as the NRA, can hide behind a cloak of anonymi­ty and mul­ti­ply its voice to the court many times over. In the court’s most recent deci­sion in favor of these dark-mon­ey groups, at least 100 Koch-fund­ed dark-mon­ey groups filed briefs sup­port­ing the plaintiff—a dark-mon­ey orga­ni­za­tion that is itself a major part of this Koch net­work.

    A prob­lem on their own, flotil­las of anony­mous ami­cus briefs are only eddies atop a much larg­er and more dan­ger­ous prob­lem beneath the water. Wealthy right-wing donors have for years fund­ed and coor­di­nat­ed a mas­sive dark-mon­ey oper­a­tion to secure through our fed­er­al judi­cia­ry what they can­not accom­plish through demo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tions. With the Fed­er­al­ist Society’s Leonard Leo at the heart of this oper­a­tion, they fun­neled over $400 mil­lion through a net­work of front groups to guide hand-picked judi­cial nom­i­nees onto the fed­er­al courts, includ­ing Jus­tices Neil Gor­such, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Bar­rett. (The NRA alone spent $1 mil­lion on ads sup­port­ing Kavanaugh’s con­fir­ma­tion, say­ing Kavanaugh was select­ed “to break the tie” on guns-rights cas­es.) With their judges con­firmed, the right-wing donors fund law­suits to advance their rad­i­cal agen­da through the courts. And final­ly, as this NRA inci­dent shows, they anony­mous­ly fund flotil­las of ami­cus briefs to sup­port their argu­ments and sig­nal how the judges should vote.

    This scheme deliv­ers results. The Roberts Court has issued more than 80 par­ti­san deci­sions deliv­er­ing clear wins to big Repub­li­can donor inter­ests. In the past two years alone, the Supreme Court fur­ther erod­ed pro­tec­tions against dis­crim­i­na­to­ry vot­er sup­pres­sion laws; carved out a nov­el con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tion for dark mon­ey; used reli­gious lib­er­ty as a cud­gel to inval­i­date pub­lic health laws pro­tect­ing against a dead­ly pan­dem­ic; and, most recent­ly, used its “shad­ow dock­et” to nul­li­fy the con­sti­tu­tion­al right to an abor­tion in Texas, at least tem­porar­i­ly. The scheme’s donors got every­thing they paid for, and more.

    In the same 2019 Supreme Court case in which the NRA appar­ent­ly fund­ed one of the ami­cus briefs, sev­er­al Sen­ate col­leagues and I filed our own brief urg­ing the court to assert its inde­pen­dence from the scheme. We warned that the Amer­i­can peo­ple were not fools and were start­ing to take notice of the court’s obe­di­ence to cor­po­rate, pol­luter, and par­ti­san donor inter­ests’ march­ing orders.

    What did the court do in response? It marched on as its cred­i­bil­i­ty tum­bled. It deliv­ered win after win for donors. Mean­while, polls showed a steady decline in the public’s faith in the court. Despite jus­tices’ pub­lic­i­ty cam­paign to con­vince us oth­er­wise, more than 60 per­cent of Amer­i­cans now believe that the jus­tices’ votes are influ­enced more by pol­i­tics than the law.

    The 80-to-zero record isn’t eas­i­ly rec­ti­fied, but there are steps that the court and judi­cia­ry could take to heal itself. Greater trans­paren­cy can ensure that groups like the NRA can’t lever­age their wealth to mis­lead judges and the pub­lic. Stronger ethics require­ments for fed­er­al judges and a code of ethics for the Supreme Court can head off con­flicts of inter­est. Report­ing gifts and hos­pi­tal­i­ty received by jus­tices can restore the public’s con­fi­dence. These are mea­sures the courts could put in place tomor­row.

    Con­gress has a role to play, too. Bills like my DISCLOSE Act would shed a light on those who seek to cor­rupt our democ­ra­cy with end­less amounts of dark mon­ey. There are bipar­ti­san pro­pos­als to require judges to abide by the same eth­i­cal stan­dards as the oth­er two branch­es of gov­ern­ment. And I am work­ing close­ly with Hank John­son to strength­en the ami­cus dis­clo­sure require­ments that the NRA exploit­ed.

    ...

    ————-

    “How Russ­ian Hack­ers Helped Expose the Right-Wing Dark Mon­ey Cor­rupt­ing Our Courts” by Shel­don White­house; The Dai­ly Beast; 11/16/2021

    The news came from Russ­ian hack­ers on the dark web. Accord­ing to report­ing by The Trace, the hack­ers unearthed a doc­u­ment sug­gest­ing that the NRA paid a lawyer more than $500,000 to advo­cate on its behalf through “the Inde­pen­dence Insti­tute.” This includ­ed fil­ing pro-gun rights “friend of the court,” or ami­cus, briefs in Supreme Court cases—including the one heard ear­li­er this month—brought by the NRA’s New York affil­i­ate. None of these pay­ments were dis­closed to the court or the pub­lic. In essence, the NRA cloned itself to ampli­fy its voice before the court.

    Over $500,000 was paid out to a lib­er­tar­i­an think tank, “the Inde­pen­dence Insti­tute,” and an a friend­ly ami­cus was deliv­ered. One of more than 100 Koch-fund orga­ni­za­tion involved in the effort. That’s orga­nized pow­er on dis­play. Except it’s only on dis­play for the fund man­agers at the dark mon­ey orga­ni­za­tions issu­ing the ‘char­i­ta­ble dona­tions’ that paid for these ‘non-par­ti­san’ activ­i­ties. The pub­lic does­n’t get to know about the mer­ce­nary nature of these ‘friend’ brief­in­gs and nei­ther does the court, although the court can prob­a­bly guess what’s going on. The pub­lic, on the oth­er hand, only know that more than 100 orga­ni­za­tions filed in favor of the plain­tiffs. Mon­ey well-spent in the age of the cor­rupt far right rigged Roberts Court:

    ...
    The jus­tices say their rules guard against this kind of mis­chief, but this inci­dent is far from iso­lat­ed. As House Courts Sub­com­mit­tee Chair­man Hank John­son and I have point­ed out repeat­ed­ly, and as I recent­ly detailed for the Yale Law Jour­nal, the court’s rules only require the most imme­di­ate expens­es involved in pro­duc­ing an ami­cus brief to be disclosed—little more than the cost of print­ing the brief for sub­mis­sion. A dark-mon­ey group or big indus­try front, such as the NRA, can hide behind a cloak of anonymi­ty and mul­ti­ply its voice to the court many times over. In the court’s most recent deci­sion in favor of these dark-mon­ey groups, at least 100 Koch-fund­ed dark-mon­ey groups filed briefs sup­port­ing the plaintiff—a dark-mon­ey orga­ni­za­tion that is itself a major part of this Koch net­work.

    ...

    The jus­tices say their rules guard against this kind of mis­chief, but this inci­dent is far from iso­lat­ed. As House Courts Sub­com­mit­tee Chair­man Hank John­son and I have point­ed out repeat­ed­ly, and as I recent­ly detailed for the Yale Law Jour­nal, the court’s rules only require the most imme­di­ate expens­es involved in pro­duc­ing an ami­cus brief to be disclosed—little more than the cost of print­ing the brief for sub­mis­sion. A dark-mon­ey group or big indus­try front, such as the NRA, can hide behind a cloak of anonymi­ty and mul­ti­ply its voice to the court many times over. In the court’s most recent deci­sion in favor of these dark-mon­ey groups, at least 100 Koch-fund­ed dark-mon­ey groups filed briefs sup­port­ing the plaintiff—a dark-mon­ey orga­ni­za­tion that is itself a major part of this Koch net­work.

    ...

    This scheme deliv­ers results. The Roberts Court has issued more than 80 par­ti­san deci­sions deliv­er­ing clear wins to big Repub­li­can donor inter­ests. In the past two years alone, the Supreme Court fur­ther erod­ed pro­tec­tions against dis­crim­i­na­to­ry vot­er sup­pres­sion laws; carved out a nov­el con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tion for dark mon­ey; used reli­gious lib­er­ty as a cud­gel to inval­i­date pub­lic health laws pro­tect­ing against a dead­ly pan­dem­ic; and, most recent­ly, used its “shad­ow dock­et” to nul­li­fy the con­sti­tu­tion­al right to an abor­tion in Texas, at least tem­porar­i­ly. The scheme’s donors got every­thing they paid for, and more.

    ...

    The 80-to-zero record isn’t eas­i­ly rec­ti­fied, but there are steps that the court and judi­cia­ry could take to heal itself. Greater trans­paren­cy can ensure that groups like the NRA can’t lever­age their wealth to mis­lead judges and the pub­lic. Stronger ethics require­ments for fed­er­al judges and a code of ethics for the Supreme Court can head off con­flicts of inter­est. Report­ing gifts and hos­pi­tal­i­ty received by jus­tices can restore the public’s con­fi­dence. These are mea­sures the courts could put in place tomor­row.
    ...

    A code of ethics for the Supreme Court. With a 6–3 out of con­trol far right court on the way, a code of ethics isn’t a bad idea. Yes, a code of ethics is always a great idea. But maybe like an offi­cial code would be a good idea right now giv­en how there’s so much uneth­i­cal behav­ior in the shad­ows leak­ing out in the open and this is like the new Supreme nor­mal.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | December 11, 2021, 1:07 am
  28. What type of GOP pawn was Kanye West oper­at­ing as in 2020 when he announced his pres­i­den­tial cam­paign? A wit­ting GOP pawn or an unwit­ting one? That’s one of the big ques­tions raised by a new Dai­ly Beast report on the role GOP dark mon­ey oper­a­tives were play­ing in West­’s cam­paign efforts. Whether or not West knew about the role GOP dark mon­ey was play­ing remains ambigu­ous based on the avail­able infor­ma­tion, but it is now entire­ly unam­bigu­ous as to whether or not GOP dark mon­ey was involved. The GOP dark mon­ey net­works were indeed so heav­i­ly involved with the financ­ing and oper­a­tions of the West cam­paign that the ques­tion is now the extent to which this was­n’t entire­ly a GOP oper­a­tion. With with a wit­ting, or per­haps unwit­ting, Kanye as the face.

    In keep­ing the bro­ken nature of the US dark mon­ey laws, while some of the Dai­ly Beast report was based on FEC fil­ings, it appears that the only rea­son we’re learn­ing about some of GOP’s involve­ment in the West cam­paign is the fact that one of the sub­con­trac­tors involved in set­ting up the cam­paign web­site, SeedX, are suing for $2 mil­lion after being offered just $20,000 for the web­site devel­op­ment work. And its in an email to SeedX, now sup­plied as evi­dence, that we learn that it was none oth­er that Jill Holtz­man Vogel who con­tact­ed SeedX and made the $20,000 offer. Vogel iden­ti­fied her­self in the email as the West cam­paign’s lawyer.

    Yes, that would be Repub­li­can Vir­ginia State Sen­a­tor Jill Holtz­man Vogel. As we’ve seen, Vogel isn’t just an elect­ed Repub­li­can offi­cial. Her law firm, Holtz­man Vogel Jose­fi­ak Torchin­sky, is a dark mon­ey pow­er­house...because it knows the law and knows how to keep oper­a­tions anony­mous and in the shad­ows. Also recall how Jill Holtz­man Vogel’s law firm, Holtz­man Vogel Jose­fi­ak Torchin­sky, appears to have been deeply involved in the shady fundrais­ing asso­ci­at­ed with the 2017 Trump inau­gur­al fund. Fundrais­ing that had the appear­ance of mon­ey-laun­der­ing from for­eign sources. That’s what made her name so sig­nif­i­cant when it showed up in those court doc­u­ments. You almost could­n’t find a more rep­re­sen­ta­tive per­son of the GOP dark mon­ey machine than Jill Holtz­man Vogel. And she was act­ing as the lawyer of Kanye West­’s cam­paign. Secret­ly.

    But Jill Holtz­man Vogel isn’t the only GOP dark mon­ey fig­ure to have been revealed to be involved with the cam­paign. Nathan Sproul of Lin­coln Strat­e­gy Group was also paid a sig­nif­i­cant amount from the West cam­paign. $4.8 mil­lion. But it was­n’t paid to Lin­coln Strat­e­gy Group, which was help­ing GOP can­di­dates at this very same time. The mon­ey was paid to “For­ti­fied Con­sult­ing”, an enti­ty that appears to have been set up for basi­cal­ly this pur­pose and noth­ing else.

    Final­ly, there’s Grand Slam Finance, Inc. which appears to be the same an enti­ty paid by the West cam­paign for “com­pli­ance” and “account”. But the West cam­paign’s FEC dis­clo­sure does­n’t list “Grand Slam Finance, Inc”. It lists “GSF, Inc”. It’s an exam­ple of how the dark mon­ey game is played. But also an exam­ple of why it would have been impor­tant for dark mon­ey pro­fes­sion­als to be inti­mate­ly involved with the West cam­paign’s oper­a­tions: if you’re going to keep the Repub­li­can financ­ing of the cam­paign a secret, you bet­ter make sure those dark mon­ey pro­fes­sion­als are involved in the fil­ing of the cam­paign’s paper­work. They know how to hide their own involve­ment. So hav­ing the West cam­paign basi­cal­ly hire the GOP dark mon­ey machine to run its cam­paign was­n’t just an effec­tive means of giv­ing the West cam­paign some pro­fes­sion­al help. It was also a great way to keep that help secret. The dark mon­ey machines knows how it hide itself. Bar­ring the pesky law­suits:

    The Dai­ly Beast

    Kanye West’s ‘Inde­pen­dent’ Cam­paign Was Secret­ly Run by GOP Elites

    The cam­paign took steps, experts say, to mask its con­nec­tions to GOP oper­a­tives. That could vio­late fed­er­al elec­tion laws.

    Roger Sol­len­berg­er
    Polit­i­cal Reporter

    William Bred­der­man
    Researcher

    Updat­ed Dec. 17, 2021 5:23AM ET / Pub­lished Dec. 17, 2021 4:59AM ET

    New doc­u­ments show Kanye West’s doomed White House campaign—styled as an “inde­pen­dent” third-par­ty effort—appears to have dis­guised poten­tial­ly mil­lions of dol­lars in ser­vices it received from a secre­tive net­work of Repub­li­can Par­ty oper­a­tives, includ­ing advis­ers to the GOP elite and a man­ag­ing part­ner at one of the top con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal firms in the coun­try.

    Poten­tial­ly even more alarm­ing? The Kanye 2020 cam­paign com­mit­tee did not even report pay­ing some of these advis­ers, and used an odd abbre­vi­a­tion for another—moves which cam­paign finance experts say appear designed to mask the asso­ci­a­tion between known GOP oper­a­tives and the cam­paign, and could con­sti­tute a vio­la­tion of fed­er­al laws.

    At the heart of Kanye’s polit­i­cal oper­a­tion was Holtz­man Vogel, one of the most pow­er­ful and well-con­nect­ed law firms serv­ing major Repub­li­can polit­i­cal and non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tions today. And weaved through­out his cam­paign, whether the mul­ti-plat­inum rap­per real­ized it or not, were Repub­li­can oper­a­tives who may have been less inter­est­ed in see­ing a Pres­i­dent West than in re-elect­ing Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump.

    Paul S. Ryan, vice pres­i­dent of gov­ern­ment watch­dog Com­mon Cause, called the rev­e­la­tions “a big deal.”

    “The impor­tance of dis­clo­sure in this mat­ter can’t be over­stat­ed,” Ryan told The Dai­ly Beast. “It’s no secret that Kanye West’s can­di­da­cy would have a spoil­er effect, siphon­ing votes from Demo­c­rat Joe Biden. Vot­ers had a right to know that a high-pow­ered Repub­li­can lawyer was pro­vid­ing legal ser­vices to Kanye—and fed­er­al law requires dis­clo­sure of such legal work.”

    Fed­er­al dis­clo­sures also show the cam­paign enlist­ed legal ser­vices from an array of firms with links to Trump and the Repub­li­can Party—including lead­ing vot­er fraud con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists and more than a half-dozen legal prac­tices which went on to push base­less elec­tion fraud law­suits on behalf of Trump or the GOP.

    In fact, Holtz­man Vogel played key roles in those efforts. They rep­re­sent­ed Trump in a Penn­syl­va­nia law­suit in late Sep­tem­ber, while advis­ing the West pres­i­den­tial campaign—advice which at one point includ­ed Penn­syl­va­nia bal­lot strat­e­gy. The firm is also tied to the Hon­est Elec­tions Project, which has been involved with vot­er-sup­pres­sion efforts.

    The for­mer “Birth­day Par­ty” contender’s cam­paign even paid rough­ly $60,000 to one of those firms—Minnesota-based Mohrman Kaardal—in ear­ly Decem­ber, when it filed a base­less elec­tion fraud law­suit. The suit was ulti­mate­ly reject­ed with such vig­or that it near­ly cost the attor­neys their license to prac­tice. That out­fit worked with anoth­er elec­tion chal­leng­ing group, the Amis­tad Project, a func­tion of Thomas More Soci­ety, which employed Trump attor­ney and Rudy Giu­liani pro­tégée Jen­na Ellis. Kanye 2020 retained the firm with­in days of the Amis­tad Project’s August launch.

    The nature of these hid­den con­nec­tions is obvi­ous­ly com­plex. And experts say that appears to be the point. Any effort to untan­gle them will, unfor­tu­nate­ly, reflect that. But they say that the red flags—including efforts to cloud dis­clo­sures, and Repub­li­can oper­a­tives exploit­ing a spoil­er candidate—appear to be there.

    The Dai­ly Beast shared the court fil­ings and FEC data with a num­ber of gov­ern­ment watch­dog groups, who all con­clud­ed that the cam­paign and oper­a­tives appear to have for one rea­son or anoth­er shield­ed their con­nec­tions. The groups found this trou­bling, and not­ed that with­out the doc­u­men­ta­tion in the lawsuit—a breach-of-con­tract claim which a for­mer cam­paign ven­dor filed this spring in Texas state court—the lack of trans­paren­cy would have kept some of the con­nec­tions secret.

    Cit­i­zens for Respon­si­bil­i­ty and Ethics in Wash­ing­ton reviewed hun­dreds of cam­paign com­mu­ni­ca­tions in court records, as well as Kanye 2020’s FEC fil­ings. Com­mu­ni­ca­tions direc­tor Jor­dan Libowitz con­clud­ed that the cam­paign book­keep­ing was a “dis­as­ter,” despite the expert guid­ance from Holtz­man Vogel, and the doc­u­ments are “enough to raise an eye­brow and a red flag or two.”

    “This was absolute­ly ama­teur hour. And his cam­paign paid a lot of mon­ey for those results,” Libowitz said.

    He con­tin­ued, “It’s very clear that the whole point behind Kanye’s cam­paign was to try to re-elect Don­ald Trump. Whether that was a goal of Kanye is anoth­er issue. But he was clear­ly seen as a way to steal poten­tial votes from Biden.”

    Mul­ti­ple peo­ple con­nect­ed to the cam­paign, includ­ing some of the campaign’s con­tract­ed lawyers, had a sim­i­lar assess­ment. Some said that mes­sag­ing deci­sions had to first go through secre­tive polit­i­cal “hands.” Oth­ers indi­cat­ed that their involve­ment had been solicit­ed by known Repub­li­can polit­i­cal oper­a­tives, though when pressed they all declined to name names. All of them also acknowl­edged an appar­ent­ly close rela­tion­ship between West and top Trump aide Jared Kush­n­er, who held meet­ings with West at his Wyoming ranch just ahead of his cam­paign announce­ment, draw­ing spec­u­la­tion that the cam­paigns were coor­di­nat­ing.

    One cam­paign lawyer, Ari­zona-based attor­ney Tim La Sota—who has filed elec­tion challenges—told The Dai­ly Beast that while West “seemed to be a sin­cere can­di­date,” polit­i­cal oper­a­tives under­stand that an “unre­al­is­tic prospect of win­ning doesn’t mean you can’t influ­ence things.”

    “I can tell you that he did not seek me out. Some­body else did,” La Sota said.

    While it’s unclear just how West, osten­si­bly run­ning as an inde­pen­dent, man­aged to con­nect almost exclu­sive­ly with Repub­li­can firms—many of which had direct con­nec­tions to Trump himself—his efforts were quite clear­ly in the hands of expe­ri­enced con­ser­v­a­tives.

    There is one major excep­tion, how­ev­er. The pro­gres­sive firm Mil­len­ni­al Strate­gies was one of Kanye’s largest 2020 ven­dors, and it’s unclear if that was a ploy to give Kanye’s cam­paign the air of true inde­pen­dence, or just a true excep­tion.

    Oth­er­wise, Kanye’s cam­paign seems to have been loaded with Repub­li­can oper­a­tives.

    At, or at least near, the top of the campaign’s chain was sit­ting GOP Vir­ginia state sen­a­tor and vet­er­an polit­i­cal oper­a­tive Jill Vogel—managing part­ner at Holtz­man Vogel, a heavy­weight in the world of con­ser­v­a­tive pol­i­tics and dark mon­ey groups.

    Vogel’s cam­paign work is made clear in months of email and text com­mu­ni­ca­tions revealed in a mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar breach-of-con­tract law­suit tar­get­ing the West cam­paign and con­sul­tants, first filed this spring in Texas state court and reviewed by The Dai­ly Beast.

    The suit, brought by for­mer cam­paign sub­ven­dor SeedX, alleges the com­pa­ny nev­er got paid for months of cam­paign work, includ­ing build­ing and main­tain­ing the web­site and merch sales, which are count­ed for cam­paign pur­pos­es as dona­tions. SeedX backs up those alle­ga­tions with hun­dreds of pages of com­mu­ni­ca­tions with cam­paign offi­cials and con­trac­tors, indi­cat­ing it engaged in sev­er­al months of cam­paign work.

    SeedX alleges that because the cam­paign did not pay them, their work would qual­i­fy as either a loan or an in-kind contribution—which would have exceed­ed lim­its. How­ev­er, the cam­paign failed to acknowl­edge either in their fil­ings.

    The case got kicked up to fed­er­al court in the West­ern Dis­trict of Texas, where a judge dis­missed it on Nov. 30, cit­ing lack of jurisdiction—in oth­er words, SeedX filed the law­suit in the wrong place. The court did not take up the mer­its of the case, which was closed before it reached the dis­cov­ery stage, when sub­poe­nas could be issued. A per­son with direct knowl­edge told The Dai­ly Beast that the plain­tiffs remain con­fi­dent, and a new law­suit will like­ly be filed again soon.

    The doc­u­ments also hap­pen to show that Vogel advised the cam­paign regard­ing legal and com­pli­ance mat­ters start­ing as far back as August 2020. The issues ranged from web­site lan­guage and dis­claimers to fundrais­ing advice and bal­lot access rules.

    “She is a name that comes up a lot when you’re look­ing at right-wing mon­ey oper­a­tions in gen­er­al, tied to a lot of major play­ers,” Libowitz explained. “She and her firm [Holtz­man Vogel] have ties to peo­ple like [top con­ser­v­a­tive fundrais­er] Leonard Leo, just real­ly big Repub­li­can mon­ey.”

    Libowitz said Vogel may have want­ed to keep her name off of fil­ings to min­i­mize “any embar­rass­ment that may come with being pub­licly affil­i­at­ed with the train­wreck that was the Kanye cam­paign,” but added that “it’s also like­ly that she did not want peo­ple to know that a Repub­li­can oper­a­tive was behind his cam­paign.”

    Two peo­ple involved with the cam­paign iden­ti­fied Vogel, whose hus­band is D.C. lob­by­ist Alex Vogel, as a key play­er. One per­son told The Dai­ly Beast that Jill Vogel was “basi­cal­ly behind it all,” and had been a pres­ence in the cam­paign since at least last July, when right-lean­ing lob­by­ing firm Mer­cury Pub­lic Affairs was advis­ing the cam­paign. A third source con­firmed her involve­ment but was unsure of her exact role.

    Michael McK­eon, a part­ner at Mer­cury, con­firmed to The Dai­ly Beast that he had worked with Kanye 2020 in its ear­ly stages. His role, he said, was to “con­nect the cam­paign with var­i­ous peo­ple, groups.” Asked in a fol­low-up if he had con­nect­ed the cam­paign with Vogel, McK­eon referred the ques­tion to the cam­paign and end­ed the con­ver­sa­tion.

    An email sent to the campaign’s list­ed email con­tact bounced back. West’s pub­li­cist, Pierre Rougi­er, did not reply to a detailed request for com­ment.

    But watch­dogs strong­ly doubt­ed that Kanye’s cam­paign just hap­pened to end up with this many GOP oper­a­tives on its team.

    “You’re not just going to trip and find your way into these Repub­li­can cir­cles,” Libowitz observed. “Bak­er­Hostetler works for the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee,” he said, ref­er­enc­ing a New York firm which Kanye 2020 paid $152,000 a full month after he lost the elec­tion.

    “So many of these firms work for major Repub­li­can orga­ni­za­tions, and they are not doing this for him out of the kind­ness of their hearts,” he added. It appears that well over a dozen Kanye 2020 firms have deep con­nec­tions in nation­al and state Repub­li­can pol­i­tics, and that many of them pushed false claims of a fraud­u­lent or fatal­ly flawed elec­tion. “It’s pret­ty clear Kanye was a GOP plant, whether he knew it or not.”

    Despite the evi­dence of Vogel’s cam­paign work in the court records, none of Kanye 2020’s FEC fil­ings show any pay­ments to her or her firm. (Nei­ther Mer­cury nor McK­eon appear, either.) How­ev­er, Vogel asso­ciates her­self direct­ly with the cam­paign in mul­ti­ple emails found in the court fil­ings, and oth­er cam­paign ven­dors iden­ti­fy her sev­er­al in texts and emails as the “cam­paign lawyer.”

    In one late Jan­u­ary email obtained by The Dai­ly Beast, Vogel iden­ti­fies her­self to SeedX as “the attor­ney for the Kanye West 2020 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign.” (Emails show she had been in touch with SeedX in this capac­i­ty for months.) She then says she has been “autho­rized” to offer SeedX $20,000 to buy the cam­paign web­site, and hints that the vendor—who did months of work but appar­ent­ly nev­er got paid—could face pos­si­ble civ­il lit­i­ga­tion if they do not set aside their demands.

    SeedX reject­ed the $20,000 and sued for $2 mil­lion, argu­ing it matched the rates of oth­er ven­dors.

    Attor­neys are allowed to vol­un­teer com­pli­ance ser­vices to cam­paigns. How­ev­er, fed­er­al law requires cam­paigns to report what the cost of that work would be. They must also report the name of the per­son who per­formed the work. Court exhibits show Vogel used her offi­cial firm email account while advis­ing on Kanye 2020.

    Libowitz said it is unclear why Vogel, an expert who advised Kanye 2020 on the many nuances of FEC laws—at one point con­sult­ing anoth­er firm part­ner, whom she iden­ti­fies as a for­mer FEC commissioner—decided that she her­self did not need to appear in the fil­ings. The mat­ter, he said, rais­es ques­tions.

    “If an out­side group was pay­ing for them, that needs to be dis­closed as an in-kind con­tri­bu­tion, and if that’s the case you would imme­di­ate­ly run up against lim­its,” Libowitz said.

    Bren­dan Fis­ch­er, direc­tor of fed­er­al reform at the Cam­paign Legal Cen­ter, who reviewed the court and FEC records, also ques­tioned the ratio­nale.

    “Vot­ers have a right to know where polit­i­cal mon­ey is com­ing from and where it is going. But the Kanye 2020 campaign’s FEC reports didn’t give much insight into who was actu­al­ly work­ing for the can­di­date,” Fis­ch­er said.

    He not­ed that while the FEC doesn’t always require cam­paigns to sep­a­rate­ly dis­close pay­ments to sub­con­trac­tors, the “sub­ven­dor loop­hole can’t explain all of the giant holes in the Kanye campaign’s FEC reports.”

    Ryan, of Com­mon Cause, not­ed that “if Holtz­man Vogel’s legal ser­vices extend­ed beyond com­pli­ance with fed­er­al cam­paign finance law to oth­er mat­ters, then the val­ue of those ser­vices would con­sti­tute a poten­tial­ly-ille­gal con­tri­bu­tion to Kanye’s cam­paign.”

    To that point, one of Vogel’s emails includes a lengthy dis­cus­sion of bal­lot require­ments in Penn­syl­va­nia and New Hamp­shire, which would not appear on its face to be relat­ed in any way to FEC com­pli­ance.

    “There are sev­er­al red flags here that war­rant FEC scruti­ny,” Ryan said.

    Inter­est­ing­ly enough, some Vogel mon­ey did flow the oth­er way: Her teenage son appears to have donat­ed $180 to Kanye 2020 in Octo­ber, FEC records show, like­ly in exchange for any of a num­ber of com­bi­na­tions of Yeezy elec­tion swag.

    ...

    Anoth­er key oper­a­tive attached to West’s White House bid, whose involve­ment had attract­ed media atten­tion last year, was Nathan Sproul. One of Sproul’s firms was at the cen­ter of a vot­er fraud case in 2012, and anoth­er, Lin­coln Strat­e­gy Group, has since 2008 pulled in more than $10 mil­lion in fed­er­al polit­i­cal con­sult­ing ser­vices, accord­ing to FEC records—including $600,000 from the Trump cam­paign weeks ahead of the 2016 elec­tion.

    Like Vogel, Lin­coln Strat­e­gy was not report­ed to have received any mon­ey from Kanye 2020. How­ev­er, one of its prin­ci­pals, long­time GOP polit­i­cal con­sul­tant Dan Centinello—who appears reg­u­lar­ly on Kanye 2020 text and email chains—con­tributed $260 to the cam­paign in Octo­ber.

    Cen­tinel­lo and Sproul are just two among a num­ber of Lin­coln Strat­e­gy employ­ees who advised West’s cam­paign, using offi­cial Lin­coln Strat­e­gy Group email address­es, accord­ing to emails and text mes­sages found in court exhibits.

    And while Lin­coln Strat­e­gy did not get paid by Kanye 2020, the cam­paign did pour about $4.8 mil­lion into a firm called “For­ti­fied Con­sult­ing.”

    At this point, you may not be stunned to learn that “For­ti­fied Con­sult­ing” has almost no pub­lic foot­print. How­ev­er, it shares an Ari­zona address with Lin­coln Strat­e­gy Group, and has been iden­ti­fied in mul­ti­ple news reports as belong­ing to Sproul.

    No oth­er polit­i­cal com­mit­tee has ever paid For­ti­fied Con­sult­ing.

    Over the four months that the firm was rak­ing in its $4.8 mil­lion from the “inde­pen­dent” West, its appar­ent alter ego, Lin­coln Strat­e­gy Group, was work­ing open­ly with main­stream Repub­li­can clients—including Sen. Jim Inhofe (R‑OK), Rep. Chip Roy (R‑TX), and the Repub­li­can Par­ty of Texas. Those clients paid Lin­coln a com­bined $1.1 mil­lion over that peri­od.

    At one point, Lin­coln Strat­e­gy employ­ees even dis­cuss buy­ing out West’s cam­paign merch store after the election—which would be pro­hib­it­ed by law. (The store had prob­lems of its own.)

    But legal fil­ings show Sproul, who did not respond to requests for com­ment, was mere­ly a small vis­i­ble sprout off the campaign’s far deep­er and unseen Repub­li­can roots.

    Begin­ning in August 2020, and stretch­ing through Sep­tem­ber of this year, Kanye 2020 made nine pay­ments totalling $692,057.35 for “com­pli­ance” and “account­ing” to a Texas enti­ty called “GSF Inc.” That eye-pop­ping fig­ure came after the hip-hop mogul had lost any hope of attain­ing the nation’s high­est office and, for con­text, it exceeds what for­mer Sen. David Per­due (R‑GA) splashed out for com­pli­ance ser­vices dur­ing his entire failed bid for re-elec­tion.

    But busi­ness records show that no such com­pa­ny as “GSF Inc.” exists in the Lone Star State, and the FEC data­base shows no oth­er polit­i­cal com­mit­tee has ever hired a firm by that name.

    How­ev­er, the data­base does show that an array of right-wing can­di­dates and com­mit­tees have paid a com­pa­ny shar­ing the same address in the sub­urbs just north of Austin: Grand Slam Finance, Inc. And the Texas law­suit doc­u­ments Grand Slam Finance’s exten­sive involve­ment in the Kanye 2020 cam­paign—as well as illus­trates how the firm appears to have both facil­i­tat­ed and poten­tial­ly con­cealed con­nec­tions between West’s cam­paign and the Repub­li­can oper­a­tive net­work more broad­ly.

    Texas records show that Grand Slam Finance was orig­i­nal­ly the cre­ation of accoun­tant Rus­sell Ander­son, who han­dled the books for dis­graced for­mer House Major­i­ty Leader Tom Delay’s polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee.

    But Ander­son told The Dai­ly Beast that he sold his stake in Grand Slam Finance to his part­ner Dean­na Hayes “three or four years” ago.

    The Texas suit includes among its exhibits emails the plain­tiff exchanged with Hayes—identified as an “asso­ciate” of Vogel and her firm—as well as cor­re­spon­dence between Hayes and cam­paign trea­sur­er Andre Bod­i­ford regard­ing bank­ing infor­ma­tion.

    “I was hop­ing we could keep andre out of it but appar­ent­ly Dean­na [Hayes] doesn’t have every­thing,” Cen­tinel­lo wrote in one mes­sage.

    It is unclear why Cen­tinel­lo, a self-pro­fessed vet­er­an of major mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar cam­paigns, want­ed to leave the West campaign’s trea­sur­er out of the loop here.

    Notably, the West campaign’s nine pay­ments to GSF add up to about $250,000 more than the firm’s com­bined fed­er­al com­pli­ance income over the last decade.

    Ryan called it “strange” to see a con­sul­tant “sud­den­ly bank­ing way more than it pre­vi­ous­ly has for ser­vices, all from one cam­paign.” And Ryan and Libowitz both made note of West’s sta­tus as an “ama­teur can­di­date,” and a bil­lion­aire who large­ly fund­ed his own cam­paign.

    Hayes did not reply to requests for com­ment. How­ev­er, days after The Dai­ly Beast first con­tact­ed her, she sent an appar­ent­ly errant text, with a ref­er­ence to a “Jill”—likely Vogel.

    “This reporter has been call­ing and tex­ting. I haven’t answered or respond­ed nor will I. No idea how he got my name or what he wants but now he’s call­ing my hus­band. I let Jill know yes­ter­day just so she’s aware,” the text mes­sage read. Nei­ther Hayes nor Vogel replied to ques­tions about this text mes­sage.

    Pub­lic records indi­cate Hayes’ his­to­ry with Vogel run through anoth­er pair of lead­ing GOP appa­ratchiks.

    Lob­by­ing doc­u­ments in Hawaii show Hayes and Grand Slam work­ing for the Cros­by Otten­hoff Group. This firm belongs to for­mer RNC Chief Finance Offi­cer Caleb Cros­by and Ben­jamin Otten­hoff, the trea­sur­er for the GOP’s dig­i­tal fundrais­ing jug­ger­naut WinRed.

    Nei­ther Cros­by nor Otten­hoff respond­ed to ques­tions about whether they had also worked for the West cam­paign. Cros­by has a par­tic­u­lar­ly close rela­tion­ship with Hayes and with Holtz­man Vogel: Hayes incor­po­rat­ed his per­son­al firm, CFC Con­sult­ing, which also works for mar­quee Repub­li­can names, and han­dled the books at a con­ser­v­a­tive non­prof­it where Cros­by worked as trea­sur­er.

    Grand Slam Finance also for­mer­ly man­aged com­pli­ance at anoth­er insti­tu­tion where Cros­by served as fidu­cia­ry: Karl Rove’s Super PAC Amer­i­can Cross­roads.

    The law firm for Amer­i­can Cross­roads? Holtz­man Vogel PLLC, accord­ing to FEC records.

    The same is true for the Sen­ate Lead­er­ship Fund, a Mitch McConnell-boost­ing PAC, which also lists Cros­by as its trea­sur­er. In fact, the Sen­ate Lead­er­ship Fund is only one of sev­er­al enti­ties based out of Holtz­man Vogel’s Vir­ginia law office which fea­ture Cros­by as an offi­cer.

    Holtz­man Vogel and the Cros­by Otten­hoff Group have teamed up numer­ous times in the past few years, most recent­ly for a pair of GOP PACs in Vir­ginia.

    West’s self-described “spir­i­tu­al advis­er,” music man­ag­er John Boyd—who the cam­paign paid $25,000 for “polit­i­cal strat­e­gy consulting—was adamant that nobody, Repub­li­can or Demo­c­rat, ever manip­u­lat­ed the hip-hop star. How­ev­er, he admit­ted that his cam­paign was high­ly dis­or­ga­nized and the can­di­date was nev­er in full con­trol of his own oper­a­tions.

    “He had com­pa­nies, indi­vid­u­als work­ing for him, I don’t even know if he knew what they were doing that deeply. That’s my per­son­al view,” Boyd told The Dai­ly Beast. “There were def­i­nite­ly agen­das out there that per­haps he didn’t have full con­trol over.”

    Boyd declined to give names or pro­vide fur­ther details.

    Col­orado-based attor­ney Mario Nico­lais, who had scru­ti­nized the West campaign’s bal­lot peti­tion activ­i­ty in Wis­con­sin last August, told The Dai­ly Beast that the GOP’s tar­get­ing West—who, accord­ing to his then-wife Kim Kar­dashi­an, had been con­tend­ing with men­tal health struggles—was “about as bot­tom-of-the-bar­rel moral turpi­tude as you can be, in my opin­ion. Just sleazy, low-rent cash­ing in.”

    Nico­lais added that it was “impor­tant to fol­low up on these sto­ries,” even a year lat­er, because they could “invite big­ger prob­lems in the future, sim­i­lar tac­tics only on a larg­er scale.

    “It turns out that this was not even a con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry,” he said. “It was lit­er­al­ly doc­u­ment­ed.”

    ———–

    “Kanye West’s ‘Inde­pen­dent’ Cam­paign Was Secret­ly Run by GOP Elites” by Roger Sol­len­berg­er and William Bred­der­man; The Dai­ly Beast; 12/17/2021

    At the heart of Kanye’s polit­i­cal oper­a­tion was Holtz­man Vogel, one of the most pow­er­ful and well-con­nect­ed law firms serv­ing major Repub­li­can polit­i­cal and non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tions today. And weaved through­out his cam­paign, whether the mul­ti-plat­inum rap­per real­ized it or not, were Repub­li­can oper­a­tives who may have been less inter­est­ed in see­ing a Pres­i­dent West than in re-elect­ing Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump.”

    This clear­ly was­n’t a real polit­i­cal cam­paign. But it also was­n’t a com­plete joke either. It was a cal­cu­lat­ed strate­gic joke. And its not at all clear Kanye or his team even knew what was going on. It’s as if the GOP was basi­cal­ly treat­ing Kanye like some sort of mind-con­trolled celebri­ty prop. And it was none oth­er than Jill Holtz­man Vogel, the liv­ing embod­i­ment of the GOP’s dark mon­ey oper­a­tions, pulling these strings. In secret and in vio­la­tion of cam­paign finance laws. It’s the kind of sto­ry that has all the ingre­di­ents of a mega-scan­dal. At least it would if the pub­lic cared about polit­i­cal finan­cial scan­dals:

    ...
    Fed­er­al dis­clo­sures also show the cam­paign enlist­ed legal ser­vices from an array of firms with links to Trump and the Repub­li­can Party—including lead­ing vot­er fraud con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists and more than a half-dozen legal prac­tices which went on to push base­less elec­tion fraud law­suits on behalf of Trump or the GOP.

    In fact, Holtz­man Vogel played key roles in those efforts. They rep­re­sent­ed Trump in a Penn­syl­va­nia law­suit in late Sep­tem­ber, while advis­ing the West pres­i­den­tial campaign—advice which at one point includ­ed Penn­syl­va­nia bal­lot strat­e­gy. The firm is also tied to the Hon­est Elec­tions Project, which has been involved with vot­er-sup­pres­sion efforts.

    ...

    Mul­ti­ple peo­ple con­nect­ed to the cam­paign, includ­ing some of the campaign’s con­tract­ed lawyers, had a sim­i­lar assess­ment. Some said that mes­sag­ing deci­sions had to first go through secre­tive polit­i­cal “hands.” Oth­ers indi­cat­ed that their involve­ment had been solicit­ed by known Repub­li­can polit­i­cal oper­a­tives, though when pressed they all declined to name names. All of them also acknowl­edged an appar­ent­ly close rela­tion­ship between West and top Trump aide Jared Kush­n­er, who held meet­ings with West at his Wyoming ranch just ahead of his cam­paign announce­ment, draw­ing spec­u­la­tion that the cam­paigns were coor­di­nat­ing.

    ...

    At, or at least near, the top of the campaign’s chain was sit­ting GOP Vir­ginia state sen­a­tor and vet­er­an polit­i­cal oper­a­tive Jill Vogel—managing part­ner at Holtz­man Vogel, a heavy­weight in the world of con­ser­v­a­tive pol­i­tics and dark mon­ey groups.

    ...

    “She is a name that comes up a lot when you’re look­ing at right-wing mon­ey oper­a­tions in gen­er­al, tied to a lot of major play­ers,” Libowitz explained. “She and her firm [Holtz­man Vogel] have ties to peo­ple like [top con­ser­v­a­tive fundrais­er] Leonard Leo, just real­ly big Repub­li­can mon­ey.”

    Libowitz said Vogel may have want­ed to keep her name off of fil­ings to min­i­mize “any embar­rass­ment that may come with being pub­licly affil­i­at­ed with the train­wreck that was the Kanye cam­paign,” but added that “it’s also like­ly that she did not want peo­ple to know that a Repub­li­can oper­a­tive was behind his cam­paign.”

    Two peo­ple involved with the cam­paign iden­ti­fied Vogel, whose hus­band is D.C. lob­by­ist Alex Vogel, as a key play­er. One per­son told The Dai­ly Beast that Jill Vogel was “basi­cal­ly behind it all,” and had been a pres­ence in the cam­paign since at least last July, when right-lean­ing lob­by­ing firm Mer­cury Pub­lic Affairs was advis­ing the cam­paign. A third source con­firmed her involve­ment but was unsure of her exact role.

    ...

    Despite the evi­dence of Vogel’s cam­paign work in the court records, none of Kanye 2020’s FEC fil­ings show any pay­ments to her or her firm. (Nei­ther Mer­cury nor McK­eon appear, either.) How­ev­er, Vogel asso­ciates her­self direct­ly with the cam­paign in mul­ti­ple emails found in the court fil­ings, and oth­er cam­paign ven­dors iden­ti­fy her sev­er­al in texts and emails as the “cam­paign lawyer.”

    ...

    West’s self-described “spir­i­tu­al advis­er,” music man­ag­er John Boyd—who the cam­paign paid $25,000 for “polit­i­cal strat­e­gy consulting—was adamant that nobody, Repub­li­can or Demo­c­rat, ever manip­u­lat­ed the hip-hop star. How­ev­er, he admit­ted that his cam­paign was high­ly dis­or­ga­nized and the can­di­date was nev­er in full con­trol of his own oper­a­tions.

    “He had com­pa­nies, indi­vid­u­als work­ing for him, I don’t even know if he knew what they were doing that deeply. That’s my per­son­al view,” Boyd told The Dai­ly Beast. “There were def­i­nite­ly agen­das out there that per­haps he didn’t have full con­trol over.”
    ...

    But Jill Vogel was­n’t the only polit­i­cal oper­a­tive play­ing a lead role in the West cam­paign. Nathan Sproul of Lin­coln Strat­e­gy Group, appears to have set up “For­ti­fied Con­sult­ing” for the sole pur­pose of financ­ing West­’s cam­paign. At the same time Lin­coln Strat­e­gy Group was secret­ly help­ing West­’s cam­paign, it was open­ly help­ing the cam­paigns of main­stream Repub­li­cans:

    ...
    Anoth­er key oper­a­tive attached to West’s White House bid, whose involve­ment had attract­ed media atten­tion last year, was Nathan Sproul. One of Sproul’s firms was at the cen­ter of a vot­er fraud case in 2012, and anoth­er, Lin­coln Strat­e­gy Group, has since 2008 pulled in more than $10 mil­lion in fed­er­al polit­i­cal con­sult­ing ser­vices, accord­ing to FEC records—including $600,000 from the Trump cam­paign weeks ahead of the 2016 elec­tion.

    ...

    And while Lin­coln Strat­e­gy did not get paid by Kanye 2020, the cam­paign did pour about $4.8 mil­lion into a firm called “For­ti­fied Con­sult­ing.”

    At this point, you may not be stunned to learn that “For­ti­fied Con­sult­ing” has almost no pub­lic foot­print. How­ev­er, it shares an Ari­zona address with Lin­coln Strat­e­gy Group, and has been iden­ti­fied in mul­ti­ple news reports as belong­ing to Sproul.

    No oth­er polit­i­cal com­mit­tee has ever paid For­ti­fied Con­sult­ing.

    Over the four months that the firm was rak­ing in its $4.8 mil­lion from the “inde­pen­dent” West, its appar­ent alter ego, Lin­coln Strat­e­gy Group, was work­ing open­ly with main­stream Repub­li­can clients—including Sen. Jim Inhofe (R‑OK), Rep. Chip Roy (R‑TX), and the Repub­li­can Par­ty of Texas. Those clients paid Lin­coln a com­bined $1.1 mil­lion over that peri­od.
    ...

    And then there’s Grand Slam Finance, Inc. (GSF), a firm run by Dean­na Hayes with a his­to­ry of work­ing for the Cros­by Otten­hoff Group. And you don’t get much more main­stream in the realm of Repub­li­can fundrais­ing than the Cros­by Otten­hoof Group. Both CSF and Cros­by have done work for Karl Rove’s Super PAC Amer­i­can Cross­roads, with Holtz­man Vogel serv­ing as Cross­road­s’s law firm. These firms are the Repub­li­can dark mon­ey main­stream. That’s who was behind the Kanye West cam­paign. It was­n’t just a sin­gle main­stream GOP dark mon­ey firm. It was a whole net­work of the biggest work­ing togeth­er. All in secret:

    ...
    Begin­ning in August 2020, and stretch­ing through Sep­tem­ber of this year, Kanye 2020 made nine pay­ments totalling $692,057.35 for “com­pli­ance” and “account­ing” to a Texas enti­ty called “GSF Inc.” That eye-pop­ping fig­ure came after the hip-hop mogul had lost any hope of attain­ing the nation’s high­est office and, for con­text, it exceeds what for­mer Sen. David Per­due (R‑GA) splashed out for com­pli­ance ser­vices dur­ing his entire failed bid for re-elec­tion.

    But busi­ness records show that no such com­pa­ny as “GSF Inc.” exists in the Lone Star State, and the FEC data­base shows no oth­er polit­i­cal com­mit­tee has ever hired a firm by that name.

    How­ev­er, the data­base does show that an array of right-wing can­di­dates and com­mit­tees have paid a com­pa­ny shar­ing the same address in the sub­urbs just north of Austin: Grand Slam Finance, Inc. And the Texas law­suit doc­u­ments Grand Slam Finance’s exten­sive involve­ment in the Kanye 2020 cam­paign—as well as illus­trates how the firm appears to have both facil­i­tat­ed and poten­tial­ly con­cealed con­nec­tions between West’s cam­paign and the Repub­li­can oper­a­tive net­work more broad­ly.

    ...

    Texas records show that Grand Slam Finance was orig­i­nal­ly the cre­ation of accoun­tant Rus­sell Ander­son, who han­dled the books for dis­graced for­mer House Major­i­ty Leader Tom Delay’s polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee.

    But Ander­son told The Dai­ly Beast that he sold his stake in Grand Slam Finance to his part­ner Dean­na Hayes “three or four years” ago.

    ...

    Pub­lic records indi­cate Hayes’ his­to­ry with Vogel run through anoth­er pair of lead­ing GOP appa­ratchiks.

    Lob­by­ing doc­u­ments in Hawaii show Hayes and Grand Slam work­ing for the Cros­by Otten­hoff Group. This firm belongs to for­mer RNC Chief Finance Offi­cer Caleb Cros­by and Ben­jamin Otten­hoff, the trea­sur­er for the GOP’s dig­i­tal fundrais­ing jug­ger­naut WinRed.

    Nei­ther Cros­by nor Otten­hoff respond­ed to ques­tions about whether they had also worked for the West cam­paign. Cros­by has a par­tic­u­lar­ly close rela­tion­ship with Hayes and with Holtz­man Vogel: Hayes incor­po­rat­ed his per­son­al firm, CFC Con­sult­ing, which also works for mar­quee Repub­li­can names, and han­dled the books at a con­ser­v­a­tive non­prof­it where Cros­by worked as trea­sur­er.

    Grand Slam Finance also for­mer­ly man­aged com­pli­ance at anoth­er insti­tu­tion where Cros­by served as fidu­cia­ry: Karl Rove’s Super PAC Amer­i­can Cross­roads.

    The law firm for Amer­i­can Cross­roads? Holtz­man Vogel PLLC, accord­ing to FEC records.

    The same is true for the Sen­ate Lead­er­ship Fund, a Mitch McConnell-boost­ing PAC, which also lists Cros­by as its trea­sur­er. In fact, the Sen­ate Lead­er­ship Fund is only one of sev­er­al enti­ties based out of Holtz­man Vogel’s Vir­ginia law office which fea­ture Cros­by as an offi­cer.

    Holtz­man Vogel and the Cros­by Otten­hoff Group have teamed up numer­ous times in the past few years, most recent­ly for a pair of GOP PACs in Vir­ginia.
    ...

    And all of this could have poten­tial­ly remained a secret had it not been for a law­suit by one of the sub­con­trac­tors, SeedX. Clas­sic. Intrigu­ing­ly, even though the law­suit was tossed out, it was only tossed for tech­ni­cal rea­sons and the plain­tiffs are intent on fil­ing a new one. Con­sid­er­ing that this law­suit is basi­cal­ly the only poten­tial source of new infor­ma­tion on this dark mon­ey net­work, that could be a very impor­tant law­suit to keep an eye on. It’s in one of the emails from this law­suit that we learn that Jill Holtz­man Vogel rep­re­sent­ed her­self to SeedX as the West cam­paign’s lawyer. What else might we learn as this case plays out?

    ...
    Vogel’s cam­paign work is made clear in months of email and text com­mu­ni­ca­tions revealed in a mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar breach-of-con­tract law­suit tar­get­ing the West cam­paign and con­sul­tants, first filed this spring in Texas state court and reviewed by The Dai­ly Beast.

    The suit, brought by for­mer cam­paign sub­ven­dor SeedX, alleges the com­pa­ny nev­er got paid for months of cam­paign work, includ­ing build­ing and main­tain­ing the web­site and merch sales, which are count­ed for cam­paign pur­pos­es as dona­tions. SeedX backs up those alle­ga­tions with hun­dreds of pages of com­mu­ni­ca­tions with cam­paign offi­cials and con­trac­tors, indi­cat­ing it engaged in sev­er­al months of cam­paign work.

    SeedX alleges that because the cam­paign did not pay them, their work would qual­i­fy as either a loan or an in-kind contribution—which would have exceed­ed lim­its. How­ev­er, the cam­paign failed to acknowl­edge either in their fil­ings.

    The case got kicked up to fed­er­al court in the West­ern Dis­trict of Texas, where a judge dis­missed it on Nov. 30, cit­ing lack of jurisdiction—in oth­er words, SeedX filed the law­suit in the wrong place. The court did not take up the mer­its of the case, which was closed before it reached the dis­cov­ery stage, when sub­poe­nas could be issued. A per­son with direct knowl­edge told The Dai­ly Beast that the plain­tiffs remain con­fi­dent, and a new law­suit will like­ly be filed again soon.

    ...

    In one late Jan­u­ary email obtained by The Dai­ly Beast, Vogel iden­ti­fies her­self to SeedX as “the attor­ney for the Kanye West 2020 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign.” (Emails show she had been in touch with SeedX in this capac­i­ty for months.) She then says she has been “autho­rized” to offer SeedX $20,000 to buy the cam­paign web­site, and hints that the vendor—who did months of work but appar­ent­ly nev­er got paid—could face pos­si­ble civ­il lit­i­ga­tion if they do not set aside their demands.

    SeedX reject­ed the $20,000 and sued for $2 mil­lion, argu­ing it matched the rates of oth­er ven­dors.
    ...

    Good luck to SeedX. Who knows if they did $2 mil­lion worth of work, but $20k sounds rather cheap for a polit­i­cal cam­paign web­site, even a stunt cam­paign. Don’t for­get, the West cam­paign paid $4.8 mil­lion “For­ti­fied Con­sult­ing,” the fake front firm for Lin­coln Strat­e­gy Group. They were throw­ing around mil­lions of dol­lars to run this fake cam­paign. $20,000 for the web­site is just cheap giv­en the size of the oth­er cam­paign expen­di­tures. It sug­gests that SeedX was a com­pa­ny run not by GOP insid­ers but is just some ran­dom com­pa­ny they found and then tried to cheat. And if keep­ing the GOP’s fin­ger­prints off the cam­paign was a top pri­or­i­ty, using a ran­dom firm with no detectable GOP con­nec­tions might be the only option. Is that what hap­pened here? They hired an out­sider firm to devel­op the web­site, then cheat­ed them because they weren’t part of the inner-cir­cle-of-grift, and then got sued. Was that was hap­pened?

    And per­haps the biggest ques­tion here is just how many oth­er secret dark mon­ey cam­paigns are being oper­at­ed by this dark mon­ey machine? This isn’t just the lat­est weird chap­ter in Kanye West­’s men­tal health jour­ney. This was a tem­plate for how any cam­paign can be heav­i­ly sup­port­ed by the GOP dark mon­ey machine in secret. A secret con­duit between the mega-donors and the ‘inde­pen­dent’ cam­paigns that can pro­vide mon­ey and invalu­able exper­tise. With the most invalu­able exper­tise offered being an exper­tise in keep­ing all of this help a secret. After all, that would­n’t real­ly have helped Kanye West­’s cam­paign if every­one knew that it was secret­ly being financed and oper­at­ed by GOP dark mon­ey power­bro­kers. Not that it was real­ly a secret in Kanye’s case. But still, in the­o­ry this kind of expo­sure would­n’t help.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | December 19, 2021, 11:32 pm
  29. It’s that time again. With the 2022 US mid-term elec­tion cycle now get­ting under­way as Demo­c­ra­t­ic pow­er in Con­gress hangs in the bal­ance, it’s time for anoth­er onslaught of polit­i­cal ads tar­get­ing the US elec­torate. An onslaught of ads fueled by the unlim­it­ed anony­mous polit­i­cal dark mon­ey that dri­ve the US polit­i­cal sys­tem. So with that tor­rent of decep­tive pro­pa­gan­da in mind, here’s a piece by Nathan J. Robin­son in Cur­rent Affairs last year that reminds us about one of the aspects of this cycli­cal pro­pa­gan­da push that’s increas­ing­ly impor­tant to keep in mind: The bil­lion­aires who have large­ly cap­tured con­trol of the wealth of US econ­o­my don’t actu­al­ly con­tribute any­thing them­selves. They’re basi­cal­ly net extrac­tors of wealth. They com­pa­nies they buy and sell would have been cre­at­ed regard­less of whether or not these bil­lion­aires were ever born. The peo­ple who own the econ­o­my don’t actu­al­ly pro­duce or inno­vate. It’s a fun fact that stabs the myth of the cap­i­tal­ist mer­i­toc­ra­cy right in the heart.

    It’s by no means a new rev­e­la­tion, but instead some­thing we’re con­stant­ly remind­ed of the more we learn about what it is the bil­lion­aire class actu­al­ly does to earn its enor­mous wealth. Recall how Max Chafk­in’s recent biog­ra­phy on Peter Thiel revealed how Thiel does­n’t actu­al­ly have a very strong tech­ni­cal back­ground. In oth­er words, he lacks the tech­ni­cal and sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge base required to mean­ing­ful­ly con­tribute any­thing to the myr­i­ad of high­ly tech­ni­cal prod­ucts cre­at­ed by com­pa­nies he owns. Oth­er peo­ple are doing all of the actu­al inno­va­tion. As Chafkin wrote, Thiel’s pri­ma­ry ‘inno­va­tion’ appeared to be a recog­ni­tion that there were many busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties to exploit if one was will­ing to aggres­sive­ly break the rules, with an end goal of secur­ing a monop­oly. Break­ing rules and cre­at­ing monop­o­lies. That’s Thiel’s actu­al ‘con­tri­bu­tion’ to soci­ety that he has made in exchange for the bil­lions of dol­lars in wealth and pow­er he wields. Wealth and pow­er that con­tin­ues to grow by the year as Thiel sticks to the tried and true strat­e­gy of break­ing rules and secur­ing monop­o­lies. It’s hard to come up with an actu­al accom­plish­ment the guy has made that isn’t eth­ni­cal­ly com­pro­mised. Thiel is qui­et­ly one of the most influ­en­tial peo­ple on the plan­et, shap­ing the future of human civ­i­liza­tion. And as Robin­son describes, Thiel is also rather typ­i­cal for the bil­lion­aire class. A class that appears to have the spe­cial­ized skill-set of cap­tur­ing eco­nom­ic rev­enue streams by buy­ing and sell­ing busi­ness­es. Not actu­al­ly inno­vat­ing those busi­ness­es. Or even man­ag­ing them. Just buy­ing them and secur­ing the prof­it streams for them­selves, often to the detri­ment of the under­ly­ing com­pa­nies. Whether we’re look­ing at Sam Zel­l’s destruc­tion of the LA Times, Richard Bran­son’s oppor­tunis­tic gate­keep­ing in the record­ing indus­try, or Stephen Schwartz­man’s socio­path­ic exploita­tion of poor renters, the same sto­ry keeps emerg­ing. The bil­lion­aires are a soci­etal mon­ey pit that just keeps grow­ing.

    It’s a real­i­ty that under­scores one of the pri­ma­ry func­tions of con­tem­po­rary polit­i­cal pro­pa­gan­da in the US: obscur­ing the the pub­lic the real­i­ty that the most eco­nom­i­cal­ly pow­er­ful class on the plan­et oper­ates as par­a­sit­i­cal net eco­nom­ic drain on civ­i­liza­tion:

    Cur­rent Affairs

    How Bil­lion­aires See Them­selves

    Read­ing the dread­ful mem­oirs of the super-rich offers an illu­mi­nat­ing look at their delu­sions.

    Nathan J. Robin­son
    filed 05 Jan­u­ary 2021 in Eco­nom­ics

    Most bil­lion­aires stay out of the pub­lic eye. This makes sense, because accord­ing to polls, far more peo­ple dis­trust bil­lion­aires than admire them, and the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of the pub­lic want the gov­ern­ment to seize a por­tion of bil­lion­aires’ wealth. It’s easy for any­one in pos­ses­sion of a bil­lion dol­lars to make their name wide­ly known, but evi­dent­ly wealth with­out fame is pre­ferred to fame with­out wealth (or the pos­si­bil­i­ty of los­ing a small chunk of wealth).

    Some bil­lion­aires, how­ev­er, write books. These are some of the only doc­u­ments that the rul­ing class has pro­duced for the con­sump­tion of the mass­es. What is it they wish us to know?

    I have on my desk a stack of “bil­lion­aire books,” most­ly mem­oirs. They include: Sam Zell’s Am I Being Too Sub­tle, Richard Branson’s Los­ing My Vir­gin­i­ty, Richard DeVos’ Com­pas­sion­ate Cap­i­tal­ism, Charles Koch’s Good Prof­it, Ken Langone’s I Love Cap­i­tal­ism!, Stephen Schwarzman’s What It Takes, Peter Thiel’s Zero to One, Marc Benioff’s Trail­blaz­er, Sam Walton’s Made in Amer­i­ca, Joe Rick­etts’ The Hard­er You Work, The Luck­i­er You Get, and Michael Bloomberg’s Bloomberg by Bloomberg. (What a title. Bloomberg, whose com­pa­ny is Bloomberg L.P., also made his for­tune on a device he invent­ed called “the Bloomberg,” so it is clear he likes say­ing “Bloomberg.”)

    What you may have noticed even from the titles of these books is that many bil­lion­aires are slight­ly defen­sive. Koch Indus­tries, for instance, is sig­nif­i­cant­ly invest­ed in fos­sil fuels and has been fined hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars for vio­la­tions of envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tions. Charles Koch, how­ev­er, wants us to know that he makes “good prof­it,” by which he means that he cre­ates “val­ue for oth­ers” rather than just enrich­ing him­self. Richard DeVos (Amway) and Marc Benioff (Sales­force) have actu­al­ly both writ­ten books called Com­pas­sion­ate Cap­i­tal­ism. John Mack­ey (Whole Foods) called his Con­scious Cap­i­tal­ism. “I am good,” they are say­ing. “I am not what you think. Please don’t hate me.” (The plea falls on deaf ears; to me, all of these books might as well be titled Expro­pri­ate Me.)

    Some, like Ken Lan­gone (Home Depot), are a lit­tle less con­cerned with appear­ances. Titling a book I Love Cap­i­tal­ism! is bold for a bil­lion­aire, since it invites the obvi­ous reac­tion: “Yes, well, of course you do. It gave you a fuck­ing bil­lion dol­lars. If you were the king you would prob­a­bly write a book called I Love Monar­chy! but it wouldn’t tell us much about whether monar­chy is good for any­one else.”

    Lan­gone, for his part, is refresh­ing­ly unabashed in his defense of hav­ing far more than the rest of us:

    Should I fol­low the Bible? I’ll be hon­est: I’m not giv­ing every­thing away. Why? Because I love this life! I love hav­ing nice hous­es and good peo­ple to help me. I love get­ting on my air­plane instead of hav­ing to take my shoes off and wait in line to take a com­mer­cial flight. You want to accuse me of liv­ing well? I plead guilty… I don’t know if I would have done what I did or sac­ri­ficed the time I’ve sac­ri­ficed if I didn’t see some­thing in it for me. If that’s greed, let the chips fall where they may…As I said, I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor, and rich is bet­ter.

    Even Lan­gone, how­ev­er, insists that what he does is not about the mon­ey, and that mon­ey is last on his list of pri­or­i­ties. In fact, if there is a cen­tral recur­ring theme to bil­lion­aire lit­er­a­ture, it is this: an insis­tence that what has made the bil­lion­aire rich is help­ing oth­er peo­ple rather than help­ing them­selves. The bil­lion­aire wants to explain to us that what might look like the steady hoard­ing of wealth and a feu­dal­is­tic imbal­ance of pow­er is, in fact, the prod­uct of defen­si­ble moral choic­es and a fair sys­tem. As Max Weber not­ed, “the for­tu­nate is sel­dom sat­is­fied with the fact of being for­tu­nate” but wants to know that “he has a right to his good for­tune,” and that it is “legit­i­mate for­tune.” Hence Joe Rick­etts’ (Amer­i­trade) “the hard­er you work, the luck­i­er you get.” It’s man­i­fest­ly untrue, but it helps Rick­etts avoid guilt over his luck and priv­i­lege.

    Chris­tian­i­ty has elab­o­rate “theod­i­cies:” attempts to account for the “prob­lem of evil,” a.k.a. rec­on­cil­ing the exis­tence of God with the fact the world is clear­ly unfair, since the most obvi­ous oth­er option is athe­ism. The rich have their own theod­i­cies: attempts to account for the obvi­ous unfair­ness of their own posi­tion and to find some expla­na­tion for the world being the way it is, because the most obvi­ous oth­er option is social­ism.

    No bil­lion­aire, as far as I’ve read, claims to have been enriched unjust­ly. They each acknowl­edge the role of luck in suc­cess, but they do not believe the game they won is fun­da­men­tal­ly unfair. Each wants to tell us the sto­ry of how hard they worked, how it deliv­ered ben­e­fits for peo­ple, and how obtain­ing a bil­lion dol­lars was sim­ply a pleas­ant side effect of their pur­suits rather than the ulti­mate aim.

    Inter­est­ing­ly, what’s implic­it in this is that greed is not, in fact, good. A bil­lion­aire has to make the case that they did not sim­ply want mon­ey (even if, as Lan­gone says, it is nice to have mon­ey), because they rec­og­nize that pure self­ish­ness is almost uni­ver­sal­ly frowned upon. (Even Trump’s The Art of the Deal opens with the sen­tence: “I don’t do it for the mon­ey.”) In these books, each bil­lion­aire presents them­selves as a moral per­son who cares about peo­ple oth­er than them­selves. The writ­ing over­flows with false mod­esty, as the bil­lion­aires tedious­ly detail their phil­an­thropic con­tri­bu­tions so as to prove that they “give back.” And they tell us that while the mon­ey is nice, it is not why they do what they do. If we take them at their word, this means that the usu­al argu­ment that high tax­es reduce incen­tives is false. After all, every rich per­son says they don’t do it for the mon­ey, so pre­sum­ably they would keep doing exact­ly the same thing if we took most of that mon­ey away.

    Anoth­er way to legit­imize their wealth is to jus­ti­fy the sys­tem by which it is accu­mu­lat­ed in the first place. There is an under­ly­ing deep con­vic­tion that finan­cial gain must be dis­trib­uted accord­ing to some ratio­nal for­mu­la, that the Invis­i­ble Hand of Mar­ket Jus­tice gives each his due:

    “Soci­ety rewards those who give it what it wants. That is why how much mon­ey peo­ple have earned is a rough mea­sure of how much they gave soci­ety what it wanted—NOT how much they desired to make mon­ey. Look at what caused peo­ple to make a lot of mon­ey and you will see that usu­al­ly it is in pro­por­tion to their pro­duc­tion of what the soci­ety want­ed and large­ly unre­lat­ed to their desire to make mon­ey. There are many peo­ple who have made a lot of mon­ey who nev­er made mak­ing a lot of mon­ey their pri­ma­ry goal. Instead, they sim­ply engaged in the work that they were doing, pro­duced what soci­ety want­ed, and got rich doing it” — Ray Dalio (Bridge­wa­ter)
    “In a tru­ly free econ­o­my, for a busi­ness to sur­vive and pros­per in the long term it must devel­op and use its capa­bil­i­ties to cre­ate real, sus­tain­able, supe­ri­or val­ue for its cus­tomers, for soci­ety, and for itself… The role of busi­ness in soci­ety is to help peo­ple improve their lives…. Prof­its are a mea­sure of the val­ue it cre­ates for soci­ety.” — Charles Koch
    “This is what we know to be true: busi­ness is good because it cre­ates val­ue, it is eth­i­cal because it is based on vol­un­tary exchange, it is noble because it can ele­vate our exis­tence, and it is hero­ic because it lifts peo­ple out of pover­ty and cre­ates pros­per­i­ty.” —John Mack­ey

    This last pas­sage could serve as a kind of “cap­i­tal­ist cat­e­chism,” a state­ment of the core ide­ol­o­gy that the bil­lion­aire “knows to be true.” Busi­ness cre­ates val­ue for soci­ety, and thus it is good. This has rad­i­cal impli­ca­tions: it means not only that it is legit­i­mate to make as much mon­ey as you can, but it could even mean that the more mon­ey you make, the bet­ter a per­son you are. If, as Dalio says, for­tunes are dis­trib­uted in pro­por­tion to the degree some­one “gives soci­ety what it wants,” then the per­son with the most mon­ey has done the most to sat­is­fy oth­er peo­ple. Price is equal to val­ue.

    Even oth­er bil­lion­aires, how­ev­er, ques­tion the the­o­ry that the most social­ly ben­e­fi­cial peo­ple earn the most mon­ey. Peter Thiel con­fessed to busi­ness stu­dents that inno­va­tors do not actu­al­ly tend to get rich. The peo­ple who get rich are monop­o­lists: those who see an oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­trol some­thing that very large num­bers of oth­er peo­ple need, and who can elim­i­nate com­pe­ti­tion. In fact, while Lan­gone presents him­self as the “co-founder of Home Depot,” which gives peo­ple a sense that he cre­at­ed some­thing real from which they ben­e­fit, else­where in the book he reveals that one way he made a giant pile of mon­ey was sim­ply by find­ing a way to gain con­trol over an impor­tant patent for a wide­ly-used laser com­po­nent. The man who actu­al­ly invent­ed the com­po­nent was unable to enforce his patent, so Lan­gone set him up with a lawyer—in exchange for a piece of the rewards, which turned out to be sub­stan­tial. The end result of this for “soci­ety” was that every time any­one pur­chased a device con­tain­ing this laser com­po­nent, it was more expen­sive, so that Ken Lan­gone could reap indef­i­nite ben­e­fits from a gov­ern­ment-enforced monop­oly on a piece of knowl­edge that he did not cre­ate.

    Many bil­lion­aires do not seem to pro­duce any­thing at all. Ray Dalio, for instance, runs a hedge fund, mean­ing he makes bets. Richard Bran­son is known for Vir­gin Mobile and Vir­gin Atlantic, but Los­ing My Vir­gin­i­ty reveals how lit­tle Bran­son actu­al­ly con­tributed to the ven­tures that were mak­ing him his for­tune. For instance, when Bran­son was run­ning Vir­gin Records, the label was con­stant­ly try­ing to scout out a hit artist. They found a gold mine in mul­ti-instru­men­tal­ist Mike Old­field, whose Tubu­lar Bells was one of the best-sell­ing albums of the 1970s. Bran­son did not write or pro­duce Tubu­lar Bells. He sim­ply owned the com­pa­ny that put out the album.

    Now your first instinct may be to think: “Well, but this is an impor­tant con­tri­bu­tion. Bran­son con­nect­ed the artist to the lis­ten­ers. The record label doesn’t do noth­ing. The actu­al music is only one of the inputs into the ulti­mate prod­uct, an album.” But this the­o­ry wob­bles a bit as we wit­ness more of what Branson’s com­pa­ny was actu­al­ly doing. For instance, in the ear­ly 1990s there was a bid­ding war for Janet Jack­son, whose next album was wide­ly expect­ed to be a sure-fire hit. Bran­son want­ed to win that war, because he believed hav­ing Jack­son on the label would not only make them a bunch of mon­ey, but would also enhance Virgin’s rep­u­ta­tion as a place for cool and trendy artists.

    Bran­son won the war, put out Jackson’s album, and it was a huge hit. But note some­thing: if Richard Bran­son and Vir­gin had not exist­ed, noth­ing would have changed from the public’s per­spec­tive. Jack­son was huge­ly pop­u­lar and some­one was going to put out her next album. Bran­son did not actu­al­ly add any val­ue. Noth­ing hap­pened because of him, except that (1) Jackson’s albums said Vir­gin on them instead of anoth­er label and (2) the mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy was pos­si­bly dif­fer­ent than it would have been under a dif­fer­ent label, but the con­sen­sus was that giv­en Jackson’s pop­u­lar­i­ty whichev­er label got the next album would have a hit on its hands no mat­ter what (3) Jack­son got slight­ly more mon­ey than she would have if the bid­ding war had one few­er par­tic­i­pant.

    This lat­ter fac­tor might make it seem like Bran­son helped Jack­son. But that’s only the case if we assume the legit­i­ma­cy of the cap­i­tal­ist sys­tem. In fact, the rea­son Jack­son need­ed to go to a bil­lion­aire record label own­er in the first place is that the bil­lion­aire record label own­er con­trols the “means of pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion.” Hav­ing sev­er­al record labels bid for her work allows the labor­er (Jack­son) to sell her labor at a high­er price, but the whole rea­son she has to sell it at all is that she doesn’t have own­er­ship of the means of pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion. Let us imag­ine an alter­nate sit­u­a­tion in which those means were social­ized; let’s say we have pub­lic record­ing stu­dios like we have pub­lic libraries, and a pub­lic means of dis­tri­b­u­tion (like, for exam­ple, an artist-owned Spo­ti­fy). Here, the artist would ben­e­fit far more from a suc­cess­ful album, because there would be no Bran­son tak­ing a cut.

    In the book, it is not obvi­ous that Richard Bran­son cares at all about music. In fact, he hap­pens to know a guy named Simon who has taste in music, and that guy does the recruit­ment and dis­cov­ery. When Bran­son talks, it is sole­ly about how he can reap the fruit of oth­er people’s tal­ents: how can they find an artist that will make the label a lot of mon­ey? Often, these are artists that the label is almost cer­tain will make it big even­tu­al­ly, but if the com­pa­ny can be the first to sign them, they will get the slice that would oth­er­wise go to some­one else. They are not lift­ing up unap­pre­ci­at­ed genius­es who would oth­er­wise nev­er get oppor­tu­ni­ties.

    For a look at what “entre­pre­neurs” actu­al­ly “inno­vate,” look at Nike founder Phil Knight. Nike is, first and fore­most, a brand: a world-famous name and swoosh. But the woman who designed the swoosh logo, graph­ic artist Car­olyn David­son, was paid $35 for it (Knight lat­er lied and said it was $75.) Knight didn’t even like the design when he saw it. In Shoe Dog, he says that when she showed him her pro­posed logos, “the theme seemed to be… fat light­ning bolts? Chub­by check marks? Mor­bid­ly obese squig­gles? Her designs did evoke motion, of a kind, but also motion sick­ness. None spoke to me.” Even­tu­al­ly he accept­ed the swoosh because there were no alter­na­tives. Like­wise with the name: Knight want­ed to call the com­pa­ny “Dimen­sion Six,” but “Nike” came to one of his employ­ees in a dream. When Knight heard it, he com­ment­ed: “It’ll have to do… I don’t love it. Maybe it will grow on me.” (Years lat­er, when the sto­ry was infa­mous, Knight did make a big show of giv­ing David­son some Nike shares.)

    We might say, of course, that the Nike brand is not the core of Nike, that the shoes mat­ter as well. But Knight did not invent a new kind of shoe. Instead, he sim­ply noticed that Japan­ese shoes were high-qual­i­ty and could be obtained cheap­ly. By being the first to import these supe­ri­or for­eign shoes, he was able to wring giant piles of mon­ey out of Amer­i­cans for goods made by the Japan­ese. It was as if he was the first Amer­i­can to go to Mex­i­co and “dis­cov­er” the taco, and real­ized he could make a for­tune because Mex­i­cans hadn’t yet tried sell­ing tacos to Amer­i­cans.

    Being “first” is a big part of how suc­cess­ful bil­lion­aires make their for­tune. Mark Zucker­berg did not cre­ate the “best” social net­work. He just made one at the very moment when such a thing was pos­si­ble but hadn’t hap­pened yet. By being first, it’s pos­si­ble to get large enough where “net­work effects” keep oth­er entrants out of the mar­ket. It’s almost impos­si­ble to launch a com­peti­tor to Face­book or Twit­ter now, because they were the first to scoop every­body up. Pay­Pal was not the most bril­liant pay­ment proces­sor imag­in­able. But they came along when an online pay­ment proces­sor hap­pened to be a thing peo­ple need­ed. Sam Zell talks in his mem­oir about the impor­tance of the “first mover advan­tage.” When the 1996 Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Act elim­i­nat­ed restric­tions on the num­ber of radio sta­tions that any one per­son could own, Zell start­ed snap­ping up dis­tressed radio sta­tions around the coun­try at bar­gain prices. Even­tu­al­ly he had a giant net­work of them that he sold to Clear Chan­nel for $4.4 bil­lion. Zell doesn’t indi­cate that he did any­thing to improve the radio sta­tions, or even that he had any inter­est in radio. He just knew that radio sta­tions could be sold for more than their exist­ing prices. In oth­er words, absolute­ly noth­ing might change about a com­pa­ny or an indus­try, but some­one like Zell can swoop in and make a giant load of mon­ey from it.

    The radio sta­tion case is an exam­ple of try­ing to con­trol as much of some­thing scarce as you can. There are a lim­it­ed num­ber of licensed radio sta­tions, so Zell just tried to buy up what he knew oth­er peo­ple would soon need and have to pay him for. There was no inno­va­tion. Just seek­ing pow­er. Thiel’s Zero to One open­ly offers straight­for­ward guid­ance to the smart cap­i­tal­ist: get a monop­oly on some­thing rather than invent some­thing extreme­ly social­ly use­ful that can be copied eas­i­ly. Zell agrees, and has said that “the best thing to have in the world is a monop­oly, and if you can’t have a monop­oly, you want an oli­garchy.”

    Zell recalls anoth­er exam­ple of a time he cor­nered a mar­ket and made a for­tune. He dis­cov­ered that a small, trou­bled com­pa­ny named Amer­i­can Hawaii Cruis­es had a monop­oly on cruise trav­el to Hawai’i, because U.S. law pro­hib­it­ed for­eign-made ships from doing intra‑U.S. trav­el. (Remem­ber, “free trade” rhetoric is all a sham, the Unit­ed States is a deeply pro­tec­tion­ist coun­try.) By buy­ing the com­pa­ny, Zell was able to make sure that he was the one who prof­it­ed, rather than some­one else, but it wasn’t because he was so good at run­ning the com­pa­ny. He calls him­self the “chair­man of every­thing and CEO of noth­ing,” and says he doesn’t “involve [him­self] in the day to day.” His job is to sim­ply fig­ure out what to buy and then make some­body else run it. (This makes it some­what fun­ny that he has also said that “the 1 per­cent work hard­er” than every­one else and “should be emu­lat­ed.”)

    Zell infa­mous­ly bought the Los Ange­les Times, and demand­ed that jour­nal­ists’ work should gen­er­ate more rev­enue. “Fuck you,” he said to an Orlan­do Sen­tinel pho­tog­ra­ph­er who pub­licly con­front­ed him about his belief that reporters need­ed to focus more on turn­ing a prof­it than report­ing the news. Did Zell’s increased focus on rev­enue end up cre­at­ing more of it? No—after a year, the Los Ange­les Times was plunged into bank­rupt­cy, in one of the more well-known cas­es of a rich guy buy­ing up a ven­er­a­ble news­pa­per and destroy­ing it.

    Bank­rupt­ing a pop­u­lar news­pa­per hard­ly “fills a social need.” Some eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty is noth­ing more than “rent seek­ing”—sim­ply try­ing to col­lect mon­ey with­out increas­ing pro­duc­tion or val­ue. For exam­ple, if you put a fence along a riv­er, and charge peo­ple entrance to swim in the riv­er, you’ve con­tributed noth­ing to any­one. All you’ve done is extract wealth from peo­ple who could pre­vi­ous­ly have used the riv­er for free. A rich per­son is not nec­es­sar­i­ly rich because they cre­at­ed val­ue. They might sim­ply, as Marx sug­gest­ed, have found a way to extract val­ue from the labor of oth­ers. As in the case of Zell, they might even lessen the over­all val­ue of the labor itself. When we ana­lyze what these men actu­al­ly do, their social func­tion begins to seem far more ques­tion­able.

    **************

    ...

    Anoth­er myth of the super-rich is that their rewards come because they have been will­ing to “take risks.” The cap­i­tal­ist, it is said, earns high returns because they have risked the pos­si­bil­i­ty that they will not. But when you read their mem­oirs, you actu­al­ly find that much of what cap­i­tal­ists do con­sists of try­ing to find propo­si­tions that are all upside, with­out any risk at all. Zell, for instance, talks about how he noticed before any­one else that mobile home parks were a fan­tas­tic invest­ment. Peo­ple who were in them were gen­er­al­ly stuck in them and rarely left, you didn’t have to put much mon­ey into main­tain­ing or improv­ing them, and com­pe­ti­tion was lim­it­ed by the fact that nobody in a house want­ed a new mobile home park near them. So if you bought them, you gained the pow­er to squeeze a great deal of mon­ey indef­i­nite­ly out of res­i­dents. The “risk” was triv­ial.

    I often hear defend­ers of cap­i­tal­ism say things like “well, if you social­ists had ever had to meet a pay­roll you’d think dif­fer­ent­ly” or “a social­ist couldn’t run a taco truck.” (In my case this is true, as I do not know any­thing about mak­ing tacos.) But in work­ing with our ded­i­cat­ed and bril­liant staff to take Cur­rent Affairs from a tiny project oper­at­ing out of my liv­ing room to a suc­cess­ful com­pa­ny with an office and glob­al dis­tri­b­u­tion, I’ve been able to see first-hand why cap­i­tal­ist talk­ing points are false. Cer­tain­ly, I under­stand that “found­ing” a com­pa­ny does not mean that you actu­al­ly make the thing it pro­duces by your­self. This is always done by a team of peo­ple who per­form a lot of labor for lit­tle pub­lic cred­it.

    ...

    They also pos­sess a dif­fer­ent mind­set than oth­er peo­ple. Stephen Schwarz­man (Black­stone) recalls a recur­ring dis­agree­ment he had with his father, who owned a small Philadel­phia drug store called Schwarzman’s. Schwarz­man the younger was con­stant­ly telling Schwarz­man the elder that he should take the store region­al or nation­al. His dad sim­ply couldn’t under­stand what the point would be.

    “We could be huge,” the son says.

    “I’m very hap­py and have a nice house. Have two cars. I have enough mon­ey to send you and your broth­ers to col­lege. What more do I need?”

    “It isn’t about what you need. It’s about wants,” says the son.

    “I don’t want it. I don’t need it. That will not make me hap­py.”

    In his book, Schwarz­man says he shook his head, and couldn’t under­stand why his father turned down a “sure thing.” Lat­er, he says he came to under­stand that you “can’t learn to be an entre­pre­neur.” Dad sim­ply didn’t have the mind­set.

    Of course, Schwarzman’s dad comes out of this exchange look­ing per­fect­ly rea­son­able, and his son still doesn’t grasp the point, even many decades lat­er. It’s not just that mon­ey can’t buy hap­pi­ness. It’s that once you have hap­pi­ness, the fur­ther pur­suit of mon­ey only detracts from it. But per­haps that’s not true for Stephen Schwarz­man, whose lifestyle Van­i­ty Fair describes as fol­lows:

    In 2007, he became syn­ony­mous with Wall Street excess when, on the eve of the finan­cial cri­sis, he threw him­self a 60th birth­day par­ty that fea­tured Mar­tin Short as the mas­ter of cer­e­monies; per­for­mances by Pat­ti LaBelle and Rod Stew­art; a meal of “lob­ster, filet mignon, and baked Alas­ka,” along with “an array of expen­sive wines”; “repli­cas of Schwarzman’s art col­lec­tion” on the walls, “a full-length por­trait of him by Andrew Fes­t­ing, the pres­i­dent of the Roy­al Soci­ety of Por­trait Painters”; around 350 guests, includ­ing Bar­bara Wal­ters, Maria Bar­tiro­mo, Tina Brown, and Mela­nia and Don­ald Trump; and a “large-scale repli­ca of . . . Schwarzman’s Man­hat­tan apart­ment.” Lat­er that year, his culi­nary preferences—stone crabs that run $400, or $40 per claw—and low tol­er­ance for noise pol­lu­tion (“while sun­ning by the pool at his 11,000-square-foot home in Palm Beach, Fla., he com­plained . . . that an employ­ee wasn’t wear­ing the prop­er black shoes with his uni­form . . . [explain­ing] that he found the squeak of the rub­ber soles distracting”)—were revealed… For decades, Schwarz­man, who’s worth an esti­mat­ed $12.4 bil­lion, has had to suf­fer through the igno­rant public’s hurt­ful attacks on the pri­vate-equi­ty indus­try and total lack of under­stand­ing about what a great pub­lic ser­vice it pro­vides. Pre­sum­ably, he want­ed to throw him­self a lav­ish 65th birth­day par­ty but had to con­sid­er the optics of it all, instead wait­ing until his 70th to cel­e­brate him­self at a soirée that includ­ed trapeze artists, live camels, acro­bats, Mon­go­lian sol­diers, “a giant birth­day cake in the shape of a Chi­nese tem­ple,” and Gwen Ste­fani singing “Hap­py Birth­day.”

    Schwarz­man, inci­den­tal­ly, is the one who com­pared Barack Obama’s attempt to slight­ly raise the top mar­gin­al tax rate to Hitler’s inva­sion of Poland.

    The vast dif­fer­ence between the way bil­lion­aires think about the world and the way nor­mal peo­ple do is one of the more fas­ci­nat­ing aspects of these books. Michael Bloomberg begins Bloomberg by Bloomberg with the sto­ry of how he was fired by Salomon Broth­ers in the 1980s, and felt dev­as­tat­ed. With his mere $10 mil­lion sev­er­ance pack­age, he says, “I was wor­ried that Sue might be ashamed of my new, less vis­i­ble sta­tus and con­cerned I couldn’t sup­port the fam­i­ly.” Daniel Abra­ham (Slim-Fast) says of his child­hood home: “When I say the house had four­teen rooms, it prob­a­bly sounds as if we were rich. But we weren’t. Not at all. Hous­es were cheap then.” Some­times it seems like they have been flat­tered for so long by those around them that they don’t notice how bizarre they sound, and how unusu­al and unnat­ur­al their greed and their aspi­ra­tions real­ly are.

    This is even true in the case of Richard Bran­son, the “fun” bil­lion­aire who peo­ple like. (Blurbs from the back of Los­ing My Vir­gin­i­ty, include Newsweek: “He wears his fame and mon­ey exceed­ing­ly well… he isn’t inter­est­ed in pow­er [and] just wants to have fun.” GQ: “he embod­ies America’s cher­ished mythol­o­gy of the icon­o­clas­tic, swash­buck­ling entre­pre­neur.” Ivana Trump: “Richard is good-look­ing and very smart.”) In a jaw-drop­ping anec­dote about his ear­ly days edit­ing and pub­lish­ing a mag­a­zine called Stu­dent, Bran­son relates how he dis­cov­ered that his co-founder want­ed to turn the busi­ness into a work­er coop­er­a­tive, and Bran­son saved the sit­u­a­tion by lying and mak­ing his friend think the work­ers hat­ed him:

    [H]e had left a draft of a memo, which he was writ­ing to the staff. It was a plan to get rid of me as pub­lish­er and edi­tor, to take edi­to­r­i­al and finan­cial con­trol of Stu­dent, and to turn it into a coop­er­a­tive. I would become just part of the team, and every­one would share equal­ly in the edi­to­r­i­al direc­tion of the mag­a­zine. I was shocked. I felt that Nik, my clos­est friend, was betray­ing me… I decid­ed to bluff my way through the cri­sis… [If the staff were] unde­cid­ed, then I could dri­ve a wedge between Nik and the rest of them and cut Nik out.

    […] “Nik,” I said as we walked down the street, “a num­ber of peo­ple have come up to me and said they’re unhap­py with what you’re plan­ning. [note: a lie] They don’t like the idea, but they’re too scared to tell you to your face.” Nik looked hor­ri­fied.

    “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to stay here,” I went on. “You’re try­ing to under­mine me and the whole of Stu­dent.”… Nik looked down at his feet.

    “I’m sor­ry, Ricky,” he said. “It just seemed a bet­ter way to orga­nize our­selves…” He trailed off.

    “I’m sor­ry too, Nik.” … Nik left that day… I hate crit­i­ciz­ing peo­ple who work with me… Ever since then I have always tried to avoid the issue by ask­ing some­one else to wield the ax.

    Beyond telling glimpses like this one, out­right psy­cho­path­ic ten­den­cies do not show up very often in these books. Most, after all, were pro­duced with the aid of skilled ghost­writ­ers whose job is to bury the nasty stuff. The only real way to get past the pro­pa­gan­da is to look beyond the pri­ma­ry sources and exam­ine the facts. Marc Benioff fills his book with page after page about his val­ues and how much his com­pa­ny cares about stake­hold­ers rather than just mak­ing mon­ey, but short­ly after the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic began, Sales­force announced that it was lay­ing off 1,000 staff despite hav­ing just report­ed their strongest annu­al per­for­mance ever. Stephen Schwarz­man talks proud­ly about a com­pa­ny he owns called Invi­ta­tion Homes, which he presents as hav­ing giv­en poor peo­ple access to good hous­ing after the finan­cial cri­sis. “I bet if I look up this com­pa­ny it will actu­al­ly turn out that it does a bunch of shady shit and Schwarz­man is an evil slum­lord,” I thought as I read the pas­sage. Sure enough, Reuters report­ed that “in inter­views with scores of the company’s ten­ants in neigh­bor­hoods across the Unit­ed States, the pic­ture that emerges isn’t as much one of excep­tion­al ser­vice as it is one of leaky pipes, ver­min, tox­ic mold, non­func­tion­ing appli­ances and months-long waits for repairs.” A U.N. work­ing group on human rights and transna­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions even sent Schwarz­man an angry let­ter denounc­ing the prac­tices of his com­pa­ny:

    Ten­ants told us that when they ask Invi­ta­tion Homes to under­take ordi­nary repairs or main­te­nance, such as to address plumb­ing house­hold insect prob­lems, they are charged direct­ly for any under­tak­ings on top of their rent. They also report­ed that Invi­ta­tion Homes—through an auto­mat­ed system—is quick to threat­en evic­tion or file evic­tion notices due to late pay­ment of rent or late of pay­ment of fees (95 USD per inci­dent), no mat­ter the cir­cum­stances. If a ten­ant can­not pay the late fee and if Invi­ta­tion Homes does not evict, that fee is added to the tenant’s rent. If in the fol­low­ing month the ten­ant can pay their rent but not the addi­tion­al charge, the ten­ant may be evict­ed for par­tial pay­ment of rent. When ten­ants choose to chal­lenge the evic­tion with Invi­ta­tion Homes they incur addi­tion­al fees and penal­ties.

    It is dif­fi­cult to award a prize for “most evil bil­lion­aire” out of the group of 21st cen­tu­ry rob­ber barons whose lit­er­ary out­put I sam­pled, but Schwarz­man prob­a­bly gets it for financ­ing a life of utter­ly obscene lux­u­ry by jack­ing up poor people’s rent and throw­ing them out onto the street the moment they get behind (and throw­ing in some fees and penal­ties for good mea­sure). Just utter­ly heinous. As the news­pa­per own­er said to the pho­to­jour­nal­ist: fuck you.

    ***********************

    Much of the behav­ior we see from bil­lion­aires comes from what I’ve come to call “the bifur­cat­ed phi­los­o­phy of accu­mu­la­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion.” Or, less obnox­ious­ly: it’s okay to be a sociopath when you’re get­ting the stuff so long as you’re a saint after you’ve got it. The idea is that the world of busi­ness is dog-eat-dog and you can be as Machi­avel­lian as you like and don’t need to think about the con­se­quences for anybody’s lives. But then you have to do phil­an­thropy after­wards, because greed is bad. Andrew Carnegie, the O.G. rob­ber baron, laid out the tem­plate in his pop­u­lar Gospel of Wealth. Carnegie begins by jus­ti­fy­ing every kind of hor­rif­ic inequal­i­ty as being the nat­ur­al order of things, which should be com­plete­ly beyond ques­tion:

    The con­trast between the palace of the mil­lion­aire and the cot­tage of the labor­er with us today mea­sures the change which has come with civ­i­liza­tion. This change, how­ev­er, is not to be deplored, but wel­comed…. Much bet­ter this great irreg­u­lar­i­ty than uni­ver­sal squalor. It is beyond our pow­er to alter, and, there­fore, to be accept­ed and made the best of. It is a waste of time to crit­i­cize the inevitable… We accept and wel­come, as con­di­tions to which we must accom­mo­date our­selves, great inequal­i­ty of envi­ron­ment: the con­cen­tra­tion of busi­ness, indus­tri­al and com­mer­cial, in the hands of a few essen­tial to the future progress of the race. The Social­ist or Anar­chist who seeks to over­turn present con­di­tions is to be regard­ed attack­ing the foun­da­tion upon which civ­i­liza­tion itself rests, for civ­i­liza­tion took its start from the day when capa­ble, indus­tri­ous work­man said to his incom­pe­tent and lazy fel­low, “If thou dost not sow, thou shalt not reap,” and thus end­ed prim­i­tive Com­mu­nism by sep­a­rat­ing the drones from the bees.

    But Carnegie then lays out a the­o­ry of noblesse oblige: in return for ben­e­fit­ing from this sys­tem, “the duty of the man of wealth” is to “organiz[e] bene­fac­tions from which the mass­es of their fel­lows will derive ben­e­fit.” He will thus be “the mere trustee and agent for his poor­er brethren, bring­ing to their ser­vice his supe­ri­or wis­dom, [doing bet­ter for them] than they would or could do for them­selves.” Now, Carnegie is very par­tic­u­lar about who he helps, con­demn­ing “indis­crim­i­nate char­i­ty” and say­ing that “it were bet­ter for mankind that the mil­lions of the rich were thrown into the sea than so spent as to encour­age the sloth­ful, the drunk­en, and the unwor­thy,” and he is one of those peo­ple who says giv­ing to pan­han­dlers actu­al­ly hurts them and is thus self­ish and immoral. But Carnegie’s over­all mes­sage is: it doesn’t mat­ter how you enrich your­self if you are a “stew­ard” of the pub­lic good after­ward. Accu­mu­late as you like, so long as you dis­trib­ute accord­ing to the prin­ci­ples of jus­tice.

    Except, of course: phil­an­thropy is just as self­ish as end­less wealth accu­mu­la­tion. A true bene­fac­tor of humankind sheds their wealth rather than hand­ing it out in lit­tle drops to their pet caus­es. The phil­an­thropist is no dif­fer­ent from a feu­dal lord who doled out favors. The “unjust accumulation/just dis­tri­b­u­tion” for­mu­la is just more ludi­crous theod­i­cy, with phil­an­thropy a means of help­ing these guys ratio­nal­ize hav­ing vast­ly more lux­u­ry and pow­er than every­one else.

    Bil­lion­aires tell them­selves many things. They say that mar­ket price is val­ue, mean­ing that if you’re mak­ing mon­ey you’re help­ing the world. They say that they are reward­ed for risk and hard work, even though they don’t risk any­thing of val­ue and peo­ple who work far hard­er than they do earn pit­tances. They say that they won a “free” con­test, when they won a rigged one whose results have no legit­i­ma­cy. (Is it mere coin­ci­dence that these are all white guys?) They say that they are “com­pas­sion­ate” in their cap­i­tal­ist prac­tices but ulti­mate­ly let the mar­ket deter­mine their moral­i­ty. They say they inno­vate and add val­ue when they do noth­ing of the kind. Their jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for their suc­cess crum­ble when touched. It’s inter­est­ing that the rul­ing class, with all of its resources, can­not mount any kind of per­sua­sive defense of its own posi­tion. But to any­one who is secret­ly inse­cure, and won­ders whether per­haps the peo­ple at the top are smarter and bet­ter and more hard­work­ing, you will be reas­sured to know that they are not. You don’t have to take my word for it. It’s right there in their books.

    ———-

    “How Bil­lion­aires See Them­selves” by Nathan J. Robin­son; Cur­rent Affairs; 01/05/2021

    “Chris­tian­i­ty has elab­o­rate “theod­i­cies:” attempts to account for the “prob­lem of evil,” a.k.a. rec­on­cil­ing the exis­tence of God with the fact the world is clear­ly unfair, since the most obvi­ous oth­er option is athe­ism. The rich have their own theod­i­cies: attempts to account for the obvi­ous unfair­ness of their own posi­tion and to find some expla­na­tion for the world being the way it is, because the most obvi­ous oth­er option is social­ism.

    How does one jus­ti­fy an unjus­ti­fi­able sys­tem when one is the over­whelm­ing ben­e­fi­cia­ry of the sys­tem? Reli­gion. Not an offi­cial reli­gion in this case. It’s more the unof­fi­cial reli­gion of cap­i­tal­ism: what hap­pens in cap­i­tal­ism is what should have hap­pened for the greater good. It has­n’t just been the bil­lion­aires who have ben­e­fit­ed from the cur­rent sys­tem. Vir­tu­al­ly every­one has been an over­whelm­ing ben­e­fi­cia­ry. The way things are today are as good as they can get, and that’s all thanks to con­tem­po­rary cap­i­tal­ism. Yes, these are absurd state­ments. But for an econ­o­my that’s as absurd­ly unfair as the US econ­o­my, the gospel of the bil­lion­aires is an absolute neces­si­ty just to ensure there’s no pub­lic back­lash. Hence all the self-serv­ing biogra­phies. And yet even in these self-serv­ing biogra­phies we find one exam­ple after anoth­er of how the bil­lion­aire class is oper­at­ing like bloat­ed par­a­site that exists sole­ly to extract val­ue from busi­ness­es with­out ever real­ly giv­ing back:

    ...
    Even oth­er bil­lion­aires, how­ev­er, ques­tion the the­o­ry that the most social­ly ben­e­fi­cial peo­ple earn the most mon­ey. Peter Thiel con­fessed to busi­ness stu­dents that inno­va­tors do not actu­al­ly tend to get rich. The peo­ple who get rich are monop­o­lists: those who see an oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­trol some­thing that very large num­bers of oth­er peo­ple need, and who can elim­i­nate com­pe­ti­tion. In fact, while Lan­gone presents him­self as the “co-founder of Home Depot,” which gives peo­ple a sense that he cre­at­ed some­thing real from which they ben­e­fit, else­where in the book he reveals that one way he made a giant pile of mon­ey was sim­ply by find­ing a way to gain con­trol over an impor­tant patent for a wide­ly-used laser com­po­nent. The man who actu­al­ly invent­ed the com­po­nent was unable to enforce his patent, so Lan­gone set him up with a lawyer—in exchange for a piece of the rewards, which turned out to be sub­stan­tial. The end result of this for “soci­ety” was that every time any­one pur­chased a device con­tain­ing this laser com­po­nent, it was more expen­sive, so that Ken Lan­gone could reap indef­i­nite ben­e­fits from a gov­ern­ment-enforced monop­oly on a piece of knowl­edge that he did not cre­ate.

    Many bil­lion­aires do not seem to pro­duce any­thing at all. Ray Dalio, for instance, runs a hedge fund, mean­ing he makes bets. Richard Bran­son is known for Vir­gin Mobile and Vir­gin Atlantic, but Los­ing My Vir­gin­i­ty reveals how lit­tle Bran­son actu­al­ly con­tributed to the ven­tures that were mak­ing him his for­tune. For instance, when Bran­son was run­ning Vir­gin Records, the label was con­stant­ly try­ing to scout out a hit artist. They found a gold mine in mul­ti-instru­men­tal­ist Mike Old­field, whose Tubu­lar Bells was one of the best-sell­ing albums of the 1970s. Bran­son did not write or pro­duce Tubu­lar Bells. He sim­ply owned the com­pa­ny that put out the album.

    Now your first instinct may be to think: “Well, but this is an impor­tant con­tri­bu­tion. Bran­son con­nect­ed the artist to the lis­ten­ers. The record label doesn’t do noth­ing. The actu­al music is only one of the inputs into the ulti­mate prod­uct, an album.” But this the­o­ry wob­bles a bit as we wit­ness more of what Branson’s com­pa­ny was actu­al­ly doing. For instance, in the ear­ly 1990s there was a bid­ding war for Janet Jack­son, whose next album was wide­ly expect­ed to be a sure-fire hit. Bran­son want­ed to win that war, because he believed hav­ing Jack­son on the label would not only make them a bunch of mon­ey, but would also enhance Virgin’s rep­u­ta­tion as a place for cool and trendy artists.

    Bran­son won the war, put out Jackson’s album, and it was a huge hit. But note some­thing: if Richard Bran­son and Vir­gin had not exist­ed, noth­ing would have changed from the public’s per­spec­tive. Jack­son was huge­ly pop­u­lar and some­one was going to put out her next album. Bran­son did not actu­al­ly add any val­ue. Noth­ing hap­pened because of him, except that (1) Jackson’s albums said Vir­gin on them instead of anoth­er label and (2) the mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy was pos­si­bly dif­fer­ent than it would have been under a dif­fer­ent label, but the con­sen­sus was that giv­en Jackson’s pop­u­lar­i­ty whichev­er label got the next album would have a hit on its hands no mat­ter what (3) Jack­son got slight­ly more mon­ey than she would have if the bid­ding war had one few­er par­tic­i­pant.

    This lat­ter fac­tor might make it seem like Bran­son helped Jack­son. But that’s only the case if we assume the legit­i­ma­cy of the cap­i­tal­ist sys­tem. In fact, the rea­son Jack­son need­ed to go to a bil­lion­aire record label own­er in the first place is that the bil­lion­aire record label own­er con­trols the “means of pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion.” Hav­ing sev­er­al record labels bid for her work allows the labor­er (Jack­son) to sell her labor at a high­er price, but the whole rea­son she has to sell it at all is that she doesn’t have own­er­ship of the means of pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion. Let us imag­ine an alter­nate sit­u­a­tion in which those means were social­ized; let’s say we have pub­lic record­ing stu­dios like we have pub­lic libraries, and a pub­lic means of dis­tri­b­u­tion (like, for exam­ple, an artist-owned Spo­ti­fy). Here, the artist would ben­e­fit far more from a suc­cess­ful album, because there would be no Bran­son tak­ing a cut.

    ...

    The radio sta­tion case is an exam­ple of try­ing to con­trol as much of some­thing scarce as you can. There are a lim­it­ed num­ber of licensed radio sta­tions, so Zell just tried to buy up what he knew oth­er peo­ple would soon need and have to pay him for. There was no inno­va­tion. Just seek­ing pow­er. Thiel’s Zero to One open­ly offers straight­for­ward guid­ance to the smart cap­i­tal­ist: get a monop­oly on some­thing rather than invent some­thing extreme­ly social­ly use­ful that can be copied eas­i­ly. Zell agrees, and has said that “the best thing to have in the world is a monop­oly, and if you can’t have a monop­oly, you want an oli­garchy.”

    Zell recalls anoth­er exam­ple of a time he cor­nered a mar­ket and made a for­tune. He dis­cov­ered that a small, trou­bled com­pa­ny named Amer­i­can Hawaii Cruis­es had a monop­oly on cruise trav­el to Hawai’i, because U.S. law pro­hib­it­ed for­eign-made ships from doing intra‑U.S. trav­el. (Remem­ber, “free trade” rhetoric is all a sham, the Unit­ed States is a deeply pro­tec­tion­ist coun­try.) By buy­ing the com­pa­ny, Zell was able to make sure that he was the one who prof­it­ed, rather than some­one else, but it wasn’t because he was so good at run­ning the com­pa­ny. He calls him­self the “chair­man of every­thing and CEO of noth­ing,” and says he doesn’t “involve [him­self] in the day to day.” His job is to sim­ply fig­ure out what to buy and then make some­body else run it. (This makes it some­what fun­ny that he has also said that “the 1 per­cent work hard­er” than every­one else and “should be emu­lat­ed.”)

    ...

    Bank­rupt­ing a pop­u­lar news­pa­per hard­ly “fills a social need.” Some eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty is noth­ing more than “rent seek­ing”—sim­ply try­ing to col­lect mon­ey with­out increas­ing pro­duc­tion or val­ue. For exam­ple, if you put a fence along a riv­er, and charge peo­ple entrance to swim in the riv­er, you’ve con­tributed noth­ing to any­one. All you’ve done is extract wealth from peo­ple who could pre­vi­ous­ly have used the riv­er for free. A rich per­son is not nec­es­sar­i­ly rich because they cre­at­ed val­ue. They might sim­ply, as Marx sug­gest­ed, have found a way to extract val­ue from the labor of oth­ers. As in the case of Zell, they might even lessen the over­all val­ue of the labor itself. When we ana­lyze what these men actu­al­ly do, their social func­tion begins to seem far more ques­tion­able.
    ...

    It’s a sys­tem root­ed in the absolute neces­si­ty of deny­ing the unde­ni­able for as long as pos­si­ble. So it’s quite notable that the denials often include acknowl­edge­ments of the gross unfair­ness of the cur­rent par­a­digm. The bil­lion­aire biogra­phies don’t try to push the ‘greed is good’ mantra that forms the core of the con­tem­po­rary cap­i­tal­ist sys­tem. Instead, they attempt to rede­fine the rapa­cious busi­ness prac­tices of these bil­lion­aires as not being dri­ven by greed at all but instead by a deep desire to help oth­ers. It’s per­haps the most com­pelling evi­dence of how lit­tle there is to jus­ti­fy this sys­tem. The bil­lion­aires can only deny the unde­ni­able by effec­tive­ly rewrit­ing their own his­to­ries:

    ...
    No bil­lion­aire, as far as I’ve read, claims to have been enriched unjust­ly. They each acknowl­edge the role of luck in suc­cess, but they do not believe the game they won is fun­da­men­tal­ly unfair. Each wants to tell us the sto­ry of how hard they worked, how it deliv­ered ben­e­fits for peo­ple, and how obtain­ing a bil­lion dol­lars was sim­ply a pleas­ant side effect of their pur­suits rather than the ulti­mate aim.

    Inter­est­ing­ly, what’s implic­it in this is that greed is not, in fact, good. A bil­lion­aire has to make the case that they did not sim­ply want mon­ey (even if, as Lan­gone says, it is nice to have mon­ey), because they rec­og­nize that pure self­ish­ness is almost uni­ver­sal­ly frowned upon. (Even Trump’s The Art of the Deal opens with the sen­tence: “I don’t do it for the mon­ey.”) In these books, each bil­lion­aire presents them­selves as a moral per­son who cares about peo­ple oth­er than them­selves. The writ­ing over­flows with false mod­esty, as the bil­lion­aires tedious­ly detail their phil­an­thropic con­tri­bu­tions so as to prove that they “give back.” And they tell us that while the mon­ey is nice, it is not why they do what they do. If we take them at their word, this means that the usu­al argu­ment that high tax­es reduce incen­tives is false. After all, every rich per­son says they don’t do it for the mon­ey, so pre­sum­ably they would keep doing exact­ly the same thing if we took most of that mon­ey away.

    ...

    Bil­lion­aires tell them­selves many things. They say that mar­ket price is val­ue, mean­ing that if you’re mak­ing mon­ey you’re help­ing the world. They say that they are reward­ed for risk and hard work, even though they don’t risk any­thing of val­ue and peo­ple who work far hard­er than they do earn pit­tances. They say that they won a “free” con­test, when they won a rigged one whose results have no legit­i­ma­cy. (Is it mere coin­ci­dence that these are all white guys?) They say that they are “com­pas­sion­ate” in their cap­i­tal­ist prac­tices but ulti­mate­ly let the mar­ket deter­mine their moral­i­ty. They say they inno­vate and add val­ue when they do noth­ing of the kind. Their jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for their suc­cess crum­ble when touched. It’s inter­est­ing that the rul­ing class, with all of its resources, can­not mount any kind of per­sua­sive defense of its own posi­tion. But to any­one who is secret­ly inse­cure, and won­ders whether per­haps the peo­ple at the top are smarter and bet­ter and more hard­work­ing, you will be reas­sured to know that they are not. You don’t have to take my word for it. It’s right there in their books.
    ...

    But it’s not just the biogra­phies of bil­lion­aires that require con­stant revi­sion­ism. It’s the pub­lic’s under­stand­ing of the whole of real­i­ty that needs to be sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly warped. Not that many peo­ple read these books after all. And that’s why this sto­ry of the delu­sions of bil­lion­aires — whether they’re gen­uine self-delu­sions or cyn­i­cal decep­tions — isn’t just about our gen­er­al mis­un­der­stand­ing of how these great for­tunes were achieved and sus­tained. Because this same group of delusion/deceptive bil­lion­aires also hap­pens to heav­i­ly over­lap with the bil­lion­aire class dom­i­nat­ing the US’s dark mon­ey polit­i­cal sys­tem. A dark mon­ey sys­tem basi­cal­ly designed to anony­mous­ly fun­nel unlim­it­ed amounts of wealth into decep­tive polit­i­cal pro­pa­gan­da. The kind of pro­pa­gan­da that serves to not just obscure real­i­ty but pro­mote far right griev­ance nar­ra­tives that point­ing fin­gers in any direc­tion oth­er than the right-wing bil­lion­aires who have effec­tive­ly secret­ly cap­tured the US econ­o­my. Yes, it’s an open secret, but still effec­tive­ly a secret. Mis­sion accom­plished.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | February 20, 2022, 7:39 pm
  30. The the US soci­ety still com­ing to grips with the New Supreme Nor­mal of a far right Supreme Court major­i­ty, here’s a peek at anoth­er case with foun­da­tion-shat­ter­ing poten­tial that could come before the court. A shat­ter­ing of the foun­da­tions of the US’s mon­ey-laun­der­ing laws in this case. And as we’re going to see, that legal chal­lenge id pred­i­cat­ed, in part, in the exact same kinds of polit­i­cal free speech argu­ments that brought us Cit­i­zen Unit­ed. In oth­er words, it’s the kind of legal argu­ment that just might find major­i­ty agree­ment with the cur­rent court.

    The case is based on a pro­vi­sion regard­ing the reg­u­la­tions of cryp­tocur­ren­cies tucked in the Novem­ber 2021 tril­lion-dol­lar infra­struc­ture bill. Under long-stand US law, cur­ren­cy trans­ac­tions involv­ing more than $10,000 must be report­ed to the US. The bill expand­ed that reg­u­la­tion, 6050I, to include cryp­tocur­ren­cy trans­ac­tions. So any cryp­tocur­ren­cy trade worth more than $10,000 needs to be report­ed to the IRS.

    All in all, it’s the kind of reg­u­la­tion that, if any­thing, helps to for­mal­ize and nor­mal­ize cryp­tocur­ren­cies in the econ­o­my. But that’s not how the cryp­to-advo­ca­cy group Coin Cen­ter views it. Instead, Coin Cen­ter is suing over the new reg­u­la­tion, argu­ing that is impinges on con­sti­tu­tion­al rights to pri­va­cy. Coin Cen­ter bases its argu­ment on 4th amend­ment pro­tec­tions against unwar­rant­ed search and seizure. But, cru­cial, they also claim the reg­u­la­tions vio­lates the First Amend­ment right to free speech. In par­tic­u­lar, they argue that the law could have a “chill­ing” effect on polit­i­cal speech. Why? Because of the pub­lic nature of the blockchain. Any­one can see any trans­ac­tion between two ‘wal­lets’. But they don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly know who owns those wal­lets. That anony­mous of wal­let own­er­ship is what gives cryp­tocur­ren­cy its ‘cryp­to’ char­ac­ter­is­tics. So if wal­let own­ers have to report all trans­ac­tions worth more than $10,000 to the IRS, all over trans­ac­tions involv­ing that wal­let can also be deter­mined by the IRS. This will appar­ent­ly have a “chill­ing” effect on polit­i­cal con­tri­bu­tions. As a result, 6050I could be over­turned and the ALL report­ing require­ments to the IRS could end up being gut­ted should Coin Cen­ter win its case.

    Keep in mind that the IRS reg­u­la­tions don’t require the own­ers of dig­i­tal wal­lets to pub­licly dis­close their iden­ti­ties. They just need to dis­close it to the IRS. And yet that non-pub­lic dis­clo­sure is appar­ent­ly going to have chill­ing effects on polit­i­cal speech. That’s the legal game being played here. A game we’ve seen before. Recall how this is more or less the same legal argu­ment we’ve seen the Koch-backed Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty was argu­ing in Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty v Bon­ta last year, assert­ing that a Cal­i­for­nia law that required the dis­clo­sure of large donor iden­ti­ties to the state, not the pub­lic, con­sti­tut­ed a chill­ing effect on polit­i­cal free speech.

    It’s also impor­tant to recall that this 1st Amend­ment ‘chill­ing’ argu­ment is basi­cal­ly an exten­sion of the 1958 Supreme Court case NAACP v. Alaba­ma. Recall how that case was one of the ear­li­er Supreme Court rul­ings that, tak­en togeth­er, cre­at­ed the col­lec­tions of rules and loop­holes that allowed for near­ly unlim­it­ed anony­mous Dark Mon­ey polit­i­cal spend­ing in the US before Cit­i­zens Unit­ed for­mal­ized it in 2010. The case cen­tered on the ques­tion of whether the iden­ti­ties of peo­ple who donat­ed to the NAACP would be pro­tect­ed giv­en the obvi­ous neg­a­tive reper­cus­sions that reveal­ing their iden­ti­ty could have had in 1950s Amer­i­ca. Also recall how the CEO of DonorsTrust, Law­son Bad­er, lit­er­al­ly cit­ed NAACP v. Alaba­ma a cou­ple years ago when faced with ques­tions about a $1.5 mil­lion dona­tion made to VDARE and the iden­ti­ty of the donor. Yes, the Koch net­work’s chief Dark Mon­ey enti­ty cit­ed a case that revolved around poten­tial intim­i­da­tion that donors to the NAACP might have faced as part of an excuse to not reveal the iden­ti­ty of the indi­vid­ual or group how made a large dona­tion to one of the US’s lead­ing white nation­al­ist orga­ni­za­tions.

    So when Coin Cen­ter argues that reveal­ing the iden­ti­ties of wal­let own­ers will sti­fle polit­i­cal giv­ing, it’s pig­gy-bag­ging on the same legal argu­ment Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty was mak­ing in Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty v Bon­ta last year. An argu­ment root­ed in NAACP v Alaba­ma which formed part of the foun­da­tion for the legal rea­son­ing behind Cit­i­zens Unit­ed. That’s part of what makes this such an alarm­ing sto­ry: it’s not at all hard to imag­ine the cur­rent court agree­ing with this legal rea­son­ing. It’s done it before. That’s how we got Cit­i­zens Unit­ed.

    But there’s anoth­er fac­tor in this case that only adds to the omi­nous­ness: the Koch-backed Cato Foun­da­tion has already come out in favor of Coin Cen­ters case. As Cato made clear in a recent blog post, the group is hop­ing the case could lead to an over­turn­ing of all sorts of oth­er finan­cial dis­clo­sure laws.

    So it appears that can add one more item to the grow­ing list of con­se­quences from the main­stream­ing of cryp­tocur­ren­cies: no more mon­ey-laun­der­ing over­sight. Because you can have a soci­ety that embraces cryp­tocur­ren­cies. Or you can have a soci­ety that reg­u­lates mon­ey-laun­der­ing. But you can’t have both, and the far right Supreme Court is going to have to choose:

    The Verge

    A legal chal­lenge over cryp­to report­ing could strike down decades-old anti-mon­ey laun­der­ing laws

    Advo­ca­cy group Coin Cen­ter is suing the US gov­ern­ment over ‘uncon­sti­tu­tion­al finan­cial sur­veil­lance’

    By Corin Faife
    Jun 21, 2022, 11:29am EDT

    Ever since the Silk Road, Bitcoin’s pow­er to fuel anony­mous trans­ac­tions (and, more specif­i­cal­ly, mon­ey laun­der­ing) has been a prime con­cern for law­mak­ers and law enforce­ment agen­cies. A new pro­vi­sion passed as part of the infra­struc­ture pack­age tried to tack­le that issue, but it’s run­ning into stiff oppo­si­tion from cryp­tocur­ren­cy groups — and a legal chal­lenge that could have huge impli­ca­tions for finan­cial trans­paren­cy across the coun­try.

    In Novem­ber 2021, when Pres­i­dent Biden’s tril­lion-dol­lar Infra­struc­ture Invest­ment and Jobs Act was signed into law, a con­tro­ver­sial cryp­tocur­ren­cy-relat­ed pro­vi­sion was passed along with the major leg­is­la­tion on roads, bridges, and oth­er infra­struc­ture.

    The bipar­ti­san infra­struc­ture bill includ­ed an amend­ment to the tax code that required any busi­ness or indi­vid­ual receiv­ing a cryp­tocur­ren­cy trans­ac­tion of more than $10,000 to report it to the IRS, using a spe­cif­ic form that includes the sender’s name, date of birth, and tax­pay­er iden­ti­fi­ca­tion num­ber. This match­es the cash report­ing require­ments already in Title 26 Sec­tion 6050I, and fail­ure to com­ply can result in a fine of up to $250,000 for an indi­vid­ual and up to five years in prison.

    ...

    Last week, Coin Cen­ter filed a legal chal­lenge in the Unit­ed States Dis­trict Court for the East­ern Dis­trict of Ken­tucky, nam­ing as defen­dants Janet Yellen as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Trea­sury Depart­ment, IRS com­mis­sion­er Charles Ret­tig, and US attor­ney gen­er­al Mer­rick Gar­land on behalf of the gov­ern­ment as a whole.

    A blog post from the advo­ca­cy group says that the legal com­plaint aims to over­turn “uncon­sti­tu­tion­al finan­cial sur­veil­lance.” The authors, Coin Cen­ter exec­u­tive direc­tor Jer­ry Brito and research direc­tor Peter Van Valken­burgh, write:

    Our suit leads with two major claims: (1) forc­ing ordi­nary peo­ple to col­lect high­ly intru­sive infor­ma­tion about oth­er ordi­nary peo­ple, and report it to the gov­ern­ment with­out a war­rant, is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al under the Fourth Amend­ment; and (2) demand­ing that polit­i­cal­ly active orga­ni­za­tions cre­ate and report lists of their donors’ names and iden­ti­fy­ing infor­ma­tion to the gov­ern­ment is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al under the First Amend­ment.

    It’s clear from the legal com­plaint that the tech­ni­cal details of cryp­tocur­ren­cy are salient to the case. It’s easy to link trans­ac­tions from the same cryp­tocur­ren­cy wal­let address, the com­plaint argues, mean­ing that one report­ed trans­ac­tion tied to a donor’s name and address could give a much more detailed and long-term insight into their finan­cial his­to­ry. (“From one 6050I report in 2024,” the text reads, “the gov­ern­ment could dis­cov­er that a per­son donat­ed to a local mosque in 2016, paid for a son’s sobri­ety treat­ment in 2018, con­tributed to an unpop­u­lar polit­i­cal cause in 2020, and hired a mar­riage coun­selor in 2022.”)

    How­ev­er, some schol­ars of pri­va­cy and sur­veil­lance tech­nol­o­gy, like law pro­fes­sor Orin Kerr, labeled the argu­ments “not par­tic­u­lar­ly seri­ous” in his opin­ion, the infor­ma­tion in ques­tion was unlike­ly to be cov­ered by the Fourth Amend­ment, Kerr tweet­ed, cit­ing pre­vi­ous case law.

    Where the First Amend­ment is con­cerned, the com­plaint argues that com­pelling an advo­ca­cy group to sup­ply the gov­ern­ment with details of donors giv­ing more than $10K would cre­ate a “chill­ing effect” on the right to polit­i­cal expres­sion. It’s an inter­pre­ta­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion that has been upheld in some high-pro­file cas­es before, notably the land­mark Cit­i­zens Unit­ed rul­ing that removed elec­toral spend­ing restric­tions on cor­po­ra­tions, unions, and non­prof­its. (That judg­ment remains high­ly con­tro­ver­sial, with many trans­paren­cy groups argu­ing that it has allowed dark mon­ey to play an out­size role in influ­enc­ing con­tem­po­rary elec­tions.)

    Some broad­ly cryp­to-skep­ti­cal pri­va­cy advo­cates have come out in favor of Coin Cen­ter. Evan Greer, direc­tor of dig­i­tal rights advo­ca­cy group Fight for the Future, tweet­ed in favor of the legal chal­lenge, writ­ing that sup­port­ers of basic rights “should oppose uncon­sti­tu­tion­al expan­sions of sur­veil­lance that will dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly harm mar­gin­al­ized and over-policed com­mu­ni­ties.”

    On the oth­er end of the spec­trum, there are some cryp­to sup­port­ers who see the inclu­sion of cryp­tocur­ren­cy under sec­tion 6050I as entire­ly ratio­nal and have advo­cat­ed for a more nuanced set of report­ing man­dates rather than a com­plete over­turn.

    It does­n’t mat­ter how you feel about cryp­tocur­ren­cies, dig­i­tal assets, “web 3,” blockchain, etc.

    Every­one who cares about basic rights should oppose uncon­sti­tu­tion­al expan­sions of sur­veil­lance that will dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly harm mar­gin­al­ized and over-policed com­mu­ni­ties. Peri­od.
    — Evan Greer (@evan_greer) June 13, 2022

    If Coin Center’s chal­lenge is suc­cess­ful, it could have impli­ca­tions far beyond cryp­tocur­ren­cy due to how the report­ing law was passed in the first place.

    When the new require­ment was made law through the infra­struc­ture bill, it wasn’t writ­ten as a new statute: rather, it was an amend­ment to an exist­ing part of the US tax code — Sec­tion 6050I — that has been on the books for almost 40 years.

    The 6050I rule states that any per­son who receives more than $10,000 in cash as part of a busi­ness trans­ac­tion must pro­vide details of the sender to the IRS through a par­tic­u­lar form. This cash report­ing require­ment, which became law in 1984, came on the heels of the Bank Secre­cy Act of 1970: one of the first major laws to address mon­ey laun­der­ing in the Unit­ed States. Togeth­er, the new report­ing laws passed in the ’70s and ’80s helped law enforce­ment agen­cies to detect and deter mon­ey laun­der­ing by cre­at­ing require­ments to file doc­u­men­ta­tion that made it eas­i­er to track cash trans­fers and impos­ing penal­ties if such doc­u­ments weren’t filed.

    The law has been in effect ever since, with­out any sig­nif­i­cant change until now. In the infra­struc­ture bill, a crit­i­cal change of eight words was made to 6050I, expand­ing the def­i­n­i­tion of cash to include “any dig­i­tal asset” and there­by extend­ing the tax code’s report­ing require­ments to cryp­tocur­ren­cy. And because of this con­struc­tion, a suc­cess­ful chal­lenge on behalf of cryp­tocur­ren­cy users could mean over­turn­ing the statute com­plete­ly.

    Coin Cen­ter direc­tor Jer­ry Brito con­firmed to The Verge that this is a pos­si­bil­i­ty:

    “Giv­en our cryp­tocur­ren­cy focus, our aim is [remov­ing] the amend­ment that adds cryp­to to the 6050I cash report­ing require­ment,” Brito said. “But that said, if the entire 6050I has to go, that’s fine with us.”

    Brito says that Coin Cen­ter doesn’t take a posi­tion on the con­cept of finan­cial report­ing over­all — he points to the organization’s sup­port for guid­ance issued by the Finan­cial Crimes Enforce­ment Net­work (Fin­CEN) on how cryp­tocur­ren­cies should be reg­u­lat­ed under the Bank Secre­cy Act — but oth­er groups that have sup­port­ed Coin Center’s com­plaint have a more ide­o­log­i­cal oppo­si­tion to finan­cial track­ing.

    One such group is lib­er­tar­i­an think tank the Cato Insti­tute: a blog post pub­lished by the DC-based research insti­tute makes it clear that the fate of the legal chal­lenge to sec­tion 6050I could serve as a bell­wether for over­turn­ing oth­er kinds of finan­cial report­ing.

    “Whether it is in enforc­ing a pro­vi­sion of the tax code or the Bank Secre­cy Act’s (BSA) require­ments, the fact remains the same that the gov­ern­ment should have to ‘prove before a judge that it has rea­son­able sus­pi­cion war­rant­i­ng a search of our pri­vate papers,’ Cato Insti­tute pol­i­cy ana­lyst Nicholas Antho­ny writes. “It may make it hard­er for law enforce­ment to have to get a war­rant to inves­ti­gate someone’s finan­cial activ­i­ty, but pro­tect­ing cit­i­zens from the unchecked hand of the state is the rea­son the Con­sti­tu­tion exists.”

    Daniel Jellins, a staff attor­ney at the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Tech­nol­o­gy Law Clin­ic at George­town Law who research­es tech­nol­o­gy, finance and the First Amend­ment, also agreed that a chal­lenge to dig­i­tal assets report­ing could be just the tip of a spear aimed at loos­en­ing cash report­ing require­ments all round.

    “The larg­er con­text is that the Supreme Court, as of now, has been much more will­ing to sort of strike down these sorts of dis­clo­sure rules than they have in the past,” Jellins says. “So if the ulti­mate goal was to take out this report­ing require­ment for all cash, then using cryp­tocur­ren­cy as a tool … might be a good way of get­ting there.”

    ...

    ———-

    “A legal chal­lenge over cryp­to report­ing could strike down decades-old anti-mon­ey laun­der­ing laws” by Corin Faife; The Verge; 06/21/2022

    ““The larg­er con­text is that the Supreme Court, as of now, has been much more will­ing to sort of strike down these sorts of dis­clo­sure rules than they have in the past,” Jellins says. “So if the ulti­mate goal was to take out this report­ing require­ment for all cash, then using cryp­tocur­ren­cy as a tool … might be a good way of get­ting there.”

    As we can see, while it’s not a guar­an­tee that Coin Cen­ter’s law­suit will lead to the unrav­el­ing of all of the US’s finan­cial dis­clo­sure laws, it’s a pos­si­bil­i­ty. The kind of pos­si­bil­i­ty that should feel much more pos­si­ble in the wake of the Supreme Court’s his­toric far right turn this year. It’s not a stretch to imag­ine that The court that just ruled that EPA can’t reg­u­late green­house gas emis­sions might also rule that the IRS can’t over­see mon­ey laun­der­ing.

    But part of what should make this seem like a very real pos­si­bil­i­ty has to do with the nature of Coin Cen­ter’s legal argu­ments: They’re not just bas­ing their argu­ments on the 4th Amend­ment pro­tec­tions against unwar­rant­ed search and seizure. They’re also mak­ing a 1st Amend­ment argu­ment that sure sounds a lot like a ref­er­ence to the 1958 Supreme Court case NAACP v. Alaba­ma. So it should­n’t come as a sur­prise when Coin Cen­ter falls back on sim­i­lar argu­ments. An argu­ment that mak­ing anony­mous polit­i­cal dona­tions specif­i­cal­ly using cryp­tocur­ren­cies that rely on pub­licly-acces­si­ble blockchains are pro­tect­ed by the First Amend­ment. And if so, those First Amend­ment pro­tec­tions can only be ensured if the US’s large-dol­lar report­ing require­ments are gut­ted in order to ensure pub­licly acces­si­ble blockchains can remain effec­tive­ly anony­mous. Cryp­tocur­ren­cies that rely on pub­licly acces­si­ble blockchains are only anony­mous as long as the own­ers of the indi­vid­u­als ‘wal­lets’ nev­er have to reveal their iden­ti­ties. And gut­ting report­ing require­ments is the only way to ensure that anonymi­ty. That’s the log­ic at work here:

    ...
    The bipar­ti­san infra­struc­ture bill includ­ed an amend­ment to the tax code that required any busi­ness or indi­vid­ual receiv­ing a cryp­tocur­ren­cy trans­ac­tion of more than $10,000 to report it to the IRS, using a spe­cif­ic form that includes the sender’s name, date of birth, and tax­pay­er iden­ti­fi­ca­tion num­ber. This match­es the cash report­ing require­ments already in Title 26 Sec­tion 6050I, and fail­ure to com­ply can result in a fine of up to $250,000 for an indi­vid­ual and up to five years in prison.

    ...

    Last week, Coin Cen­ter filed a legal chal­lenge in the Unit­ed States Dis­trict Court for the East­ern Dis­trict of Ken­tucky, nam­ing as defen­dants Janet Yellen as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Trea­sury Depart­ment, IRS com­mis­sion­er Charles Ret­tig, and US attor­ney gen­er­al Mer­rick Gar­land on behalf of the gov­ern­ment as a whole.

    A blog post from the advo­ca­cy group says that the legal com­plaint aims to over­turn “uncon­sti­tu­tion­al finan­cial sur­veil­lance.” The authors, Coin Cen­ter exec­u­tive direc­tor Jer­ry Brito and research direc­tor Peter Van Valken­burgh, write:

    Our suit leads with two major claims: (1) forc­ing ordi­nary peo­ple to col­lect high­ly intru­sive infor­ma­tion about oth­er ordi­nary peo­ple, and report it to the gov­ern­ment with­out a war­rant, is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al under the Fourth Amend­ment; and (2) demand­ing that polit­i­cal­ly active orga­ni­za­tions cre­ate and report lists of their donors’ names and iden­ti­fy­ing infor­ma­tion to the gov­ern­ment is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al under the First Amend­ment.

    It’s clear from the legal com­plaint that the tech­ni­cal details of cryp­tocur­ren­cy are salient to the case. It’s easy to link trans­ac­tions from the same cryp­tocur­ren­cy wal­let address, the com­plaint argues, mean­ing that one report­ed trans­ac­tion tied to a donor’s name and address could give a much more detailed and long-term insight into their finan­cial his­to­ry. (“From one 6050I report in 2024,” the text reads, “the gov­ern­ment could dis­cov­er that a per­son donat­ed to a local mosque in 2016, paid for a son’s sobri­ety treat­ment in 2018, con­tributed to an unpop­u­lar polit­i­cal cause in 2020, and hired a mar­riage coun­selor in 2022.”)

    How­ev­er, some schol­ars of pri­va­cy and sur­veil­lance tech­nol­o­gy, like law pro­fes­sor Orin Kerr, labeled the argu­ments “not par­tic­u­lar­ly seri­ous” in his opin­ion, the infor­ma­tion in ques­tion was unlike­ly to be cov­ered by the Fourth Amend­ment, Kerr tweet­ed, cit­ing pre­vi­ous case law.

    Where the First Amend­ment is con­cerned, the com­plaint argues that com­pelling an advo­ca­cy group to sup­ply the gov­ern­ment with details of donors giv­ing more than $10K would cre­ate a “chill­ing effect” on the right to polit­i­cal expres­sion. It’s an inter­pre­ta­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion that has been upheld in some high-pro­file cas­es before, notably the land­mark Cit­i­zens Unit­ed rul­ing that removed elec­toral spend­ing restric­tions on cor­po­ra­tions, unions, and non­prof­its. (That judg­ment remains high­ly con­tro­ver­sial, with many trans­paren­cy groups argu­ing that it has allowed dark mon­ey to play an out­size role in influ­enc­ing con­tem­po­rary elec­tions.)
    ...

    And if it seems like its just the cryp­tocur­ren­cy indus­try push­ing for this, think again. When groups like the Cato Insti­tute come out in favor of Coin Cen­ter’s posi­tion, that’s all you need to know: The same Koch-backed net­work of mega-donors that brought us Cit­i­zen Unit­ed is now try­ing to use the US’s absurd dark mon­ey laws to gut what’s left of the coun­try’s mon­ey-laun­der­ing over­sight pow­ers:

    ...
    Brito says that Coin Cen­ter doesn’t take a posi­tion on the con­cept of finan­cial report­ing over­all — he points to the organization’s sup­port for guid­ance issued by the Finan­cial Crimes Enforce­ment Net­work (Fin­CEN) on how cryp­tocur­ren­cies should be reg­u­lat­ed under the Bank Secre­cy Act — but oth­er groups that have sup­port­ed Coin Center’s com­plaint have a more ide­o­log­i­cal oppo­si­tion to finan­cial track­ing.

    One such group is lib­er­tar­i­an think tank the Cato Insti­tute: a blog post pub­lished by the DC-based research insti­tute makes it clear that the fate of the legal chal­lenge to sec­tion 6050I could serve as a bell­wether for over­turn­ing oth­er kinds of finan­cial report­ing.

    “Whether it is in enforc­ing a pro­vi­sion of the tax code or the Bank Secre­cy Act’s (BSA) require­ments, the fact remains the same that the gov­ern­ment should have to ‘prove before a judge that it has rea­son­able sus­pi­cion war­rant­i­ng a search of our pri­vate papers,’ Cato Insti­tute pol­i­cy ana­lyst Nicholas Antho­ny writes. “It may make it hard­er for law enforce­ment to have to get a war­rant to inves­ti­gate someone’s finan­cial activ­i­ty, but pro­tect­ing cit­i­zens from the unchecked hand of the state is the rea­son the Con­sti­tu­tion exists.”
    ...

    Even the left-lean­ing group Fight for the Future appears to have come out in favor of this. It’s an exam­ple of how these kinds of pub­lic rela­tions schemes can suck­er in all sorts of groups:

    ...
    Some broad­ly cryp­to-skep­ti­cal pri­va­cy advo­cates have come out in favor of Coin Cen­ter. Evan Greer, direc­tor of dig­i­tal rights advo­ca­cy group Fight for the Future, tweet­ed in favor of the legal chal­lenge, writ­ing that sup­port­ers of basic rights “should oppose uncon­sti­tu­tion­al expan­sions of sur­veil­lance that will dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly harm mar­gin­al­ized and over-policed com­mu­ni­ties.”
    ...

    That’s the kind of momen­tum that’s behind this attempt to effec­tive­ly blind the IRS of large finan­cial trans­ac­tions. Momen­tum that has an unstop­pable feel­ing after the last cou­ple of weeks of Supreme Court rul­ings. After all, the cur­rent court is almost the same one that brought us Cit­i­zens Unit­ed, except WAY cra­zier. What a dif­fer­ence a few jus­tices make.

    But also note the absur­di­ty of the sit­u­a­tion: the whole rea­son this sit­u­a­tion devel­oped is because cryp­tocur­ren­cies are designed in such a way that any­time any­one reveals their own­er­ship of a ‘wal­let’ every­one gets to see all trans­ac­tions that have ever been con­duct­ed with that wal­let. That’s just how these things work. Because peo­ple built them to work that way. The ‘cryp­to’ nature of the sys­tem is pred­i­cat­ed on keep­ing the iden­ti­ties of the wal­let own­ers secret. A new ‘finan­cial tech’ is devel­oped with this mas­sive poten­tial pri­va­cy vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, asserts that its a valid form of cur­ren­cy, and now demands that cryp­tocur­ren­cies either remain out­side the mon­ey-laun­der­ing reg­u­la­tions or the reg­u­la­tions have to go entire­ly. That actu­al­ly hap­pened. And this stunt is prob­a­bly going to work.

    So if you hap­pen to have any large mon­ey-laun­der­ing ambi­tions, it might be a good idea to put them on hold for the moment. The Supreme Court’s far right major­i­ty will be open­ing those flood gates and shut­ting off the lights soon enough.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | July 2, 2022, 4:59 pm
  31. Fol­low­ing up on reports about Leonard Leo’s Hon­est Elec­tion’s Project fil­ing an ami­cus brief in sup­port of the “Inde­pen­dent State Leg­is­la­ture” the­o­ry in the Harp­er v Moore Supreme Court case, it’s worth not­ing the recent reports on the record-break­ing $1.6 bil­lion dona­tion Leo just received from an obscure right-wing bil­lion­aire. It sounds like Leo, and Leo alone, will be deter­min­ing how the $1.6 bil­lion is spent. At least for the rest of Leo’s life. The $1.6 bil­lion behind the new­ly cre­at­ed Mar­ble Free­dom Trust will pre­sum­ably long-out­live Leo.

    It also sounds like the $1.6 bil­lion dona­tion dou­bled as an incred­i­ble tax dodge. The obscure bil­lion­aire, Barre Seid, trans­ferred all of his shares in the pri­vate­ly-owned com­pa­ny Tripp Lite to Mar­ble Free­dom Trust. This was April 2020. Leonard Leo is both the trustee and chair of the trust. Then, in Feb 2021, Tripp Lite filed annu­al reports with the state of Illi­nois that had Sei­d’s name crossed out as the direc­tor and Leonard Leo’s name filled in. Tripp Lite’s Cana­di­an sub­sidiary did the same thing the name month, and the whole com­pa­ny was sold off to Eaton for $1.65 bil­lion lat­er that month. That’s how Leonard Leo end­ed up with $1.6 bil­lion. The move avoid­ed both cap­i­tal gains tax­es and gift tax­es by trans­fer­ring those shares to the 501c4 ‘non-prof­it’ trust, sav­ing Seid $400 mil­lion in tax­es in the process.

    As as result of these maneu­vers, dark mon­ey shad­ow lord Leonard Leo is the sole indi­vid­ual who deter­mines the use of this $1.6 for­tune. That’s on top of all the oth­er mon­ey he’s raised over the years. Don’t for­get that while Leo is best known for his role in the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety, this Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy mem­ber does a lot more than that. Like dark mon­ey fundrais­ing through enti­ties like BG Group. And, of course, found­ing groups like the “Hon­est Elec­tions Project” — a Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy front group ded­i­cat­ed to rig­ging elec­toral. Leonard Leo wears a lot of hats. Extreme­ly well-financed hats going for­ward:

    Pro Pub­li­ca

    How a Secre­tive Bil­lion­aire Hand­ed His For­tune to the Archi­tect of the Right-Wing Takeover of the Courts

    In the largest known polit­i­cal advo­ca­cy dona­tion in U.S. his­to­ry, indus­tri­al­ist Barre Seid fund­ed a new group run by Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety co-chair Leonard Leo, who guid­ed Trump’s Supreme Court picks and helped end fed­er­al abor­tion rights.

    by Andrew Perez, The Lever, and Andy Kroll and Justin Elliott, ProP­ub­li­ca
    Aug. 22, 2:45 p.m. EDT

    This sto­ry was co-pub­lished with The Lever.

    An elder­ly, ultra-secre­tive Chica­go busi­ness­man has giv­en the largest known dona­tion to a polit­i­cal advo­ca­cy group in U.S. his­to­ry — worth $1.6 bil­lion — and the recip­i­ent is one of the prime archi­tects of con­ser­v­a­tives’ efforts to reshape the Amer­i­can judi­cial sys­tem, includ­ing the Supreme Court.

    Through a series of opaque trans­ac­tions over the past two years, Barre Seid, a 90-year-old man­u­fac­tur­ing mag­nate, gave the mas­sive sum to a non­prof­it run by Leonard Leo, who co-chairs the con­ser­v­a­tive legal group the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety.

    The dona­tion was first report­ed by The New York Times on Mon­day. The Lever and ProP­ub­li­ca con­firmed the infor­ma­tion from doc­u­ments received inde­pen­dent­ly by the news orga­ni­za­tions.

    ...

    As Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s advis­er on judi­cial nom­i­na­tions, Leo helped build the Supreme Court’s con­ser­v­a­tive super­ma­jor­i­ty, which recent­ly elim­i­nat­ed Con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tions for abor­tion rights and has made a series of sweep­ing pro-busi­ness deci­sions. Leo, a con­ser­v­a­tive Catholic, has both helped select judges to nom­i­nate to the Supreme Court and direct­ed mul­ti­mil­lion dol­lar media cam­paigns to con­firm them.

    Leo derives immense polit­i­cal pow­er through his abil­i­ty to raise huge sums of mon­ey and dis­trib­ute those funds through­out the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment to influ­ence elec­tions, judi­cial appoint­ments and pol­i­cy bat­tles. Yet the biggest fun­ders of Leo’s oper­a­tion have long been a mys­tery.

    Seid, who led the surge pro­tec­tor and data-cen­ter equip­ment mak­er Tripp Lite for more than half a cen­tu­ry, has been almost unknown out­side a small cir­cle of polit­i­cal and cul­tur­al recip­i­ents. The gift imme­di­ate­ly vaults him into the ranks of major fun­ders like the Koch broth­ers and George Soros.

    In prac­ti­cal terms, there are few lim­i­ta­tions on how Leo’s new group, the Mar­ble Free­dom Trust, can spend the enor­mous dona­tion. The struc­ture of the dona­tion allowed Seid to avoid as much as $400 mil­lion in tax­es. Thus, he max­i­mized the amount of mon­ey at Leo’s dis­pos­al.

    Now, Leo, 56, is posi­tioned to finance his already sprawl­ing net­work with one of the largest pools of polit­i­cal cap­i­tal in Amer­i­can his­to­ry. Seid has left his lega­cy to Leo.

    “To my knowl­edge, it is entire­ly with­out prece­dent for a polit­i­cal oper­a­tive to be giv­en con­trol of such an aston­ish­ing amount of mon­ey,” said Bren­dan Fis­ch­er, a cam­paign finance lawyer at the non­par­ti­san watch­dog group Doc­u­ment­ed. “Leonard Leo is already incred­i­bly pow­er­ful, and now he is going to have over a bil­lion dol­lars at his dis­pos­al to con­tin­ue upend­ing our country’s insti­tu­tions.”

    ...

    The Mar­ble Free­dom Trust is a so-called dark mon­ey group that is not required to pub­licly dis­close its donors. It has wide lat­i­tude to spend direct­ly on elec­tions as well as on ide­o­log­i­cal projects such as fund­ing issue-advo­ca­cy groups, think tanks, uni­ver­si­ties, reli­gious insti­tu­tions and orga­niz­ing efforts.

    The cre­ators of the Mar­ble Free­dom Trust shroud­ed their project in secre­cy for more than two years.

    The group’s name does not appear in any pub­lic data­base of busi­ness, tax or secu­ri­ties records. The Mar­ble Free­dom Trust is orga­nized for legal pur­pos­es as a trust, rather than as a cor­po­ra­tion. That means it did not have to pub­licly dis­close basic details like its name, direc­tors and address.

    The trust was formed in Utah. Its address is a house in North Salt Lake owned by Tyler Green, a lawyer who clerked for Supreme Court Jus­tice Clarence Thomas. Green is list­ed in the trust’s tax return as an admin­is­tra­tive trustee. The dona­tion does not appear to vio­late any laws.

    Seid’s $1.6 bil­lion dona­tion is a land­mark in the era of dereg­u­lat­ed polit­i­cal spend­ing ush­ered in by the Supreme Court’s 2010 Cit­i­zens Unit­ed deci­sion. That case, along with sub­se­quent changes and weak fed­er­al over­sight, empow­ered a tiny group of the super rich in both par­ties to fund groups that can spend unlim­it­ed sums to sup­port can­di­dates and polit­i­cal caus­es. In the last decade, dona­tions in the mil­lions and some­times tens of mil­lions of dol­lars have become com­mon.

    Indi­vid­u­als could give unlim­it­ed amounts of mon­ey to non­prof­it groups pri­or to Cit­i­zens Unit­ed, but the deci­sion allowed those non­prof­its to more direct­ly influ­ence elec­tions. A hand­ful of bil­lion­aires such as the Koch fam­i­ly and Soros have spent bil­lions to achieve epochal polit­i­cal influ­ence by bankrolling net­works of non­prof­its.

    Even in this mon­ey-drenched world, Seid’s $1.6 bil­lion gift exceeds all pub­licly known one-time dona­tions to a polit­i­cal­ly ori­ent­ed group.

    The Silent Donor

    One day in Novem­ber 2015, the employ­ees of Tripp Lite, a man­u­fac­tur­er of pow­er strips and oth­er elec­tri­cal equip­ment, gath­ered for a cel­e­bra­tion at the company’s head­quar­ters on the South Side of Chica­go. Cup­cakes frost­ed in blue and white spelled out the num­bers “56.” An easel held up a sign hail­ing Tripp Lite’s long­time leader: “Con­grat­u­la­tions Barre!”

    A small, bald­ing man with a white goa­tee and a rud­dy com­plex­ion took the micro­phone. Barre Seid was known as some­one who pre­ferred to keep a low pro­file, but on the 56th anniver­sary of his lead­er­ship of Tripp Lite, he couldn’t resist the chance to address his employ­ees. Lat­er, as he bit into a cup­cake, Seid posed for a com­pa­ny pho­tog­ra­ph­er, who lat­er uploaded the pho­to to the company’s Face­book page.

    Even this semi­pub­lic glimpse of Seid was rare.

    For sev­er­al decades, a select group of polit­i­cal activists, aca­d­e­mics and fundrais­ers was ush­ered to Tripp Lite head­quar­ters to pitch Seid at his office. Despite his sta­tus as one of the country’s most pro­lif­ic fun­ders of con­ser­v­a­tive caus­es, and despite his decades as the pres­i­dent and sole own­er of one of the country’s most suc­cess­ful elec­tron­ics mak­ers, Seid has spent most of his 90 years painstak­ing­ly guard­ing his pri­va­cy.

    There are no art gal­leries, opera com­pa­nies, or the­aters or uni­ver­si­ty build­ings embla­zoned with his name in his home­town of Chica­go. There’s even some con­fu­sion over how to pro­nounce his last name. (Peo­ple who’ve dealt with him say it’s “side.”)

    The Lever and ProP­ub­li­ca pieced togeth­er the details of his life and his moti­va­tions for his exten­sive dona­tions through inter­views, court records and oth­er doc­u­ments obtained through pub­lic-records requests.

    One of the only pho­tos of Seid that The Lever and ProP­ub­li­ca could find shows him as a 14-year-old walk­ing in a small group across a col­lege cam­pus. Born in 1932 to Russ­ian Jew­ish immi­grants, Seid grew up on the South Side of Chica­go, the old­est of two broth­ers, accord­ing to Cen­sus records. A pre­co­cious child, he was cho­sen for a spe­cial bachelor’s degree pro­gram at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go, not far from his child­hood home.

    Seid attend­ed the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go in the ear­ly years of the “Chica­go school,” a group of pro­fes­sors and researchers who would reimag­ine the field of eco­nom­ics, assail­ing mas­sive gov­ern­ment inter­ven­tions in the econ­o­my and empha­siz­ing the impor­tance of human lib­er­ty and free mar­kets. After col­lege, Seid served two years in the Army and even­tu­al­ly returned home to Chica­go, accord­ing to tes­ti­mo­ny giv­en decades lat­er in a court case. He took a job as an assis­tant to an investor and busi­ness­man named Gra­ham Trippe, whose com­pa­ny made head­lights and would pro­duce the rotat­ing warn­ing lights used by police cars, tow trucks and oth­er emer­gency response vehi­cles.

    By the mid-1960s, Seid had tak­en over as Trippe Manufacturing’s pres­i­dent. In the decades to come, the com­pa­ny, now called Tripp Lite, became a pick-and-shov­el busi­ness of the dig­i­tal gold rush. The com­pa­ny sells the pow­er strips that sup­ply elec­tric­i­ty to com­put­ers and the serv­er racks, cool­ing equip­ment and net­work switch­es that make data cen­ters run. Busi­ness surged with the shift to cloud com­put­ing and the pro­lif­er­a­tion of vast data cen­ters.

    That boom vault­ed him from the ranks of mere­ly rich to the super­rich. Seid was mak­ing around $30 mil­lion per year by the mid-1990s, tax records obtained by ProP­ub­li­ca show. His annu­al income, the vast major­i­ty of which came from Tripp Lite’s prof­its, took off in the mid-2000s and steadi­ly rose, hit­ting around $157 mil­lion in 2018. Tripp Lite, which was 100% owned by Seid?, con­tributed $136 mil­lion to his total income that year.

    Even as Seid built a bil­lion-plus dol­lar busi­ness, he drew scant pub­lic atten­tion; Forbes nev­er put him on its list of the wealth­i­est Amer­i­cans, and busi­ness and polit­i­cal press rarely men­tioned him.

    Yet he was becom­ing a major donor. He gave at least $775 mil­lion in char­i­ta­ble dona­tions between 1996 and 2018, a peri­od in which he report­ed $1.7 bil­lion in income, accord­ing to his tax records. Seid parceled out a small por­tion of those dona­tions to Chica­go-area uni­ver­si­ties, reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions, med­ical research and dozens of civic-focused groups.

    While Seid has nev­er spo­ken to the press about his ide­ol­o­gy, evi­dence of his world­view has emerged here and there. His fam­i­ly foun­da­tion has sup­port­ed the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chicago’s Beck­er Fried­man Insti­tute for Eco­nom­ics, named after two of the Chica­go school’s intel­lec­tu­al lead­ers, Gary Beck­er and Mil­ton Fried­man. He has also donat­ed to the Heart­land Insti­tute, a Chica­go-based non­prof­it that has a his­to­ry of using inflam­ma­to­ry rhetoric and mis­lead­ing tac­tics to under­mine cli­mate sci­ence.

    Seid appeared to be the donor (list­ed as “Bar­ry Seid”) who gave $17 mil­lion to fund the dis­tri­b­u­tion dur­ing the 2008 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign of mil­lions of copies of a DVD of the film “Obses­sion: Rad­i­cal Islam’s War With the West.” The DVDs, which were sent specif­i­cal­ly to house­holds in pres­i­den­tial elec­tion bat­tle­ground states, were crit­i­cized as vir­u­lent­ly anti-Mus­lim.

    Seid’s per­son­al­i­ty can be glimpsed in exchanges with George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty offi­cials from the late 2000s to mid-2010s that came out in response to a pub­lic-records request by the activist group UnKoch My Cam­pus. In the emails, Seid comes across as an intel­lec­tu­al­ly prob­ing fig­ure, ask­ing the dean of the law school to respond to news sto­ries about the val­ue of a law-school degree or the work­ings of high­er education’s accred­i­ta­tion sys­tem. Seid dri­ly addressed sev­er­al admin­is­tra­tors for the uni­ver­si­ty, whose law school and eco­nom­ics depart­ment are known for their align­ment with con­ser­v­a­tive, free-mar­ket prin­ci­ples, as “Fel­low Mem­bers of the Vast Right Wing Con­spir­a­cy.”

    Seid appears to have con­tin­u­al­ly sought new vehi­cles for dis­pens­ing his mon­ey and main­tain­ing as much anonymi­ty as pos­si­ble. The GMU emails also show a redact­ed donor — who activists believed to be Seid based on oth­er unredact­ed mate­ri­als — rout­ing dona­tions to the school through DonorsTrust or the Donors Cap­i­tal Fund, two donor-advised funds that pro­vide an addi­tion­al lev­el of anonymi­ty.

    While the roots of Seid and Leo’s pro­fes­sion­al rela­tion­ship aren’t clear, the two worked togeth­er at a small foun­da­tion Seid formed in 2009 called the Chica­go Free­dom Trust, a char­i­ty that gave out small grants to non­po­lit­i­cal groups. Leo lat­er joined the foundation’s board.

    The GMU emails pro­vide an inkling of the rela­tion­ship between the two men. In ear­ly 2016, Seid emailed the dean of GMU’s law school and the head of a promi­nent Amer­i­can Jew­ish orga­ni­za­tion to urge them to work togeth­er. The dean, Hen­ry But­ler, for­ward­ed Seid’s mes­sage to Leo seek­ing to bet­ter under­stand Seid’s inten­tions.

    “Do you have any insight?” But­ler wrote.

    “I do not, but will find out,” Leo replied.

    The Mon­ey

    Bil­lion­aires tend to craft intri­cate estate plans to pass the fam­i­ly busi­ness to the next gen­er­a­tion, for­ti­fied from tax­a­tion and pro­tec­tive of their vision. The appar­ent­ly child­less Seid didn’t have that option, but start­ing in April 2020, he set in motion a plan to make sure his for­tune would go toward his favored caus­es.

    That month, the Mar­ble Free­dom Trust was cre­at­ed, and Seid sub­se­quent­ly trans­ferred his 100% own­er­ship stake in Tripp Lite to the trust, accord­ing to the doc­u­ments reviewed by The Lever and ProP­ub­li­ca.

    In Feb­ru­ary 2021, Tripp Lite filed its annu­al reports with the state of Illi­nois as it had done for decades. But this time, Seid’s type­writ­ten name had been crossed out as an offi­cer of the com­pa­ny. Added as an offi­cer, writ­ten in by hand, was Leonard Leo.

    A Tripp Lite sub­sidiary in Nova Sco­tia, Cana­da, sim­i­lar­ly removed Seid as a direc­tor and added Leo as a direc­tor in March 2021, accord­ing to dis­clo­sure fil­ings.

    Then, lat­er that same month, Eaton Cor­po­ra­tion, a large pub­licly trad­ed com­pa­ny, acquired Tripp Lite for $1.65 bil­lion.

    The trans­ac­tions appear to have been care­ful­ly sequenced to reap mas­sive tax sav­ings. Sell­ing a com­pa­ny that has grown in val­ue after decades of own­er­ship is treat­ed the same way for tax pur­pos­es as a per­son sell­ing a share of stock. If the prop­er­ty has grown in val­ue, cap­i­tal gains tax­es are due when it is sold.

    But Seid trans­ferred Tripp Lite to the Mar­ble Free­dom Trust, a non­prof­it that is exempt from income tax, before the elec­tron­ics com­pa­ny was sold. As a result, lawyers say, Seid avoid­ed up to $400 mil­lion in state and fed­er­al income tax, pre­serv­ing those funds for Leo’s oper­a­tion.

    “If the per­son who had owned the stock had sold the stock him­self, he would’ve been taxed on the appre­ci­a­tion in the stock,” said Ellen Aprill, a tax law pro­fes­sor at Loy­ola Mary­mount Uni­ver­si­ty. “Where­as if you give it to the 501(c)(4), there’s no char­i­ta­ble deduc­tion for giv­ing the mon­ey, but you avoid the tax on all of that appre­ci­a­tion.”

    Polit­i­cal advo­ca­cy non­prof­its like the Mar­ble Free­dom Trust are for­mal­ly called 501(c)(4) social wel­fare orga­ni­za­tions, after the sec­tion of the tax code. Infor­mal­ly, they are known as dark-mon­ey groups because donors can remain secret, in con­trast to the pub­lic dis­clo­sures required of gifts to polit­i­cal cam­paigns or super PACs. While they can spend mon­ey direct­ly advo­cat­ing for or against can­di­dates in polit­i­cal cam­paigns, such spend­ing can­not be their pri­ma­ry pur­pose.

    In giv­ing to such a dark mon­ey group, Seid also avoid­ed anoth­er fed­er­al levy, the gift tax, thanks to a change signed into law by Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma in 2015.

    There’s a rea­son why giv­ing mon­ey specif­i­cal­ly to a trust might have been attrac­tive for an old­er and ide­o­log­i­cal donor such as Seid. The found­ing doc­u­ments that lay out how the trust will spend mon­ey can be hard­er to change than the gov­ern­ing doc­u­ments of a cor­po­ra­tion, accord­ing to Lloyd Hitoshi May­er, a pro­fes­sor at Notre Dame Law School.

    May­er added that while cor­po­ra­tions usu­al­ly have at least three direc­tors, trusts can have just a sin­gle trustee in charge of the organization’s activ­i­ties.

    Leo is the trustee and chair­man of the Mar­ble Free­dom Trust. In oth­er words, Leo is now in charge of the mas­sive sum of mon­ey.

    The Rain­mak­er

    For decades, Leo had served as a top exec­u­tive at the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety, help­ing lead the influ­en­tial Wash­ing­ton-based con­ser­v­a­tive lawyers group that serves as a launch­ing pad for careers on the right.

    But in ear­ly 2020, Leo made an announce­ment that sug­gest­ed he was tak­ing his suc­cess­ful mod­el for reshap­ing the courts to remake Amer­i­can pol­i­tics at every lev­el: local, state and fed­er­al. In an inter­view with Axios, Leo said he was step­ping away from his day-to-day role with the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety to take a more active role steer­ing a net­work of con­ser­v­a­tive dark mon­ey groups.

    The plan was to expand the network’s scope to “fun­nel tens of mil­lions of dol­lars into con­ser­v­a­tive fights around the coun­try,” accord­ing to Axios. What Leo did not men­tion in the inter­view was the immi­nent cre­ation of the Mar­ble Free­dom Trust, his biggest-ever war chest.

    Leo’s long career as both a legal activist and a prodi­gious fundrais­er for con­ser­v­a­tive caus­es shows a steady march toward becom­ing a cen­tral fig­ure in the Repub­li­can Party’s suc­cess­ful strat­e­gy to fill as many judi­cial vacan­cies as pos­si­ble with young, con­ser­v­a­tive judges skep­ti­cal of the fed­er­al government’s pow­er. He served as an advis­er to Trump’s 2016 cam­paign, help­ing the can­di­date take a step no oth­er major pres­i­den­tial can­di­date had ever tak­en: releas­ing a list of names he would draw on to nom­i­nate to the Supreme Court.

    Com­ing at a moment when con­ser­v­a­tives were wary of Trump’s past lean­ings, the move bol­stered his sup­port among social con­ser­v­a­tives. Leo stayed on as a judi­cial advis­er dur­ing Trump’s four years in office. Dur­ing that time, Leo helped the pres­i­dent appoint and con­firm more than 200 nom­i­nees to the fed­er­al bench, most famous­ly Supreme Court Jus­tices Neil Gor­such, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Bar­rett.

    Leo’s efforts to reshape the country’s judi­cial sys­tem began long before Trump’s polit­i­cal ascent. In 1991, he joined the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety, which was then in its ear­ly years and only begin­ning to build a pipeline for con­ser­v­a­tive jurists.

    In the view of Leo and his allies, the U.S. legal sys­tem had drift­ed dan­ger­ous­ly far from its roots, estab­lish­ing priv­i­leged class­es and doc­trines that were not enu­mer­at­ed in the Con­sti­tu­tion and would be unrec­og­niz­able to the Founders. Those same courts had also empow­ered a class of unelect­ed bureau­crats dubbed the “admin­is­tra­tive state” to impose need­less reg­u­la­tions and to endow the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment with too much pow­er. Like his close friend Jus­tice Antonin Scalia, Leo argued for an orig­i­nal­ist view of the Con­sti­tu­tion — name­ly, that the country’s found­ing doc­u­ment should be inter­pret­ed strict­ly based on how its 18th cen­tu­ry authors under­stood its words at the time.

    In 2005, Leo and his allies formed a dark mon­ey net­work to ral­ly sup­port for George W. Bush’s Supreme Court nom­i­nees, John Roberts and Samuel Ali­to. But if Leo want­ed to turn back the tide of what he saw as unchecked judi­cial activism, he need­ed to build some­thing big­ger, more last­ing.

    Leo set out to cre­ate a net­work of inter­lock­ing groups that could each play a part in return­ing the coun­try to what he saw as its roots, whether by train­ing future gen­er­a­tions of Scalias, fund­ing schol­ar­ship that made the case for orig­i­nal­ism or bankrolling efforts to install con­ser­v­a­tive judges on the bench.

    Between 2005 and mid-2021, Leo and his asso­ciates raised at least $460 mil­lion (not includ­ing the Mar­ble Free­dom Trust’s funds).

    Accord­ing to tax records, Leo’s net­work has fun­neled those hun­dreds of mil­lions into ad cam­paigns and right-lean­ing groups. The Judi­cial Cri­sis Net­work — which is now called the Con­cord Fund and is head­ed by a for­mer clerk to Jus­tice Clarence Thomas and Leo asso­ciate named Car­rie Sev­eri­no — has spent tens of mil­lions air­ing ads dur­ing Supreme Court con­fir­ma­tion fights.

    The group’s fundrais­ing took off in 2016, when it led a cam­paign to block Oba­ma Supreme Court nom­i­nee Mer­rick Garland’s con­fir­ma­tion. That year, Leo’s net­work received a $28 mil­lion infu­sion from a sin­gle anony­mous donor. Leo and his net­work long refused to say who is pay­ing for their advo­ca­cy cam­paigns.

    Leo’s net­work has worked close­ly with Sen­ate Repub­li­cans and has show­ered them with cash as well, recent­ly donat­ing $9 mil­lion to a dark mon­ey group affil­i­at­ed with Sen­ate Minor­i­ty Leader Mitch McConnell, R‑Ky..

    ...

    At the state lev­el, the net­work funds groups sup­port­ing con­ser­v­a­tive guber­na­to­r­i­al and leg­isla­tive can­di­dates. Leo’s non­prof­its and their sub­sidiaries have recent­ly pushed states to tight­en vot­ing laws, opposed the teach­ing of crit­i­cal race the­o­ry in schools and financed orga­ni­za­tions press­ing states to remove mil­lions of Amer­i­cans from the Med­ic­aid rolls.

    But now, with Seid’s largesse, Leo has near­ly four times the amount he raised over 16 years at his dis­pos­al and ambi­tions to match.

    “I have a very sim­ple rule, which is, I’m engaged in the bat­tle of ideas, and I care very deeply about our Con­sti­tu­tion and the role of courts in our soci­ety,” Leo told The Wash­ing­ton Post in 2019 when asked about his donors. “And I don’t waste my time on sto­ries that involve mon­ey and pol­i­tics because what I care about is ideas.”

    ———-

    “How a Secre­tive Bil­lion­aire Hand­ed His For­tune to the Archi­tect of the Right-Wing Takeover of the Courts” by Andrew Perez, The Lever, and Andy Kroll and Justin Elliott; ProP­ub­li­ca; 08/22/2022

    ““I have a very sim­ple rule, which is, I’m engaged in the bat­tle of ideas, and I care very deeply about our Con­sti­tu­tion and the role of courts in our soci­ety,” Leo told The Wash­ing­ton Post in 2019 when asked about his donors. “And I don’t waste my time on sto­ries that involve mon­ey and pol­i­tics because what I care about is ideas.”

    “I don’t waste my time on sto­ries that involve mon­ey and pol­i­tics because what I care about is ideas”. LOL! spo­ken like a gen­uine­ly moral­ly bank­rupt indi­vid­ual. A moral­ly bank­rupt indi­vid­ual who just had $1.6 Bil­lion gift­ed to him to car­ry on his about raw pow­er ‘ideas’ cru­sade. A $1.6 bil­lion gift that man­aged to save Barre Seid $400 mil­lion in tax­es. This is how bro­ken the US democ­ra­cy is: gift­ing vast dark-mon­ey for­tunes to polit­i­cal 501c4 ‘non-prof­its’ dou­bles as an incred­i­ble tax dodge:

    ...
    Seid, who led the surge pro­tec­tor and data-cen­ter equip­ment mak­er Tripp Lite for more than half a cen­tu­ry, has been almost unknown out­side a small cir­cle of polit­i­cal and cul­tur­al recip­i­ents. The gift imme­di­ate­ly vaults him into the ranks of major fun­ders like the Koch broth­ers and George Soros.

    In prac­ti­cal terms, there are few lim­i­ta­tions on how Leo’s new group, the Mar­ble Free­dom Trust, can spend the enor­mous dona­tion. The struc­ture of the dona­tion allowed Seid to avoid as much as $400 mil­lion in tax­es. Thus, he max­i­mized the amount of mon­ey at Leo’s dis­pos­al.

    ...

    Bil­lion­aires tend to craft intri­cate estate plans to pass the fam­i­ly busi­ness to the next gen­er­a­tion, for­ti­fied from tax­a­tion and pro­tec­tive of their vision. The appar­ent­ly child­less Seid didn’t have that option, but start­ing in April 2020, he set in motion a plan to make sure his for­tune would go toward his favored caus­es.

    That month, the Mar­ble Free­dom Trust was cre­at­ed, and Seid sub­se­quent­ly trans­ferred his 100% own­er­ship stake in Tripp Lite to the trust, accord­ing to the doc­u­ments reviewed by The Lever and ProP­ub­li­ca.

    In Feb­ru­ary 2021, Tripp Lite filed its annu­al reports with the state of Illi­nois as it had done for decades. But this time, Seid’s type­writ­ten name had been crossed out as an offi­cer of the com­pa­ny. Added as an offi­cer, writ­ten in by hand, was Leonard Leo.

    A Tripp Lite sub­sidiary in Nova Sco­tia, Cana­da, sim­i­lar­ly removed Seid as a direc­tor and added Leo as a direc­tor in March 2021, accord­ing to dis­clo­sure fil­ings.

    Then, lat­er that same month, Eaton Cor­po­ra­tion, a large pub­licly trad­ed com­pa­ny, acquired Tripp Lite for $1.65 bil­lion.

    The trans­ac­tions appear to have been care­ful­ly sequenced to reap mas­sive tax sav­ings. Sell­ing a com­pa­ny that has grown in val­ue after decades of own­er­ship is treat­ed the same way for tax pur­pos­es as a per­son sell­ing a share of stock. If the prop­er­ty has grown in val­ue, cap­i­tal gains tax­es are due when it is sold.

    But Seid trans­ferred Tripp Lite to the Mar­ble Free­dom Trust, a non­prof­it that is exempt from income tax, before the elec­tron­ics com­pa­ny was sold. As a result, lawyers say, Seid avoid­ed up to $400 mil­lion in state and fed­er­al income tax, pre­serv­ing those funds for Leo’s oper­a­tion.

    ...

    “If the per­son who had owned the stock had sold the stock him­self, he would’ve been taxed on the appre­ci­a­tion in the stock,” said Ellen Aprill, a tax law pro­fes­sor at Loy­ola Mary­mount Uni­ver­si­ty. “Where­as if you give it to the 501(c)(4), there’s no char­i­ta­ble deduc­tion for giv­ing the mon­ey, but you avoid the tax on all of that appre­ci­a­tion.”

    Polit­i­cal advo­ca­cy non­prof­its like the Mar­ble Free­dom Trust are for­mal­ly called 501(c)(4) social wel­fare orga­ni­za­tions, after the sec­tion of the tax code. Infor­mal­ly, they are known as dark-mon­ey groups because donors can remain secret, in con­trast to the pub­lic dis­clo­sures required of gifts to polit­i­cal cam­paigns or super PACs. While they can spend mon­ey direct­ly advo­cat­ing for or against can­di­dates in polit­i­cal cam­paigns, such spend­ing can­not be their pri­ma­ry pur­pose.

    In giv­ing to such a dark mon­ey group, Seid also avoid­ed anoth­er fed­er­al levy, the gift tax, thanks to a change signed into law by Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma in 2015.
    ...

    It was far from the only polit­i­cal dona­tion by the obscure bil­lion­aire. Barre Seid had been using dark mon­ey vehi­cles like DonorsTrust to make anony­mous polit­i­cal dona­tions for years:

    ...
    The trust was formed in Utah. Its address is a house in North Salt Lake owned by Tyler Green, a lawyer who clerked for Supreme Court Jus­tice Clarence Thomas. Green is list­ed in the trust’s tax return as an admin­is­tra­tive trustee. The dona­tion does not appear to vio­late any laws.

    ...

    Even in this mon­ey-drenched world, Seid’s $1.6 bil­lion gift exceeds all pub­licly known one-time dona­tions to a polit­i­cal­ly ori­ent­ed group.

    ...

    Seid appears to have con­tin­u­al­ly sought new vehi­cles for dis­pens­ing his mon­ey and main­tain­ing as much anonymi­ty as pos­si­ble. The GMU emails also show a redact­ed donor — who activists believed to be Seid based on oth­er unredact­ed mate­ri­als — rout­ing dona­tions to the school through DonorsTrust or the Donors Cap­i­tal Fund, two donor-advised funds that pro­vide an addi­tion­al lev­el of anonymi­ty.
    ...

    The fact that we even know Sei­d’s iden­ti­ty at all is rather remark­able. Most of Leo’s donors remain a 501c4 mys­tery:

    ...
    Leo derives immense polit­i­cal pow­er through his abil­i­ty to raise huge sums of mon­ey and dis­trib­ute those funds through­out the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment to influ­ence elec­tions, judi­cial appoint­ments and pol­i­cy bat­tles. Yet the biggest fun­ders of Leo’s oper­a­tion have long been a mys­tery.

    ...

    Between 2005 and mid-2021, Leo and his asso­ciates raised at least $460 mil­lion (not includ­ing the Mar­ble Free­dom Trust’s funds).

    Accord­ing to tax records, Leo’s net­work has fun­neled those hun­dreds of mil­lions into ad cam­paigns and right-lean­ing groups. The Judi­cial Cri­sis Net­work — which is now called the Con­cord Fund and is head­ed by a for­mer clerk to Jus­tice Clarence Thomas and Leo asso­ciate named Car­rie Sev­eri­no — has spent tens of mil­lions air­ing ads dur­ing Supreme Court con­fir­ma­tion fights.

    The group’s fundrais­ing took off in 2016, when it led a cam­paign to block Oba­ma Supreme Court nom­i­nee Mer­rick Garland’s con­fir­ma­tion. That year, Leo’s net­work received a $28 mil­lion infu­sion from a sin­gle anony­mous donor. Leo and his net­work long refused to say who is pay­ing for their advo­ca­cy cam­paigns.
    ...

    And thanks to the way the Mar­ble Free­dom Trust is struc­tured, with Leo as both the trustee and the chair­man, it’s going to be Leo exclu­sive­ly decid­ing how this vast for­tune is spent for decades to come. It’s not a mys­tery where that mon­ey is going to be spent. It’s going to be spent try­ing to send the US back to the 18th cen­tu­ry under the ‘orig­i­nal­ist’ umbrel­la:

    ...
    There’s a rea­son why giv­ing mon­ey specif­i­cal­ly to a trust might have been attrac­tive for an old­er and ide­o­log­i­cal donor such as Seid. The found­ing doc­u­ments that lay out how the trust will spend mon­ey can be hard­er to change than the gov­ern­ing doc­u­ments of a cor­po­ra­tion, accord­ing to Lloyd Hitoshi May­er, a pro­fes­sor at Notre Dame Law School.

    May­er added that while cor­po­ra­tions usu­al­ly have at least three direc­tors, trusts can have just a sin­gle trustee in charge of the organization’s activ­i­ties.

    Leo is the trustee and chair­man of the Mar­ble Free­dom Trust. In oth­er words, Leo is now in charge of the mas­sive sum of mon­ey.

    ...

    In the view of Leo and his allies, the U.S. legal sys­tem had drift­ed dan­ger­ous­ly far from its roots, estab­lish­ing priv­i­leged class­es and doc­trines that were not enu­mer­at­ed in the Con­sti­tu­tion and would be unrec­og­niz­able to the Founders. Those same courts had also empow­ered a class of unelect­ed bureau­crats dubbed the “admin­is­tra­tive state” to impose need­less reg­u­la­tions and to endow the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment with too much pow­er. Like his close friend Jus­tice Antonin Scalia, Leo argued for an orig­i­nal­ist view of the Con­sti­tu­tion — name­ly, that the country’s found­ing doc­u­ment should be inter­pret­ed strict­ly based on how its 18th cen­tu­ry authors under­stood its words at the time.
    ...

    And as Leo him­self warned the world back in 2020, he isn’t just inter­est­ed in reshap­ing the judi­cia­ry branch. He’s out to remake all branch­es of gov­ern­ment at all lev­els. So of course we find Leo’s groups pro­mot­ing things like state-lev­el push­es to ‘tight­en’ vot­ing laws:

    ...
    For decades, Leo had served as a top exec­u­tive at the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety, help­ing lead the influ­en­tial Wash­ing­ton-based con­ser­v­a­tive lawyers group that serves as a launch­ing pad for careers on the right.

    But in ear­ly 2020, Leo made an announce­ment that sug­gest­ed he was tak­ing his suc­cess­ful mod­el for reshap­ing the courts to remake Amer­i­can pol­i­tics at every lev­el: local, state and fed­er­al. In an inter­view with Axios, Leo said he was step­ping away from his day-to-day role with the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety to take a more active role steer­ing a net­work of con­ser­v­a­tive dark mon­ey groups.

    The plan was to expand the network’s scope to “fun­nel tens of mil­lions of dol­lars into con­ser­v­a­tive fights around the coun­try,” accord­ing to Axios. What Leo did not men­tion in the inter­view was the immi­nent cre­ation of the Mar­ble Free­dom Trust, his biggest-ever war chest.

    ...

    Leo’s net­work has worked close­ly with Sen­ate Repub­li­cans and has show­ered them with cash as well, recent­ly donat­ing $9 mil­lion to a dark mon­ey group affil­i­at­ed with Sen­ate Minor­i­ty Leader Mitch McConnell, R‑Ky..

    ...

    At the state lev­el, the net­work funds groups sup­port­ing con­ser­v­a­tive guber­na­to­r­i­al and leg­isla­tive can­di­dates. Leo’s non­prof­its and their sub­sidiaries have recent­ly pushed states to tight­en vot­ing laws, opposed the teach­ing of crit­i­cal race the­o­ry in schools and financed orga­ni­za­tions press­ing states to remove mil­lions of Amer­i­cans from the Med­ic­aid rolls.
    ...

    And as we saw last week, it’s Leo’s Hon­est Elec­tions Project that filed the ami­cus brief in sup­port of the “Inde­pen­dent State Leg­is­la­ture” the­o­ry in the upcom­ing Harp­er v Moore Supreme Court case. A case that could remove state and fed­er­al courts from deci­sions involv­ing elec­tion results. The “Inde­pen­dent State Leg­is­la­ture” the­o­ry has been giv­en Leonard Leo’s “orig­i­nal­ist” stamp of approval. But more impor­tant­ly, it now has Leo’s $1.6 bil­lion behind it.

    But also keep in mind one of the oth­er obvi­ous uses for the Mar­ble Free­dom Trust’s enor­mous wealth: after Leo and the Supreme Court con­ser­v­a­tive major­i­ty are done enshrin­ing the “Inde­pen­dent State Leg­is­la­ture” legal the­o­ry with the pati­na of an “orig­i­nal­ist” right-wing Supreme Court rul­ing and state leg­is­la­tures get to deter­mine the out­comes of elec­tions, some­one needs to help those leg­is­la­tors deter­mine who won all those elec­tions. $1.6 bil­lion in dark mon­ey can be pret­ty help­ful when it comes to mak­ing those kinds of deci­sions.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | September 12, 2022, 11:07 pm
  32. As the US waits to find out how the con­ser­v­a­tive major­i­ty will rule on Harp­er v Moore and whether or not there are five jus­tices will­ing to go ahead and imper­il the basic func­tion­ing of the US’s democ­ra­cy even more, here’s a pair of arti­cles that are a reminder that this par­tic­u­lar case isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly the last word on the mat­ter. Because if the plain­tiffs lose they’re going to be back again and again. Because as the arti­cles describe, it’s not just Leonard Leo’s “Hon­est Elec­tions Project” fil­ing ami­cus briefs with in this case sup­port­ing the Inde­pen­dent State Leg­is­la­ture The­o­ry (ISLT) the­o­ry. It’s a slew of Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP)-led enti­ties writ­ing ami­cus briefs and there’s ten’s of mil­lions of dol­lars in mega-donor mon­ey behind main­tain­ing this effort. They aren’t giv­ing up until this con­ser­v­a­tive court major­i­ty — which was large­ly hand picked by Leo — gives them their ISLT win. It’s a pri­or­i­ty. A well-financed pri­or­i­ty with major mega-donor buy-in:

    Salon

    Dark mon­ey groups pump near­ly $90 mil­lion into “inde­pen­dent state leg­is­la­ture” case
    Untrace­able right-wing mon­ey has flowed into a net­work of right-wing groups seek­ing to lim­it vot­ing rights

    By Aree­ba Shah
    Staff Writer
    Pub­lished Decem­ber 10, 2022 6:00AM (EST)

    report released this week by the non­par­ti­san watch­dog group Accountable.US revealed a net­work of dark mon­ey groups that have donat­ed near­ly $90 mil­lion to orga­ni­za­tions active­ly sup­port­ing the plain­tiffs in Moore v. Harp­er — a bomb­shell case now before the Supreme Court that could alter the way fed­er­al elec­tions are con­duct­ed across the coun­try.

    The land­mark case hinges on the “inde­pen­dent state leg­is­la­ture” the­o­ry brought by North Car­oli­na leg­is­la­tors, who want to elim­i­nate the sys­tem of checks and bal­ances gov­ern­ing fed­er­al elec­tions and appro­pri­ate full pow­er them­selves. This could mean, for exam­ple, that state leg­is­la­tures are free to appoint a slate of pres­i­den­tial elec­tors as they see fit, regard­less of which can­di­date a state’s vot­ers favored.

    The the­o­ry asserts that under the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion, state leg­is­la­tures have full author­i­ty to set the rules when it comes to mak­ing state laws that apply to fed­er­al elec­tions, and that state con­sti­tu­tions and state courts have no pow­er or author­i­ty over them. If the Supreme Court affirms the the­o­ry in decid­ing the Moore case, state leg­is­la­tures will effec­tive­ly be freed to ger­ry­man­der elec­toral maps and pass restric­tive vot­ing laws with lit­tle to no super­vi­sion by state courts or oth­er enti­ties.

    Some legal experts have even sug­gest­ed that the inde­pen­dent state leg­is­la­ture the­o­ry could cre­ate a path­way for elec­tion sub­ver­sion. Leg­is­la­tors could throw out elec­tion results they don’t agree with, as men­tioned above, and appoint their own pres­i­den­tial elec­tors. 

    But oth­ers are con­cerned about where the mon­ey is com­ing from in back­ing the the­o­ry. 

    “It’s obvi­ous­ly a fringe, extrem­ist legal the­o­ry that’s being fund­ed by these wealthy con­ser­v­a­tive donors, and these are peo­ple who know their extreme agen­da isn’t pop­u­lar,” said Kay­la Han­cock, direc­tor of pow­er and influ­ence at Accountable.US. “So they’re spend­ing mil­lions of dol­lars to stack the Supreme Court and chip away at our demo­c­ra­t­ic rights and free­doms by influ­enc­ing these insti­tu­tions.” 

    The inde­pen­dent state leg­is­la­ture the­o­ry has pre­vi­ous­ly been reject­ed by a major­i­ty of Supreme Court jus­tices and is wide­ly viewed as well out­side the main­stream of legal thought, even for high-pro­file judi­cial con­ser­v­a­tives, as Moth­er Jones has report­ed

    But over the last two years, that changed with the found­ing of a non­prof­it called the Hon­est Elec­tions Project, which has pro­mot­ed the the­o­ry exten­sive­ly. The group is close­ly linked to Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety co-chair­man Leonard Leo, seen as immense­ly influ­en­tial in build­ing the cur­rent Supreme Court’s con­ser­v­a­tive super­ma­jor­i­ty.

    Leo has a his­to­ry of oper­at­ing a net­work of inter­lock­ing non­prof­its that sup­port right-wing advo­ca­cy and lob­by­ing. He helped con­ser­v­a­tive non­prof­its raise $250 mil­lion from most­ly undis­closed donors to pro­mote con­ser­v­a­tive judges and caus­es. He advised Don­ald Trump dur­ing the nom­i­na­tions of Supreme Court Jus­tices Neil Gor­such, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Bar­rett, accord­ing to Accountable.US

    “It’s inter­est­ing to see that this man, who has all this pow­er in influ­enc­ing the court and the struc­ture of the court, is also fund­ing groups that are fil­ing ami­cus briefs to try and influ­ence that same court,” Han­cock said. “A lot of these groups that Leo is fund­ing are also engag­ing in advo­ca­cy work to place restric­tions on bal­lot access and ger­ry­man­der­ing. So I think it’s broad­er than just this legal the­o­ry. It’s an all-out assault on our elec­tions.”

    The Hon­est Elec­tions Project stoked fears about vot­er fraud pri­or to the 2020 elec­tion and even wrote let­ters to elec­tion offi­cials in Col­orado, Flori­da and Michi­gan that relied on mis­lead­ing data to accuse juris­dic­tions of hav­ing bloat­ed vot­er rolls and threat­en legal action, the Guardian report­ed. The group also spent $250,000 on ads against mail-in vot­ing, call­ing it a “brazen attempt to manip­u­late the elec­tion sys­tem for par­ti­san advan­tage.” In fact, there have been almost no ver­i­fied cas­es of fraud in vot­ing by mail any­where in the coun­try, and many Repub­li­cans have blamed their par­ty’s rel­a­tive­ly poor show­ing in the 2022 midterms on a reluc­tance to encour­age mail-in vot­ing

    ...

    Along with the Hon­est Elec­tions Project, four oth­er right-wing groups have filed ami­cus briefs in Moore v. Harp­er Ami­cus Briefs sup­port­ing the inde­pen­dent state leg­is­la­ture the­o­ry, includ­ing the Amer­i­can Leg­isla­tive Exchange Coun­cil (known as the con­ser­v­a­tive “bill mill”), the Pub­lic Inter­est Legal Foun­da­tion, Amer­i­ca’s Future Inc. and the Clare­mont Insti­tute, where elec­tion con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist John East­man wrote the now-infa­mous mem­os urg­ing Vice Pres­i­dent Mike Pence to reject the elec­toral votes from cer­tain states. 

    DonorsTrust, which has been described as the “dark mon­ey ATM” of the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment, has fund­ed a major­i­ty of the dona­tions, giv­ing almost $70.5 mil­lion to these groups, accord­ing to the Accountable.US report. 

    The group fun­nels anony­mous dona­tions to hun­dreds of orga­ni­za­tions, includ­ing sev­er­al right-wing legal and pol­i­cy groups favored by the Koch net­work as well as oth­er mega-donors, accord­ing to Sludge.

    ...

    Three Supreme Court jus­tices have sig­naled appar­ent sup­port for the inde­pen­dent state leg­is­la­ture the­o­ry, but North Car­oli­na leg­is­la­tors would need at least two more votes to pre­vail. Vot­ing rights advo­cates have warned that the the­o­ry could fun­da­men­tal­ly reshape the mech­a­nisms of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics and bring immense chaos to the elec­toral process. The court is expect­ed to issue a rul­ing next sum­mer. 

    ———-

    “Dark mon­ey groups pump near­ly $90 mil­lion into “inde­pen­dent state leg­is­la­ture” case” By Aree­ba Shah; Salon; 12/10/2022

    ““It’s obvi­ous­ly a fringe, extrem­ist legal the­o­ry that’s being fund­ed by these wealthy con­ser­v­a­tive donors, and these are peo­ple who know their extreme agen­da isn’t pop­u­lar,” said Kay­la Han­cock, direc­tor of pow­er and influ­ence at Accountable.US. “So they’re spend­ing mil­lions of dol­lars to stack the Supreme Court and chip away at our demo­c­ra­t­ic rights and free­doms by influ­enc­ing these insti­tu­tions.” ”

    A fringe legal the­o­ry backed by the usu­al sus­pects. The same ‘vast right-wing con­spir­a­cy’ net­work of Koch and CNP-affil­i­at­ed wealthy mega-donors who have been financ­ing all the oth­er anti-democ­ra­cy projects are behind the Inde­pen­dent State Leg­is­la­ture The­o­ry (ISLT) too. And as we’ve seen, that mega-donor net­work is chan­nel­ing those efforts through the Hon­est Elec­tions Project, head­ed by key right-wing activist Leonard Leo. And Leo hap­pens to be the same fig­ure who led the decades-long efforts to stack the Supreme Court with its exist­ing far right major­i­ty as well as var­i­ous oth­er anti-democ­ra­cy projects like new vot­ing restric­tions or ger­ry­man­der­ing. That’s a huge part of this sto­ry here: Leo’s Hon­est Elec­tions Project did­n’t sim­ply file an Ami­cus Brief in this case in sup­port of the ISLT. Leo’s group has been heav­i­ly push­ing the ISLT for the past cou­ple of years thanks to large dona­tions for this same mega-donor net­work. The Vast Right-Wing Mega-Donor Con­spir­a­cy decid­ed to start push­ing the ISLT with heavy dona­tions to Leo and, two years lat­er, we have a case before a Supreme Court that could end up grant­i­ng these mega-donors their wish. It’s a case study in the incred­i­ble val­ue these mega-donors get from their invest­ments in Leonard Leo, who is now one of the most influ­en­tial in the US and in a posi­tion to wield his pro­found influ­ence before a Supreme Court major­i­ty he hand-picked for years to come:

    ...
    The inde­pen­dent state leg­is­la­ture the­o­ry has pre­vi­ous­ly been reject­ed by a major­i­ty of Supreme Court jus­tices and is wide­ly viewed as well out­side the main­stream of legal thought, even for high-pro­file judi­cial con­ser­v­a­tives, as Moth­er Jones has report­ed

    But over the last two years, that changed with the found­ing of a non­prof­it called the Hon­est Elec­tions Project, which has pro­mot­ed the the­o­ry exten­sive­ly. The group is close­ly linked to Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety co-chair­man Leonard Leo, seen as immense­ly influ­en­tial in build­ing the cur­rent Supreme Court’s con­ser­v­a­tive super­ma­jor­i­ty.

    Leo has a his­to­ry of oper­at­ing a net­work of inter­lock­ing non­prof­its that sup­port right-wing advo­ca­cy and lob­by­ing. He helped con­ser­v­a­tive non­prof­its raise $250 mil­lion from most­ly undis­closed donors to pro­mote con­ser­v­a­tive judges and caus­es. He advised Don­ald Trump dur­ing the nom­i­na­tions of Supreme Court Jus­tices Neil Gor­such, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Bar­rett, accord­ing to Accountable.US

    “It’s inter­est­ing to see that this man, who has all this pow­er in influ­enc­ing the court and the struc­ture of the court, is also fund­ing groups that are fil­ing ami­cus briefs to try and influ­ence that same court,” Han­cock said. “A lot of these groups that Leo is fund­ing are also engag­ing in advo­ca­cy work to place restric­tions on bal­lot access and ger­ry­man­der­ing. So I think it’s broad­er than just this legal the­o­ry. It’s an all-out assault on our elec­tions.
    ...

    And as the fol­low­ing piece from Sludge reminds us, the HEP was­n’t the only group to file ami­cus brief in favor of the ISLT. Oth­er groups like the Clare­mont Insti­tute, the Pub­lic Inter­est Legal Foun­da­tion (PILF), ALEC, and a non-prof­it called Amer­i­ca’s Future. All of those head­ed by CNP mem­bers. The PILF was found­ed by CNP mem­ber Cle­ta Mitchell. The Clare­mont Insti­tute’s Co-Founder Dr. Lar­ry P. Arnn, and for­mer Exec­u­tive VP, Dou­glas A. Jef­frey, both show up on the CNP mem­ber list. ALEC’s CEO Ann Nel­son also shows up on the CNP mem­ber­ship list. And Ed Mar­tin, the pres­i­dent of Amer­i­ca’s Future, is a CNP mem­ber with his own inter­est­ing ties to Jan 6: Recall how CNP mem­ber Ali Alexan­der — who played a key role in the Jan 6 plot­ting — tweet­ed out on Novem­ber 4, 2020, the day after the elec­tion, how he was work­ing on the #StoptheSteal efforts and includ­ed 15 names of peo­ple he was work­ing with, includ­ing Ed Mar­tin.

    So as with all of these sprawl­ing efforts, when we look at the orga­nized effort to file ami­cus briefs in favor of the ISLT, we find a famil­iar pat­tern: a bunch of dif­fer­ent groups all found­ed and led by the same peo­ple fund­ed by the same secre­tive net­work of bil­lion­aires. And lots of CNP mem­bers:

    Sludge

    Leonard Leo-Tied Group Push­ing Rad­i­cal Elec­tion The­o­ry Got $66 Mil­lion Recent­ly From ‘Dark Mon­ey’ Hub

    The Hon­est Elec­tions Project helped cat­a­pult an extreme legal the­o­ry on elec­tions to the Supreme Court.

    David Moore
    Co-founder of Sludge

    Edit­ed by Don­ald Shaw
    Pub­lished on Dec 6, 2022 12:38PM EST

    On Decem­ber 7, the U.S. Supreme Court will start hear­ing argu­ments in Moore v. Harp­er, a case relat­ed to par­ti­san ger­ry­man­der­ing that will address the so-called “inde­pen­dent state leg­is­la­ture the­o­ry.” The legal the­o­ry, known as ISLT, holds that the Elec­tion Clause of the Con­sti­tu­tion gives all pow­er over fed­er­al elec­tion process­es to state leg­is­la­tures. It is favored by many con­ser­v­a­tive groups and would give state leg­is­la­tures unchecked pow­er to run fed­er­al elec­tions, bar­ring reviews from gov­er­nors, cit­i­zen ref­er­en­dums, or courts at the fed­er­al or state lev­els. The non­par­ti­san Bren­nan Cen­ter for Jus­tice describes ISLT as “rad­i­cal and mer­it­less,” a view shared by a broad coali­tion of legal schol­ars that includes many promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tive jurists.

    In the case, a group of North Car­oli­na Repub­li­can law­mak­ers is ask­ing the Supreme Court to endorse the ISLT as jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for rein­stat­ing con­gres­sion­al dis­trict maps drawn by the leg­is­la­ture that the state Supreme Court struck down as uncon­sti­tu­tion­al due to par­ti­san ger­ry­man­der­ing. If the Supreme Court sides with the Repub­li­cans’ ISLT argu­ment, its impli­ca­tions could go so far as over­turn­ing elec­tions, accord­ing to the Bren­nan Cen­ter, hand­ing state leg­is­la­tors near-absolute pow­er to appoint their own slate of pres­i­den­tial elec­tors, regard­less of the pop­u­lar vote results. 

    The ISLT is viewed by many as a fringe legal the­o­ry, one with a long his­to­ry of being reject­ed by a major­i­ty of Supreme Court jus­tices. In the views of legal experts, how­ev­er, ISLT’s prospects changed over the past two years as a well-financed right-wing legal group called the Hon­est Elec­tions Project (HEP) has dra­mat­i­cal­ly stepped up its activ­i­ties to pro­mote the the­o­ry, eye­ing an audi­ence with the Supreme Court.

    NPR vot­ing cor­re­spon­dent Han­si Lo Wang has report­ed that the Hon­est Elec­tions Project has repeat­ed­ly peti­tioned the Supreme Court since 2020 to hear a case on state leg­is­la­tures’ abil­i­ty to set rules gov­ern­ing fed­er­al elec­tions. Sim­i­lar­ly, vot­ing rights cor­re­spon­dent Ari Berman flagged as influ­en­tial the group’s brief in a chal­lenge to mail-in bal­lots brought by the Repub­li­can Par­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia in the months before the 2020 elec­tion, which is based on the ISLT. The Penn­syl­va­nia case result­ed in a 4–4 dead­lock short­ly before Amy Coney Bar­rett was con­firmed, but through opin­ions in that case and oth­ers, four con­ser­v­a­tive jus­tices (Samuel Ali­to, Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gor­such, and Clarence Thomas) sig­naled their open­ness to ISLT. On June 30, with Bar­rett in place as a poten­tial­ly piv­otal fifth vote, the Court announced that it would hear Moore. The HEP filed an ami­cus brief in the Moore case endors­ing ISLT. 

    The HEP is close­ly linked to con­ser­v­a­tive legal activist Leonard Leo, a lawyer who as an advis­er to for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump helped select the Supreme Court’s con­ser­v­a­tive super­ma­jor­i­ty. The HEP was cre­at­ed out of a reshuf­fling of opaque con­ser­v­a­tive non­prof­its: the Leo-tied Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project in Decem­ber 2019 changed its name to The 85 Fund, which in May 2020 picked up the HEP name as a legal alias in a rebrand­ing move. Leo also serves as co-chair of the pow­er­ful Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety, a high­ly influ­en­tial con­ser­v­a­tive legal group part of a net­work that sim­i­lar­ly pro­mot­ed ISLT’s claims. The 85 Fund and an allied group, the Con­cord Fund, were found­ed by Leo’s con­ser­v­a­tive allies and have paid two of Leo’s for-prof­it groups hefty con­sult­ing fees. Leo has been described as an advis­er to the net­work. 

    The nom­i­na­tions of con­ser­v­a­tive Supreme Court Jus­tices Gor­such, Kavanaugh, and Coney Bar­rett were backed by tens of mil­lions of dol­lars in ad spend­ing by Leo-tied dark mon­ey groups.

    As a non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion, HEP is not required to pub­licly dis­close its donors, but tax records show that in recent years more than 70% of its fund­ing came from a “dark mon­ey” group used by wealthy con­ser­v­a­tive donors to shield their iden­ti­ties. 

    In 2020 and 2021, HEP received more than $65.8 mil­lion from DonorsTrust, a major con­duit group used by the Koch net­work of polit­i­cal donors, accord­ing to new pro­files of con­ser­v­a­tive fund­ing groups avail­able on Mon­i­toring­In­flu­ence from the watch­dog group Accountable.US. In 2020, as it ramped up its ISLT efforts, HEP’s $48.7 mil­lion in dona­tions from DonorsTrust that year made up about three-quar­ters of its rev­enue. 

    DonorsTrust, dubbed the “Dark Mon­ey ATM” of the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment, is a donor-advised fund that fun­nels anony­mous dona­tions to hun­dreds of orga­ni­za­tions, includ­ing many right-wing legal and pol­i­cy groups known to be favored by the Koch net­work and oth­er megadonors. Donor-advised funds like DonorsTrust pro­vide donors with accounts and for­ward their funds to char­i­ties of their choice, offer­ing the donors an extra lay­er of anonymi­ty and numer­ous tax advan­tages. The fund­ing that arrived to HEP via DonorsTrust in 2020 sharply increased the 85 Fund’s rev­enue, which jumped near­ly five­fold from the year before.

    Amer­i­ca First Works, a 501(c)(4) advo­ca­cy group led by for­mer Trump cam­paign offi­cials, donat­ed $4.8 mil­lion to DonorsTrust in 2020 that it ear­marked for HEP. Anoth­er $2 mil­lion dona­tion to the 85 Fund in 2020 came through the gigan­tic Nation­al Chris­t­ian Char­i­ta­ble Foun­da­tion, accord­ing to tax fil­ings, pos­si­bly giv­en through the foundation’s donor-advised funds.

    The 85 Fund, HEP, and Judi­cial Elec­tion Project con­glom­er­ate has received dona­tions from sev­er­al more well-known con­ser­v­a­tive fun­ders in recent years, accord­ing to the Cen­ter for Media and Democ­ra­cy, includ­ing the Ed Uih­lein Fam­i­ly Foun­da­tion, Sto­ry Garschi­na Foun­da­tion, Bradley Impact Fund, Diana Davis Spencer Foun­da­tion, and the Thomas W. Smith Foun­da­tion. It has also received dona­tions from donor-advised funds spon­sors the Nation­al Phil­an­thropic Trust and the Fideli­ty Invest­ments Char­i­ta­ble Gift Fund. 

    The Dark Mon­ey Con­ser­v­a­tive Legal Net­work

    Sev­er­al more groups that have received mil­lions of dol­lars in anony­mous dona­tions via DonorsTrust since 2016 filed ami­cus briefs in the Moore case sup­port­ing the ISLT argu­ment, accord­ing to Accountable.US: the Amer­i­can Leg­isla­tive Exchange Coun­cil (ALEC); the Pub­lic Inter­est Legal Foun­da­tion, a con­ser­v­a­tive legal group chaired by Trump’s for­mer lawyer Cle­ta Mitchell; the Clare­mont Insti­tute, where Trump-sup­port­ing lawyer John C. East­man, who wrote mem­os seek­ing to over­turn the 2020 elec­tion results found­ed and directs the Cen­ter for Con­sti­tu­tion­al Jurispru­dence; and the non­prof­it America’s Future, Inc., which received a $1 mil­lion infu­sion last year from DonorsTrust.

    These groups are part of a net­work for con­ser­v­a­tive elec­tion lawyers, many of whom tout­ed Trump’s false claims of a stolen 2020 elec­tion and worked to pass laws that lim­it elec­tion access in bat­tle­ground states. Accord­ing to the Bren­nan Cen­ter, dozens of restric­tive vot­ing mea­sures have passed in states since the start of last year.

    The secre­tive orga­ni­za­tion ALEC, which brings togeth­er cor­po­rate lob­by­ists with state law­mak­ers to craft poli­cies, sub­mit­ted an ami­cus brief argu­ing for the peti­tion­ers in Moore “because a state con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­vi­sion can­not with­draw or lim­it the Fed­er­al Constitution’s express grant of author­i­ty to state leg­is­la­tures.” This sum­mer, ALEC invit­ed leg­is­la­tors to a two-day Hon­est Elec­tions Acad­e­my, accord­ing to Exposed­By­CMD, capped by a lead­er­ship din­ner co-host­ed with HEP. In a speech to a friend­ly con­ser­v­a­tive audi­ence last year, ALEC’s CEO Lisa Nel­son admit­ted that HEP oper­ates as ALEC’s out­sourced lead in writ­ing and spread­ing elec­tions-relat­ed pol­i­cy, allow­ing her to large­ly dodge ques­tions about ALEC’s elec­tions work. From 2016 through 2021, ALEC has received almost $2.5 mil­lion from DonorsTrust and near­ly $475,000 from sup­port­ing group Donors Cap­i­tal Trust. 

    The Pub­lic Inter­est Legal Foundation’s brief filed in the Moore case states, “The Framers sought to pro­tect ordered lib­er­ty by vest­ing state leg­is­la­tures as the pri­ma­ry reser­voir of pow­er over elec­tions.” The con­ser­v­a­tive legal group is known for bring­ing law­suits against states and local­i­ties, push­ing them to purge vot­ers from their rolls. Based in Indi­anapo­lis, the group has received $850,000 from DonorsTrust and $400,000 from the 85 Fund since 2017. Its chair Cle­ta Mitchell is employed by a con­ser­v­a­tive non­prof­it that acts as a hub of con­ser­v­a­tive efforts to impose restric­tions on vot­ing based on base­less claims of wide­spread vot­er fraud. In 2020, Mitchell par­tic­i­pat­ed in phone calls with Trump pres­sur­ing Geor­gia elec­tion offi­cials to over­turn the state’s 2020 results. In addi­tion, the group has received mil­lions of dol­lars from promi­nent right-wing donors: the Mil­wau­kee-based Bradley Foun­da­tion; its aligned donor-advised fund, the Bradley Impact Fund; and the Sarah Scaife Foun­da­tion, ben­e­fi­cia­ry of the late bil­lion­aire Richard Mel­lon Scaife, a megadonor to right-wing caus­es.

    The Clare­mont Institute’s brief argues that the fed­er­al Con­sti­tu­tion gives “ple­nary” pow­er to the “Leg­is­la­tures” of the states in con­duct­ing fed­er­al elec­tions. An influ­en­tial think tank, the group’s John C. East­man debat­ed with for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Mike Pence’s lawyers ahead of the Jan. 6 Elec­toral Col­lege cer­ti­fi­ca­tion over legal sce­nar­ios for reject­ing the state-approved slates of pres­i­den­tial elec­tors. The group has received more than half a mil­lion dol­lars from DonorsTrust and Donors Cap­i­tal Fund since 2016, as well as more than $2.2 mil­lion from the Sarah Scaife Foun­da­tion and half a mil­lion dol­lars from the Bradley Foun­da­tion.

    The non­prof­it America’s Future, based in St. Louis, also filed a Supreme Court brief sup­port­ing a nar­row read­ing of “Leg­is­la­ture” after receiv­ing $1 mil­lion from DonorsTrust in 2021. Three law firms, includ­ing the right-wing Trump ally William J. Olson of Vir­ginia, joined as co-coun­sel in the group’s brief. In 2020, the group’s tax fil­ing report­ed only $92,014 in rev­enue and list­ed as its pres­i­dent Ed Mar­tin, a for­mer Mis­souri Repub­li­can Par­ty chair­man and for­mer can­di­date for state attor­ney gen­er­al. In May 2021, Mar­tin wrote on the web­site of the Phyl­lis Schlafly Eagles, a con­ser­v­a­tive inter­est group where he is still the pres­i­dent, that for­mer Trump advis­er Gen­er­al Michael Fly­nn was tak­ing on the role of chair of America’s Future. Flynn’s sis­ter Mary O’Neill is now list­ed on the group’s web­site as exec­u­tive direc­tor, and the group is now based in Flori­da. 

    The Seman­tic Argu­ment at the Core of ISLT  

    Around 70 ami­cus briefs have been filed in Moore v. Harp­er, includ­ing briefs oppos­ing ISLT from con­ser­v­a­tive lawyers who decry the theory’s rea­son­ing and warn of its dan­ger­ous impli­ca­tions. One was filed by con­ser­v­a­tive legal the­o­rist and for­mer fed­er­al judge J. Michael Lut­tig, who recent­ly called ISLT “anti­thet­i­cal to the Framers’ intent, and to the text, fun­da­men­tal design, and archi­tec­ture of the Con­sti­tu­tion.” Anoth­er came from Repub­li­can lawyer Ben­jamin Gins­berg, who worked on the infa­mous Bush v Gore case in 2000, and oth­ers arrived from GOP polit­i­cal appointees and legal schol­ars.

    ...

    In their Moore brief, the Repub­li­can peti­tion­ers write, “the pow­er to reg­u­late fed­er­al elec­tions lies with State leg­is­la­tures alone, and the [U.S. Constitution’s Elec­tions Clause] does not allow the state courts, or any oth­er organ of state gov­ern­ment, to sec­ond-guess the legislature’s deter­mi­na­tions.” In its brief to the Supreme Court, the HEP offers back­up, mount­ing a case for ISLT based on its read­ing of the “plain mean­ing” of “Leg­is­la­ture” in the Elec­tions Clause. 

    This core ISLT argu­ment has been reject­ed by the Supreme Court in cas­es going back to 1916. Most recent­ly, a major­i­ty of jus­tices decid­ed against ISLT in 2015, when the Court allowed for an inde­pen­dent redis­trict­ing com­mis­sion in Ari­zona, rul­ing that “leg­is­la­ture” in his­tor­i­cal con­text meant “the pow­er to make laws,” not a spe­cif­ic state leg­isla­tive body. The peti­tion­ers’ nar­row inter­pre­ta­tion of “Leg­is­la­ture” is chal­lenged on mul­ti­ple fronts by Bren­nan Cen­ter experts, who write, among oth­er argu­ments, that “it would be absurd for a state leg­is­la­ture to be allowed to vio­late the very state con­sti­tu­tion that cre­at­ed it.” 

    Ahead of the 2020 elec­tion, HEP’s Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Jason Snead built a project called the Her­itage Elec­tion Fraud Data­base with Repub­li­can elec­tion lawyer Hans von Spakovsky of the Her­itage Foun­da­tion, who has pro­mot­ed vot­er restric­tions such as strict vot­er I.D. laws in states based on ground­less claims of mass vot­er fraud. The database’s method­ol­o­gy was crit­i­cized by elec­tion researchers as over­ly broad, but its find­ings still under­scored the extreme rar­i­ty of inten­tion­al vot­er fraud in U.S. elec­tions.

    ————-

    “Leonard Leo-Tied Group Push­ing Rad­i­cal Elec­tion The­o­ry Got $66 Mil­lion Recent­ly From ‘Dark Mon­ey’ Hub” by David Moore; Sludge; 12/06/2022

    “The ISLT is viewed by many as a fringe legal the­o­ry, one with a long his­to­ry of being reject­ed by a major­i­ty of Supreme Court jus­tices. In the views of legal experts, how­ev­er, ISLT’s prospects changed over the past two years as a well-financed right-wing legal group called the Hon­est Elec­tions Project (HEP) has dra­mat­i­cal­ly stepped up its activ­i­ties to pro­mote the the­o­ry, eye­ing an audi­ence with the Supreme Court.

    What changed? The ISLT has long been viewed as a crank legal the­o­ry with a long his­to­ry of being reject­ed before the Supreme Court. But all of a sud­den its prospects got a lot bet­ter over the past two years, coin­cid­ing with the cre­ation the extreme­ly well-financed Hon­est Elec­tions Project (HEP). It’s amaz­ing what dif­fer­ence tens of mil­lions of dol­lars giv­en to Leonard Leo can make. Crank legal the­o­ries sud­den­ly have a path to vic­to­ry:

    ...
    NPR vot­ing cor­re­spon­dent Han­si Lo Wang has report­ed that the Hon­est Elec­tions Project has repeat­ed­ly peti­tioned the Supreme Court since 2020 to hear a case on state leg­is­la­tures’ abil­i­ty to set rules gov­ern­ing fed­er­al elec­tions. Sim­i­lar­ly, vot­ing rights cor­re­spon­dent Ari Berman flagged as influ­en­tial the group’s brief in a chal­lenge to mail-in bal­lots brought by the Repub­li­can Par­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia in the months before the 2020 elec­tion, which is based on the ISLT. The Penn­syl­va­nia case result­ed in a 4–4 dead­lock short­ly before Amy Coney Bar­rett was con­firmed, but through opin­ions in that case and oth­ers, four con­ser­v­a­tive jus­tices (Samuel Ali­to, Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gor­such, and Clarence Thomas) sig­naled their open­ness to ISLT. On June 30, with Bar­rett in place as a poten­tial­ly piv­otal fifth vote, the Court announced that it would hear Moore. The HEP filed an ami­cus brief in the Moore case endors­ing ISLT. 
    ...

    And note how the HEP is, itself, real­ly just a rebrand­ing of of 85 Fund, which itself was a rebrand­ing of the Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project. So when we observe that the HEP was found­ed in May of 2020, it’s impor­tant to rec­og­nize that the HEP is just the lat­est rebrand­ing of the same ongo­ing agen­da Leo-led legal activist group work­ing on behalf of this mega-donor net­work for a decade before the HEP was formed in 2020. But while the agen­da may have stayed the same, it sounds like the fund­ing lev­els changed, with the HEP rak­ing in remark­able dona­tions since 2020. And it’s not a mys­tery why. Now is the time for the for the mega-donors to cash in on their invest­ments. ‘Cash in’ in the form of favor­able Supreme Court rul­ings that val­i­date crank anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic legal the­o­ries:

    ...
    The HEP is close­ly linked to con­ser­v­a­tive legal activist Leonard Leo, a lawyer who as an advis­er to for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump helped select the Supreme Court’s con­ser­v­a­tive super­ma­jor­i­ty. The HEP was cre­at­ed out of a reshuf­fling of opaque con­ser­v­a­tive non­prof­its: the Leo-tied Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project in Decem­ber 2019 changed its name to The 85 Fund, which in May 2020 picked up the HEP name as a legal alias in a rebrand­ing move. Leo also serves as co-chair of the pow­er­ful Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety, a high­ly influ­en­tial con­ser­v­a­tive legal group part of a net­work that sim­i­lar­ly pro­mot­ed ISLT’s claims. The 85 Fund and an allied group, the Con­cord Fund, were found­ed by Leo’s con­ser­v­a­tive allies and have paid two of Leo’s for-prof­it groups hefty con­sult­ing fees. Leo has been described as an advis­er to the net­work. 

    The nom­i­na­tions of con­ser­v­a­tive Supreme Court Jus­tices Gor­such, Kavanaugh, and Coney Bar­rett were backed by tens of mil­lions of dol­lars in ad spend­ing by Leo-tied dark mon­ey groups.

    As a non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion, HEP is not required to pub­licly dis­close its donors, but tax records show that in recent years more than 70% of its fund­ing came from a “dark mon­ey” group used by wealthy con­ser­v­a­tive donors to shield their iden­ti­ties. 

    In 2020 and 2021, HEP received more than $65.8 mil­lion from DonorsTrust, a major con­duit group used by the Koch net­work of polit­i­cal donors, accord­ing to new pro­files of con­ser­v­a­tive fund­ing groups avail­able on Mon­i­toring­In­flu­ence from the watch­dog group Accountable.US. In 2020, as it ramped up its ISLT efforts, HEP’s $48.7 mil­lion in dona­tions from DonorsTrust that year made up about three-quar­ters of its rev­enue. 
    ...

    And as the arti­cle reminds us, the HEP­’s Exec­u­tive Direc­tor, Jason Snead, built an ‘elec­tion fraud’ data­base with con­ser­v­a­tive elec­tions lawyer Hans von Spakovsky. As we’ve seen, Snead and Spakovsky are both part of a net­work of con­ser­v­a­tive activists who are spear­head­ing anoth­er recent­ly cre­at­ed very-well-financed ‘elec­tions integrity’-related lob­by­ing oper­a­tion along with CNP mem­bers Cle­ta Mitchell, J Chris­t­ian Adams, and Ken­neth Black­well. In oth­er words, that ‘vot­er fraud’ data­base Snead cre­at­ed with Spakovsky is just one of many ‘elec­tion integri­ty’ efforts this same very well financed net­work has been up to over the last cou­ple of years as the mega-donors decid­ed to make ‘elec­tion integri­ty’ and oth­er anti-democ­ra­cy ini­tia­tives top pri­or­i­ties:

    ...
    Ahead of the 2020 elec­tion, HEP’s Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Jason Snead built a project called the Her­itage Elec­tion Fraud Data­base with Repub­li­can elec­tion lawyer Hans von Spakovsky of the Her­itage Foun­da­tion, who has pro­mot­ed vot­er restric­tions such as strict vot­er I.D. laws in states based on ground­less claims of mass vot­er fraud. The database’s method­ol­o­gy was crit­i­cized by elec­tion researchers as over­ly broad, but its find­ings still under­scored the extreme rar­i­ty of inten­tion­al vot­er fraud in U.S. elec­tions.
    ...

    And while the HEP­’s Ami­cus Brief in Harp­er v Moore is obvi­ous­ly very influ­en­tial giv­en per­son­al role Leo played in nom­i­na­tions of four of the sit­ting jus­tices, it’s not the only enti­ty involved with this net­work that filed an Ami­cus Brief. There was the brief filed by Cle­ta Mitchel­l’s Pub­lic Inter­est Legal Foun­da­tion, along with the Clare­mont Insti­tute. As we’ve seen, Mitchell was a cen­tral fig­ure in the schem­ing that led up to the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol insur­rec­tion. Also recall the Clare­mont Insti­tute was run­ning the “79 Days report” elec­tion sim­u­la­tions in the final weeks of the 2020 elec­tion that iron­i­cal­ly envi­sioned all sorts of sce­nar­ios involv­ing left­ist mobs occu­py­ing capi­tols. The Clare­mont Insti­tute hap­pens to have John East­man, one of the cen­tral fig­ures in devel­op­ing legal jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for the events that led up to the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol insur­rec­tion. And when we read that at the Bradley Foun­da­tion donat­ed to Mitchel­l’s Pub­lic Inter­est Legal Foun­da­tion, don’t for­get that Mitchell sits on the foun­da­tion’s board. This is a very well financed full-spec­trum attack on democ­ra­cy, orches­trat­ed by a rel­a­tive­ly small net­work of fig­ures like Cle­ta Mitchell and Leonard Leo show­ered with mega-donor cash:

    ...
    Sev­er­al more groups that have received mil­lions of dol­lars in anony­mous dona­tions via DonorsTrust since 2016 filed ami­cus briefs in the Moore case sup­port­ing the ISLT argu­ment, accord­ing to Accountable.US: the Amer­i­can Leg­isla­tive Exchange Coun­cil (ALEC); the Pub­lic Inter­est Legal Foun­da­tion, a con­ser­v­a­tive legal group chaired by Trump’s for­mer lawyer Cle­ta Mitchell; the Clare­mont Insti­tute, where Trump-sup­port­ing lawyer John C. East­man, who wrote mem­os seek­ing to over­turn the 2020 elec­tion results found­ed and directs the Cen­ter for Con­sti­tu­tion­al Jurispru­dence; and the non­prof­it America’s Future, Inc., which received a $1 mil­lion infu­sion last year from DonorsTrust.

    These groups are part of a net­work for con­ser­v­a­tive elec­tion lawyers, many of whom tout­ed Trump’s false claims of a stolen 2020 elec­tion and worked to pass laws that lim­it elec­tion access in bat­tle­ground states. Accord­ing to the Bren­nan Cen­ter, dozens of restric­tive vot­ing mea­sures have passed in states since the start of last year.

    ...

    The Pub­lic Inter­est Legal Foundation’s brief filed in the Moore case states, “The Framers sought to pro­tect ordered lib­er­ty by vest­ing state leg­is­la­tures as the pri­ma­ry reser­voir of pow­er over elec­tions.” The con­ser­v­a­tive legal group is known for bring­ing law­suits against states and local­i­ties, push­ing them to purge vot­ers from their rolls. Based in Indi­anapo­lis, the group has received $850,000 from DonorsTrust and $400,000 from the 85 Fund since 2017. Its chair Cle­ta Mitchell is employed by a con­ser­v­a­tive non­prof­it that acts as a hub of con­ser­v­a­tive efforts to impose restric­tions on vot­ing based on base­less claims of wide­spread vot­er fraud. In 2020, Mitchell par­tic­i­pat­ed in phone calls with Trump pres­sur­ing Geor­gia elec­tion offi­cials to over­turn the state’s 2020 results. In addi­tion, the group has received mil­lions of dol­lars from promi­nent right-wing donors: the Mil­wau­kee-based Bradley Foun­da­tion; its aligned donor-advised fund, the Bradley Impact Fund; and the Sarah Scaife Foun­da­tion, ben­e­fi­cia­ry of the late bil­lion­aire Richard Mel­lon Scaife, a megadonor to right-wing caus­es.
    ...

    And while Leo and Mitchell are both well known CNP mem­bers, note the many oth­er CNP we see pop up in this sto­ry. For exam­ple, there’s the $2 mil­lion from the Nation­al Chris­t­ian Char­i­ta­ble Foun­da­tion donat­ed to the 85 Fund (now the HEP). The pres­i­dent of the Nation­al Chris­t­ian Foun­da­tion is CNP mem­ber David H. Willis. And when we see that the Koch-backed ALEC filed its own ami­cus brief in favor of the ISLT, don’t for­get that ALEC’s CEO is CNP mem­ber Anne Nel­son. And don’t for­get that the Clare­mont Insti­tute’s Co-Founder Dr. Lar­ry P. Arnn, and for­mer Exec­u­tive VP, Dou­glas A. Jef­frey, both show up on the CNP mem­ber list.

    And then there’s Amer­i­ca’s Future’s pres­i­dent CNP mem­ber Ed Mar­tin. First, there’s Mar­t­in’s own ties to Jan 6: CNP mem­ber Ali Alexan­der — who played a key role in the Jan 6 plot­ting — tweet­ed out on Novem­ber 4, 2020, the day after the elec­tion, how he was work­ing on the #StoptheSteal efforts and includ­ed 15 names of peo­ple he was work­ing with, includ­ing Ed Mar­tin. And who do we see as Amer­i­ca’s Future chair but none oth­er than cen­tral Jan 6 fig­ure Michael Fly­nn. So of course we see Ed Mar­tin as pres­i­dent of a group the files an ami­cus for some­thing like the ISLT:

    ...
    The Clare­mont Institute’s brief argues that the fed­er­al Con­sti­tu­tion gives “ple­nary” pow­er to the “Leg­is­la­tures” of the states in con­duct­ing fed­er­al elec­tions. An influ­en­tial think tank, the group’s John C. East­man debat­ed with for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Mike Pence’s lawyers ahead of the Jan. 6 Elec­toral Col­lege cer­ti­fi­ca­tion over legal sce­nar­ios for reject­ing the state-approved slates of pres­i­den­tial elec­tors. The group has received more than half a mil­lion dol­lars from DonorsTrust and Donors Cap­i­tal Fund since 2016, as well as more than $2.2 mil­lion from the Sarah Scaife Foun­da­tion and half a mil­lion dol­lars from the Bradley Foun­da­tion.

    ...

    Amer­i­ca First Works, a 501(c)(4) advo­ca­cy group led by for­mer Trump cam­paign offi­cials, donat­ed $4.8 mil­lion to DonorsTrust in 2020 that it ear­marked for HEP. Anoth­er $2 mil­lion dona­tion to the 85 Fund in 2020 came through the gigan­tic Nation­al Chris­t­ian Char­i­ta­ble Foun­da­tion, accord­ing to tax fil­ings, pos­si­bly giv­en through the foundation’s donor-advised funds.

    ...

    The secre­tive orga­ni­za­tion ALEC, which brings togeth­er cor­po­rate lob­by­ists with state law­mak­ers to craft poli­cies, sub­mit­ted an ami­cus brief argu­ing for the peti­tion­ers in Moore “because a state con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­vi­sion can­not with­draw or lim­it the Fed­er­al Constitution’s express grant of author­i­ty to state leg­is­la­tures.” This sum­mer, ALEC invit­ed leg­is­la­tors to a two-day Hon­est Elec­tions Acad­e­my, accord­ing to Exposed­By­CMD, capped by a lead­er­ship din­ner co-host­ed with HEP. In a speech to a friend­ly con­ser­v­a­tive audi­ence last year, ALEC’s CEO Lisa Nel­son admit­ted that HEP oper­ates as ALEC’s out­sourced lead in writ­ing and spread­ing elec­tions-relat­ed pol­i­cy, allow­ing her to large­ly dodge ques­tions about ALEC’s elec­tions work. From 2016 through 2021, ALEC has received almost $2.5 mil­lion from DonorsTrust and near­ly $475,000 from sup­port­ing group Donors Cap­i­tal Trust. 

    ...

    The non­prof­it America’s Future, based in St. Louis, also filed a Supreme Court brief sup­port­ing a nar­row read­ing of “Leg­is­la­ture” after receiv­ing $1 mil­lion from DonorsTrust in 2021. Three law firms, includ­ing the right-wing Trump ally William J. Olson of Vir­ginia, joined as co-coun­sel in the group’s brief. In 2020, the group’s tax fil­ing report­ed only $92,014 in rev­enue and list­ed as its pres­i­dent Ed Mar­tin, a for­mer Mis­souri Repub­li­can Par­ty chair­man and for­mer can­di­date for state attor­ney gen­er­al. In May 2021, Mar­tin wrote on the web­site of the Phyl­lis Schlafly Eagles, a con­ser­v­a­tive inter­est group where he is still the pres­i­dent, that for­mer Trump advis­er Gen­er­al Michael Fly­nn was tak­ing on the role of chair of America’s Future. Flynn’s sis­ter Mary O’Neill is now list­ed on the group’s web­site as exec­u­tive direc­tor, and the group is now based in Flori­da. 
    ...

    And when we see large dona­tions for the HEP­’s ongo­ing efforts com­ing from the Ed Uih­lein Fam­i­ly Foun­da­tion, recall how the Uih­lein made a large dona­tion to Con­ser­v­a­tive Part­ner­ship Insti­tute (CPI) in 2021, which went on to spawn a series of groups involved with both ‘elec­tion integri­ty’ and the Sched­ule F plot to sack fed­er­al gov­ern­ment work­ers and replace them with ide­o­log­i­cal­ly-dri­ven yes-men. The Uih­lein’s are by now ‘usu­al sus­pects’ for anti-democ­ra­cy efforts:

    ...
    The 85 Fund, HEP, and Judi­cial Elec­tion Project con­glom­er­ate has received dona­tions from sev­er­al more well-known con­ser­v­a­tive fun­ders in recent years, accord­ing to the Cen­ter for Media and Democ­ra­cy, includ­ing the Ed Uih­lein Fam­i­ly Foun­da­tion, Sto­ry Garschi­na Foun­da­tion, Bradley Impact Fund, Diana Davis Spencer Foun­da­tion, and the Thomas W. Smith Foun­da­tion. It has also received dona­tions from donor-advised funds spon­sors the Nation­al Phil­an­thropic Trust and the Fideli­ty Invest­ments Char­i­ta­ble Gift Fund. 
    ...

    The ISLT effort isn’t just a pet project of a few cranky bil­lion­aires. It’s got a lot of cranky bil­lion­aires behind it and the CNP’s back­ing too. And that’s why we should expect it to return again and again if they fail to win this case. All the piece are in place. It’s just a mat­ter of time. They just need to find the way to bring pro-ISLT legal chal­lenges that thread that nee­dle and give them a five jus­tice major­i­ty. Maybe it will be Moore or maybe it will be the next chal­lenge. But the under­ly­ing point is that the group that put that con­ser­v­a­tive major­i­ty on the court is the same group behind the ISLT. The court’s con­ser­v­a­tive con­ser­v­a­tive major­i­ty’s spon­sors real­ly real­ly real­ly want this and the jus­tices know this.

    And who knows how long the con­ser­v­a­tive major­i­ty on the court will last. A death or retire­ment here and there on the bench and this incred­i­ble win­dow of oppor­tu­ni­ty for this mega-donor net­work to make good on their decades-long invest­ment in the court might close. Which is a reminder that if this case does­n’t suc­ceed, they’re going to have to bring the next cas­es as soon as pos­si­ble. This is the mod­ern gold­en age of cranky legal the­o­ries. Which means we should expect a lot of cranky legal suc­cess­es. And even more fail­ures while every­one is test­ing the court while the cranky get­ting is good.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | December 12, 2022, 1:26 am
  33. How did Leonard Leo end up becom­ing one of the most pow­er­ful indi­vid­u­als in the US? It’s a ques­tion that isn’t going away any time soon thanks to the record $1.6 bil­lion dona­tion Leo received from mys­te­ri­ous bil­lion­aire Barre Seid last year. Leonard Leo is going to be a con­ser­v­a­tive king­mak­er for decades to come thanks to that dona­tion. A con­ser­v­a­tive king­mak­er work­ing at the behest of the reac­tionary theo­crat­ic groups like the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP) and Opus Dei.

    So why did Barre Seid, a sec­u­lar Jew, decide to hand over a bil­lion dol­lars to a rad­i­cal Catholic extrem­ist like Leonard Leo? It’s one of the ques­tions raised in the fol­low­ing piece in the New Repub­lic about Sei­d’s decades of qui­et polit­i­cal phil­an­thropy.

    For starters, there’s the fact that Leo isn’t just a mem­ber of the CNP. He’s also long been the key indi­vid­ual at the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety for deter­min­ing who was be select­ed for con­ser­v­a­tive judi­cial appoint­ments. If you’re a con­ser­v­a­tive bil­lion­aire look­ing to influ­ence the US judi­cia­ry, Leonard Leo is the guy to talk to and has long been that guy.

    But it’s also hard to ignore the fact that 5 out of the 6 con­ser­v­a­tive Supreme Court jus­tices are deeply con­ser­v­a­tive Catholics. Some­how, almost all of the Repub­li­can-appoint­ed Supreme Court jus­tices over the past gen­er­a­tion have been con­ser­v­a­tive Catholics. With hard right Catholic Leonard Leo play­ing the lead role as the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety’s point man on mak­ing those Supreme Court rec­om­men­da­tions. Leo did­n’t just use his pow­er to stack the Supreme Court with far right con­ser­v­a­tives. He keeps pick­ing con­ser­v­a­tive Catholics.

    So is it Leo’s role as a board mem­ber of the Catholic Infor­ma­tion Cen­ter, one of Opus Dei’s DC-based orga­ni­za­tions, that has result­ed his repeat­ed selec­tion of con­ser­v­a­tive Catholic Supreme Court nom­i­nees? It seems like a like­ly fac­tor. Also recall how the financ­ing for the Leo’s orga­ni­za­tions was heav­i­ly financed by the bil­lion­aire Cork­ery fam­i­ly who are Opus Dei mem­bers.

    And that brings us to anoth­er far right Catholic orga­ni­za­tions that it turns out Leo has also long been a mem­ber of: the Knights of Mal­ta. Yep, Leo is a mem­ber of the Knights of Malt too. On top of his CNP and Opus Dei mem­ber­ships.

    It’s worth recall­ing at this point anoth­er notable mem­ber of both the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety and the Knights of Mal­ta: Joseph E. Schmitz, the Inspec­tor Gen­er­al of the Depart­ment of Defense from 2002–2005. This is also a good time to recall that 2011 report by Sy Hersh on the sur­pris­ing­ly large num­ber of Knights of Mal­ta sit­ting on the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. Opus Dei isn’t the only reac­tionary Catholic enti­ty with pro­found influ­ence in DC.

    So when we find that Leonard Leo has some­how become one of the most pow­er­ful indi­vid­u­als in the US through the pro­found influ­ence he wields as the fig­ure in charge of deter­min­ing the Fed­er­al Soci­ety’s judi­cial rec­om­men­da­tions, we have to ask: just how much is Leo act­ing as a ves­sel for wield­ing influ­ence on behalf of these far right Catholic orders? How much influ­ence do Opus Dei and the Knights of Mal­ta have over the US judi­cia­ry? Is this why Barre Seid felt com­pelled to hand over their for­tune to Leo? That’s all part of the con­text of this fas­ci­nat­ing new report the ori­gins of the remark­able rela­tion­ship between Barre Seid and Leonard Leo. A rela­tion­ship that has ele­vat­ed Leo into a kind of right-wing sug­ar-dad­dy Pope for US con­ser­v­a­tives:

    The New Repub­lic

    Who Is Leonard Leo’s Mys­te­ri­ous Dark Mon­ey King?

    Amer­i­ca needs to know who Barre Seid is, what kind of coun­try he wants, and just how mas­sive an impact his $1.6 bil­lion gift can have on our polit­i­cal dis­course.
    Nina Burleigh/May 16, 2023

    A few months before the midterms, with poll­sters spew­ing red wave pre­dic­tions and post-Roe con­ser­v­a­tives plan­ning to force raped chil­dren to give birth, a bit of polit­i­cal news added to pro­gres­sives’ gloom. A Chica­go bil­lion­aire had gift­ed anti-abor­tion Supreme Court fix­er Leonard Leo the largest known tranche of dark mon­ey in U.S. his­to­ry: $1.6 bil­lion. The sum is stag­ger­ing; it will finance at least a gen­er­a­tion of extreme right-wing polit­i­cal pros­e­ly­tiz­ing. And almost no one—except for the con­ser­v­a­tive cabal that bagged the whale—had heard of him.

    The gift from nona­ge­nar­i­an elec­tron­ics mag­nate Barre Seid (pro­nounced Bar­ry Side) is effec­tive altru­ism in reverse: a fire hose of cash aimed at destroy­ing Amer­i­can lib­er­al cul­ture through law­suits and sup­port for politi­cians chal­leng­ing gay rights, unions, envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion, vot­ing rights, and ppub­lic edu­ca­tion. The mon­ey will last a good long while. Phil­an­thropic recip­i­ents usu­al­ly fol­low a 5 per­cent rule: They try not to spend more than 5 per­cent of the endow­ment per year. Seid’s pile is so large that it could return an aver­age $136 mil­lion a year, or north of $230 mil­lion on a good year, to influ­ence U.S. law and pol­i­cy. With­out ever hav­ing to touch the nut. For a sense of how enor­mous that is, con­sid­er this. The Her­itage Foun­da­tion and its affil­i­ates spent about $86 mil­lion in 2021. Her­itage is a huge, and huge­ly influ­en­tial, con­ser­v­a­tive think tank. Leo could cre­ate two Her­itage Foun­da­tions and one more siz­able orga­ni­za­tion on the side—all, again, with­out hav­ing to dip into the prin­ci­pal at all.

    Leo, a New Jer­sey Roman Catholic and grand­son of an Ital­ian immi­grant who worked for Brooks Broth­ers, hob­nobs around the upper ech­e­lons of Amer­i­can pow­er in nat­ty suits with vests and a pock­et watch on a gold chain. This fop­pish dandy is the Pen­guin in the pan­theon of Wash­ing­ton, D.C., DC Comics vil­lains. Leo is a proud “Knight of the Sov­er­eign Order of Mal­ta,” and his long career has been moti­vat­ed by fanat­i­cal oppo­si­tion to women’s rights to repro­duc­tive choice. Since Seid hand­ed the mon­ey over in 2021, part of the pile has been fun­neled into black box­es like Donors Trust, a mega-donor mon­ey-wash­ingg machine. Hav­ing suc­ceed­ed at sub­ject­ing Amer­i­can women to forced preg­nan­cy, Leo, 57, is direct­ing the mon­ey toward oth­er goals: stop­ping “woke” cul­ture, end­ing fed­er­al reg­u­la­tions on cli­mate change, and lim­it­ing vot­ing rights. Ulti­mate­ly, Seid’s mon­ey will be used to shore up society’s winners—the Amer­i­can oli­garchy, inher­it­ed trusts, CEOs, self-made bil­lion­aires, corporations—against the demands of the weak. It will be used to make the Unit­ed States a tougher and, for many, a nas­ti­er coun­try, where big mon­ey always wins, under the eye of Ram­bo Jesus.

    All that from a man nobody knows.

    Mr. 999

    Steven Baer is, like Leonard Leo, a career anti-choice fanat­ic, but with a polit­i­cal style from the Roger Stone School of Rat­fuck­ery. The Illi­nois fringe con­ser­v­a­tive built him­self a minor nation­al rep­u­ta­tion by sham­ing ene­mies like Don­ald Trump and Kevin McCarthy with sala­cious dirt. Even the con­ser­v­a­tive Nation­al Review finds Baer hard to stom­ach, call­ing him “the world’s most suc­cess­ful email harass­er.” After decades in Illi­nois con­ser­v­a­tive pol­i­tics, Baer now resides in Flori­da part-time, and spends his time sip­ping tequi­las and IPAs, and tex­ting streams of Atlantic Coast sun­ris­es, cats, bloody abort­ed fetus­es, and the sins (he uses that word) of Don­ald Trump and Kevin McCarthy to email address­es and phone num­bers of right-wing donors, politi­cians, and jour­nal­ists.

    Baer had his fetal rights epiphany as a stu­dent at Brown in the ear­ly 1980s, when he “saw pho­tographs of piles of corpses at Auschwitz jux­ta­posed to pho­tographs of piles of dead babies,” he told me, sug­gest­ing that legal abor­tion was equiv­a­lent to the Holo­caust and abor­tion clin­ics the fem­i­nist ver­sion of Hitler’s gas cham­bers. He then spent much of his career rais­ing hell and mon­ey from a wacky cor­ner of fringe right-wing pol­i­tics. He famous­ly mass-emailed a rumor about Kevin McCarthy and an extra­mar­i­tal affair in 2015, and before that Baer became known as a kind of right-wing mer­ry prankster, with stunts like hold­ing a press con­fer­ence in Illi­nois with fake law­mak­ers dressed as pigs. He was known in the local press as “a major irri­tant,” for­ev­er pulling polit­i­cal pranks and “high jinks,” but always good for a quip­py quote and some polit­i­cal gos­sip.

    And now, he is the mys­tery donor’s self-appoint­ed Boswell.

    When The New York Times broke news of the bequest in August, Baer was the only source among Seid’s friends and acquain­tances who talked to jour­nal­ists. And he’s still at it. He told me that he wants to talk about the old man because he’s afraid that Seid, whom he describes as a father fig­ure, will die with­out ever get­ting his prop­er due as one of the great right-wing financiers of the age.

    In 1986, Baer was a twen­tysome­thing con­ser­v­a­tive with a job solic­it­ing mon­ey for a fringe off­shoot of the Illi­nois GOP called the Unit­ed Repub­li­can Fund. The orga­ni­za­tion wasn’t doing so well. Baer stud­ied the Lotus spread­sheet and noticed one con­sis­tent donor who repeat­ed­ly gave $999. The guy had, as Baer saw it, “a fun­ny name, looked Ara­bic.” But the pre­ci­sion of the num­ber and reg­u­lar­i­ty of the gifts sug­gest­ed a mon­ey tree that might be shak­en a lit­tle hard­er.

    He decid­ed to track down the donor he had tak­en to call­ing Mr. 999. He found Barre Seid at the helm of a com­pa­ny called Trippe Man­u­fac­tur­ing, in a rent­ed build­ing in the city’s down­town, “a rat war­ren” packed with carrels—a phone oper­a­tion. The com­pa­ny was just then tran­si­tion­ing from one that pro­duced police and ambu­lance lights to one that sold dig­i­tal-age elec­tron­ic gad­getry. The pres­i­dent explained that he had cho­sen the $999 num­ber to keep him­self anony­mous. “He didn’t know if it was solic­i­tors or [Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion] types or gov­ern­ment,” Baer recalled. “He had just intu­it­ed that nine-nine-nine keeps you off more radars than a thou­sand. He did it out of a kind of a shy­ness or a desire not to be in the tar­gets.”

    Baer quick­ly rec­og­nized in Seid a cul­ti­vat­able mark. He began spend­ing long evenings talk­ing pol­i­tics with the old man, who liked to work late after his employ­ees went home. He bought Seid a copy of Chris Matthews’s book Hard­ball to help the old­er man under­stand that pol­i­tics, as gen­er­a­tions of Chica­go politi­cians would say, ain’t bean­bag. Seid, a sec­u­lar Jew, didn’t seem to care much about the abor­tion issue, but Baer saw his poten­tial. He describes their rela­tion­ship as a kind of father-son sit­u­a­tion (Baer’s father was born exact­ly one day before Seid, who is child­less). Mr. 999 was hap­py to con­tribute to Baer’s Unit­ed Repub­li­can Fund and its events, but he remained adamant about avoid­ing atten­tion. Nev­er­the­less, by 1990, Baer had per­suad­ed Seid to poke his head above the anony­mous para­pet. Seid made local news with a $500,000 loan to Baer for a failed guber­na­to­r­i­al run. After that bap­tism by media, Seid was ready to meet oth­er con­ser­v­a­tive donors.

    “Elbert How­ell”

    Baer likes to say of his father fig­ure that “he’s shy,” and indeed Seid, who turned 91 in April, has gone to great lengths to pro­tect his “anonymi­ty para­noia,” as Seid calls it. Baer noticed that he kept his dona­tions just under the report­ing lim­it. He’s been impli­cat­ed in covert endeav­ors like try­ing to trans­form a broke lib­er­al arts col­lege into a cap­i­tal­ist incu­ba­tor and rename a pub­lic law school after one of the Supreme Court’s staunchest right-wingers. Seid even used an alias, Elbert How­ell, on offi­cial papers as CEO of his own com­pa­ny.

    But the shad­owy Mr. How­ell has lived too many years into the inter­net age to erase his sto­ry entire­ly. His father and grand­par­ents arrived in New York from Rus­sia before the turn of the last cen­tu­ry. Father Reuben heaved him­self out of the gar­ment trade, became a promi­nent Chica­go optometrist, and had two sons. Young Barre was very smart. He built a TV remote con­trol as a child. He entered the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go at age 14 as part of an advanced pro­gram for teens and got degrees in Eng­lish and eco­nom­ics from the uni­ver­si­ties of Col­orado and Penn­syl­va­nia.

    After a short stint in the Army, Seid went to work. He was good at a lot of things. He had a nat­ur­al apti­tude for engi­neer­ing and a head for num­bers. In 1959, he joined a com­pa­ny that made rotat­ing lights for police cars and ambu­lances and lat­er became a de fac­to chief engi­neer, even though he was not trained in engi­neer­ing. With­in a decade, Seid bought Trippe Man­u­fac­tur­ing and became pres­i­dent of Tripp Lite—the com­pa­ny that he expand­ed into the glob­al elec­tron­ics con­cern that Leonard Leo sold for $1.6 bil­lion.

    ...

    To try to cut through the veil, I decid­ed to do my own tour of Barre Seid’s Chica­go, hop­ing to coax out for­mer col­leagues and friends and rel­a­tives. I start­ed with a dri­ve-by of a fac­to­ry he owns, not far from the shores of Lake Michi­gan in Michi­gan City, Indi­ana. Seid made his for­tune in elec­tron­ics, but his busi­ness inter­ests have includ­ed indus­tri­al chem­i­cals and relat­ed man­u­fac­tur­ing. While at Tripp Lite, Seid was also pres­i­dent of a chem­i­cal com­pa­ny, Yates Man­u­fac­tur­ing, in Chica­go.

    In 1975, he bought a com­pa­ny called Fiber Bond, then locat­ed in a heav­i­ly pol­lut­ed indus­tri­al swath of Chica­go. The com­pa­ny had been in the fiber and fab­rics divi­sion of Union Car­bide, pro­duc­ing padding and fibers, which at the time con­tained asbestos, for the car indus­try. Fiber Bond’s orig­i­nal Chica­go site is fouled with lead paint and asbestos. Seid moved the Fiber Bond fac­to­ry to Michi­gan City, and from a blue-and-white plant on an expanse of prairie weeds, it still makes high-tech, non­wo­ven mate­ri­als and “paint/finishing fil­tra­tion” prod­ucts for HVACs and indus­try.

    From Michi­gan City, I tooled back to Chica­go via the hec­tic express­way that rims Lake Michi­gan and pass­es Gary, Indi­ana. That city is best known as the birth­place of the Jack­son 5. It is also home to the Ninth Avenue Dump, one of the Super­fund sites that Fiber Bond and oth­er com­pa­nies used. Three decades of envi­ron­men­tal reme­di­a­tion and law­suits have still not cleaned the 17-acre site of a witch­es’ brew of poi­sons includ­ing cyanide, chlo­ri­nat­ed ethane, PCBs, volatile organ­ic com­pounds, and ketones, dumped by a large group of pol­luters. The Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency’s most recent report states that con­cerns about area ground­wa­ter are still being addressed.

    I could find no evi­dence that Seid ever con­tributed to the cleanup. In a build­ing appli­ca­tion in Chica­go, Seid acknowl­edged that Fiber Bond was noti­fied in 1986 and again in 1989 that it was deemed poten­tial­ly respon­si­ble for dump­ing at Super­fund sites in Michi­gan City and Gary, but he reject­ed respon­si­bil­i­ty. He wrote in the appli­ca­tion that “Fiber­bond, dur­ing the time it has been an ‘affil­i­at­ed enti­ty’ of Appli­cant, did not dis­pose of waste at such land­fills.” He added that the com­pa­ny had not been ordered to pay “dam­ages, costs, or expens­es.”

    Seid expand­ed Tripp Lite’s prod­ucts from ambu­lance, fire truck, and police car lights to elec­tron­ics in the mid-1980s and start­ed sell­ing surge pro­tec­tors, pow­er strips, and oth­er dig­i­tal-age elec­tron­ic hard­ware. These prod­ucts proved to be the old man’s tick­et to donor Val­hal­la, ensur­ing the unin­ter­rupt­ed pow­er sup­ply every man, woman, child, office, hos­pi­tal, and video gamer needs. “As the com­put­er boom took off, peo­ple would get real­ly pissed when there was a pow­er blip, and they’d lose all their Lotus 1–2‑3 data,” Baer recalled of Tripp Lite’s surge pro­tec­tor. “Barre was just an incred­i­bly bril­liant Jew­ish entre­pre­neur.” (Baer is a Chris­t­ian.)

    Seid was per­fect­ly posi­tioned as Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were invent­ing their prod­ucts on the West Coast. But he was the oppo­site of a dis­rup­tor. He was not look­ing to make some­thing to change the world. If a prod­uct could be made for less and still work, that was more than good enough for him. His for­tu­itous tim­ing and pen­ny-wise approach made him very rich. Seid’s annu­al income explod­ed in the mid-2000s, hit­ting $157 mil­lion in 2018, of which $136 mil­lion was from Tripp Lite, accord­ing to tax records obtained by ProP­ub­li­ca.

    ...

    Around the time of his sec­ond mar­riage, he pulled a Charles Fos­ter Kane and found­ed the Cham­ber Opera Chica­go, a small com­pa­ny that for the next decades show­cased Chica­go-born mez­zo-sopra­no Bar­bara Lan­dis Seid in tee­ny-tiny operas per­formed at var­i­ous venues, includ­ing a the­ater not far from their home. A review­er of the Cham­ber Opera’s pro­duc­tion of Il Trova­tore in 2003 wrote, “Mez­zo sopra­no Bar­bara Lan­dis Seid, an attrac­tive young woman, seems to delight in play­ing deranged ladies, which makes her just right for Azu­ce­na.”

    The cou­ple tried, but nev­er had chil­dren. No pets. They favor a spar­tan lifestyle. They order in, eat at home, and watch old movies, Baer said. Seid fan­cies him­self an aes­thete, and, like David Koch in New York, he has donat­ed to his city’s cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions. “I’m a suc­cess­ful adult male who gets plea­sure out of see­ing nice things hap­pen,” Seid once told a jour­nal­ist about found­ing the opera. “I’m not a musi­cian but I have a tal­ent for run­ning things.” He has donat­ed mil­lions to the arts in Chica­go, includ­ing the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go, area orches­tras, and the School of the Art Insti­tute, where he’s an hon­orary mem­ber of the gov­ern­ing com­mit­tee.

    It’s a good bet that the School of the Art Institute’s admin­is­tra­tors and oth­er cul­ture ben­e­fi­cia­ries do not sup­port, say, the seat­ing of homo­phobes and right-wing extrem­ist jus­tices on the nation’s high­est court, who will rein­state back-alley abor­tions, dis­crim­i­na­tion against gays, and lim­it­ing vot­er rights to favor a fas­cist minor­i­ty. But school offi­cials I reached out to declined to talk about him. For­mer and cur­rent Cham­ber Opera cre­ative direc­tors, musi­cians, and set direc­tors also ran for the hills. A Bul­gar­i­an sculp­tor whose work is plant­ed in the Tripp Lite HQ park­ing lot was the only one who talked. In the aughts, Seid bought a large work—a del­i­cate­ly wrought iron mod­el of a ship—by Boy­an Mari­nov, and invit­ed him to his office to close the deal. Mari­nov remem­bers a small man with a large tele­scope near his desk. “It was like meet­ing Bruce Wayne,” he said.

    Enter­ing the Big Leagues

    After Baer came along, Seid was dab­bling in the polit­i­cal influ­ence game, but most­ly on local can­di­dates who sup­port­ed issues like school choice. He made four- and five-fig­ure dona­tions in local races in Illi­nois and Wis­con­sin and Iowa where can­di­dates were push­ing his pet issues. Baer intro­duced Seid to the Koch net­work. “Around 2005, 2004, 2005, I’m push­ing Barre to swing for the fences regard­ing apply­ing his mon­ey to affect Amer­i­can pol­i­tics and cul­ture,” Baer said. “I spoke at two of Koch’s big famous donor gath­er­ings in Palm Springs and Aspen.” Seid, of course, didn’t attend these events, but through Baer he start­ed “frat­er­niz­ing” with Charles Koch, who had just set up the Cato Insti­tute as a non­prof­it think tank. In the ear­ly 1990s, Seid forked over what Baer reck­ons to be many tens of mil­lions for a Cato spin-off, U.S. Term Lim­its. The project was an ear­ly test of the pow­er of Koch dark mon­ey, and an incu­ba­tor for ris­ing right-wing politi­cos like Mike Pom­peo. “Barre had this low pro­file and a kind of a fear­less­ness,” Baer said. “When he intu­it­ed yeah, this is real­ly good and it’s com­pelling, he would then drop unbe­liev­able amounts of mon­ey, by my stan­dards. I remem­ber one year it was $20 mil­lion. All of it 501(c)(4) invis­i­ble.”

    Dur­ing those years, Baer encour­aged Seid to deep­en his sup­port for Israel, intro­duc­ing him to a project that con­nect­ed Israeli right-wingers with Amer­i­can evan­gel­i­cals, so-called Chris­t­ian Zion­ism. Seid then became a gen­er­ous donor to Israeli caus­es. In 2011, he trav­eled to Israel with his wife to accept an hon­orary degree from Bar-Ilan Uni­ver­si­ty for “sup­port­ing those orga­ni­za­tions which will for­ti­fy Israel’s posi­tion in the world.” A pho­to from the award cer­e­mo­ny is one of the few pub­licly avail­able pic­tures of Seid.

    Besides the cul­tur­al recip­i­ents of Seid’s largesse, polit­i­cal ben­e­fi­cia­ries have large­ly main­tained omertà. To man­gle an idiom: Why expose a gift horse with your mouth? The Chica­go-based cli­mate-denial Heart­land Insti­tute, for exam­ple, received many of Seid’s mil­lions. Its lead­ers refused to acknowl­edge him pub­licly, even after he was out­ed, con­tin­u­ing to refer to him as “anony­mous.” “He is enti­tled to his pri­va­cy,” said Joseph Mor­ris, the chair­man of Heartland’s board of direc­tors, when I called his office.

    The only chat­ter­er has been Steve Baer, a man who, before retir­ing, dab­bled in reverse mort­gages for senior cit­i­zens. As I report­ed on this sto­ry, Baer veered between help­ful and aveng­ing-angel right­eous, hell-bent on con­vert­ing a fem­i­nist into an “abor­tion abo­li­tion­ist.” He put me on a text string that he boast­ed includ­ed Ohio Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jim Jor­dan and Leonard Leo. Few recip­i­ents replied to his memes and effu­sions, with the excep­tion of one or two del­i­cate flow­ers from the anti-choice move­ment, pre­sum­ably female, hor­ri­fied at Baer’s repeat­ed use of the word “pussy,” who begged to be removed. He ignored them.

    As crude as he is, Baer has clear­ly been use­ful to both Seid and Leo. Baer was a key link in the chain between the ret­i­cent Mid­west­ern bil­lion­aire and the pow­er­ful D.C. fix­er whom The Wash­ing­ton Post has anoint­ed as a man “on a mis­sion to turn back the clock,” and whom Clarence Thomas has called “the num­ber three most pow­er­ful per­son in the world.”

    About 20 years ago, as Seid was turn­ing 70 and rolling in the dough, he start­ed think­ing about his lega­cy, Baer recalled. His younger broth­er Richard is a lib­er­al with six kids—Seid refers to one of the chil­dren as “nepot” and tried to help get that one into law school. Gift­ing already com­fort­ably well-off rel­a­tives didn’t appeal to him. Nor did buy­ing a “Seid” wing for a hos­pi­tal or a uni­ver­si­ty. Baer recalled: “He’s 70. He’s mak­ing maybe 30 mil­lion a year on S‑corp prof­its. He joked about the Edi­fice com­plex. He would give what he want­ed to give, but he was nev­er moti­vat­ed by the plaque or the name.”

    Seid had very par­tic­u­lar polit­i­cal inter­ests, simul­ta­ne­ous­ly regres­sive and grand. In 2007 and 2008, a tiny, near­ly broke Chica­go-area col­lege that focused on the Great Books received an anony­mous infu­sion of $825,000. The mon­ey saved Shimer Col­lege but it came at a price. First, the college’s board of trustees was expand­ed, with 13 new mem­bers, who all turned out to be right-wing activists. Most had finan­cial ties to Seid, either as employ­ees, col­leagues, or recip­i­ents of his polit­i­cal dona­tions. They includ­ed John C. Marien­au, at the time pres­i­dent of Fiber Bond, and an array of ben­e­fi­cia­ries of Seid’s polit­i­cal mon­ey, includ­ing Joseph Bast, the pres­i­dent and chief exec­u­tive of the Heart­land Insti­tute; tele­vi­sion pro­duc­er Bob Chitester, who found­ed the right-wing Palmer R. Chitester Fund; and Den­nis Katz, a rab­bi of the Con­gre­ga­tion Shaare Tik­vah B’nai Zion in Chica­go.

    Shimer’s new pres­i­dent, Thomas Lind­say, who served in the Bush admin­is­tra­tion as deputy chair­man of the Nation­al Endow­ment for the Human­i­ties, installed the new trustees. Soon, the tiny school (enroll­ment around 100) was offer­ing a new class called the Moral­i­ty of Cap­i­tal­ism, cre­at­ed and taught by Mar­sha Fami­laro Enright, a mem­ber of the adjunct fac­ul­ty. Enright was also talk­ing about cre­at­ing a col­lege, to be called the Col­lege of the Unit­ed States, which was going to offer a “cur­ricu­lum that demon­strates the virtues of West­ern cul­ture, cap­i­tal­ism, and mar­kets.”

    Before the school could be turned into any­thing resem­bling the Col­lege of the Unit­ed States, a for­mer stu­dent fer­ret­ed out the source of the funds: the Bar­bara and Barre Seid Foun­da­tion. The school’s stu­dents and fac­ul­ty rebelled, and the takeover failed. But the goal of sell­ing cap­i­tal­ism as a moral virtue nev­er died. Pri­or to his death in 2011, Seid’s CEO Marien­au arranged for an annu­al posthu­mous sym­po­sium in his name at his alma mater in Nebras­ka. The John C. Marien­au Sym­po­sium on the Moral­i­ty of Cap­i­tal­ism appears to still be func­tion­ing. Just before the Covid shut­down in March 2020, the sym­po­sium spon­sored a two-day event in Oma­ha pro­mot­ing the ben­e­fits of mar­ket-based rur­al health care. The theme of the sym­po­sium was “Schumpeter’s Cre­ative Destruc­tion: How Mar­ket Forces and Tech­nol­o­gy Will Reshape Rur­al Health Care.”

    Elbert How­ell moved on to big­ger insti­tu­tions. Between 1998 and 2006, Seid pumped more than $3 mil­lion to the Mer­ca­tus Cen­ter, a free-mar­ket think tank at George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty.

    Seid soon bankrolled a much more suc­cess­ful right-wing school takeover at GMU’s law school. In 2016, the George Mason School of Law announced it was chang­ing its name to the Antonin Scalia Law School. At the time, The Wash­ing­ton Post report­ed that a $20 mil­lion grant from an anony­mous donor had made the name change a con­di­tion of the gift. A for­mer stu­dent dis­cov­ered the like­ly source, gain­ing access to a trove of emails through the Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act. The group UnKoch My Cam­pus even­tu­al­ly issued a report, based on a pub­lic-records request, impli­cat­ing Seid as the anony­mous donor behind the name change.

    Besides that rev­e­la­tion, the 800 pages of FOIA’ed emails show­case the fawn­ing obse­quious­ness of GMU’s law school dean and oth­ers. They flat­ter Seid’s intel­lect. They trash cli­mate change, the wel­fare state, and the “ugly appa­ra­tus of mod­ern gov­ern­ment” with him, hurl loathing at the Amer­i­can Bar Asso­ci­a­tion for its judi­cial accred­i­ta­tion process, and sneer at the uni­ver­si­ty accred­i­ta­tion sys­tem. The men nev­er miss a chance to turn an inter­ac­tion with the whale into an oppor­tu­ni­ty for per­son­al puffery, book pro­mo­tion, and gen­er­al unc­tu­ous­ness.

    In August 2019, Seid shot Fran­cis H. “Frank” Buck­ley, a con­ser­v­a­tive GMU law pro­fes­sor, a link to an arti­cle about how lawyers had moved dan­ger­ous­ly to the left. “This change in an impor­tant class of cit­i­zens con­tributes great­ly to the rest­less state of our repub­lic,” wrote the author, John O. McGin­nis. “Lawyers as a group also pose the great­est obsta­cle to a revival of a sound jurispru­dence, like an orig­i­nal­ism that appro­pri­ate­ly respects prece­dent.” Buck­ley shot back: “Yeah. And I’m teach­ing them! My hope is that the Scalia brand tends to inoc­u­late them.”

    The emails also sug­gest Seid was push­ing cer­tain peo­ple on to GMU fac­ul­ty, such as Dou­glas Gins­burg, a for­mer chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Dis­trict of Colum­bia Cir­cuit. In addi­tion, accord­ing to UnKoch My Cam­pus vol­un­teer advo­cate Alli­son Pien­ta, Seid may have had a say in appoint­ing Brett Kavanaugh as an adjunct. He was appoint­ed three months after GMU noti­fied a donor—believed to be Seid—regarding poten­tial fac­ul­ty hires. Any hint of a Seid-Kavanaugh con­nec­tion is cat­nip for researchers and con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists who have tried and failed to learn who paid Kavanaugh’s cred­it card debt (esti­mat­ed to be between $60,000 and $200,000) before he was nom­i­nat­ed to the Supreme Court. There has nev­er been an on-the-record answer to this ques­tion. The FBI briefed the Sen­ate Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee on Kavanaugh behind closed doors. Among the atten­dees was Rhode Island Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tor Shel­don White­house, a Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee mem­ber and oppo­nent of dark mon­ey.

    White­house told me he wouldn’t rule out a Seid con­nec­tion. “It would not sur­prise me,” White­house said. “Kavanaugh was a very enthu­si­as­tic and ener­getic cam­paign­er audi­tion­ing for the Supreme Court. He made 50 appear­ances at the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety, where Leo was exec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent for many years. He man­aged to get him­self on the Leo-man­aged Trump list. Clear­ly there was a lot going on behind the scenes.”

    The Seid-Leo Rela­tion­ship

    The first pub­lic con­nec­tion between Barre Seid and Leonard Leo is believed to have hap­pened around 2011, when Leo joined the board of an enti­ty Seid had found­ed, the Chica­go Free­dom Trust, which was in some ways a pre­de­ces­sor to Mar­ble Free­dom Trust, the por­tal through which Seid’s $1.6 bil­lion entered Leonard Leo’s right-wing dark mon­ey sphere.

    Seid could have donat­ed his for­tune to any num­ber of right-wing play­ers. But he chose a Catholic fanat­ic whose main issue has been forc­ing women to give birth—never an issue Seid was real­ly moved by, accord­ing to Baer. Why did he choose Leo? Pre­cise­ly because of Leo’s con­trol over the court sys­tem. “The inter­sec­tion is the Supreme Court,” Baer said. “Because the Supreme Court deals in all sub­ject mat­ter, and if you could get a Supreme Court that’s orig­i­nal­ist along Scalia/Thomas lines, then that’s great. And Leonard’s famous skill build­ing the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety and then even­tu­al­ly, most famous­ly, becom­ing the guy who holds the hors d’oeuvre tray up to Trump that says: Here, pick Amy [Coney Bar­rett] or pick Neil [Gor­such]. That, I believe, is what closed the sale for Barre. I think [the deal] was going before, say, Amy, but that prox­im­i­ty to pow­er and the abil­i­ty to serve up orig­i­nal­ist judges, because it real­ly cov­ers all of Amer­i­can life, busi­ness, as well as the one thing Leonard cares about.” (Leo pulled back from the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety in 2020 but has remained involved in right-wing judi­cial activism.)

    Seid’s bequest to Leonard Leo was a com­plex tax maneu­ver long in the plan­ning. The lega­cy involved cash­ing in not only his own busi­ness­es, but his brother’s pigeon repel­lent com­pa­ny. In 2021, Seid’s brother’s com­pa­ny, Bird‑X, and Tripp Lite for­mal­ly com­bined. Seid donat­ed 100 per­cent of the shares of Tripp Lite to Mar­ble Free­dom Trust, just before Tripp Lite was sold to an Irish com­pa­ny for $1.6 bil­lion. The oper­a­tion was cloaked in secre­cy. Eaton, the Irish com­pa­ny that bought Tripp Lite in March 2021, revealed noth­ing in its pur­chase announce­ment. As a pri­vate com­pa­ny, Tripp Lite was not required to dis­close the dona­tion.

    As trustee and chair­man of the Mar­ble trust, Leo makes $350,000 a year and has “pri­ma­ry author­i­ty” to decide how the mon­ey is spent, accord­ing to a tax fil­ing reviewed by The New York Times. And in its fil­ing, Leo’s Mar­ble trust nev­er named Tripp Lite, “to pro­tect donor con­fi­den­tial­i­ty,” accord­ing to the Times. The scheme enabled Seid to avoid about $400 mil­lion in fed­er­al and state tax.

    Leo has only made one state­ment about the bequest—comparing Seid to the Hun­gar­i­an bil­lion­aire George Soros, the myth­ic bogey­man for the right wing. “It’s high time for the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment to be among the ranks of George Soros, Han­sjörg Wyss, Ara­bel­la Advi­sors, and oth­er left-wing phil­an­thropists, going toe-to-toe in the fight to defend our Con­sti­tu­tion and its ideals,” Leo said to The New York Times.

    Since the bequest was revealed, researchers and jour­nal­ists have been try­ing to iden­ti­fy how the mon­ey is being used. Leo appears to be fun­nel­ing it into a dark mon­ey net­work that buys elec­tion influ­ence through what the IRS clas­si­fies as “social wel­fare” and indi­rect­ly through the courts. Some of the mon­ey already appears to be influ­enc­ing the 2024 elec­tion: Accord­ing to an April report in The Lever, Leo has direct­ed funds to a super PAC back­ing Ron DeSan­tis and to non­prof­its affil­i­at­ed with Mike Pence and Nik­ki Haley.

    The ami­cus curi­ae brief is one of the network’s favored weapons. ProP­ub­li­ca has iden­ti­fied at least six groups fund­ed by Leo’s net­work that have filed ami­cus briefs sup­port­ing a Col­orado web design­er, Lorie Smith, who wants to refuse to work for gay peo­ple, and whose law­suit, now at the Supreme Court, would over­turn Colorado’s anti-dis­crim­i­na­tion law. Twen­ty Repub­li­can attor­neys gen­er­al have also filed an ami­cus brief in sup­port of the case through the Repub­li­can Attor­neys Gen­er­al Asso­ci­a­tion. RAGA has received huge tranch­es of Leo’s largesse for years. In 2022, a Leo-con­nect­ed group donat­ed $6.5 mil­lion to RAGA, accord­ing to ProP­ub­li­ca. RAGA mon­ey went into PACs tar­get­ing Democ­rats in the midterms. RAGA coor­di­nates Repub­li­can attor­neys gen­er­al in pro-cor­po­rate, anti-pro­gres­sive legal action. Those include 19 attor­neys gen­er­al who are pres­sur­ing investors like Black­Rock to aban­don envi­ron­men­tal, social, and gov­er­nance, or ESG, invest­ments aimed at cur­tail­ing cli­mate pol­lu­tion. RAGA mon­ey has also been traced to orga­ni­za­tions involved in the Jan­u­ary 6 insur­rec­tion, and the group filed an ami­cus brief in sup­port of dis­miss­ing fed­er­al crim­i­nal charges against Michael Fly­nn, the Trump administration’s for­mer nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er who plead­ed guilty to lying to the FBI.

    Oth­er orga­ni­za­tions linked to Leo, includ­ing the Judi­cial Cri­sis Net­work and the Repub­li­can State Lead­er­ship Committee’s Judi­cial Fair­ness Ini­tia­tive, are pour­ing mon­ey into state judge races. A Grid News inves­ti­ga­tion found that Leo-con­nect­ed groups have put “$31 mil­lion in cam­paign funds into at least 42 races for seats on state Supreme Courts or oth­er high-lev­el state judge­ships in 15 states since 2010.” These obscure, low-inter­est races are increas­ing­ly crit­i­cal as the Supreme Court toss­es deci­sions about every­thing from abor­tion to elec­tions down to the states.

    Sen­a­tor White­house has devot­ed him­self to track­ing dark mon­ey, espe­cial­ly mon­ey aimed at reshap­ing the law and court-pack­ing. He has giv­en much thought to what moti­vates a man to leave his entire for­tune to a regres­sive, dark mon­ey fun­nel. “Poor man wan­na be rich, rich man wan­na be king,” White­house said, quot­ing Bruce Spring­steen. “That’s the song. If you are a creepy right-wing bil­lion­aire and you know the pub­lic hates your view of the world, the only way to be king is to work your way around demo­c­ra­t­ic process­es, go clan­des­tine, and find a scamp like Leonard Leo who knows how to move levers secret­ly.”

    What $1.6 Bil­lion Means

    Seid’s bequest is believed to be the largest dark mon­ey dona­tion in U.S. his­to­ry. Char­i­ta­ble non­prof­its are required to dis­close their major donors, but the IRS class of polit­i­cal recip­i­ents defined as “social wel­fare” groups like Leo’s Mar­ble trust are not. “Seid’s dona­tion seems to be one of the largest, if not the largest, sin­gle polit­i­cal dona­tion ever giv­en,” said Kath­leen Enright, pres­i­dent of the Coun­cil on Foun­da­tions, a non­prof­it asso­ci­a­tion of phil­an­thropic enti­ties. “But to be clear, this is not a char­i­ta­ble con­tri­bu­tion by any means. It is a polit­i­cal con­tri­bu­tion made to sup­port a polit­i­cal agen­da.”

    How it works is: If War­ren Buf­fett sets up a char­i­ta­ble foun­da­tion, a 501(c)(3) orga­ni­za­tion under IRS rules, it must spend trans­par­ent­ly. Polit­i­cal action com­mit­tees engag­ing in can­di­date sup­port also must dis­close donors. But when a bil­lion­aire throws a for­tune at a “social wel­fare,” 501(c)(4) sta­tus orga­ni­za­tion, the IRS doesn’t require donor dis­clo­sure. Beyond Leo and his coterie, nobody knows how the mon­ey is being spent, or whether Seid put any restric­tions on it. If Leo’s past is prece­dent, the mon­ey will sup­port cher­ished right-wing goals: expand­ed gun rights, fur­ther era­sure of the wall between church and state, roll­backs of civ­il rights on var­i­ous fronts, and fed­er­al and state judges who will rule favor­ably on those issues.

    Some of the mon­ey might wind up in the pock­ets of Leo and his pals. In March, Politi­co pub­lished an inves­ti­ga­tion find­ing that Leo-con­trolled non­prof­its moved $43 mil­lion into his for-prof­it polit­i­cal con­sul­tan­cy, CRC Advi­sors, which he has been run­ning since around the time of the Seid dona­tion. The inves­ti­ga­tion dat­ed the start of Leo’s “lifestyle upgrade,” with real estate and oth­er perks, to 2016, the year he became Trump’s judge-pick­er.

    In the wake of the Politi­co report, Sen­a­tor White­house and oth­ers are call­ing for an IRS inves­ti­ga­tion. “Leonard Leo’s new lav­ish lifestyle appears to be his reward for help­ing anony­mous right-wing bil­lion­aires cap­ture our Supreme Court,” White­house said in a state­ment to The New Repub­lic. “But ques­tions remain about how he is get­ting paid and by whom, and who is behind the front groups com­mu­ni­cat­ing instruc­tions to the jus­tices through ami­cus briefs. Peo­ple need to under­stand the lev­el of coor­di­na­tion among dozens of sup­pos­ed­ly inde­pen­dent groups that are played like piano keys by a manip­u­la­tive donor elite. It’s an oper­a­tion, not a coin­ci­dence.”

    White­house cit­ed “Repub­li­can polit­i­cal bat­ter­ing of a pre­vi­ous IRS Com­mis­sion­er” for the agency’s over­sight “inef­fec­tu­al­i­ty.” Kath­leen Enright con­curred. “The char­i­ta­ble sec­tor has always val­ued and sup­port­ed fair over­sight,” she said. “How­ev­er, the IRS divi­sion that reg­u­lates these orga­ni­za­tions has been hol­lowed out in recent years, so the mech­a­nisms to ensure the checks and bal­ances that pre­serve the cred­i­bil­i­ty of non­prof­its, and the peo­ple and orga­ni­za­tions that fund them, is woe­ful­ly inad­e­quate. Rebuild­ing that account­abil­i­ty and enforce­ment capac­i­ty is an impor­tant first step to rebuild­ing trust in the sec­tor.”

    Besides the ques­tion of what to spend Seid’s pile on, Leo can also decide how long to hold on to the mon­ey. He could spend Seid’s mon­ey all at once, essen­tial­ly drop­ping a bil­lion on a can­di­date or cause on one or a few cycles. Or he could treat it more like an endow­ment, invest it, and spend the income. That choice is not avail­able to most char­i­ta­ble enti­ties, since they rarely receive such large gifts, Enright said. “An oper­at­ing non­prof­it that received a gift of this size would be wise to put some por­tion into an endow­ment for future needs, giv­en that it’s unlike­ly they will receive sim­i­lar gifts in the future.”

    Gara LaMarche is a past pres­i­dent of Democ­ra­cy Alliance, a group of lib­er­al donors, and no stranger to allo­cat­ing big mon­ey. In his pre­vi­ous posi­tion as pres­i­dent of Atlantic Phil­an­thropies, LaMarche spent half a bil­lion dol­lars a year in the process of dol­ing out a $4 bil­lion fund accord­ing to the wish­es of bil­lion­aire Chuck Feeney, who made his for­tune in duty-free shops. Feeney had man­dat­ed that the mon­ey be spent over a short time on four pro­gram areas: pop­u­la­tion health, aging, dis­ad­van­taged youth, and human rights and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion. Atlantic laid a great deal of grass­roots ground­work for the pas­sage of Oba­macare.

    Still, LaMarche is impressed by the Seid dona­tion, which he com­pared to the endow­ment of a very sig­nif­i­cant char­i­ta­ble foun­da­tion. The Democ­ra­cy Alliance has nev­er spent more than $100 mil­lion a year, he said. He wouldn’t haz­ard a guess as to what Leo plans to spend it on, but LaMarche sug­gest­ed sev­er­al pos­si­ble spend­ing styles. Leo could spend it fast—say, $400 mil­lion over four elec­tion cycles. “Short­er time, big­ger impact,” said LaMarche. “Or he could save it and spend it as an endow­ment. It’s enough mon­ey so you could have a very sig­nif­i­cant pro­gram just off the inter­est of the endowment—hundreds of mil­lions of dol­lars with­out touch­ing the nut. My guess is it will be a com­bi­na­tion.”

    Besides legal­ly sav­ing him hun­dreds of mil­lions in tax­es, Seid’s struc­tur­ing the gift as a stock trans­fer increased the size of the gift by 20 to 25 per­cent over what it would have been if Seid first sold his shares and then made the dona­tion. “Under cur­rent law, that approach just makes sense,” Enright said. “How­ev­er, the broad­er ques­tions remain of whether this scale of influ­ence on our elec­tions is good for our demo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tem, and whether donors to polit­i­cal caus­es should be able to reap tax ben­e­fits by struc­tur­ing gifts in this way. If you believe unchecked polit­i­cal giv­ing is unhealthy, as we do, that requires changes to the law.”

    Philip Hack­ney is asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of law at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Pitts­burgh, spe­cial­iz­ing in non­prof­its and their tax exemp­tions. Hack­ney explained that the IRS has been bat­tered from the right, first in 2014, after a man­u­fac­tured scan­dal alleg­ing that the Oba­ma IRS tar­get­ed con­ser­v­a­tives, and fur­ther with a Trump-era IRS deci­sion to stop requir­ing recip­i­ents of polit­i­cal dark mon­ey to reveal the names of donors. “The sys­tem is allow­ing peo­ple to com­plete­ly avoid wealth tax on future gen­er­a­tions and accom­plish polit­i­cal goals,” Hack­ney said. “Then the IRS moves in 2019–2020 made it very hard to see these wealth games hap­pen­ing. We are ensconc­ing dynas­ties and giv­ing fed­er­al mon­ey to accom­plish that. Why would you allow a bil­lion­aire to use this sys­tem to get more mon­ey from gov­ern­ment to accom­plish their goals?” Hack­ney offered an answer to his own ques­tion: “There is a part of our insti­tu­tion­al struc­ture that believes wealthy peo­ple are bril­liant and deserve the right to ample polit­i­cal speech.”

    The Barre Seid bequest should alert all Amer­i­cans to the extent of the dam­age Cit­i­zens Unit­ed does to democ­ra­cy. So far, it has only caused rip­ples of fear through the polit­i­cal junkie class on the pro­gres­sive side. But it should freak you out, and here’s why.

    The Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety, with an annu­al expen­di­ture of around $20 mil­lion, remade the Supreme Court and seed­ed the fed­er­al bench with enough extrem­ists to over­turn gun con­trol laws in places like New York and Chica­go, chip away at the Afford­able Care Act, and over­turn the Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion when it comes to approval of an abor­tion pill. Leo’s peo­ple spent a mere $6.5 mil­lion to gin up an ami­cus curi­ae machine that, for exam­ple, aims to ensure that dis­crim­i­nat­ing against gay peo­ple is fed­er­al­ly pro­tect­ed.

    Why stop there? With Seid’s help, Leo and friends can blow $30 mil­lion a year—almost twice the Fed­er­al­ist Society’s old bud­get, a drop from the Seid buck­et, push­ing the fed­er­al bench fur­ther to the right. They could blow anoth­er $30 mil­lion pro­mot­ing lies about fos­sil fuels. And anoth­er $30 mil­lion help­ing rad­i­cal right-wing state leg­is­la­tors ban the teach­ing of slav­ery. They could found a whole insti­tu­tion ded­i­cat­ed to the cher­ished extrem­ist goal of end­ing the pro­gres­sive income tax. Spend $100 mil­lion on that project—and still not have touched the prin­ci­pal.

    All that, and Mr. Leo will have spent just $200 mil­lion, a mere 12.5 per­cent of the Seid bequest, eas­i­ly cov­ered by the aver­age income it accrues annu­al­ly. Leonard Leo, Sov­er­eign Knight of Mal­ta, can run such projects, and any­thing else that strikes his regres­sive fan­cy, year after year, remak­ing Amer­i­can soci­ety in as many ways as there are right-wing caus­es, as long as mon­ey exists.

    Medieval popes had less pow­er.

    ———-

    “Who Is Leonard Leo’s Mys­te­ri­ous Dark Mon­ey King?” by Nina Burleigh; The New Repub­lic; 05/16/2023

    “The gift from nona­ge­nar­i­an elec­tron­ics mag­nate Barre Seid (pro­nounced Bar­ry Side) is effec­tive altru­ism in reverse: a fire hose of cash aimed at destroy­ing Amer­i­can lib­er­al cul­ture through law­suits and sup­port for politi­cians chal­leng­ing gay rights, unions, envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion, vot­ing rights, and ppub­lic edu­ca­tion. The mon­ey will last a good long while. Phil­an­thropic recip­i­ents usu­al­ly fol­low a 5 per­cent rule: They try not to spend more than 5 per­cent of the endow­ment per year. Seid’s pile is so large that it could return an aver­age $136 mil­lion a year, or north of $230 mil­lion on a good year, to influ­ence U.S. law and pol­i­cy. With­out ever hav­ing to touch the nut. For a sense of how enor­mous that is, con­sid­er this. The Her­itage Foun­da­tion and its affil­i­ates spent about $86 mil­lion in 2021. Her­itage is a huge, and huge­ly influ­en­tial, con­ser­v­a­tive think tank. Leo could cre­ate two Her­itage Foun­da­tions and one more siz­able orga­ni­za­tion on the side—all, again, with­out hav­ing to dip into the prin­ci­pal at all.

    It’s like the ‘chick­en and egg’ para­dox for dark mon­ey pow­er pol­i­tics: Why is Leonard Leo so wild­ly influ­en­tial? Part of that answer today is obvi­ous­ly the fact that Leo exclu­sive­ly con­trols a vast for­tune bequest­ed to him from Barre Seid. But that vast wealth trans­fer did­n’t hap­pen until 2020, long after Seid began rely­ing on Leo as the pri­ma­ry indi­vid­ual through which to chan­nel his polit­i­cal aspi­ra­tions. It’s part of the ongo­ing mys­tery of Leonard Leo’s influ­ence: how did he he become so deeply influ­en­tial in this move­ment in the first place? Sure, Leo’s deep influ­ence inside the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety — and the cen­tral role that group plays in select­ing con­ser­v­a­tive Supreme Court jus­tices — is part of the expla­na­tion. But that still does­n’t explain how Leo end­ed up with this pro­found Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety influ­ence in the first place. He isn’t inde­pen­dent­ly super wealthy, and yet the super wealthy just seem to grav­i­tate towards him. In fact, as we can see, the first pub­lic con­nec­tion between Barre Seid and Leo came in 2011, when Leo joined the board of the Chica­go Free­dom Trust that Seid had found­ed. A move that we can rea­son­ably assume was heav­i­ly root­ed in Leo’s influ­ence over the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety. But, again, where did they pro­found influ­ence of the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety come from in the first place? How did Leonard Leo end up the avatar of right-wing bil­lion­aire mega-donors? It’s the ques­tion loom­ing largest over this sto­ry:

    ...
    The Seid-Leo Rela­tion­ship

    The first pub­lic con­nec­tion between Barre Seid and Leonard Leo is believed to have hap­pened around 2011, when Leo joined the board of an enti­ty Seid had found­ed, the Chica­go Free­dom Trust, which was in some ways a pre­de­ces­sor to Mar­ble Free­dom Trust, the por­tal through which Seid’s $1.6 bil­lion entered Leonard Leo’s right-wing dark mon­ey sphere.

    Seid could have donat­ed his for­tune to any num­ber of right-wing play­ers. But he chose a Catholic fanat­ic whose main issue has been forc­ing women to give birth—never an issue Seid was real­ly moved by, accord­ing to Baer. Why did he choose Leo? Pre­cise­ly because of Leo’s con­trol over the court sys­tem. “The inter­sec­tion is the Supreme Court,” Baer said. “Because the Supreme Court deals in all sub­ject mat­ter, and if you could get a Supreme Court that’s orig­i­nal­ist along Scalia/Thomas lines, then that’s great. And Leonard’s famous skill build­ing the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety and then even­tu­al­ly, most famous­ly, becom­ing the guy who holds the hors d’oeuvre tray up to Trump that says: Here, pick Amy [Coney Bar­rett] or pick Neil [Gor­such]. That, I believe, is what closed the sale for Barre. I think [the deal] was going before, say, Amy, but that prox­im­i­ty to pow­er and the abil­i­ty to serve up orig­i­nal­ist judges, because it real­ly cov­ers all of Amer­i­can life, busi­ness, as well as the one thing Leonard cares about.” (Leo pulled back from the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety in 2020 but has remained involved in right-wing judi­cial activism.)
    ...

    Now, in terms of how Seid and Leo end­ed up con­nect­ing in the first place, that appears to be in part the result of Steven Baer’s polit­i­cal match­mak­ing efforts. And yet it does­n’t sound like Baer direct­ly intro­duced Seid to Leo. Instead, Baer intro­duced Seid to the Koch net­work around 2004–2005. Intrigu­ing­ly, it’s also dur­ing this time that Baer intro­duced Seid to Amer­i­can evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian Zion­ists. It was after intro­duc­tions that Seid became a major backer of Israel-relat­ed caus­es. So it sounds like this net­work of Chris­t­ian Zion­ists exert­ed a sig­nif­i­cant influ­ence of Sei­d’s polit­i­cal giv­ing. This is a good time to recall that Leonard Leo is a mem­ber of CNP and quite pos­si­bly one of those Chris­t­ian Zion­ists him­self:

    ...
    Steven Baer is, like Leonard Leo, a career anti-choice fanat­ic, but with a polit­i­cal style from the Roger Stone School of Rat­fuck­ery. The Illi­nois fringe con­ser­v­a­tive built him­self a minor nation­al rep­u­ta­tion by sham­ing ene­mies like Don­ald Trump and Kevin McCarthy with sala­cious dirt. Even the con­ser­v­a­tive Nation­al Review finds Baer hard to stom­ach, call­ing him “the world’s most suc­cess­ful email harass­er.” After decades in Illi­nois con­ser­v­a­tive pol­i­tics, Baer now resides in Flori­da part-time, and spends his time sip­ping tequi­las and IPAs, and tex­ting streams of Atlantic Coast sun­ris­es, cats, bloody abort­ed fetus­es, and the sins (he uses that word) of Don­ald Trump and Kevin McCarthy to email address­es and phone num­bers of right-wing donors, politi­cians, and jour­nal­ists.

    Baer had his fetal rights epiphany as a stu­dent at Brown in the ear­ly 1980s, when he “saw pho­tographs of piles of corpses at Auschwitz jux­ta­posed to pho­tographs of piles of dead babies,” he told me, sug­gest­ing that legal abor­tion was equiv­a­lent to the Holo­caust and abor­tion clin­ics the fem­i­nist ver­sion of Hitler’s gas cham­bers. He then spent much of his career rais­ing hell and mon­ey from a wacky cor­ner of fringe right-wing pol­i­tics. He famous­ly mass-emailed a rumor about Kevin McCarthy and an extra­mar­i­tal affair in 2015, and before that Baer became known as a kind of right-wing mer­ry prankster, with stunts like hold­ing a press con­fer­ence in Illi­nois with fake law­mak­ers dressed as pigs. He was known in the local press as “a major irri­tant,” for­ev­er pulling polit­i­cal pranks and “high jinks,” but always good for a quip­py quote and some polit­i­cal gos­sip.

    ...

    Enter­ing the Big Leagues

    After Baer came along, Seid was dab­bling in the polit­i­cal influ­ence game, but most­ly on local can­di­dates who sup­port­ed issues like school choice. He made four- and five-fig­ure dona­tions in local races in Illi­nois and Wis­con­sin and Iowa where can­di­dates were push­ing his pet issues. Baer intro­duced Seid to the Koch net­work. “Around 2005, 2004, 2005, I’m push­ing Barre to swing for the fences regard­ing apply­ing his mon­ey to affect Amer­i­can pol­i­tics and cul­ture,” Baer said. “I spoke at two of Koch’s big famous donor gath­er­ings in Palm Springs and Aspen.” Seid, of course, didn’t attend these events, but through Baer he start­ed “frat­er­niz­ing” with Charles Koch, who had just set up the Cato Insti­tute as a non­prof­it think tank. In the ear­ly 1990s, Seid forked over what Baer reck­ons to be many tens of mil­lions for a Cato spin-off, U.S. Term Lim­its. The project was an ear­ly test of the pow­er of Koch dark mon­ey, and an incu­ba­tor for ris­ing right-wing politi­cos like Mike Pom­peo. “Barre had this low pro­file and a kind of a fear­less­ness,” Baer said. “When he intu­it­ed yeah, this is real­ly good and it’s com­pelling, he would then drop unbe­liev­able amounts of mon­ey, by my stan­dards. I remem­ber one year it was $20 mil­lion. All of it 501(c)(4) invis­i­ble.”

    Dur­ing those years, Baer encour­aged Seid to deep­en his sup­port for Israel, intro­duc­ing him to a project that con­nect­ed Israeli right-wingers with Amer­i­can evan­gel­i­cals, so-called Chris­t­ian Zion­ism. Seid then became a gen­er­ous donor to Israeli caus­es. In 2011, he trav­eled to Israel with his wife to accept an hon­orary degree from Bar-Ilan Uni­ver­si­ty for “sup­port­ing those orga­ni­za­tions which will for­ti­fy Israel’s posi­tion in the world.” A pho­to from the award cer­e­mo­ny is one of the few pub­licly avail­able pic­tures of Seid.

    ...

    As crude as he is, Baer has clear­ly been use­ful to both Seid and Leo. Baer was a key link in the chain between the ret­i­cent Mid­west­ern bil­lion­aire and the pow­er­ful D.C. fix­er whom The Wash­ing­ton Post has anoint­ed as a man “on a mis­sion to turn back the clock,” and whom Clarence Thomas has called “the num­ber three most pow­er­ful per­son in the world.”
    ...

    And that Chris­t­ian Zion­ist role in the evo­lu­tion of Barre Sei­d’s polit­i­cal giv­ing brings us to a poten­tial­ly rel­e­vant fun fact about Leonard Leo. The kind of fun fact that might help explain why so many pow­er­ful peo­ple have decid­ed to entrust Leo with admin­is­ter­ing the far right’s dark mon­ey influ­ence empire: Leo isn’t just a CNP mem­ber and Opus Dei. He’s also a mem­ber of the Knights of Mal­ta. How much of Leo’s influ­ence is derived from his role as a ves­sel for real­iz­ing the goals of the CNP, Opus Dei, and the Knights of Mal­ta?

    ...
    Leo, a New Jer­sey Roman Catholic and grand­son of an Ital­ian immi­grant who worked for Brooks Broth­ers, hob­nobs around the upper ech­e­lons of Amer­i­can pow­er in nat­ty suits with vests and a pock­et watch on a gold chain. This fop­pish dandy is the Pen­guin in the pan­theon of Wash­ing­ton, D.C., DC Comics vil­lains. Leo is a proud “Knight of the Sov­er­eign Order of Mal­ta,” and his long career has been moti­vat­ed by fanat­i­cal oppo­si­tion to women’s rights to repro­duc­tive choice. Since Seid hand­ed the mon­ey over in 2021, part of the pile has been fun­neled into black box­es like Donors Trust, a mega-donor mon­ey-wash­ingg machine. Hav­ing suc­ceed­ed at sub­ject­ing Amer­i­can women to forced preg­nan­cy, Leo, 57, is direct­ing the mon­ey toward oth­er goals: stop­ping “woke” cul­ture, end­ing fed­er­al reg­u­la­tions on cli­mate change, and lim­it­ing vot­ing rights. Ulti­mate­ly, Seid’s mon­ey will be used to shore up society’s winners—the Amer­i­can oli­garchy, inher­it­ed trusts, CEOs, self-made bil­lion­aires, corporations—against the demands of the weak. It will be used to make the Unit­ed States a tougher and, for many, a nas­ti­er coun­try, where big mon­ey always wins, under the eye of Ram­bo Jesus.

    ...

    The Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety, with an annu­al expen­di­ture of around $20 mil­lion, remade the Supreme Court and seed­ed the fed­er­al bench with enough extrem­ists to over­turn gun con­trol laws in places like New York and Chica­go, chip away at the Afford­able Care Act, and over­turn the Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion when it comes to approval of an abor­tion pill. Leo’s peo­ple spent a mere $6.5 mil­lion to gin up an ami­cus curi­ae machine that, for exam­ple, aims to ensure that dis­crim­i­nat­ing against gay peo­ple is fed­er­al­ly pro­tect­ed.

    Why stop there? With Seid’s help, Leo and friends can blow $30 mil­lion a year—almost twice the Fed­er­al­ist Society’s old bud­get, a drop from the Seid buck­et, push­ing the fed­er­al bench fur­ther to the right. They could blow anoth­er $30 mil­lion pro­mot­ing lies about fos­sil fuels. And anoth­er $30 mil­lion help­ing rad­i­cal right-wing state leg­is­la­tors ban the teach­ing of slav­ery. They could found a whole insti­tu­tion ded­i­cat­ed to the cher­ished extrem­ist goal of end­ing the pro­gres­sive income tax. Spend $100 mil­lion on that project—and still not have touched the prin­ci­pal.

    All that, and Mr. Leo will have spent just $200 mil­lion, a mere 12.5 per­cent of the Seid bequest, eas­i­ly cov­ered by the aver­age income it accrues annu­al­ly. Leonard Leo, Sov­er­eign Knight of Mal­ta, can run such projects, and any­thing else that strikes his regres­sive fan­cy, year after year, remak­ing Amer­i­can soci­ety in as many ways as there are right-wing caus­es, as long as mon­ey exists.

    Medieval popes had less pow­er.
    ...

    As the arti­cle puts it, Medieval popes did­n’t even have the kind of wealth and influ­ence Leonard Leo is has been wield­ing. And will pre­sum­ably con­tin­ue to wield for decades to come. It’s not like he’s fac­ing an elec­tion, after all. Or even a nom­i­na­tion. The sources of Leonard Leo’s pow­er and influ­ence are above all that. Or beneath all that.

    So while we do indeed now know more about the mys­te­ri­ous bil­lion­aire who decid­ed to entrust his for­tune with Leo, and it’s pret­ty obvi­ous why Seid saw Leo as the per­son best-posi­tioned to trans­late Sei­d’s vast polit­i­cal for­tune into polit­i­cal results, it’s still not clear how Leonard Leo end­ed up in this posi­tion as the Pope for US con­ser­v­a­tive mega-donors. It’s all part of God’s some­one’s mys­te­ri­ous grand design. It sure would be nice to know the iden­ti­ty of that mys­te­ri­ous some­one.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | May 22, 2023, 10:43 pm
  34. Who does Leonard Leo actu­al­ly work for? It’s one of the many ques­tions raised by last year’s his­toric $1.6 bil­lion tax free dona­tion from indus­tri­al­ist Barre Seid. And while the iden­ti­ties of secre­tive mega-donors is indeed a very inter­est­ing and rel­e­vant top­ic, it still does­n’t answer the ques­tion of who Leonard Leo is and how did he end up so deeply trust­ed by these mega-donors that one of them end­ed up hand­ing Leo con­trol of a $1.6 bil­lion polit­i­cal war chest. How did Leo earn that lev­el of both trust and influ­ence among the mega-donor class?

    Part of the answer is pre­sum­ably due to the fact that, as one of the first paid employ­ees of the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety, Leo is a ded­i­cat­ed true believ­er in the con­tem­po­rary con­ser­v­a­tive project. A project that appears to be focused on ensur­ing pri­vate inter­ests are allowed to accrue as much wealth and pow­er and pos­si­ble. And then there’s all of the elite clubs Leo has man­aged to become of mem­ber of, includ­ing the theo­crat­ic tri­fec­ta of Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP), Opus Dei, and the Knights of Mal­ta.

    But as the fol­low­ing 2019 Wash­ing­ton Post pro­file of Leo lays out, part of what makes the ques­tions about the nature and ori­gins of Leo’s influ­ence so intrigu­ing is that it’s very unclear how much he’s paid and by whom. That’s despite, or per­haps due to, Leo being a kind of con­ser­v­a­tive lord of dark mon­ey enti­ties tasked with man­ag­ing first the cre­ation of dark mon­ey orga­ni­za­tions and then chan­nel­ing mil­lions of dol­lars through them to ulti­mate­ly finance the ads and oth­er forms of right-wing pro­pa­gan­da. As we’re going to see in the fol­low­ing Sep­tem­ber 2019 arti­cle, one of Leo’s sole sources of income pub­licly dis­closed over the past cou­ple of decades has been the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety. And even there it’s murky. For exam­ple, Leo claimed to have stepped away from the Fed­er­al Soci­ety in 2005 and 2006 to work on the nom­i­na­tion of John Roberts and Samuel Ali­to. And yet records show his com­pen­sa­tion from the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety jumped near­ly 50 per­cent dur­ing those years.

    The BH Group is the only oth­er pub­licly dis­closed source of income for Leo. Recall how the BH Group, and sis­ter enti­ty BH Fund were both formed in 2016 by an employ­ee of the key dark mon­ey con­ser­v­a­tive law firm Holtz­man Vogel Jose­fi­ak Torchin­sky. As we’ve seen, that employ­ee was Don­na Smith and Holtz­man Vogel Jose­fi­ak Torchin­sky is the same law firm that shared a War­ren­ton, Va. office with the address the 2016 Trump inau­gur­al com­mit­tee on its tax return. BH Group’s only known activ­i­ty in 2016 was giv­ing $1 mil­lion to the Trump inau­gu­ra­tion fund.. Also note that BH Fund was dis­solved in Jan­u­ary 2023, three days after a report by Politi­co inquired into whether or not it facil­i­tat­ed the sale of Kellyanne Con­way’s polling com­pa­ny. In oth­er words, BH Group and BH Funds aren’t just dark mon­ey enti­ties. They’re par­tic­u­lar­ly shady dark mon­ey enti­ties. At least that’s what we can glean from the lit­tle pub­lic infor­ma­tion we have on them. And BH Group is the only oth­er pub­licly dis­closed source of Leonard Leo’s income oth­er than the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety. So is Leo just a rel­a­tive­ly under-paid dark mon­ey shad­ow lord? Or is his take dark income?

    And that high­lights one of the oth­er income-relat­ed details we’ve learned about Leo: back in 2018, Leo and his Sal­ly paid off a 30 year mort­gage issued in 2010. Two months lat­er, they pur­chased a $3.3 mil­lion lux­u­ry home in Maine. Beyond rais­ing more ques­tions about shad­ow sources of income, it’s also eeri­ly rem­i­nis­cent of the sto­ry of bil­lion­aire mega-donor Har­lan Crow pur­chas­ing Clarence Thomas’s mother’s home in an 2014 real estate trans­ac­tion. A rather odd 2014 trans­ac­tion that saw Thomas sell Crow his fam­i­ly home for $133k, which was appar­ent­ly a net-loss for the Thomases, but with a pro­vi­sion that his moth­er can live there rent free for the rest of her life. That ‘net-loss’ sale price was, in turn, used by Thomas as an excuse to not dis­close the deal since he appar­ent­ly thought, incor­rect­ly, that only prof­itable trans­ac­tions need­ed to be report­ed. Which is a reminder not only of Leo’s long­stand­ing friend­ship with the Thomases but also of the fact that, if there’s any­one com­pa­ra­ble to Leo’s stand­ing as a key dark mon­ey orga­niz­er for theo­crat­ic bil­lion­aires, it’s Gin­ni Thomas. The two have few peers.

    Or at least that was the case before Barre Seid made Leo the execu­tor of a $1.6 bil­lion dark mon­ey war chest. Leo has no peers at this point. Which rais­es the grim­ly inter­est­ing ques­tion as to which par­tic­u­lar oli­garch he’s most ide­o­log­i­cal­ly aligned with today. Which brings us to a very impor­tant detail in terms of under­stand­ing who is shap­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of right-wing mega-donors: In 2013, Leo joined forces with Rebekah Mer­cer and Steve Ban­non on the board of the small char­i­ty Reclaim New York. Ban­non and Mer­cer found­ed the char­i­ty that year. The Mer­cer fam­i­ly went on to become the lead­ing bene­fac­tor of the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety, with $6 mil­lion in dona­tions over the next two years. So it appears that 2013 was a year when the Mer­cers took over as lead­ing bene­fac­tors of Leo’s long­stand­ing core orga­ni­za­tion. A move that was kind of indi­rect­ly chris­tened with Leo’s join­ing of a char­i­ty formed by Ban­non and Mer­cer. So when we’re forced to ask which right-wing bil­lion­aire’s vision is most close­ly aligned with Leo’s today now that Leo has become ‘inde­pen­dent­ly super-wealthy’ as a result of Barre Sei­d’s ‘char­i­ty’, it’s worth keep­ing in mind that it Rebekah and Robert Mer­cer have been mak­ing major Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety invest­ments over the past decade. It’s also worth keep­ing that in mind when it comes to spec­u­lat­ing about the sources of any undis­closed income Leo may have been tak­ing. Tak­ing lux­u­ry home in Maine did­n’t pay for itself.

    This is also a good time to recall how 2013 was the same year Gin­ni Thomas co-found­ed the Groundswell Group meet­ings with fel­low CNP mem­ber Steve Ban­non back in 2013 as a com­peti­tor to Grover Norquist’s influ­en­tial ‘Wednes­day Morn­ing Meet­ings’. Groundswell went on to play a major role in mak­ing staffing deci­sions for the Trump White House. Groundswell is now known as TC Group, in keep­ing with the propen­si­ty of these groups to keep chang­ing their names. So in 2013, both Leo and Gin­ni Thomas cozied up to Steve Ban­non, who was at this point already work­ing clos­ing with the Mer­cers. Leo then joins a Mer­cer char­i­ty and the Mer­cers becomes major Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety donors. This seems like an impor­tant devel­op­ment in the struc­ture of ‘kind of vast right-wing con­spir­a­cy’.

    And that’s all part of what it’s increas­ing­ly impor­tant to try to under­stand how it is that Leonard Leo became one of the most pow­er­ful men on the plan­et. He’s so cen­tral to today’s dark mon­ey world that we can’t real­ly under­stand that world with­out under­stand­ing Leonard Leo. And yet the more we look at Leo’s career, the more appar­ent it becomes the his pow­er is derived from how effec­tive­ly he holds and wields that pow­er in a high­ly opaque man­ner. Bil­lion­aires go to Leonard Leo because he knows how to wield their influ­ence anony­mous­ly. Which is also why his pow­er and influ­ence has only explod­ed in the post-Cit­i­zens Unit­ed envi­ron­ment. He’s a dark mon­ey mas­ter who knows how to strate­gi­cal­ly chan­nel hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars for cam­paigns that can shape pub­lic opin­ion while shield­ing the ulti­mate source of the funds. A role that’s only going to get eas­i­er now that he’s per­son­al­ly in con­trol of a $1.6 bil­lion war chest. It’s like Leonard Leo’s career became the dement­ed love child of the Amer­i­can fan­ta­sy of a vir­tu­ous mer­i­toc­ra­cy and the real­i­ty of unlim­it­ed dark mon­ey influ­ence: If you are high­ly skilled at shield­ing cor­rupt con­cen­tra­tions of pow­er from scruti­ny, you can become one of the most pow­er­ful peo­ple in the world:

    The Wash­ing­ton Post

    A con­ser­v­a­tive activist’s behind-the-scenes cam­paign to remake the nation’s courts
    Leonard Leo helped con­ser­v­a­tive non­prof­its raise $250 mil­lion from most­ly undis­closed donors in recent years to pro­mote con­ser­v­a­tive judges and caus­es

    By Robert O’Har­row Jr. and Shawn Boburg
    May 21, 2019

    Leonard Leo stepped onto the stage in a dark­ened Flori­da ball­room, looked out at a gath­er­ing of some of the nation’s most pow­er­ful con­ser­v­a­tive activists and told them they were on the cusp of ful­fill­ing a long-sought dream.

    For two decades, Leo has been on a mis­sion to turn back the clock to a time before the U.S. Supreme Court rou­tine­ly expand­ed the government’s author­i­ty and endorsed new rights such as abor­tion and same-sex mar­riage. Now, as Pres­i­dent Trump’s unof­fi­cial judi­cial advis­er, he told the audi­ence at the closed-door event in Feb­ru­ary that they had to mobi­lize in “very unprece­dent­ed ways” to help fin­ish the job.

    “We’re going to have to under­stand that judi­cial con­fir­ma­tions these days are more like polit­i­cal cam­paigns,” Leo told the mem­bers of the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy, accord­ing to a record­ing of the speech obtained by The Wash­ing­ton Post. “We’re going to have to be smart as a move­ment.”

    “No one in this room has prob­a­bly expe­ri­enced the kind of trans­for­ma­tion that I think we are begin­ning to see,” Leo said.

    At a time when Trump and Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Mitch McConnell are rapid­ly reshap­ing fed­er­al courts by installing con­ser­v­a­tive judges and Supreme Court jus­tices, few peo­ple out­side gov­ern­ment have more influ­ence over judi­cial appoint­ments now than Leo.

    He is wide­ly known as a con­fi­dant to Trump and as exec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent of the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety, an influ­en­tial non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion for con­ser­v­a­tive and lib­er­tar­i­an lawyers that has close ties to Supreme Court jus­tices. But behind the scenes, Leo is the mae­stro of a net­work of inter­lock­ing non­prof­its work­ing on media cam­paigns and oth­er ini­tia­tives to sway law­mak­ers by gen­er­at­ing pub­lic sup­port for con­ser­v­a­tive judges.

    The sto­ry of Leo’s rise offers an inside look into the mod­ern machin­ery of polit­i­cal per­sua­sion. It shows how undis­closed inter­ests out­side of gov­ern­ment are har­ness­ing the nation’s non­prof­it sys­tem to influ­ence judi­cial appoint­ments that will shape the nation for decades.

    Even as Leo coun­seled Trump on judi­cial picks, he and his allies were rais­ing mon­ey for non­prof­its that under IRS rules do not have to dis­close their donors. Between 2014 and 2017 alone, they col­lect­ed more than $250 mil­lion in such dona­tions, some­times known as “dark mon­ey,” accord­ing to a Post analy­sis of the most recent tax fil­ings avail­able. The mon­ey was used in part to sup­port con­ser­v­a­tive poli­cies and judges, through adver­tis­ing and through fund­ing for groups whose exec­u­tives appeared as tele­vi­sion pun­dits.

    The groups in Leo’s net­work often work in con­cert and are linked to Leo and one anoth­er by finances, shared board mem­bers, phone num­bers, address­es, back-office sup­port and oth­er oper­a­tional details, accord­ing to tax fil­ings, incor­po­ra­tion records, oth­er doc­u­ments and inter­views.

    Nine of the groups hired the same con­ser­v­a­tive media rela­tions firm, Cre­ative Response Con­cepts, col­lec­tive­ly pay­ing it more than $10 mil­lion in con­tract­ing fees in 2016 and 2017.. Dur­ing that time, the firm coor­di­nat­ed a months-long media cam­paign in sup­port of Trump’s Supreme Court nom­i­nee, Neil M. Gor­such, includ­ing pub­lish­ing opin­ion essays, con­tribut­ing 5,000 quotes to news sto­ries, sched­ul­ing pun­dit appear­ances on tele­vi­sion and post­ing online videos that were viewed 50 mil­lion times, accord­ing to a report on the firm’s web­site.

    In anoth­er case, a non­prof­it Leo launched in 2016, the Free­dom and Oppor­tu­ni­ty Fund, gave $4 mil­lion over two years to a non­prof­it called Inde­pen­dent Women’s Voice, about half the group’s rev­enue, tax fil­ings show. Lead­ers of Inde­pen­dent Women’s Voice last year spoke at ral­lies, wrote online com­men­tary and appeared reg­u­lar­ly on Fox News to pro­mote anoth­er of Trump’s Supreme Court nom­i­nees, Brett M. Kavanaugh.

    Dur­ing an on-cam­era inter­view for a Post doc­u­men­tary, Leo called him­self “a leader of the con­ser­v­a­tive legal move­ment” and said, “I have no idea how many groups I’ve been involved with over the years.”

    A devout Catholic, Leo said he is dri­ven by his faith and a lit­er­al inter­pre­ta­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion. He also defend­ed the prac­tice of tak­ing mon­ey from donors whose iden­ti­ties are not pub­licly dis­closed, com­par­ing his effort to shape the courts to those of abo­li­tion­ists, suf­frag­ists and civ­il rights activists.

    “[They] were all very much fueled by very wealthy peo­ple, and often­times wealthy peo­ple who chose to be anony­mous,” Leo said.

    But he refused to talk about the mon­ey behind his advo­ca­cy, say­ing, “I’m not par­tic­u­lar­ly knowl­edge­able about a lot of it.”

    “I have a very sim­ple rule, which is, I’m engaged in the bat­tle of ideas, and I care very deeply about our Con­sti­tu­tion and the role of courts in our soci­ety,” he said. “And I don’t waste my time on sto­ries that involve mon­ey and pol­i­tics because what I care about is ideas.”

    Lat­er, in response to writ­ten ques­tions about the inter­lock­ing non­prof­its, Leo described the net­work as “an effec­tive and high­ly suc­cess­ful judi­cial coali­tion that’s orga­nized just about the same as the Left’s, except that their coali­tion is sig­nif­i­cant­ly big­ger and bet­ter fund­ed.”

    Leo, 53, wears round, horn-rimmed glass­es, tai­lored suits and mono­chro­mat­ic pock­et squares. His office at the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety is filled with memen­tos of his career, includ­ing a red Trump-cam­paign-style hat that reads “Make The Court Great Again” and a gold-framed New York­er pro­file of him­self. On a book­shelf is a pho­to of Leo and Kavanaugh in tuxe­dos. A name­plate on the shelf reads, “The Real Boss.”

    Leo grew up in sub­ur­ban New Jer­sey, where his high school year­book lists his nick­name as the “Mon­ey­bags kid” and shows a pho­to­graph of him hold­ing a hand­ful of cash. He attend­ed Cor­nell as an under­grad­u­ate and law stu­dent and found­ed an ear­ly chap­ter of the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety, then an all-vol­un­teer orga­ni­za­tion focused on infus­ing tra­di­tion­al legal val­ues into the nation’s law schools.

    His con­ser­v­a­tive val­ues stood out. When a class­mate protest­ing apartheid in South Africa threw a choco­late cream pie into the face of the university’s pres­i­dent, Leo expressed out­rage in a let­ter to the stu­dent news­pa­per. “Although some will dis­miss Tues­day as only a pie-throw­ing inci­dent, it is rep­re­sen­ta­tive of a more hos­tile form of expres­sion that has become more com­mon,” he wrote.

    In 1990, Leo became a clerk for a U.S. Court of Appeals judge in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., where he met Clarence Thomas, then an appel­late judge. The two became close friends.

    After his clerk­ship, Leo joined the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety as one of its first paid employ­ees. But he delayed the start date to help Thomas through his con­tentious con­fir­ma­tion process for the Supreme Court.

    At the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety, Leo took a lead­ing role in the con­ser­v­a­tive legal move­ment, part of a bur­geon­ing effort to counter the influ­ence of the 1960s and lib­er­als on edu­ca­tion, law and pol­i­tics.

    With the elec­tion of George W. Bush, Leo began work­ing as an out­side advis­er for the White House on ini­tia­tives relat­ed to judi­cial nom­i­na­tions. Among his allies was Kavanaugh, then White House asso­ciate coun­sel.

    In Jan­u­ary 2003, Leo called White House offi­cials, includ­ing Kavanaugh, to object to a plan by Bush to weigh in on affir­ma­tive action. Bush was going to crit­i­cize the prac­tice but praise racial diver­si­ty. Leo com­plained that prais­ing diver­si­ty would “dis­gust any con­ser­v­a­tive who thinks that this is a mat­ter of prin­ci­ple,” accord­ing to a pre­vi­ous­ly unre­port­ed email by a White House offi­cial describ­ing one of the calls.

    About 15 min­utes lat­er, Kavanaugh wrote back: “Leonard just called me and gave me the same ear­ful.”

    Leo told The Post that from the accounts of the calls, “it appears I was con­vey­ing the wide­ly shared belief among con­ser­v­a­tives that dis­crim­i­nat­ing on the basis of race is always wrong and incon­sis­tent with the dig­ni­ty and worth of every per­son.”

    Leo came to be known in the White House as coor­di­na­tor of “all out­side coali­tion activ­i­ty regard­ing judi­cial nom­i­na­tions,” accord­ing to a 2003 email by a White House aide to Kavanaugh and oth­ers.

    Leo also devel­oped a rep­u­ta­tion as a con­ser­v­a­tive mon­ey­man. When Kavanaugh and oth­er Bush aides were look­ing for some­one to pay for a press event aimed at sup­port­ing the stalled judi­cial nom­i­na­tion of Miguel Estra­da, they turned to Leo.

    “Leonard Leo will know,” a White House aide wrote in an email obtained by The Post. “We prob­a­bly don’t want the fed soc pay­ing for it, but he might know some gen­er­ous donor.”

    Leo’s behind-the-scenes activism came at the same time he was help­ing to grow the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety, which describes itself as non­par­ti­san. Leo told The Post he has tak­en steps to avoid any con­flict.

    “I sep­a­rate my advo­ca­cy from the edu­ca­tion­al work of The Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety,” he said in his state­ment. “I put in a full day’s work for the Soci­ety and spend a sub­stan­tial amount of my per­son­al time on the oth­er pub­lic ser­vice work I also love.”

    ...

    In 2005 and 2006, Leo served as the leader of the cam­paigns sup­port­ing Supreme Court nom­i­nees John G. Roberts Jr. and Samuel A. Ali­to Jr. He and oth­er mem­bers of an advo­ca­cy coali­tion spent about $15 mil­lion in dona­tions from undis­closed donors on ads, tele­mar­ket­ing and the mobi­liza­tion of “grass roots” groups, Leo lat­er told a Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety chap­ter at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia. They con­duct­ed polls to help craft the most per­sua­sive mes­sages and arranged dozens of “back­ground” brief­in­gs for reporters.

    A key part of those efforts was a new non­prof­it called the Judi­cial Con­fir­ma­tion Net­work, or JCN. Tax fil­ings show it was based at the home of Ann and Neil Cork­ery, close allies of Leo who have served as board mem­bers or trea­sur­ers of orga­ni­za­tions run by Leo and a small group of inter­con­nect­ed activists.

    One radio spot paid for by JCN in Arkansas fea­tured a local min­is­ter who warned lis­ten­ers that lib­er­als want­ed to curb reli­gious free­dom, includ­ing Christ­mas cel­e­bra­tions. “Now these extrem­ist groups want our sen­a­tors to vote against Judge Ali­to for the Unit­ed States Supreme Court,” the ad said.

    In the inter­view with The Post, Leo said he took time off from the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety — a char­i­ty that says it does not endorse spe­cif­ic nom­i­nees — dur­ing the nom­i­na­tion fights in 2005 and 2006. The group’s tax fil­ings show that his com­pen­sa­tion in those two years jumped by near­ly 50 per­cent, to about $328,000 annu­al­ly. Leo did not respond to a ques­tion about how his com­pen­sa­tion was affect­ed by his time off. A spokesman for the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety said Leo’s pay went up — despite the time off — because of the organization’s “extra­or­di­nary rev­enue growth.” Back at the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety the fol­low­ing year, his com­pen­sa­tion was $419,000.

    Doc­u­ments show that Leo nev­er assumed a for­mal posi­tion at JCN, which even­tu­al­ly changed its name to the Judi­cial Cri­sis Net­work. But he told The Post he is “very sup­port­ive” of the group.

    The ties between JCN and Leo are opaque. JCN’s office is on the same hall­way as the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety in a down­town Wash­ing­ton build­ing, though JCN’s web­site and tax fil­ings list a mail­ing address at a dif­fer­ent loca­tion, an address shared by mul­ti­ple com­pa­nies.

    JCN board direc­tor Gary Marx told The Post the two orga­ni­za­tions share sim­i­lar goals but have “dif­fer­ent boards, dif­fer­ent mis­sions, dif­fer­ent func­tions and do very dif­fer­ent things.”

    When a Post reporter vis­it­ed the JCN offices to ask ques­tions, a secu­ri­ty guard con­tact­ed a long­time employ­ee of the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety to see whether any­one at JCN was avail­able. A Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety employ­ee then escort­ed the reporter to JCN’s office.

    The group’s pres­i­dent, Daniel Casey, has worked close­ly with Leo for years. Casey receives no pay from JCN or three oth­er non­prof­its in the net­work that he helps to lead, tax fil­ings show. He received more than $1.5 mil­lion in fees from the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety over nine years for media train­ing through a firm based at his home in Front Roy­al, Va.

    In an inter­view with The Post, Casey declined to dis­cuss that firm, DC Strate­gies. He said all of the non­prof­it groups he is affil­i­at­ed with fol­lowed the law. “Every­thing is up and up,” he said.

    Leo told The Post that Casey has been “a high­ly skilled provider of strate­gic con­sult­ing ser­vices in the legal pol­i­cy space for over 30 years.”

    Leo’s influ­ence and polit­i­cal con­nec­tions con­tin­ued to expand even as Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma took over the White House.

    He rou­tine­ly attend­ed galas and black-tie Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety events that includ­ed jus­tices Thomas, Ali­to and Antonin Scalia, as well as McConnell and oth­er lead­ing law­mak­ers, accord­ing to inter­views and annu­al reports by the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety.

    He also became more adept at man­ag­ing media cam­paigns. In a pre­vi­ous­ly undis­closed email, Leo boast­ed to a col­league in 2009 about his savvy at gen­er­at­ing free pub­lic­i­ty through the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety.

    “I’m very famil­iar with the media,” Leo wrote to Tom Carter, then a spokesman for the U.S. Com­mis­sion on Inter­na­tion­al Reli­gious Free­dom, a gov­ern­ment agency cre­at­ed to pro­mote reli­gious lib­er­ty abroad. “I spend prob­a­bly close to $800,000 annu­al­ly on a PR team at the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety, and we gen­er­ate press that has a pub­lic­i­ty val­ue of approx­i­mate­ly $146 mil­lion each year.”

    Leo, then a com­mis­sion­er, said the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety had learned to side­step point­ed ques­tions about judi­cial nom­i­nees — and he urged Carter to do the same in his work for the com­mis­sion. “We get around these inquiries quite well, and I am sure you can find a way to do so as well,” he wrote.

    Leo joined addi­tion­al advo­ca­cy groups that expand­ed his influ­ence fol­low­ing the Supreme Court’s land­mark Cit­i­zens Unit­ed deci­sion in 2010, which lift­ed restric­tions on spend­ing by cor­po­ra­tions, unions and non­prof­its on polit­i­cal­ly ori­ent­ed adver­tise­ments and media cam­paigns.

    His grow­ing net­work was com­posed most­ly of non­prof­its called “social wel­fare orga­ni­za­tions,” which are allowed to engage in pol­i­tics as long as it’s not their pri­ma­ry activ­i­ty. It also includ­ed some pub­lic char­i­ties, which can receive tax-deductible dona­tions and are pro­hib­it­ed from back­ing or oppos­ing can­di­dates for office.

    In 2010, Leo served on the board of a tea par­ty group called Lib­er­ty Cen­tral. Gin­ni Thomas, wife of Jus­tice Clarence Thomas, received $120,511 as the start-up’s pres­i­dent that year. She lat­er stepped down fol­low­ing ques­tions about pos­si­ble con­flicts of inter­est, say­ing the issue had become a dis­trac­tion for the group.

    In 2012, Leo joined the boards of the non­prof­it Catholic Asso­ci­a­tion and an affil­i­at­ed char­i­ty, the Catholic Asso­ci­a­tion Foun­da­tion. They fund­ed cam­paigns to ral­ly Catholic vot­ers and stop states from rec­og­niz­ing same-sex mar­riage.

    The two Catholic non­prof­its launched a third orga­ni­za­tion called Catholic Voic­es. Its stat­ed mis­sion was to train Catholic lay mem­bers to advo­cate for reli­gious and con­ser­v­a­tive caus­es, some of whom lat­er wrote let­ters for pub­li­ca­tion in major news­pa­pers con­demn­ing the Afford­able Care Act and Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court deci­sion that made abor­tion legal.

    The next year, Leo joined forces with wealthy con­ser­v­a­tive donor Rebekah Mer­cer and Stephen K. Ban­non, then the chair­man of Bre­it­bart News, on the board of a small char­i­ty known as Reclaim New York. Mer­cer and Ban­non would go on to play cen­tral roles in Trump’s insur­gent cam­paign, Mer­cer as a lead­ing finan­cial backer and Ban­non as cam­paign chief.

    In the year Leo joined Mercer’s group, and in the two fol­low­ing years, the Mer­cer fam­i­ly became a lead­ing bene­fac­tor of the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety, donat­ing a total of near­ly $6 mil­lion, tax fil­ings show.

    In March 2016, Leo met with Trump and Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety mem­ber Don­ald McGahn at the Wash­ing­ton law firm Jones Day, just as Trump was begin­ning to pre­vail in his quest to be the Repub­li­can nom­i­nee, Leo told The Post.

    Jus­tice Scalia had just died, and the men were mulling the impli­ca­tions. McGahn had come up with the idea of gen­er­at­ing a list of poten­tial Supreme Court nom­i­nees that Trump could dis­close to win over mod­er­ates. Leo said he briefed Trump about the cur­rent com­po­si­tion of the court, the ide­ol­o­gy of the jus­tices and the like.

    As Leo tells it, Trump was open to one of his long-held goals: A fed­er­al court sys­tem dom­i­nat­ed by con­ser­v­a­tive judges who believe the Con­sti­tu­tion must be inter­pret­ed lit­er­al­ly.

    Leo lat­er gave the pres­i­dent a list of pos­si­ble Supreme Court nom­i­nees. Trump released the list dur­ing the pri­ma­ry cam­paign, a ges­ture that helped him win the sup­port of skep­ti­cal main­stream Repub­li­cans. Gor­such and Kavanaugh were added to the list lat­er.

    JCN, the group that has office space on the same hall as the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety, launched a $7 mil­lion media cam­paign to bol­ster the Repub­li­can-con­trolled Sen­ate in pre­vent­ing Oba­ma from fill­ing the seat, accord­ing to a JCN news release at the time. Work­ing on the cam­paign was Cre­ative Response Con­cepts, a firm that was hired by mul­ti­ple non­prof­its in Leo’s net­work, tax fil­ings show.

    CRC’s pres­i­dent, Greg Mueller, describes him­self as a friend of Leo. Mueller’s firm gained promi­nence dur­ing the pres­i­den­tial cam­paign of 2004 for help­ing to pro­mote the “swift boat” alle­ga­tions, unsub­stan­ti­at­ed claims that Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date John F. Kerry’s war record in Viet­nam was exag­ger­at­ed. Among its clients now is the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety.

    Mueller said in a state­ment that the firm does not dis­cuss its work for clients.

    As the 2016 elec­tion cam­paign heat­ed up, Leo became pres­i­dent of three new non­prof­its whose tax fil­ings and incor­po­ra­tion records illus­trate how his net­work some­times oper­ates.

    The groups — called BH Fund, the Free­dom and Oppor­tu­ni­ty Fund and Amer­i­ca Engaged — were formed by an employ­ee at Holtz­man Vogel Jose­fi­ak Torchin­sky, a War­ren­ton, Va., law firm with deep ties to the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment.

    The non­prof­its report­ed hav­ing no employ­ees and no web­sites. They had vir­tu­al­ly no pub­lic pres­ence. Leo’s role as pres­i­dent of all three groups was not dis­closed for near­ly three years because of lags in how non­prof­it groups report their annu­al oper­a­tions to the IRS.

    All three hired CRC for pub­lic rela­tions and con­sult­ing.

    In 2016 and 2017, the three non­prof­its raised about $33 mil­lion, with the BH Fund tak­ing in $24,250,000 from a sin­gle donor whose iden­ti­ty is still not pub­licly known, doc­u­ments show. BH Fund then gave a total of almost $3 mil­lion to the two oth­er Leo groups, Free­dom and Oppor­tu­ni­ty Fund and Amer­i­ca Engaged. The Cen­ter for Respon­sive Pol­i­tics pub­lished details about the groups’ spend­ing in Feb­ru­ary.

    In 2017, Amer­i­ca Engaged passed on almost $1 mil­lion to the lob­by­ing arm of the Nation­al Rifle Asso­ci­a­tion. That same year, the NRA announced a $1 mil­lion ad cam­paign in sup­port of Gor­such. The ads tar­get­ed law­mak­ers in Mon­tana, Indi­ana, Mis­souri and North Dako­ta who had sup­port­ed Obama’s calls for gun con­trol. “Your free­dom is on the line,” the ads stat­ed.

    The media blitz coin­cid­ed with yet anoth­er cam­paign to pro­mote Gorsuch’s nom­i­na­tion, by Judi­cial Cri­sis Net­work. JCN announced that it would spend $10 mil­lion, call­ing it “the most robust oper­a­tion in the his­to­ry of con­fir­ma­tion bat­tles.” CRC, its media con­sul­tant on the cam­paign, lat­er boast­ed that online videos, tele­vi­sion ads, pun­dit com­men­tary, opin­ion essays and oth­er mate­r­i­al sup­port­ing Gor­such had been viewed 1.2 bil­lion times.

    Leo’s Free­dom and Oppor­tu­ni­ty Fund, mean­while, dis­trib­uted $4 mil­lion to Inde­pen­dent Women’s Voice over two years.

    The lead­ers of Inde­pen­dent Women’s Voice appeared fre­quent­ly on Fox News, speak­ing in sup­port of Trump and his judi­cial nom­i­nees. They spoke at ral­lies, accord­ing to videos, and they bought Face­book ads that reached hun­dreds of thou­sands of users, accord­ing to a Face­book polit­i­cal adver­tis­ing data­base.

    Heather Hig­gins, the group’s pres­i­dent and chief exec­u­tive, expressed doubts on Fox News about the mem­o­ry of the woman accus­ing Kavanaugh of sex­u­al­ly assault­ing her decades ago. “If you have a weak stan­dard of evi­dence, then what you are doing is guar­an­tee­ing that future nom­i­na­tions will all be last-minute char­ac­ter assas­si­na­tions and cir­cus­es,” said Hig­gins, who records show is paid $311,000 as the leader of Inde­pen­dent Women’s Voice.

    ...

    She once described her group as a weapon in the “Repub­li­can con­ser­v­a­tive arse­nal” that caters to “donors who want a high return on their invest­ment for their polit­i­cal dol­lars,” accord­ing to a video of a speech she made at the non­prof­it David Horowitz Free­dom Cen­ter.

    “We have worked hard to cre­ate a brand­ed orga­ni­za­tion . . . that does not car­ry par­ti­san bag­gage,” Hig­gins said in 2015. “Being brand­ed as neu­tral but actu­al­ly hav­ing the peo­ple who know, know that you’re actu­al­ly con­ser­v­a­tive puts us in a unique posi­tion.”

    Leonard Leo’s work in the non­prof­it world has proved lucra­tive.

    The Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety, a char­i­ty, has reg­u­lar­ly paid him more than $400,000 in annu­al com­pen­sa­tion in recent years, tax fil­ings show. In 2016, the Catholic Asso­ci­a­tion paid him $120,000 for man­age­ment con­sult­ing.

    Leo’s only oth­er pub­licly known employ­er is an obscure for-prof­it start-up called the BH Group. It was reg­is­tered in Vir­ginia on Aug. 22, 2016, by the same law firm employ­ee who incor­po­rat­ed the BH Fund and the two oth­er non­prof­its Leo start­ed ear­li­er that year. The firm is based out of a vir­tu­al office suite used as a shared mail­ing address and meet­ing space for unre­lat­ed com­pa­nies.

    In the two years fol­low­ing its for­ma­tion, the BH Group received more than $4 mil­lion from the Judi­cial Cri­sis Net­work, a relat­ed group called the Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project and a third non­prof­it in the net­work called the Well­spring Com­mit­tee, all of them con­nect­ed to Leo through fund­ing, per­son­nel and the same accoun­tant, IRS fil­ings show. The groups described the pay­ments in IRS fil­ings as con­sult­ing, research and pub­lic rela­tions fees.

    Leo, who dis­closed BH Group as his employ­er in a cam­paign finance fil­ing, declined to say how much mon­ey he received from the com­pa­ny or pro­vide any oth­er details about it.

    “BH Group is a pri­vate firm whose team of pro­fes­sion­als, which includes Leonard Leo, pro­vides man­age­ment and con­sult­ing ser­vices to phil­an­thropists and non­prof­its,” a CRC spokesman for Leo said in a state­ment. “Like sim­i­lar firms on the Left, its clients are pri­vate as are the details of the work for them.”

    In Decem­ber 2016, while Leo worked on Trump’s tran­si­tion team, BH Group donat­ed $1 mil­lion to Trump’s inau­gur­al com­mit­tee, accord­ing to a cam­paign finance dis­clo­sure.

    The next year, Leo and his wife, Sal­ly, were named Stew­ards of Saint Peter by the Papal Foun­da­tion, an hon­or giv­en to those who pledge to donate $1 mil­lion or more for Vat­i­can ini­tia­tives world­wide.

    The Leos and their six chil­dren have lived in a McLean home that was pur­chased in 2010 for $710,000, accord­ing to real estate records. They paid off a 30-year mort­gage last August and two months lat­er bought a $3.3 mil­lion sum­mer home with 11 bed­rooms in an afflu­ent sea­side vil­lage on the coast of Maine. In a state­ment, Leo described the man­sion as “a retreat for our large fam­i­ly and for extend­ing hos­pi­tal­i­ty to our com­mu­ni­ty of per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al friends and co-work­ers.”

    Leo’s work to influ­ence judi­cial nom­i­na­tions has made him a hero to some con­ser­v­a­tive activists. The esteem was evi­dent in Feb­ru­ary at the closed-door meet­ing of the non­prof­it Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy, where Leo serves on the board of gov­er­nors.

    “He is one of us. He cares about the Con­sti­tu­tion. He under­stands that elec­tions may come and go, but judges with life­time appoint­ments . . . are going to be here for a long time,” Rebec­ca Hagelin, a board mem­ber, told the assem­bled activists and donors.

    “And this is per­haps where Don­ald Trump is mak­ing his great­est, longest-last­ing effort. But he’s doing it based on a lot of the work by Leonard Leo. And today I’m so pleased to intro­duce him,” she said. “Wel­come him to the stage, and thank him for all the work that he is doing to help save Amer­i­ca.”

    ————

    “A con­ser­v­a­tive activist’s behind-the-scenes cam­paign to remake the nation’s courts” By Robert O’Har­row Jr. and Shawn Boburg; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 05/21/2019

    “The sto­ry of Leo’s rise offers an inside look into the mod­ern machin­ery of polit­i­cal per­sua­sion. It shows how undis­closed inter­ests out­side of gov­ern­ment are har­ness­ing the nation’s non­prof­it sys­tem to influ­ence judi­cial appoint­ments that will shape the nation for decades.”

    Yes, it’s hard to get a more inside look into the mod­ern machin­ery of polit­i­cal per­sua­sion than an inside look at Leonard Leo’s career. A career in a rather unique role as the lead­ing mid­dle-man between the con­ser­v­a­tive legal estab­lish­ment and the rest of world. A mid­dle-man between the con­ser­v­a­tive legal world, con­ser­v­a­tive mega-donors, the polit­i­cal estab­lish­ment. He’s got a lot of roles. Includ­ing, of course, his role on the CNP’s board of gov­er­nors:

    ...
    “We’re going to have to under­stand that judi­cial con­fir­ma­tions these days are more like polit­i­cal cam­paigns,” Leo told the mem­bers of the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy, accord­ing to a record­ing of the speech obtained by The Wash­ing­ton Post. “We’re going to have to be smart as a move­ment.”

    “No one in this room has prob­a­bly expe­ri­enced the kind of trans­for­ma­tion that I think we are begin­ning to see,” Leo said.

    At a time when Trump and Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Mitch McConnell are rapid­ly reshap­ing fed­er­al courts by installing con­ser­v­a­tive judges and Supreme Court jus­tices, few peo­ple out­side gov­ern­ment have more influ­ence over judi­cial appoint­ments now than Leo.

    He is wide­ly known as a con­fi­dant to Trump and as exec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent of the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety, an influ­en­tial non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion for con­ser­v­a­tive and lib­er­tar­i­an lawyers that has close ties to Supreme Court jus­tices. But behind the scenes, Leo is the mae­stro of a net­work of inter­lock­ing non­prof­its work­ing on media cam­paigns and oth­er ini­tia­tives to sway law­mak­ers by gen­er­at­ing pub­lic sup­port for con­ser­v­a­tive judges.

    ...

    Even as Leo coun­seled Trump on judi­cial picks, he and his allies were rais­ing mon­ey for non­prof­its that under IRS rules do not have to dis­close their donors. Between 2014 and 2017 alone, they col­lect­ed more than $250 mil­lion in such dona­tions, some­times known as “dark mon­ey,” accord­ing to a Post analy­sis of the most recent tax fil­ings avail­able. The mon­ey was used in part to sup­port con­ser­v­a­tive poli­cies and judges, through adver­tis­ing and through fund­ing for groups whose exec­u­tives appeared as tele­vi­sion pun­dits.

    ...

    Leo’s work to influ­ence judi­cial nom­i­na­tions has made him a hero to some con­ser­v­a­tive activists. The esteem was evi­dent in Feb­ru­ary at the closed-door meet­ing of the non­prof­it Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy, where Leo serves on the board of gov­er­nors.

    He is one of us. He cares about the Con­sti­tu­tion. He under­stands that elec­tions may come and go, but judges with life­time appoint­ments . . . are going to be here for a long time,” Rebec­ca Hagelin, a board mem­ber, told the assem­bled activists and donors.

    “And this is per­haps where Don­ald Trump is mak­ing his great­est, longest-last­ing effort. But he’s doing it based on a lot of the work by Leonard Leo. And today I’m so pleased to intro­duce him,” she said. “Wel­come him to the stage, and thank him for all the work that he is doing to help save Amer­i­ca.”
    ...

    And then there’s Leonard Leo’s role as a kind of mid­dle-man between the afore­men­tioned ‘vast right-wing con­spir­a­cy’ net­work of enti­ties and all of that and the rest of world when it comes to Leo’s role in set­ting up one ‘non-par­ti­san’ dark mon­ey 501(c)(4) group after anoth­er ded­i­cat­ed to ‘social wel­fare’ in the form of pro­pa­gan­da. The kind of pro­pa­gan­da that will make this cap­ture of the legal estab­lish­ment as palat­able to the pub­lic as pos­si­ble. And fore what­ev­er rea­son, nine of those ‘non-par­ti­san char­i­ties’ chose Cre­ative Response Con­cepts (CRC) to exe­cute much of that pro­pa­gan­da. CRC is Leonard Leo’s media firm of choice it seems:

    ...
    The groups in Leo’s net­work often work in con­cert and are linked to Leo and one anoth­er by finances, shared board mem­bers, phone num­bers, address­es, back-office sup­port and oth­er oper­a­tional details, accord­ing to tax fil­ings, incor­po­ra­tion records, oth­er doc­u­ments and inter­views.

    Nine of the groups hired the same con­ser­v­a­tive media rela­tions firm, Cre­ative Response Con­cepts, col­lec­tive­ly pay­ing it more than $10 mil­lion in con­tract­ing fees in 2016 and 2017. Dur­ing that time, the firm coor­di­nat­ed a months-long media cam­paign in sup­port of Trump’s Supreme Court nom­i­nee, Neil M. Gor­such, includ­ing pub­lish­ing opin­ion essays, con­tribut­ing 5,000 quotes to news sto­ries, sched­ul­ing pun­dit appear­ances on tele­vi­sion and post­ing online videos that were viewed 50 mil­lion times, accord­ing to a report on the firm’s web­site.

    ...

    CRC’s pres­i­dent, Greg Mueller, describes him­self as a friend of Leo. Mueller’s firm gained promi­nence dur­ing the pres­i­den­tial cam­paign of 2004 for help­ing to pro­mote the “swift boat” alle­ga­tions, unsub­stan­ti­at­ed claims that Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date John F. Kerry’s war record in Viet­nam was exag­ger­at­ed. Among its clients now is the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety.

    Mueller said in a state­ment that the firm does not dis­cuss its work for clients.
    ...

    Amus­ing­ly, when pressed about this unique role in this ‘kind of vast right-wing con­spir­a­cy’ of bil­lion­aires, theocrats, and ultra-con­ser­v­a­tive attor­neys and judges as the ‘mon­ey guy’ who can con­nect those bil­lion­aires to activists who will exe­cute their vision, Leo insists that “I’m not par­tic­u­lar­ly knowl­edge­able about a lot of it.” No, no, he cares about ideas. Not mon­ey. The fact that those hard right ideas all seem to accrue enor­mous mon­ey and pow­er for these bil­lion­aires is inci­den­tal:

    ...
    Dur­ing an on-cam­era inter­view for a Post doc­u­men­tary, Leo called him­self “a leader of the con­ser­v­a­tive legal move­ment” and said, “I have no idea how many groups I’ve been involved with over the years.”

    A devout Catholic, Leo said he is dri­ven by his faith and a lit­er­al inter­pre­ta­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion. He also defend­ed the prac­tice of tak­ing mon­ey from donors whose iden­ti­ties are not pub­licly dis­closed, com­par­ing his effort to shape the courts to those of abo­li­tion­ists, suf­frag­ists and civ­il rights activists.

    “[They] were all very much fueled by very wealthy peo­ple, and often­times wealthy peo­ple who chose to be anony­mous,” Leo said.

    But he refused to talk about the mon­ey behind his advo­ca­cy, say­ing, “I’m not par­tic­u­lar­ly knowl­edge­able about a lot of it.”

    “I have a very sim­ple rule, which is, I’m engaged in the bat­tle of ideas, and I care very deeply about our Con­sti­tu­tion and the role of courts in our soci­ety,” he said. “And I don’t waste my time on sto­ries that involve mon­ey and pol­i­tics because what I care about is ideas.”

    Lat­er, in response to writ­ten ques­tions about the inter­lock­ing non­prof­its, Leo described the net­work as “an effec­tive and high­ly suc­cess­ful judi­cial coali­tion that’s orga­nized just about the same as the Left’s, except that their coali­tion is sig­nif­i­cant­ly big­ger and bet­ter fund­ed.”

    ...

    Leo grew up in sub­ur­ban New Jer­sey, where his high school year­book lists his nick­name as the “Mon­ey­bags kid” and shows a pho­to­graph of him hold­ing a hand­ful of cash. He attend­ed Cor­nell as an under­grad­u­ate and law stu­dent and found­ed an ear­ly chap­ter of the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety, then an all-vol­un­teer orga­ni­za­tion focused on infus­ing tra­di­tion­al legal val­ues into the nation’s law schools.

    ...

    Leo also devel­oped a rep­u­ta­tion as a con­ser­v­a­tive mon­ey­man. When Kavanaugh and oth­er Bush aides were look­ing for some­one to pay for a press event aimed at sup­port­ing the stalled judi­cial nom­i­na­tion of Miguel Estra­da, they turned to Leo.

    “Leonard Leo will know,” a White House aide wrote in an email obtained by The Post. “We prob­a­bly don’t want the fed soc pay­ing for it, but he might know some gen­er­ous donor.”
    ...

    Beyond his role as the ‘mon­ey­man’, Leo is also appears per­son­al­ly chum­my with a num­ber of the con­ser­v­a­tive Supreme Court jus­tices too. In the case of Brett Kavanaugh, long before he became a jus­tice. And as one of the first paid employ­ees of the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety, it’s not hard to imag­ine why Leo might be extra pop­u­lar among young con­ser­v­a­tive lawyers. Being friends with Leonard Leo has ben­e­fits and that’s long been the case:

    ...
    In 1990, Leo became a clerk for a U.S. Court of Appeals judge in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., where he met Clarence Thomas, then an appel­late judge. The two became close friends.

    After his clerk­ship, Leo joined the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety as one of its first paid employ­ees. But he delayed the start date to help Thomas through his con­tentious con­fir­ma­tion process for the Supreme Court.

    At the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety, Leo took a lead­ing role in the con­ser­v­a­tive legal move­ment, part of a bur­geon­ing effort to counter the influ­ence of the 1960s and lib­er­als on edu­ca­tion, law and pol­i­tics.

    With the elec­tion of George W. Bush, Leo began work­ing as an out­side advis­er for the White House on ini­tia­tives relat­ed to judi­cial nom­i­na­tions. Among his allies was Kavanaugh, then White House asso­ciate coun­sel.

    ...

    Leo came to be known in the White House as coor­di­na­tor of “all out­side coali­tion activ­i­ty regard­ing judi­cial nom­i­na­tions,” accord­ing to a 2003 email by a White House aide to Kavanaugh and oth­ers.

    ...

    Leo’s influ­ence and polit­i­cal con­nec­tions con­tin­ued to expand even as Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma took over the White House.

    He rou­tine­ly attend­ed galas and black-tie Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety events that includ­ed jus­tices Thomas, Ali­to and Antonin Scalia, as well as McConnell and oth­er lead­ing law­mak­ers, accord­ing to inter­views and annu­al reports by the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety.
    ...

    But it’s not the per­son­al rela­tion­ship with Leo that ulti­mate­ly gets some­one onto the Supreme Court. It’s the pub­lic rela­tion­ship and behind-the-scenes lob­by­ing work done by enti­ties like Judi­cial Con­fir­ma­tion Net­work (JCN) (pre­vi­ous­ly known as the Judi­cial Cri­sis Net­work and now known as the Con­cord Fund). As we’ve seen, the biggest donor to JCN has been the Well­spring Com­mit­tee, a 501(c)(4) backed by the donor net­work oper­at­ed by bil­lion­aires Ann and Neil Cork­ery. When Well­spring was set up in 2008, it was actu­al­ly found­ed by the Koch broth­ers, and only lat­er hand­ed off to the Cork­erys. It under­scores how Leo’s pow­er and influ­ence seems to emanate from the influ­ence he has over all of these var­i­ous groups like JCN/Concord Fund. Groups that are ulti­mate­ly paid for by bil­lion­aires like the Cork­ery who hap­pen to share Leo’s theo­crat­ic pro-oli­garchy vision of a ‘free soci­ety’:

    ...
    In 2005 and 2006, Leo served as the leader of the cam­paigns sup­port­ing Supreme Court nom­i­nees John G. Roberts Jr. and Samuel A. Ali­to Jr. He and oth­er mem­bers of an advo­ca­cy coali­tion spent about $15 mil­lion in dona­tions from undis­closed donors on ads, tele­mar­ket­ing and the mobi­liza­tion of “grass roots” groups, Leo lat­er told a Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety chap­ter at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia. They con­duct­ed polls to help craft the most per­sua­sive mes­sages and arranged dozens of “back­ground” brief­in­gs for reporters.

    A key part of those efforts was a new non­prof­it called the Judi­cial Con­fir­ma­tion Net­work, or JCN. Tax fil­ings show it was based at the home of Ann and Neil Cork­ery, close allies of Leo who have served as board mem­bers or trea­sur­ers of orga­ni­za­tions run by Leo and a small group of inter­con­nect­ed activists.

    One radio spot paid for by JCN in Arkansas fea­tured a local min­is­ter who warned lis­ten­ers that lib­er­als want­ed to curb reli­gious free­dom, includ­ing Christ­mas cel­e­bra­tions. “Now these extrem­ist groups want our sen­a­tors to vote against Judge Ali­to for the Unit­ed States Supreme Court,” the ad said.
    ...

    Also recall how the Cork­erys are, like Leo, mem­bers of Opus Dei. But Opus Dei isn’t the only theo­crat­ic orga­ni­za­tion the lead­er­ship of the JCN belongs to. JCN board mem­ber and founder Gary Marx shows up on the CNP mem­ber­ship list. But in terms of enti­ties influ­enc­ing the JCN, it’s pret­ty obvi­ous that the JCN is oper­at­ing as an exten­sion of the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety. They lit­er­al­ly share DC offices in the same hall­way. On top of that, JCN pres­i­dent Daniel Casey has been paid more than $1.5 mil­lion in fees from the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety over nine years for “media ser­vices” pro­vid­ed by a com­pa­ny based out of his home. It’s all one giant inces­tu­ous net­work man­i­fest­ing as all these seem­ing­ly ‘inde­pen­dent’ orga­ni­za­tions. Despite all of that, the ties between the JCN/Concord Fund and Leo are offi­cial opaque:

    ...
    The ties between JCN and Leo are opaque. JCN’s office is on the same hall­way as the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety in a down­town Wash­ing­ton build­ing, though JCN’s web­site and tax fil­ings list a mail­ing address at a dif­fer­ent loca­tion, an address shared by mul­ti­ple com­pa­nies.

    JCN board direc­tor Gary Marx told The Post the two orga­ni­za­tions share sim­i­lar goals but have “dif­fer­ent boards, dif­fer­ent mis­sions, dif­fer­ent func­tions and do very dif­fer­ent things.”

    When a Post reporter vis­it­ed the JCN offices to ask ques­tions, a secu­ri­ty guard con­tact­ed a long­time employ­ee of the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety to see whether any­one at JCN was avail­able. A Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety employ­ee then escort­ed the reporter to JCN’s office.

    The group’s pres­i­dent, Daniel Casey, has worked close­ly with Leo for years. Casey receives no pay from JCN or three oth­er non­prof­its in the net­work that he helps to lead, tax fil­ings show. He received more than $1.5 mil­lion in fees from the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety over nine years for media train­ing through a firm based at his home in Front Roy­al, Va.

    In an inter­view with The Post, Casey declined to dis­cuss that firm, DC Strate­gies. He said all of the non­prof­it groups he is affil­i­at­ed with fol­lowed the law. “Every­thing is up and up,” he said.

    Leo told The Post that Casey has been “a high­ly skilled provider of strate­gic con­sult­ing ser­vices in the legal pol­i­cy space for over 30 years.”
    ...

    Notably, it appears that a big part of the rise of Leo’s influ­ence has to do with the con­se­quences of the his­to­ry 2010 Supreme Court Cit­i­zens Unit­ed rul­ing that effec­tive­ly hand­ed US elec­tions over to sprawl­ing dark mon­ey net­works capa­ble of pro­duc­ing opin­ion-shift­ing media cam­paigns. Leo expe­ri­ence man­ag­ing the media cam­paigns run by this net­work of dark mon­ey enti­ties and the abil­i­ty to con­nect activists to bil­lion­aire donors became all the more valu­able:

    ...
    He also became more adept at man­ag­ing media cam­paigns. In a pre­vi­ous­ly undis­closed email, Leo boast­ed to a col­league in 2009 about his savvy at gen­er­at­ing free pub­lic­i­ty through the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety.

    “I’m very famil­iar with the media,” Leo wrote to Tom Carter, then a spokesman for the U.S. Com­mis­sion on Inter­na­tion­al Reli­gious Free­dom, a gov­ern­ment agency cre­at­ed to pro­mote reli­gious lib­er­ty abroad. “I spend prob­a­bly close to $800,000 annu­al­ly on a PR team at the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety, and we gen­er­ate press that has a pub­lic­i­ty val­ue of approx­i­mate­ly $146 mil­lion each year.”

    Leo, then a com­mis­sion­er, said the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety had learned to side­step point­ed ques­tions about judi­cial nom­i­nees — and he urged Carter to do the same in his work for the com­mis­sion. “We get around these inquiries quite well, and I am sure you can find a way to do so as well,” he wrote.

    Leo joined addi­tion­al advo­ca­cy groups that expand­ed his influ­ence fol­low­ing the Supreme Court’s land­mark Cit­i­zens Unit­ed deci­sion in 2010, which lift­ed restric­tions on spend­ing by cor­po­ra­tions, unions and non­prof­its on polit­i­cal­ly ori­ent­ed adver­tise­ments and media cam­paigns.

    His grow­ing net­work was com­posed most­ly of non­prof­its called “social wel­fare orga­ni­za­tions,” which are allowed to engage in pol­i­tics as long as it’s not their pri­ma­ry activ­i­ty. It also includ­ed some pub­lic char­i­ties, which can receive tax-deductible dona­tions and are pro­hib­it­ed from back­ing or oppos­ing can­di­dates for office.
    ...

    Inter­est­ing­ly, it’s in 2010 where we find Leo serv­ing on the board of the Tea Par­ty group Lib­er­ty Cen­tral, found­ed by Gin­ni Thomas. If there’s anoth­er fig­ure in this move­ment who has the kind of ‘mas­ter insid­er net­work­er’ role, it’s Gin­ni Thomas. Recall how Gin­ni start­ed Lib­er­ty Cen­tral in 2010 with a $500k anony­mous dona­tion but end­ed up step­ping away from the osten­si­bly ‘non-prof­it’ group Novem­ber of that year over con­flict of inter­est ques­tions. She went on to form con­sult­ing group Lib­er­ty Con­sult­ing, a for-prof­it enti­ty with few­er pub­lic report­ing require­ments. So when we see how the $120k salary Gin­ni took in as pres­i­dent of Lib­er­ty Cen­tral was the basis for a pos­si­ble con­flict-of-inter­est vio­la­tion, it’s per­haps fit­ting to see Leonard Leo — long­time fam­i­ly friend of the Thomases — serv­ing beside her in this con­flict­ed role:

    ...
    In 2010, Leo served on the board of a tea par­ty group called Lib­er­ty Cen­tral. Gin­ni Thomas, wife of Jus­tice Clarence Thomas, received $120,511 as the start-up’s pres­i­dent that year. She lat­er stepped down fol­low­ing ques­tions about pos­si­ble con­flicts of inter­est, say­ing the issue had become a dis­trac­tion for the group.
    ...

    And then we get to this extreme­ly inter­est­ing detail in the rise of Leonard Leo as the con­ser­v­a­tive move­men­t’s lord of dark mon­ey: In 2013, Leo joined forces with Rebekah Mer­cer and Steve Ban­non on the board of the small char­i­ty Reclaim New York. Ban­non and Mer­cer found­ed the char­i­ty that year. The Mer­cer fam­i­ly went on to become the lead­ing bene­fac­tor of the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety, with $6 mil­lion in dona­tions over the next two years. This is also a good time to recall how 2013 was the same year Gin­ni Thomas co-found­ed the Groundswell Group meet­ings with fel­low CNP mem­ber Steve Ban­non back in 2013 as a com­peti­tor to Grover Norquist’s influ­en­tial ‘Wednes­day Morn­ing Meet­ings’. Groundswell went on to play a major role in mak­ing staffing deci­sions for the Trump White House. Groundswell is now known as TC Group, in keep­ing with the propen­si­ty of these groups to keep chang­ing their names. So in 2013, both Leo and Gin­ni Thomas cozied up to Steve Ban­non, who was at this point already work­ing clos­ing with the Mer­cers. Leo then joins a Mer­cer char­i­ty and the Mer­cers becomes major Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety donors. In an impor­tant chap­ter the evo­lu­tion of the dark mon­ey com­po­nent of the con­tem­po­rary polit­i­cal land­scape:

    ...
    In 2012, Leo joined the boards of the non­prof­it Catholic Asso­ci­a­tion and an affil­i­at­ed char­i­ty, the Catholic Asso­ci­a­tion Foun­da­tion. They fund­ed cam­paigns to ral­ly Catholic vot­ers and stop states from rec­og­niz­ing same-sex mar­riage.

    The two Catholic non­prof­its launched a third orga­ni­za­tion called Catholic Voic­es. Its stat­ed mis­sion was to train Catholic lay mem­bers to advo­cate for reli­gious and con­ser­v­a­tive caus­es, some of whom lat­er wrote let­ters for pub­li­ca­tion in major news­pa­pers con­demn­ing the Afford­able Care Act and Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court deci­sion that made abor­tion legal.

    The next year, Leo joined forces with wealthy con­ser­v­a­tive donor Rebekah Mer­cer and Stephen K. Ban­non, then the chair­man of Bre­it­bart News, on the board of a small char­i­ty known as Reclaim New York. Mer­cer and Ban­non would go on to play cen­tral roles in Trump’s insur­gent cam­paign, Mer­cer as a lead­ing finan­cial backer and Ban­non as cam­paign chief.

    In the year Leo joined Mercer’s group, and in the two fol­low­ing years, the Mer­cer fam­i­ly became a lead­ing bene­fac­tor of the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety, donat­ing a total of near­ly $6 mil­lion, tax fil­ings show.
    ...

    Flash for­ward to 2016, and we see Leo involved with the cre­ation of three new dark mon­ey enti­ties: the BH Fund, the Free­dom and Oppor­tu­ni­ty Fund, and Amer­i­ca Engaged. Although tech­ni­cal­ly four new enti­ties. BH Fund has a sis­ter enti­ty, the BH Group, too. All were formed by an employ­ee of the key dark mon­ey con­ser­v­a­tive law firm Holtz­man Vogel Jose­fi­ak Torchin­sky. As we’ve seen, that employ­ee was Don­na Smith and Holtz­man Vogel Jose­fi­ak Torchin­sky is the same law firm that shared a War­ren­ton, Va. office with the address the 2016 Trump inau­gur­al com­mit­tee on its tax return. BH Group’s only known activ­i­ty in 2016 was giv­ing $1 mil­lion to the Trump inau­gu­ra­tion fund.. Also note that BH Fund was dis­solved in Jan­u­ary 2023, three days after a report by Politi­co inquired into whether or not it facil­i­tat­ed the sale of Kellyanne Con­way’s polling com­pa­ny. The com­mon theme being that these enti­ties are basi­cal­ly set up for shady dark mon­ey activ­i­ty, dis­solved when they received scruti­ny, only to be replaced or rebrand­ed. The oth­er com­mon theme being the hir­ing of CRC to exe­cute the pro­pa­gan­da cam­paigns:

    ...
    JCN, the group that has office space on the same hall as the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety, launched a $7 mil­lion media cam­paign to bol­ster the Repub­li­can-con­trolled Sen­ate in pre­vent­ing Oba­ma from fill­ing the seat, accord­ing to a JCN news release at the time. Work­ing on the cam­paign was Cre­ative Response Con­cepts, a firm that was hired by mul­ti­ple non­prof­its in Leo’s net­work, tax fil­ings show.

    ...

    As the 2016 elec­tion cam­paign heat­ed up, Leo became pres­i­dent of three new non­prof­its whose tax fil­ings and incor­po­ra­tion records illus­trate how his net­work some­times oper­ates.

    The groups — called BH Fund, the Free­dom and Oppor­tu­ni­ty Fund and Amer­i­ca Engaged — were formed by an employ­ee at Holtz­man Vogel Jose­fi­ak Torchin­sky, a War­ren­ton, Va., law firm with deep ties to the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment.

    The non­prof­its report­ed hav­ing no employ­ees and no web­sites. They had vir­tu­al­ly no pub­lic pres­ence. Leo’s role as pres­i­dent of all three groups was not dis­closed for near­ly three years because of lags in how non­prof­it groups report their annu­al oper­a­tions to the IRS.

    All three hired CRC for pub­lic rela­tions and con­sult­ing.
    ...

    Also note how mon­ey was even being shift­ed between these three new­ly formed groups, with BH Fund — which took in near­ly $25 mil­lion from a sin­gle still unknown donor — giv­ing almost $3 mil­lion to the oth­er two groups. An inter­wo­ven nest of enti­ties that seem to exist for no rea­son oth­er than obscur­ing the nature of their exis­tence:

    ...
    In 2016 and 2017, the three non­prof­its raised about $33 mil­lion, with the BH Fund tak­ing in $24,250,000 from a sin­gle donor whose iden­ti­ty is still not pub­licly known, doc­u­ments show. BH Fund then gave a total of almost $3 mil­lion to the two oth­er Leo groups, Free­dom and Oppor­tu­ni­ty Fund and Amer­i­ca Engaged. The Cen­ter for Respon­sive Pol­i­tics pub­lished details about the groups’ spend­ing in Feb­ru­ary.

    In 2017, Amer­i­ca Engaged passed on almost $1 mil­lion to the lob­by­ing arm of the Nation­al Rifle Asso­ci­a­tion. That same year, the NRA announced a $1 mil­lion ad cam­paign in sup­port of Gor­such. The ads tar­get­ed law­mak­ers in Mon­tana, Indi­ana, Mis­souri and North Dako­ta who had sup­port­ed Obama’s calls for gun con­trol. “Your free­dom is on the line,” the ads stat­ed.

    The media blitz coin­cid­ed with yet anoth­er cam­paign to pro­mote Gorsuch’s nom­i­na­tion, by Judi­cial Cri­sis Net­work. JCN announced that it would spend $10 mil­lion, call­ing it “the most robust oper­a­tion in the his­to­ry of con­fir­ma­tion bat­tles.” CRC, its media con­sul­tant on the cam­paign, lat­er boast­ed that online videos, tele­vi­sion ads, pun­dit com­men­tary, opin­ion essays and oth­er mate­r­i­al sup­port­ing Gor­such had been viewed 1.2 bil­lion times.
    ...

    And, of course, there’s the com­mon theme of the CNP, with CNP mem­bers seem­ing­ly end­less­ly show­ing up in these dark mon­ey sto­ries. So it should­n’t be a sur­prise to find the Free­dom the Oppor­tu­ni­ty Fund was basi­cal­ly used a a vehi­cle for chan­nel­ing mon­ey to groups like the Inde­pen­dent Wom­en’s Voice that played a role in pub­licly attack­ing Brett Kavanaugh­’s accusers, run by CNP Heather Hig­gins. And in keep­ing with the oth­er com­mon theme of whole disin­gen­u­ous abus­es of the dark mon­ey rules that allow for tax-deductible anony­mous polit­i­cal activ­i­ties only if they are non-par­ti­san’, we find Hig­gins basi­cal­ly brag­ging about how her group “worked hard to cre­ate a brand­ed orga­ni­za­tion . . . that does not car­ry par­ti­san bag­gage.” An orga­ni­za­tion “brand­ed as neu­tral but actu­al­ly hav­ing the peo­ple who know, know that you’re actu­al­ly con­ser­v­a­tive.” She’s say­ing the qui­et part out loud because she can. Because no one cares noth­ing is going to be done about it. That’s how utter­ly bro­ken the US’s polit­i­cal financ­ing laws are. So bro­ken the main perps can brag about it:

    ...
    Leo’s Free­dom and Oppor­tu­ni­ty Fund, mean­while, dis­trib­uted $4 mil­lion to Inde­pen­dent Women’s Voice over two years.

    The lead­ers of Inde­pen­dent Women’s Voice appeared fre­quent­ly on Fox News, speak­ing in sup­port of Trump and his judi­cial nom­i­nees. They spoke at ral­lies, accord­ing to videos, and they bought Face­book ads that reached hun­dreds of thou­sands of users, accord­ing to a Face­book polit­i­cal adver­tis­ing data­base.

    Heather Hig­gins, the group’s pres­i­dent and chief exec­u­tive, expressed doubts on Fox News about the mem­o­ry of the woman accus­ing Kavanaugh of sex­u­al­ly assault­ing her decades ago. “If you have a weak stan­dard of evi­dence, then what you are doing is guar­an­tee­ing that future nom­i­na­tions will all be last-minute char­ac­ter assas­si­na­tions and cir­cus­es,” said Hig­gins, who records show is paid $311,000 as the leader of Inde­pen­dent Women’s Voice.

    ...

    She once described her group as a weapon in the “Repub­li­can con­ser­v­a­tive arse­nal” that caters to “donors who want a high return on their invest­ment for their polit­i­cal dol­lars,” accord­ing to a video of a speech she made at the non­prof­it David Horowitz Free­dom Cen­ter.

    “We have worked hard to cre­ate a brand­ed orga­ni­za­tion . . . that does not car­ry par­ti­san bag­gage,” Hig­gins said in 2015. “Being brand­ed as neu­tral but actu­al­ly hav­ing the peo­ple who know, know that you’re actu­al­ly con­ser­v­a­tive puts us in a unique posi­tion.”
    ...

    Final­ly, with the hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars slush­ing around in these dark mon­ey net­works, and Leonard Leo’s role as a the mas­ter orches­tra­tor of these net­works, it’s fas­ci­nat­ing to see how neb­u­lous Leo’s own income report­ing is over the past two decades. For exam­ple, when he claimed to have tak­en time off from the Fed­er­al Soci­ety in 2005 and 2006 to work on the Bush admin­is­tra­tion Supreme Court nom­i­na­tion fights, it turns out his Fed­er­al Soci­ety com­pen­sa­tion actu­al­ly increased near­ly 50 per­cent. And dur­ing this entire peri­od, the only oth­er pub­licly dis­closed employ­er for Leo is BH Group, found­ed in 2016 with that near­ly $25 mil­lion dona­tion from a still anony­mous donor and that seems to exist for no oth­er rea­son than to dole out that mon­ey to oth­er dark mon­ey enti­ties will shield­ing the iden­ti­ty of its donors. How much has Leo been paid by BH Group? We have no idea. That’s part of what makes it so inter­est­ing to see that 2016 was the same year Leo and his wife Sal­ly were named Stew­ards of Saint Peter by the Papal Foun­da­tion, an hon­or giv­en to those who pledge to donate $1 mil­lion or more for Vat­i­can ini­tia­tives world­wide. And then we also find that the Leo not only man­aged to pay their 30 year home mort­gage on a $710,000 home off in less than a decade but they also pur­chased a $3.3 mil­lion lux­u­ry home in Maine just two months after pay­ing off that mort­gage. How much mon­ey is Leo actu­al­ly mak­ing from his role as a right-wing dark mon­ey shad­ow lord? This is a good time to recall how bil­lion­aire mega-donor Har­lan Crow pur­chased Clarence Thomas’s mother’s home in an 2014 real estate trans­ac­tion. A rather odd 2014 trans­ac­tion that saw Thomas sell Crow his fam­i­ly home for $133k, which was appar­ent­ly a net-loss for the Thomases, but with a pro­vi­sion that his moth­er can live there rent free for the rest of her life. That ‘net-loss’ sale price was, in turn, used by Thomas as an excuse to not dis­close the deal since he appar­ent­ly thought, incor­rect­ly, that only prof­itable trans­ac­tions need­ed to be report­ed. Was there any sort of hid­den mega-donor involve­ment in Leo’s sur­prise home deals of 2018? We’ll like­ly nev­er know. But it’s hard to not sus­pect that large hid­den gifts of this nature are part of the dark mon­ey puz­zle we’re look­ing at here:

    ...
    In the inter­view with The Post, Leo said he took time off from the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety — a char­i­ty that says it does not endorse spe­cif­ic nom­i­nees — dur­ing the nom­i­na­tion fights in 2005 and 2006. The group’s tax fil­ings show that his com­pen­sa­tion in those two years jumped by near­ly 50 per­cent, to about $328,000 annu­al­ly. Leo did not respond to a ques­tion about how his com­pen­sa­tion was affect­ed by his time off. A spokesman for the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety said Leo’s pay went up — despite the time off — because of the organization’s “extra­or­di­nary rev­enue growth.” Back at the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety the fol­low­ing year, his com­pen­sa­tion was $419,000.

    Doc­u­ments show that Leo nev­er assumed a for­mal posi­tion at JCN, which even­tu­al­ly changed its name to the Judi­cial Cri­sis Net­work. But he told The Post he is “very sup­port­ive” of the group.

    ...

    Leonard Leo’s work in the non­prof­it world has proved lucra­tive.

    The Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety, a char­i­ty, has reg­u­lar­ly paid him more than $400,000 in annu­al com­pen­sa­tion in recent years, tax fil­ings show. In 2016, the Catholic Asso­ci­a­tion paid him $120,000 for man­age­ment con­sult­ing.

    Leo’s only oth­er pub­licly known employ­er is an obscure for-prof­it start-up called the BH Group. It was reg­is­tered in Vir­ginia on Aug. 22, 2016, by the same law firm employ­ee who incor­po­rat­ed the BH Fund and the two oth­er non­prof­its Leo start­ed ear­li­er that year. The firm is based out of a vir­tu­al office suite used as a shared mail­ing address and meet­ing space for unre­lat­ed com­pa­nies.

    In the two years fol­low­ing its for­ma­tion, the BH Group received more than $4 mil­lion from the Judi­cial Cri­sis Net­work, a relat­ed group called the Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project and a third non­prof­it in the net­work called the Well­spring Com­mit­tee, all of them con­nect­ed to Leo through fund­ing, per­son­nel and the same accoun­tant, IRS fil­ings show. The groups described the pay­ments in IRS fil­ings as con­sult­ing, research and pub­lic rela­tions fees.

    Leo, who dis­closed BH Group as his employ­er in a cam­paign finance fil­ing, declined to say how much mon­ey he received from the com­pa­ny or pro­vide any oth­er details about it.

    “BH Group is a pri­vate firm whose team of pro­fes­sion­als, which includes Leonard Leo, pro­vides man­age­ment and con­sult­ing ser­vices to phil­an­thropists and non­prof­its,” a CRC spokesman for Leo said in a state­ment. “Like sim­i­lar firms on the Left, its clients are pri­vate as are the details of the work for them.”

    In Decem­ber 2016, while Leo worked on Trump’s tran­si­tion team, BH Group donat­ed $1 mil­lion to Trump’s inau­gur­al com­mit­tee, accord­ing to a cam­paign finance dis­clo­sure.

    The next year, Leo and his wife, Sal­ly, were named Stew­ards of Saint Peter by the Papal Foun­da­tion, an hon­or giv­en to those who pledge to donate $1 mil­lion or more for Vat­i­can ini­tia­tives world­wide.

    The Leos and their six chil­dren have lived in a McLean home that was pur­chased in 2010 for $710,000, accord­ing to real estate records. They paid off a 30-year mort­gage last August and two months lat­er bought a $3.3 mil­lion sum­mer home with 11 bed­rooms in an afflu­ent sea­side vil­lage on the coast of Maine. In a state­ment, Leo described the man­sion as “a retreat for our large fam­i­ly and for extend­ing hos­pi­tal­i­ty to our com­mu­ni­ty of per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al friends and co-work­ers.”
    ...

    And, of course, all of the infor­ma­tion in this 2019 piece pre­dates last year’s his­toric $1.6 bil­lion bequeath­ment from indus­tri­al­ist Barre Seid to Mar­ble Free­dom Trust, a ‘char­i­ty’ that only Leo con­trols. As pro­found as Leo’s influ­ence was in Sep­tem­ber of 2019, he’s much more pow­er­ful now. Espe­cial­ly pow­er­ful in his core role as a shield for bil­lion­aires from scruti­ny over their polit­i­cal ‘speech’. ‘Speech’ in the form of giv­ing mil­lions, or bil­lions, of dol­lars to peo­ple or Leo to spend on pub­lic per­sua­sion cam­paigns. Tax-free ‘non-par­ti­san’ pub­lic per­sua­sion cam­paigns, of course. Will the 2024 Leo-backed media cam­paigns ulti­mate­ly get financed by Charles Koch? Robert Mer­cer? Or off the inter­est earned on Barre Sei­d’s $1.6 bil­lion war chest? We’ll prob­a­bly nev­er find out, thanks to Leonard Leo’s dark mon­ey mas­tery. Well, that and the Cit­i­zen’s Unit­ed rul­ing com­pli­ments of Leo’s hand-picked con­ser­v­a­tive major­i­ty.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | May 28, 2023, 10:46 pm
  35. “No men­tion of Gin­ni, of course.” Those were the damn­ing instruc­tions issued by dark mon­ey over­lord Leonard Leo to fel­low CNP mem­ber Kellyanne Con­way back in 2011 as part of some sort of still-unex­plained series of pay­ments made to Gin­ni between June of 2011 and June of 2012 total­ly $80k in all. The pay­ments weren’t made direct­ly to Gin­ni but instead the Lib­er­ty Con­sult­ing for-prof­it con­sult­ing com­pa­ny she set up in Novem­ber of 2010. Recall how Gin­ni start­ed the ‘non­prof­it’ Tea Par­ty group Lib­er­ty Cen­tral in 2009 but stepped away due to con­flict of inter­est con­cerns. As we’re going to see in the fol­low­ing arti­cles, those were some very valid con­flict of inter­est con­cerns. By June of 2012, Leonard Leo had arranged for Kellyanne Con­way’s polling firm to bill a non-prof­it he con­trolled — the Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project, now know as the 85 Fund — with the instruct­ing of send­ing the billed pay­ments to Lib­er­ty Con­sult­ing. That’s what the “no men­tion of Gin­ni, of course” was all about. It was a secret pay­ment from Leonard Leo to Gin­ni Thomas.

    But it gets sleazier and more inces­tu­ous. First, recall how Leo was serv­ing on the board of Lib­er­ty Cen­tral after Thomas formed it in 2010. Also recall how Gin­ni Thomas report­ed­ly made over $120k as Lib­er­ty Cen­tral’s Pres­i­dent in 2010. So Gin­ni was get­ting a pret­ty hefty salary from an enti­ty that had Leo serv­ing on its when she stepped away from it over con­flict of inter­est con­cerns in Novem­ber 2010, only to have a secret pay­ment scheme arranged by Leo by June of 2011.

    It also turns out that pres­i­dent of the Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project in 2011 is the same man list­ed as the Lib­er­ty Cen­tral’s account in 2009 found­ing doc­u­ments: bil­lion­aire Neil Cork­ery. As we’ve seen, in addi­tion to being mem­bers of Opus Dei, bil­ion­aires Ann and Neil Cork­ery are a major force behind the Judi­cial Cri­sis Netork (JCN)/Concord Fund, which plays a major role in pub­lic rela­tions cam­paigns around judi­cial nom­i­na­tions. The biggest donor to JCN has been the Well­spring Com­mit­tee, a 501(c)(4) backed by the donor net­work oper­at­ed by the Cork­erys. When Well­spring was set up in 2008, it was actu­al­ly found­ed by the Koch broth­ers, and only lat­er hand­ed off to the Cork­erys.

    It’s the kind of inci­dent that should be the stuff of scan­dals. Should be. Instead, it’s the lat­est exam­ple of the Supreme Impuni­ty enjoyed by the chief jus­tices of the Supreme Court. But it’s not an impuni­ty exclu­sive­ly enjoyed by Jus­tice Thomas. It’s like this entire net­work has carved out a legal bribery niche, using dark mon­ey laws and inces­tu­ous insti­tu­tion­al rela­tion­ships as cov­er. And that was all before Leonard Leo was put sole­ly in charge of the $1.6 bil­lion Mar­ble Free­dom Trust polit­i­cal war chest. What he was doing in 2012 is child’s play com­pared to what he’s capa­ble of doing now.

    So what is Leonard Leo doing now, with that vast for­tune and even more dark mon­ey enti­ties at his dis­pos­al? We have no idea. Or at least lit­tle idea. We do the Mar­ble Free­dom Trust has already been deplet­ed down to about $1.2 bil­lion, thanks to the hun­dreds of mil­lions it’s already giv­en to the oth­er dark mon­ey enti­ties that were already under Leo’s con­trol. Enti­ties like the Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project (now the 85 Fund) or the JCN/Concord Fund, which, in turn, dole it out to even more dark mon­ey groups. And, ulti­mate­ly, enti­ties like CRC Advi­sors to run the media cam­paigns. Recall how CRC advi­sors has been rou­tine­ly select­ed by Leo-affil­i­at­ed enti­ties to con­duct the media com­po­nent of their pro­pa­gan­da cam­paigns. As we’re going to see in the fol­low­ing arti­cle, Leo joined CRC in 2020, around the same time he resigned as pres­i­dent of the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety (although he still sits on its board). And as we’re also going to see, CRC Advi­sors got a big new project last year. The kind of project that was obvi­ous­ly going to raise of host of con­flict of inter­est ques­tions: CRC Advi­sors is now doing pub­lic rela­tions for the Thomas fam­i­ly:

    The Dai­ly Beast

    Clarence Thomas’ Strange Pick to Pro­mote His Book Says It All

    Right-wing judi­cial activist Leonard Leo has been exert­ing influ­ence over the Supreme Court for three decades. So why is Clarence Thomas hir­ing Leo’s firm to do pub­lic rela­tions?

    Roger Sol­len­berg­er
    Polit­i­cal Reporter
    Pub­lished Mar. 08, 2022 4:56AM ET

    When Supreme Court Jus­tice Clarence Thomas was pro­mot­ing a new release of his 2007 mem­oir last Octo­ber, he made an inter­est­ing choice for his pub­lic rela­tions firm, a com­pa­ny run by one of the most influ­en­tial fig­ures in con­ser­v­a­tive legal cir­cles: Leonard Leo.

    Leo, the for­mer head of the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety and a top fundrais­er for right-wing judi­cia­ry activist groups, wasn’t just in charge of Thomas’ mem­oir; Leo’s PR firm, CRC Advi­sors, was also tasked with pro­mot­ing a Thomas doc­u­men­tary, and the firm was the reg­is­tered agent for four Thomas-cen­tric web domains.

    The inter­est­ing part of this choice is not that Leo’s firm was inca­pable of han­dling the work—far from it. What makes Thomas’ deci­sion notable is that Leo hap­pens to have a vest­ed inter­est in the Supreme Court, and his dark mon­ey net­work active­ly tries to influ­ence rul­ings.

    The rev­e­la­tions of Leo and Thomas’ busi­ness rela­tion­ship offers new evi­dence othe most pow­er­ful con­ser­v­a­tive judi­cial activistin the coun­try. And while it might not be an instant­ly damn­ing smok­ing gun, experts say the connection—where Thomas stands to gain financially—raises fur­ther ques­tions about the arch-con­ser­v­a­tive justice’s deep and shady ties to a sprawl­ing net­work of dark mon­ey orga­ni­za­tions and right-wing activist groups, many of which have busi­ness before him.

    The news also comes at a time of dwin­dling pub­lic faith in the Supreme Court’s impar­tial­i­ty. That faith hit an all-time low last Sep­tem­ber, the month before the audiobook’s press release.

    Paul Collins, pro­fes­sor of polit­i­cal sci­ence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mass­a­chu­setts at Amherst and author of sev­er­al books about the high court, called Thomas’ spe­cif­ic choice of Leo’s firm, of all avail­able options, “strange” and “unnec­es­sary.”

    “It sig­nals that this world of the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety is even small­er than we thought,” Collins told The Dai­ly Beast.

    That world was already thought to be minis­cule, with Leo’s hand seem­ing­ly nev­er far from the court’s affairs.

    The fore­most of a tight cadre of hyper­con­ser­v­a­tive legal activists, Leo has raised hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars over the three decades on behalf of right-wing dark mon­ey groups to influ­ence the fed­er­al judi­cia­ry and Supreme Court. He advised and per­suad­ed Repub­li­can pres­i­dents George W. Bush and Don­ald Trump in their appoint­ments of Jus­tices Samuel Ali­to, Neil Gor­such, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Bar­rett, and Chief Jus­tice John Roberts—and prepped Jus­tice Thomas for his nom­i­na­tion hear­ings.

    Leo is also the hub of a net­work of dark mon­ey groups which rou­tine­ly, and anony­mous­ly, fund and join argu­ments before the Supreme Court—bankrolling what researchers have called an “ami­cus flotil­la.”

    His net­work has most recent­ly tak­en the shape of a sprawl­ing legal effort focused on influ­enc­ing elec­tion admin­is­tra­tion, includ­ing mis­lead­ing alle­ga­tions of impro­pri­ety. The Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety, the legal activist group syn­ony­mous with Leo, has been called “the sin­gle most influ­en­tial advo­ca­cy orga­ni­za­tion in Wash­ing­ton.”

    But Leo’s affil­i­a­tions with the court are espe­cial­ly height­ened when it comes to Jus­tice Thomas.

    Leo made Thomas the god­fa­ther of one of his chil­dren, and, accord­ing to The New York Times, has host­ed the jus­tice on vaca­tion at his New Eng­land get­away. Thomas’ wife, Gin­ni Thomas, was also the sub­ject of a recent pro­file by the New York­er’s Jane May­er, titled, “Is Gin­ni Thomas a Threat to The Supreme Court?” It detailed the stag­ger­ing extent and depth of con­nec­tions between the justice’s wife and con­ser­v­a­tive groups.

    Some of those orga­ni­za­tions are tied with Leo, and, as May­er report­ed, many have mat­ters before the court. At least one of them has tapped CRC to han­dle its pub­lic rela­tions.

    Leo, whom Gin­ni Thomas con­sid­ers a men­tor, joined CRC Advi­sors in 2020, after step­ping down from his posi­tion as vice pres­i­dent of the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety. (He still co-chairs the board.) Leo told Axios at the time that CRC planned to pump a “min­i­mum of $10 mil­lion” into judi­cial advo­ca­cy issues ahead of the 2020 elec­tion.

    ...

    CRC’s press announce­ment for the Thomas mem­oir—My Grandfather’s Son—pro­motes a new release in audio­book and Kin­dle for­mats. It also quotes two con­ser­v­a­tive activists, and informs media that they can con­tact a CRC Advi­sors offi­cial if they want to land an inter­view with either of them.

    One of the offi­cials, Mark Pao­let­ta, worked on Jus­tice Thomas’ nom­i­na­tion; the oth­er, Car­rie Sev­eri­no, clerked for him and cur­rent­ly runs the Judi­cial Cri­sis Net­work, a con­ser­v­a­tive group linked to Leo which has poured mil­lions into influ­enc­ing judi­cial nom­i­na­tions.

    CRC Advi­sors was also cho­sen to pro­mote the crit­i­cal­ly panned Thomas doc­u­men­tary, Cre­at­ed Equal, which Vari­ety called “a two-hour infomer­cial for the decen­cy, the com­pe­tence, and the con­ser­v­a­tive role-mod­el aspi­ra­tional­ism of Clarence Thomas.”.

    (CNBC report­ed that the documentary’s producer—a Trump appointee—had tapped dona­tions to his non­prof­it to help fund his pri­vate pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny.)

    CRC has also reg­is­tered sev­er­al web domains relat­ed to Jus­tice Thomas, includ­ing “clarencethomas.org,” “clarencethomas.us,” “justicethomas.us,” and “theanitahillcase.com,” a ref­er­ence to the cred­i­ble sex­u­al harass­ment alle­ga­tions that marked Thomas’ bit­ter nom­i­na­tion hear­ings in 1991.

    The rela­tion­ship car­ries the fur­ther con­text of Leo’s activism, fundrais­ing, and con­nec­tion to cas­es before the court. This extends not just to the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety, but to CRC itself, which with­in months of pro­mot­ing the mem­oir pub­lished mul­ti­ple press releas­es about attempts to influ­ence Supreme Court cas­es, includ­ing a peti­tion to knock down the vac­cine man­date.

    ...

    Stephen Gillers, an expert on legal ethics at New York Uni­ver­si­ty School of Law, said that while the con­nec­tion between Leo, CRC, and Thomas bears report­ing, it doesn’t hit an offi­cial eth­i­cal bar—partly, he said, because the bar is so much high­er for Supreme Court jus­tices than for any oth­er fed­er­al judge.

    “The ethics rules gov­ern­ing jus­tices are much nar­row­er than the rules gov­ern­ing oth­er fed­er­al judges. So on the ques­tion of dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion, in this case it’s too atten­u­at­ed, as this case doesn’t sug­gest that those rules have been vio­lat­ed,” Gillers explained, not­ing that “Gin­ni Thomas is a class by itself; noth­ing comes close to the harm that does to our courts.”

    On the issue of CRC, Gillers said, “There’s a dif­fer­ence between whether some­thing is news­wor­thy, and whether it cross­es a legal line. This instance is news­wor­thy, but it doesn’t cross a line.”

    “Thomas of course has a right to hire a PR firm to sell his book and get atten­tion to it. Now, it may appear to many peo­ple as unseem­ly, but that’s not a legal ques­tion,” Gillers said. “In my view, jus­tices should not act in a way that casts sus­pi­cion on the court just because they can.”

    Arte­mus Ward, a pro­fes­sor of polit­i­cal sci­ence at North­ern Illi­nois Uni­ver­si­ty who has writ­ten exten­sive­ly on the pol­i­tics of the Supreme Court, said that the mat­ter could raise polit­i­cal prob­lems for Thomas.

    Ward point­ed to a 1960s con­ser­v­a­tive cam­paign to force the res­ig­na­tion of Supreme Court Jus­tice Abe For­t­as, a lib­er­al jus­tice “got hound­ed out by con­ser­v­a­tives because of some alleged eth­i­cal breach­es regard­ing his finances, such as receiv­ing speak­ers fees.”

    “It was nev­er ful­ly clear just what the mon­ey was or whether he had crossed eth­i­cal lines, but con­ser­v­a­tives held hear­ings to drum him out of office because they saw him as a lib­er­al crony,” he said. “The ques­tion with Thomas is whether the endgame for Democ­rats is to hound him out of office before he’s ready to go.”

    ———–

    “Clarence Thomas’ Strange Pick to Pro­mote His Book Says It All” by Roger Sol­len­berg­er; The Dai­ly Beast; 03/08/2022

    “Stephen Gillers, an expert on legal ethics at New York Uni­ver­si­ty School of Law, said that while the con­nec­tion between Leo, CRC, and Thomas bears report­ing, it doesn’t hit an offi­cial eth­i­cal bar—part­ly, he said, because the bar is so much high­er for Supreme Court jus­tices than for any oth­er fed­er­al judge.”

    This is fine. Every­thing is fine. At least from a tech­ni­cal legal per­spec­tive. Sure, it’s eth­i­cal­ly unseem­ly for CRC Advi­sors — a media firm now Leonard Leo joined in 2020 — to take on the role of pro­mot­ing a doc­u­men­tary about Clarence Thomas and host mul­ti­ple Thomas-cen­tric web domains. Unseem­ly, but legal:

    ...
    Leo, the for­mer head of the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety and a top fundrais­er for right-wing judi­cia­ry activist groups, wasn’t just in charge of Thomas’ mem­oir; Leo’s PR firm, CRC Advi­sors, was also tasked with pro­mot­ing a Thomas doc­u­men­tary, and the firm was the reg­is­tered agent for four Thomas-cen­tric web domains.

    The inter­est­ing part of this choice is not that Leo’s firm was inca­pable of han­dling the work—far from it. What makes Thomas’ deci­sion notable is that Leo hap­pens to have a vest­ed inter­est in the Supreme Court, and his dark mon­ey net­work active­ly tries to influ­ence rul­ings.

    ...

    Leo, whom Gin­ni Thomas con­sid­ers a men­tor, joined CRC Advi­sors in 2020, after step­ping down from his posi­tion as vice pres­i­dent of the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety. (He still co-chairs the board.) Leo told Axios at the time that CRC planned to pump a “min­i­mum of $10 mil­lion” into judi­cial advo­ca­cy issues ahead of the 2020 elec­tion.

    ...

    CRC has also reg­is­tered sev­er­al web domains relat­ed to Jus­tice Thomas, includ­ing “clarencethomas.org,” “clarencethomas.us,” “justicethomas.us,” and “theanitahillcase.com,” a ref­er­ence to the cred­i­ble sex­u­al harass­ment alle­ga­tions that marked Thomas’ bit­ter nom­i­na­tion hear­ings in 1991.

    The rela­tion­ship car­ries the fur­ther con­text of Leo’s activism, fundrais­ing, and con­nec­tion to cas­es before the court. This extends not just to the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety, but to CRC itself, which with­in months of pro­mot­ing the mem­oir pub­lished mul­ti­ple press releas­es about attempts to influ­ence Supreme Court cas­es, includ­ing a peti­tion to knock down the vac­cine man­date.
    ...

    And note who else we find work­ing as CRC: long-time Thomas fam­i­ly-friend Mark Pao­let­ta and CNP mem­ber Car­rie Sev­eri­no from the “Judi­cial Cri­sis Net­work” (JCN) that Leo is also deeply involved with (now renamed the Con­cord Fund). Recall how the JCN was instru­men­tal in orga­niz­ing the GOP stance in 2016 fol­low­ing the death of Antonin Scalia that no Oba­ma nom­i­nees to replace Scalia would be con­sid­ered until after the 2016 elec­tion. Also recall how CNP mem­ber Gary Marx found­ed the JCN and is basi­cal­ly a sub­sidiary of the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety. As we should, the JCN is also a client of the CRC. So when we see how the CRC is lead­ing the pub­lic rela­tions for the Thomases and refer­ring to peo­ple like Mark Pao­let­ta and Car­rie Sev­eri­no for relat­ed inter­views, it’s a reflec­tion of just how the pro­mo­tion of the Thomases’ lega­cy dou­bles as an excuse to get paid for pro­vid­ed ‘pro­mo­tion­al ser­vices’:

    ...
    CRC’s press announce­ment for the Thomas memoir—My Grandfather’s Son—promotes a new release in audio­book and Kin­dle for­mats. It also quotes two con­ser­v­a­tive activists, and informs media that they can con­tact a CRC Advi­sors offi­cial if they want to land an inter­view with either of them.

    One of the offi­cials, Mark Pao­let­ta, worked on Jus­tice Thomas’ nom­i­na­tion; the oth­er, Car­rie Sev­eri­no, clerked for him and cur­rent­ly runs the Judi­cial Cri­sis Net­work, a con­ser­v­a­tive group linked to Leo which has poured mil­lions into influ­enc­ing judi­cial nom­i­na­tions.

    CRC Advi­sors was also cho­sen to pro­mote the crit­i­cal­ly panned Thomas doc­u­men­tary, Cre­at­ed Equal, which Vari­ety called “a two-hour infomer­cial for the decen­cy, the com­pe­tence, and the con­ser­v­a­tive role-mod­el aspi­ra­tional­ism of Clarence Thomas.”.

    (CNBC report­ed that the documentary’s producer—a Trump appointee—had tapped dona­tions to his non­prof­it to help fund his pri­vate pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny.)
    ...

    And that report from March of 2022 brings us to the fol­low­ing NY Times Report from last month pro­vid­ing a glimpse into how Leo has set­tled into role as the mas­ter of $1.6 bil­lion Mar­ble Free­dom Trust. As the report describes, Leo has indeed been quite busy dol­ing mon­ey out to var­i­ous groups. Specif­i­cal­ly, dol­ing mon­ey out to oth­er groups that he sits on the board of and con­trols. And then appar­ent­ly direct those enti­ties to, in turn, hire CRC Advi­sors. It under­scores one of the more remark­able aspects of Leonard Leo’s $1.6 bil­lion polit­i­cal trea­sure trove: that trove is get­ting spent on ser­vices pro­vid­ed by the rest of Leonard Leo’s net­work of dark mon­ey enti­ties. Which, of course, only serves to effec­tive­ly make this entire net­work even dark­er and more opaque:

    The New York Times

    Group Tied to Influ­en­tial Con­ser­v­a­tive Activist Spent $183 Mil­lion in a Year

    The activist, Leonard Leo, has been instru­men­tal in push­ing the fed­er­al judi­cia­ry to the right. A new tax fil­ing offers a glimpse of the deep pool of mon­ey flow­ing into con­ser­v­a­tive caus­es.

    By Rebec­ca Davis O’Brien
    May 12, 2023

    A deep-pock­et­ed non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion found­ed by the con­ser­v­a­tive activist Leonard A. Leo gave away $182.7 mil­lion in a year’s time, a new tax fil­ing shows, demon­strat­ing how aggres­sive­ly it has worked behind the scenes to prop up oth­er groups and caus­es on the right.

    The orga­ni­za­tion, Mar­ble Free­dom Trust, was formed in 2020 and was fund­ed by a gift of more than $1.6 bil­lion — an extra­or­di­nary wind­fall that result­ed from a sin­gle donor’s con­tri­bu­tion of 100 per­cent of a company’s shares before the com­pa­ny was sold, leav­ing Mar­ble with the pro­ceeds of the sale, The New York Times report­ed last year.

    ...

    Mar­ble Free­dom Trust, a tax-exempt 501(c)(4) “social wel­fare” orga­ni­za­tion, is a cen­ter­piece of Mr. Leo’s net­work. The group’s stat­ed mis­sion is to “main­tain and expand human free­dom con­sis­tent with the val­ues and ideals set forth in the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence and the Con­sti­tu­tion.”

    It was not imme­di­ate­ly clear from the group’s record of con­tri­bu­tions how Mar­ble was real­iz­ing that mis­sion. The recent fil­ing for Mar­ble — a tax record for the year end­ing on April 30, 2022, that was obtained by the lib­er­al trans­paren­cy group Accountable.US — does not reveal much about the ulti­mate des­ti­na­tion of the $182.7 mil­lion.

    In the year end­ing last April, accord­ing to the fil­ing, Mar­ble gave $153.8 mil­lion to the Schwab Char­i­ta­ble Fund, a man­ag­er of donor-advised funds, which allow peo­ple and enti­ties to direct their deposits over time into char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tions, includ­ing some polit­i­cal­ly inclined groups and insti­tu­tions.

    Anoth­er $28.9 mil­lion went to the Con­cord Fund, a con­ser­v­a­tive advo­ca­cy orga­ni­za­tion. For­mer­ly known as the Judi­cial Cri­sis Net­work, the group has act­ed as a fund­ing hub in the past, giv­ing tens of mil­lions of dol­lars in grants to allied non­prof­it groups and sup­port­ing in-house projects, includ­ing oppo­si­tion to Democ­rats’ attempts to expand vot­ing access.

    From those two orga­ni­za­tions, it is impos­si­ble to direct­ly trace where the Mar­ble mon­ey went.

    Dur­ing that approx­i­mate time peri­od, accord­ing to Schwab Charitable’s tax fil­ings, Schwab Char­i­ta­ble gave $141.5 mil­lion to anoth­er group linked to Mr. Leo, the 85 Fund — a non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion that says its mis­sion is “to edu­cate the pub­lic and sup­port activ­i­ties that high­light the rela­tion­ship between struc­tur­al lim­its on gov­ern­ment pow­er and the pro­tec­tion of our dig­ni­ty and our free­dom.”

    The 85 Fund backs the Hon­est Elec­tions Project, a con­ser­v­a­tive group found­ed in 2020 that has worked in states across the coun­try to restrict vot­ing access.

    Some of the mon­ey that flows through Mr. Leo’s net­work of non­prof­it groups goes to for-prof­it com­pa­nies he con­trols. In 2021, the 85 Fund paid $21.75 mil­lion to CRC Advi­sors, a con­sult­ing firm run by Mr. Leo, accord­ing to the 85 Fund’s tax fil­ings.

    Sev­er­al oth­er enti­ties in Mr. Leo’s net­work, includ­ing the Con­cord Fund, have also paid CRC Advi­sors mil­lions of dol­lars in the last two years, tax records show.

    “Mar­ble Free­dom Trust is Leonard Leo’s bil­lion-dol­lar slush fund to erode democ­ra­cy,” said Kyle Her­rig, the pres­i­dent of Accountable.US. “With all this mon­ey under his con­trol, Leo can push his extreme agen­da by influ­enc­ing con­ser­v­a­tive law­mak­ers on Capi­tol Hill, deploy­ing state attor­neys gen­er­al to do his bid­ding and mov­ing extreme bills in state leg­is­la­tures.”

    In a state­ment, Mr. Leo said that CRC Advi­sors “employs near­ly 100 best-in-class pro­fes­sion­als whose exper­tise goes across all aspects of pub­lic affairs, and we deliv­er results that are lead­ing the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment to win more than it has ever before.”

    Marble’s grants last year declined slight­ly from the pre­vi­ous year, when the group report­ed near­ly $229 mil­lion in grants, includ­ing to Con­cord and the 85 Fund.

    Since the $1.6 bil­lion wind­fall — which came from Barre Seid, an elec­tron­ics man­u­fac­tur­ing mogul — Mar­ble has received no con­tri­bu­tions or grants, but it did report $26.6 mil­lion in invest­ment income last year. As of about a year ago, Mar­ble still had $1.2 bil­lion to spend.

    Marble’s tax fil­ing also shows that Mr. Leo’s salary for his part-time role at the com­pa­ny increased to $400,000 from $350,000.

    Mr. Leo’s work, and his long­time rela­tion­ship with Jus­tice Clarence Thomas, have come under new scruti­ny recent­ly. The Wash­ing­ton Post report­ed last week that Mr. Leo had arranged for Jus­tice Thomas’s wife, the con­ser­v­a­tive activist Gin­ni Thomas, to be paid tens of thou­sands of dol­lars for con­sult­ing work, and had urged to keep her name off the paper­work.

    In a state­ment, Mr. Leo said the pay­ment did not present a con­flict of inter­est with the court. “It is no secret that Gin­ni Thomas has a long his­to­ry of work­ing on issues with­in the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment,” he said. “The work she did here did not involve any­thing con­nect­ed with either the court’s busi­ness or with oth­er legal issues.”

    ————-

    “Group Tied to Influ­en­tial Con­ser­v­a­tive Activist Spent $183 Mil­lion in a Year” By Rebec­ca Davis O’Brien; The New York Times; 05/12/2023

    ““Mar­ble Free­dom Trust is Leonard Leo’s bil­lion-dol­lar slush fund to erode democ­ra­cy,” said Kyle Her­rig, the pres­i­dent of Accountable.US. “With all this mon­ey under his con­trol, Leo can push his extreme agen­da by influ­enc­ing con­ser­v­a­tive law­mak­ers on Capi­tol Hill, deploy­ing state attor­neys gen­er­al to do his bid­ding and mov­ing extreme bills in state leg­is­la­tures.””

    A bil­lion-dol­lar slush fund to erode democ­ra­cy, entire­ly under Leonard Leo’s con­trol. More than a bil­lion dol­lars still, despite the hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars Mar­ble Free­dom Trust has already giv­en out to oth­er Leo-con­trolled enti­ties like the 85 Fund, pre­vi­ous­ly known as the Hon­est Elec­tions Project (HEP), and oth­er dark mon­ey enti­ties. Dark mon­ey enti­ties that, in turn, gave the mon­ey out fur­ther. Lay­ers of dark mon­ey obfus­ca­tion at work between the Mar­ble Trust and the ulti­mate ben­e­fi­cia­ries:

    ...
    Mar­ble Free­dom Trust, a tax-exempt 501(c)(4) “social wel­fare” orga­ni­za­tion, is a cen­ter­piece of Mr. Leo’s net­work. The group’s stat­ed mis­sion is to “main­tain and expand human free­dom con­sis­tent with the val­ues and ideals set forth in the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence and the Con­sti­tu­tion.”

    It was not imme­di­ate­ly clear from the group’s record of con­tri­bu­tions how Mar­ble was real­iz­ing that mis­sion. The recent fil­ing for Mar­ble — a tax record for the year end­ing on April 30, 2022, that was obtained by the lib­er­al trans­paren­cy group Accountable.US — does not reveal much about the ulti­mate des­ti­na­tion of the $182.7 mil­lion.

    In the year end­ing last April, accord­ing to the fil­ing, Mar­ble gave $153.8 mil­lion to the Schwab Char­i­ta­ble Fund, a man­ag­er of donor-advised funds, which allow peo­ple and enti­ties to direct their deposits over time into char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tions, includ­ing some polit­i­cal­ly inclined groups and insti­tu­tions.

    Anoth­er $28.9 mil­lion went to the Con­cord Fund, a con­ser­v­a­tive advo­ca­cy orga­ni­za­tion. For­mer­ly known as the Judi­cial Cri­sis Net­work, the group has act­ed as a fund­ing hub in the past, giv­ing tens of mil­lions of dol­lars in grants to allied non­prof­it groups and sup­port­ing in-house projects, includ­ing oppo­si­tion to Democ­rats’ attempts to expand vot­ing access.

    From those two orga­ni­za­tions, it is impos­si­ble to direct­ly trace where the Mar­ble mon­ey went.

    Dur­ing that approx­i­mate time peri­od, accord­ing to Schwab Charitable’s tax fil­ings, Schwab Char­i­ta­ble gave $141.5 mil­lion to anoth­er group linked to Mr. Leo, the 85 Fund — a non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion that says its mis­sion is “to edu­cate the pub­lic and sup­port activ­i­ties that high­light the rela­tion­ship between struc­tur­al lim­its on gov­ern­ment pow­er and the pro­tec­tion of our dig­ni­ty and our free­dom.”

    The 85 Fund backs the Hon­est Elec­tions Project, a con­ser­v­a­tive group found­ed in 2020 that has worked in states across the coun­try to restrict vot­ing access.

    ...

    Marble’s grants last year declined slight­ly from the pre­vi­ous year, when the group report­ed near­ly $229 mil­lion in grants, includ­ing to Con­cord and the 85 Fund.

    Since the $1.6 bil­lion wind­fall — which came from Barre Seid, an elec­tron­ics man­u­fac­tur­ing mogul — Mar­ble has received no con­tri­bu­tions or grants, but it did report $26.6 mil­lion in invest­ment income last year. As of about a year ago, Mar­ble still had $1.2 bil­lion to spend.
    ...

    And as we should expect, when these Leo-con­trolled dark mon­ey enti­ties need­ed to run media oper­a­tions, they hired CRC. As we saw above, it was 2020 when Leo for­mal­ly joined the CRC. So when we see this surge in spend­ing on CRC ser­vices from Leo-con­trolled enti­ties over the past two years, you have to won­der how much of that surge in spend­ing is ulti­mate­ly get­ting pock­et­ed by Leo:

    ...
    Some of the mon­ey that flows through Mr. Leo’s net­work of non­prof­it groups goes to for-prof­it com­pa­nies he con­trols. In 2021, the 85 Fund paid $21.75 mil­lion to CRC Advi­sors, a con­sult­ing firm run by Mr. Leo, accord­ing to the 85 Fund’s tax fil­ings.

    Sev­er­al oth­er enti­ties in Mr. Leo’s net­work, includ­ing the Con­cord Fund, have also paid CRC Advi­sors mil­lions of dol­lars in the last two years, tax records show.

    ...

    In a state­ment, Mr. Leo said that CRC Advi­sors “employs near­ly 100 best-in-class pro­fes­sion­als whose exper­tise goes across all aspects of pub­lic affairs, and we deliv­er results that are lead­ing the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment to win more than it has ever before.”
    ...

    And that brings us to the rather remark­able salary Leo is mak­ing off the Mar­ble Trust alone: Leo’s salary for his part-time work went from $350k to 400k. Because not. The guy can pay him­self what­ev­er he want. And poten­tial­ly any­one else he wants to pay off for what­ev­er rea­son. And it’s not like Leo does­n’t have a track record of doing exact­ly that: it turns out Leo was arrang­ing for pay­ments to Gin­ni Thomas back when Thomas was still work­ing for the Lib­er­ty Con­sult­ing for-prof­it con­sult­ing firm she set up back in Novem­ber 2010 fol­low­ing con­flict-of-inter­est con­cerns over the Lib­er­ty Cen­tral ‘non­prof­it’ she set up ear­li­er that year. Secret pay­ments that kept her name off the paper­work:

    ...
    Marble’s tax fil­ing also shows that Mr. Leo’s salary for his part-time role at the com­pa­ny increased to $400,000 from $350,000.

    Mr. Leo’s work, and his long­time rela­tion­ship with Jus­tice Clarence Thomas, have come under new scruti­ny recent­ly. The Wash­ing­ton Post report­ed last week that Mr. Leo had arranged for Jus­tice Thomas’s wife, the con­ser­v­a­tive activist Gin­ni Thomas, to be paid tens of thou­sands of dol­lars for con­sult­ing work, and had urged to keep her name off the paper­work.

    In a state­ment, Mr. Leo said the pay­ment did not present a con­flict of inter­est with the court. “It is no secret that Gin­ni Thomas has a long his­to­ry of work­ing on issues with­in the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment,” he said. “The work she did here did not involve any­thing con­nect­ed with either the court’s busi­ness or with oth­er legal issues.”
    ...

    How many hours did Leo have to put in for that part-time pay of $400k last year? Who knows. But this a good time to recall how Gin­ni Thomas report­ed­ly made over $120k as Lib­er­ty Cen­tral’s Pres­i­dent in 2010, the year she start­ed the group, only to go on to start the for-prof­it Lib­er­ty Con­sult­ing lat­er that year. As the fol­low­ing report describes, he arranged for Kellyanne Con­way’s polling firm to bill a dark mon­ey enti­ty he con­trolled — the Judi­cial Elec­tions Project (now the 85 Fund) — tens of thou­sands of dol­lars and use that mon­ey to pay Gin­ni Thomas in a way that leaves her name off of the trans­ac­tion. That arrange­ment paid Lib­er­ty Con­sult­ing $80k from June 2011 to June 2012:

    The Wash­ing­ton Post

    Judi­cial activist direct­ed fees to Clarence Thomas’s wife, urged ‘no men­tion of Gin­ni’

    Leonard Leo told GOP poll­ster Kellyanne Con­way to bill non­prof­it, then use mon­ey to pay spouse of Supreme Court jus­tice

    By Emma Brown, Shawn Boburg and Jonathan O’Con­nell
    May 4, 2023 at 7:15 p.m. EDT

    Con­ser­v­a­tive judi­cial activist Leonard Leo arranged for the wife of Supreme Court Jus­tice Clarence Thomas to be paid tens of thou­sands of dol­lars for con­sult­ing work just over a decade ago, spec­i­fy­ing that her name be left off billing paper­work, accord­ing to doc­u­ments reviewed by The Wash­ing­ton Post.

    In Jan­u­ary 2012, Leo instruct­ed the GOP poll­ster Kellyanne Con­way to bill a non­prof­it group he advis­es and use that mon­ey to pay Vir­ginia “Gin­ni” Thomas, the doc­u­ments show. The same year, the non­prof­it, the Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project, filed a brief to the Supreme Court in a land­mark vot­ing rights case.

    Leo, a key fig­ure in a net­work of non­prof­its that has worked to sup­port the nom­i­na­tions of con­ser­v­a­tive judges, told Con­way that he want­ed her to “give” Gin­ni Thomas “anoth­er $25K,” the doc­u­ments show. He empha­sized that the paper­work should have “No men­tion of Gin­ni, of course.”

    Conway’s firm, the Polling Com­pa­ny, sent the Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project a $25,000 bill that day. Per Leo’s instruc­tions, it list­ed the pur­pose as “Sup­ple­ment for Con­sti­tu­tion Polling and Opin­ion Con­sult­ing,” the doc­u­ments show.

    In all, accord­ing to the doc­u­ments, the Polling Com­pa­ny paid Thomas’s firm, Lib­er­ty Con­sult­ing, $80,000 between June 2011 and June 2012, and it expect­ed to pay $20,000 more before the end of 2012. The doc­u­ments reviewed by The Post do not indi­cate the pre­cise nature of any work Thomas did for the Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project or the Polling Com­pa­ny.

    The arrange­ment reveals that Leo, a long­time Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety leader and friend of the Thomases, has func­tioned not only as an ide­o­log­i­cal ally of Clarence Thomas’s but also has worked to pro­vide finan­cial remu­ner­a­tion to his fam­i­ly. And it shows Leo arrang­ing for the mon­ey to be drawn from a non­prof­it that soon would have an inter­est before the court.

    In response to ques­tions from The Post, Leo issued a state­ment defend­ing the Thomases. “It is no secret that Gin­ni Thomas has a long his­to­ry of work­ing on issues with­in the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment, and part of that work has involved gaug­ing pub­lic atti­tudes and sen­ti­ment. The work she did here did not involve any­thing con­nect­ed with either the Court’s busi­ness or with oth­er legal issues,” he wrote. “As an advi­sor to JEP I have long been sup­port­ive of its opin­ion research relat­ing to lim­it­ed gov­ern­ment, and The Polling Com­pa­ny, along with Gin­ni Thomas’s help, has been an invalu­able resource for gaug­ing pub­lic atti­tudes.”

    Of the effort to keep Thomas’s name off paper­work, Leo said: “Know­ing how dis­re­spect­ful, mali­cious and gos­sipy peo­ple can be, I have always tried to pro­tect the pri­va­cy of Jus­tice Thomas and Gin­ni.”

    Leo’s state­ment did not address ques­tions about whether he had arranged oth­er work for Gin­ni Thomas or how much mon­ey he direct­ed to her in all from the non­prof­it.

    ...

    In Decem­ber 2012, the Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project sub­mit­ted an ami­cus brief in Shel­by Coun­ty v. Hold­er, a case chal­leng­ing a land­mark civ­il rights law aimed at pro­tect­ing minor­i­ty vot­ers. The court struck down a for­mu­la in the Vot­ing Rights Act that deter­mined which states had to obtain fed­er­al clear­ance before chang­ing their vot­ing rules and pro­ce­dures. Clarence Thomas was part of the 5‑to‑4 major­i­ty.

    Thomas issued a con­cur­ring opin­ion in the case, argu­ing that the pre­clear­ance require­ment itself is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. Thomas’s opin­ion, which was con­sis­tent with a pre­vi­ous opin­ion he wrote, favored the out­come the Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project and sev­er­al oth­er con­ser­v­a­tive orga­ni­za­tions had advo­cat­ed in their ami­cus briefs. He did not cite the Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project brief.

    Legal ethics experts dis­agreed about whether the arrange­ment out­lined by Leo and the pay­ments from Con­way should have led Thomas to recuse him­self from the Shel­by case.

    Fed­er­al law requires jus­tices to recuse if their “impar­tial­i­ty might rea­son­ably be ques­tioned,” a stan­dard that has not been well-defined as applied to fil­ers of ami­cus briefs, the experts said. Law pro­fes­sor Kath­leen Clark of Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty said that if the Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project paid Gin­ni Thomas $100,000 in the year and a half before it filed its brief, the size and tim­ing of the pay­ments would have been enough to cast doubt on Clarence Thomas’s impar­tial­i­ty and require his recusal. Law pro­fes­sor Stephen Gillers of New York Uni­ver­si­ty, how­ev­er, said that as the rule is now inter­pret­ed, the link appeared too “atten­u­at­ed” to require recusal.

    But both experts said the arrange­ment shows that cur­rent ethics rules and dis­clo­sure require­ments fail to pro­tect pub­lic con­fi­dence in the inde­pen­dence of the courts. For exam­ple, although jus­tices must report the name of com­pa­nies that pay their spous­es, they are not required to report the names of the com­pa­nies’ clients. In this case, even if there were such a require­ment, it is not clear that the Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project would have been list­ed as a client, because the fees intend­ed for Gin­ni Thomas were to go through Con­way.

    “The idea that Leonard Leo, who has a pas­sion­ate ide­o­log­i­cal inter­est in how the court rules and who has worked hard for years to advance that inter­est, could pick up the phone and gen­er­ate sub­stan­tial com­pen­sa­tion to Vir­ginia Thomas, which also ben­e­fits Clarence Thomas — that idea is bad for the coun­try, the court and the rule of law,” Gillers said. “It’s not the way the Supreme Court should do its busi­ness or allow its busi­ness to be done.”

    The effort to keep Gin­ni Thomas’s name off paper­work makes the arrange­ment seem “more egre­gious,” said Clark.

    In his state­ment to The Post, Leo said that Gin­ni Thomas’s work had no bear­ing on her husband’s opin­ions.

    “I have known Clarence and Gin­ni Thomas since 1990. They are dear friends and are peo­ple of tremen­dous good will and integri­ty. Any­body who thinks that Jus­tice Thomas is influ­enced in his work by what oth­ers say or do, includ­ing his wife Gin­ni, is com­plete­ly igno­rant of who this man is and what he stands for. And any­body who thinks Gin­ni Thomas would seek to influ­ence the Supreme Court’s work is com­plete­ly igno­rant of the respect she has for her hus­band and the impor­tant role that he and his col­leagues play in our soci­ety.”

    Leo, 57, has for years been the behind-the-scenes leader of a net­work of inter­lock­ing non­prof­its that has raised and spent hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars to sup­port con­ser­v­a­tive judges and caus­es. Mar­ble Free­dom Trust, one of the orga­ni­za­tions Leo chairs, received a con­tri­bu­tion worth $1.6 bil­lion in 2020 from a Chica­go busi­ness­man, Barre Seid.

    The Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project was part of that net­work, although Leo was not list­ed on its tax fil­ings or incor­po­ra­tion records. Leo’s allies found­ed the Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project in 2004. Its mis­sion was to “con­duct research and edu­cate the pub­lic on the role of the judi­cia­ry as laid out in the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion,” accord­ing to its tax fil­ings. It secured tax-exempt sta­tus in 2011 and was not ini­tial­ly well-fund­ed, fil­ing paper­work with the IRS indi­cat­ing it brought in less than $50,000 annu­al­ly.

    In 2012, it received about $1.5 mil­lion from donors whose iden­ti­ties were not pub­licly dis­closed, the tax fil­ings show. The Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project spent $150,000 on “polling” that year, accord­ing to its tax fil­ing. The fil­ing does not iden­ti­fy which firm did the work.

    The pres­i­dent of the Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project that year was Neil Cork­ery, a Leo ally and book­keep­er for sev­er­al of his non­prof­it groups. Cork­ery cer­ti­fied on the group’s 2012 tax fil­ing that no one oth­er than the group’s offi­cers or key employ­ees had con­trol over the non­prof­it.

    ...

    Leo’s ties to the Thomases go back decades and span their per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al lives.

    Leo advised Clarence Thomas through his con­tentious con­fir­ma­tion process in the ear­ly 1990s and made Thomas the god­fa­ther of one of his chil­dren. Leo also has host­ed the jus­tice at his New Eng­land vaca­tion home, accord­ing to the New York Times.

    At a Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety event in 2018, Thomas shared a stage with Leo and jok­ing­ly told him, “You’re the Num­ber Three most pow­er­ful per­son in the world.”

    The year before that, Gin­ni Thomas called Leo a “men­tor to me” and “a hero” when she hon­ored him with one of her Impact awards for con­ser­v­a­tive activists.

    “Leonard Leo has sin­gle-hand­ed­ly changed the face of the judi­cia­ry,” she said at the awards din­ner, held at what was then the Trump Inter­na­tion­al Hotel in Wash­ing­ton. “He has many hats. That isn’t even all he does. He does not real­ly tell all that he does. But I know enough to know the man is a force of nature.”

    In 2009, when Thomas found­ed a tea par­ty-aligned non­prof­it called Lib­er­ty Cen­tral, Leo served on the board, tax fil­ings show. Cork­ery was the nonprofit’s accoun­tant, pub­lic records show.

    Thomas stepped away from Lib­er­ty Cen­tral in late 2010 amid con­tro­ver­sy over whether its anony­mous fund­ing — includ­ing one dona­tion for $500,000 — posed a poten­tial con­flict of inter­est for her hus­band. (Politi­co report­ed the fol­low­ing year that the dona­tion had come from Crow.)

    She then formed Lib­er­ty Con­sult­ing, a for-prof­it firm. On her LinkedIn page, Thomas describes her work as col­lab­o­rat­ing with “cit­i­zen activists, lead­ers and non­prof­its to suc­ceed and have impact in defend­ing the prin­ci­ples that have made Amer­i­ca an excep­tion­al nation.”

    Lib­er­ty Con­sult­ing began receiv­ing pay­ments from Conway’s firm with­in months of its cre­ation in 2011, doc­u­ments reviewed by The Post show. On mul­ti­ple occa­sions, Thomas con­tact­ed the Polling Com­pa­ny to dis­cuss her pay­ments, the doc­u­ments show.

    The doc­u­ments do not indi­cate whether Thomas knew of Leo’s role in the arrange­ment with Conway’s com­pa­ny, or of the Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project’s role. (Con­way sold the com­pa­ny in 2017 to what is now known as CRC Advi­sors, anoth­er firm that Leo chairs.)

    Since its first ami­cus brief, in the vot­ing rights case in 2012, the Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project has sub­mit­ted about a dozen ami­cus briefs to the Supreme Court. It has argued for lim­it­ing or rolling back race-based col­lege admis­sions poli­cies, reg­u­la­tions on green­house-gas emis­sions and gun-con­trol mea­sures.

    In 2014, the group filed a brief in the Hob­by Lob­by case, which chal­lenged a man­date in the Afford­able Care Act that employ­ers make con­tra­cep­tion avail­able to work­ers at no cost to the work­ers. The court’s rul­ing struck down part of the require­ment in a split deci­sion, with Clarence Thomas again in the nar­row major­i­ty.

    Thomas’s votes were aligned with the Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project in six of the cas­es in which it filed briefs, includ­ing the Hob­by Lob­by case and two involv­ing affir­ma­tive action at pub­lic uni­ver­si­ties. Thomas, a long­time crit­ic of affir­ma­tive action, vot­ed with the major­i­ty to uphold Michigan’s pro­hi­bi­tion on race-based admis­sions at its pub­lic uni­ver­si­ties, and he dis­sent­ed in a rul­ing that upheld admis­sions poli­cies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas.

    Thomas’s votes did not align with the group’s posi­tion in three oth­er cas­es, includ­ing one that large­ly upheld the Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency’s abil­i­ty to reg­u­late green­house-gas emis­sions. The court did not take up all the cas­es in which the Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project filed briefs.

    The group’s inter­est in the Supreme Court extend­ed beyond the court­room. It spent mon­ey on cam­paigns to sup­port Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s nom­i­na­tions of Brett M. Kavanaugh and Neil M. Gor­such to the Supreme Court. And it is list­ed as a fun­der in the cred­its of a 2020 doc­u­men­tary that cel­e­brat­ed Thomas. Clarence and Gin­ni Thomas are fea­tured exten­sive­ly in the doc­u­men­tary, titled “Cre­at­ed Equal: Jus­tice Thomas In His Own Words,” talk­ing about the justice’s upbring­ing and his judi­cial phi­los­o­phy.

    As the Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project pushed for a con­ser­v­a­tive court, the group grew into a finan­cial jug­ger­naut and was rebrand­ed as the 85 Fund. Between 2020 and 2021, its rev­enue near­ly dou­bled from about $66 mil­lion to more than $117 mil­lion, tax forms show.

    Even so, the group has nev­er had more than a hand­ful of employ­ees, tax fil­ings show. It has list­ed its main office address as a UPS Store sit­u­at­ed amid row­hous­es and retail stores in the George­town neigh­bor­hood of D.C.

    ———–

    “Judi­cial activist direct­ed fees to Clarence Thomas’s wife, urged ‘no men­tion of Gin­ni’” By Emma Brown, Shawn Boburg and Jonathan O’Con­nell; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 05/04/2023

    “The arrange­ment reveals that Leo, a long­time Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety leader and friend of the Thomases, has func­tioned not only as an ide­o­log­i­cal ally of Clarence Thomas’s but also has worked to pro­vide finan­cial remu­ner­a­tion to his fam­i­ly. And it shows Leo arrang­ing for the mon­ey to be drawn from a non­prof­it that soon would have an inter­est before the court.”

    Yes, it turns out Leonard Leo isn’t just an influ­ence ped­dler. He ped­dles cash too. Or rather, “finan­cial remu­ner­a­tions”. And as the 2012 pay­ments of $80k between June 2011 and June 2012 to Gin­ni Thomas’s Lib­er­ty Con­sult­ing demon­strate, Leo knows how make these remu­ner­a­tions extra qui­et. In this case, he asked CNP mem­ber Kellyanne Con­way to bill a non­prof­it Leo con­trols — the Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project (now known as The 85 Fund) — and use that mon­ey to qui­et­ly remu­ner­ate Gin­ni Thomas. Don’t for­get that Leo was serv­ing on the board of Lib­er­ty Cen­tral after Thomas formed it in 2010. So Leo joins board of Lib­er­ty Cen­tral in 2010, a ‘non­prof­it’ Gin­ni just formed. Then in Novem­ber of 2010, Gin­ni steps away from Lib­er­ty Cen­tral over con­flict of inter­est con­cerns and forms the for-prof­it Lib­er­ty Con­sult­ing. By June of 2011, Leo has arrange for secret pay­ments from intend­ed for Gin­ni under the ban­ner of ser­vices pro­vid­ed to the Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project. And the Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project/85 Fund just hap­pened to be active­ly peti­tion­ing the Supreme Court that year. In oth­er words, those con­flict of inter­est con­cerns were pret­ty valid:

    ...
    In Jan­u­ary 2012, Leo instruct­ed the GOP poll­ster Kellyanne Con­way to bill a non­prof­it group he advis­es and use that mon­ey to pay Vir­ginia “Gin­ni” Thomas, the doc­u­ments show. The same year, the non­prof­it, the Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project, filed a brief to the Supreme Court in a land­mark vot­ing rights case.

    Leo, a key fig­ure in a net­work of non­prof­its that has worked to sup­port the nom­i­na­tions of con­ser­v­a­tive judges, told Con­way that he want­ed her to “give” Gin­ni Thomas “anoth­er $25K,” the doc­u­ments show. He empha­sized that the paper­work should have “No men­tion of Gin­ni, of course.”

    Conway’s firm, the Polling Com­pa­ny, sent the Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project a $25,000 bill that day. Per Leo’s instruc­tions, it list­ed the pur­pose as “Sup­ple­ment for Con­sti­tu­tion Polling and Opin­ion Con­sult­ing,” the doc­u­ments show.

    In all, accord­ing to the doc­u­ments, the Polling Com­pa­ny paid Thomas’s firm, Lib­er­ty Con­sult­ing, $80,000 between June 2011 and June 2012, and it expect­ed to pay $20,000 more before the end of 2012. The doc­u­ments reviewed by The Post do not indi­cate the pre­cise nature of any work Thomas did for the Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project or the Polling Com­pa­ny.

    ...

    In Decem­ber 2012, the Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project sub­mit­ted an ami­cus brief in Shel­by Coun­ty v. Hold­er, a case chal­leng­ing a land­mark civ­il rights law aimed at pro­tect­ing minor­i­ty vot­ers. The court struck down a for­mu­la in the Vot­ing Rights Act that deter­mined which states had to obtain fed­er­al clear­ance before chang­ing their vot­ing rules and pro­ce­dures. Clarence Thomas was part of the 5‑to‑4 major­i­ty.

    Thomas issued a con­cur­ring opin­ion in the case, argu­ing that the pre­clear­ance require­ment itself is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. Thomas’s opin­ion, which was con­sis­tent with a pre­vi­ous opin­ion he wrote, favored the out­come the Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project and sev­er­al oth­er con­ser­v­a­tive orga­ni­za­tions had advo­cat­ed in their ami­cus briefs. He did not cite the Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project brief.
    ...

    And while such an arrange­ment may look incred­i­bly uneth­i­cal, it’s not ille­gal. Ethics experts agree that it looks awful, but that does­n’t mean it’s ille­gal:

    ...
    Legal ethics experts dis­agreed about whether the arrange­ment out­lined by Leo and the pay­ments from Con­way should have led Thomas to recuse him­self from the Shel­by case.

    Fed­er­al law requires jus­tices to recuse if their “impar­tial­i­ty might rea­son­ably be ques­tioned,” a stan­dard that has not been well-defined as applied to fil­ers of ami­cus briefs, the experts said. Law pro­fes­sor Kath­leen Clark of Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty said that if the Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project paid Gin­ni Thomas $100,000 in the year and a half before it filed its brief, the size and tim­ing of the pay­ments would have been enough to cast doubt on Clarence Thomas’s impar­tial­i­ty and require his recusal. Law pro­fes­sor Stephen Gillers of New York Uni­ver­si­ty, how­ev­er, said that as the rule is now inter­pret­ed, the link appeared too “atten­u­at­ed” to require recusal.

    But both experts said the arrange­ment shows that cur­rent ethics rules and dis­clo­sure require­ments fail to pro­tect pub­lic con­fi­dence in the inde­pen­dence of the courts. For exam­ple, although jus­tices must report the name of com­pa­nies that pay their spous­es, they are not required to report the names of the com­pa­nies’ clients. In this case, even if there were such a require­ment, it is not clear that the Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project would have been list­ed as a client, because the fees intend­ed for Gin­ni Thomas were to go through Con­way.

    “The idea that Leonard Leo, who has a pas­sion­ate ide­o­log­i­cal inter­est in how the court rules and who has worked hard for years to advance that inter­est, could pick up the phone and gen­er­ate sub­stan­tial com­pen­sa­tion to Vir­ginia Thomas, which also ben­e­fits Clarence Thomas — that idea is bad for the coun­try, the court and the rule of law,” Gillers said. “It’s not the way the Supreme Court should do its busi­ness or allow its busi­ness to be done.”

    The effort to keep Gin­ni Thomas’s name off paper­work makes the arrange­ment seem “more egre­gious,” said Clark.
    ...

    And note the pres­i­dent of the Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project that year: Neil Cork­ery. As we’ve seen, in addi­tion to being mem­bers of Opus Dei, bil­lion­aires Ann and Neil Cork­ery are a major force behind the JCN/Concord Fund. The biggest donor to JCN has been the Well­spring Com­mit­tee, a 501(c)(4) backed by the donor net­work oper­at­ed by the Cork­erys. When Well­spring was set up in 2008, it was actu­al­ly found­ed by the Koch broth­ers, and only lat­er hand­ed off to the Cork­erys. So when we see how Neil Cork­ery also oper­ates as a book­keep­er for sev­er­al of Leo’s groups, it’s impor­tant to keep in mind that he’s the source of a lot of that mon­ey too:

    ...
    The Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project was part of that net­work, although Leo was not list­ed on its tax fil­ings or incor­po­ra­tion records. Leo’s allies found­ed the Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project in 2004. Its mis­sion was to “con­duct research and edu­cate the pub­lic on the role of the judi­cia­ry as laid out in the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion,” accord­ing to its tax fil­ings. It secured tax-exempt sta­tus in 2011 and was not ini­tial­ly well-fund­ed, fil­ing paper­work with the IRS indi­cat­ing it brought in less than $50,000 annu­al­ly.

    In 2012, it received about $1.5 mil­lion from donors whose iden­ti­ties were not pub­licly dis­closed, the tax fil­ings show. The Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project spent $150,000 on “polling” that year, accord­ing to its tax fil­ing. The fil­ing does not iden­ti­fy which firm did the work.

    The pres­i­dent of the Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project that year was Neil Cork­ery, a Leo ally and book­keep­er for sev­er­al of his non­prof­it groups. Cork­ery cer­ti­fied on the group’s 2012 tax fil­ing that no one oth­er than the group’s offi­cers or key employ­ees had con­trol over the non­prof­it.

    ...

    As the Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project pushed for a con­ser­v­a­tive court, the group grew into a finan­cial jug­ger­naut and was rebrand­ed as the 85 Fund. Between 2020 and 2021, its rev­enue near­ly dou­bled from about $66 mil­lion to more than $117 mil­lion, tax forms show.

    Even so, the group has nev­er had more than a hand­ful of employ­ees, tax fil­ings show. It has list­ed its main office address as a UPS Store sit­u­at­ed amid row­hous­es and retail stores in the George­town neigh­bor­hood of D.C.
    ...

    And who do we find serv­ing as Lib­er­ty Cen­tral’s accoun­tant? Niel Cork­ery. So both Leonard Leo and Neil Cork­ery were direct­ly involved with Gin­ni Thomas’s 2010 for­ma­tion of Lib­er­ty Cen­tral. That’s part of the con­text of all of the hoops Leo was jump­ing through to secret pay Gin­ni for alleged polling ser­vices:

    ...
    In 2009, when Thomas found­ed a tea par­ty-aligned non­prof­it called Lib­er­ty Cen­tral, Leo served on the board, tax fil­ings show. Cork­ery was the nonprofit’s accoun­tant, pub­lic records show.

    Thomas stepped away from Lib­er­ty Cen­tral in late 2010 amid con­tro­ver­sy over whether its anony­mous fund­ing — includ­ing one dona­tion for $500,000 — posed a poten­tial con­flict of inter­est for her hus­band. (Politi­co report­ed the fol­low­ing year that the dona­tion had come from Crow.)

    She then formed Lib­er­ty Con­sult­ing, a for-prof­it firm. On her LinkedIn page, Thomas describes her work as col­lab­o­rat­ing with “cit­i­zen activists, lead­ers and non­prof­its to suc­ceed and have impact in defend­ing the prin­ci­ples that have made Amer­i­ca an excep­tion­al nation.”

    Lib­er­ty Con­sult­ing began receiv­ing pay­ments from Conway’s firm with­in months of its cre­ation in 2011, doc­u­ments reviewed by The Post show. On mul­ti­ple occa­sions, Thomas con­tact­ed the Polling Com­pa­ny to dis­cuss her pay­ments, the doc­u­ments show.
    ...

    Final­ly, note the ulti­mate fate of Kellyanne Con­way’s polling com­pa­ny: CRC Advi­sors bought it. Because of course that’s what hap­pened:

    ...
    The doc­u­ments do not indi­cate whether Thomas knew of Leo’s role in the arrange­ment with Conway’s com­pa­ny, or of the Judi­cial Edu­ca­tion Project’s role. (Con­way sold the com­pa­ny in 2017 to what is now known as CRC Advi­sors, anoth­er firm that Leo chairs.)
    ...

    As we can see, they keep in all in the fam­i­ly. A theo­crat­ic oli­garchic fam­i­ly intent on con­trol­ling the levers of pow­er from the shad­ows. And while we don’t know how exact­ly $1.6 bil­lion Leo obtained con­trol over will ulti­mate­ly be spent, we can be pret­ty con­fi­dent as to where it will be spent: as much as pos­si­ble will be spent entire inside this inces­tu­ous net­work of dark mon­ey enti­ties under Leo’s con­trol. It points towards one of the weird­ly hope­ful points in this entire sto­ry about the rise of Leonard Leo and his $1.6 bil­lion polit­i­cal war chest: the whole arrange­ment is so wild­ly cor­rupt and shroud­ed in mys­tery that there’s not real­ly any­thing pre­vent­ing Leo and his allies from sim­ply embez­zling the whole thing on bogus ‘ser­vices’. Of course, even mon­ey wast­ed on cor­rupt kick­backs to Leo’s friends still do real dam­age when those kick­backs are going to pub­lic offi­cials or their fam­i­lies. Which also makes this a good time to note that Gin­ni’s Lib­er­ty Con­sult­ing is still oper­at­ing. So don’t be sur­prised to even­tu­al­ly learn that the Mar­ble Free­dom Trust gave mil­lions of dol­lars to a dark mon­ey enti­ty he con­trols that paid anoth­er dark mon­ey he con­trols, etc, until one of them even­tu­al­ly paid Lib­er­ty Con­sult­ing a pret­ty pen­ny for some sort of vague ser­vice. That’s to be expect­ed at this point. But do be sur­prised if Gin­ni’s name is any­where on the paper­work. This is a classy dark mon­ey kick­back oper­a­tion.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | June 6, 2023, 12:08 am
  36. One of the increas­ing­ly tir­ing aspects of the Trumpian era of US pol­i­tics has become the seem­ing­ly end­less ‘sil­ly sea­son’ nature to so much of the polit­i­cal cov­er­age since Trump entered the polit­i­cal are­na in 2015. There’s only so much absur­dism one can han­dle. Not to say the US was­n’t del­uged with absur­dism and divorced from real­i­ty pre-Trump, but there was­n’t as promi­nent a fig­ure who so force­ful­ly pro­ject­ed such dan­ger­ous absur­dism on such a reg­u­lar basis.

    But as the fol­low­ing pair of arti­cles remind us, Trump is far from the only absur­dist enti­ty on the polit­i­cal stage. He’s just the biggest and most dan­ger­ous. Just take the 2024 field. Putting aside the humil­i­at­ing clown show that the GOP pri­ma­ry turned out to be, we have fig­ures like RFK Jr or Dean Phillips run­ning seem­ing­ly hope­less races in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry while both pon­der­ing sim­i­lar­ly hope­less third-par­ty runs. Cam­paign­ing earnest­ly and assur­ing audi­ences of their sin­cer­i­ty the whole time, despite the silli­ness of the whole endeav­or.

    Except, of course, win­ning the White House does­n’t have to be the only pos­si­ble objec­tive for fig­ures like RFK Jr. or Phillips. Sim­ply alter­ing the out­come of the 2024 race could be enough. And while RFK Jr. and Phillips both start­ed off as Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry con­tenders, RFK Jr. has already switched an inde­pen­dent run and his report­ed­ly look­ing into the Lib­er­tar­i­an tick­et which would secure him wider bal­lot access. Phillips, while still in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry for sil­ly rea­sons, refused to rule out a third par­ty run under the No Labels tick­et just a cou­ple of weeks ago. If we see a repeat of 2016 or 2020-style close con­tests, it’s only going to require them to shave off a frac­tion of a per­cent more for Trump or Biden to flip in the high­ly con­test­ed swing states.

    So with the grow­ing prospects of both RFK Jr. and Dean Phillips play­ing spoil­er roles in the upcom­ing race, we have to ask whose race are they most like­ly to ulti­mate­ly spoil? Trump’s or Biden’s? And while a case might be made that RFK Jr could end up steal­ing away more votes from Trump than Biden with their over­lap­ping ‘out­sider fight the sys­tem’ cam­paign nar­ra­tives, some of the biggest clues come in the form of who is financ­ing these cam­paigns. Spoil­er alert: it’s not earnest pro­gres­sives.

    Instead, for RFK Jr. we find none of than Trump mega-donor Tim­o­thy Mel­lon, of the pow­er­ful Mel­lon dynasty. As we saw, Mel­lon donat­ed $10 mil­lion to a Trump super PAC back in 2020. He did so again last year. But that was­n’t his only polit­i­cal giv­ing. Mel­lon recent­ly gave $10 mil­lion to a pro-Kennedy super PAC, which is on top of $15 mil­lion he gave to the PAC last year. So, giv­en that Mel­lon obvi­ous­ly wants Don­ald Trump to win a sec­ond term, it’s also pret­ty obvi­ous why he gave $25 mil­lion to RFK Jr. Is this a $25 mil­lion blun­der? Tim­o­thy Mel­lon does­n’t think so.

    And then there’s the Phillips cam­paign. A cam­paign that appears to in midst of iden­ti­ty cri­sis. A well financed iden­ti­ty cri­sis. For starters, Phillips — one of the wealth­i­est mem­bers of con­gress him­self — has a pair of wealthy broth­ers who are not only financ­ing his cam­paign but help­ing him craft his mes­sage. Matt and Scott Krisiloff, both of whom are very close to Ope­nAI CEO Sam Alt­man. Matt even report­ed­ly dat­ed Alt­man at one point.

    And while the deci­sion of these lit­er­al ‘tech bros’ to fund a pro-Phillips super-PAC, We Deserve Bet­ter, is itself an eye­brow-rais­ing turn of events, there’s more ques­tion­able part of this rela­tion­ship: it appears to vio­lat­ed the US’s cam­paign finance laws. Noto­ri­ous­ly shod­dy cam­paign finance laws that effec­tive­ly allow cam­paigns to have allied super-PAC run unlim­it­ed spend­ing cam­paigns on their behalf but only as long as they main­tain the pre­tense of no direct coor­di­na­tion between the cam­paign and the super-PAC. As we’re going to see, that pre­tense was not remote­ly main­tained. For starters, the broth­ers were ini­tial­ly part of Phillip­s’s “lead­er­ship” group that was coor­di­nat­ing via the encrypt­ed Sig­nal app. As part of this work, the broth­ers con­duct­ed at least a dozen focus groups about Phillips. The Krisiloffs removed them­selves from the campaign’s Sig­nal group less than three weeks after they gave feed­back on the polling memo and ten days lat­er the We Deserve Bet­ter super PAC was formed. And while the Krisiloffs main­tain that their super PAC is mere­ly “a sep­a­rate 501(c)(4) orga­ni­za­tion which has a mis­sion of edu­cat­ing vot­ers about increas­ing vot­er turnout for greater prac­tice of democ­ra­cy,” it’s pret­ty obvi­ous that it was set up to help the Phillips cam­paign.

    Now, did the Krisiloff broth­ers and the Phillips cam­paign vio­late cam­paign finance laws by not adher­ing to the super­fi­cial rules of main­tain­ing an appear­ance of inde­pen­dence between cam­paigns and super PACs? That will pre­sum­ably be for reg­u­la­tors and/or courts to decide. But it’s clear that the Krisiloff broth­ers want to see Biden out of office as soon as pos­si­ble and that appar­ent­ly includes financ­ing a stunt that can only end up help­ing Don­ald Trump’s chances in the end. We don’t have to won­der why they might want to get rid of Biden. The ini­tial meet­ing between the Krisiloffs and Phillips took place days after Biden signed an exec­u­tive order cre­at­ing new rules for the arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence indus­try. Phillips has since embraced the ben­e­fits and promise of AI as a talk­ing point on his cam­paign. So while this sto­ry is about the Krisiloffs and the Phillips cam­paign, it’s worth keep­ing in mind that Sam Alt­man and oth­er fig­ures in the AI indus­try may be play­ing sup­port­ing roles in this spoil­er effort.

    It’s also worth not­ing that Matt Krisiloff start­ed Con­cep­tion, a com­pa­ny ded­i­cat­ed to cre­at­ing human eggs from stem cells. And as we’ve seen, part of the promise of this tech­nol­o­gy is the mass cre­ation of large num­bers of eggs, and there­fore embryos, that can be used for genet­ic screen­ing and “opti­mal” embryo selec­tion. Which makes it the kind of ser­vice that is going to be very pop­u­lar with the bur­geon­ing do-it-your­self eugen­ics indus­try.

    But the Krisiloffs aren’t the Phillips cam­paign’s only source of ques­tion­able mega-donor assis­tance. Hedge fund bil­lion­aire Bill Ack­man recent­ly pledge $1 mil­lion for Krisilof­f’s super PAC. Yep. The same bil­lion­aire who has now teamed up with Chris Rufo in wag­ing an anti-DEI cru­sade against col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties. Short­ly after, the Phillips cam­paign scrubbed the Diver­si­ty, Equi­ty, and Inclu­sion sec­tion from its cam­paign web­site. It was­n’t a great look.

    And with both RFK Jr. and Phillips, we’re going to get end­less insis­tences that they real­ly are ‘in it to win it’ and not just play­ing a spoil­er role. We’ll hear such denails until the day Trump is sworn back into office. Extreme­ly well-financed dan­ger­ous absur­dism, thanks to the tens of mil­lions of dol­lars from some unlike­ly sup­port­ers:

    Rolling Stone

    Half of RFK Jr.’s Mas­sive Fundrais­ing Haul Came From Two Peo­ple

    The inde­pen­dent can­di­date and his super PAC have raised a stag­ger­ing $50 mil­lion — includ­ing $25 mil­lion from two peo­ple

    By Andrew Perez
    Jan­u­ary 31, 2024

    Robert Kennedy Jr. and a super PAC back­ing his 2024 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign have raised $50 mil­lion, accord­ing to new fed­er­al elec­tion records released Wednes­day. Half of that stag­ger­ing cash haul has come from two peo­ple.

    Tim­o­thy Mel­lon, a Repub­li­can megadonor who has also backed for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, has donat­ed anoth­er $10 mil­lion to the pro-Kennedy super PAC, Amer­i­can Val­ues 2024. Mel­lon, an heir to the Mel­lon bank­ing for­tune, gave a total of $15 mil­lion to the group in 2023. He sep­a­rate­ly donat­ed $10 mil­lion to Make Amer­i­ca Great Again Inc., a pro-Trump super PAC, in the sec­ond half of 2023.

    Gavin de Beck­er, who leads Kennedy’s pri­vate secu­ri­ty team, donat­ed $5.5 mil­lion to Amer­i­can Val­ues 2024 in Octo­ber; he has giv­en a total of $10 mil­lion to the pro-Kennedy super PAC. His secu­ri­ty firm, Gavin de Beck­er and Asso­ciates, has been paid $1.5 mil­lion by Kennedy’s cam­paign. De Beck­er has report­ed­ly pro­vid­ed secu­ri­ty for A‑list celebri­ties like Cher and John Tra­vol­ta as well as Ama­zon founder Jeff Bezos.

    ...

    Kennedy’s cam­paign post­ed a plea from de Beck­er on Insta­gram request­ing dona­tions: “I’m reach­ing out to you with an unusu­al fundrais­ing request,” de Beck­er wrote. “The Biden Admin­is­tra­tion has refused to pro­vide Secret Ser­vice pro­tec­tion to RFK Jr., which means thir­ty cents of every dol­lar donat­ed to his cam­paign has to go toward secu­ri­ty. Nor­mal­ly, none of it would. I would glad­ly pay for his secu­ri­ty myself — but that’s not allowed, because it would be a cam­paign con­tri­bu­tion above the lim­it.”

    To date, rough­ly sev­en per­cent of the mon­ey raised by Kennedy’s cam­paign has been paid to de Becker’s secu­ri­ty firm — though he has donat­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly more than that to the Kennedy super PAC.

    The dig­i­tal media out­let Puck has described de Beck­er as “a tried-and-true RFK believ­er and per­son­al friend of the can­di­date.”

    “I have been a sup­port­er of Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates for decades, and I find RFK Jr. to be more com­mit­ted to gen­uine Demo­c­ra­t­ic val­ues than the [Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Com­mit­tee] itself,” de Beck­er told the out­let.

    ———-

    “Half of RFK Jr.’s Mas­sive Fundrais­ing Haul Came From Two Peo­ple” By Andrew Perez; Rolling Stone; 01/31/2024

    “Tim­o­thy Mel­lon, a Repub­li­can megadonor who has also backed for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, has donat­ed anoth­er $10 mil­lion to the pro-Kennedy super PAC, Amer­i­can Val­ues 2024. Mel­lon, an heir to the Mel­lon bank­ing for­tune, gave a total of $15 mil­lion to the group in 2023. He sep­a­rate­ly donat­ed $10 mil­lion to Make Amer­i­ca Great Again Inc., a pro-Trump super PAC, in the sec­ond half of 2023.

    Tim­o­thy Mel­lon sure has eclec­tic polit­i­cal tastes: $15 mil­lion in 2023 and anoth­er $10 mil­lion this year for RJF Jr’s super PAC. That’s on top of the $10 mil­lion for Trump’s Make Amer­i­can Great Again PAC last year. Which isn’t the first time Mel­lon has giv­en Trump $10 mil­lion. It’s a pow­er­ful anec­dote to keep in mind when try­ing to assess RFK Jr’s net-impact on the gen­er­al elec­tion and whether or not he’ll be expect­ed to draw more sup­port from Trump or Biden. While, on the one hand, RFK Jr’s ‘out­sider’ polit­i­cal appeal seems to over­lap heav­i­ly with Don­ald Trump’s ‘burn it all down’ polit­i­cal brand. But on the oth­er hand, we don’t see Biden mega-donors financ­ing RFK Jr’s cam­paign too.

    Yes, Tim­o­thy Mel­lon sure has eclec­tic polit­i­cal tastes. Or, more obvi­ous­ly, gross­ly cyn­i­cal and Machi­avel­lian ambi­tions. Which brings us to the fol­low­ing sto­ry about anoth­er gross­ly cyn­i­cal and Machi­avel­lian cam­paign finance sto­ry involv­ing anoth­er fringe can­di­date with some rather inter­est­ing mega-donors behind him: Dean Phillips, the Min­neso­ta con­gress­man who has been engaged in an increas­ing­ly hap­less pri­ma­ry chal­lenge to Joe Biden. It turns out Phillips has a pair of wealthy broth­ers who are not only financ­ing his cam­paign but help­ing him craft his mes­sage: Matt and Scott Krisiloff, bil­lion­aire Sam Alt­man stand­ing behind them. And Bill Ack­man beside them.

    Again, Phillips recent­ly refused to rule out out a third par­ty bid, and admits close ties to no “No Labels”. A third par­ty run is just a mat­ter of time. Phillips only has to drain a small per­cent­age of the vote in key swing states to swing the elec­tion. And he’s going to have plen­ty of AI-backed mon­ey to do it:

    Rolling Stone

    Did These ‘Tech Bros’ Break the Law Back­ing Biden’s Rival?

    Allies of Sam Alt­man were deeply involved with Biden chal­lenger Dean Phillips’ cam­paign before launch­ing a super PAC to sup­port him, doc­u­ments show

    By Tes­sa Stu­art
    Jan­u­ary 18, 2024

    Broth­ers Matt and Scott Krisiloff — allies of Ope­nAI CEO Sam Alt­man — were deeply involved in Rep. Dean Phillips’ pres­i­den­tial cam­paign before leav­ing to launch a super PAC in sup­port of the Min­neso­ta Democrat’s long­shot 2024 bid, as well as a dark-mon­ey group that is run­ning ads in New Hamp­shire, accord­ing to inter­views, inter­nal doc­u­ments, and pub­lic records obtained by Rolling Stone.

    Cam­paign finance lawyers say the Phillips cam­paign and We Deserve Bet­ter, the super PAC, are test­ing the lim­its of fed­er­al elec­tion rules designed to pro­hib­it coor­di­na­tion between cam­paigns, which are bound by con­tri­bu­tion lim­its, and out­side groups that can accept dona­tions of any size. A watch­dog group has already filed a sep­a­rate com­plaint alleg­ing coor­di­na­tion between the Phillips cam­paign and a dif­fer­ent super PAC sup­port­ing the liquor heir’s pri­ma­ry chal­lenge to Pres­i­dent Joe Biden.

    ...

    Accord­ing to inter­views and doc­u­ments, the Krisiloffs were mem­bers of the Phillips campaign’s “lead­er­ship” group on the encrypt­ed mes­sag­ing appli­ca­tion Sig­nal; they con­duct­ed at least a dozen focus groups about Phillips with vot­ers in New Hamp­shire, Michi­gan, and South Car­oli­na both before and after the launch of the cam­paign; and they marked up at least one inter­nal Phillips cam­paign polling memo with their opin­ions on polling mechan­ics and their mes­sag­ing ideas.

    On Nov. 21, both broth­ers abrupt­ly removed them­selves from the Sig­nal group, accord­ing to a screen grab reviewed by Rolling Stone; one day lat­er, Matt Krisiloff formed a dark-mon­ey non­prof­it, We Deserve Bet­ter Action, and nine days after that, the broth­ers launched a super PAC sup­port­ing the Phillips cam­paign. The groups’ names are vari­a­tions on “We Deserve Bet­ter,” a tagline that appeared on a list of poten­tial cam­paign slo­gans cir­cu­lat­ed inside the Phillips cam­paign. The super PAC has spent $1.4 mil­lion so far to pro­mote Phillips’ can­di­da­cy. The dark-mon­ey group, mean­while, has spent hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars on ads that seek to boost vot­er turnout in New Hamp­shire with­out men­tion­ing Phillips.

    The Krisiloff broth­ers and the Phillips cam­paign denied any pro­hib­it­ed coor­di­na­tion. “There was absolute­ly no pro­hib­it­ed coor­di­na­tion between these for­mer unpaid vol­un­teers and the cam­paign,” a Phillips cam­paign rep­re­sen­ta­tive told Rolling Stone by email.

    In a sep­a­rate email, Matt Krisiloff said he and his broth­er “were unpaid vol­un­teers to the cam­paign with­out any for­mal asso­ci­a­tion, and we have nei­ther coor­di­nat­ed nor used any non-pub­lic infor­ma­tion in super PAC activ­i­ties. We have not vio­lat­ed any cam­paign finance laws.”

    Of the dark-mon­ey group, We Deserve Bet­ter Action, Matt Krisiloff said, it “is a sep­a­rate 501(c)(4) orga­ni­za­tion which has a mis­sion of edu­cat­ing vot­ers about increas­ing vot­er turnout for greater prac­tice of democ­ra­cy.”

    While inside the cam­paign, two peo­ple famil­iar with its inner work­ings tell Rolling Stone the broth­ers rep­re­sent­ed them­selves as ambas­sadors for Alt­man, the CEO of the arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence research orga­ni­za­tion Ope­nAI. They “name-dropped him con­stant­ly,” one said. They are said to have promised Altman’s help mar­shal­ing influ­encers to pub­licly sup­port Phillips and his assis­tance devel­op­ing an arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence-dri­ven donor sys­tem. The idea that the tech bil­lion­aire would raise enor­mous amounts of mon­ey for a super PAC to back Phillips’ can­di­da­cy was also a top­ic of fre­quent dis­cus­sion when the broth­ers were involved in the cam­paign, those peo­ple said.

    A spokesper­son for Alt­man said he did not make those sug­ges­tions to the Phillips cam­paign or ask any­one to do it on his behalf.

    The broth­ers also reject­ed the char­ac­ter­i­za­tion. “We nev­er rep­re­sent­ed our­selves as ambas­sadors for Sam nor rep­re­sent­ed he would give any kind of spe­cif­ic help, and Sam is nei­ther involved nor a donor to the super PAC,” said Matt Krisiloff. “As far as I am aware he also has no involve­ment with the cam­paign.” (Matt Krisiloff also insist­ed that his broth­er is no longer involved with the super PAC, despite the fact that he is list­ed as a board mem­ber on mul­ti­ple TV ad buys, includ­ing one filed on Wednes­day. Krisiloff attrib­uted his inclu­sion on those fil­ings to a cler­i­cal error.)

    In Novem­ber, Puck News report­ed that, for months, Alt­man — con­cerned about Biden’s prospects for reelec­tion — had “con­vened a series of pri­vate gath­er­ings … cen­tered on iden­ti­fy­ing and recruit­ing a viable Biden alter­na­tive who could pre­vent Trump’s return.” The tech bil­lion­aire report­ed­ly met with Phillips the same month, days after Pres­i­dent Biden signed an exec­u­tive order impos­ing new rules on the grow­ing arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence indus­try.

    The Krisiloffs were already involved with the cam­paign at that time. Matt Krisiloff was an ear­ly employ­ee at Ope­nAI who report­ed­ly dat­ed Alt­man; he went on to found a com­pa­ny, Con­cep­tion, that is work­ing to pro­duce arti­fi­cial human eggs using stem cells. His broth­er, Scott, was described by Puck as “Altman’s polit­i­cal advis­er”; accord­ing to his LinkedIn, Scott Krisiloff cur­rent­ly works as an exec­u­tive at a nuclear fusion start­up backed by Alt­man.

    The Krisiloffs’ pres­ence — along with that of Zach Grau­mann, Andrew Yang’s for­mer cam­paign man­ag­er — made the cam­paign feel like “tech-bro fest,” one per­son said. The “bros” grat­ed on more expe­ri­enced staffers, who felt they were out of their depth. “It’s the Dun­ning-Kruger effect: The less you know, the more cer­tain you are of your opin­ions, because there’s no infor­ma­tion there to help you,” one per­son with knowl­edge of the campaign’s inner work­ings said. “They are the def­i­n­i­tion of the Dun­ning-Kruger effect.”

    That dynam­ic is pal­pa­ble in one inter­nal Phillips cam­paign polling memo marked up by both Krisiloffs. Instead of ask­ing vot­ers if cer­tain pol­i­cy posi­tions would make a per­son more or less like­ly to vote for Phillips — the tra­di­tion­al sur­vey tech­nique — Scott Krisiloff sug­gests: “It may be use­ful to have a 1 to 10 scale.”

    ...

    In the polling memo, advis­ers to the cam­paign also con­tem­plate polling on posi­tions Phillips didn’t yet hold. “‘We can/should explic­it­ly test Medicare for All,’” one staffer com­ments on the doc­u­ment. “[Phillips] is sold on the mer­its but not on the brand­ing, so a split with one ques­tion call­ing it ‘uni­ver­sal health insur­ance’ or ‘nation­al health insur­ance’ would be valu­able.” The ques­tion must have polled well because Phillips announced his sup­port for Medicare for All a few weeks lat­er — some­thing he had declined to do over his first three terms in Con­gress. (We Deserve Bet­ter would lat­er pro­duce ads tout­ing Phillips’ sup­port for Medicare for All.)

    On Nov. 21 — less than three weeks after they gave feed­back on the polling memo — both Krisiloffs removed them­selves from the campaign’s Sig­nal group. Ten days after that, they offi­cial­ly formed a super PAC called We Deserve Bet­ter.

    The super PAC has not yet pub­licly report­ed its finances, and it is unclear if Alt­man is among its donors. (His spokesper­son did not respond to ques­tions about whether he has donat­ed to the super PAC or the dark-mon­ey group.) But at least one oth­er bil­lion­aire Phillips court­ed is com­ing through: Last week, hedge-fund chief Bill Ack­man pledged to donate $1 mil­lion to the super PAC. Short­ly there­after, the Phillips cam­paign web­site dropped a ref­er­ence to “Diver­si­ty, Equi­ty, and Inclu­sion” — a move­ment of which Ack­man is crit­i­cal.

    The Krisiloffs’ deci­sion to leave the cam­paign and launch a super PAC in sup­port of Phillips’ bid short­ly after such close involve­ment with the cam­paign is a direct test of Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion rules gov­ern­ing coor­di­na­tion between cam­paigns and PACs, two cam­paign finance experts con­firmed to Rolling Stone.

    Even if the Krisiloffs were nev­er paid by the cam­paign, there are rules gov­ern­ing their con­duct if they had access to cer­tain infor­ma­tion. “Some­one with inti­mate knowl­edge of a cam­paign can­not be mate­ri­al­ly involved in a super PAC’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions or strat­e­gy,” says Shan­na Ports, senior legal coun­sel for cam­paign finance at the Cam­paign Legal Cen­ter. “If you have knowl­edge of the inter­nal plans, or activ­i­ties, or needs of a cam­paign, and take that knowl­edge to a super PAC and put it to use, that would be coor­di­na­tion.”

    The super PAC’s own name tests that stan­dard. “It could be evi­dence of coor­di­na­tion if ‘We Deserve Bet­ter’ is not a pub­lic tagline of the cam­paign,” Ports says. “That would show that they did have inti­mate strate­gic knowl­edge of the campaign’s strat­e­gy and inner work­ings.”

    Bren­dan Fis­ch­er, deputy exec­u­tive direc­tor of the watch­dog Doc­u­ment­ed, agrees. “The con­duct may not fall square­ly with­in the FEC’s coor­di­na­tion pro­vi­sions gov­ern­ing for­mer employ­ees if the indi­vid­u­als were not paid by the cam­paign. How­ev­er, the coor­di­na­tion rules are aimed at pre­vent­ing a cam­paign from pri­vate­ly shar­ing its plans, strate­gies, and mes­sag­ing with a super PAC, which sounds a lot like what hap­pened here,” Fis­ch­er tells Rolling Stone.

    “At a min­i­mum, it sounds like the Phillips cam­paign is push­ing the legal enve­lope as it works close­ly with its big-mon­ey arm. Depend­ing on the nature of the rela­tion­ship, there may be oth­er ways that this con­duct vio­lates the coor­di­na­tion rules,” Fis­ch­er added.

    ...

    Phillips’ stance on mon­ey in pol­i­tics was, in fact, one of the mes­sages that the cam­paign sought polling data on, accord­ing to the memo.

    It asks if the fol­low­ing state­ment from Phillips would make vot­ers more or less like­ly to sup­port his can­di­da­cy: “When politi­cians raise mon­ey, they’re not call­ing sin­gle par­ents work­ing two jobs, the home­less, the dis­abled. They’re call­ing wealthy peo­ple, cor­po­ra­tions, lob­by­ists. And then what do those cor­po­ra­tions and lob­by­ists expect in return? They expect access, and when you have access, you have influ­ence. So is it any won­der we have Trump­ism in this coun­try? We have tens of mil­lions of peo­ple across the coun­try say­ing, ‘It’s just so clear my voice doesn’t mat­ter. Nobody cares about me. I’m not being heard.’ You know why? They’re right. And that’s why I’m run­ning for pres­i­dent. I’m sick of the cor­rupt sta­tus quo in Wash­ing­ton.”

    ———–

    “Did These ‘Tech Bros’ Break the Law Back­ing Biden’s Rival?” By Tes­sa Stu­art; Rolling Stone; 01/18/2024

    Cam­paign finance lawyers say the Phillips cam­paign and We Deserve Bet­ter, the super PAC, are test­ing the lim­its of fed­er­al elec­tion rules designed to pro­hib­it coor­di­na­tion between cam­paigns, which are bound by con­tri­bu­tion lim­its, and out­side groups that can accept dona­tions of any size. A watch­dog group has already filed a sep­a­rate com­plaint alleg­ing coor­di­na­tion between the Phillips cam­paign and a dif­fer­ent super PAC sup­port­ing the liquor heir’s pri­ma­ry chal­lenge to Pres­i­dent Joe Biden.”

    The US’s dark mon­ey rules have long been a farce, pred­i­cat­ed on the sil­ly notion that super PACs spend­ing tens of mil­lions are dol­lars for a cam­paign aren’t effec­tive­ly coor­di­nat­ing with that cam­paign already. But those are the rules. In order to be allowed to spend unlim­it­ed amounts in sup­port of a can­di­date, a pre­tense of non-coor­di­na­tion must be main­tained. A pre­tense that was­n’t main­tained when we find the Krisiloff broth­ers were first mem­bers of Phillip­s’s “lead­er­ship” group before abrupt­ly remov­ing them­selves and form­ing the We Deserve Bet­ter Action super-PAC. It’s pret­ty hard to break the dark mon­ey rules in the US’s cur­rent bro­ken cam­paign finance sys­tem. But it looks like Phillips and Krisiloffs may have man­aged to do it:

    ...
    Accord­ing to inter­views and doc­u­ments, the Krisiloffs were mem­bers of the Phillips campaign’s “lead­er­ship” group on the encrypt­ed mes­sag­ing appli­ca­tion Sig­nal; they con­duct­ed at least a dozen focus groups about Phillips with vot­ers in New Hamp­shire, Michi­gan, and South Car­oli­na both before and after the launch of the cam­paign; and they marked up at least one inter­nal Phillips cam­paign polling memo with their opin­ions on polling mechan­ics and their mes­sag­ing ideas.

    On Nov. 21, both broth­ers abrupt­ly removed them­selves from the Sig­nal group, accord­ing to a screen grab reviewed by Rolling Stone; one day lat­er, Matt Krisiloff formed a dark-mon­ey non­prof­it, We Deserve Bet­ter Action, and nine days after that, the broth­ers launched a super PAC sup­port­ing the Phillips cam­paign. The groups’ names are vari­a­tions on “We Deserve Bet­ter,” a tagline that appeared on a list of poten­tial cam­paign slo­gans cir­cu­lat­ed inside the Phillips cam­paign. The super PAC has spent $1.4 mil­lion so far to pro­mote Phillips’ can­di­da­cy. The dark-mon­ey group, mean­while, has spent hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars on ads that seek to boost vot­er turnout in New Hamp­shire with­out men­tion­ing Phillips.

    ...

    On Nov. 21 — less than three weeks after they gave feed­back on the polling memo — both Krisiloffs removed them­selves from the campaign’s Sig­nal group. Ten days after that, they offi­cial­ly formed a super PAC called We Deserve Bet­ter.

    ...

    The Krisiloffs’ deci­sion to leave the cam­paign and launch a super PAC in sup­port of Phillips’ bid short­ly after such close involve­ment with the cam­paign is a direct test of Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion rules gov­ern­ing coor­di­na­tion between cam­paigns and PACs, two cam­paign finance experts con­firmed to Rolling Stone.

    Even if the Krisiloffs were nev­er paid by the cam­paign, there are rules gov­ern­ing their con­duct if they had access to cer­tain infor­ma­tion. “Some­one with inti­mate knowl­edge of a cam­paign can­not be mate­ri­al­ly involved in a super PAC’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions or strat­e­gy,” says Shan­na Ports, senior legal coun­sel for cam­paign finance at the Cam­paign Legal Cen­ter. “If you have knowl­edge of the inter­nal plans, or activ­i­ties, or needs of a cam­paign, and take that knowl­edge to a super PAC and put it to use, that would be coor­di­na­tion.”

    The super PAC’s own name tests that stan­dard. “It could be evi­dence of coor­di­na­tion if ‘We Deserve Bet­ter’ is not a pub­lic tagline of the cam­paign,” Ports says. “That would show that they did have inti­mate strate­gic knowl­edge of the campaign’s strat­e­gy and inner work­ings.”

    ...

    Bren­dan Fis­ch­er, deputy exec­u­tive direc­tor of the watch­dog Doc­u­ment­ed, agrees. “The con­duct may not fall square­ly with­in the FEC’s coor­di­na­tion pro­vi­sions gov­ern­ing for­mer employ­ees if the indi­vid­u­als were not paid by the cam­paign. How­ev­er, the coor­di­na­tion rules are aimed at pre­vent­ing a cam­paign from pri­vate­ly shar­ing its plans, strate­gies, and mes­sag­ing with a super PAC, which sounds a lot like what hap­pened here,” Fis­ch­er tells Rolling Stone.

    “At a min­i­mum, it sounds like the Phillips cam­paign is push­ing the legal enve­lope as it works close­ly with its big-mon­ey arm. Depend­ing on the nature of the rela­tion­ship, there may be oth­er ways that this con­duct vio­lates the coor­di­na­tion rules,” Fis­ch­er added.
    ...

    So what is moti­vat­ing the Krisiloff broth­er’s inter­est in the Phillips cam­paign? This is where it starts look­ing espe­cial­ly sleazy: the broth­ers — who rep­re­sent them­selves as ambas­sadors for Ope­nAI CEO Sam Alt­man — met with Phillips just days after Joe Biden signed an exec­u­tive order cre­at­ing new rules for the AI indus­try. It’s not hard to see the moti­va­tions here:

    ...
    While inside the cam­paign, two peo­ple famil­iar with its inner work­ings tell Rolling Stone the broth­ers rep­re­sent­ed them­selves as ambas­sadors for Alt­man, the CEO of the arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence research orga­ni­za­tion Ope­nAI. They “name-dropped him con­stant­ly,” one said. They are said to have promised Altman’s help mar­shal­ing influ­encers to pub­licly sup­port Phillips and his assis­tance devel­op­ing an arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence-dri­ven donor sys­tem. The idea that the tech bil­lion­aire would raise enor­mous amounts of mon­ey for a super PAC to back Phillips’ can­di­da­cy was also a top­ic of fre­quent dis­cus­sion when the broth­ers were involved in the cam­paign, those peo­ple said.

    ...

    In Novem­ber, Puck News report­ed that, for months, Alt­man — con­cerned about Biden’s prospects for reelec­tion — had “con­vened a series of pri­vate gath­er­ings … cen­tered on iden­ti­fy­ing and recruit­ing a viable Biden alter­na­tive who could pre­vent Trump’s return.” The tech bil­lion­aire report­ed­ly met with Phillips the same month, days after Pres­i­dent Biden signed an exec­u­tive order impos­ing new rules on the grow­ing arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence indus­try.
    ...

    So what do we know about the pol­i­tics of the Krisiloffs beyond their pre­sumed oppo­si­tion to reg­u­la­tions for the AI indus­try? Well, Matt Krisiloff start­ed Con­cep­tion, a com­pa­ny ded­i­cat­ed to cre­at­ing human eggs from stem cells. And as we’ve seen, part of the promise of this tech­nol­o­gy is the mass cre­ation of large num­bers of eggs, and there­fore embryos, that can be used for genet­ic screen­ing and “opti­mal” embryo selec­tion. In oth­er words, Matt Krisiloff start­ed a com­pa­ny that mod­ern eugeni­cists should be real­ly excit­ed about:

    ...
    The Krisiloffs were already involved with the cam­paign at that time. Matt Krisiloff was an ear­ly employ­ee at Ope­nAI who report­ed­ly dat­ed Alt­man; he went on to found a com­pa­ny, Con­cep­tion, that is work­ing to pro­duce arti­fi­cial human eggs using stem cells. His broth­er, Scott, was described by Puck as “Altman’s polit­i­cal advis­er”; accord­ing to his LinkedIn, Scott Krisiloff cur­rent­ly works as an exec­u­tive at a nuclear fusion start­up backed by Alt­man.
    ...

    But the Krisiloffs aren’t the only ques­tion­able donor to Phillip­s’s super PAC. None oth­er than hedge fund bil­lion­aire Bill Ack­man, the same bil­lion­aire who has tak­en up the ‘anti-DEI’ agen­da led by Chris Rufo and turned it into a per­son­al cru­sade. And then Phillips removed the DEI ref­er­ences from his cam­paign web­site. Dean Phillips sure has an inter­est­ing rela­tion­ship with these mega-donors:

    ...
    The super PAC has not yet pub­licly report­ed its finances, and it is unclear if Alt­man is among its donors. (His spokesper­son did not respond to ques­tions about whether he has donat­ed to the super PAC or the dark-mon­ey group.) But at least one oth­er bil­lion­aire Phillips court­ed is com­ing through: Last week, hedge-fund chief Bill Ack­man pledged to donate $1 mil­lion to the super PAC. Short­ly there­after, the Phillips cam­paign web­site dropped a ref­er­ence to “Diver­si­ty, Equi­ty, and Inclu­sion” — a move­ment of which Ack­man is crit­i­cal.
    ...

    It’s the best “Yes to AI. No to DEI.” cam­paign mon­ey can buy. Not that it’s had any trac­tion at all so far. But should Phillips pur­sue a third par­ty bid as he recent­ly refused to rule out, and with enough bil­lion­aire back­ers (and enough ‘flex­i­bil­i­ty’ on the Phillips cam­paign to allow for the adop­tion of their bil­lion­aire pet caus­es), who knows how much sup­port Phillips might ulti­mate­ly be able to siphon off from Joe Biden. He’s work­ing to get Trump elect­ed and he knows it. Along with all his back­ers. And along with Tim­o­thy Mel­lon and RFK Jr. Despite all the denials, they can’t not know these basic truths. And yet, it’s going to be ‘no, no, I’m here to win’ the whole time, as absurd as that will sound. Sil­ly sea­son sucks for a lot of rea­sons. But the in-your-face denials of the unde­ni­able, ampli­fied by bil­lion­aires play­ing Machi­avel­lian games, might be the worst part. Machi­avel­lian games that would­n’t be pos­si­ble if the US had sen­si­ble cam­paign finance lim­its. But here we are in the per­ma­nent sil­ly sea­son of 2024. It’s absurd. And bad. Although, admit­ted­ly, not remote­ly as absurd­ly bad as the open unchecked fas­cism sea­son com­ing up next.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | February 5, 2024, 1:01 am

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