Tag: dark money

Dark Money Group Plows Millions Into Biden Campaign

President Joe Biden’s reelection effort will count on help from some anonymous friends.

In the 2024 general election, President Biden will be supported by numerous campaign committees and funds. One of the most significant will be FF PAC, also known as Future Forward. FF PAC has collected and will likely continue to collect millions from a nonprofit group, Future Forward Action USA, that shares leadership and a name with FF PAC.

According to FF PAC’s year-end financial summary filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) on Jan. 31, the hybrid political action committee brought in $25.3 million in total receipts in 2023. Future Forward Action USA sent FF PAC about $8.3 million, or about a third of its total fundraising for the year.

In 2020, when then Vice President Joe Biden was squaring off against incumbent President Donald Trump, Future Forward USA Action was one of the most important benefactors of FF PAC. According to FEC records, it sent FF PAC $61 million between 2019 and 2020. That’s around 40 percent of the about $151.4 million FF PAC collected in the cycle.

For the 2022 midterm cycle, Future Forward Action USA sent about $16.3 million to FF PAC. That’s around 53.4 percent of the about $30.6 million FF PAC raised between 2021 and 2022.

Future Forward USA Action is a tax-exempt, non-profit 501(c)(4). This type of organization, according to the Internal Revenue Service, is often a so-called social welfare organization. The agency also bars private enrichment and supporting or opposing a specific political candidate. However, social welfare organizations are allowed to engage in some political activities as long as they are not the primary activity.

FF PAC is a hybrid PAC. It can solicit and accept unlimited contributions from individuals, corporations, labor unions, and other political committees, according to the FEC. It must maintain two bank accounts—one for independent spending on advertisements or voter drives and another for making direct contributions to federal candidates.

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Is Dark Money ‘Anti-Hate’ Group CCDH Run By An Intelligence Operative?

A UK dark money nonprofit with outsized influence over the digital advertising space and political sphere, which popped up seemingly out of nowhere, is run by a British operative who reportedly had dreams of being a spook in his younger years – only to surround himself with spook-adjacents in his quest to deplatform opinions that diverge from establishment orthodoxy.

As Paul Thacker writes in Tablet, Former British Labour party operative Imran Ahmed heads up the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), which in March of 2021 released a report about online misinformation that quickly reached the pre-Musk Twitter regime, and was used to silence Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who the report named as one of “The Disinformation Dozen.” The report was then cited by by the Biden administration.

“There’s about 12 people who are producing 65% of anti-vaccine misinformation on social media platforms,” claimed former White House spox-turned-MSM gaslighter Jen Psaki in July 2021.

After Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced he was running against Biden for the Democratic nomination and appeared on Joe Rogan, Ahmed told the BBC, “He’s working really hard to keep people from knowing he’s a hardcore anti-vaxxer.” -Tablet

The report notes how Ahmed’s group, funded by all sorts of dark money, pulled off a near-impossible feat in DC – climbing to the upper echelons of influence in the DC cesspool dominated by massive think tanks and hardball lobbyists.

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Sam Bankman-Fried’s dad allegedly had advisory role at top Democratic ‘dark money network’

Joseph Bankman, the father of troubled former crypto entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried, allegedly held an advisory role at a top Democratic dark money network, an arrangement a watchdog says “deserves serious scrutiny.”

The allegation appeared in a lawsuit Bankman-Fried’s former company, FTX, filed against his parents Monday after they allegedly “exploited their access and influence within the FTX enterprise to enrich themselves, directly and indirectly, by millions of dollars,” the company’s lawyers wrote. FTX is seeking to recoup money to pay owed debts.

Bankman-Fried’s father, a Stanford University law professor, “sat on the advisory board of Arabella Advisors,” according to the complaint. 

Arabella Advisors, a Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm, manages a nonprofit network that provides fiscal sponsorship to dozens of left-wing groups.

The funds it manages, which include the New Venture Fund, Sixteen Thirty Fund, Windward Fund and Hopewell Fund, collectively raise over a billion dollars in anonymous cash annually and, in turn, also shower liberal causes and initiatives with money nationwide.

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Swiss Billionaire Bankrolls Biden Agenda With $63 Million in Dark Money

A Swiss billionaire is evading bans on foreign donations to political candidates and committees by giving tens of millions of dollars to a web of nonprofits to bankroll President Joe Biden’s agenda. 

Hansjörg Wyss, who made billions in the medical device industry, is positioning himself as a megadonor to Democrat-aligned groups despite being forbidden from making political donations as a foreign national. Wyss gave $72 million in 2021 to the Berger Action Fund, which directs money to nonprofits that don’t have to disclose their donors or expenditures. By donating to the fund, Wyss can bypass bans on foreign political financial involvement. 

Wyss created the fund in 2007, and it has donated $339 million to left-leaning groups since 2016, according to the Associated Press. Wyss’s representatives claim the tens of millions go to “issue advocacy,” addressing the environment, for example, and not partisan interests. 

Yet groups that received Wyss’s money have spent heavily backing Biden and Democrats, the AP reported: 

Of the $72.7 million donated in 2021 by Wyss’ Berger Action Fund, $62.7 million went to two groups that were focused on building public support for Biden’s agenda, according to tax documents and a statement from the group.

Since switching his focus to nonprofits, two closely related organizations that play a role in Democratic politics have been among the biggest recipients of Wyss’ money. 

The Sixteen Thirty Fund and the New Venture Fund — two organizations that share the same founder, address and management firm — collectively received $245 million donated by Wyss’ groups since 2016, tax records show… 

Caitlin Sutherland, executive director of Americans for Public Trust, said Wyss’s giving must come under “immediate scrutiny.”

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Dem-Linked Dark Money Group Is Masquerading As A Newspaper To Influence Pivotal Court Race

A Democrat-linked dark money group has used a website resembling a Wisconsin news outlet to attack the conservative candidate in the state’s current high-stakes Supreme Court election.

American Independent Media (AIM), a Washington, D.C.-registered 501(c)(4) nonprofit with ties to Democratic political operative David Brock, bought at least $90,000 in Facebook advertisements this month promoting two articles critical of former State Supreme Court Justice Dan Kelly on The Wisconsin Independent, a media website labelled as an AIM “project.” Early voting is already underway in Kelly’s officially non-partisan April 4 Wisconsin State Supreme Court election contest against liberal Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Janet Protasiewicz, which will determine whether Democrats take majority control of the court for the first time in 15 years, according to NBC News.

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A Dem-Linked Dark Money Network Is Quietly Funding The ‘Misinformation’ Research Industry

Several funds managed by Arabella Advisors, a Democrat-linked consultant firm, are quietly bankrolling research by universities and non-profits into how online “misinformation” and “disinformation” spreads, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation review of the networks’ grants.

Arabella Advisors, run by former Bill Clinton official Eric Kessler, manages certain administrative, legal and philanthropic functions of several non-profits including the Sixteen Thirty Fund, Hopewell Fund, North Fund and New Venture Fund, which donate to a variety of left-leaning groups, causes and Democratic candidates, according to tax filings and statements on the funds’ and Arabella’s websites. Several funds within the network are also sponsoring research into the effects of, and how best to mitigate, misinformation and disinformation, according to a DCNF review of public grants.

Many of the Arabella-funded research projects cite conservatives predominantly as purveyors of misinformation, with several projects recommending solutions to mitigate the spread of misinformation, including censorship.

The New Venture Fund sponsored a project in March called “The True Costs of Misinformation” at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, led by the center’s research director Joan Donovan, that sought to study the impacts of online misinformation, particularly on “vulnerable communities,” according to the project’s description. The project included a workshop featuring several panels on different topics related to the alleged impacts of misinformation.

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Sam Bankman-Fried Reveals Massive ‘Dark Money’ Donations To Republicans

Former crypto billionaire and Democratic Party megadonor Sam Bankman-Fried revealed he gave large sums of “dark” money to Republicans in a Nov. 29 interview.

He told crypto YouTuber Tiffany Fong that “all my Republican donations were dark” because “reporters freak the fuck out if you donate to a Republican” and that he “didn’t want to have that fight” with “super liberal” journalists. He claimed he was the third largest Republican donor and gave “about the same” to both parties. He did not specify how much he donated to Republicans or which GOP politicians he supported.

Campaign finance watchdog group OpenSecrets reported that Bankman-Fried donated over $36 million to Democrats and over $39 million in total, making him the sixth largest donor of the 2022 midterm election cycle. He was Democrats’ second-largest donor behind George Soros, who contributed over $128 million to Democrats this cycle.

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GOP senators block bill requiring dark money groups to disclose donors

Senate Republicans on Thursday blocked a Democrat-led measure to require so-called dark money groups disclose the identities of donors who contribute more than $10,000 during an election cycle.

The vote in the 100-member chamber was 49-49 with every present Republican voting against the bill and every present Democrat voting for it.

The bill is not new, however. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) first introduced the legislation in 2010 and it has been reintroduced every Congress since.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) told Insider that he is concerned the donors would be harassed.

“I don’t want to see them doxxed, and hassled, and harried, and harmed, and that’s what this bill is about,” he said.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) cited a 1958 Supreme Court decision that determined that the state of Alabama, which at the time was largely controlled by segregationist Democrats, could not force the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to disclose its members.

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Leo DiCaprio Used Dark Money To Annoy People With Climate Lawsuits

Actor Leonardo DiCaprio reportedly used his non-profit to award funds to dark money groups, which then funneled the money to a law firm that files nuisance climate-related lawsuits.

Communications between philanthropist Dan Emmett and University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) climate professor Ann Carlson revealed that they worked with law firm Sher Edling to raise money to sue oil companies over alleged climate change deception, according to Fox News Digital. Emmett told Carlson in 2018 that she could tell prospective donors that the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation had become “serious supporters” of Sher Edling’s ongoing litigation, Fox continued.

The lawsuits filed by Sher Edling were said to be supported by the Collective Action Fund for Accountability, Resilience, and Adaptation at the time, Fox News reported noted. This fund was managed by the Resources Legacy Fund (RLF), a dark money group, according to Fox News.

Emmett and Carlson reportedly discussed how Sher Edling’s director of strategic client relationships, Chuck Savitt, had sought support from the philanthropist, noting that they had received such financial support from DiCaprio’s foundation CEO, Terry Tamminen, between 2016 and 2019, the outlet continued.

“Chuck Savitt who is heading this new organization behind the lawsuits has been seeking our support,” Emmett reportedly wrote in an email to Carlson on July 22, 2017. “Terry Tamminen in his new role with the DiCaprio Foundation has been a key supporter.”

The emails were sent roughly two months prior to the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation’s announcement of $20 million in grants for various climate and conservation efforts, Fox News reported. The announcement was subsequently deleted, but archives shared by Fox News show that the RLF received funding “to support precedent-setting legal actions to hold major corporations in the fossil fuel industry liable.”

Sher Edling received more than $5.2 million from RLF between 2017 and 2020, Fox News continued. The firm predominantly filed suits on behalf of cities and states, including California, Delaware, Minnesota, Rhode Island, New York City, Washington D.C., San Francisco, Baltimore, and Honolulu against major oil companies.

“Wanted to let you know that we filed the first three lawsuits supported by the Collective Action Fund on Monday,” Savitt told Emmett in one of the emails reviewed by Fox News.

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Candidate who railed against ‘dark money’ shown to be funded by ‘dark money’

A Democratic Wisconsin Senate candidate who has railed against “dark money” in politics is being supported by a left-wing dark money network, Federal Election Commission (FEC) records show.

Mandela Barnes, whose top Senate primary opponents dropped out of the race in July, said in February “Dark money has no place in democracy” and pledges on his website “to stand up to the corrupting influence of dark money.” At the same time, Barnes was endorsed Monday by the Family Friendly Action PAC — which is dumping millions in his race to unseat Republican Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson and is largely funded by the dark money groups Sixteen Thirty Fund and America Votes, according to FEC filings.

Nonprofits with 501(c)(4) IRS exempt status are often referred to as “dark money” groups because they are under no legal obligation to disclose donors and can funnel unlimited sums to super PACs, according to OpenSecrets. Super PACs have to disclose their donors but can be “effectively dark money groups when the bulk of their funding cannot be traced back to the original donor,” according to OpenSecrets.

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