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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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’.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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 TP