Tag: charities

The Bigger Problem that the Tim Walz NGO Scandal Has Exposed 

The Minnesota nonprofit fraud scandal, now expected to cost taxpayers more than $9 billion, is being dismissed by many as an isolated failure. However, this is far from the case, and writing it off as such would be a colossal mistake.

What it actually revealed is a broader problem in the Swamp—that institutions claiming to represent others often operate with little accountability and then quietly drift away from the very people who are footing the bill.

In Minnesota, nonprofit organizations became the perfect vehicle for abuse—shielded from scrutiny, politically protected, and flush with public money. However, in Washington, trade associations operate in largely the same way. They collect millions in dues from American businesses while increasingly choosing to serve their own leadership’s personal and political interests instead of those of their dues-paying members.

Their members only care about being able to deliver good-paying jobs to their employees and securing a more favorable regulatory climate so they can deliver lower-priced goods for the American people; however, you’d never know that if you looked at the public policy priorities of their association leadership officials, who seem more interested in fitting in at woke radical leftist cocktail parties.

Jay Timmons, president and CEO of the National Association of Manufacturers, has repeatedly broken with Republicans by sharply criticizing Donald Trump, including after January 6, when he called Trump’s actions “mob rule,” urged Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment, and faulted the administration’s handling of COVID-19. Despite that record, Timmons later congratulated Trump on his November 2024 victory and suggested they should “work together like we did before.” At the same time, Timmons praised and partnered with Joe Biden, backing the administration’s COVID-19 vaccine campaign and publicly supporting the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the CHIPS and Science Act. In 2022, he also donated to Adam Kinzinger’s leadership PAC just days after Kinzinger was censured by the Republican Party.

If a presidency was truly so dangerous five years ago that it was deemed incompatible with democracy itself, it is fair to ask how the same association leadership can now claim alignment and cooperation without any explanation, accountability, or evident change in approach. That kind of abrupt pivot invites skepticism from dues-paying manufacturers who expect their trade groups to be guided by member interests, not political positioning or reputational hedging.

The problem is compounded by a reliance on press releases in place of real relationships. Press releases don’t move policy—relationships do. Manufacturers don’t pay dues for moral posturing, elite signaling, or ceremonial access; they pay for results. When leadership spends years attacking an administration only to reverse course once the election is settled—substituting optics for engagement—it raises a fundamental question about who the organization is really serving.

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State Department Hones In On Left-Wing NGOs As Vectors Of Chinese Influence Operations

It appears the Trump administration is finally getting serious about dark money-funded NGOs that are sowing chaos on America’s city streets, with apparent links to foreign influence operations. More alarmingly, these same nonprofits appear to sit at the center of the protest industrial complex and are actively amplified and promoted by prominent members of the Democratic Party. This highly organized and well-funded protest machine has waged an endless decade-long color revolution-style operation of chaos against President Trump.

The New York Post reports the State Department has sent a report to Congress connecting the left-wing nonprofits Code Pink and the People’s Forum to Chinese propaganda influence operations, mostly because of their direct association with China-based Marxist Neville Roy Singham, who operates the so-called “Singham network” of nonprofits.

The Post wrote:

“Partisan hacks spent years peddling the phony Russia collusion hoax while turning a blind eye to the sprawling web of far-left activist organizations who push the agendas of the Chinese Communist Party,” Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Sarah Rogers said in a statement provided to The Post.

“Organizations like Code Pink and the People’s Forum denigrate the United States, whitewash the violence of Marxist regimes, and run cover for China while enjoying an influx of cash from a donor network with connections to the Chinese Communist Party,” Rogers added.

“The State Department will pursue complete transparency for the donor and NGO networks that lobby for our adversaries and seek to weaken the resolve of the United States.”

And continued:

The report on “Countering Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference” alleges that China “spreads propaganda through influence campaigns run by nonprofit organizations like Code Pink, the People’s Forum and groups linked with the notorious Singham network.”

The so-called “Singham network” are nonprofits funded by tech mogul Neville Roy Singham, whose wife is a co-founder of Code Pink.

Singham, an American expat living in China, “works closely with the Chinese government media machine and is financing its propaganda worldwide,” the New York Times reported in 2023.

“Chinese diplomats, state media, and pro-China influencers use social media, content-sharing agreements, and local partnerships to publish pro-CCP propaganda,” the report continues. “China invests in [public diplomacy], exchanges, reporting tours, and educational and cultural initiatives to boost its image.”

“The Department assesses that China, Iran, and Russia aggressively use state media, proxies, and digital platforms to spread propaganda and falsehoods, undermine U.S. credibility and policies, and expand their influence.”

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Leftist Group Gets Millions of Taxpayer Dollars to Help Illegal Aliens After Trump Order Bans It

The Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee is promoting his investigation of a leftist group that received massive amounts of taxpayer dollars from the Biden administration to help illegal immigrants while omitting that the Trump administration kept the cash flowing. In fact, a $200 million program that gives illegal alien minors free lawyers was briefly cancelled and quietly reinstated by the Trump administration within days, though there is no mention of the abrupt about face in the probe announced last week by Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan, a former collegiate wrestling champion serving his tenth term in the House.

Shortly after President Trump issued an executive order, back in mid-February 2025, ensuring taxpayer resources are used to protect the interest of American citizens and not to incentivize or support illegal immigration, the $200 million allocation for migrant kids got axed. The money was going to the same leftwing nonprofit that Jordan’s committee is investigating, though the veteran lawmaker’s new audit only mentions that it is focusing on how the open borders group has spent hundreds of millions of dollars awarded under Biden-Harris. The target is the Acacia Center for Justice, a Washington D.C. nonprofit that partners with a national network of human rights defenders to provide legal defense to immigrants at risk of detention or deportation. “Acacia envisions a nation with a transformed immigration system that embodies freedom from detention, due process, and equal protection, where every person facing the prospect of exile and community separation has access to meaningful legal defense,” the group writes on its website, which assures its network of attorneys fight for all immigrants regardless of gender identity, sexual orientation, race or previous interaction with the criminal system.

Just a few days after suspending the $200 million annual program that funds the Acacia Center’s initiative to provide illegal alien minors with free legal assistance, the Trump administration quietly restored it with no further explanation. The center’s executive director, Shaina Aber, celebrated the speedy reinstatement of the government’s multi-million-dollar UAC defense program, saying in a press release that “it is unconscionable” that children who arrive in the U.S. unaccompanied by parents or legal guardians should be forced to represent themselves in immigration court. The hefty award is part of a billion-dollar commitment launched in 2022 by a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) agency known as Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) to legally represent underage migrants, known as Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC), who cross the border without a parent. Over 600,000 UAC have crossed illegally into the U.S. through Mexico since 2019 and Uncle Sam spends hundreds of millions of dollars to house, educate, feed, entertain and medically treat them. Under Trump’s America First policies—and his executive order banning the use of taxpayer resources to incentivize or support illegal immigration—that was supposed to change.

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“Ask Jeffrey”: Epstein Ran Wexner’s Pro-Israel Philanthropy Machine, Emails Reveal

Six months after Jeffrey Epstein’s death in August 2019, the philanthropic foundation founded by billionaire fashion tycoon Leslie Wexner published an “independent review” of Epstein’s involvement in the organization, in response to concerns raised by donors and alumni of foundation-funded programs. The Wexner Foundation is one of the largest contributors to pro-Israel causes in the U.S.

The review claimed that Wexner Foundation staff had “no contact” with Epstein after his resignation as a trustee in September 2007, and, before that, he had “played no role in the management or administration of the Foundation’s operations,” had “no meaningful role in the Foundation’s budget [or] finances,” and “did not make decisions regarding the use of Foundation’s funds.” None of that is true.

Hundreds of leaked emails from Epstein’s Yahoo inbox, spanning from 2005 to 2008, contradict the Wexner Foundation report. Inside the Wexners’ family financial office in Ohio, staff treated Epstein as de facto chief financial officer, where major decisions about taxes, lines of credit, eight-figure funds transfers, and politically sensitive grants were routed through Epstein’s lawyer, and required Epstein’s approval.

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Ex–Nonprofit Leader Who Championed Social Justice Sentenced for COVID Fraud

A former Bostonian of the Year was sentenced in federal court in Boston for using thousands of dollars in donations to Violence in Boston to pay personal expenses and defrauding taxpayers. 

Monica Cannon-Grant, 44, of Taunton, was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Angel Kelley to four years’ probation, with six months of home detention and 100 hours of community service. She was also ordered to pay restitution of $106,003 as well as forfeiture in an amount to be decided at a later date. The government recommended a sentence of 18 months in prison.

Cannon-Grant allegedly defrauded the City of Boston out of COVID-19 relief funds and rental assistance money, defrauded the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office out of Community Reinvestment Grant funds, filed false tax returns and failed to file tax returns for two years.

The founder and former Chief Executive Officer of a Boston-based nonprofit was sentenced today in federal court in Boston.

In September 2025, Cannon-Grant pleaded guilty to 18 counts: three counts of wire fraud conspiracy; 10 counts of wire fraud; one count of mail fraud; two counts of filing false tax returns; and two counts of failing to file tax returns. In March 2023, Cannon-Grant was charged along with her co-conspirator and late husband, Clark Grant, in a 27-count superseding indictment. 

Clark Grant’s charges were dismissed in May 2023 due to his death. Cannon-Grant and Clark Grant had previously been charged in an 18-count indictment in March 2022.

In 2020, Cannon-Grant was lauded as a Bostonian of the Year and social justice advocate, recognized for being a “voice for the community” and social justice advocate.

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Virginia Democrat Moves to Squash Oversight of Nonprofits After Somali Fraud Scandal

A Virginia state Democrat introduced a bill that would bar the state from verifying eligibility to receive federal taxpayer benefits.

“No state agency responsible for the administration of federal funds shall impose a requirement on a nonprofit charitable organization providing a federal public benefit to determine, verify, or otherwise require proof of eligibility of any applicant for such benefits,” the one-page bill stated, which was proposed by state Delegate Jessica Anderson.

The Dominion State Democrat’s bill was introduced as the nation has increasingly scrutinized the misuse of taxpayer funds. The Trump administration has moved to clamp down on fraud across many federal benefit programs.

Billions of dollars of taxpayer funds have been lost due to fraud related to Minnesota’s Somali community.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) charged at least 78 people as part of the “Feeding our Future” scandal, named for a Somali-linked nonprofit that bilked taxpayers of $250 million.

Those accused reportedly faked invoices, attendance records, and the distribution of meals in low-income and other areas in Minnesota.

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Nigerian professor pleads guilty to stealing $1.4 million from Grand Rapids preschool nonprofit

A highly acclaimed Nigerian professor at Aquinas College is facing two decades in prison after she admitted to swindling more than $1 million from taxpayers and poor minority children in West Michigan.

Nkechy Ezeh, founder and CEO of the Early Learning Neighborhood Collaborative, pleaded guilty last week to wire fraud and tax evasion in a scheme that forced the nonprofit to shut down after a dozen years preparing about 8,000 preschoolers for kindergarten in Kent County, Battle Creek and Kalamazoo, WOOD reports.

Ezeh worked with ELNC bookkeeper Sharon Killebrew to create nearly $500,000 in fake invoices, as well as created fake daycare businesses to siphon off hundreds of thousands of dollars more, which Ezeh used for personal travel to Hawaii, Nigeria and Liberia, according to court documents cited by the news site.

The case comes amid sprawling investigations into fraud in government funded child care programs in Minnesota, Ohio and other states.

The investigations are motivated in part by a viral YouTube video last month that featured what appeared to be a largely vacant “Quality Learing [sic] Center” in Minneapolis that collected $4 million in recent years to provide child care services to the Somali community, Fox News reports.

The learning center is part of a broader scandal involving alleged social services fraud largely tied to the Somali community in the Twin Cities that U.S. Attorney Joseph Thompson said last month could exceed $1 billion once investigations into Minnesota’s Child Care Assistance Program are complete. Officials have followed some of the funds to the Somali terror group Al-Shabab, according to Fox.

Ezeh’s attorney, Mary Chartier, told MLive her client “is committed to taking full responsibility and accountability for her actions.

“She is deeply remorseful to anyone who has been negatively impacted,” Chartier said.

ELNC President Amy DeLeeuw offered a decidedly different perspective following Ezeh’s plea hearing in U.S. District Court on Jan. 14, noting in a statement the former CEO’s “failure to meaningfully articulate the nature and scope of her criminal misconduct.”

“Her theft of million of dollars intended for the most vulnerable of children was brazen, all encompassing and unconscionable,” DeLeeuw said.

“To date, Nkechy has made no effort to repay any of the millions of dollars she stole from ELNC,” the statement read. “I trust Nkechy’s demeanor at today’s hearing did not go unnoticed by Chief Judge Hala Jarbou. I and the board will have more to say in our victim impact statement and look forward to her sentencing hearing on May 13.”

Killebrew pleaded guilty earlier this year to engaging in conspiracy to defraud a federally funded program of $1,170,935 and tax evasion, and was sentenced to four years, six months in prison.

Ezeh agreed to pay $1.4 million in restitution to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service’s Early Head Start Programs and other organizations as part of her plea agreement, which also detailed $390,000 in back taxes, according to media reports.

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Explosive report claims a network of charities connected to George Soros funneled $40M to support Zohran Mamdani’s political rise in tax-dodging scheme

Zohran Mamdani’s campaign is facing explosive allegations that it benefited from tens of millions of dollars in donations funneled from George Soros-linked charities as part of an elaborate scheme that may have violated federal tax laws. 

The 34-year-old State Assemblyman’s team has always claimed that he rose from obscurity to become New York City‘s mayoral front-runner thanks to an organic, grassroots movement involving many small donations and hundreds of young people with backpacks canvassing on his behalf.

But the Daily Mail can reveal that that narrative is now being called into question  according to a report from a watchdog website.

The findings, from conservative investigative site White Collar Fraud, alleged that a network of tax-exempt organizations connected to billionaire financier Soros shrewdly coordinated political and ground operations to support Mamdani in a scheme that involved laundering more than $40million in charitable donations through nonprofits and redirecting them into political activity.

Soros’s group disputes the report’s findings of improprieties, saying it is ‘riddled with inaccuracies, false assumptions and misinformation’.

‘The math isn’t the only thing that doesn’t add up,’ a spokesman for the Open Society Foundation – that was founded by Soros and is now headed by his 40-year-old son Alex, told the Daily Mail. 

‘The grants it cited – many of which we were earmarked for specific projects and causes elsewhere around the country as we have disclosed – were made years before the mayoral race even began.’ 

But White Collar Fraud investigator Sam Antar told the Daily Mail Soros-affiliated entities may have violated federal tax laws. Antar has filed 11 whistleblower complaints with the Internal Revenue Service as a result of his investigation.

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European Billionaires Funneled $2 Billion Via Transatlantic NGO Network To Erode U.S. Democracy, Finance Anti-Trump Protest Machine

A new bombshell report by Americans for Public Trust (APT), based on IRS Form 990s and media reports, reveals that five foreign “charities” have funneled nearly $2 billion into American leftist nonprofits, injecting what can only be described as a far-left extremist European policy agenda and toxic social-engineering campaigns into U.S. institutions like cancer. The report alleges that these foreign influence operations, exploiting the dark webs of the NGO world, also bankroll part of the protest industrial complex that has waged an ongoing color-revolution-style operation against President Trump, his supporters, and seeks to dismantle the Make America Great Again movement.

APT’s 31-page analysis (first revealed on Fox News), backed by grant records, shows that while foreign nationals can’t directly donate to U.S. political candidates, there is an alarming interconnected web of transatlantic funding networks into the NGO world where foreign billionaires bankroll American far-left nonprofits to unleash all sorts of activist campaigns. This unchecked foreign philanthropy risks undermining U.S. sovereignty, and according to APT Executive Director Caitlin Sutherland, who told Fox News, “foreign money is coming in, and it’s trying to erode our democracy.”

Here are the five foreign funders outlined in the report:  

  1. Quadrature Climate Foundation (UK) – $530 million
  2. KR Foundation (Denmark) – $36 million
  3. Oak Foundation (Switzerland) – $750 million
  4. Laudes Foundation (Switzerland) – $20 million
  5. Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (UK) – $553 million

The key findings are shocking:

Quadrature Climate Foundation (QCF): Founded in 2019 by hedge-fund billionaires Greg Skinner and Suneil Setiya. Has given roughly $530 million to 41 U.S. groups, including ClimateWorks Foundation ($147 M), Growald Climate Fund ($80 M), Grantham Foundation ($80 M), Windward Fund ($49 M), and Sunrise Project ($36 M). QCF also funds controversial solar-geoengineering research and “climate litigation and regulation advocacy.”

KR Foundation: Danish climate charity tied to the Carlsberg family. Has provided $36 million to 53 U.S. groups backing climate litigation, ESG advocacy, and fossil-fuel divestment. Major recipients include Center for International Environmental Law ($1.4 M), Conservation Law Foundation ($0.4 M), Oil Change International ($2.2 M), and Fossil Free Media ($1 M). It even funded The Associated Press ($300 K) for climate-related programming.

Oak Foundation: Swiss-based trust founded by British billionaire Alan Parker. Gave >$750 million to 152 U.S. groups advancing “climate justice” and lawsuits against fossil-fuel firms.

Key recipients include:

  • Environmental Law Institute ($650 K, creator of the Climate Judiciary Project)
  • Community Change ($1.6 M, linked to Free DC protests)
  • Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors ($108 M)
  • New Venture Fund ($67 M)
  • NRDC ($6.5 M)
  • Tides Center ($8.2 M)

Laudes Foundation: Established in 2020 by the secretive Brenninkmeijer family (C&A clothing empire). Has sent $20 million to 17 U.S. groups promoting ESG disclosure, “climate-friendly diets,” and equity mandates. Largest grants: Pulitzer Center ($3.7 M) for climate-justice reporting, Ceres ($1.7 M), Community Initiatives ($1 M), and World Resources Institute ($2.8 M).

Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF): Run by British hedge-fund billionaire Sir Christopher Hohn. Sent $553 million to 39 U.S. entities before pledging in late 2025 to halt U.S. funding after APT’s exposure.

Key recipients include:

  • Energy Foundation China ($70 M) — under House investigation for links to former CCP officials
  • Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development ($25 M)
  • Environmental Defense Fund ($17 M)
  • Sunrise Project ($36 M)

ATP points out that these funding flows exploit gaps in U.S. oversight laws, which prohibit foreign election donations but allow influence through 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) organizations. Through the nonprofit world, foreign billionaires can conduct foreign influence operations through leftist nonprofits, including funding protest industrial complex against Trump, get-out-the-vote drives, anti-Trump ads, lobbying, and whatever else.

Sutherland said, “There’s not a question about where it’s going and where it is coming from. We know that it’s foreign money coming into our U.S. policy fights, climate litigation, research, protests, lobbying, you name it“. 

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Nonprofits Cruelly Normalize Poverty for Climate Virtue

The last two decades should have been a period of accelerating economic development for Africa, South America and much of Asia. Discoveries of abundant oil and gas supplies offered a rescue from poverty, industrial stagnation and poor access to electricity and other basic services.

Instead, they got a man-made disaster, a deliberate slowdown of growth driven not by geographical disadvantage or domestic inefficiency but by a global campaign to divert affordable fossil fuels from poor nations.

Examples abound. At the United Nations’ COP26 of 2021, more than 30 governments and a number of public financial institutions committed to the so-called Glasgow Statement, also known as the Clean Energy Transition Partnership. The objective was to end new public finance for fossil fuel projects by the end of 2022 and instead prioritize “green” energy.

The European Investment Bank stopped financing all fossil fuel projects by the end of 2021, affecting billions in planned natural gas infrastructure. Major European pension funds and commercial institutions – BNP Paribas, Crédit Agricole, Société Générale – reduced or eliminated support for development projects for oil, natural gas and coal, citing targets to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.

The coercion was unequivocal: Pursue fossil fuels and lose access to Western capital. The opposition to hydrocarbons was embraced by Western nonprofit organizations and even by people who had made money from oil.

Just Stop Oil, a malicious anti-fossil fuel outfit, has been bankrolled by the Climate Emergency Fund and Hollywood filmmaker Adam McKay, maker of the alarmist movie Don’t Look Up. The fund draws heavily on contributions from Aileen Getty, heir to the Getty oil fortune, and other wealthy donors.

Rainforest Action Network, Sunrise Movement, Oil Change International, and 350.org are just a handful of so-called non-profit organizations that inject funds into domestic campaigns across the developing world. 

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