GAI gov't acct inst 2 bak
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ntbcw orig and legit whistleblower protection eg vance v rumsfild
see seamusbruner RT?
Louis Clark, Government Accountability Project,
est 1977
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Accountability_Project
promoted to primary, crypto opp res, dark web, mercer, investigative jrnl
12/19 bak
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Marc Morano
Weekly update ⋅ November 14, 2025
Brazil culls thousands of trees to make highway for climate COP30 meeting
Sky News Australia
... Marc Morano joined My Kenny to detail the events unfolding in the leadup to the summit.
Brazil Carves Through Amazon Rainforest for New Highway to Ferry Global Climate ...
AMAC
... Marc Morano, Director of Communications for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow, told the Just the News, No Noise TV show. CFACT promotes a ...
Tens of thousands of trees in the Amazon rainforest have been wiped out to prepare for a global summit on saving the environment, the latest in seeming climate-change hypocrisy.
In northern Brazil, near the city of Belém, a strip of rainforest about eight miles long was cleared to build a four-lane highway in advance of the COP30 climate summit that began on Monday. The highway, dubbed Avenida Liberdade, is intended to handle the surge of delegates and dignitaries expected for the gathering, but has drawn sharp rebuke from climate activists and fueled perceptions of hypocrisy about climate change concerns.
“But It’s Sustainable,” Say Defenders
Defenders of the project say it includes “sustainable” features like solar-powered lighting, bike lanes, and wildlife crossings that will provide a climate-friendly example for future projects. However, critics are pointing out the blatant irony of cutting down a protected rainforest for a climate conference that is itself aimed, among other things, at halting deforestation.
“They ripped the hell out of the Rainforest of Brazil to build a four-lane highway for Environmentalists to travel. It’s become a big scandal!” U.S. President Donald Trump, who has long been a critic of climate change activism, posted to Truth Social on Sunday.
Unlike his predecessor, Trump’s administration is not sending an official delegation to the United Nations-backed conference. White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers told the *Daily Mail* that the president would “not jeopardize our country’s economic and national security to pursue vague climate goals that are killing other countries.”
The clearing of the forest has raised the ire of both climate change activists and skeptics alike.
Eight Miles of Rainforest Chopped Away
“We’re looking at eight miles of a virgin tropical Amazon rainforest were clear cut there, so that they could put in this highway to allow the private jets and to allow all the SUVs and limousines of all the world leaders and celebrities that are pumping in here the next two weeks, they could have a freer time getting around the city,” Marc Morano, Director of Communications for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow, told the Just the News, No Noise TV show.
CFACT promotes a “positive, alternative voice” on the environment and advocates for market forces and technological innovation to overcome environmental challenges. “So they had to cut, in other words, they had to cut the forest down so they could bring more people to show…you can’t make these kinds of absurdities up,” he added.
Even those on the other side of the climate debate spectrum slammed the move. A Canadian climate activist who advocates for a Green New Deal pointed out that “A new four-lane highway that cuts through tens of thousands of acres of protected Amazon rainforest was cut for the COP30 climate summit in the Brazilian city of Belém,” Mike Hudema posted to X. “You can’t be a climate leader if you’re cutting down one of the world’s greatest climate solutions to do it.”
“Do as I Say, Not as I Do”
This is not the first time that climate leaders have drawn criticism for failing to live up to their own standards. For example, former Biden administration climate czar, failed presidential candidate, and former Secretary of State John Kerry, has frequently come under fire for his family’s heavy use of a fuel-guzzling private jet while he attended climate conferences aimed at reducing carbon emissions.
A Fox News investigation found that Kerry’s family jet had released more than 300 metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere just a year into the Biden administration. President Biden had appointed Kerry as his administration’s climate czar shortly after he took office in January 2021.
At the same time, Kerry called the “climate crisis” an “urgent national security threat” and proposed shutting down power plants and implementing a carbon credit system to limit emissions.
Most famously, former Vice President Al Gore, who made millions on global warming hysteria, like Kerry and so many liberal media figures, doesn’t practice what he preaches. The National Center for Public Policy Research, a 501(c)3, nonpartisan, independent conservative think tank, reported that “Al Gore’s Nashville home consumed 20 times more electricity than the average American household” and that “Gore guzzles more electricity in one year than the average American family uses in 21 years.”
Locals Left Without Compensation for Losses
Local residents say the damage is immediate. One acai berry harvester, Claudio Verequete, told the BBC that trees he relied on for income “have already been cut down” and he has “no compensation.”
Conservationists also warn about the “fish-bone effect” of the road: once the main corridor is carved through the forest, new access routes follow, fragmenting the ecosystem and increasing deforestation risks, the BBC reported.
The Brazilian state government of Pará, where the conference is being held, has floated such a highway since at least 2012. However, prior attempts were shelved primarily due to environmental concerns.
The infrastructure project only overcame the backlog after Belém was chosen as the site of the climate conference. In addition to the new highway, the government is expanding airport capacity and building a new city park.
Steven Richards joined Just the News in August 2023 after previously working as a Research Analyst for the Government Accountability Institute (GAI) in Tallahassee, Florida.*}:
Reprinted with Permission from Just The News – By Steven Richards
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.*
Arabella Archives - The Automatic Earth
Arabella is the mothership of over 200 NGOs.
Trump Calls For RICO Charges Against Soros; Gates Foundation Severs Ties (ZH)}:
The “dark money” network operated by Arabella Advisors has reportedly lost one of its top funding sources: a leftist billionaire’s foundation. Equally significant in the news cycle this morning, President Trump stated on Truth Social that George Soros and his radical leftist son, Alex Soros, “should be charged with RICO because of their support of violent protests.” A New York Times report indicates that the Gates Foundation has halted funding to nonprofit funds managed by Arabella, choosing instead to work directly with some partners rather than through intermediaries. In its internal announcement, dated June 24 and sent to some Gates employees who oversee grant programs, foundation officials did not mention politics. Instead, they cited a desire to engage more directly with grant recipients and cut back on the use of intermediaries like Arabella entities.
*> Trump: "George Soros, and his wonderful Radical Left son, should be charged with RICO because of their support of Violent Protests, and much more, all throughout the United States of America." pic.twitter.com/KBxuyAaisF
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 27, 2025
“Teams are increasingly working directly with programmatic partners — organizations that are deeply embedded in the communities we serve and closely aligned with our mission,” the note reads. “As we look ahead, this is a chance to build deeper, more durable relationships with those partners — and to reinforce the kind of legacy we want to leave behind.” -NYT” Tracing the Arabella network’s donors is tricky. But according to the NYT, the Gates Foundation has plowed $450 million into the network since 2008, which in turn funneled money into other nonprofit entities, ranging from radical leftist climate groups to abortion initiatives, and even supporting the permanent protest-industrial complex against President Trump.
https://twitter.com/seamusbruner/status/1933626755358863457?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1933626755358863457%7Ctwgr%5E1e0fde66960c2c75df873fe2087d2cf266f22afb%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fgates-foundation-cuts-ties-arabella-advisors-linked-funding-radical-leftist-causes}:
With President Trump back in the White House and investigations focusing on corruption across the Democratic Party’s funding and nonprofit infrastructure, as well as ActBlue investigations, the risks for Bill Gates’ progressive NGO empire have never been greater. The move to cut ties could have happened even sooner, according to two people, one close to the foundation and one with knowledge of Arabella’s internal operations. Over the last few years, Arabella has become a target of conservative watchdogs because of its work with groups that funnel money toward progressive causes. With President Trump back in the White House, the political risks have only mounted. -NYT Peter Schweizer and Seamus Bruner of the Government Accountability Institute recently revealed a report that detailed how the rogue anti-Trump ‘No Kings’ front group, waging a permanent protest against all things Trump, “bagged $114.8 million from the Arabella dark money network.”*
The Gates Foundation told NYT that the move to sever ties with Arabella was “a business decision that reflects our regular strategic assessments of partnerships and operating models.” NYT’s report on Arabella comes hours after NBC News confirmed Gates met with Trump at the White House on Tuesday afternoon. More details from the report: • Some nonprofits are distancing themselves from Arabella to keep Gates funding. • Several groups have started exiting Arabella’s New Venture Fund (NVF), which serves as a fiscal sponsor for 170+ projects and has funneled billions into progressive causes. • While Gates once accounted for a significant share of NVF funding, in 2023 its contribution was only 2%. Still, losing Gates threatens Arabella’s influence and revenue streams.
:{Read more …
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10 25 off bs
Government Accountability Institute - GAI exposes corruption and cronyism in Washington
news allegedly
Oct 13, 2025jduffusNews From GAI. News About GAIAntifa, Arabella Advisors, George Soros, Neville Roy Singham, Peter Schweizer, Riot Inc., Tides Foundation
GAI President Peter Schweizer joined Mark Levin on Oct. 12, 2025 to expose deep links between radical ideologies, terrorism, and political movements inside the United States.
Appearing on the Fox News show “Life, Liberty, and Levin,” Schweizer detailed how New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has financial and ideological ties to Qatar’s royal family, which once harbored 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
Schweizer warned of foreign influence and Islamist infiltration in American politics. In the second half, Schweizer and Levin uncover how billionaire Roy Singham funds Marxist and pro-CCP movements like Antifa through U.S.-based nonprofits. Together, they connect Islamist and Marxist networks working to destabilize America — both financially and ideologically.
[
video fox
omfg
Peter Schweizer EXPOSES the Islamist–Marxist Alliance Threatening America
Oct 13, 2025 #thedrilldown #drilldown #gai
:{:{@Govt_Acct_Inst President Peter Schweizer joins Mark Levin (Oct. 12, 2025) to expose deep links between radical ideologies, terrorism, and political movements inside the United States. Schweizer details how New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has financial and ideological ties to Qatar’s royal family, which once harbored 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. He warns of foreign influence and Islamist infiltration in American politics. In the second half, Schweizer and Levin uncover how billionaire Roy Singham funds Marxist and pro-CCP movements like Antifa through U.S.-based nonprofits.
Together, they connect Islamist and Marxist networks working to destabilize America — both financially and ideologically. Chapters /maxresdefault.jpg)) Levin Introduces Schweizer’s Explosive Findings /maxresdefault.jpg)) Qatar’s Royal Family and the 9/11 Connection /maxresdefault.jpg)) Mamdani’s Foreign Backers Revealed /maxresdefault.jpg)) Hezbollah, Iran, and Islamist Cheerleaders /maxresdefault.jpg)) Terror Ties Hidden by U.S. Media /maxresdefault.jpg)) Why Islamist Power Grabs Threaten All Americans /maxresdefault.jpg)) Inside the Antifa Roundtable at the White House /maxresdefault.jpg)) Dark Money, Marxism, and the Arabella Network /maxresdefault.jpg)) The Billionaire Roy Singham’s Pro-China Machine /maxresdefault.jpg)) Foreign Funding and Domestic Terrorism Links /maxresdefault.jpg)) Federal Task Force Needed to Stop the Flow /maxresdefault.jpg)) Levin Calls for Action Against Enemy Within /maxresdefault.jpg)) Trump Administration’s Pushback on Radical Networks maxresdefault.jpg)) Schweizer’s Final Warning: The Enemy Within}:
== 🟡g-a-i.org🔵 Instagram: [
/ govt_acct_inst](https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&redir_token=QUFFLUhqbWFkNEFpYXFhUzhxdjU5Q1U2eUJkQVBQQ00xUXxBQ3Jtc0trck1URjMwTzAxWmxhWEgtNEdoX2RlajM1QjVmS3MtTVdnNEE4QnowejU4TGxoSWp1RG1VZHlmM1FkX0swaDVqUk5JNmpicDgtd3N1cVZmRGRxdEtQYmdQZ2R5Q21LXzA3ZmpHNVU1M3V2NXgwZDE0NA&q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.instagram.com%2Fgovt_acct_inst%2F&v=_IdY4rxZVDY)Twitter: https://x.com/Govt_Acct_InstYouTube: 
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:{:{---}:
transcript
Levin Introduces Schweizer’s Explosive Findings
0:00
Welcome back, America. We're here with
0:01
our dear friend Peter Schweitzer. He
0:03
really is a great investigative
0:05
reporter. He's president of the
0:07
Government Accountability Institute, a
0:09
fantastic group, GI,
0:12
uh you write great books, you write
0:14
great pieces over at Breitbart. Just
0:16
fantastic. Peter, I wanted to get into
0:18
this. You have put out new information,
0:21
you and your group, about who he is,
0:24
what he's doing, who is funding him. And
0:26
before people finish voting in New York,
0:29
and people around the country, you need
0:31
to know exactly who this man is, his
Qatar’s Royal Family and the 9/11 Connection
0:34
family, who's funding him, what he's all
0:36
about. It is pure evil. Peter
0:39
Schweitzer, go. Yeah, Mark, what people
0:42
have to understand is that this election
0:44
for mayor in New York is really a dark
0:47
echo of the 911 terrorist attack. Uh,
0:50
and you wonder what do I mean by that?
0:52
Well, look at the family itself, the
0:55
Mondami family itself. They are joined
0:57
at the hip with the royal family of
1:00
Qatar, the Althani family. Um, they have
1:03
sent them millions of dollars. They have
1:05
funded their projects. So, why does this
1:08
family matter? It matters because uh
1:11
back in 1996, Khaled Shik Muhammad who
1:15
was the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks
1:18
was granted sanctuary by this very royal
1:22
family. He was given a no-show job at
1:25
the Ministry of Water in Qatar. And it
1:28
was there that he started planning the
1:30
911 attacks. The FBI was looking for
1:33
him, Mark, because he had been involved
1:35
in in the 1993 World Trade Center
1:39
attack, uh, as well as other terrorist
1:41
attacks. So, the FBI went to the royal
1:44
family and said, "We want this man for
1:46
his involvement in terrorism." What did
1:49
the family do? They hid him and helped
1:51
him to escape. They tipped him off. And
1:54
I would encourage a lot of people to go
1:56
back and look at the statements that
1:57
Louie Freeh made back in the day saying
2:00
had they gotten uh Khaled Shake Muhammad
2:04
uh that would have pre prevented future
2:06
terrorist attacks like 911. So this is
2:10
the royal family of Qatar. Why do we
2:13
care about them in the context of
Mamdani’s Foreign Backers Revealed
2:15
Mandami? Well, first of all, there's the
2:17
financial connection that we talked
2:19
about. Millions of dollars bankrolling
2:22
the Mandani family. Second of all, this
2:25
same family is now on social media
2:27
around the world. And what are they
2:29
doing, Mark? They're pushing Mandami's
2:31
campaign. They're pushing his policy
2:34
positions. They're pushing his poll
2:35
numbers. They're encouraging people to
2:37
vote for him to financially support him.
2:40
So, they're cheerleading for him. And
2:42
what did Mumani do in September? Just a
2:45
few weeks ago, he was on Qatari TV. Now,
2:49
what American uh politician running to
2:52
be a mayor of a city goes on Qatari TV?
2:56
Mumani goes on Qatari TV and what does
2:58
he do? He talks about the jihad, the
3:02
verbal jihad as it were. He talks about
3:04
the fact that the United States is under
3:07
uh writing genocide in Israel. This is
3:10
the same family, the Mumamis, by the
3:12
way, who say that Darfur, where 400,000
3:16
Christians were slaughtered by
3:17
Islamists, that was not jihad. This is
3:20
the same family that says that terrorism
3:22
is a western invention. It's not an
3:24
Islamist invention. So you have this
3:27
bizarre situation where a political
3:30
candidate in New York speaks the
3:32
language of jihad uh is financially
3:36
connected to the family that helped the
3:39
911 plotters get away so they could
3:41
bring down the Twin Towers. And it would
Hezbollah, Iran, and Islamist Cheerleaders
3:44
be a tragedy if the Qataris would see a
3:48
occupant of city hall um when they were
3:51
the same people that were involved in
3:53
what happened in 9/11 and bringing down
3:55
the twin towers.
3:56
1993 World Trade Center bombing.
4:00
What's that connection?
4:01
Yeah. So um Kaid Shake Muhammad was one
4:05
of the people that plotted and was
4:06
involved in that. It's when he was on
4:08
the run from that attack that he ended
4:11
up in Qatar. And so the Qatar
4:13
relationship uh has been long with
4:16
terrorism. You've talked about of course
4:18
their ties to Hamas, their ties to
4:20
Hezbollah. I should point out, Mark,
4:22
that in addition to the Qatari
4:24
connection, there are also a lot of
4:26
other uh uh international enemies of the
4:29
United States that are cheering on
4:30
Mandani. Uh for example, the
4:33
international Quran news agency uh which
4:36
is based out of Iran has run glowing
4:39
profiles on Mandami talking about the
4:41
fact that he can win in New York, that
4:44
his policy positions and that his values
4:47
are Islamic in their words. They talk
4:50
about how his strategy is to cultivate
4:52
Muslim votes. So the Iranian news
4:55
agencies are cheering them on. In
4:57
addition to that, there's a news
4:59
publication in Lebanon linked to
5:01
Hezbollah, uh, the terrorist
5:03
organization. They ran a story talking
5:06
about Mumani's rise after he won the
5:08
Democratic nomination in New York. And
5:11
they were thrilled. And it's very
5:13
interesting, Mark, to point out in that
5:15
article, they said if Mandami wins in
5:18
New York and becomes mayor of New York,
5:20
he has a future political career on the
5:22
national stage. among the positions they
Terror Ties Hidden by U.S. Media
5:25
mention he might get to assume is head
5:29
of homeland security. Now, why would a
5:32
terrorist organization like Hezbollah
5:34
want Mani to be head of the Department
5:36
of Homeland Security? Uh I I think the
5:39
evidence is pretty clear.
5:41
You're putting this information out.
5:42
You're now putting it out to millions of
5:44
people nationally. What do you want to
5:45
bet? It's ignored by the New York Times
5:47
in New York, by the New York Daily News
5:50
in New York, by the Associated Press, by
5:53
Reuters and all the rest. You do all the
5:55
footwork, you pull all the the
5:56
investigative data together. What do you
5:59
want to bet this is ignored because they
6:01
want this guy elected?
6:02
Yeah, I think it is going to be ignored.
6:04
And look, there are other financial
6:06
connections. Uh there's an imam wah that
6:09
we talk about. This imam, by the way,
6:11
has three children that last year were
6:15
sentenced to life in prison for their
6:17
involvement in a terrorist attack. He is
6:19
supporting Mum Donnie's campaign in New
6:22
York. Uh, and in 2021, in a interview,
6:25
he actually predicted the rise of a
6:28
Muslim candidate in New York and said
6:30
the time was ready and the time was
6:32
ready for Muslims to seize political
6:34
power in New Yorkk. So, uh, they are
6:36
ignoring this. Um the the stakes could
6:39
not be higher. Uh it's not just an issue
Why Islamist Power Grabs Threaten All Americans
6:41
for New Yorkers. It should be an issue
6:43
for all Americans that are concerned
6:45
about our security. We have a candidate
6:47
who speaks the language of jihad and we
6:50
have a candidate whose family is tied to
6:53
individuals or or a family in Qatar uh
6:56
that has been linked to international
6:58
terrorist networks. You know, I get very
7:01
frustrated by hearing people
7:03
in the media, conservatives,
7:06
Republicans, what have you, say things
7:07
like, "Okay, he'll win in New York and
7:10
then they'll never win anywhere else in
7:11
the United States because we'll see how
7:13
he destroys New York." They don't
7:15
understand the thinking of these
7:17
Islamists. That's not the plan. The plan
7:20
is to run people for city council, to
7:22
run people for mayors, to pick off one
7:24
area after another after another. They
7:27
changed the voting system in order to
7:28
get him nominated as a Democrat, even
7:30
though he's a democratic socialist, aka
7:33
Marxist Islamist who hates America and
7:35
hates Jews. This is a dire threat to the
7:38
country and we better wake the hell up
7:40
to this. Welcome back, America. We're
7:42
here with Peter Schwitzer, the president
7:44
of the Government Accountability
7:45
Institute, really a national treasure.
7:48
Uh Peter, your folks were at the round
7:51
table on Antifa and the Antifa movement
7:54
uh that the president held at the White
7:56
House. So important what he's doing
7:58
trying to get to the bottom of these
Inside the Antifa Roundtable at the White House
8:00
radical organizations because they are
8:02
nefarious. They're evil. They're funded
8:04
by dark money, by billionaires, by
8:06
foreign governments.
8:08
And here's Antifa. I talk about the
8:10
fusion of Marxism and Islamism. You just
8:14
spoke about Islamism. Now let's move to
8:16
Marxism. And that would be Antifa. What
8:19
do you know about Antifa?
8:21
Yeah. So, I mean, Antifa, there's not an
8:23
organization per se named Antifa. It's a
8:26
network of radical organizations um that
Dark Money, Marxism, and the Arabella Network
8:30
as you pointed out are Marxist. They're
8:33
often times sympathetic to Islamist
8:35
causes. Uh and as we uh demonstrated in
8:38
our research that we presented to the
8:40
president, uh they are heavily funded.
8:43
Um, some of that funding comes from
8:45
sources in the United States. You have
8:47
advisory firms like Arabella that are
8:49
advising groups like the Tides
8:51
Foundation uh that we point out um have
8:54
sent money to organizations that are
8:57
involved in violent protests. Uh there
8:59
were violent protests down in in
9:02
Atlanta, Georgia around something called
9:04
Cop City uh where the police were trying
9:06
to create a training facility for uh law
9:09
enforcements. Uh the radicals didn't
9:12
want that. So they violently protested.
9:14
They threw Molotov cocktails. Uh they
9:16
engaged in other violent acts. Members
The Billionaire Roy Singham’s Pro-China Machine
9:19
of those organizations um were charged
9:22
uh uh under law for domestic terrorism
9:25
or domestic terrorism related charges.
9:28
Well, those organizations, some of those
9:30
organizations were funded by the Tides
9:32
Foundation. So you have these radical
9:36
progressive groups in the United States
9:38
that are funding in some instances
9:40
violent organizations. And to be clear
9:43
here, Mark, I'm not talking about groups
9:45
that just talk about radical things. I'm
9:47
talking about groups that are actually
9:49
involved in violence in our streets. So
9:52
you have the domestic side. You also
9:54
have the foreign side. Uh Mark, um
9:57
there's a uh American billionaire uh
9:59
named Roy Singum uh who sold his
10:02
business, it was called Thought Works
10:04
for about a billion dollars, moved to
10:07
Beijing, China, which is where he lives
10:09
now. He's very close to the CCP. He
10:13
counts them amongst his friends. He goes
10:15
to Chinese Communist Party events. He's
Foreign Funding and Domestic Terrorism Links
10:18
friends with their propagandists. uh and
10:20
he funds groups in the United States um
10:24
through the so-called people's forum in
10:26
New York. Uh and these are groups like
10:28
the Freedom Road Socialist Organization,
10:30
the Party for Socialism and Liberation.
10:33
And these are pro-Chinese,
10:36
anti-American, and they lead violent
10:38
protests. Uh it could be over Black
10:40
Lives Matter, it could be over uh the
10:43
issues in the Middle East, it could be
10:45
over law enforcement issues, it doesn't
10:47
matter. And so you have these
10:50
organizations that are not organic per
10:52
se. They are funded and they are
10:54
organized. Uh and we think it's
10:57
important not only for the
10:58
administration to know, but to
11:00
investigate them for possible criminal
11:02
conduct because you're an attorney
11:05
better than I am. I'm not an attorney.
11:07
Uh you if you are involved in funding
11:10
entities that you know are engaged in
11:12
criminal conduct, you could potentially
11:15
be charged with a crime for doing that.
Federal Task Force Needed to Stop the Flow
11:17
I don't know if there is, probably is,
11:19
but there ought to be a task force
11:21
looking at all this with Treasury,
11:22
state, the FBI, the IRS, among others.
11:27
Uh, pulling together uh all the uh
11:30
possible legal issues, pulling together
11:33
all the investigative issues, trying to
11:36
attack it from every angle. It's a big
11:38
federal government. It's been used
11:40
against us. It's been used against
11:42
conservative groups. It's been used
11:43
against our president. It's been used
11:45
against Republican members of the
11:46
Senate. How about we put it to good use?
11:49
Um, if we have foreign countries along
11:52
with these billionaires and others who
11:53
are pouring money into this country to
11:55
overthrow us, if we have people dark
11:58
money in the shadows in our country
11:59
doing the same thing and we have uh and
12:02
we know this is going on, we better put
12:04
an end to it or we will cease to exist.
Levin Calls for Action Against Enemy Within
12:06
There's no reason for this. There's
12:07
absolutely no reason. Which is why I'm
12:09
so proud that the president obviously is
12:12
on the ball. what he's saying. He pulls
12:13
it together. He had your group there and
12:15
many others. And you had independent
12:17
journalists who were beaten to a pulp by
12:18
Antifa and so forth. And the mainstream
12:21
media, which isn't mainstream, it's
12:23
leftwing. It's Democrat. It's hostile to
12:25
the country, has essentially covered it
12:27
up. You had Antifa attacking the
12:30
Portland, Oregon
12:33
courthouse, the federal courthouse month
12:36
after month in 2020, still using it for
12:40
target practice. And then you have a
12:41
federal judge out there
12:44
a real whack job in what she wrote
12:46
talking about well you know this kind of
12:48
free speech and so forth and so on this
Trump Administration’s Pushback on Radical Networks
12:51
is this is normal in our country and so
12:53
forth. So we got a big problem here. Any
12:56
final words Peter?
12:57
Yeah we were uh happy to participate in
12:59
the round table. President Trump asked
13:01
us to share our findings with the
13:03
attorney general and with the director
13:04
of the FBI. We are glad to do so and we
13:07
hope that they will put it to good use.
Schweizer’s Final Warning: The Enemy Within
13:09
And I'll just say again, I don't know of
13:10
another president who would be doing
13:12
this, who really gets into the weeds and
13:14
says, "I love our country, Mr. and Mrs.
13:17
America. I got to do what I can to
13:19
protect you." Whether it's law
13:20
enforcement, whether it's ICE, whether
13:22
it's securing the border, whether it's
13:23
building up the military, and here, the
13:26
enemy within. Peter Schweitzer, great
13:29
group, great guy. Thank you for
13:31
everything. Appreciate it. Thank you,
13:33
Mark.
---
11/06/25
November 5, 2025, edition of Newsmax's Finnerty
ROB FINNERTY (HOST): Republicans did not win last night, but Democrats really didn't win either. Democrat socialists had their biggest night ever last night after a communist was elected mayor of New York City, the Democrat Socialist Party of America. Ilhan Omar tweeting last night praise be to Allah in Arabic because that's a normal thing for a United States congresswoman to do, isn't it? Tweet something out in Arabic. Tweet in the language of the country that you immigrated from, not the country that you immigrated to, a country that's so amazing that it made you a member of Congress and you're tweeting in a foreign language.
And after eight years of Bill de Blasio and four of Eric Adams, the people of New York City just elected the most radical politician in American history, right up there with Jefferson Davis. He was the president of the Confederacy during the Civil War.
And if you've ever been to New York City — maybe you haven't, but if you have been to New York City, hold on to those memories, because the city will never be the same again. Which is exactly what Zohran Mamdani wants to happen. Zohran never lied to us from the very beginning. He told us who he was — a man who spends his free time with terrorists. Remember this little number right here? The guy in the white, an unindicted coconspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. That photo was taken 19 days ago. Zohran never lied to us. And Zohran told us what he wanted to do to New York City and to America.
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GAI’s Seamus Bruner Reveals Left-Wing Funders Such as Roy Singham Behind Antifa Riots
PIX PEACE SIGN Elizabeth Weibel9 Oct 2025
Seamus Bruner, the Director of Research at the Government Accountability Institute (GAI) revealed that left-wing funders such as billionaire Neville Roy Singham were behind left-wing Antifa riots and protests.
During a roundtable event on Antifa with President Donald Trump, Bruner explained that he, GAI President Peter Schweizer, and their team “followed” a trail of money and “followed it to the top of what” they called the Protest Industrial Complex, or Riot Inc. Bruner explained that the so-called “Riot Inc.” was made up of many different divisions, and that “dozens of radical organizations” have received millions of dollars from Riot Inc.
“We found a network of NGOs, it’s not just the Soros network, the Open Society Network. It’s other funding networks, the Arabella Funding Network, the Tides Funding Network, Neville Roy Singham and his network, foreign cash,” Bruner explained. “And, it’s also big left-wing funders — some of them are not citizens of this country.”
Bruner continued to note that these left-wing funders were “pouring money into this entire ecosystem.”
Bruner continued to share “three money facts” about Riot Inc., explaining that there were “many divisions” such as “PR divisions, marketing divisions” and even a “well-funded legal division.”
“Number two, we have identified dozens of radical organizations, not just the decentralized Antifa organizations, but dozens of radical organizations that have received more than one hundred million dollars from the Riot Inc. investors,” Bruner added. “These would be the lawyer groups, these would be the groups that advocate for calling good, honest Americans fascists.”
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“And then, three, I think the most shocking thing is that we have found that more than one hundred million dollars in U.S. taxpayer funding has flowed into these funding networks, including at least four million dollars to these very groups themselves,” Bruner added.
Bruner’s mention of Singham comes after an investigation by the Breitbart News Foundation reported that while “records from the United Kingdom confirm” that Singham resigned from Thoughtworks, Inc., which he founded in 1993, “Chinese government records suggest otherwise.”
After founding Thoughtworks, Inc. in 1993 and building the company into a software consulting powerhouse, Singham helped orchestrate its sale in October 2017, for approximately $785 million to a group of funds managed by London-based private equity firm Apax Partners. Corporate records from the United Kingdom confirm Singham’s resignation from Thoughtworks the same month, and his own LinkedIn profile says he has been retired since 2017. Thoughtworks’ English-language website relegates him to its “alumni” section, reinforcing the image of a clean break.
But Chinese government records suggest otherwise. These records list Singham as a corporate officer of Thoughtworks’ Chinese subsidiary, Thoughtworks Beijing, as recently as June 17, 2025, and for at least as far back as 2022. These records are from the National Enterprise Credit Reporting System (NECIPS), China’s corporate registry. Other documents, including trade show profile and “help-wanted” ads, listed Singham as Thoughtworks Beijing’s official contact in 2021.
The New York Post reported in June that Singham was set to be called to testify before a congressional committee regarding him funding “radical anti-Israel and Marxist groups” behind the Los Angeles riots.
In an article written by Bruner in June, Bruner detailed how the GAI had uncovered how the “official partners” behind the “No Kings” protests “bagged $114.8 million since 2019 from the Arabella Avisors dark money network an how professional protest organizations use tax dollars as a force multiplier.”
Bruner reported:
The expected worldwide mobilization of protests against President Donald Trump this weekend will hardly be a spontaneous eruption. On the contrary, the tumult is a carefully plotted production organized by The Indivisible Project and financed by the progress dark money network managed/advised by Arabella Advisors, which has perfected the mounting of made-to-order protests. Since 2019, the Arabella network has dumped more than $100 million into the coffers of the official “No Kings” protest partners—including the creator of the official protest song book.
This “grassroots” “nationwide days of defiance” targets Trump and his “billionaire allies,” according to organizers. The Arabella network’s biggest benefactors are the left’s own billionaire heroes, including George Soros, Bill Gates, Hansjorg Wyss, Mark Zuckerberg, and Reid Hoffman.
During the roundtable event, Bruner vowed to “keep following the money,” and expressed that he appreciated “everything” Trump was doing.
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The Latest Videos from The Drill Down’s YouTube Channel 10 25
Latest Articles about GAI
Schweizer exposes “RIOT Inc.” for Mark Levin on his Fox News program
October 13, 2025
GAI President Peter Schweizer joined Mark Levin on Oct. 12, 2025 to expose deep links between radical ideologies, terrorism, and political movements inside the United States. Appearing on the Fox…
Read More
Inside “RIOT Inc.” & the Protest Industrial Complex // Seamus Bruner & Victoria Taft
October 13, 2025
Following his White House roundtable remarks, GAI Director of Research Seamus Bruner joined Victoria Taft on the Adult in the Room Podcast to expose how elite foundations, foreign funders, and…
Read More
SCHWEIZER: Mamdani Family “Joined at the Hip” with Foreign Powers & Radical Financiers
October 12, 2025
Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer revealed to Fox News’s Mark Levin that New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani and his family have deep financial ties to Qatar’s royal family…
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Fox News: ‘Riot Inc.’: Trump launches ‘whole-of-government’ push to expose Antifa funding networks, dark money sources
October 9, 2025
White House roundtable targets nonprofit organizations and dark money sources behind organized unrest The Trump administration is intensifying efforts to trace the funding behind Antifa and other protest movements, pursuing what officials…
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GAI Briefs Trump – “It’s A Money Story.” Bruner Tells Trump How Non-Governmental Funding Networks Fund Violent Protests
October 9, 2025
The Government Accountability Institute’s Director of Research, Seamus Bruner, joined a panel of journalists who briefed President Donald Trump, and several of his cabinet members on the threats posed by…
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Big Pharma’s Shadow Over Tylenol Debate? Eggers Discusses the Difficulties in Challenging the Pharmaceutical Industry
October 1, 2025
GAI Vice President Eric Eggers joined The Stephen Gardner Show to confront what he called the perilous collision of politics and public health — a space where ideology can cost…
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Bruner does a deep dive into radical groups linked to broader unrest
September 23, 2025
Seamus Bruner, the Director of Research at the Government Accountability Institute, joined Kristi Leigh on LindellTV (Sep. 19, 2025) for a deep dive into the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination…
Read More
Eggers: Grassley’s disclosures make Biden corruption even more clear
September 22, 2025
GAI Vice President Eric Eggers joined Greg Kelly Reports (Sep. 18, 2025), to unpack new revelations about Biden family corruption and the FBI’s handling of evidence. Eggers argued that new…
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The Chinese Takeover of American Society
September 20, 2025
Two of the largest funders of the “trans movement” in the US are Chinese billionaires. Joe Tsai, the founder of Alibaba, and Neville ‘Roy’ Singham, an American entrepreneur who declared…
Read More
The Chinese Threat from Software Engineers
September 19, 2025
GAI President Peter Schweizer recently appeared on Jesse Kelly’s program. He was asked to react to news that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ended an Obama-begun program that has allowed…
Read More
Seamus Bruner details Neville Roy Singham’s far-left ties to “Armed Queers SLC” and the CCP
September 19, 2025
GAI Director of Research Seamus Bruner joined Grant Stinchfield (Sep. 17, 2025) on Real America’s Voice to share details of evidence retrieved from the now-scrubbed online presence of Armed Queers…
Read More
Eric Eggers on OAN’s The Real Story to discuss former Sen. Bob Menendez’s corruption scandal and Congress
September 15, 2025
Eric Eggers, vice president of the Government Accountability Institute, joined Riley Lewis on OAN’s The Real Story to weigh in on the Bob Menendez corruption scandal and what it says…
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Schweizer: After Charlie Kirk’s Murder, Uncivil Left Remains A Threat; Billionaires Funding Trans Agenda
September 11, 2025
The Left has gone from “I will die to defend your right to state your opinion opposite mine” to “I will kill you if you have an opinion opposite of…
Read More
Bruner explains why Bill Gates is backing away from the leftist Arabella Advisors funding network
September 9, 2025
GAI Research Director Seamus Bruner led the GAI team that researched the donor connections between billionaires George Soros and Bill Gates to Arabella Advisors, a dark-money distributor that gives funding…
Read More
Schweizer presses for bans on stock trading by members of Congress
September 8, 2025
Peter Schweizer, President of the Government Accountability Institute, joined Kristine Frazao on Sinclair Broadcasting’s The National Desk to discuss the bipartisan effort to ban members of Congress and their families…
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Sunday Morning Futures wiith Maria Bartiromo logo
Schweizer: Trump is Right in Targeting China and Soros
September 8, 2025
Appearing on Sunday Morning Futures on Fox News, GAI President Peter Schweizer, whose investigations exposed China’s unholy alliance with Mexican cartels in the deadly fentanyl trade, applauds ed the Trump…
Read More
Schweizer discusses India’s flirtation with Russia, and Chinese fentanyl trade
September 5, 2025
Government Accountability Institute President and Author Peter Schweizer believes the government of India is attempting to “flex its muscles” against the United States with its continued purchasing of Russian oil.…
Read More
Rep. Ilhan Omar now worth as much as $30 million. Where does that money come from? GAI’s Peter Schweizer explains
September 5, 2025
Peter Schweizer joined Chanel Rion to explore the dramatic rise in Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s household wealth, now estimated at $30 million and largely tied to her husband’s venture capital firm.…
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Bruner reveals depth of connections between government corruption and George Soros
September 5, 2025
GAI Director of Research Seamus Bruner revealed the depth of connections between government corruption and the family of billionaire investor George Soros. Joining the Allen Jackson Now program on Trinity…
Read More
Eggers exposes ‘deep state’ corruption
September 3, 2025
Eric Eggers, Vice President of the Government Accountability Institute, joined Allen Jackson on TBN’s Allen Jackson Now to expose Deep State corruption. In a wide-ranging discussion, Eggers detailed how elites…
Read More
Eggers explains mail-in voting problems and the potential for election fraud
September 3, 2025
GAI Vice President Eric Eggers joined OAN host Riley Lewis on The Real Story to unpack the complexities of America’s election system. Eggers, author of the 2018 book FRAAUD: How…
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Bruner discusses newly discovered “burn bags” filled with information on FBI election involvement
August 30, 2025
GAI Director of Research Seamus Bruner analyzed Tulsi Gabbard’s revelations about unburned “burn bags” containing hidden intelligence on election corruption. Appearing on a Newsmax program called The Count, he praised…
Read More
Schweizer discusses Congress’s insider stock trading: “It’s not a red or blue problem — it’s a green problem”
August 29, 2025
GAI President, Peter Schweizer, discusses congressional corruption through insider trading, highlighting how lawmakers routinely evade the STOCK Act and exploit privileged information for financial gain. Appearing on Chanel Rion’s program…
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Bruner says admitting 600,000 Chinese students to the US invites espionage
August 29, 2025
Seamus Bruner, research director at the Government Accountability Institute, said on Newsmax that President Donald Trump’s statement about welcoming 600,000 students from China was probably made for negotiating purposes. Bruner…
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Jan 12, 2021 — 45-4681912. 501(c)(3). $1,000,000.00. N/A. Cash. N/A for general ... Name, address, and EIN (if applicable) of disregarded entity. (b).
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10 25
GAI Investigations
Home/GAI Investigations
GAI Report on Arabella Advisors and Dark MoneyRIOT INC. EXPOSED – The Dark Money Billionaires Behind the Left’s “Day of Defiance”
June 19, 2025
New Schweizer team investigation reveals how ‘No Kings’ and its partners bagged $114.8 million from the Arabella dark money network and how these professional protest organizations use tax dollars as a force multiplier. To view the Arabella funding flows and IRS Form 990s, CLICK HERE: Arabella Funds to No Kings Partners & Affiliates [LINKS] The expected worldwide mobilization of protests this weekend, from Mississippi to Malawi, will hardly be a spontaneous eruption. On the contrary, the…
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Exposed: The CCP’s United Front Hub in America’s Heartland (Part II)
March 28, 2025
By Seamus Bruner, Jedd McFatter, and Breitbart News Foundation The following is a joint investigation by the Breitbart News Foundation (BNF) and the Government Accountability Institute (GAI). From a single brick building on North Eustis Street, a web of pro-Beijing nonprofits and businesses collaborate with the Overseas Chinese Service Center of Minnesota (Minnesota OCSC), which works directly with China’s United Front Work Department. The Breitbart News Foundation’s joint investigation with…
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Exposed: Inside the CCP’s United Front Work in Minnesota (Part I)
March 28, 2025
By Seamus Bruner, Jedd McFatter, and Breitbart News Foundation This is the first of a two-part report on Chinese Communist Party activity in Minnesota. It was reported and prepared jointly by the Government Accountability Institute and the Breitbart News Foundation. The building on the 1300 block of North Eustis Street in St. Paul, Minnesota. (Google Maps) Out of this building, CCP operatives curry favor with politicians like Minnesota Governor Tim…
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FOOL’S GOLD RELEASES ON MARCH 11, 2025
March 6, 2025
Award-winning journalist Susan Crabtree has teamed up with Jedd McFatter and the investigative team behind the runaway New York Times bestsellers Blood Money, Red Handed, Profiles in Corruption, and Clinton Cash. They are proud to present: FOOL S GOLD: The Radicals, Con Artists, and Traitors Who Killed the California Dream and Now Threaten Us All By Susan Crabtree & Jedd McFatter Everyone knows that California is a radical dystopian hellscape…
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A Deep Dive Into Election Integrity
October 16, 2024
A new report from the Government Accountability Institute counts at least fifty threats to election integrity. The report, just out this week, categorizes fifty different threats to election integrity according to whether they concern the influence of “dark money,” lawfare operations, voter fraud, or election fraud. The report documents examples of each and offers potential solutions. DOWNLOAD THE FULL REPORT States such as Michigan, however, have not been so fastidious, as…
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The Camp Lejeune Act Promises Justice for Victims and a New Path for Personal Injury Lawyers
June 5, 2024
Executive Summary On August 11, 2022, South Carolina personal injury attorney Ed Bell joined a group of veterans and their families in the East Room of the White House for the signing of the PACT Act by President Joe Biden. The PACT Act, which provided financial compensation to families whose loved ones had been harmed in service to the U.S., contained a provision (the Camp Lejeune Justice Act) that addressed…
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Thermal Runaway: How Hawaii’s Green Obsession Exacerbated the Worst American Wildfire in a Century
April 24, 2024
(Editor’s Note: In a new article published in The American Spectator, GAI research analyst Samuel Schaefer uncovers an inconvenient truth — Hawaii’s obsession with green energy policies directly affected the ferocity of the wildfires that tore through Maui last year, destroying homes, businesses, and the island’s environment.) The tragic wildfire in Lahaina last August — America’s worst in more than a century, with nearly 100 deaths and 2,000 buildings and…
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Jessica Schumer, Sen. Charles SchumerPolitics Is A Family Business
April 3, 2023
There has been widespread media coverage about family members cashing in on the elected fortunes of nationally recognized political leaders. These leaders include Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and Donald Trump. However, as you will see, you do not have to be the son, daughter, or spouse of the President of the US or the Speaker of the House to take advantage of opportunities that come when a family member is…
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From Academics to Activists: Teachers Unions ‘Reimagine’ Spending Priorities
October 31, 2022
NEW GAI REPORT SHOWS WHERE THE MONEY GOES During the 2021 fiscal year, the two largest teachers unions in the US – the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) – collected approximately $575 million in dues from their members. How did they spend these funds? In past decades these funds were spent on traditional union activities including collective bargaining, advocating for increased funding for public…
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The Truth About Ukrainian Biolabs
September 20, 2022
When the invasion of Ukraine began, Russian leaders accused the U.S. of weaponizing deadly pathogens in Ukrainian biolabs near Russia’s borders. While the U.S. initially denied the claim, Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland admitted in a congressional hearing that biolabs do exist in Ukraine and that the U.S. has partnered with the country on work relating to dangerous pathogens. As the war continues, questions still surround the nature of…
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Commerce DepartmentDepartment of Cronyism: Inside Deals, Conflicts of Interest, and Chinese Connections
April 6, 2022
The latest investigative report from the Government Accountability Institute is a deep dive into the Commerce Department — it is a confluence of streams of money that fill a swamp of corruption and cronyism for insiders. The US Department of Commerce seldom grabs headlines or is the subject of stern congressionalrebukes. It does not find itself accused of being “weaponized” against political opponents.Following the 2016 election, an article on Vox…
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Teachers Unions: From Academics to Activists
February 27, 2022
New report from GAI exposes teachers union misuse of power No U.S institution has been affected more by current events than the K-12 educationsystem. The COVID pandemic wreaked havoc on the mechanics of deliveringeducation, while the social justice movement sparked a debate over what should betaught in the classroom. The convergence of these two issues turned traditionallymundane school board meetings into a platform for frustrated parents and oftenpitted these parents…
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Hat Trick: Peter Schweizer’s ‘Red-Handed’ Officially #1 on NYT Bestseller List
February 27, 2022
Just one week after its release, Peter Schweizer’s Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win is sitting at the top of the New York Times bestseller list —a hat trick for Schweizer, whose previous titles ‘Profiles in Corruption’ and ‘Secret Empires’ also achieved #1 status. Schweizer says this investigation was the “scariest” of his long, storied career exposing corruption. The malicious machinations behind some of America’s most powerful profit machines…
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NEW GAI Report Exposes Corruption and Cronyism in the Cannabis Industry
February 3, 2021
GAI releases a new report exposing corruption in the cannabis industry in seven different states.
Green FogGreen Fog: The Coming Climate Change Bond Crisis
October 28, 2019
The Government Accountability Institute undertook a yearlong study of 40 major cities to find out if mayors’ apocalyptic projections about climate risks are factored into the interest rates on the municipal bonds their cities issue. We published this report as “Green Fog: The Coming Climate Change Bond Crisis — the Narrative vs. The Numbers.” The results revealed a gulf between the words municipal leaders speak and the disclosures cities make.…
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EBT FraudExclusive: New GAI Report on EBT Program’s Link To Terrorism and Fraud
October 23, 2018
Throughout the Great Recession, Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program enrollment skyrocketed— and for good reason. Millions of Americans were unemployed, state and local governments were cutting public services, and vulnerable citizens needed help meeting basic needs, such as the ability to adequately feed their families. SNAP, also known as “food stamps,” provided relief. GAI investigated the charges of widespread fraud in the EBT SNAP Program, and published our findings in the…
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Wilbur RossGAI Exclusive Report: Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross Conflicts of Interest
June 10, 2018
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross was allowed by ethics officials to maintain investments and other ties to a group of shipping firms. Many of the these firms’ clients specialize in industries greatly impacted by the Commerce Department’s policies, particularly the implementation of tariffs still to be negotiated largely by Ross and the Commerce Department. The Government Accountability Institute investigated Ross’s business ties and published our findings in the report entitled “Commerce…
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America the VulnerableAmerica The Vulnerable: The Problem of Duplicate Voting
July 24, 2017
GAI obtained voter roll data from 21 states, amounting to 17 percent of all possible state-to-state combinations. Despite significant data acquisition obstacles and an extremely conservative matching approach that sought only to identify two votes cast in the same legal name, GAI found 8,471 highly likely duplicate votes. We published our findings as a report entitled “America The Vulnerable: The Problem of Duplicate Voting.” The Government Accountability Institute (GAI) attempted…
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America the Vulnerable: Are Foreign and Fraudulent Online Contributions Influencing U.S. Elections? Taking Another Look.
July 24, 2017
The Government Accountability Institute published a new report entitled “America the Vulnerable: Are Foreign and Fraudulent Online Contributions Influencing U.S. Elections? Taking Another Look.” GAI’s report finds that while 91% of Republicans with active donate pages require the Card Verification Value (CVV) on their websites, fewer than 10% of Congressional Democrats require the additional layer of security. With interest in the 2018 midterm elections heating up, the Government Accountability Institute…
Read More
Follow The Money: How the Department of Justice funds progressive non-profits
October 27, 2016
A new investigation by the Government Accountability Institute details the flow of funds from consent decree settlements overseen by the Department of Justice into progressive non-profits engaged in political activity. GAI published its findings in a report entitled, “Follow The Money: How The Department of Justice Funds Progressive Activists.” The Government Accountability Institute conducted an in-depth examination of the nature of settlement agreements between U.S. financial institutions and the United…
Read More
FROM RUSSIA WITH MONEY: Report raises questions about ‘Clinton Cash’ during ‘Russian Reset’
July 31, 2016
Key players in a main component of the reset — a Moscow-based, Silicon Valley-style campus for developing bio-medical, space, nuclear, and other information technology called “Skolkovo” — poured tens of millions of dollars into the Clinton Foundation, the report by journalist Peter Schweizer and the Government Accountability Institute shows. GAI published its findings as a report entitled “From Russia With Money: Hillary Clinton, The Russian Reset, and Cronyism.” • A…
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GAI Analysis into Clinton Email record shows surprising anomalies
July 6, 2016
The Governmengt Accountability Institute did research into the content of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails, and published our findings in a report entitled, “Secretary Clinton Email Analysis.” Research by the Government Accountability Institute shows that Secretary Clinton’s email record contains anomalous patterns in her email history. Among the findings are: The term “Rosatom,” the term for the Russian State Nuclear Agency, onlyappears once. This is particularly interesting given that…
Read More
GAI Report: “Presidential Meetings With Cabinet Secretaries”
December 10, 2013
Government Accountability Institute is pleased to release its new report, “Presidential Meetings With Cabinet Secretaries Since the Signing of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act: March 23, 2010 – November 30, 2013.” Click here to download the report. The Government Accountability Institute (GAI) conducted an analysis of the Presidential Schedule, as released by the White House, to determine the number of times President Barack Obama has met directly with his Cabinet secretaries. To…
Read More
Obama campaign blocks Chinese IP addresses from contributing to its campaign.GAI REPORT: “Blocked: Chinese Government & Obama Campaign Quietly Block Access To Donations Webpage”
October 25, 2012
The Government Accountability Institute is pleased to announce the release of its follow-up report on foreign and fraudulent online campaign contributions: BLOCKED: Chinese Government & Obama Campaign Quietly Block Access To Donation Webpage.
GAI Report: An Analysis Of FEC Campaign Donations Listing Non-Existent ZIP Codes
October 22, 2012
The Government Accountability Institute is pleased to announce the release of its new report, Campaign Funding Risks: An Analysis Of FEC Campaign Donations Listing Non-Existent ZIP Codes. Click here to download the complete report.
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PP
Government Accountability Institute - Nonprofit Explorer - ProPublica
10 25
Government Accountability Institute
Tallahassee, FL
Tax-exempt since Jan. 2013
EIN: 45-4681912
Receive an email when new data is available for this organization.
Organization summary
Type of Nonprofit
Designated as a 501(c)(3)
Organizations for any of the following purposes: religious, educational, charitable, scientific, literary, testing for public safety, fostering national or international amateur sports competition (as long as it doesn't provide athletic facilities or equipment), or the prevention of cruelty to children or animals.
Category: Civil Rights, Social Action, Advocacy N.E.C. (NTEE)
Donations to this organization are tax deductible.
Summary charts: organization finances over time
Revenue
$3.91M (2023)
2012
2023
$0
$1M
$2M
$3M
$4M
Expenses
$3.32M (2023)
2012
2023
$0
$1M
$2M
$3M
$4M
Total Assets
$1.31M (2023)
2012
2023
$0
$500k
$1M
$1.5M
Total Liabilities
$120k (2023)
2012
2023
$0
$100k
$200k
$300k
Source: Form 990 tax filings from 2012 to 2023
Tax Filings by Year
Form 990 is an information return that most organizations claiming federal tax-exempt status must file yearly with the IRS.
See an issue with the data?
Contact Us
Fiscal Year Ending Dec.
2023
Extracted Financial Data
Extracted Financial Data from Form 990
Revenue
$3,914,339
Expenses
$3,318,475
Net Income
$595,864
Net Assets
$1,192,969
| Notable Sources of Revenue | Percent of Total Revenue | |
|---|---|---|
| Contributions | $3,859,223 |
98.6%
| Program Services | $20,807 |
0.5%
| Investment Income | $34,309 |
0.9%
| Bond Proceeds | $0 | |
|---|---|---|
| Royalties | $0 | |
| Rental Property Income | $0 | |
| Net Fundraising | $0 | |
| Sales of Assets | $0 | |
| Net Inventory Sales | $0 | |
| Other Revenue | $0 | |
| Notable Expenses | Percent of Total Expenses | |
| Executive Compensation | $591,923 |
17.8%
| Professional Fundraising Fees | $0 | |
|---|---|---|
| Other Salaries and Wages | $1,102,493 |
33.2%
| Assets/Debt | ||
|---|---|---|
| Total Assets | $1,313,437 | |
| Total Liabilities | $120,468 | |
| Net Assets | $1,192,969 |
Compensation
| Key Employees and Officers | Compensation | Related | Other |
|---|---|---|---|
| Peter Schweizer (President, Secretary/Treas) | $218,077 | $0 | $51,272 |
| Peter Boyer (Executive Vice President) | $197,308 | $0 | $41,630 |
| Stuart Christmas (Executive Vp & General Cou) | $176,538 | $0 | $34,698 |
| Sandra Schulz (Publicist) | $103,846 | $0 | $0 |
| Rebekah Mercer (Chairman, Board Of Directo) | $0 | $0 | $0 |
| Ron Robinson (Board Director) | $0 | $0 | $0 |
| Thomas Smith (Board Director) | $0 | $0 | $0 |
Document Links
990
Filed on Nov. 12, 2024
Primary tax return for a nonprofit’s activities, finances, and governance
10 25
Government Accountability Institute (GAI) is a conservative think tank[3][4] located in Tallahassee, Florida.[5][6] GAI was founded in 2012[7] by Peter Schweizer and Steve Bannon with funding from Robert Mercer and family.[8] Schweizer serves as the group's president.[9]
The group's stated goal is to investigate and expose government corruption, misuse of taxpayer money, and crony capitalism. It is registered as a nonpartisan organization,[10] but is largely focused on investigations of allegations related to the Democratic Party[11] with many of the claims being later debunked or considered dubious.[12][13][14]
Overview
The Government Accountability Institute was set up by Steve Bannon as a tool for transmitting partisan dirt-digging and questionable opposition research to the mainstream media.[15][16] "He realized that, though mainstream reporters were suspicious of partisan opinion, they were open to damning facts about public figures, regardless of the sourcing. He set out, with Schweizer, to produce material that would generate mainstream coverage, and right-wing outrage", wrote Jane Mayer in The New Yorker.[17]
While GAI claims to be "a self-styled corruption watchdog group chaired and funded by conservative mega-donor Rebekah Mercer",[18] the group has become a mainstay of alt-right media.[19] Further, GAI's conspiracy theories, though debunked, have been legitimized in coverage by major news outlets such as The New York Times, the Associated Press, and The Washington Post.[20][21]
Members of GAI's board of directors include Bannon, Peter Schweizer, Hunter Lewis, Ron Robinson (president of Young America's Foundation), and Wynton Hall.[22] Former U.S. representative Jason Chaffetz joined GAI as a distinguished fellow in 2021.[11]
Funding
Between 2012 and 2014, GAI received donations of almost $4 million from the Mercer Family Foundation and the Koch brothers-affiliated Donors Trust.[23][24]
In 2019, The New Yorker reported that most of GAI's funding came from tax-exempt donations from the family foundation of Robert Mercer, and that in the organization's 2017 tax filings it listed his daughter Rebekah as chairman of the GAI board.[17]
Activities
The Government Accountability Institute published several reports and books with premises and claims that were debunked after—or even before—publication.[25][26][27]
In October 2012, GAI released a report insinuating that the Obama campaign had received contributions from donors who were not American citizens, which is illegal under U.S. law.[28] The report claimed that "campaigns that aggressively raise money online are soliciting donations from people around the world—whether they intend to or not," and asserted that the Obama campaign lacked "rigorous screening for donors' citizenship". Multiple media sources debunked the claim, finding no evidence to support the report's allegations.[29]
Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich is a 2015 book published by GAI that makes false claims about donations made to the Clinton Foundation by foreign entities, paid speeches made by Bill and Hillary Clinton, and the Clintons' personal enrichment since leaving the White House in 2001.[30]
GAI was central in pushing the debunked conspiracy theory concerning alleged involvement by Hillary Clinton in the sale of Uranium One.[31][32] Attorney General Jeff Sessions had John W. Huber investigate GAI's claims connecting the Clinton Foundation to the sale of the group of companies. Huber found no tangible evidence of impropriety.[33]
Bush Bucks: How Public Service and Corporations Helped Make Jeb Rich, an e-book published by GAI in October 2015, raises questions about millions of dollars received by former Florida Governor Jeb Bush after he left office. The money came from from companies which had benefited from Bush's policies while he was governor.[34][35]
Another debunked[36] book published by GAI is Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends. It was the first printed source of the false Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory,[1] which GAI was heavily involved in promoting.[37] When asked about GAI's role in media coverage of the allegations, Bannon replied, “It’s key. It was the predicate”.[38]
Links to Breitbart News
A November 2016 investigation by The Washington Post detailed ties between the Government Accountability Institute and the conservative website Breitbart News. Three GAI employees received full-time compensation while simultaneously being employed elsewhere.[39] From 2012 to 2015, GAI co-founder and executive chair Bannon received $376,000 for working 30 hours a week. He simultaneously served as executive chairman of Breitbart.[23] GAI communications strategist Wynton Hall received $600,000 during the same time. Hall worked as a writer for Breitbart and was promoted to managing editor in 2013. GAI president and treasurer Schweizer, also an at-large editor and writer for Breitbart, was paid $778,000 by the GAI from 2012 to 2015.[23]
The Post noted that GAI's political advocacy raises questions about whether the 501(c)(3) organization has illegally intervened in political campaigns. The Post also found that, from 2013 to 2015, GAI purchased over $200,000 in advertising from the Breitbart website.[23][40]
References MANY
not much talk a wacko
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crc evil but 10 25
The Government Accountability Institute (GAI) is an investigative journalism outfit that tracks transactions and documents, gathers research, and employs fact-checkers to uncover abuses of government power. GAI promotes its findings and analyses through books, investigative reports, and a podcast. ^1
Activities
Government Accountability Institute publishes its most in-depth research as books. In 2018, GAI published its findings on Hunter Biden’s business dealings in China, Ukraine, and Russia in Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends. In 2015, GAI’s book Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich provides information claiming that the Clintons used the Clinton Foundation to gain influence. ^1
GAI’s most recently published book, Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win in 2022, presents findings that suggest wealthy Americans have been cutting secret deals to aid China in building its military, technological, and economic strength. GAI research asserts that these wealthy Americans include presidential families, tech gurus, professional athletes, Wall Street businessmen, and Ivy League universities. ^2
GAI’s investigative reports focus on a variety of subjects related to public corruption, especially as it concerns teachers’ unions, the legalization of cannabis at the state level, and fraud within the government’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). ^1
In a 2022 report, the Government Accountability Institute claims that the two largest teachers’ unions in the U.S., the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA), have been misusing their power to support Democratic presidential candidates, progressive causes, and social activism. GAI’s research finds that both AFT and NEA have used the COVID-19 pandemic to guide public education to include more liberal policies and advocate for a more radical curriculum. This includes advancing gender politics in classrooms, race curriculum that pushes critical race theory-aligned narratives, and expanding “community school” programs. ^3
Funding
Government Accountability Institute is funded by donations from individuals, foundations, and corporations. While GAI does not disclose its donors, tax filings confirm donations from the Franklin News Foundation ($2 million in 2012), ^4 Mercer Family Foundation ($1.7 million in 2017), ^5 and Donors Trust ($1 million in 2019). ^6
People
Peter Schweizer is the founder and president of the Governmental Accountability Institute. Schweizer is a former consultant to the Office of Presidential Speechwriting during the George W. Bush administration ^1 and a former fellow at the Hoover Institution. ^7
Peter Boyer is the executive vice president of GAI. Boyer formerly worked as a national correspondent for the Weekly Standard, editor-at-large for Fox News, and a writer forNewsweek. ^8
Rebekah Mercer is the chair of the board of GAI, the director of the Mercer Family Foundation, and the founder of Reclaim New York. Mercer sits on the boards of the Media Research Center, the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation, and the Moving Picture Institute, and is a trustee at the Heritage Foundation. ^9
Ron Robinson is the former president of the Young America’s Foundation, cofounder of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), ^10 and the vice president of the Free Speech Defense and Education Fund. Robinson is a trustee of the Phillips Foundation and sits on the boards of Citizens United, the Citizens United Foundation, and the American Conservative Union. ^11
References
https://yyy.theguardian.com/books/2022/jan/29/bidens-american-muckrackers-red-handed-book-review
no lnx GUK
American muckrakers: Peter Schweizer, James O’Keefe and a rightwing full court press
The author of Clinton Cash takes aim at the Bidens, the founder of Project Veritas stakes a claim for legitimacy. The results are murky – but offer a map for political battles to come
Lloyd Green
Sat 29 Jan 2022
The official investigation of Hunter Biden’s dealings in China and elsewhere rests in the hands of David Weiss, a Trump-appointed federal prosecutor in Delaware, and the US justice department under Joe Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland. Politically speaking, we now have Red-Handed by Peter Schweizer, who would very much like to help us digest the business past of the 46th president’s troublesome son.
Clinton Cash: errors dog Bill and Hillary exposé – but is there any 'there' there?
Read more
Schweizer’s works include Clinton Cash, a compendium of opposition researchthat helped shape the presidential election in 2016. These days, he is president of the Government Accountability Institute, a think tank funded by the Mercer family,part of the rightwing ecosystem.
Rebekah Mercer chairs the GAI board, a position previously held by Steve Bannon, whom Donald Trump pardoned of fraud charges but who is now under indictment for contempt of Congress. Mercer is also a founding investor in Parler, a rightwing alternative to Twitter and communications vehicle for Trump’s faithful in the run-up to the 6 January insurrection.
The Mercers are mainstays of Breitbart News and once funded James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas – of which, more later. Via Cambridge Analytica, the Mercers helped hijack Brexit. Not surprisingly, Nigel Farage counts the Mercers as allies.
If Republicans recapture the House in November, as expected, most see investigations of Hunter Biden and his father an inevitable sequel. Schweizer has published a roadmap, from sources including Secret Service travel logs, materials from former business associates and that infamous laptop.
Schweizer argues that the rich and powerful have grown too cozy with China, at the expense of their own country. His central contention is that the Biden family garnered approximately $31m from individuals with direct ties to Chinese intelligence.
Hunter Biden has denied wrongdoing. In 2020, Politifact said Schweizer’s claims about Joe Biden did “not add up to a picture” of his “being corrupt or pursuing policies contrary to the national interest”.
Peter Schweizer speaks at CPAC in 2016.]
Schweizer, however, fires shots across the political spectrum. John Boehner, a Republican speaker of the House, and Henry Kissinger, secretary of state to two Republican presidents, are in his sights. So are the Bushes.Chuck Schumer, Mark Warner, Chris Coons and Joe Manchin, all Democratic senators, are praised.
Schweizer lambasts Silicon Valley for enabling China’s rise and turning a blind eye to human rights abuses. Elon Musk and Bill Gates are criticized, Wall Street (prominently Goldman Sachs, Blackstone and Black Rock), the National Basketball Association and academe too. Yale University receives particular attention.
Not surprisingly, Schweizer does not consider links to China enjoyed by Trump and his most ardent followers. He ignores, for example, tax records that show Trump International Hotels Management paid more than $188,000 in China while pursuing licensing deals between 2013 and 2015, and maintained a bank account there. [chao taiwan?]
Likewise, Schweizer looks away from Ted Cruz. The Texas senator’s wife is a banker at Goldman. The Cruzes hold direct investments of between $15,000 and $50,000 in the Goldman Sachs China Equity Fund Class P, a mutual fund with positions in Alibaba and Tencent – companies firmly in Schweizer’s sights.
Then again, the Mercers are Cruz donors. In 2016, Cruz’s presidential campaign was a Cambridge Analytica client.
Schweizer calls for a US lobbying ban on companies linked to the Chinese military and Chinese intelligence, and their exclusion from US stock exchanges. He also demands the press pursue big tech involvement with China.
As models for how to resist the Chinese, he holds out Peter Thiel and his company Palantir. Thiel, a rightwing megadonor, gained notoriety when he wrote in 2009 that women and minorities had mucked up democratic capitalism. A Palantir employee planted the concept of data harvesting with Cambridge Analytica.
Hunter Biden, middle, with his half-sister Ashley at Joe Biden’s inauguration in January.]
The scandal that wasn’t: Republicans deflated as nation shrugs at Hunter Biden revelations
Read more
As for China’s territorial ambitions? In another book, Trump was quoted by the Washington Post’s Josh Rogin. If the Chinese were to invade Taiwan, he told a senator, “there isn’t a fucking thing we can do”.
It seems unlikely the US could be capable of decoupling its economy from China while avoiding clashes. China’s opacity with regard to Covid does not instill confidence. Schweizer’s book does at least deliver food for thought.
‘Free speech for me …’
If Red-Handed is an amalgam of more than 1,100 footnotes, facts, arguments and innuendos, American Muckraker by James O’Keefe, the founder of Project Veritas, is a 288-page exercise in self-reverence.
“The American Muckraker understands that the path to truth involves suffering and sacrifice,” O’Keefe writes. OK. Elsewhere, he compares his plight to that of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Alabama in the late 1950s, as it worked for “equality”. Really. He also repeatedly refers to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the great Russian dissident.
What does O’Keefe do for a living? Mostly, he makes sting videos targeting Democrats and progressives. Targets have included Planned Parenthood and a teachers’ union.
Practically speaking, American Muckraker is O’Keefe’s attempt to bolster his claim of being a journalist while re-defining what the media actually is in an era of cold civil war. On that note, he recounts a conversation with Brian Karem after the Playboy White House reporter had a dust-up with a Trump loyalist, Sebastian Gorka.
“I’m on the same team as you,” said O’Keefe. “I respect you guys.”
Really? Project Veritas counts the Donald J Trump Foundation among past donors andErik Prince, former head of the Blackwater private security company and brother of Trump’s education secretary, Betsy DeVos, was involved in its sting operations against Trump adversaries. O’Keefe makes clear he is not keen on a shedding a light on those who fund his work.
James O’Keefe speaks at CPAC in 2021.]
He does have a genuine grievance. In early November 2021, the FBI raided his apartment, handcuffed him in his underwear and seized two phones. He was not arrested.
Reportedly, the feds swooped in connection with the disappearance and unauthorized publication of a diary kept by Ashley Biden, the president’s daughter. Project Veritas never wrote anything on the topic and handed the document over. The justice department had placed the first amendment and O’Keefe’s civil liberties in its crosshairs, notwithstanding a court-ordered warrant.
But that is only part of the story. In 2020, O’Keefe sued the New York Times for libel in connection with its coverage of videos concerning alleged voter fraud in Minnesota. A New York judge refused to dismiss the suit and O’Keefe has obtained an injunction that bars the paper from publishing documents written by a Project Veritas lawyer.
O’Keefe’s mantra might be: “Free speech for me – but not for thee.”
Despite the efforts of Richard Nixon in the case of the Pentagon Papers, prior restraint remains anathema to a free press – as Donald Trump’s late brother, Robert, learned when he failed to block publication of a niece’s tell-all.
Nonetheless, Trump allies are urging the supreme court to reconsider protections afforded to the media under US libel law. Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch have indicated they are willing. The fact that the decision in question was rendered by a unanimous court a half-century ago means little. American Muckraker is a book for such troubled times.
Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win is published in the US by Harper. American Muckraker: Rethinking Journalism for the 21st Century is published by Post Hill Press
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This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. The nation's attention is riveted on the drama unfolding in Washington, where House investigators are assembling evidence for their impeachment inquiry, and President Trump is refusing to cooperate. Our guest, Bloomberg Businessweek columnist Joshua Green, says that, ironically, Trump's impeachment peril is the unintended result of an effort to help him.
Last spring, a book came out called "Secret Empires: How The American Political Class Hides Corruption And Enriches Family And Friends." Its author was Peter Schweizer, the head of the Government Accountability Institute, a think tank founded by Schweizer and Steve Bannon. The book includes information about Hunter Biden, the son of Joe Biden and his activities in Ukraine when his father was the vice president.
The book raises questions about possible ethical violations and corruption related to Hunter Biden's activities in Ukraine. The book received a lot of attention on Fox News, where it came to the attention of President Trump and led Trump to send Rudy Giuliani to Ukraine to pressure the new government there to investigate the claims in Schweizer's book.
Joshua Green notes in a new article how this echoes the playbook that Schweizer and Bannon successfully used with their 2015 book "Clinton Cash," which raised questions about the propriety of Hillary Clinton's financial dealings and those of the Clinton Foundation. It led to investigations by the mainstream media. Joshua Green writes about politics for Bloomberg Businessweek and is the author of a book about Steve Bannon called "Devil's Bargain." He spoke with FRESH AIR's Dave Davies.
DAVE DAVIES, BYLINE: Joshua Green, welcome back to FRESH AIR. You write that the allegations of corruption involving Joe Biden and his son Hunter in Ukraine were first aired in a book published last year by something called the Government Accountability Institute. What is the Government Accountability Institute?
JOSHUA GREEN: Well, the Government Accountability Institute is registered as a nonpartisan research organization. It was founded in 2012 by Steve Bannon, Donald Trump's former chief strategist, and Peter Schweizer, who, I believe, is now the president and still works there. And it bills itself as an investigatory outfit that investigates money and politics, corruption and that sort of thing.
DAVIES: Right. Who funds it?
GREEN: Well, we don't know all the funders, but one of its chief funders is Rebekah Mercer, who is part of the Mercer family, headed by Robert Mercer, the former co-chair of Renaissance Technologies, the big hedge fund. The Mercer family was and still is a major right-wing donor to various different causes, big Trump supporters, and a family that has come into the spotlight since Trump's election - also involved in Cambridge Analytica and some of the outfits that became famous and even notorious after the 2016 election.
DAVIES: The funding certainly comes from partisan sources. You know, the co-founder was Steve Bannon. What's interesting, as you write, is that the work - the research that it produced and the books that it produced weren't intended particularly to reach the conservative media or core Republican voters. What was the purpose?
GREEN: Well, the purpose of GAI originally was to, you know, investigate politicians. But given the conservative band of people like Bannon and Schweizer and their funders, the focus often tended to be Democrats. And in my book, I write about howSchweizer and Bannon resolved to go after Hillary Clinton a couple of years before the 2016 election, knowing that she was likely to emerge as the Democratic nominee.
So through GAI and its investigators, its forensic data scientists, you know, they pored over public records, corporate filings, dark Web scrapings to compile, you know, a damning book about Bill and Hillary Clinton in their work through their nonprofit, the Clinton Foundation, that was published about a month before Hillary launched her presidential campaign. And that book, "Clinton Cash," became an instant New York Times [PARTNERSHIP?!] bestseller and really tarnished Hillary Clinton's image just as she was entering the presidential fray.
DAVIES: And the interesting thing is that, you know, Bannon was not interested in just generating material for the conservative media. It was important that mainstream media draw on this research and, you know, give it their imprimatur tour too.
GREEN: That's exactly right. You know, Bannon's critique of how Republicans deal with the media goes back to the 1990s and Bill Clinton's impeachment, when he thought that Republicans really just wound up talking to themselves in an echo chamber and they chased wild rumors and conspiracy theories and really put off ordinary voters. The media didn't listen to them. Voters didn't listen to them. OPPO RESEARCH
So with "Clinton Cash," he resolved to compile factual information that he wanted the mainstream media to pick up and amplify. And so he explicitly was not looking to reach a conservative audience, which is already going to be predisposed to dislike the Clintons, and was aiming to affect the votes in the views of independents and Democrats and the type of people that Hillary Clinton was counting on.It was important to Bannon that GAI's work be picked up and taken seriously by mainstream media outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post, Bloomberg News.
DAVIES: And did those mainstream media organizations publish stories based on the research?
GREEN: Yeah, they did. I mean, famously, there was a New York Times story based on Schweizer's reporting. And it revealed this in the story, looking at a Clinton Foundation deal in a Russian-backed company called Uranium One that really took off and, I think, poisoned the public views of Clinton and the Clinton Foundation. And, as Bannon intended, a whiff of corruption attached itself to Hillary Clinton. Of course, that expanded as the media focused on her missing emails and Republicans pushed these ideas. But the book really succeeded in what Bannon had set out to do. And that was to raise doubts about the ethics and morals and fitness for the presidency of Hillary Clinton.
DAVIES: Right. And we should just note that there is nothing at all unusual about credible reporters getting tips and leads and information from partisan sources. They have to, of course, independently verify the information and assess its credibility. Were the books that the Government Accountability Institute writes generally accurate?
GREEN: Well, they were based on facts. And what these investigators did was go out and turn out examples of foreign donors that hadn't been disclosed and examples of behavior by former President Bill Clinton that seemed to be conducted on behalf of donors to the Clinton Foundation.You know, Schweizer's style is not to fabricate or allege illegality. Instead, he uses his reporting to lay out a suggestive timeline that leads readers to a conclusion that, hey, something is dirty here. This reeks of influence peddling. Something is not right. And it raises doubts about the subjects.
DAVIES: So the new book from Peter Schweizer and the Government Accountability Institute is called "Secret Empires: How The American Political Class Hides Corruption And Enriches Family And Friends." And it identified Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden as a target for some of the material. What did it find about Joe and Hunter Biden?
GREEN: Well, what it found was that Hunter Biden, the vice president's son, had become a highly paid director at a Ukrainian natural gas company called Burisma, a position that he didn't have any obvious qualifications for. But he did have a very famous last name, and the owner of the company was interested, I think, in building credibility. Schweizer also took a look at a private equity fund that Hunter Biden became involved in that drew a lot of money from Chinese investors at the same time that Hunter was flying to China on Air Force Two with his father, the vice president.
So in Schweizer's reporting, you know, this is made to look very fishy and possibly illegal and raise doubts about the ethics of Joe Biden and whether or not, you know, the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination really belongs in that position or, you know, is in some way corrupt because of his son's business dealings.
DAVIES: No direct evidence that Joe Biden did anything to assist his son in either of those ventures, right? But there's an association.
GREEN: No. No, there isn't. And Bloomberg News, my employer, has done a lot of reporting and has turned up no wrongdoing.Other outlets have taken a look. I mean, what is going on and what Schweizer is good at finding are situations like this where, you know, I think any objective reader would come to the conclusion that, you know, but for Hunter's last name, he would not be in this position. You and I would not be offered a $50,000 a month board seat at a Ukrainian gas company because our father isn't vice president.
So it's the sort of - it's what, you know, Schweizer calls corruption by proxy. There's nothing explicitly illegal, but it's sort of morally corrupt and an indictment of our system in a way that populist Republicans and Democrats like to criticize.
DAVIES: The Clinton book got a ton of mainstream media attention and had an impact on the Clintons themselves. This book, did it get a lot of mainstream attention? Did it hurt harm the Bidens?
GREEN: You know, it really didn't. It came out in 2018, and it kind of came and went. It - you know, it didn't attach itself to Biden. It didn't become - it didn't drive the political news cycle in the way that "Clinton Cash" drove the 2015-2016 presidential news cycle. It got a decent amount of attention in conservative media, but it never really broke out into the mainstream.
You know, and I speculated in my Businessweek piece, a couple of reasons for this - one, Joe Biden wasn't yet a candidate, and so there wasn't that kind of urgency to look into his past. There might have been had the book come out later on. It also didn't focus only on the Biden's; it focused on John Kerry, Barack Obama, the Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell.So I think that influenced how it was received. And of course, unlike "Clinton Cash," it wasn't focused on an actual Democratic presidential candidate; it was mainly focused on his son. And so there - it was sort of one degree removed from the primary actors.
I think all these things together help explain why the book didn't really break out until, that is, Donald Trump and his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, became infatuated with it, started trying to investigate these things themselves and now has kicked off what has become an entire impeachment proceeding and put the book and the Bidens and Schweizer himself very much in the center of the 2020 presidential news cycle.
DAVIES: So when this book was launched with these stories, what were the ambitions of Peter Schweizer and the Government Accountability Institute?
GREEN: Well, I think the ambition was a reprise of what they'd seen with "Clinton Cash," that the mainstream media would look into this stuff and amplify it in the way that they had with the Clinton charges. You know, Steve Bannon, who kind of pioneered this model, has a phrase he likes to use - anchor left, pivot right. And what that means is you want to anchor this reporting on the left and the mainstream media - what Bannon considers the left - get them writing about it and then use the right-wing media to amplify what it is the mainstream media is saying and to kind of dominate the entire mediasphere.
So I think Schweizer and GAI were hoping that "Secret Empires," the Biden reporting, would be anchored in the mainstream media, and the whole process would repeat itself, but that never really happened with the second book.
DAVIES: So what did happen? Why do we know about it now?
GREEN: Well, we know about it now - it got a decent amount of attention in the right-wing media, onFox News, in the New York Post.And of course, some of - you know, one of the most loyal consumers of right-wing media is the president, Donald Trump, who according to reporting watches hours and hours of Fox News every day. So he was exposed to this reporting, exposed to the charges and the insinuations that Schweizer made. He's tweeted about the book. He's tweeted about Schweizer.
And, you know, based on everything we've heard from the whistleblower report, from the White House call transcript that was released at the end of September, Trump and Giuliani took it upon themselves to pick up the phone and try and advance Schweizer's reporting into the Bidens. I mean, essentially, calling the president of Ukraine and saying, hey,I know about this Biden stuff. I want you to look into this. I want you to investigate my political opponent. And, you know, if you don't, we're going to withhold this military aid - setting off all the alarm bells that have now led to the impeachment inquiry.
DAVIES: So it really was the president and Giuliani that took this and ran with it.
GREEN: It really was. I mean, the remarkable thing - a lot of people watch Fox News, watch right-wing media, get upset about the Clintons and the Bidens, but only one of them had the power to pick up the telephone, call the president of the Ukraine and put pressure on him to investigate the Bidens in hopes that they could turn up more damning information about Joe and Hunter Biden, knowing that Joe Biden was very likely to be his Democratic opponent in 2020.
DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. And we're speaking with Bloomberg Businessweek columnist Joshua Green about the origins of the story about Joe Biden and his son Hunter in Ukraine, which drew interest from President Trump and has now led to an impeachment inquiry. Green is the author of a book about Steve Bannon called "Devil's Bargain."
So President Trump has said that Joe Biden, when he was vice president - I guess in 2016 - sought to get the Ukrainian prosecutor fired, who was, at that time, investigating the company associated with Hunter Biden, his son - in effect, kind of scotching an investigation into his son by getting the prosecutor fired. What's the truth of this?
GREEN: Well, it is true what Trump says, but it is wildly misleading. Vice President Biden played a central role in overseeing U.S. policy in the Ukraine. But Biden, the Obama administration, Republicans in the Senate, the International Monetary Fund, the European Union were all putting pressure on the Ukrainian government to root out corruption and, particularly, to fire the chief prosecutor at the time, Viktor Shokin, who was not - who was essentially beholden to the oligarchs, was not doing the kind of corruption investigations they wanted.
So Biden threatened to withhold up to a billion dollars in aid from Ukraine if Shokin wasn't fired because he was so deeply corrupt. So Biden and the Obama administration were putting pressure on the Ukraine government to do more investigating of corruption not less, as Trump and his allies are insinuating.
And it's also - I mean, just to be clear, they weren't in - Ukrainian prosecutors were never investigating Hunter Biden. They were investigating an oligarch who owned - who is the co-founder of Burisma, the gas company, on whose board Hunter Biden served.
DAVIES: Right. And is it clear whether, at the time that he was fired,this prosecutor, Victor Shokin, was actually investigating the company?
GREEN: You know, it isn't clear.There have been conflicting reports on this. There does seem to have been an investigation into Burisma. But, you know, they paid a fine. That went away. At no point was Hunter Biden ever implicated in any kind of corruption. And part of what, I think, Trump and Giuliani were trying to do was to reopen this investigation and steer it toward Hunter Biden in hopes that they could find or maybe create damaging material around the Bidens.
DAVIES: There is a new chief prosecutor in Ukraine and was quoted as saying that he had opened an audit of a bunch of old investigations, including one into Burisma Holdings, the company that Hunter Biden was associated with. What does this portend?
GREEN: Well, it's not clear. I mean, one of the things, I think, a lot of people don't understand about the whole Ukraine situation is that Hunter Biden was never investigated by Ukrainian prosecutors. What happened was that they were investigating an oligarch named Mykola Zlochevsky, who co-founded Burisma.And so reopening investigations would be investigations into Burisma Holdings. But they - from what we know, that wouldn't affect or have anything specifically to do with Hunter Biden or his situation there.
One of the things that Trump and Giuliani are pushing for in these text messages and these - in these meetings and phone calls is for Ukrainian prosecutors to go further and specifically investigate the Bidens in hope that they can turn up dirt that can be used in the 2020 presidential campaign.
And as far as we know, there's no basis for investigating anything. There is no evidence that I'm aware of or that anybody has reported that would suggest that there was wrongdoing there.And Schweizer himself, in fact, in the New York Times today, has an op-ed saying that, you know, what transpired actually wasn't illegal under U.S. law. It was unseemly. It might have been unethical - the idea of putting a politician's son on a board as a way of maybe trying to influence the political process - but there was nothing illegal here. And that's very much Schweizer's style is not to allege illegality but to insinuate that there is something corrupt going on there.
And, I think, part of the way that this entire story went sideways and went crashing into this impeachment inquiry is that Trump is very much susceptible to the insinuation that there is something, you know, perfidious going on here and took it upon himself to, you know, push and amplify and even threaten people in hopes of advancing the story.
DAVIES: You mentioned that Peter Schweizer, the author of this book that was funded by the Government Accountability Institute, has an op-ed in The Times. He's arguing that there's a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which makes it illegal for an American company operating in a foreign country to engage in, you know, bribery or nepotism to secure favor from governments in which they operate but that there's a big hole in the law in that there's nothing to prevent a foreign government from hiring the family of U.S. officials or creating relationships in order to, you know, create an appearance which helps their business. Does he have a point?
GREEN: I think he's got a perfectly good point. And that's exactly what seems to be going on with Hunter Biden. He had no traditional, professional qualification for the job that he held with Burisma, you know, and that in itself doesn't seem right. I think that is what Schweizer is pointing to.
Now, Trump and Republicans have taken it a lot further, twisting a lot of the facts about what was investigated, what the Obama administration and Biden were pressuring the Ukrainian government to do in 2016. But the basic fact that Hunter Biden was on this board and was probably there for political reasons, because there weren't really any other good reasons for him to be on the board - what Scheizer has pointed out here and what he says in his New York Times op-ed is that what Hunter Biden did was perfectly legal, but that, in itself, is a problem.
GROSS: Joshua Green is a columnist for Bloomberg Businessweek. After a break, he'll talk with Dave Davies about how the controversy is affecting the Biden campaign and how Trump and his allies are fighting back with counter narratives that paint the president as the victim of Democratic attacks.
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to the interview FRESH AIR's Dave Davies recorded with Bloomberg Businessweek columnist Joshua Green. In a recent column, Green argues that President Trump's impeachment worries are actually the unintended result of an effort to help him. He says Trump picked up on research about Joe Biden developed by a conservative think tank and included in a book last year.
The material was intended to harm Biden's presidential campaign. But when Trump saw the story on conservative media and began urging Ukraine to investigate Biden, he created far bigger problems for himself. Trump is now the subject of an impeachment inquiry into whether he abused the authority of his office. When we left off, Green was talking about an op-ed published in The New York Times by Peter Schweizer, the author of the book with the allegations against Biden.
DAVIES: Are you surprised that The New York Times would publish an op-ed by Peter Schweizer, you know, who got funding from, you know, the Mercers and have a very strong political point of view?
GREEN: Yeah. You know, a little bit, given the controversy it kicked up in 2016 when Schweizer's reporting appeared on the front page - in other words, in the news pages. This piece today is in the opinion section, which I think is a little bit more appropriate for the author and the subject and the claims that he's making.
DAVIES: Right. And just going back to 2016, my understanding is that, you know, the author of the Times' reporting on the Clinton Foundations and the Uranium One story is reporting that they stand by, that they independently investigated all of this and found it credible and newsworthy. Do you disagree?
GREEN: No. I don't disagree with that at all. I mean, part of what made the GAI project so effective is that they didn't do what some conservative authors do, which is to, you know, fabricate or publish rumors. I mean, they're - all of this is based in fact. They certainly put their own spin on those facts. They insinuated that there was maybe more going on than was actually going on. But they really did turn up evidence of unreported donations, of relationships that just didn't seem right that, you know, any legitimate investigative reporter, were he or she to come across this information, would want to look into further. And that's exactly what happened.
So the fact that there is a grain of truth in a lot of what is written is one of the things that makes it so effective and that Bannon and Schweizer understood from the outset would get the mainstream media to pay attention and amplify these charges. I think what happened in 2016 that upsets liberals so much is that, you know, as this stuff was being published in the mainstream media, it was also being amplified and distorted in the right-wing media. And that was having a real effect on Hillary Clinton as a presidential candidate.
Her reputation was unquestionably tarnished. She was dogged by these charges and allegations. You add in the amplifying voice of Donald Trump as a presidential candidate calling her crooked Hillary and corrupt and I don't think there's any question - but that - it affected voters' views of her in a way that ultimately proved disastrous for Clinton's own candidacy and for Democrats.
DAVIES: One of the things that I think adds to the political potency is that the facts of a lot of these stories are so complicated, that it's really hard for an average reader to sort out what it all means. Was there subsequent reporting on the Uranium One story which cast the Clintons' actions in a different light?
GREEN: Nothing knocked it down. You know, the subsequent reporting - I mean, I think what a lot of Democrats objected to was the fact that this, frankly, partisan outfit and author and right-wing money had produced this information that had made its way onto the front page of The New York Times. And I spoke to the liberal activist David Brock at the time about Schweizer and Bannon. And he shook his head. And he Said, you know, looking at it from their point of view, the Times is the perfect host body for the virus - meaning, you know, the intention all along from these guys was to poison the public image of Hillary Clinton. And by getting these charges onto the front pages of The New York Times, they essentially accomplished that mission. I think everything that happened subsequently with Trump's attacks and Clinton's loss in the 2016 election back that up. And this time around, with Joe and Hunter Biden, they were looking to do the same thing.
DAVIES: In the op-ed, the Times doesn't mention Peter Schweizer's association with the Government Accountability Institute or its funders, you know, the Mercers.What do you think of that?
GREEN: You know, if I were running the op-ed page, I think that's something I would've disclosed based on, you know, his background, the political lineage and what we saw in the 2016 presidential cycle.
DAVIES: So is all of this affecting the Biden campaign?
GREEN: You know, it's not clear that it is. I mean, Biden had been on a bit of a downward trajectory before Trump and the Ukraine charges really came into the news cycle. But, you know, he is - he's starting to slip now. I mean, in the latest averages of polls, Elizabeth Warren has nudged ahead of him. So, you know, it's not clear that this is a deadly development for Joe Biden's candidacy, but it certainly isn't helping.
DAVIES: Since the whistleblower complaint emerged, there's been a lot of information and text and the summary of the phone call between President Trump and the president of Ukraine, which has led to this impeachment inquiry, which is clearly picking up steam. I mean, we're going to see, you know, testimony from other players in this including the former ambassador, Marie Yovanovitch. The Trump administration says it is not going to cooperate with this because, you know, it's a witch hunt. Where do you see this going?
GREEN: Well, you know, the irony here is that Trump, by involving himself, you know, essentially made this entire project blow up in his face and committed actions that, at the very least, have launched an impeachment inquiry and I think are very likely to lead to his impeachment in the House whether or not the Senate ultimately chooses to remove him.
But what the whistleblower report showed, what the subsequent text messages that have now been revealed between the U.S. ambassador to the EU, Gordon Sondland, and Bill Taylor, a top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, that show that the U.S. apparently was withholding military aid to help a political campaign, as Taylor put it in his text. That is the quid pro quo that Democrats are alleging. And I think if there is a trial in the House, that's what it's likely to show. And the evidence we've seen so far certainly supports that.
So I think, from an impeachment standpoint, Trump is in real trouble. Whether or not he's ultimately removed from office, we'll see. I'm skeptical. But certainly this isn't the outcome that Schweizer and GAI and I think Trump and Giuliani expected to happen when they started making noise about this over the summer.
DAVIES: Right. Well, the president's defenders are aggressively promoting other narratives. I mean, Giuliani, a couple of weeks ago, was on the ABC weekend show waiving an affidavit from Viktor Shokin, you know, the prosecutor that was fired in 2016, in which alleges that, in fact, he was investigating the company Hunter Biden's - was associated with. There are certainly reasons to doubt his credibility in the eyes of a lot of people. And then, you know, last week, Senator Ron Johnson had a heated exchange with Chuck Todd on "Meet The Press" in which he was arguing that there's all this credible evidence that people in the Ukraine were trying to hurt Trump and help Hillary Clinton in 2016. [RUSSIAN DISINFO] It's a very aggressive strategy to - you know, bringing up other stuff. What do you think the effect will be?
GREEN: Well, I think the intention on the part of Republicans is to muddy the waters and to turn the charges of corruption against Trump that we've seen laid out in the whistleblower report and the text messages - turn them back against the Democrats.
What is troubling to a lot of people is that a lot of these charges are based on discredited conspiracy theories. What Ron Johnson was talking about was a conspiracy theory that Trump and Giuliani have propagated that it wasn't Russia that hacked the Democratic National Committee servers in the 2016 election but Ukraine.That's something that's been knocked down by every intelligence official, U.S. and otherwise, who's looked into this. And yet, this is what's being propagated by Trump.
And I think a lot of Republican politicians, fearful of Trump's wrath and eager to toe the partisan line, have found themselves forced or obligated to repeat these wild charges in a way that bears no relationship to reality but is nonetheless, I think, muddying the waters and shaping public opinion in a way that is intended to mitigate the damage of the charges against Trump.
DAVIES: Is Steve Bannon playing a role in stoking any of these allegations?
GREEN: You know, he really isn't anymore. I mean, Bannon had a very public falling-out with Donald Trump in 2017, where Trump sort of publicly humiliated him and excommunicated him from the Republican Party. He lost his position as the head of Breitbart News, was essentially sent out into the wilderness.
I mean, Bannon is still around on the scene. He is focused more on China these days and trying to, I think, strengthen Trump's resolve to conduct the trade war. Trump did tweet favorably about him a couple of months ago. But there isn't a close relationship there in the way that there was during the presidential campaign.
DAVIES: Yeah. I asked because you wrote a book about Steve Bannon and talked to him a lot. He was also going around Europe trying to kind of build a, you know, nationalist, populist movement. How did that go?
GREEN: Well, it basically failed. I mean, the nationalist movements in Europe weren't really interested in an American political strategist coming in and telling them what to do. They didn't perform nearly as well in the May European parliamentary elections as Bannon and some of the nationalist contingent were hoping for.
And so he's focused mainly these days on kind of beating the war drums against China, going out and publicly defending Trump's aggression against China when it comes to tariffs and the trade war and that sort of thing, and seeking to remain relevant in that way. But so far, there has been no reproach with Trump and the White House, or the Mercer family, for that matter. And so he's off on his own.
DAVIES: You know, looking at the strategy of the Government Accountability Institute with this book, you know, the idea was to kind of repeat the playbook that worked with the Clinton candidacy in 2016, where you develop information, it becomes adopted by the mainstream media and becomes a scandal. And in this case, it seems like another - kind of a different weird thing happened, which is that it turned into a scandal for the president himself when he pursued a theory and then engaged in conduct which has resulted in this impeachment inquiry.
At the same time, Peter Schweizer, the author of the book funded by the Government Accountability Institute, is being quoted. I mean, the story is out there. I wonder how they view this - how it's all worked out.
GREEN: Well, the irony here is that the target was supposed to be the Bidens, not the president. And by the president becoming involved, you know, the original plan has kind of blown up. What may wind up happening - as you say, you know, Biden and these charges are very much in the news. That was part of the intention, even if the negative attention toward Trump wasn't part of the plan. What we could see end up happening is a kind of a murder-suicide where Trump really does take out his strongest Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, only, he winds up, in the process, getting himself impeached.
DAVIES: Well, Joshua Green, thanks so much for speaking with us again.
GREEN: Thank you. It's always a pleasure.
GROSS: Joshua Green is a columnist for Bloomberg Businessweek and the author of a book about Steve Bannon called "Devil's Bargain."
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2015
https://www.mediamatters.org/peter-schweizer/who-funds-peter-schweizers-government-accountability-institute}:
Discredited Clinton Cash author Peter Schweizer is the president of the Government Accountability Institute (GAI), a conservative group with close ties to a billionaire family funding Sen. Ted Cruz's presidential run. GAI has also received substantial support from groups backed by Charles and David Koch.
Schweizer's upcoming anti-Clinton book has garnered widespread media attention, despite the author's long history of criticism from reporters for blatant errors, retractions, and reliance on sources that “do not exist.”
Schweizer's GAI, which was behind one of the “bogus” reports Schweizer has been excoriated for, bills itself as a nonprofit devoted to investigating “cronyism and government corruption” and protecting “free markets.”
But as MSNBC's Rachel Maddow explained on her show, "[W]hen you take a closer look at Mr. Schweizer's organization and who is backing him, it is a who's who of big right-wing funders, including one of the guys behind the right-wing media site Breitbart.com, for which Mr. Schweizer has previously written -- also the billionaire family that is currently bankrolling Ted Cruz's presidential run."
Indeed, as Crooks and Liars also noted, IRS tax forms reveal GAI is funded by some of the top donors on the right, including the billionaire Mercer family.
Robert Mercer was described by Bloomberg News as the “ultimate behind-the-scenes kingmaker” during the 2014 midterm elections. His daughter, Rebekah Mercer, runs the Mercer Family Foundation, which “has also supported a slew of conservative causes.”
According to IRS filings, the Mercer Foundation donated $1 million to GAI in 2013 alone. (Rebekah Mercer was listed on the GAI's board of directors in its 2013 tax documents, but is not currently listed among board members on the group'swebsite.)
Rebekah Mercer has close ties to potential Clinton opponent Ted Cruz. The same day Cruz announced his bid for the presidency, Mercer reportedly threw him a cocktail party at her New York City apartmentto launch his fundraising tour.
Schweizer's GAI has also benefited from substantial donations from other Koch-linked groups. Donors Trust, described by Mother Jones as the "dark-money ATM of the right," gave $1,500,000 to GAI in 2013. Donors Trust provides individuals and organizations a way to hide their donations to various right-leaning causes and media outlets, and as Mother Jones noted, they are a key funnel for Koch funds.
Donors Trust has also heavily funded the Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity, which itself has donated substantial sums to GAI, including $2 million in 2012.
As Media Mattershas noted, Schweizer gave a February 2014 address to the Charles Koch Institute. He also spoke at an undergraduate Koch Leadership program at Regent University, and according to documents originally obtainedby The Nation, he spoke at the Koch's brothers “secret billionaire summit” in June 2014. At the conference, attendees reportedly “discussed strategy on campaign finance, climate change, healthcare, higher education and opportunities for taking control of the Senate.” Schweizer previously served as a speechwriter for the Bush White House, as an adviser to Sarah Palin, and as a headliner for multiple Republican Party fundraisers.
related
mma
Fabricated and wildly inaccurate: Peter Schweizer's new book gets bankruptcy law totally wrong in attack on Elizabeth Warren
02/03/20 11:59 AM EST
Fox's Bret Baier pretends Peter Schweizer is criticized for doing “opposition research” instead of for being wrong all the time
01/27/20 3:21 PM EST
In the middle of gaslighting the country on Ukraine, John Solomon launches a new gaslighting website
01/17/20 7:30 AM EST
https://www.mediamatters.org/john-solomon/while-gaslighting-country-ukraine-john-solomon-launches-new-gaslighting-website
RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM BOBBY LEWIS
:{PUBLISHED 01/17/20
No media figure has played a larger role in laying the foundation for the current impeachment saga than John Solomon. Solomon worked in lockstep with Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and a shady cast of characters to manufacture a disinformation campaign targeting one of President Donald Trump’s political rivals, a campaign that backfired spectacularly and resulted in the president being impeached. Solomon has now announced his latest gaslighting venture -- a new media outlet Just the News -- one day after documents were released that conclusively show Solomon working with a now-indicted associate of Giuliani to advance their disinformation.
Ukraine scandal
Solomon is one of the most critical figures in Trump and Giuliani’s plot to extort the Ukrainian government into meddling in our 2020 election to help the president.
Trump hired Giuliani in late 2018 for his legal team responding to the special counsel Robert Mueller’ investigation into Russian electoral interference in the 2016 U.S. elections. Purportedly as part of this effort, Giuliani worked closely with a team of players to create a two-pronged conspiracy theory that both smeared former Vice President Joe Biden as well as discredit the Mueller report by showing that it was really Ukraine that interfered with our 2016 election.
Giuliani’s team included Solomon, two now-indicted con men Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, and the pro-Trump legal duo (and Fox News fixtures) Victoria Toensing and Joe diGenova. They worked together to secure interviews with discredited and disgraced former Ukranian prosecutors and government officials to weave a complex conspiracy theory alleging that corrupt Ukrainian officials colluded with equally corrupt American officials to frame Trump’s campaign manager Paul Manafort in order to discredit Trump and benefit his 2016 political opponent Hillary Clinton. (Manafort is currently serving a seven-and-a-half-year prison sentence due to his work in Ukraine.) At the same time, according to their theory, the Ukranian government was also aiding Biden in supposedly getting investigations into the Burisma gas company shut down because his son Hunter served on the board. Through this disinformation campaign, they targeted the then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch whose anti-corruption initiatives in Ukraine put her in the crosshairs of the very Ukranian officials Giuliani needed to concoct this conspiracy theory.
Solomon’s columns at The Hill was the primary vehicle through which they injected this narrative into the public. Giuliani has stated that he “turned my stuff over to John Solomon,” but as more information about their work comes to light, Solomon’s involvement appears more direct. Instant messages recently released by the House Intelligence Committee show Parnas working as an intermediary between Solomon and at least two of the corrupt Ukranian prosecutors used to support this conspiracy, Yuri Lutsenko and Viktor Shokin. Giuliani appears to have made a deal with Lutsenko: If Lutsenko gives them dirt on Biden, he’ll get Yovanovitch fired.
At the same time, the messages show Parnas serving as an intermediary for Solomon to interview Lutsenko, even appearing to send him advanced copies of Solomon’s columns prior to publication. ProPublica reported that Parnas even was in the control room when Solomon interviewed Lutsenko for The HillTV. Solomon’s resulting columns set the stage to make public a behind-the-scenes smear campaign targeting Yovanovitch and Biden. Parnas played a similar role in facilitating interviews between Solomon and Viktor Shokin, the disgraced former Ukrainian prosecutor who was fired in 2016 as a result of pressure by the United States and the international community.
Another key player in this scheme is Firtash, a Ukranian pro-Russian oligarch and former business associate of Paul Manafort who is in Austria fighting extradition to the United States to face charges related to a bribery conspiracy. In the summer of 2019, Firtash fired his legal team to hire diGenova and Toensing, who were working closely with Parnas, Giuliani, and Solomon. (As it turns out, diGenova and Toensing also represented Solomon.) Parnas has recently claimed that Firtash agreed to work with Giuliani and his cronies to help them discredit the Mueller investigation in exchange for getting his extradition case dropped. Parnas alleged that Solomon played a key role in helping him connect with Firtash, saying “Basically I was given certain documents by John Solomon that would validate to Dimitri Firtash that I was in the loop and that I knew what was going on, because Mr. Firstash is a gentleman that just doesn't see anybody.”
All told in 2019, Solomon published dozens of columns in The Hill aimed at discrediting the Russia investigation and planting the seeds of this new Ukrainian element of the conspiracy theory. Solomon brought the conspiracy theory to Fox News and Fox Business, where he has appeared at least 92 times since March 20 through the end of 2019 to push elements of the conspiracy theory, in some cases alongside his attorneys diGenova and Toensing. None of the three ever disclosed their relationship to each other. Hannity gushed over Solomon’s work, hosting him at least 65 times during this same time period. Solomon’s efforts paid off when Fox News announced in October 2019 that it was hiring him as a contributor; he had recently announced he was leaving The Hill.
Solomon’s work also became a critical part of Trump’s impeachment inquiry. Multiple witnesses testified that his reporting was inaccurate but nonetheless led to Yovanovitch’s removal.
“Just the News”
In the same week that incriminating evidence has been released showing Solomon’s deep role in the Ukranian scandal, Solomon announced his latest venture, Just the News. Solomon is pitching the outlet as the answer to “the growing need for fact-based, impartial news and compelling digital content” that will feature “fact-based news without an agenda, with a neutral voice and with unprecedented transparency.” In reality, readers should expect anything but.
Solomon began his career as a mainstream reporter and has leveraged that experience to provide him cover for the decades of right-wing propaganda he has advanced since. A 2012 Columbia Journalism Review profile noted that “Solomon has a history of bending the truth to his storyline” and that he “was notorious for massaging facts to conjure phantom scandals.”
And “conjure phantom scandals” he does. For instance, prior to his involvement in the Ukraine disinformation campaign, Solomon was a key player in advancing the manufactured Uranium One scandal, another thoroughly debunked and discredited conspiracy theory that was first deployed to damage Clinton’s 2016 presidential election campaign.
Solomon revived and revised the conspiracy theory in 2017 -- when Trump needed an assist in his efforts to discredit the Mueller investigation -- by reporting without evidence that “Russian nuclear officials had routed millions of dollars to the U.S. designed to benefit former President Bill Clinton’s charitable foundation” when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state as part of a scheme to ensure the Uranium One deal’s success. He suggested that Mueller, as FBI director, had covered up Russia’s attempt to bribe the Clintons. In November 2017, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions appointed U.S. Attorney John Huber to investigate, and The Washington Post recently reported that Huber is winding down his two-year review without bringing any criminal charges or finding any “other known impacts.”
While Solomon was at Circa in 2016-2017 -- and continuing into his time at The Hill -- he emerged as a key figure on Hannity’s Fox show. Circa under Solomon fueled Hannity’s show with pro-Trump stories on a nightly basis. It was during this stretch, all the way into 2019, that Hannity was working to spin a counternarrative to the charges of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Solomon’s “slanted reporting” was a fundamental part of Hannity’s conspiracy theories.
A quick glance at “trusted reporters” Solomon has partnered with to provide “honest journalism” at Just the News shows a familiar cabal of discredited journalists with a penchant for advancing right-wing conspiracy theories. For instance:
Peter Schweizer
Peter Schweizer is a Breitbart senior editor-at-large and president of conservative think tank Government Accountability Institute, both of which have been heavily funded by the pro-Trump billionaires Robert and Rebekah Mercer and which were previously headed by former Trump White House strategist Steve Bannon. Schweizer is also the creator of several popular conspiracy theories about the Clinton family, including originating the aforementioned Uranium One allegations.
Even prior to Solomon’s involvement, the story of Hunter Biden’s role with Ukrainian gas company Burisma first gained traction on the right when Schweizer wrote about it in his 2018 book, Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends. Schweizer’s claims garnered airtime on Fox but had largely receded until Solomon revived it with his reporting in March 2019. Schweizer’s next book, Profiles in Corruption, is set to release January 21 and promises to target 2020 Democratic presidential candidates.
Sharyl Attkisson
Sharyl Attkisson is a former CBS news reporter who left the network in 2014 due to her shoddy reports about the Obama administration.She was also “widely criticized within medical-research circles” for her reports about vaccines. Sources close to CBS News executives told Politico in 2013 that the network was concerned her reporting was “wading dangerously close to advocacy,” including her obsessive promotion of then-colleague Lara Logan’s disastrous *60 Minutes* Benghazi report. CBS News ultimately retracted and apologized for the report, and Logan took a leave of absence but never returned to CBS.
After leaving CBS, Attkisson also embarrassed her next employer, The Daily Signal, with faulty reporting falsely claiming that “Hillary Clinton confidants were part of an operation to ‘separate’ damaging documents” about the Benghazi attack prior to handing them over to investigators. Attkisson also published a book, alleging that the Obama administration hacked her personal computer, TV, phone, and home security system in retaliation for her often-incorrect Benghazi reporting. (CBS News did find that her work-issued laptop was breached using “sophisticated” methods, but no cyberattacker was ever named.) Attkisson kept changing her story about who did the hack and which devices of hers were hacked, but a 2015 federal investigation found no evidence that her personal computer was hacked. Attkisson also falsely accused Media Matters of accepting a payoff to specifically “target” her.
In 2015, Attkisson got a show with Sinclair Broadcast Group, the right-wing, pro-Trump TV network, and the disgraced reporter fit right in. Before her Sinclair show launched, Attkisson happened to be responsible for one of the earliest cycles of campaign-era Trump spin, when Trump promoted her misleading insistence that Trump called then-Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) a war hero four times. Trump was plainly being sarcastic in each of the four instances he called McCain a “war hero,” including the now-infamous line: “He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured.”
Attkisson conducted a typically softball interview with Trump in 2017, inviting him to make unchecked, demonstrably false claims about a wide range of issues.
David Brody
David Brody is the chief political analyst for the Christian Broadcasting Network, a provider of generally right-wing Christian programming. Brody has a history of hostility toward LGBTQ people, once attacking a male blogger as a Republican senator’s “angry girlfriend.” Brody also opposed a transgender Obama appointee simply for being trans, writing, “There will be those who say all that matters is whether or not Simpson is qualified for the job. … Here's a newsflash for you: The transgender thing doesn't play well with millions of conservative Evangelicals.” Brody also declared that Trump was the “Big Winner” of the racist birther campaign against President Barack Obama, because Obama did ultimately release his birth certificate.
Brody has granted Trump at least 10 interviews since his 2016 campaign and continues to drive talking points that align with the administration’s positions. On a 2017 episode of Fox & Friends, Brody complained that calls for Christian leaders to denounce white supremacy, including the then-recent murder of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, Virginia, showed that “the fix is in, if you will against evangelical Christians, white evangelical Christians in this country.” Brody was also one of many right-wing media figures piling onto Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) with a deceptively edited clip purporting to show her saying that people should be afraid of white men. In reality, she was criticizing religious profiling.
Lee Smith
Lee Smith is a pro-Trump author, who recently published The Plot Against the President: The True Story of How Congressman Devin Nunes Uncovered the Biggest Political Scandal in U.S. History. The book advances the conspiracy theory that a “deep state” plot to take down Trump “officially began July 31, 2016 with the counterintelligence investigation that the FBI opened to probe Russian infiltration of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.”
Smith has described the impeachment inquiry as “a secret ritual conducted by a cult” with “Speaker Pelosi as the high priestess of the cult and Adam Schiff as a high priest.”
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Bannon & Breitbart, aka the Three Men and A Baby ghost
Around that same time in 2011, the 42yo Breitbart suffered a heart attack. Within a year, he collapsed on an L.A. street and died on 1 March 2012, with his autopsy blaming another massive heart attack due to an enlarged heart. Later that very same day, Bannon has said he met with New York investors to plan the future of Breitbart News, and he would quickly be named Executive Chairman on 19 March.
This was a crucial time period for all of these players. In February2012, Bannon founded the Government Accountability Institute (GAI) with $2m in seed funding from the Mercers. Rebekah Mercer became Chairwoman, and Bannon installed Peter Schweizer— author of Reagan’s War, the book adapted into Bannon’s first “documentary” — as president of GAI. Like Bossie and Mercer, Schweizer is yet another Clinton-hating, Reagan-adoring, tax reform & financial deregulation advocate and conspiracy theorist.
A couple of the first ‘reports’ out of the gate for GAI: a treatise attesting to the horrors of food stamps, as well as another which itemized every instance of President Barack Obama’s attendance at his daily briefings. Breitbart predictably publishes multiple stories each time GAI puts out a press release, but both of those early missives were picked up for publication and discussion in major media outlets, such as ABC News, Washington Times, National Review, and Washington Post.
Peter Schweizer on Russia Today
==
For nearly two years, conservative operatives have been trying to weaponize the Ukraine-based story that has led Trump to the brink of impeachment. A look back over the coverage of the story—a repeatedly discredited conspiracy theory involving Joe Biden and his son Hunter’s work in Ukraine—suggests that America’s news organizations continue to be just as susceptible to manipulation by political partisans pushing complicated and hard-to-check foreign narratives as they were in 2016. In fact, several of the same players are involved. “There’s no effective mechanism in this country for weeding disinformation out,” Paul Barrett, the deputy director of N.Y.U.’s Stern Center for Business and Human Rights, and the author of the recent study “Disinformation and the 2020 Election,” said. “We’re not doing anything about it at all.”
Anyone trying to track the Ukrainian conspiracy stories that were eventually embraced by President Trump is likely to get mired in the same echo chamber of right-wing news purveyors that misinformed voters in 2016. A pivotal source of the allegations against the Bidens, for instance, is the Government Accountability Institute, a Florida-based opposition-research operation that was founded by the former Trump political adviser Stephen Bannon—the same conservative nonprofit that ginned up questionable stories about the Clintons during the last Presidential campaign. In both instances, much of the coverage of the scandal was kicked off by Peter Schweizer, a longtime conservative political writer who is an editor-at-large at Breitbart News and the president of the Government Accountability Institute. Since its founding, in 2012, the group has largely been funded with millions of dollars in tax-exempt donations from the family foundation of the New York hedge-fund magnate Robert Mercer, who was a major donor to Trump’s 2016 campaign. In the organization’s most recently available I.R.S. tax filings, for 2017, Mercer’s daughter Rebekah is listed as the board chairman.
Asked about the Government Accountability Institute’s role in this year’s Biden scandal coverage, Bannon e-mailed to say, “It’s key. It was the predicate,” as it had been for much of the previous Clinton scandal coverage. As Joshua Green describes in “Devil’s Bargain,” his book, from 2017, about Bannon’s role in the Trump campaign, Bannon designed the organization as a means of transmitting partisan dirt-digging to the mainstream media. He realized that, though mainstream reporters were suspicious of partisan opinion, they were open to damning facts about public figures, regardless of the sourcing. He set out, with Schweizer, to produce material that would generate mainstream coverage, and right-wing outrage.
Thus, during the last Presidential campaign, under the auspices of the Government Accountability Institute, Schweizer published the best-selling book “Clinton Cash.” In a novel arrangement, he doled out negative scoops about the Clintons from it in advance to a variety of mainstream news outlets, including the Times. The paper disclosed its exclusive deal with the book’s author to its readers, and maintained that it independently verified and expanded on the information. But when it ran a front-page story derived from the book on April 24, 2015, the Times stirred controversy and criticism, including from its own public editor.
The story insinuated that, as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton had risked national security by facilitating the sale of American uranium mines to Russia in exchange for more than two million dollars in contributions to the Clinton Foundation from the businessmen behind the deal, who worked for a company called Uranium One. The story enabled Clinton’s opponents to frame her as greedy and corrupt. Even a year after she had lost the race, the Fox News host Sean Hannity was still invoking it on air, calling it “the biggest scandal ever involving Russia.”
Yet later reporting poked holes in the story’s insinuation of corruption, revealing that multiple government agencies—not just Clinton’s State Department—had approved the deal, and that the amount of uranium involved was negligible. (Schweizer didn’t respond to phone calls from The New Yorker.) On Thursday, the Daily Beast identified what it said were over a dozen passages in his book, “Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends,” that were lifted from other sources, such as Wikipedia—a charge that his publisher, HarperCollins, denied amounted to a violation of fair use.
For those who recall the “Clinton Cash” controversy, the baseless tales claiming that Biden corruptly intervened on behalf of his son’s Ukrainian business interests feel a lot like the movie “Groundhog Day.” In March of 2018, Schweizer and the Government Accountability Institute once again produced a book that was perfectly timed for the Presidential campaign. “Secret Empires” devoted a chapter to the subject of “Bidens in Ukraine,” which laid out the conflicts of interest posed by the wheeling and dealing of Biden’s son Hunter. (An additional chapter laid out Hunter Biden’s business deals in China.) As the book recounted, in 2014, Hunter Biden, a Washington lobbyist, took a profitable post on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company run by a shady oligarch, while his father, who was then the Vice-President, handled a drive to rid Ukraine of corruption. Other news organizations, including the Times and the Wall Street Journal, had already run stories on the same unethical-seeming morass. (In July, The New Yorker published a piece about the relationship between Joe and Hunter Biden that dismissed allegations of any illegality in the Ukraine matter but included some concerns from Obama Administration officials that Hunter could potentially undermine his father’s work.)
...Jane Mayer of theNew Yorkerexplains how the “Biden/Ukraine” hoax was invented and spread by the same people who invented the “Uranium One” fiction whichFox News and other Republican sludge generators spawned in order to smear Hillary Clinton in the 2016. The cast of characters for both smears is remarkably similar.
...
no lnx
The Invention of the Conspiracy Theory on Biden and Ukraine
How a conservative dark-money group that targeted Hillary Clinton in 2016 spread the discredited story that may lead to Donald Trump’s impeachment.
By Jane Mayer October 4, 2019
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guard uk no links (many)
gXardian.com/politics/2017/feb/26/robert-mercer-breitbart-war-on-media-steve-bannon-donald-trump-nigel-farage
Mercer: the big data billionaire waging war on mainstream media
With links to Donald Trump, Steve Bannon and Nigel Farage, the rightwing US computer scientist is at the heart of a multimillion-dollar propaganda network
Carole Cadwalladr
Sunday 26 February 2017
This article is the subject of a legal complaint on behalf of Cambridge Analytica LLC and SCL Elections Limited.
Just over a week ago, Donald Trump gathered members of the world’s press before him and told them they were liars. “The press, honestly, is out of control,” he said. “The public doesn’t believe you any more.” CNN was described as “very fake news… story after story is bad”. The BBC was “another beauty”.
That night I did two things. First, I typed “Trump” in the search box of Twitter. My feed was reporting that he was crazy, a lunatic, a raving madman. But that wasn’t how it was playing out elsewhere. The results produced a stream of “Go Donald!!!!”, and “You show ’em!!!” There were star-spangled banner emojis and thumbs-up emojis and clips of Trump laying into the “FAKE news MSM liars!”
Trump had spoken, and his audience had heard him. Then I did what I’ve been doing for two and a half months now. I Googled “mainstream media is…” And there it was. Google’s autocomplete suggestions: “mainstream media is… dead, dying, fake news, fake, finished”. Is it dead, I wonder? Has FAKE news won? Are we now the FAKE news? Is the mainstream media – we, us, I – dying?
It leads to a website called CNSnews.com and an article: “The Mainstream media are dead.” They’re dead, I learn, because they – we, I – “cannot be trusted”. How had it, an obscure site I’d never heard of, dominated Google’s search algorithm on the topic? In the “About us” tab, I learn CNSnews is owned by the Media Research Center, which a click later I learn is “America’s media watchdog”, an organisation that claims an “unwavering commitment to neutralising leftwing bias in the news, media and popular culture”.
Another couple of clicks and I discover that it receives a large bulk of its funding – more than $10m in the past decade – from a single source, the hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer. If you follow US politics you may recognise the name. Robert Mercer is the money behind Donald Trump. But then, I will come to learn, Robert Mercer is the money behind an awful lot of things. He was Trump’s single biggest donor. Mercer started backing Ted Cruz, but when he fell out of the presidential race he threw his money – $13.5m of it – behind the Trump campaign.
It’s money he’s made as a result of his career as a brilliant but reclusive computer scientist. He started his career at IBM, where he made what the Association for Computational Linguistics called “revolutionary” breakthroughs in language processing – a science that went on to be key in developing today’s AI – and later became joint CEO of Renaissance Technologies, a hedge fund that makes its money by using algorithms to model and trade on the financial markets.
One of its funds, Medallion, which manages only its employees’ money, is the most successful in the world – generating $55bn so far. And since 2010, Mercer has donated $45m to different political campaigns – all Republican – and another $50m to non-profits – all rightwing, ultra-conservative. This is a billionaire who is, as billionaires are wont, trying to reshape the world according to his personal beliefs.
Donald Trump’s presidential campaigned received $13.5m from Robert Mercer.
Robert Mercer very rarely speaks in public and never to journalists, so to gauge his beliefs you have to look at where he channels his money: a series of yachts, all called Sea Owl;a $2.9m model train set; climate change denial (he funds a climate change denial thinktank, the Heartland Institute); and what is maybe the ultimate rich man’s plaything – the disruption of the mainstream media. In this he is helped by his close associate Steve Bannon, Trump’s campaign manager and now chief strategist. The money he gives to the Media Research Center, with its mission of correcting “liberal bias” is just one of his media plays. There are other bigger, and even more deliberate strategies, and shining brightly, the star at the centre of the Mercer media galaxy, is Breitbart.
It was $10m of Mercer’s money that enabled Bannon to fund Breitbart – a rightwing news site, set up with the express intention of being a Huffington Post for the right. It has launched the careers of Milo Yiannopoulos and his like, regularly hosts antisemitic and Islamophobic views, and is currently being boycotted by more than 1,000 brands after an activist campaign. It has been phenomenally successful: the 29th most popular site in America with 2bn page views a year. It’s bigger than its inspiration, the Huffington Post, bigger, even, than PornHub. It’s the biggest political site on Facebook. The biggest on Twitter.
Prominent rightwing journalist Andrew Breitbart, who founded the site but died in 2012, told Bannon that they had “to take back the culture”. And, arguably, they have, though American culture is only the start of it. In 2014, Bannon launched Breitbart London, telling the New York Times it was specifically timed ahead of the UK’s forthcoming election. It was, he said, the latest front “in our current cultural and political war”. France and Germany are next.
A determined plutocrat and a brilliant media strategist can, and have, found a way to mould journalism to their own ends
But there was another reason why I recognised Robert Mercer’s name: because of his connection to Cambridge Analytica, a small data analytics company. He is reported to have a $10m stake in the company, which was spun out of a bigger British company called SCL Group. It specialises in “election management strategies” and “messaging and information operations”, refined over 25 years in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan. In military circles this is known as “psyops” – psychological operations. (Mass propaganda that works by acting on people’s emotions.)
Cambridge Analytica worked for the Trump campaign and, so I’d read, the Leave campaign. When Mercer supported Cruz, Cambridge Analytica worked with Cruz. When Robert Mercer started supporting Trump, Cambridge Analytica came too. And where Mercer’s money is, Steve Bannon is usually close by: it was reported that until recently he had a seat on the board.
Last December, I wrote about Cambridge Analytica in a piece about howGoogle’s search results on certain subjects were being dominated by rightwing and extremist sites. Jonathan Albright, a professor of communications at Elon University, North Carolina, who had mapped the news ecosystem and found millions of links between rightwing sites “strangling” the mainstream media, told me that trackers from sites like Breitbart could also be used by companies like Cambridge Analytica to follow people around the web and then, via Facebook, target them with ads.
On its website,Cambridge Analytica makes the astonishing boast that it has psychological profiles based on 5,000 separate pieces of data on 220 million American voters – its USP is to use this data to understand people’s deepest emotions and then target them accordingly. The system, according to Albright, amounted to a “propaganda machine”.
A few weeks later, the Observer received a letter. Cambridge Analytica was not employed by the Leave campaign, it said. Cambridge Analytica “is a US company based in the US. It hasn’t worked in British politics.”
Which is how, earlier this week, I ended up in a Pret a Manger near Westminster with Andy Wigmore, Leave.EU’s affable communications director, looking at snapshots of Donald Trump on his phone. It was Wigmore who orchestrated Nigel Farage’s trip to Trump Tower – the PR coup that saw him become the first foreign politician to meet the president elect.
Wigmore scrolls through the snaps on his phone. “That’s the one I took,” he says pointing at the now globally famous photo of Farage and Trump in front of his golden elevator door giving the thumbs-up sign. Wigmore was one of the “bad boys of Brexit” – a term coined by Arron Banks, the Bristol-based businessman who was Leave.EU’s co-founder.
Cambridge Analytica had worked for them, he said. It had taught them how to build profiles, how to target people and how to scoop up masses of data from people’s Facebook profiles. A video on YouTube shows one of Cambridge Analytica’s and SCL’s employees, Brittany Kaiser, sitting on the panel at Leave.EU’s launch event.
Facebook was the key to the entire campaign, Wigmore explained. A Facebook ‘like’, he said, was their most “potent weapon”. “Because using artificial intelligence, as we did, tells you all sorts of things about that individual and how to convince them with what sort of advert. And you knew there would also be other people in their network who liked what they liked, so you could spread. And then you follow them. The computer never stops learning and it never stops monitoring.”
It sounds creepy, I say.
“It is creepy! It’s really creepy! It’s why I’m not on Facebook! I tried it on myself to see what information it had on me and I was like, ‘Oh my God!’ What’s scary is that my kids had put things on Instagram and it picked that up. It knew where my kids went to school.”
They hadn’t “employed” Cambridge Analytica, he said. No money changed hands. “They were happy to help.”
Why?
“Because Nigel is a good friend of the Mercers. And Robert Mercer introduced them to us.He said, ‘Here’s this company we think may be useful to you.’ What they were trying to do in the US and what we were trying to do had massive parallels. We shared a lot of information. Why wouldn’t you?” Behind Trump’s campaign and Cambridge Analytica, he said, were “the same people. It’s the same family.”
There were already a lot of questions swirling around Cambridge Analytica, and Andy Wigmore has opened up a whole lot more. Such as: are you supposed to declare services-in-kind as some sort of donation? The Electoral Commission says yes, if it was more than £7,500. And was it declared? The Electoral Commission says no. Does that mean a foreign billionaire had possibly influenced the referendum without that influence being apparent? It’s certainly a question worth asking.
In the last month or so, articles in first the Swiss and the US press have asked exactly what Cambridge Analytica is doing with US voters’ data. In a statement to the Observer, the Information Commissioner’s Office said: “Any business collecting and using personal data in the UK must do so fairly and lawfully. We will be contacting Cambridge Analytica and asking questions to find out how the company is operating in the UK and whether the law is being followed.”
Cambridge Analytica said last Friday they are in touch with the ICO and are completely compliant with UK and EU data laws. It did not answer other questions the Observer put to it this week about how it built its psychometric model, which owes its origins to original research carried out by scientists at Cambridge University’s Psychometric Centre, research based on a personality quiz on Facebook that went viral. More than 6 million people ended up doing it, producing an astonishing treasure trove of data.
These Facebook profiles – especially people’s “likes” – could be correlated across millions of others to produce uncannily accurate results. Michal Kosinski, the centre’s lead scientist,found that with knowledge of 150 likes, their model could predict someone’s personality better than their spouse. With 300, it understood you better than yourself. “Computers see us in a more robust way than we see ourselves,” says Kosinski.
But there are strict ethical regulations regarding what you can do with this data. Did SCL Group have access to the university’s model or data, I ask Professor Jonathan Rust, the centre’s director? “Certainly not from us,” he says. “We have very strict rules around this.”
A scientist, Aleksandr Kogan, from the centre was contracted to build a model for SCL, and says he collected his own data. Professor Rust says he doesn’t know where Kogan’s data came from. “The evidence was contrary. I reported it.” An independent adjudicator was appointed by the university. “But then Kogan said he’d signed a non-disclosure agreement with SCL and he couldn’t continue [answering questions].”
Kogan disputes this and says SCL satisfied the university’s inquiries. But perhaps more than anyone,Professor Rust understands how the kind of information people freely give up to social media sites could be used.
“The danger of not having regulation around the sort of data you can get from Facebook and elsewhere is clear. With this, a computer can actually do psychology, it can predict and potentially control human behaviour. It’s what the scientologists try to do but much more powerful. It’s how you brainwash someone. It’s incredibly dangerous.
“It’s no exaggeration to say that minds can be changed. Behaviour can be predicted and controlled. I find it incredibly scary. I really do. Because nobody has really followed through on the possible consequences of all this. People don’t know it’s happening to them. Their attitudes are being changed behind their backs.”
Mercer invested in Cambridge Analytica, the Washington Post reported, “driven in part by an assessment that the right was lacking sophisticated technology capabilities”. But in many ways, it’s what Cambridge Analytica’s parent company does that raises even more questions.
Emma Briant, a propaganda specialist at the University of Sheffield, wrote about SCL Group in her 2015 book, Propaganda and Counter-Terrorism: Strategies for Global Change. Cambridge Analytica has the technological tools to effect behavioural and psychological change, she said, but it’sSCL that strategises it. It has specialised, at the highest level – for Nato, the MoD, the US state department and others – in changing the behaviour of large groups. It models mass populations and then it changes their beliefs.
SCL was founded by someone called Nigel Oakes, who worked for Saatchi & Saatchi on Margaret Thatcher’s image, says Briant, and the company had been “making money out of the propaganda side of the war on terrorism over a long period of time. There are different arms of SCL but it’s all about reach and the ability to shape the discourse. They are trying to amplify particular political narratives. And they are selective in who they go for: they are not doing this for the left.”
In the course of the US election, Cambridge Analytica amassed a database, as it claims on its website, of almost the entire US voting population – 220 million people – and the Washington Post reported last week thatSCL was increasing staffing at its Washington office and competing for lucrative new contracts with Trump’s administration. “It seems significant that a company involved in engineering a political outcome profits from what follows. Particularly if it’s the manipulation, and then resolution, of fear,” says Briant.
It’s the database, and what may happen to it, that particularly exercises Paul-Olivier Dehaye, a Swiss mathematician and data activist who has been investigating Cambridge Analytica and SCL for more than a year. “How is it going to be used?” he says. “Is it going to be used to try and manipulate people around domestic policies? Or to ferment conflict between different communities? It is potentially very scary. People just don’t understand the power of this data and how it can be used against them.”
There are two things, potentially, going on simultaneously: the manipulation of information on a mass level, and the manipulation of information at a very individual level. Both based on the latest understandings in science about how people work, and enabled by technological platforms built to bring us together.
Are we living in a new era of propaganda, I ask Emma Briant? One we can’t see, and that is working on us in ways we can’t understand? Where we can only react, emotionally, to its messages? “Definitely. The way that surveillance through technology is so pervasive, the collection and use of our data is so much more sophisticated. It’s totally covert. And people don’t realise what is going on.”
Public mood and politics goes through cycles. You don’t have to subscribe to any conspiracy theory, Briant says, to see that a mass change in public sentiment is happening. Or that some of the tools in action are straight out of the military’s or SCL’s playbook.
But then there’s increasing evidence that our public arenas – the social media sites where we post our holiday snaps or make comments about the news – are a new battlefield where international geopolitics is playing out in real time. It’s a new age of propaganda. But whose? This week, Russia announced the formation of a new branch of the military: “information warfare troops”.
Sam Woolley of the Oxford Internet Institute’s computational propaganda institute tells me that one third of all traffic on Twitter before the EU referendum was automated “bots” – accounts that are programmed to look like people, to act like people, and to change the conversation, to make topics trend. And they were all for Leave. Before the US election, they were five-to-one in favour of Trump – many of them Russian. Last week they have been in action in the Stoke byelection – Russian bots, organised by who? – attacking Paul Nuttall.
You can take a trending topic, such as fake news, and then weaponise it, turn it against the media that uncovered it
“Politics is war,” said Steve Bannon last year in the Wall Street Journal. And increasingly this looks to be true.
There’s nothing accidental about Trump’s behaviour, Andy Wigmore tells me. “That press conference. It was absolutely brilliant. I could see exactly what he was doing. There’s feedback going on constantly. That’s what you can do with artificial intelligence. You can measure ever reaction to every word. He has a word room, where you fix key words. We did it. So with immigration, there are actually key words within that subject matter which people are concerned about. So when you are going to make a speech, it’s all about how can you use these trending words.”
Wigmore met with Trump’s team right at the start of the Leave campaign. “And they said the holy grail was artificial intelligence.”
Who did?
“Jared Kushner and Jason Miller.”
Later, when Trump picked up Mercer and Cambridge Analytica, the game changed again. “It’s all about the emotions. This is the big difference with what we did. They call it bio-psycho-social profiling. It takes your physical, mental and lifestyle attributes and works out how people work, how they react emotionally.”
Bio-psycho-social profiling, I read later, is one offensive in what is called “cognitive warfare”. Though there are many others: “recoding the mass consciousness to turn patriotism into collaborationism,” explains a Nato briefing document on countering Russian disinformation written by an SCL employee. “Time-sensitive professional use of media to propagate narratives,” says one US state department white paper. “Of particular importance to psyop personnel may be publicly and commercially available data from social media platforms.”
Yet another details the power of a “cognitive casualty” – a “moral shock” that “has a disabling effect on empathy and higher processes such as moral reasoning and critical thinking”. Something like immigration, perhaps. Or “fake news”. Or as it has now become: “FAKE news!!!!”
How do you change the way a nation thinks? You could start by creating a mainstream media to replace the existing one with a site such as Breitbart. You could set up other websites that displace mainstream sources of news and information with your own definitions of concepts like “liberal media bias”, like CNSnews.com. And you could give the rump mainstream media, papers like the “failing New York Times!” what it wants: stories. Because the third prong of Mercer and Bannon’s media empire is the Government Accountability Institute.
Bannon co-founded it with $2m of Mercer’s money. Mercer’s daughter, Rebekah, was appointed to the board. Then they invested in expensive, long-term investigative journalism. “The modern economics of the newsroom don’t support big investigative reporting staffs,” Bannon told Forbes magazine. “You wouldn’t get a Watergate, a Pentagon Papers today, because nobody can afford to let a reporter spend seven months on a story. We can. We’re working as a support function.”
Welcome to the future of journalism in the age of platform capitalism. News organisations have to do a better job of creating new financial models. But in the gaps in between, a determined plutocrat and a brilliant media strategist can, and have, found a way to mould journalism to their own ends.
In 2015, Steve Bannon described to Forbes how theGAI operated, employing a data scientist to trawl the dark web (in the article he boasts of having access to $1.3bn worth of supercomputers) to dig up the kind of source material Google can’t find. One result has been a New York Times bestseller, Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich, written by GAI’s president, Peter Schweizer and later turned into a film produced by Rebekah Mercer and Steve Bannon.
This, Bannon explained, is how you “weaponise” the narrative you want. With hard researched facts. With those, you can launch it straight on to the front page of the New York Times, as the story of Hillary Clinton’s cash did.Like Hillary’s emails it turned the news agenda, and, most crucially, it diverted the attention of the news cycle. Another classic psyops approach. “Strategic drowning” of other messages.
This is a strategic, long-term and really quite brilliant play. In the 1990s, Bannon explained, conservative media couldn’t take Bill Clinton down because “they wound up talking to themselves in an echo chamber”.
As, it turns out, the liberal media is now. We are scattered, separate, squabbling among ourselves and being picked off like targets in a shooting gallery. Increasingly, there’s a sense that we are talking to ourselves. And whether it’s Mercer’s millions or other factors,Jonathan Albright’s map of the news and information ecosystem shows how rightwing sites are dominating sites like YouTube and Google, bound tightly together by millions of links.
Is there a central intelligence to that, I ask Albright? “There has to be. There has to be some type of coordination. You can see from looking at the map, from the architecture of the system, that this is not accidental. It’s clearly being led by money and politics.”
There’s been a lot of talk in the echo chamber about Bannon in the last few months, but it’s Mercer who provided the money to remake parts of the media landscape. And while Bannon understands the media, Mercer understands big data. He understands the structure of the internet. He knows how algorithms work.
Robert Mercer did not respond to a request for comment for this piece. Nick Patterson, a British cryptographer, who worked at Renaissance Technologies in the 80s and is now a computational geneticist at MIT, described to me how he was the one who talent-spotted Mercer. “There was an elite group working at IBM in the 1980s doing speech research, speech recognition, and when I joined Renaissance I judged that the mathematics we were trying to apply to financial markets were very similar.”
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Bannon scorns media in rare public appearance at CPAC
He describes Mercer as “very, very conservative. He truly did not like the Clintons. He thought Bill Clinton was a criminal. And his basic politics, I think, was that he’s a rightwing libertarian, he wants the government out of things.”
He suspects that Mercer is bringing the brilliant computational skills he brought to finance to bear on another very different sphere. “We make mathematical models of the financial markets which are probability models, and from those we try and make predictions. What I suspect Cambridge Analytica do is that they build probability models of how people vote. And then they look at what they can do to influence that.”
Finding the edge is what quants do. They build quantitative models that automate the process of buying and selling shares and then they chase tiny gaps in knowledge to create huge wins. Renaissance Technologies was one of the first hedge funds to invest in AI. But what it does with it, how it’s been programmed to do it, is completely unknown. It is, Bloomberg reports, the “blackest box in finance”.
Johan Bollen, associate professor at Indiana University School of Informatics and Computing, tells me how he discovered one possible edge: he’s done research that shows you can predict stock market moves from Twitter. You can measure public sentiment and then model it. “Society is driven by emotions, which it’s always been difficult to measure, collectively. But there are now programmes that can read text and measure it and give us a window into those collective emotions.”
The research caused a huge ripple among two different constituencies. “We had a lot attention from hedge funds. They are looking for signals everywhere and this is a hugely interesting signal. My impression is hedge funds do have these algorithms that are scanning social feeds. The flash crashes we’ve had – sudden huge drops in stock prices – indicates these algorithms are being used at large scale. And they are engaged in something of an arms race.”
The other people interested in Bollen’s work are those who want not only to measure public sentiment, but to change it. Bollen’s research shows how it’s possible. Could you reverse engineer the national, or even the global, mood? Model it, and then change it?
Google, democracy and the truth about internet search
“It does seem possible. And it does worry me. There are quite a few pieces of research that show if you repeat something often enough, people start involuntarily to believe it. And that could be leveraged, or weaponised for propaganda. We know there are thousands of automated bots out there that are trying to do just that.”
THE war of the bots is one of the wilder and weirder aspects of the elections of 2016. At the Oxford Internet Institute’s Unit for Computational Propaganda, its director, Phil Howard, and director of research, Sam Woolley, show me all the ways public opinion can be massaged and manipulated. But is there a smoking gun, I ask them, evidence of who is doing this? “There’s not a smoking gun,” says Howard. “There are smoking machine guns. There are multiple pieces of evidence.”
“Look at this,” he says and shows me how, before the US election, hundreds upon hundreds of websites were set up to blast out just a few links, articles that were all pro-Trump. “This is being done by people who understand information structure, who are bulk buying domain names and then using automation to blast out a certain message. To make Trump look like he’s a consensus.”
And that requires money?
“That requires organisation and money. And if you use enough of them, of bots and people, and cleverly link them together, you are what’s legitimate. You are creating truth.”
You can take an existing trending topic, such as fake news, and then weaponise it. You can turn it against the very media that uncovered it. Viewed in a certain light, fake news is a suicide bomb at the heart of our information system. Strapped to the live body of us – the mainstream media.
One of the things that concerns Howard most is the hundreds of thousands of “sleeper” bots they’ve found. Twitter accounts that have tweeted only once or twice and are now sitting quietly waiting for a trigger: some sort of crisis where they will rise up and come together to drown out all other sources of information.
Like zombies?
“Like zombies.”
Many of the techniques were refined in Russia, he says, and then exported everywhere else. “You have these incredible propaganda tools developed in an authoritarian regime moving into a free market economy with a complete regulatory vacuum. What you get is a firestorm.”
This is the world we enter every day, on our laptops and our smartphones. It has become a battleground where the ambitions of nation states and ideologues are being fought – using us. We are the bounty: our social media feeds; our conversations; our hearts and minds. Our votes. Bots influence trending topics and trending topics have a powerful effect on algorithms, Woolley, explains, on Twitter, on Google, on Facebook. Know how to manipulate information structure and you can manipulate reality.
We’re not quite in the alternative reality where the actual news has become “FAKE news!!!” But we’re almost there. Out on Twitter, the new transnational battleground for the future, someone I follow tweets a quote by Marshall McLuhan, the great information theorist of the 60s. “World War III will be a guerrilla information war,” it says. “With no divisions between military and civilian participation.”
By that definition we’re already there.
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http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Government_Accountability_Institute
The Government Accountability Institute (GAI) is a "a new conservative investigative research organization."[1] The GAI states as its mission "to investigate and expose crony capitalism, misuse of taxpayer monies, and other governmental corruption or malfeasance."[2]
The GAI has several ties to right-wing groups such as Citizens United, the American Conservative Union, Young America's Foundation, and the Hoover Institution, through its key staff and board members:
- Peter Schweizer, president of the GAI, is a researcher for the Hoover Institution in Stanford, California.[3] Mr. Schweizer is also on the Research Advisory Council of the James Madison Institute,[4] a member of the State Policy Network, which itself is a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council.
- Executive Chairman and co-founder of the GAI, Stephen Bannon, is the Executive Chairman of Breitbart News LLC, the parent company of Breitbart.com, a conservative news and opinion website, founded by conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart[5][6].
- Board member, Ron Robinson, is a director of both Citizens United[7] and the American Conservative Union.[8][6] Mr. Robinson has also acted as the president of the Young America's Foundation for over thirty years.[9]
Contents
Personnel
Executive Officers
- Peter Schweizer, President (Research Fellow, Hoover Institution)
- Rick White, Executive Vice President
- Stuart Christmas, General Counsel and Vice President of Legal Investigation
Board of Directors
- Stephen K. Bannon, Executive Chairman and Co-Founder (Executive Chairman, Breitbart News LLC, parent company of Breitbart.com)
- Owen T. Smith, Esq. (Chairman, Institute of World Politics)
- Ron Robinson (President, Young America's Foundation)
- Rebekah Mercer
- Hunter Lewis
Contact Details
Sandy Schulz, Senior Publicist
Government Accountability Institute
202.244.1460
Sandy.schulz@g-a-i.org
References
- :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ Marc Thiessen, "Why is Obama skipping more than half of his daily intelligence meetings?The Washington Post: Opinions; September 10, 2012
- :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ g-a-i mission, organizational website, accessed October 2012.
- :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ "Fellows", Hoover Institution website, accessed October 2012
- :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ "James Madison Institute: Research Advisory Council", organizational website, accessed October 2012
- :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ "Andrew Breitbart, Conservative Blogger, Dies at 43",The New York Times; March 1, 2012
- ↑ ^Jump ^up to:6.0 6.1 "g-a-i team", organizational website, accessed October 2012
- :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ "Citizens United: Who We Are", organizational website, accessed October 2012,
- :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ "American Conservative Union: Board of Directors", organization website, accessed October 2012
- :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ "Ron Robinson, President", Young America's Foundation website, accessed October 2012
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Rebranding Steve Bannon: Inside the PR Campaign to Rehab Trump Adviser’s Image
How a cagey publicist is trying to fight the bad press about the president-elect’s new chief adviser
Tim Molloy | November 16, 2016 @ 3:23 PM
If you see any stories in the next few days about how Steve Bannon was a great boss at Breitbart News and excelled during his time in the U.S. Navy, you’ll know that publicist Maria Sliwa is thriving in her job.
On Sunday, Trump named Bannon, the former executive chairman of Breitbart and CEO of his presidential campaign, as his chief adviser. Since then, Bannon has gotten lots of bad press, some of it accusing him of racism, sexism and anti-Semitism. (A New York Times news story said critics see him as a “voice of racism.” An opinion piece in the Washington Post called him a “dead lizard wrapped in the Confederate flag.”)
So someone decided to take the initiative and get Bannon some good PR. The question is who.
On Wednesday, Sliwa sent out two emails to reporters offering interviews with two men available to talk about Bannon: U.S. Navy Seal (Ret.) Carl Higbie, and Breitbart Jerusalem bureau chief Aaron Klein.
But Sliwa insisted on Wednesday that she isn’t working for Bannon.
Also Read:
Steve Bannon Illegally Paid Via Movie Company, Watchdog Group Says
“I’m not working for Bannon,” she told TheWrap in a brief interview. “I have a client who is.”
In two brief talks with a Wrap reporter, Sliwa wouldn’t say who actually hired her. When the reporter noted that she has worked for Breitbart in the past (see press release, below) she replied, “Oh God, please no,” and hung up.
She also asked why it was necessary to ask about the publicist behind a story.
The answer, in this case, is that it illustrates how people push Bannon’s agenda in ways that leave no sign of his involvement.
Also Read:
Cory Booker Blasts Trump Appointment Steve Bannon: He 'Won't Build Bridges, He Will Burn Them'
It is not unusual for prominent people to hire publicists, or to seek positive stories. But it is unusual for publicists to refuse to say who they work for. (The Public Relations Society of America’s code of ethics says publicists should “reveal the sponsors for causes and interests represented.”)
Higbie and Klein were only part of the effort to rebrand Bannon in a more positive light. The Huffington Post noted that Trump spokesman Jason Miller cast Bannon on Wednesday as someone who has “embraced diversity.”
Sliwa’s emails to reporters on Wednesday were not the first time she has been involved in advancing Bannon’s agenda. She has promoted the work of a group Bannon helped establish in 2012, a nonprofit called the Government Accountability Institute. According to Bloomberg, it “partners with mainstream media outlets conservatives typically despise to disseminate those findings to the broadest audience.”
Also Read:
Even Glenn Beck Is Terrified of Steve Bannon's Alt-Right Movement (Video)
Sliwa also helped promote “Clinton Cash: A Graphic Novel,” based on the book “Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich.” (The press release is below.) The New York Times cited some of the book’s findings in an April 2015 story.
The book was written by GAI president Peter Schweitzer. Bannon became GAI’s founding chairman in 2012, Bloomberg reports. Schweizer’s e-book, “Bush Bucks: How Public Service and Corporations Helped Make Jeb Rich,” was published during the Republican primaries.
Both books cast an unfavorable light on political rivals of Trump’s as he sought to win the Republican nomination and then the presidency.
ADVERTISEMENT
Sliwa’s bio notes that she is the president of Freedom Now Communications, Inc. and M. Sliwa Public Relations, as well as the press agent for the Sudan Campaign, and has “played a major role in publicizing the genocide, slavery and rape of civilians in Sudan and Darfur.” It says she is also part of the adjunct faculty at Columbia University and a former New York City undercover police officer. And she is the sister of Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa.
Also Read:
How Steve Bannon Made a Fortune Off of 'Seinfeld'
Sliwa’s press release about Higbie on Wednesday quotes him saying that Bannon “has excelled in every single role he has held dating back to his service in the US Navy. I cannot imagine a better person to be advising an already successful businessman taking on the biggest business in the world, the US Government.”
On Wednesday night, hours after this story was initially published, Higbie got into a PR crisis of his own: Fox News’ Megyn Kelly gave him an on-air scolding after he said that the Japanese internment camps of World War II helped establish a precent for a national registry of Muslims.
Here are screen grabs of the two press releases from Sliwa:
clinton graphic novel
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Peter Schweizer • President
Peter Schweizer is the President of Government Accountability Institute and a best-selling author. He is a partner in the Washington, D.C. firm Oval Office Writers which provides speechwriting and communications services for corporate executives and political figures.From 2008-9 he was a consultant to the Office of Presidential Speechwriting in the White House. He has also served as a member of the Ultraterrorism Study Group at the U.S. government’s Sandia National Laboratory and is a former consultant to NBC News.His books have been translated into eleven languages and include several New York Times or Washington Post bestsellers.Peter is the author of the book Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets. Both Extortion and his previous book, Throw Them All Out were New York Times bestsellers and were featured on CBS’s 60 Minutes
His other non-fiction books include Reagan’s War (Doubleday, 2002), which the Washington Post praised as “A fascinating, well-written, useful and important look at one of the three or four most important American political leaders of the 20th century. No serious assessment of the 40th president of the United States can ignore the central importance of anti-communism in his career; after Schweizer none will.” The Los Angeles Times called it “A rousing and compelling case that Reagan’s personal and political odyssey…was central to bringing down the ‘evil empire.” He is also the co-author of The Bushes: Portrait of a Dynasty (Doubleday, 2004), which the New York Times called “Fascinating…Provides illuminating insights into the internal dynamics of the Bush family dynasty.” The New York Post declared “If you want to know as fully as can be told the story of how the Bushes rose from Midwestern obscurity to equal the records of families like the Roosevelts, the Kennedys, and the Adamses—this is the book.”
Other non-fiction works include Architects of Ruin (Harper, 2009) Victory (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1994) , Do As I Say (Not As I Do) (Doubleday, 2005) and Makers and Takers (Doubleday, 2008).
His academic books include Landmark Speeches of the American Conservative Movement (Texas A&M University Press, 2006) The Reagan Presidency: Assessing the Man and His Legacy (Rowman and Littlefield, 2005), and The Fall Of The Wall: Reassessing the Causes and Consequences of the End of the Cold War (Hoover Institution Press, 2000). He was also a contributor to Living in the Eighties (Oxford University Press, 2008)
His articles have appeared in Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, National Review, and elsewhere. He has appeared on numerous radio and television programs.
Peter received his M.Phil. from Oxford University and his B.A. from George Washington University. He lives in Florida with his wife, Rhonda, and his children.
Board of Directors
Stephen K. Bannon•
Executive Chairman and Co-Founder of the Government Accountability Institute •Mr. Bannon is a former Surface Warfare Officer who served aboard the destroyer U.S.S. Paul F. Foster (DD964) in the Pacific Fleet. In addition, Mr. Bannon was a Special Assistant to the Chief of Naval Operations. Mr. Bannon is a former Goldman Sachs investment banker in their Mergers & Acquisitions Department. He has been a financier/entrepreneur in the entertainment and media industry for 25 years. He is currently the Executive Chairman of Breitbart News LLC the parent company of Breitbart.com.Mr. Bannon is an award-winning conservative filmmaker who has written and directed such films as: Generation Zero; The Undefeated; Occupy Unmasked and The Hope & The Change.From 2007-2011, Mr. Bannon was Chairman/CEO of Affinity Media, the world’s leading digital asset trading company with operations in Korea and China. Affinity Media was financed by Oak Investment Partners and Goldman Sachs.
Mr. Bannon is a graduate of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and holds a Masters Degree in National Security Studies from Georgetown University’s School of Government. In 1985, Mr. Bannon received his MBA from Harvard Business School with honors.Mr. Bannon is a native of Virginia who now resides in Laguna Beach, CA. Mr. Bannon’s eldest daughter graduated from The United States Military Academy at West Point in 2010. She is a First Lieutenant and Logistics Officer with a combat engineering battalion recently returned from Iraq where she served with the 101st Airborne Division.
Owen T. Smith, Esq. is the Chairman of the Institute of World Politics Board of Trustees and Professor Emeritus at Long Island University and a businessman. Mr. Smith has served as chairman of the New York State Board of Elections (1991-1996), and directed the Center for Long Island Studies at Long Island University (1987-1995).Mr. Smith has also been deputy county executive of Nassau County, N.Y. (1980-1987), chairman of the Nassau County Planning Commission (1976-1980), counsel to the New York Senate Committee on Crime and Correction (1972-1976), and counsel to the New York Senate Committees on Villages, Towns and Counties (1966-1972).The author or co-author of more than 20 books and dozens of articles in legal journals, Mr. Smith earned his law degree from the St. John’s School of Law, and a bachelor’s degree in economics and government from Trinity College.
Ron Robinsonhas served as Young America’s Foundation’s president for more than three decades. Time magazine wrote that Young America’s “[F]oundation—run by a former Reagan Administration advisor, Ron Robinson—is now the nation’s largest advocacy group devoted to student politics.” Time referred to Robinson as one of the “seasoned generals of the right” who is leading the “diverse and well funded” generation of conservatives who are “winning battles on campus.”??Insight Magazine reported that under Robinson’s leadership, “Young America’s Foundation is leading the conservative charge to win the hearts and minds of impressionable college-age students…Indeed, the Foundation organizes so many programs on so many campuses that it’s difficult to find a conservative activist younger than 30 who hasn’t had some contact with its activities.”??
Robinson has led the Foundation through two successful landmark Supreme Court victories for student rights, the inauguration and development of the National Conservative Student Conference and the National High School Leadership Conference held annually in Washington; and the Foundation’s effort to save Ronald Reagan’s ranch. ??Robinson is a native of Buffalo, New York. He received a bachelors of arts degree in political science at Canisius College and a juris doctor degree at The Catholic University of America. Robinson served as executive director of Young Americans for Freedom (1977-79), president of the United States Youth Council (1983-85), and president of the International Youth Year Commission (1983-84). He was an advisor to the U.S. Department of Education during the Reagan administration. He is also co-author of
Funding Fathers: The Unsung Heroes of the Conservative Movement (Regnery, 2008).??Robinson served as a trustee of the Philadelphia Society, is currently a trustee of The Phillips Foundation, a director of Citizens United and the Citizens United Foundation, a director of the American Conservative Union, and he is the vice-president of the Free Speech Defense and Education Fund. He also serves on the boards of the Strong Charitable Trust and the D.J. Findley Family Foundation.Robinson is a member of the Virginia and U. S. Supreme Court Bars and resides with his wife, Michelle Easton, president of the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute, in Reston, Virginia.
Hunter Lewis is the former CEO of Cambridge Associates, a leading investment advisor to foundations and endowments, private wealth, and corporate and government entities. He is a former board of member of the World Bank.Mr. Lewis is the author of six books, Where Keynes Went Wrong being his most recent work. He is also the co-founder of AgainstCronyCapitalism.org.Mr. Lewis has served on boards and committees of fifteen not-for-profit organizations, including environmental, teaching, research, and cultural organizations.
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 | Peter Schweizer • President •Peter Schweizer is the President of Government Accountability Institute and a best-selling author. He is a partner in the Washington, D.C. firm Oval Office Writers which provides speechwriting and communications services for corporate executives and political figures.From 2008-9 he was a consultant to the Office of Presidential Speechwriting in the White House. He has also served as a member of the Ultraterrorism Study Group at the U.S. government’s Sandia National Laboratory and is a former consultant to NBC News.His books have been translated into eleven languages and include several New York Times or Washington Post bestsellers.Peter is the author of the book Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets.Both Extortionand his previous book, Throw Them All Out were New York Timesbestsellers and were featured on CBS’s 60 Minutes His other non-fiction books include *Reagan’s War* (Doubleday, 2002), which the Washington Post praised as “A fascinating, well-written, useful and important look at one of the three or four most important American political leaders of the 20th century. No serious assessment of the 40th president of the United States can ignore the central importance of anti-communism in his career; after Schweizer none will.” The Los Angeles Times called it “A rousing and compelling case that Reagan’s personal and political odyssey…was central to bringing down the ‘evil empire.” He is also the co-author of*The Bushes*: Portrait of a Dynasty (Doubleday, 2004), which the New York Times called “Fascinating…Provides illuminating insights into the internal dynamics of the Bush family dynasty.” The New York Post declared “If you want to know as fully as can be told the story of how the Bushes rose from Midwestern obscurity to equal the records of families like the Roosevelts, the Kennedys, and the Adamses—this is the book.” Other non-fiction works include *Architects of Ruin* (Harper, 2009) *Victory* (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1994) ,*Do As I Say (Not As I Do)* (Doubleday, 2005) and*Makers and Takers* (Doubleday, 2008). His academic books include *Landmark Speeches of the American Conservative Movement* (Texas A&M University Press, 2006) *The Reagan Presidency: Assessing the Man and His Legacy* (Rowman and Littlefield, 2005), and *The Fall Of The Wall: Reassessing the Causes and Consequences of the End of the Cold War* (Hoover Institution Press, 2000). He was also a contributor to *Living in the Eighties* (Oxford University Press, 2008) His articles have appeared in Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, National Review, and elsewhere. He has appeared on numerous radio and television programs. Peter received his M.Phil. from Oxford University and his B.A. from George Washington University. He lives in Florida with his wife, Rhonda, and his children. |
|---|---|
| Board of Directors | Board of Directors |
| Stephen K. Bannon • Executive Chairman and Co-Founder of the Government Accountability Institute •Mr. Bannon is a former Surface Warfare Officer who served aboard the destroyer U.S.S. Paul F. Foster (DD964) in the Pacific Fleet. In addition, Mr. Bannon was a Special Assistant to the Chief of Naval Operations. Mr. Bannon is a former Goldman Sachs investment banker in their Mergers & Acquisitions Department. He has been a financier/entrepreneur in the entertainment and media industry for 25 years. He is currently the Executive Chairman of Breitbart News LLC the parent company of Breitbart.com.Mr. Bannon is an award-winning conservative filmmaker who has written and directed such films as: Generation Zero; The Undefeated; Occupy Unmasked and The Hope & The Change.From 2007-2011, Mr. Bannon was Chairman/CEO of Affinity Media, the world’s leading digital asset trading company with operations in Korea and China. Affinity Media was financed by Oak Investment Partners and Goldman Sachs.Mr. Bannon is a graduate of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and holds a Masters Degree in National Security Studies from Georgetown University’s School of Government. In 1985, Mr. Bannon received his MBA from Harvard Business School with honors.Mr. Bannon is a native of Virginia who now resides in Laguna Beach, CA. Mr. Bannon’s eldest daughter graduated from The United States Military Academy at West Point in 2010. She is a First Lieutenant and Logistics Officer with a combat engineering battalion recently returned from Iraq where she served with the 101st Airborne Division. | |
| Owen T. Smith, Esq. is the Chairman of the Institute of World Politics Board of Trustees and Professor Emeritus at Long Island University and a businessman. Mr. Smith has served as chairman of the New York State Board of Elections (1991-1996), and directed the Center for Long Island Studies at Long Island University (1987-1995).Mr. Smith has also been deputy county executive of Nassau County, N.Y. (1980-1987), chairman of the Nassau County Planning Commission (1976-1980), counsel to the New York Senate Committee on Crime and Correction (1972-1976), and counsel to the New York Senate Committees on Villages, Towns and Counties (1966-1972).The author or co-author of more than 20 books and dozens of articles in legal journals, Mr. Smith earned his law degree from the St. John’s School of Law, and a bachelor’s degree in economics and government from Trinity College. | |
| Ron Robinson has served as Young America’s Foundation’s president for more than three decades. Time magazine wrote that Young America’s “[F]oundation—run by a former Reagan Administration advisor, Ron Robinson—is now the nation’s largest advocacy group devoted to student politics.” Time referred to Robinson as one of the “seasoned generals of the right” who is leading the “diverse and well funded” generation of conservatives who are “winning battles on campus.” Insight Magazine reported that under Robinson’s leadership, “Young America’s Foundation is leading the conservative charge to win the hearts and minds of impressionable college-age students…Indeed, the Foundation organizes so many programs on so many campuses that it’s difficult to find a conservative activist younger than 30 who hasn’t had some contact with its activities.” Robinson has led the Foundation through two successful landmark Supreme Court victories for student rights, the inauguration and development of the National Conservative Student Conference and the National High School Leadership Conference held annually in Washington; and the Foundation’s effort to save Ronald Reagan’s ranch. Robinson is a native of Buffalo, New York. He received a bachelors of arts degree in political science at Canisius College and a juris doctor degree at The Catholic University of America. Robinson served as executive director of Young Americans for Freedom (1977-79), president of the United States Youth Council (1983-85), and president of the International Youth Year Commission (1983-84). He was an advisor to the U.S. Department of Education during the Reagan administration. He is also co-author ofFunding Fathers: The Unsung Heroes of the Conservative Movement (Regnery, 2008). Robinson served as a trustee of the Philadelphia Society, is currently a trustee of The Phillips Foundation, a director of Citizens United and the Citizens United Foundation, a director of the American Conservative Union, and he is the vice-president of the Free Speech Defense and Education Fund. He also serves on the boards of the Strong Charitable Trust and the D.J. Findley Family Foundation.Robinson is a member of the Virginia and U. S. Supreme Court Bars and resides with his wife, Michelle Easton, president of the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute, in Reston, Virginia. | |
| Hunter Lewis is the former CEO of Cambridge Associates, a leading investment advisor to foundations and endowments, private wealth, and corporate and government entities. He is a former board of member of the World Bank.Mr. Lewis is the author of six books, Where Keynes Went Wrong being his most recent work. He is also the co-founder of AgainstCronyCapitalism.org.Mr. Lewis has served on boards and committees of fifteen not-for-profit organizations, including environmental, teaching, research, and cultural organizations. |
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References
- :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ Marc Thiessen, "Why is Obama skipping more than half of his daily intelligence meetings?The Washington Post: Opinions; September 10, 2012
- :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ g-a-i mission, organizational website, accessed October 2012.
- :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ "Fellows", Hoover Institution website, accessed October 2012
- :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ "James Madison Institute: Research Advisory Council", organizational website, accessed October 2012
- :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ "Andrew Breitbart, Conservative Blogger, Dies at 43",The New York Times; March 1, 2012
- ↑ ^Jump ^up to:6.0 6.1 "g-a-i team", organizational website, accessed October 2012
- :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ "Citizens United: Who We Are", organizational website, accessed October 2012,
- :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ "American Conservative Union: Board of Directors", organization website, accessed October 2012
- :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ "Ron Robinson, President", Young America's Foundation website, accessed October 2012
Intro
The Institute of World Politics, founded in 1990, describes itself as an "independent graduate school of statecraft and national security affairs."
Quote: "The Institute's superb curriculum and fine faculty create a well-integrated program that produces professionals well-grounded in the real world." - R. James Woolsey, Jr., Former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
"IWP's mission includes educating current and aspiring foreign affairs professionals in the art of statecraft by offering a unique multi-disciplinary program. The Institute currently offers two M.A. degrees (M.A. in Statecraft and National Security Affairs and M.A. in Statecraft and World Politics), Certificates of Graduate Study, and individual courses.
"The Institute distinguishes itself from other professional schools by having a faculty composed almost entirely of scholar-practitioners with high-level government experience in defense of the United States."[1]
Faculty
- Norman A. Bailey, Ph.D.
- Kenneth deGraffenreid
- John J. Dziak, Ph.D.
- Lee Edwards, Ph.D.
- Roger Fontaine, Ph.D.
- Paul A. Goble
- Christopher C. Harmon
- Walter Jajko
- Sven F. Kraemer
- Mark P. Lagon, Ph.D.
- John Lenczowski, Ph.D.
- Joshua Muravchik, Ph.D.
- Alberto M. Piedra, Ph.D.
- Juliana Geran Pilon, Ph.D.
- Herbert Romerstein, Independent researcher
- Henry Sokolski
- David L. Thomas, D-Phil.
- John J. Tierney, Jr., Ph.D.
- J. Michael Waller, Ph.D.
Contact
The Institute of World Politics
1521 16th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20036
Tel: 202-462-2101 / 888-KNOW-IWP
info@iwp.edu
URL: www.iwp.edu
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