The first rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club. The Sixteen Thirty Fund, an offshoot of the left-wing dark money behemoth Arabella Advisors, tried to enforce that dictum when recruiting an army of handsomely paid left-wing influencers to spout Democratic talking points through an effort called “Chorus.”
Contracts reviewed by Wired stipulated that they weren’t supposed to reveal their affiliation with the Sixteen Thirty Fund or tell anybody they were being paid to mouth Democratic Party shibboleths. Presumably that includes complaining to reporters about the stringent terms of the contract and the astroturf nature of the project to “build new infrastructure to fund independent progressive voices online at scale.” Oops.
According to Wired, some of the online Left’s biggest names—including Olivia Julianna, who spoke at the 2024 Democratic National Convention; the “nonbinary content creator” Adesso Laurenzo, who boasts nearly one million TikTok followers; and Aaron Parnas, a social media journalist described by Rolling Stone as “a sort of 20-something Walter Cronkite”—expressed interest. Then they read Chorus’s proposed contract. It included the following terms, according to Wired:
- Influencers cannot disclose their affiliation with Chorus or the Sixteen Thirty Fund.
- Influencers cannot disclose “the identity of any Funder” or reveal they’re being paid.
- Influencers “must funnel all bookings with lawmakers and political leaders through Chorus,” even those organized independently.
- Influencers cannot use their monthly stipend “to make content that supports or opposes any political candidate or campaign without express authorization from Chorus in advance and in writing.”
- Influencers must attend “regular advocacy trainings,” “daily messaging check-ins,” and biweekly “newsroom” events with lawmakers and other figures.
- Influencers must remove content created at said events if Chorus requests them to do so.
Chorus gave the influencers two days to sign the contract and barred prospective affiliates from enlisting their lawyers to request changes.
On a Zoom call with the influencers, a partner at Democratic fixer Marc Elias’s Elias Law Group, Graham Wilson, boasted that “housing” Chorus through a nonprofit gave them “some real great advantages.”
“It gives us the ability to raise money from donors,” he said, according to Wired. “It also, with this structure, it avoids a lot of the public disclosure or public disclaimers—you know, ‘Paid for by blah blah blah blah’—that you see on political ads. We don’t need to deal with any of that. Your names aren’t showing up on, like, reports filed with the FEC.” (Elias Law Group made national headlines when it threatened to stop work for longtime client Media Matters if it didn’t fork over $2.25 million in unpaid bills.)
Many of the influencers approached to join Chorus expressed concerns over the setup in a group chat. “Nonbinary content creator” Laurenzo floated sending a “joint email” requesting changes, while a “reproductive justice influencer named Pari” said there were “at least 4 other things that should change.”
Ultimately, most of them fell in line. “I don’t feel strongly about pushing tbh,” wrote Parnas, the young Cronkite. “They aren’t going to modify it anymore. Seems like a take it or leave it.”
Hellbound and Down 