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GOOD 21021 SUM

charles Koch’s “Uniter” Rebrand Strains Credulity After Funding Congressional Coup Supporter

By Alex Kotch

|

February 11th, 2021

ALEC, Climate, Democracy, Featured Investigations, Koch, News, Opinion, Trump

At 85, the most influential Republican political donor in modern U.S. history says he has some regrets. According to soft-ball corporate media interviews and a new book he’s written, billionaire industrialist Charles Koch wishes that his more than five decades of organizing and funding far-right, partisan politicians, advocacy groups, and academia had slightly less partisan results.

Koch’s latest media makeover strains credulity. The man spent his entire adult life, while helming one of the largest and dirtiest private companies in the nation, working to fundamentally alter society and move it towards his ideal: a libertarian utopia with low taxes, no unions, weak regulations, and unlimited corporate political spending.

Most recently, numerous House and Senate Republicans that he, his family, his company, and his political machine helped elect attempted to overturn the election just hours after hordes of Trump supporters mounted a deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Koch’s efforts have had a tremendous impact on the country. His massive grants to ideological, free-market university programs have created a body of right-wing economics literature. His political advocacy groups have grown into a network as large as either major political party. The hundreds of state lawmakers he helped elect have gerrymandered legislative and congressional districts with partisan and racial bias, making legislatures and U.S. House delegations far more conservative than the states they represent. Elected officials and agency heads he has supported have cut taxes on corporations and the wealthy and struck down environmental regulations.

The sum of these many parts is a major, industrialized nation wedded to fossil fuels, without universal health care, and with lower taxes than most comparable countries, where Republicans govern the majority of its states, and right-wing ideologues occupy scores of powerful court seats.

Boosting Extremist Politicians

Koch’s success thus far still isn’t enough for him. As he perfected the pages of his latest book, trying to cast himself as a unifier and good-hearted philanthropist, his political operation poured tens of millions of dollars into election ads and canvassing operations for mostly Republican candidates. Many of those candidates would win their races and proceed to challenge the valid election of Joe Biden.

A recent CMD report found that Koch Industries was the biggest corporate donor to super PACs and other outside groups that spent money to help elect many of the 147 House and Senate Republicans who voted to overturn the election and disenfranchise millions of voters. In just these members’ most recent election cycles, Koch Industries donated nearly $14 million to those groups. Charles Koch’s Americans for Prosperity and its affiliated super PAC spent close to $18 million on ads and other means to help elect a number of members who attempted the legislative coup.

Koch Industries’ PAC also chipped in, making six-figure contributions to the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) and the National Republican Congressional Committee, which spent to boost the election deniers in Congress. Charles Koch and five of his close family members each gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to the NRSC.

As OpenSecrets found, Koch PAC was also the biggest direct donor to the campaigns of the election-denying members of Congress, having contributed over $930,000.

And, to make sure Republicans retained their Senate majority under Mitch McConnell, Koch’s Americans for Prosperity Action (AFPA) spent millions on one of the two Jan. 5 Georgia Senate runoff elections. AFPA spent at least $13.9 million on mailers, digital ads, door hangers, and canvassing in favor of incumbent Republican Sen. David Perdue or opposing his challenger, Democrat John Ossoff. Perdue campaigned on the “Big Lie” of rampant voter fraud and encouraged other senators to vote against the election results, saying he would do the same if he was eligible to do so.

Part of the Koch election effort was run by the Libre Initiative, a project of Americans for Prosperity that has courted Hispanic voters for nearly a decade, which went “all-in on the Georgia runoffs,” according to The New York Times.

Along with AFPA, Libre Action spent considerable resources on canvassing, knocking on doors for vulnerable GOP incumbent Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina for nearly a year; Tillis won re-election. Tillis did not vote against the election results but, along with many of his Republican colleagues, supported Trump’s legal challenges and recount requests and expressed unfounded concern over the security of mail-in ballots.

As in 2016, the Koch political groups did not directly campaign for Trump, but its work for GOP senators helped him. “The turnout we do for Tillis is helpful to the president indirectly, because we’re turning out conservatives who are aligned,” said Libre Initiative Executive Director.

According to a Nov. 11 CMD analysis, 82 percent of state and federal candidates whom the Koch network backed in 2020 won their elections. Of the 439 candidates in whom the Koch network invested, only 19, or 4.3 percent, were Democrats. The network supported 19 U.S. Senate candidates, all Republicans, and 15 won.

Candidates the network has supported in recent elections include Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Ted Cruz (R-TX), the two election denial ringleaders in the Senate, and extremist representatives such as Paul Gosar (R-AZ) and Andy Biggs (R-AZ), both Freedom Caucus members who voted against the election results and allegedly helped plan the Jan. 6 events with lead organizer Ali Alexander.

Funding Division

Koch’s new persona is that of a man who seeks to “build bridges” between political partisans in a deeply divided country. His record, up to this very moment, is that of a man who has fueled that divide by bankrolling hyper-partisan operations, think tanks, and media companies that spread disinformation and back radical right-wing policies.

At the structural level, Koch has long funded the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a pay-to-play network of Republican state lawmakers and corporate lobbyists that writes model bills that boost business profits. Over the years, ALEC has carried the oil industry’s water on climate denial and anti-environmental legislation, and promoted highly controversial “stand your ground,” anti-labor, deregulation, school privatization, and voter suppression bills.

ALEC President Lisa Nelson told a Center for National Policy crowd last year that her group drafted letters that lawmakers could send to their secretaries of state to cast doubt on their states’ election results, implying that this would be a way for them to overturn their constituents’ votes and instead pick pro-Trump Electoral College electors. ALEC members in the Pennsylvania state legislature went on to lead an effort to overturn their state’s electors, and numerous individuals associated with ALEC have ties to the events on Jan. 6 or to the “Big Lie” of voter fraud that fueled the insurrection.

Koch is also a major funder of ALEC ally the State Policy Network and its numerous members, which are right-wing think tanks that promote free-market, anti-labor, and pro-business policies, fight legal battles in favor of conservative ideals, and often have ties to Republican state lawmakers. One member, the Mackinac Center, promoted the “Operation Gridlock” anti-coronavirus restriction protest in Michigan where white militia members, who would later plot to kidnap and execute Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, recruited followers.

Several Koch-backed groups have been lying about voter fraud for years in a coordinated effort to lay the groundwork for voting restrictions that disproportionately disenfranchise Democratic voters. Some have advocated for purging huge numbers of voters from the rolls.

At the Heritage Foundation, which has received roughly $1 million from the Charles Koch Foundation since 2014, voter suppression advocate Hans von Spakovsky manages its Election Law Reform Initiative. Spakovsky recently argued that mail-in voting is ripe for fraud and has promoted the “voter-fraud myth” for many years. He was a member of Trump’s failed “election integrity” commission, which found no evidence of voter fraud in the 2016 elections.

The Texas Public Policy Foundation, which got roughly $4.9 million from the Charles Koch Foundation from 2014 to 2019, attacked mail-in voting this year as the pandemic raged, a tactic adopted by many conservative groups aimed to boost Republican candidates.

Ties to Far-Right Extremism

Several organizations that Koch funds have hired or promoted far-right extremists.

The Leadership Institute, a State Policy Network member that counts Koch as a donor and chairman emeritus, trains young conservatives and publishes Campus Reform, a website that attacks liberal university students, professors, and administrations as well as affirmative action and other policies it claims are illegitimate. Multiple Leadership Institute alumni went on to reveal themselves as overt white nationalists.

ALEC has a history of failing to denounce extremists in its ranks, including former Washington state chair Matt Shea. Even after Shea was accused of white supremacist domestic terrorism, ALEC never publicly denounced him nor cut ties with him.

The Heritage Foundation had Andy Ngo, a prominent propagandist for fascists, give a keynote speech about antifascists in 2019.

Koch may be walking back a small fraction of that funding for divisive groups. The Charles Koch Foundation’s 2019 tax return, obtained by CMD, shows that it did not fund The Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF), which finances much of the reporting that appears on the website of The Daily Caller, an extremely partisan website founded by Fox News’ Tucker Carlson that often publishes dubious, Republican-friendly stories and has a history of employing white nationalists.

While Koch didn’t fund DCNF in 2019, his foundations provided 84 percent of the nonprofit’s annual revenue in 2016 and nearly 40 percent in 2017, giving close to $1 million in each of those years. In 2018, Koch’s largest media investment, nearly $750,000, went to DCNF.

Bankrolling Climate Change Denial

As the leader of an oil and gas empire, Koch has financed a vast climate change denial network for decades. According to Greenpeace, Koch family foundations poured over $145 million into 90 groups that have attacked climate science and policy from 1997 to 2018.

Pressure from Koch’s network on politicians and academics helped politicize climate science and radicalize Republicans on the issue. The result is a deeply divided America, where 72 percent of Democrats and those who lean Democratic believe that “human activity contributes a great deal to climate change,” while only 22 percent of Republicans and Republican leaners agree with this factual statement, according to a 2020 Pew Research Center poll.

Broader Network Even More Toxic

In addition to the outfits he directly funds, Koch has been a prominent funder of DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund, two connected charity vehicles that direct wealthy conservatives’ donations to the nonprofits of their choosing while hiding the donors’ identities from the public. The two funds, especially DonorsTrust in recent years, have bankrolled far-right, hyperpartisan organizations, even explicitly white nationalist hate groups.

A recent Center for Media and Democracy investigation revealed that DonorsTrust gave over $1.5 million to the white nationalist hate group VDARE in 2019, along with a smaller donation to the white nationalist hate group behind the American Renaissance publication.

Project Veritas, the frequently discredited sting operation led by James O’Keefe, gets significant funding from DonorsTrust. From 2014 to 2019, DonorsTrust gave $12.5 million to the group, representing a sizable portion of its revenue. During that time, Project Veritas worked with ex-spies recruited by Blackwater founder Erik Prince, who is the brother of Education Sec. Betsy DeVos, to infiltrate and smear liberal groups. Most recently, Project Veritas worked with a postal worker and promoted his false statements about alleged ballot-related malfeasance within the USPS and allegedly attempted to bribe a Minnesota man to falsely claim he was “harvesting” ballots for Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar. The group has “a cozy relationship” with the self-described “Western chauvinist” Proud Boys, a hate group, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Far-right student group Turning Point USA, which has a history of hiring racists, is also a big beneficiary of DonorsTrust contributions, receiving over $1.5 million from the charity from 2017 to 2019.

DonorsTrust also finances discriminatory organizations and groups considered hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center. According to a CMD report, DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund combined to give over $13 million to anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, and anti-LGBTQ organizations from 2014 to 2018, including anti-Muslim hate group the Center for Security Policy and the anti-LGBTQ Alliance Defending Freedom.

The Middle East Media and Research Institute, an organization at the “inner core” of the nation’s Islamophobia network that “attempts to portray Muslims and Arabs as being inherently irrational and violent,” received over $600,000 from DonorsTrust from 2015 to 2019.

Other extreme groups that DonorsTrust has kept afloat include the alt-right-friendly Center for American Greatness and the Prager University Foundation, the nonprofit being online disinformation publisher PragerU, which produces online videos denying climate change, claiming that white privilege does not exist, and spreading white nationalist tropes.

DonorsTrust also bankrolls numerous voter suppression groups, including the Public Interest Legal Foundation ($600,000 since 2016), True the Vote ($150,000 from 2013 to 2017), the Judicial Education Project ($47.5 million from 2011 to 2018), and Judicial Watch ($218,000 since 2010).

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About Alex Kotch

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GUK

...Moore co-founded CUP in 2015 with the billionaire Steve Forbes, the economist Larry Kudlow (later Trump’s chief economic adviser) and Arthur Laffer, an economist and pundit who advised Ronald Reagan and Trump and to whom Trump gave the presidential medal of freedom.

The Accountable.US report details donations of at least $1.77m to CUP from DonorsTrust, a rightwing group not required to reveal the names of its donors.

“A principled philanthropic partner for conservative and libertarian donors” in its own words, but “the right’s dark-money ATM” in the words of Mother Jones magazine, DonorsTrust has links to the Koch network and Leonard Leo, two dominant figures in rightwing political funding.

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an 4 26 guk

The Guardian reports a small West Virginia town is still trying to recover from becoming the face of white nationalism after a nonprofit selling “white replacement theory” and other conspiracies moved in and began flooding the internet with conspiracies.

Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, residents learned Peter and Lydia Brimelow — owners of the controversial online publication VDare — bought property in the area in 2020.

“Critics have accused the anti-immigration publication of being the genteel face of a constellation of white nationalist groups,” reports the Guardian. “… VDare’s arrival was flame to tinder in a town already navigating disagreements about the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter and Pride movements. Residents were divided over how, if at all, to react to the prospect of their town becoming an organizational nexus of the far right. Neighbors stopped speaking to neighbors, business partnerships fell apart, and people attacked each other on Facebook.”

Journalist Michael Edison Hayden said Peter Brimelow has been influential at spreading the idea of “white genocide,” the argument that white people are being deliberately replaced by non-white immigration.

“And he succeeded,” said Hayden. “At the Republican National Convention in 2024, people were holding signs calling for mass deportation. That is in part Brimelow’s legacy.”

Last year, the attorney general of New York, where VDare is registered as a non-profit, sued the nonprofit, accusing the Brimelows of using the non-profit for personal gain, under the argument that the Brimelow family might be living in the West Virginia castle they purchased, which would be a violation of non-profit laws. The other side of the legal fight is the company wants to keep their writers and donors anonymous.

“They appear to have purchased the castle with the help of around $4.5m in donations channeled through DonorsTrust, a group that bundles money from wealthy rightwing people and helps obscure the source,” said Hayden. “ … We’ll see how it plays out. But financially, I think it really is the end of the road for VDare. They were hiring lawyers, one after the other, and that just became extraordinarily expensive.”

But Hayden wonders if parties willing to use racism as a political weapon even have use for the organization, or is it already mission accomplished?

“Does the Republican party, or Trump, or any of these people, need VDare? They have all these online influencers, and at this point practically every MAGA politician has paid lip service to the great replacement theory. … VDare’s mission of making immigration a hot-button issue has succeeded in a way that may make VDare obsolete,” said Hayden. “Are younger people going to read VDare now? No. They’re watching Nick Fuentes. I’m sure before long even Fuentes will look like an older person in the eyes of some young radicals. … They are always thinking about the next thing – the thinkers, or talkers, who can help accrue power tomorrow.”

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https://www.thedailybeast.com/donors-to-tucker-carlsons-daily-caller-news-foundation-revealed?ref=home

ref roger s 12 22

this reporting is one of several scoops featured in this week’s edition of [Confider, the newsletter pulling back the curtain on the media. Subscribe here and send your questions, tips, and complaints here.

The non-profit that feeds the conservative Daily Caller website co-founded by Fox News host Tucker Carlson has accepted tens of thousands of dollars from entities and individuals who have received favorable coverage, including some who authored opinion pieces, a new filing shows.

The document—the Daily Caller News Foundation’s fiscal year 2021 tax statement—includes for thefirst time a list of donors to the 501(c)(3) organization, a group that is not required by law to disclose donor information. The filing also reveals that Carlson, who in 2020 announced he was leaving the Daily Caller and selling his stake in the website, is still the foundation chairman, and has not cut back on his hours.

When Carlson announced his split with the Daily Caller in 2020, he cited work constraints. “I’m just too absorbed in what I’m doing,” the host told **The Wall Street Journal** at the time, explaining, “I wasn’t helping in any way, because I’ve got an hour to do every night” on his Fox News program. The tax filing, which covers the following year, shows he continued to hold the chairman position and put in the same hours as in all previous foundation filings—five hours a week.

Many of the foundation’s donors are tied to industries and issues that the Caller covers frequently. Most notable is the Ariel Corporation,which manufactures natural gas compressors and gave $135,000 to support the news organization—which has for years been criticized for its pro-carbon energy reporting and financial ties to the Koch brothers, the right-wing industrialists.

Other donors have an even closer relationship with the site, including some who have published pieces in their own names, without a disclosure of their financial ties. That, according to top journalism ethics expert Kelly McBride raises ethics questions.

“With any news organization that solicits donations, you really have to have an editorial policy that articulates how you separate out your loyalty to your audience and to your journalistic mission from your ties to your donors,” McBride, who is senior vice president and chair of the Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership at the Poynter Institute, told The Daily Beast.

such a policy, she said, would ideally include an advisement to donors that they can’t influence editorial work, and a promise of transparency whenever there’s a conflict of interest.

“You’re looking for, first of all, separation between fundraising and the editorial product, and you’re also looking for clarity around what donors can expect in exchange for their donation, as well as transparency so the audience understands,” McBride said, adding that “a tagline on an op-ed would be an obvious transparency mechanism.”

The Daily Beast reached out to the Daily Caller and Carlson for comment, but did not immediately receive a reply.

The journalistic and ethical standards published on the Daily Caller website don’t mention the foundation or any policy regarding donor influence over editorial content. But some donors have contributed content themselves.

For instance, RightForge, an internet infrastructure provider that caters to conservatives, in 2021 gave the foundation $7,500. In May of that year, the Daily Caller ran an op-ed from RightForge CEO Martin Avila, criticizing what Avila called the social media “witch trial” of former President Donald Trump. Months later, RightForge announced it would host Trump’s new social media network, Truth Social.

Real estate investor Adam Milstein gave the foundation $25,000 in 2021 and published an opinion piece that same year. The piece—titled, “Strategic Active Philanthropy Can Strengthen Our American Values”—includes a brief bio for Milstein, which describes him only as “an active philanthropist, an investor, and community leader.”

While the Daily Caller has been blasted for its affinity for the fossil fuel industry, the tax filing shows the Daily Caller News Foundation received financial backing from conservative green-energy group ClearPath Action, which gave $10,000 in 2021.

ClearPath has received favorable coverage from the Daily Caller, which earlier this year cited CEO Rich Powell in an article about his group, without a disclaimer. When Powell landed a Daily Caller op-ed earlier this month, the outlet added a note to the piece and his contributor page that read, “The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.” But those notes did not mention the financial relationship.

Then there’s Daniel Oliver, a Daily Caller regular​​ contributor who also serves as trustee of the George E. Coleman Jr. Foundation, which gave the foundation $7,500 in 2021. The Daily Caller highlights some of Oliver’s rich experience in his bio—chair of the Education and Research Institute, director of Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy, and former chairmanships of the Federal Trade Commission under President ​​Ronald Reagan and the National Review”—but doesn’t mention his role with the Coleman Foundation, or the donor relationship. (Buzzfeed News reported in 2019 that the foundation was a FDRLST Media investor, citing Oliver’s role.)

An even more influential GOP figure also appears in the filing, in the form of a $10,000 gift from CRC Advisors, a group headed up by arch-conservative megadonor and judicial activist Leonard Leo. The Daily Caller published a piece on Friday based on the results of a CRC poll, without disclosing the relationship. The two groups also show overlap in their employees, including current CRC vice president Kevin Daley, whose LinkedIn page says he left the Daily Caller in 2020 after four years as a reporter.

​​Power the Future, a nonprofit that advocates for the fossil fuel industry, donated $10,000 in 2021 and appears frequently enough in the Daily Caller that articles about the group have their own tag on the site. Since the donation, Power the Future Executive Director Daniel Turner has been cited in multiple Daily Caller pieces as an expert voice, without no mention of his status as a foundation donor.

Justin Olson , an elected Arizona utility regulatorand former Arizona GOP Senate candidate, gave the foundation $10,000 in 2021, listing his role at the time as an officer with right-wing youth activist group Turning Point USA.

The Daily Caller has given TPUSA favorable coverage, including after the donation. It also published an exclusive report in November 2021, the month after Olson announced his bid, revealing that a Scottsdale school board official had access to a so-called Google Drive “dossier” of personal information of vocal conservatives. (Police cleared the official of wrongdoing.) Olson tweeted the article when it came out, and expressed repeated outrage at the story on the platform, while a Twitter search shows he had not tweeted about schools previously.

The filing reveals the names of 2021 donors, but does not indicate whether they had donated before. Some of the contributors who present apparent conflicts of interest have had contributor roles in the publication previously, such as Leo and Adam Milstein, who published op-eds in 2018 and 2019. In 2018, when Power the Future announced its debut, the Daily Caller had the exclusive story.

There are, of course, numerous examples of media companies drawing funding from non-profit backers. But the Daily Caller and the DCNF have a unique relationship.

The foundation was created in 2011, a few years after Carlson founded the Daily Caller with then-partner Neil Patel, who still helms the operation. Thanks to the organization’s non-profit status, the foundation can subsidize not only publication costs, but the production of the actual content—with a built-in tax break.

Part of the foundation’s stated mission is to train young reporters, but its staff also generates content, which the Daily Caller then gets to post to its site for free. And while this content is nominally available to any publication,The Washington Postreported that it’s rarely used by anyone beyond the Daily Caller. A 2017 Center for Media and Democracy report found that the Daily Caller published “virtually everything” the nonprofit churned out.

However, other groups have taken advantage of the arrangement. The fact-checking site Snopes reported in 2019 that conservative political activists appropriated foundation content to populate a number of small-time websites styling themselves as local news outlets to smuggle political content to unsuspecting audiences.

The Daily Caller has also been called out for its financial and political ties to Trump’s campaign, which shelled out about $150,000 for access to the Daily Caller email list in the 2016 election, the Center for Media and Democracy reported.

One of the most familiar examples of a donor-funded news organization would be National Public Radio. While NPR gets some government grants, most of its money comes from private contributors—including from industries it reports on. But McBride noted that NPR puts disclaimers on stories that may present an apparent conflict.

“When you listen to public media, you hear that certain people give money for certain lines of reporting, like for climate change, et cetera. So you can fund a line of reporting, but you get no influence over how that news is presented, and public media also lets the audience know when that funding may intersects with the reporting,” McBride said.

It’s unclear whether any Daily Caller News Foundation donors tabbed their contributions for specific issues or series. But some well-known issues-driven names populate the list, including top GOP megadonor and election-denial enthusiast Dick Uihlein ($25,000), anti-climate change groups the Bradley Foundation ($50,000) and Sarah Scaife Foundation ($350,000), and conservative free-market underwriters Searle Freedom Trust ($230,000).

Thesource of the biggest donation, however, is still unknown. That would be the $400,000 the group received through DonorsTrust, a nonprofit known as a conservative dark money “ATM,” which allows funders to channel money anonymously to various recipients. The foundation also got a $300,000 injection from someone identified as “anonymous.”

The Daily Caller operation—which has been exposed forties to white nationalists—has been widely criticized on the left for its financial ties to energy interests, most specificallyCharles Koch, who has provided millions in funding over the years, and at one point reportedly accounted for more than 83 percent of the foundation’s annual revenue.

That bankroll swelled between 2020 and 2021. The foundation’s fiscal year 2020 filing shows $1.57 million in contributions, a number thatnearly doubled to $2.8 million the next year, according to the 2021 document. The foundation spent $1.4 million—$254,000 of it on fundraising—which, combined with previous assets, left it with a year-end balance of about $2.1 million.

https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2022/03/21/the-dirty-dozen-the-biggest-nonprofit-funders-of-climate-denial/

CMD 3 22:

tABLE 2

Top Nonprofit Climate Denial Funders, 2014-20

Numerous charities, private foundations, and trade associations have bankrolled the climate misinformation movement.

 Page 1 of 4  

Table with 9 columns and 53 rows. Currently displaying rows 1 to 15.

Donor    2014 2015 2016   2017 2018   2019 2020   TOTAL

1 DonorsTrust/Donors Capital Fund $3,293,850 $3,816,850 $3,676,750 $2,422,000 $3,830,200 $2,101,732 $1,416,500 20,557,882

2 Searle Freedom Trust $839,500 $589,500 $1,140,000 $940,000 $1,096,000 $754,000 $985,000 6,344,000

3 Sarah Scaife Foundation $350,000 $610,000 $842,000 $875,000 $960,000 $715,000 $1,245,000 5,597,000

4 Mercer Family Foundation $885,000 $100,000 $1,075,000 $970,000 3,030,000

5 Dunn Foundation $1,200,000 $250,000 $325,000 $200,000 $350,000 $350,000 $350,000 3,025,000

6 Bradley Foundations $344,376 $318,876 $458,500 $519,000 $280,000 $475,000 $110,000 2,505,752

7 American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers $365,000 $275,000 $470,000 $400,000 1,510,000

8 Koch Foundations $100,128 $431,891 $333,028 $413,016 $84,000 $99,049 $18,749 1,479,861

9 Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program $38,500 $228,500 $265,000 $230,000 $235,000 997,000

10 Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund $35,525 $21,350 $27,867 $241,355 $212,310 $231,055 $201,952 971,414

11 National Philanthropic Trust $150,000 $175,000 $175,500 $176,000 $200,000 876,500

12 Bartley J. Madden Foundation $45,000 $270,000 $270,000 $250,000 $30,000 865,000

13 Thomas W. Smith Foundation $150,000 $175,000 $200,000 $200,000 725,000

14 The 85 Fund $700,000 700,000

15 Ed Uihlein Family Foundation $10,500 $129,000 $35,000 $115,000 $115,000 $140,000...

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P2

Donor 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 TOTAL

16 Schwab Charitable Fund $206,600 $14,475 $121,775 $32,925 $45,100 $44,895 $95,480 561,250

17 Chase Foundation of Virginia $84,000 $113,000 $108,000 $85,000 $75,000 $75,000 540,000

18 Murray Energy $10,000 $285,000 $100,000 395,000

19 Adolph Coors Foundation $80,000 $100,000 $90,000 $100,000 370,000

20 Claws Foundation $65,000 $115,000 $175,000 355,000

21 Lilly Endowment $50,000 $50,000 $50,000 $50,000 $50,000 $50,000 $50,000 350,000

22 Diana Davis Spencer Foundation $50,000 $100,000 $150,000 300,000

23 National Christian Foundation $200,000 $1,100 201,100

24 The Carthage Foundation $160,000 160,000

25 Barney Family Foundation $40,000 $40,000 $40,000 $40,000 160,000

26 DuPage Community Foundation $25,000 $50,000 $55,000 $25,000 155,000

27 Deramus Foundation $25,000 $25,000 $25,000 $25,000 100,000

28 Pew Charitable Trusts $95,177 95,177

29 John William Pope Foundation $10,000 $10,000 $15,000 $25,000 $25,000 85,000

30 William H. Donner Foundation $82,000 82,000 ....

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A number of the top funders of climate misinformation are closely connected. Staff and board members often overlap, and many currently work or previously worked for organizations linked to Charles Koch.

In addition to the fossil fuel companies themselves, this network of nonprofits has been effective at blocking meaningful policies and regulations to address the climate crisis. In 2022, after a number of dire warnings from the IPCC and other climate monitors, even a unified Democratic White House and congressional majority have yet to pass substantial environmental protection legislation.

In descending order, the leading nonprofit funders of climate science misinformation from 2014–20 are:

1. Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund — $20.6 million

Known as the “dark money ATM of the conservative movement,” DonorsTrust and its sister fund, Donors Capital Fund, have been the nonprofit funding vehicles of choice for the wealthy right wing for many years. They are both donor-advised fund sponsors, meaning that they manage the charitable donations of their clients. These clients “advise” the funds on which nonprofit charities should receive their money, but the funds decide on the recipients.

Between 2014 and 2020, the two funds gave the most money—$13.3 million—to the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based free-market think tank and charity that “has been at the forefront of denying the scientific evidence for man-made climate change,” according to DeSmog.

The institute has historically received significant funding from fossil fuel giants such as ExxonMobil, Koch Industries, and Murray Energy, and in the 1990s it worked with the tobacco company Philip Morris to question the science linking second-hand smoke to health problems.

The funds bankrolled the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based free market advocacy group that also has a history of funding from tobacco and oil companies, with nearly $6 million. The institute’s former executive director, Gregory Conko, is senior director of programs at DonorsTrust.

In addition, DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund funded these climate misinformation groups from 2014–20:

• Energy and Environment Legal Institute ($421,000)
• Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change ($400,000)
• Institute for Energy Research ($371,000)
• Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow ($122,000)
• Property and Environmental Research Center ($30,000)

Kimberly Dennis, cofounder and board chair of DonorsTrust, is on the board of the Property and Environmental Research Center (PERC), which was formerly known as the Political Economy Research Center. She’s also president of the right-wing Searle Freedom Trust.

Thomas Beach, a member of the DonorsTrust board of directors, also serves on the PERC board.

omg random grab narrow slice?!

https://publicintegrity.org/politics/news-outlets-unearth-more-donors-trust-recipients/

donors use charity to push free-market policies in states

By Paul Abowd

February 14, 2013

Charity acts as screen for conservative foundations that feed network of state-based think tanks, media outlets.

Virginia-based charity Donors Trust has promised anonymity to donors who seek to fund “sensitive or controversial” issues.

A Center for Public Integrityreport last week lifted that veil — at least partially — revealing dozens of conservative foundations that together in recent years have given tens of millions of dollars to Donors Trust .

Donors Trust, in turn, has funded a nationwide network of free-market think tanks, media outlets and university programs to the tune of nearly $400 million since 2002.

Recently, much of that funding has gone toward state-based policy efforts. For example, Donors Trust provided 95 percent of the funding for a conservative media clearinghouse called the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, which runs a network of state-based blogs.

While many of the charity’s 193 donors remain anonymous, a variety of media reports have shown where Donors Trust money ends up:

Climate change-denial

In late February, The Guardian GUK reported that 46 percent of Donors Trust grants in 2010 went to groups opposing climate science. Between 2002 and 2010, the group gave $118 million to about 100 such groups.

A detailed 2012 report published on DeSmog Blog ties Donors Trust to a vast climate science denial machine through its generous support for theHeartland Institute, a Chicago-based think tank that mobilized support for the tobacco industry before shifting its focus to climate change. BUCHHOLTZ?]

An October episode of PBS Frontline said Donors Trust has become “the number one supporter” of climate denial groups like Heartland and the Koch brothers-funded Americans for Prosperity after industry giants such as ExxonMobil curtailed funding to Heartland following public protest.

Islamic radicalism

Donors Trust made its largest grant in 2007 to a New York-based group called Clarion Fund. The $17 million donation went toward the production of a documentary called “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West.”

Seven weeks before the 2008 election of Barack Obama as president, Clarion distributed millions of copies of the movie, which stirred fear about Islamic radicalism, by inserting DVDs as ads in daily newspapers nationwide.

Reports later suggested that Chicago businessmanBarry Seid may have passed the $17 million through Donors Trust to Clarion. Seid and Donors Trust director Whitney Ball co-chair another foundation called Chicago Freedom Trust.

Academic coups?

In 2010, a free-market professor of economics whose research is funded through Donors Trust laid out his “Free State” plan for libertarians to migrate to and take over the state of New Hampshire.

In 2009, Donors Trust passed about $600,000 in donations to Shimer Collegewhile conservative Chicago businessmen, including Seid, attempted unsuccessfully to take control of the small liberal arts school.

‘Fair representation’

A Donors Trust subsidiary called the Project for Fair Representationhas led legal challenges to affirmative action programs and, more recently, to the Voting Rights Act, according to reports by Reuters and The New York Times.

The project sought out and tapped the majority-white Shelby County, Ala., as plaintiffs in a challenge to Section 5 of the Act,which gives the U.S. Department of Justice power to approve or reject changes to electoral laws in 16 states, mostly in the south. The case will be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.

==

https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/capitol-riot/?rs=182

tom b raw story

according to a report from theDaily Beast's Roger Sollenberger, a dark money nonprofit with ties to the Koch family has been funneling millions of dollars into organizations promoting white supremacy as well as supporters of Donald Trump linked to the Jan 6th insurrection.

Based upon an IRS filing from Donors Trust, reported upon by CNBC, the Beast explains that the nonprofit took in $360 million last year to disperse as it sees fit.

According to the report, beneficiaries of donations have been linked to the organizers of the Jan 6th rally -- that turned into a riot at the U.S. Capitol -- as well private universities.

Calling Donors Trust the "dark money ATM of the right," the report states the organization that does not have to reveal who gives it money, "... gave more than $2 million to groups linked to white supremacists,including the VDARE Foundation."

Government ethics expert Norm Eisen claimed, after reviewing the IRS filing that it is "profoundly concerning for the future of our democracy."

With the Beast reporting, "the group channeled major support for entities which fought to overturn President Joe Biden's 2020 victory and organized the Jan. 6 rallies in Washington, D.C." Eisen claimed, "The Donors Trust is taking advantage of the dangerous opacity of our tax and related laws and regulations to fund alleged white supremacist and white nationalist associated groups, those who were bad actors in wrongly attempting to spread misinformation about or overturn the legitimate 2020 election results, and even groups that were responsible for the rally that helped trigger the Jan. 6 insurrection."

According to the Beast's Sollenberger, "Donors Trust posted record numbers in 2020.The group, which has hauled in more than $1 billion since 2016, raised more than $360 million last year, while spreading around $182 million across 339 organizations. Donors Trust itself held on to about $174 million in contributions, bringing its total assets to $607 million."

You can read more here.

https://www.exposedbycmd.org/:{2020/12:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:/04/dark-money-atm-of-the-conservative-movement-gives-1-5-million-to-white-nationalist-hate-group/

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.”

SPLC has been tracking hate activity since 1971, when it was founded “to ensure that the promise of the civil rights movement became a reality for all.”

“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 2017and 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.

after 1/6 am radio // universe o'keefe cited BS]

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/13/dark-money-gop-fund-funneled-millions-groups-that-pushed-voter-fraud-claims.html

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

At least five people, including a Capitol police officer, died in connection to the riot, which happened after Trump and some of his closest allies led a rally urging supporters to fight to prevent Congress’ declaration of Biden’s victory.

Several pro-Trump groups were involved with planning the rally, which was held near the White House. Trump encouraged people who attended the rally to march on the U.S. Capitol. Critics, including several Republicans, accused him of inciting the violence. On Tuesday, Trump said the comments were “totally appropriate.”

Groups with the same 501(c)(3) status as Donors Trust are prohibited under tax regulations from supporting specific candidates. However, they can skirt those rules by supporting and promoting policies that align with a particular politician. In the case of Trump-fueled unrest, several groups historically backed by Donors Trust money aligned themselves with Trump’s false claims about widespread election fraud.

Turning Point USA, a nonprofit founded by staunch Trump ally Charlie Kirk, received over $850,000 from the Donors Trust. Kirk has continued to parrot the president’s attacks on the election, falsely claiming Biden’s victory was fraudulent.

“I will say it very bluntly. This election was stolen from President Trump. And the changes to the election, to the ballot questions, to the voter registration, to the access problems in these states” Kirk said in December.

Kirk’s affiliated 501(c)(4) Turning Point Action was listed as a participant in last week’s “March to Save America” rally, which preceded the attack on Capitol Hill. Prior to the rally, in a tweet he later deleted, Kirk said the group would be involved with sending over 80 buses to the rally. CNBC captured a screenshot of tweet before it was deleted.

Kirk recently said on his podcast that those from Turning Point got back on their buses and left following the conclusion of the rally.

A Turning Point Action spokesperson said the group did not include a march to the Capitol on its itinerary.

“Turning Point Action (TPA) did bus some students to the January 6th rally, which included a speech from the President of the United States. Following the president’s remarks, TPA then bused those students immediately out of the area,” the spokesperson said. “The march to the Capitol Building was never part of TPA’s itinerary,nor did TPA encourage participation in the march. TPA’s leadership condemns political violence and immediately did so as soon as news broke of the incident at the Capitol Building. ”

The New York Times reported that the group ended up sending only seven buses to the rally from New Jersey, North Carolina and other locations. twt]

other connections

The 85 Fund, a group with ties to longtime Trump judicial advisor Leonard Leo, received over $10 million from the Donors Trust in 2019. According to a report by The Guardian and the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, it was once known as The Judicial Education Project. It was run by Carrie Severino, who also is in charge of the Leo-affiliated Judicial Crisis Network. Severino’s Judicial Crisis Network actively campaigned in support of Trump’s nominees to the Supreme Court.

The Donors Trust lists an address for the 85 Fund in Washington that matches the address on The Judicial Education Project’s 2018 990 form. Leo also told Axios that the 85 Fund would be one of the groups used to funnel millions of dollars into conservative battles around the country.

The Judicial Education Project, though, has another alias, according to the report: the Honest Elections Project. The organization claims to be nonpartisan and says that “through public engagement, advocacy, and public-interest litigation, the Honest Elections Project will defend the fair, reasonable, common sense measures that voters want in place to protect the integrity of the voting process.”

A review of advertisements and litigation reveals that, in some cases, the group is aligned with claims about election fraud that are similar to Trump’s. The group lists two Michigan-related lawsuits linked to Republicans that took place before the November election.

In September, The Detroit News reported on one of those lawsuits, which featured two former Republican secretaries of state. The former officials challenged Michigan’s plan to count absentee ballots that are postmarked before Election Day but arrive up to 14 days afterward. Biden went on to win Michigan, even though an appeals court did rescind the 14-day extension of mail in ballots.

Fox News reported in June on another suit featuring theHonest Elections Project.In that case, a Republican named Tony Daunt claimed that Michigan voter registration rates in some counties are too high because their voting records have not been updated to remove ineligible voters, such as those who have died or convicted of crimes.

A leader of the Honest Elections Project told CNBC that the group concluded after the election that no widespread voter fraud occurred and they did not get involved with any post-election legal challenges. It also condemned the violence on Capitol Hill.

“HEP was created to make it easy to vote and hard to cheat. Before the election, HEP fought to preserve the rule of law as left-wing groups, including the Democratic Party, filed over 200 lawsuits to challenge existing election laws,” Honest Elections Project executive director Jason Snead said in a statement. “After the election, HEP concluded that there was no widespread fraud and did not challenge or support any challenge to the results of the 2020 election. The violent insurrection at the Capitol was a heinous attack against democracy, the rule of law, and the election system HEP was created to defend.”

Former U.S. Attorney General William Barr said in December that the Department of Justice has found no evidence of voter fraud.

the  anti-immigration VDARE Foundation, which the Southern Poverty Law Center labeled a hate group, received just under $2 million from the Donors Trust in 2019. The foundation is run by Peter Brimelow, somebody the Southern Poverty Law Center says is a “leading anti-immigration activist.”

Brimelow did not return a request for comment.

Since the riot last week, VDARE has become a platform for several writers standing with Trump and people who attended the rally.

“I believe Trump won the election and I believe that this matters,” says an article on the foundation’s site. The writer also says he believes the anti-fascist protesters and frequent Trump targets known as antifa were “amongst the crowd.” Ken Kohl, a senior official in the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office, recently said that investigators saw no indication of antifa being part of the riot.

Another writer on VDARE’s site admitted to cheering on the Capitol invasion. “I’m going to open with a confession here: watching those protestors rampaging through the halls of Congress on Wednesday afternoon, there was a part of me that was cheering them on,” the article says.

Project Veritas, an activist group founded by investigator James O’Keefe, received over $4 million in 2019 from the Donors Trust. In August, The New Republic reported that Project Veritas was secretly moving ahead with sting operations that would “undermine the integrity of absentee and mail-in ballot counts.”

Jered Ede, chief legal officer for Project Veritas, told CNBC that the group condemns the violence at the Capitol and pushed back on the idea their investigations are attempts to undermine the election. He also said Project Veritas has proved at least two instances of fraud and irregularities, including in New Hampshire and Texas.

“Project Veritas has been exposing voter fraud and election integrity stories for nearly a decade. We did so prior to 2020, we did so prior to 2019, we did so prior to Mr. Trump announcing his candidacy, and we will continue to do so for as long as we are around,” Ede said in part of his lengthy responses to CNBC. “Neither our donors nor any politician control or direct what stories we cover. We have and will continue to cover these stories because voters deserve to know the truth and have faith in their electoral system.”

Project Veritas pushed a Pennsylvania postal worker’s claim about mail-in ballots that the Trump campaign would cite in a lawsuit that eventually went nowhere, according to The Washington Post.

The Center for Security Policy received over $800,000 from Donors Trust in 2019.It was founded by Frank Gaffney, who pushed conspiracy theories about President Barack Obama’s administration and the Muslim Brotherhood. In the buildup to the riot, Gaffney questioned the results of the election.

Fred Fleitz, president of the Center for Security Policy, told CNBC late Tuesday that the group acknowledges that Biden is going to be the new president. He said Gaffney was no longer running the organization. The website lists Gaffney as executive chairman.

“Center for Security Policy accepts Joe Biden as the legal President of the United States,” Fleitz said. “It’s time to move on. We are an organization that is going to focus on holding Biden accountable when it comes to national security. Gaffney does not run the organization. He’s not the president of the organization, I am,” Fleitz added.

In a post on the group’s website, Gaffney himself claimed in December the media is pushing a “false narrative” that “there’s no evidence of electoral larceny in the 2020 presidential race — or at least none that would have made a difference,” he said. Gaffney also wrote that “the online resource EveryLegalVote.com makes clear that election integrity was systematically compromised.”

In January, a Center for Security Policy article claimed there are 10 truths about election fraud, including that election fraud has become “more sinister and sophisticated.”

An article on Jan. 5, a day before the riot, is headlined “Exercising your First Amendment rights? How to avoid Antifa violence at the upcoming January 6th protests.” Then article then goes on to give protesters tips on how to avoid fights with antifa.

Gaffney’s own condemnation of the violence after the protest included him calling for a hearing that would show “evidence of electoral grand larceny.”

The Gaffney posts disappeared off the group’s website shortly after CNBC reached out for comment. CNBC has screenshots of the posts.

https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/wp-content/uploads/legacy/Global/usa/planet3/PDFs/Donor's%20Trust%20-%20Laundering%20Climate%20Denial%20Funding.pdf

GREENPEACE BRIEFING

Donors Trust: The shadow operation that has laundered $146 million in climate-denial funding

One year ago, in February 2012, internal documents from the Heartland Institute were revealed by a sting operation,

leading to the discovery that Heartland had one significant “Anonymous Donor” who accounted for a vast majority of

their funding revenue.It was then discovered that these checks were being routed through two interlaced trusts in

Alexandria Virginia: Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund.

Over the past year, Greenpeace and other researchers have discovered that Donors Trust, a shadowy funding operation

for anti-government extremists, is laundering millions of dollars in climate denial funding for donors who do not want to

be associated with their pet causes. For the purposes of this report, any funding attributed to “Donors Trust” includes

funding from both Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund. Donors Capital Fund is the sister organization to Donors Trust,

with the same mission, same leadership, and same office address.

Since the late 1990s, Greenpeace has tracked and exposed the funding to climate denial front groups from Big Oil

donors, including ExxonMobil and the Koch brothers foundations. As these funding connections have been revealed, the

publicly traceable funding to these groups has slowly declined, while the overall revenue and budgets of these groups

has increased in many cases. This has coincided with a sharp increase in anonymous and untraceable funding for denial

groups through Donors Trust.

Greenpeace defines “climate denial” organizations as those that have attempted to undermine and obstruct the

scientific consensus around climate change or policy solutions to climate change, against the recommendations of the

scientific community that countries must act urgently to reduce carbon pollution. Funding of these organizations is only

disclosed on the IRS 990 tax forms of non-profit foundations without divulging individual donors, which means that a

great deal of corporate and industry giving is untraceable. The groups rarely publish their funders on their websites or in

other publications.

1. KEY FINDINGS

 As traceable funding from big oil (Exxon and Koch) to climate denial front groups has slowly declined over the

last few years, “anonymous” money from Donors Trust has sharply increased.

 Donors Trust was created with the intent of bolstering support to climate denial and anti-government extremists

while hiding the identity of major funders, like Charles G. Koch Foundation and the Koch’s Knowledge and

Progress Fund.

 Donors Trust and its associated organization, Donors Capital Fund, have funded 102 climate-denial organizations

since 2002.

 From 2002 to 2011, Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund have provided $146 million to climate denial groups.

 In 2010, a dozen climate denial groups received between 30% to 70% of their funding from Donors Trust,

including the Koch-founded Americans for Prosperity, as well as Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow

(CFACT)

 Additional climate denial organizations that have received major funding in recent years by Donors Trust include

the Heartland Institute, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Cato Institute and the James Partnership (Cornwall

Alliance).

...

4. KEY TAKERS OF DONORS TRUST MONEY

Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT)

In 2011, CFACT received 40% of its budget from Donors Trust ($1.2 million). The previous year, CFACT received nearly

half, $1.3 million totaling 45.5%, from Donors Trust. This indicates that Donors Trust may be keeping afloat one of the

country’s most strident and misleading climate denial organizations. CFACT was originally founded to counter the

environmental movement, and anti-environmental programs dominate its agenda today. According to the CFACT

website:9

“In 1985, the Committee For a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) was founded to promote a positive voice on

environment and development issues...Today, this Washington DC-based group...can be heard relentlessly infusing the

environmental debate with a balanced perspective on environmental stewardship.”

CFACT refuses to accept any scientific evidence, not to mention the consensus, that human activity is causing climate

change. CFACT maintains an FAQ webpage that attempts to refute arguments that the vast majority of scientists say

climate change is human-caused:10

o “While some continue to insist that human ‘greenhouse gas’ emissions are causing potentially

catastrophic changes in climate and weather, growing numbers of scientists say nature, not man, rules

the climate.”

o “Today, the real danger is laws and policies implemented in a misplaced belief that humans can control

or prevent climate change. These policies raise energy costs, kill jobs, andimpose especially heavy

burdens on poor families.”

o “Regulating carbon dioxide may be profitable for certain industries and governments, but will impose

enormous costs on society – while having no effect on our weather and climate.”

o The idea that there is a “scientific consensus” does not hold up. Scientists who are skeptical about

“dangerous man-made climate change” have been speaking out for years.11

Marc Morano, the long-standing climate denier, currently serves as CFACT’s primary climate-denial spokesperson. The

organization also sponsors and produces Morano’s website, ClimateDepot.com. Morano is frequently a “talking head”

on cable television news, casting doubt on the scientific evidence of human influence on the climate. Recently on Fox

News, Morano claimed, “[Climate change action] is now akin to medieval witchcraft, where we used to blame witches

for controlling the weather."12

CFACT’s 2011 financial disclosure form shows that Morano is the most valued employee at CFACT, receiving the largest

salary of $150,000 a year. Morano’s compensation is 40% more than both the Executive Director and the President’s

salaries, whose compensation is roughly $105,000 annually. After Morano’s arrival at CFACT in 2009, CFACT’s revenue

increased significantly, nearly doubling from 2008 to 2009.

 Dr. Willie Soon

Dr. Willie Soon is an aerospace engineer employed at the Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, who is wellknown for accepting funds from oil and coal business interests. Greenpeace Freedom of Information Act inquiries to

Smithsonian Institute reveal that in 2011 and 2012, Dr. Soon received nearly $115,000 from Donors Trust.13 Since 1994,

Dr. Soon has received over $1.3 million from ExxonMobil, the Koch brothers, American Petroleum Institute, Texaco,

Southern Company, Donors Trust and others.

Even though Dr. Soon is not a trained climatologist and most of his work is not peer-reviewed, his work is still frequently cited by climate deniers. He has been affiliated with a number of climate denial organizations, including the Heartland Institute, George C. Marshall Institute, and Tech Central Station.14 Dr. Soon pretends to be a jack-of-all-trades when it comes to scientific expertise. He has published articles claiming that polar bears are not threatened by climate change, mercury from coal plants is not a public health threat, and variability of the sun is responsible for Arctic changes. In addition to his organizational affiliations, Dr. Soon has conspired to weaken the scientific consensus on climate change. In a letter obtained by Greenpeace, Dr. Soon alerts his colleagues to an upcoming UN climate change report (IPCC Fourth Assessment), and states “I hope we can start discussing to see what we can do to weaken the fourth assessment.” He also says “As A-team, we may give it our best shot to…counter some of the chapters,” and “Even if we can tackle ONE single chapter forcefully and effectively, we will really accomplish A LOT!” 15

....

Donors Trust Funding to Top Twenty Climate Denial Recipients

(2002-2011)

DENIAL ORGANIZATION DONORS TRUST FUNDING

American Enterprise Institute (AEI) $ 19,840,954

Heartland Institute $ 14,496,497

Americans for Prosperity (AFP) $ 12,241,961

Federalist Society $ 10,854,463

State Policy Network $ 10,059,051

Hudson Institute $ 5,222,000

Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) $ 4,165,978

Americans for Limited Government $ 3,950,000

Independent Women's Forum $ 3,387,604

Institute for Humane Studies $ 3,349,662

Texas Public Policy Foundation $ 2,630,758

Institute for Religion and Democracy $ 2,340,000

Mercatus Center $ 2,258,650

NFIB Legal Foundation $ 2,093,500

Illinois Policy Institute $ 1,895,707

Philanthropy Roundtable $ 1,822,560

Independence Institute $ 1,727,000

Freedom Foundation (Evergreen Freedom Foundation) $ 1,716,555

Cato Institute $ 1,535,207

Commonwealth Foundation for Public Policy

Alternatives $ 1,473,300

1220 cmd

https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2020/12/04/dark-money-atm-of-the-conservative-movement-gives-1-5-million-to-white-nationalist-hate-group/

Dark Money ATM of the Conservative Movement” Gives $1.5 Million to White Nationalist Hate Group

by Alex Kotch | December 4th, 2020

For the first time, DonorsTrust donated to explicitly white nationalist groups—and its contribution to VDARE tripled the group’s annual revenue....

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https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2020/12/04/cmd-files-lawsuitagain-against-irs-for-refusing-to-release-tax-records/

2x?

https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2020/03/17/koch-linked-charity-bankrolled-project-veritas

3/20

Erik Prince, the former head of private mercenary firm Blackwater Worldwide, recruited ex-spies to work with right-wing sting operation Project Veritas to infiltrate liberal groups, The New York Times reported on March 7. He also gave Project Veritas staff access to his Wyoming ranch, where they took “surveillance and elicitation training” from a former British MI-6 officer, as The Intercept reported in May 2019.

In 2017, the former British spy helped direct an operation to copy files and record conversations in a Michigan office of the American Federation of Teachers, a major teachers’ union that his sister, Education Sec. Betsy DeVos, and her husband’s family have fought for years. The same operative who went undercover at the union infiltrated the campaign of now-Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) the following year.

The DeVos family is one of the right wing’s major political donors. (The Prince family is also very wealthy and gives money to conservative causes.) While the DeVos family foundations have not donated directly to Project Veritas, several of their wealthy political allies, and multiple donor-advised fund sponsors, have been bankrolling the group. It’s not clear who paid the ex-spies to work with Project Veritas, or if they were paid.

Donor-Advised Fund Sponsors Bankroll Project Veritas

The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) has tracked over $11.9 million in contributions to Project Veritas from 2014-18, or roughly 43 percent of its contribution revenue over that time period. The biggest funders, by far, are donor-advised fund (DAF) sponsors–501(c)(3) nonprofits that provide individual charitable accounts for donors, passing along their clients’ contributions to other nonprofits for a fee while offering the donors special tax deductions. Clients have the option of remaining anonymous.

The favorite DAF sponsor of the Right is DonorsTrust. Used heavily by Charles Koch, Robert Mercer, and Adolph Coors, it pours money into a network of right-wing charities and social welfare nonprofits. DonorsTrust gave more than $8.4 million to Project Veritas from 2014-18, or nearly one-third of the group’s contribution revenue. DonorsTrust’s yearly contribution rose from $607,000 in 2014 to a high of $2.4 million in 2017. Several members and staff of DonorsTrust have close ties to Koch-backed operations. The related Donors Capital Fund gave $20,000 to Project Veritas from 2014-15.

Project Veritas has a 501(c)(4) political arm, Project Veritas Action Fund, to which the billionaire, Trump-supporting Mercer family has steered funds. In 2018, a nonprofit called Making America Great, chaired by Rebekah Mercer, the daughter of former Renaissance Technologies co-CEO and Breitbart News funder Robert Mercer, donated $750,000 to the action fund. The Mercer Family Foundation has not donated directly to Project Veritas in recent years, but it’s possible it has used DonorsTrust to do so. From 2014-18, the foundation gave $10.9 million to DonorsTrust, including nearly $8.2 million in 2018, a big increase from previous years. By shifting more of its charitable dollars through DonorsTrust, the family is effectively hiding its donations from the public. In 2012, Robert Mercer donated $25,000 to Project Veritas through his LLC Gravitas Maximus.

Other top foundations that have used DonorsTrust to donate anonymously to conservative nonprofits from 2014-18 include the Knowledge and Progress Fund, a Koch family foundation ($5.3 million), the Adolph Coors Foundation ($4.2 million), the Searle Freedom Trust ($2.6 million), and the Charles Koch Foundation ($980,000). From 2009-12, the foundation of DeVos’s in-laws, the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation, contributed $6.5 million to DonorsTrust, but has not donated since.

The National Philanthropic Trust, another donor-advised fund sponsor, gave close to $1.3 million to Project Veritas from 2014-18. Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund, a DAF sponsor associated with Fidelity Investments and the biggest nonprofit by annual revenue in the country, gave over $1.2 million from 2015-18. The Greater Houston Community Foundation gave close to $116,000 from 2014-18. Donor-advised fund sponsors associated with additional major finance companies, Schwab Charitable and Vanguard Charitable, have each contributed over $100,000 to Project Veritas. Additional DAF sponsors the National Christian Foundation (nearly $15,000 from 2014-18), the Community Foundation of North Florida ($10,000 from 2017-18), and the Jewish Communal Fund ($6,000 in 2015) gave smaller amounts.

The Greater Houston Community Foundation’s 2016 tax records show that the DAF sponsor received a large amount of money in the form of transferred oil and gas stock. Clients can transfer appreciable assets like stock into their charitable accounts without paying taxes on the sale of those assets, and get the charitable tax deduction at the same time, one reason why DAF sponsors are rapidly becoming more popular among wealthy donors. Clients delivered nearly $14 million worth of Anadarko Petroleum, ExxonMobil, and Marathon Oil stock into their charitable accounts with the Greater Houston Community Foundation in 2016.

Wealthy individual donors in the right-wing philanthropic world have also donated directly to Project Veritas through their family foundations. Dunn Foundation–which has Thomas Beach, a DonorsTrust board member and chairman of the Koch-backed Reason Foundation, on its board–gave $274,000 from 2015-18; the Helen Diller Foundation gave $125,000 in 2017; and the Bradley Impact Fund gave $31,000 from 2015-18.

The Donald J. Trump Foundation gave $20,000 to Project Veritas in 2015, and Trump met with and promoted the group and its founder, James O’Keefe. Trump allegedly encouraged O’Keefe to infiltrate Columbia University and obtain Barack Obama’s college records. Donald Trump, Jr. is set to attend O’Keefe’s upcoming wedding. Prince began working with Project Veritas during the 2016 elections and would go on to work on Trump’s transition into the White House. He later pitched the White House and the Pentagon on a plan to privatize the Afghan war, but the secretary of defense did not pursue a deal.

Law and lobbying firm Alston and Bird, which employs former Kansas Republican Sen. Bob Dole, directed a $1 million donation from an unknown source to Project Veritas in 2019, according to The New York Times. The firm lobbied the federal government on behalf of corporate fossil fuel and health care clients including ConocoPhillips, Cheniere Energy, trade group America’s Health Insurance Plans, and CVS Health in the second half of 2019.[doc lisr]

...

[[Known Donors to Project Veritas, FY2014-2018

CMD has tracked nearly $12 million in donations to Project Veritas, or roughly 43 percent of the group's contribution revenue, from the 2014 fiscal year through 2018. Below are donors who gave $10,000 or more.

:{

}:

Donor Amount

DonorsTrust $8,436,945

National Philanthropic Trust $1,271,032

Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund $1,212,329

Dunn Foundation $274,000

Helen Diller Family Foundation $125,000

Greater Houston Community Foundation $116,350

Vanguard Charitable $102,000

Schwab Charitable $100,925

Chase Foundation of Virginia $40,000

American Endowment Foundation $35,000

Bradley Impact Fund $31,000

Debora J. and Peter A. Magowan Foundation $30,000

Donors Capital Fund $20,000

Donald J. Trump Foundation $20,000

Daniel and Susan Gottleib Family Foundation $17,500

National Christian Foundation $14,927

Community Foundation of North Florida $10,035

William H. Donner Foundation $10,000

Brad Brock Family Foundation $10,000

- Show less

Table: Center for Media and Democracy  Source: Internal Revenue Service  Get the data ]]

The Koch foundations haven’t given money to Project Veritas directly, but the group has personal ties to the Koch political network. A 2018 annual review acquired by CMD shows that Project Veritas’s vice president of development is Adam Guillette, who launched the Florida branch of Koch’s premier political nonprofit, Americans for Prosperity, and worked there for several years. Guillette is also president of Accuracy in Media, a nonprofit that has received funding from DonorsTrust.

Project Veritas had $8.8 million in annual revenue in 2018, and O’Keefe took home roughly $387,000, according to its latest tax filing obtained by CMD.

About Alex Kotch

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https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2020/01/27/right-wing-megadonors-financing-media-operations-promote-their-ideologies/

Middle East Media and Research Institute—$5.1 million

An anti-Muslim nonprofit led by Daniel Pipes, the Middle East Media and Research Institute is another favorite of right-wing megadonors. The Institute, an organization at the “inner core” of the nation’s Islamophobia network that “attempts to portray Muslims and Arabs as being inherently irrational and violent,” according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, took in $5.1 million–or 23 percent of its contribution revenue–from four conservative foundations from 2015-18: Sheldon and Miriam Adelson’s family foundation ($4 million), DonorsTrust ($564,800), the Sarah Scaife Foundation ($450,000), and the Bradley Foundation ($70,000).

https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2020/01/22/koch-favored-donorstrust-keeps-funding-anti-muslim-anti-lgbtq-hate-groups/

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2x? ref to corkery jcn

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/12/donors-trust-franklin-center-alec-mercatus-center-dark-money/

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http://www.desmogblog.com/:{2015}:/09/28/climate-science-denier-lawson-bader-ceo-donors-trust

An organisation that has funneled millions of dollars into groups promoting climate science denial has appointed a new CEO who signed a declaration dismissing the overwhelming evidence that human activities are causing climate change.

Lawson Bader, currently the CEO at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, :{will join Donors Trust:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}: in November.

Donors Trust (DT), together with its sister organisation Donors Capital Fund (DCF), is a key funding arm of the climate science denial movement in the United States.

The organisation creates so called “donor-advised funds” on behalf of wealthy conservatives, and then uses those funds to finance “good conservative and liberty-oriented causes”.

DT asks potential donors to sign a declaration stating “it is wrong that the fortunes of successful Americans are being used to fund political and social causes that undermine the free market economy.”

In September 2014, Bader (pictured), an evangelical Christian, signed a declaration organised by the Cornwall Alliance calling on politicians to “abandon fruitless and harmful policies to control global temperature”.

The declaration claimed that “God’s wise design and faithful sustaining” of the Earth would “suppress and correct” any damage, including to the climate.

The declaration promoted a series of misleading statements about the impacts of burning fossil fuels on the world’s climate.  The document claimed that rising CO2 would help the poor and that changes in global temperature were natural.

Bader joined CEI in January 2013 after spending 16 years at the Mercatus Center — a think tank based at George Mason University — where he was vice president.

According to Greenpeace, during Bader’s time at Mercatus the centre accepted more than $10million in funding from foundations linked to the oil billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch.

Charles Koch and Koch Industries director Richard Fink are both long standing Mercatus board members.

Koch Brothers foundations have also been major backers of the CEI, a think tank that has also worked to spread doubt over the links between fossil fuel emissions and dangerous climate change. CEI has also accepted cash from several fossil fuel corporations.

Last year a CEI fellow Marlo Lewis claimed that problems caused by rising sea levels, linked to global warming caused by fossil fuel burning, would be easily solved by simply moving low lying cities like New York and Boston.

Bader’s move to DT will see him remain within the funding circle of Republican activists the Koch Brothers. DeSmog analysishas found that one foundation controlled by Charles Koch – the Knowledge and Progress Fund – gave $7.65 million to DTbetween 2010 and 2013.  KPF did not give grants to any other organisation over that period.

DeSmog revealed that since 2005, more than $470 million of untraceable money has flowed through DT and DCF.

Donors Trust had been searching for a new CEO since prior to the death of its founder, Whitney Ball, in August this year

http://energydesk.greenpeace.org/2015/12/08/exposed-academics-for-hire/

sting: GP

A Greenpeace undercover investigation has exposed how fossil fuel companies can secretly pay academics at leading American universities to write research that sows doubt about climate science and promotes the companies’ commercial interests.

Posing as representatives of oil and coal companies, reporters from Greenpeace UK asked academics from Princeton and Penn State to write papers promoting the benefits of CO2 and the use of coal in developing countries.

The professors agreed to write the reports and said they did not need to disclose the source of the funding.

Citing industry-funded documents – including testimony to state hearings and newspaper articles – Professor Frank Clemente of Penn State said: “In none of these cases is the sponsor identified. All my work is published as an independent scholar.”

Leading climate-sceptic academic, Professor William Happer, agreed to write a report for a Middle Eastern oil company on the benefits of CO2 and to allow the firm to keep the source of the funding secret.  

Happer is due to appear this afternoon as a star witness in Senate hearings called by Republican Presidential candidate Ted Cruz.

In emails to reporters he also revealed Peabody Energy paid thousands of dollars for him to testify at a separate state hearing, with the money being paid to a climate-sceptic think tank.

Read the emails with Professor Frank Clemente

Read the emails with Professor :{Happer and the Donors Trust:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:

The investigation also found:

• US coal giant PeabodyEnergy also paid tens of thousands of dollars to an academic who produced coal-friendly research and provided testimony at state and federal climate hearings, the amount of which was never revealed.
• The Donors Trust, an organisation that has been described as the “dark money ATM” of the US conservative movement, confirmed in a taped conversation with an undercover reporter that it could anonymously channel money from a fictional Middle Eastern oil and gas company to US climate sceptic organisations.
• Princeton professor William Happer laid out details of an unofficial peer review process run by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a UK climate sceptic think tank, and said he could ask to put an oil-funded report through a similar review process, after admitting that it would struggle to be published in an academic journal.
• A recent report by the GWPF that had been through the same unofficial peer review process, was promoted as “thoroughly peer-reviewed” by influential columnistMatt Ridley-:{a senior figure:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: in the organisation.

The findings echo the case of Willie Soon, who was the subject of an investigation published in the  New York Times earlier this year. The investigation revealed that Soon had accepted donations from fossil fuel companies and anonymous donors in return for producing climate-sceptic scientific papers. He described his studies as “deliverables” and failed to declare who paid for the research.

The revelations also follow a series of reports showing fossil fuel companies burying the truth about climate change, while funding flawed research to cast doubt on the scientific consensus.

Academics for hire

Reporters approached the academics claiming to be representatives of unnamed fossil fuel companies – one, a Middle Eastern oil and gas exploration company, the other a coal mining firm based in Indonesia – looking to commission “independent” research.

“In none of these cases is the sponsor identified. All my work is published as an independent scholar.” – Professor Frank Clemente

The individuals approached have previously been linked to fossil fuel companies or climate sceptic organisations that have received fossil fuel funding.

Professor Frank Clemente, a sociologistfrom Penn State university, was asked if he could produce a report “to counter damaging research linking coal to premature deaths (in particular the World Health Organization’s figure that 3.7 million people die per year from fossil fuel pollution)”.

He said that this was within his skill set; that he could be quoted using his university job title; and that it would cost around $15,000 for an 8–10 page paper. He also explained that he charged $6,000 for writing a newspaper op-ed.

When asked whether he would need to declare where the money came from, Professor Clementesaid: “There is no requirement to declare source funding in the US.”

Clemente is a favourite of the coal industry and particularly Peabody Energy, which:{regularly uses his research:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: as evidence of the need for an expansion of coal power in developing countries.

In the exchange Clemente disclosed that for another report on “the Global Value of Coal” he was paid $50,000 by Peabody Energy – the sponsorship was mentioned in the small print of the paper, but the amount has not been disclosed until now.

:{Following the report Clemente produced an:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}::{op-ed:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: arguing against the coal divestment movement in universities, which was picked up by over 50 newspapers across the US. But as Clemente told undercover reporters: “In none of these cases is the sponsor identified. All my work is published as an independent scholar.”

Professor Clemente failed to respond to requests for comment.

Investigators also approached Professor William Happer of Princeton University, who is chairman of the climate sceptic:{George Marshall Institute:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: and a former Director of Energy Research at theUS Department of Energy under the first President Bush where he “supervised all of DOE’s work on climate change”.   

Professor Happer, who is a physicist rather than a climatologist, told Greenpeace reporters that he would be willing to produce research promoting the benefits of carbon dioxide for $250 per hour. He asked that the money be paid to climate sceptic campaign group, the CO2 Coalition, of which he is a board member.

Happer described his work on carbon dioxide as a “labor of love”and said that while other pollutants produced by burning fossil fuels are a problem, in his opinion “More CO2 will benefit the world”, adding “The only way to limit CO2 would be to stop using fossil fuels, which I think would be a profoundly immoral and irrational policy.”

When reporters asked if it would be possible for the fossil fuel client’s role in commissioning the research to remain hidden, in order to give the work more credibility, Happer replied that: “If I write the paper alone, I don’t think there would be any problem stating that ‘the author received no financial compensation for this essay.’”

Happer also disclosed that Peabody Energy paid $8,000 in return for his testimony in a:{ crucial:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}::{Minnesota state hearing:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: on the impacts of carbon dioxide. This fee was also paid to the CO2 Coalition.

“I am trying get [sic] another mysterious client to donate funds to the CO2 Coalition instead of compensating me for my writing something for them.” – Professor Happer

The academics’ willingness to conceal the source of funding contrasts strongly with the ethics of journals such as Science, which states in its:{submission requirements:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: that research “should be accompanied by clear disclosures from all authors of their affiliations, funding sources, or financial holdings that might raise questions about possible sources of bias”.

Late last month Happer appeared at a:{climate sceptic summit:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: in Texas. There he defended CO2 production saying: “Our breath is not that different from a power plant.” He went on to say, “If plants could vote, they would vote for coal”.

Hiding the money trail

The investigation has also revealed a system by which oil and gas companies can anonymously fund US climate-sceptic scientists and organisations.

When asked to ensure that the commissioning of the report could not be traced back to the Middle East oil and gas company, Professor Happer contacted his fellow CO2 Coalition board member, Bill O’Keefe,explaining: “I am trying get [sic] another mysterious client to donate funds to the CO2 Coalition instead of compensating me for my writing something for them.”

O’Keefe, a former:{Exxon lobbyist:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:, suggested channelling it through the Donors Trust, a controversial organisation that has previously been called the“Dark Money ATM” of the US conservative movement.

The organisation has a long history of channelling funding to US climate sceptics, including controversial professor Willie Soon, and some of the most influential organisations in the US conservative movement, including Americans for Prosperity, the Heartland Institute and the American Enterprise Institute.

When investigators asked Peter Lipsett of the Donors Trust if the Trust would accept money from an oil and gas company based in the Middle East, he said that, although the Trust would need the cash to come from a US bank account, “we can take it from a foreign body, it’s just we have to be extra cautious with that.”

He added that: “I’ll double check everything and make sure I’m wording things  correctly after chatting with our CFO [Chief Financial Officer], but what he’s told me before is that the preference is to have it in US dollars, and the ideal preference is to have it originate from a US source, but the US dollars is the important bit”.

[sound file]

Peter Lipsett is:{director of growth strategies:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: at the Donors Trust and has worked in a senior position for Charles Koch, and before that Koch Industries for almost a decade. When contacted for on the record comment, Mr Lipsett said:

“We only accept donations in U.S. currency and drawn from U.S. banks. Donors Trust has never accepted secret donations from foreign donors. We have supported over 1,500 organizations representing the arts, medicine and science, public policy, education, religion, and civics. We are no more a “middle man” between donors and their causes than any other community or commercial donor-advised fund sponsoring organization”.

Mr O’Keefe said: “As a matter of personal policy, I do not respond to requests such as yours.”

Peer review

As well as exposing how fossil fuel companies are able to anonymously commission scientific research, Greenpeace can reveal details of a so-called “peer review” process being operated by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), a UK climate sceptic think tank.

Sense About Science, a UK charitable trust, describes peer review as the process by which “scientists submit their research findings to a journal, which sends them out to be assessed for competence, significance and originality, by independent qualified experts who are researching and publishing work in the same field (peers).” The process usually involves varying degrees of anonymity.

“I would be glad to ask for a similar review for the first drafts of anything I write for your client. Unless we decide to submit the piece to a regular journal, with all the complications of delay, possibly quixotic editors and reviewers that is the best we can do, and I think it would be fine to call it a peer review.” – Professor Happer

Professor Happer, who sits on the GWPF’s:{Academic Advisory Council:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:, was asked by undercover reporters if he could put the industry funded report through the same peer review process as previous GWPF reports they claimed to have been “thoroughly peer reviewed”. Happer explained that this process had consisted of members of the Advisory Council and other selected scientists reviewing the work, rather than presenting it to an academic journal.

He added: “I would be glad to ask for a similar review for the first drafts of anything I write for your client. Unless we decide to submit the piece to a regular journal, with all the complications of delay, possibly quixotic editors and reviewers that is the best we can do, and I think it would be fine to call it a peer review.”

GWPF’s “peer review” process was used for a recent GWPF report on the benefits of carbon dioxide. According to Dr Indur Goklany, the author of the report, he was initially encouraged to write it by the journalist Matt Ridley, who is also a GWPF academic advisor. That report was then promoted by Ridley, who claimed in his Times column that the paper had been“thoroughly peer reviewed”.

Sense About Science, which lists Ridley as a member of its Advisory Council, has warned against such review processes, saying: “sometimes organisations or individuals claim to have put their studies through peer review when, on inspection, they have only shown it to some colleagues. Such claims are usually made in the context of a campaign directed at the public or policy makers, as a way of trying to give scientific credibility to certain claims in the hope that a non-scientific audience will not know the difference.”

The organisation also says that: “reporters or advocates citing these sources as peer reviewed would show themselves to be biased or uninformed”.

Professor Happer claimed that the review of the paper was “more rigorous than the peer review for most journals”.  But he also told undercover reporters that he believed most members of the Academic Advisory Council had been too busy to comment on the paper:

“I know that the entire scientific advisory board of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) was asked to submit comments on the first draft.  I am also sure that most were too busy to respond,” he said.  

Professor Happer also noted that submitting a report on the benefits of carbon dioxide to a peer-reviewed scientific journal would be problematic.

“That might greatly delay publication and might require such major changes in response to referees and the journal editor that the article would no longer make the case that CO2 is a benefit, not a pollutant, as strongly as I would like, and presumably as strongly [as] your client would also like,” he said.

When asked about the review process behind Dr Goklany’s report, GWPF explained that the report had gone for review to other chosen scientists beyond just those in their Advisory Council and that: “the quality of Dr Goklany’s report is self-evident to any open-minded reader.”

Peabody Energy

The investigation raises further questions for coal giant Peabody Energy, which earlier this year was investigated by**New York attorney general**Eric Schneidermanover accusations that they violated New York laws prohibiting false and misleading conduct, in relation to misleading statements on the risks it could face from tightening climate change laws. Peabody have now agreed to change the way it reports the risks posed to investors by climate change.

Professors Clemente and Happer were both employed by Peabody to provide testimony favourable to the company in state and governmental hearings. The company paid $8,000 for Professor Happer to make the case on the social costs of carbon.

Other prominent climate sceptics who provided testimony in the Minnesota hearing on behalf of Peabodyincluded: Roy Spencer who told Greenpeace he was paid $4,000 by Peabody; Richard Tolwho said he was not paid and Richard Lindzen and Robert Mendelsohn who failed to reply to questions. Tol, Lindzen and Mendelsohn are all members of the GWPF Academic Advisory Council.

Both Penn State and Princeton University declined to comment.

The GWPF said: “Professor Happer made his scientific views clear from the outset, including the need to address pollution problems arising from fossil fuel consumption. Any insinuation against his integrity as a scientist is outrageous and is clearly refuted by the correspondence.

“Nor did Professor Happer offer to put a report “commissioned by a fossil fuel company” through the GWPF peer review process. This is a sheer fabrication by Greenpeace.

“The cack-handed attempt by Greenpeace to manufacture a scandal around Dr Goklany’s report, and to smear Professor Happer’s reputation, only points to the need for the Global Warming Policy Foundation to redouble its efforts to bring balanced, rigorous and apolitical research on climate and energy policyissues to the public’s attention, as counter to the misleading noise and activist rhetoric from groups like Greenpeace.”

Journalist and GWPF Academic Advisor, Matt Ridley, did not respond to requests for comment.

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http://conservativetransparency.org/donor/donors-capital-fund/?og_tot=2629&order_by=year+DESC

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older

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