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https://www.icij.org/article/us-president-donald-trumps-influencers/

Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Illinois [1]
B.S. from the University of New Mexico

Background

Robert Mercer, 70, is the co-chief executive officer of the hedge fund Renaissance Technologies. In 2016, Mercer and his daughter Rebekah Mercer emerged as influential figures in Donald Trump's presidential campaign. [2]

Robert Mercer was listed as #18 on*Forbes's*list of the highest-earning Hedge Fund Managers in 2016 with earnings listed at $150 million. Mercer is one of the Republican Party's largest contributors, and spent $11 million backing Ted Cruz's presidential bid. Mercer formerly worked at IBM, where he developed speech recognition programs at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center. He and IBM colleague Peter Brown joined James Simons' Renaissance Technologies in 1993 where they now serve as co-CEOs. [1],[3]

Robert Mercer's foundation, The Mercer Family Foundation, is run by his daughter Rebekah Mercer and has funnelled millions of dollars to conservative causes. Mercer and his foundation have funded a variety of climate change denial think tanks as well as climate deniers like Arthur Robinson of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM). [4], [1]

According to *Politico, both Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah regularly attended Koch donor summits and initially contributed to the Koch network. However, when Rebekah became frustrated with the political ineffectiveness of the network, they shifted focus to the Mercer Family Foundation and used it to channel their support to conservative causes. In their time supporting the Kochs, the Mercer family gave at least $25 million to the network of Koch-connected groups. In 2014, Robert Mercer mad ea $2.5 million contribution nto the Koch's Freedom Parters Action fund, prompting the headling in *Bloomberg News:“The Man who out-Koched the Kochs.” [15], [28], [9]

According to a 2013 study by Drexel University sociologist Robert Brulle's titled “Institutionalizing delay: foundation funding and the creation of U.S. climate change counter-movement organizations,” The Mercer Family Foundationspent at least **$3,824,000 between 2003 and 2010directly funding groups opposing climate change action. That money went to organizatons including The Heartland Institute, Manhattan Institute, Media Research Center, and Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM). [5]

Robert Mercer and Donald Trump

According to the Center for Public Integrity (CIP), Robert Mercer emerged as the “single most influential donor to Trump.” [2] *Bloomberg* reportsthat Rober Mercer's Super-PAC, while not endorsing Donald Trump directly, would focus '”solely on attacking Clinton.” Mercer's Super-PAC, Make America Number 1, funds a special project titled “Defeat Crooked HIllary.” Make America Number 1 was a revamped version of Mercer's Keep the Promise I, a group that had supported Texas Senator Ted Cruz.[14],[13]

The Center for Public Integrity (CIP) notes that Robert Mercer has funded “anti-establishment groups and insurgent candidates working to pull the Republican Party further to the right, rather than the business-backed organizations closely associated with the Republican establishment, adding to his reputation as an ideologically motivated giver.” [2]

Mercer has heavily funding conservative news outlets such as Breitbart News and Brent Bozell's Media Research Center. He’s also backed the Citizens United Foundation and the Government Accountability Institute, organizations strongly opposing Hillary Clinton. Notably, Stephen K. Bannon, executive chairman of Breitbart,is Donald Trump's new Campaign Chief. [2]

*The New York Times* reports that Mercer's strategists, super PACs, and other political organizations as well as his daughter, Rebekah Mercer, “have emerged to play a pivotal role in Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign”:[6]

Kellyanne Conway, Mr. Trump's new campaign manager, oversaw a super PAC financed by the Mercer family.
Stephen K. Bannon, executive chairman of Breitbart News (in which Mercer has a reported $10 million invested) is Donald Trump's new Campaign Chief.
Cambridge Analytica,a voter data firm supported by Mercer, are working to identify Trump supporters in the electorate.
David Bossie, whose projects have been funded in part by the Mercer Family Foundation, is working with a super PACsupporting trump.

“The fingerprints of Robert Mercer, a New York hedge fund billionaire, and his middle daughter, Rebekah, can be seen all over the new Trump staffing appointments and other decisions being made by the GOP presidential nominee,” The Hill reported in August. [7]

Jane Mayer, writing in *The New Yorker*, notes that the Mercers worked hard to oppose a Clinton victory: “If Clinton won, the Mercers claimed, she would 'repeal both the First and Second Amendments of the Bill of Rights.' Given the stakes, they said, 'all hands' were 'needed on deck' in order to insure a Trump victory. Cruz, they noted, had 'chosen to stay in his bunk below.'” [28]

In David Magerman's essay for in *The Inquirer,*he said that Mercer has “surrounded our President with his people, and his people have an outsized influence over the running of our country, simply because Robert Mercer paid for their seats.” [29]

Cambridge Analytica

Robert Mercer is one of the largest investors in the data science firm Cambridge Analytics, a group that worked on President Trump's campaign and advertises its ability totarget voters through psychological profiling, reports The Washington Post. [26], [27]

The Mercers invested approximately $5 million in the company. Cambridge Analytics is an American affiliate of Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL), based in London, and has done work extensively for Mercer-backed candidates. In its UKarm, it reportedly worked on the Brexit campaign. [28]

The firm's CEO, Alexander Nix, has said publicly that “Persuading somebody to vote a certain way is really very similar to persuading 14- to 25-year-old boys in Indonesia to not join Al Qaeda.” While critics have said the group's promotion as exceeded its effectiveness, Jonathan Albright, an assistant professor of communications at Elon University, published a paper calling Cambridge Analytica a “propaganda machine.” [28]

“Mercer, having revolutionized the use of data on Wall Street, was eager to accomplish the same feat in the political realm,” Jane Mayer wrote in her profile of Mercer in *The New Yorker*. [28]

Political Spending

Contributions to Super PACs...

Stance on Climate Change

1993

While Robert Mercer doesn't have a formal statement on his view on climate change,he has funded known climate change denierArt Robinson and his work, as well as prominent climate change denial groups including The Heartland Institute. [9]

Jane Mayer wrote that in 1993, Nick Patterson, a former colleague of Mercer's at Renaissance technologies (now a computational biologist at the Broad Institute), said that they differed in opinion over climate change. When Patterson shared a scientific paper on the suject, Mercer responded with one from Art Robinson: [28]

“It looked like a scientific paper, but it was completely loaded with selective and biased information,” Patterson told Mayer. The paper argued that, if climate change were real, future generations would “enjoy an Earth with far more plant and animal life.” [28]

When Patterson sent Mercer a note in response, calling Robinson’s arguments “completely false,” He never heard back. “I think if you studied Bob’s views of what the ideal state would look like, you’d find that, basically, he wants a system where the state just gets out of the way,” Patterson said. “Climate change poses a problem for that world view, because markets can’t solve it on their own.” [28]

Climate Change Denial Funding

A *DeSmog*analysis found that, collectively, the Mercers have given at least $22 million to organizations that promote climate science denial while blocking moves to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Before backing Donald Trump, the Mercers financially backed Senator Ted Cruz, who made climate science denial a main feature of his speeches. [17], [16]

The Mercers have also reportedly invested in Breitbart, a news source that regularly calls climate change a hoax. Breitbart'sformer chief, Steve Bannon, was also picked by Trump to fill the role of chief strategist. [16]

Among the groups funded by the Mercer Family Foundation include The Chicago-based Heartland Institute, which received $4,988,000 from the Mercers since 2008. Robert Mercer also spent $1.25 million supporting the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, a little-known group led led by climate change denier Art Robinson. [16]

Robinson was behind the long-debunked Oregon petition. First published in 1998, the petition claimed that 30,000 “scientists” had declared humans were not to blame for global warming. [16]

The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research is another group receiving funding from the Mercers, having donations exceeding $1 million since 2011. [16]

The Heritage Foundation is another organization that regularly promoted skepticism of mainstream climate change science. Rebekah Mercer is also a trustee at Heritage while David Kreutzer, also affiliated with Heritage, served on Trump's EPA “landing team” and has claimed the recent run of record-breaking hot years globally is nothing unusual. [16], [18], [19]

The Cato Institute and Americans for Prosperity, two more groups funded by the Mercers, have attacked the science of human-caused climate change while challenging the legitimacy of solutions, such as renewable energy and electric vehicles. [16]

Key Quotes

Robert Mercer rarely addresses the media. “I don't usually talk about myself so it's not a comfortable thing,” he said at a speech in Baltimore to accept a lifetime achievement award from the Association for Computational Linguistics. [10]

Mercer, who had formerly worked writing programs at the Kirtland Air Force Base's weapons lab, said the job gave him a poor impression of government-funded research:

“One of the most important goals of government-financed research is not so much to get answers as it is to consume the computer budget,” he said in the speech. “[It] left me ever since with a jaundiced view of government-financed research.”

Key Deeds

February 24, 2017

Larry Solov of Britbart News, working to secure official credentials for Capitol Hill, revealed that the Mercer family were co-owners of the website, *Politico* reported. BuzzFeed's Steve Perlberg, who live-tweeted the meeting, noted that the owners included the site's CEO Larry Solov, founder Andrew Breitbart's widow, Susie Breitbart, and the Mercer family with Breitbart's family owning the largest stake. [20], [21]

February, 2017

2014 tax filings for Mercer’s family foundation revealed that the foundation was a major donor of work by Richard Muller, a University of California physics professor who initially founded the Berkeley Earth project. The project set out to conduct an independent review of global warming data, and was initially funded by Charles Koch. Mercer Family Foundation’s 2014 tax return listed a donation of $250,000 to the project, as *Bloomberg*reported. [22], [23]

To many’s surprise, Muller’s project confirmed (PDF) what the majority of climate scientists had already found related to changing climate. After announcing the findings in *The New York Times* in 2012, calling it a “total turnaround,” Mueller declared himself as a “converted skeptic.” [24], [25]

Connor Gibson, a researcher at the environmentalist group Greenpeace, said he was “thoroughly confused” by the development that Robert Mercer’s foundation was a major backer of Muller’s research. [23]

However,Bloombergnoted that since his “conversion,” Muller has endorsed fracking. According to his website, Muller's second-biggest funder in 2014 was America's Natural Gas Alliance, at $200,000. [23]

In an interview, Muller said he meets regularly with Mercer to discuss the group's research. “Never has he ever criticized anything that we've published or done. Never has he indicated any hope for any conclusions we could reach,” Muller said. “He is one of the world's experts at data analysis – that's what he did at his company. And my sense is he felt the data out there – the big data – was not being analyzed properly and that we would do so.” [23]

2016

Robert Mercer and his family have been deeply involved in the Republican nominations, reports*The New York Times.*[6]

Initially backing Senator Ted Cruz of Texas—with $13 million in donations going to the super PAC supporting Cruz—Mercer later shifted support to Donald Trump after he won the nomination. When Ted Cruz refused to endorse Donald Trump, the Mercers issued a rare public statement where they said they were “profoundly disappointed” in Mr. Cruz. [6]

“Keep the Promise I” which Mercer had used to support Cruz, was revamped into “Make America Number 1,” which also funded a “special project” titled “Defeat Crooked Hillary.” [13], [6]

“The Mercers basically own this campaign,” a source who had worked with Rebekah Mercer told The Hill. “They have installed their people. … And now they’ve got their data firm in there.” [7]

2010

Robert Mercer funded an Oregon House race to support Republican Arthur Robinson, who was challenging incumbent Representative Peter DeFazio. Mercer had also funded Robinson's skeptical work on climate change Mercer. [9]

DeFazio's campaign ran radio ads saying Robinson was funded by a secretive donor with Wall Streetties:

“Oregon isn't a state that likes outside interference,” DeFazio said. “Once we focused on who Mercer was we began to move our poll numbers.” DeFazio won. This year, Robinson is running again to oust DeFazio, but Mercer hasn't dropped mega-dollars into the race. Robinson declined comment for this story.

Nick Patterson, a former senior Renaissance Technologies employee, described Mercer's views on climate change. “Most people at Renaissance didn’t challenge him” about politics, Patterson said. Jane Mayer wrote in *The New Yorker*that Patterson clashed with Mercer over climate change as “Mercer said that concerns about it were overblown.” [28]

When Patterson had shared a scientific paper with Mercer on climate, Mercer and his brother, Randall, responded with a paper from Art Robinson. “It looked like a scientific paper, but it was completely loaded with selective and biased information,” Patterson recalled. The paper argued that, if climate change were real, future generations would “enjoy an Earth with far more plant and animal life.” Patterson sent Mercer a note calling Robinson’s statements “completely false,” however he never heard back. [28]

In all, the Mercers gave over $640,000 to a group that attacked DeFazio with negative ads. At the time, press speculated that Mercer's opposition was due to a proposed high-volume stock trade tax that would have affected Renaissance Technologies, but severalcolleagues associate his connection with Art Robinson as the reason. [28]

The Mercer Family notably gave over $1.6 million in donations to Robinson’s Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM), some of which went to the purchase of freezers to store 14,000 samples of human urine. [28]

Jane Mayer also wrote that Robinson may be behind mercer's views on nuclear radiation. Robinson co-authored a 1986 book claiming a majority of Americans would be able to survive “an all-out atomic attack on the United States.” Robert and Rebekah Mercer also praised the homeschool curriculum sold by Robinson, which describes public schools as having a “evil” and “socialist” agenda. [28]

Affiliations

Renaissance Technologies LLC—Chairman and Co-CEO. [11]
Mercer Family Foundation[12]

https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/01/12/trump-kingmaker-billionaires-robert-rebekah-mercer-pouring-millions-climate-science-denial

When it comes to climate science denial, some names come easily and deservingly to mind.

There’s oil giant ExxonMobil — a company that contributed millions of dollars to organizations that told the public there was no risk from burning fossil fuels.

There are the oil billionaire Koch brothers — Charles and David — and their ideological zeal against government regulations that drove them to pour vast amounts into groups spreading doubt on the realities of human-caused global warming.

But a name that has not yet reached those heights of climate science denial infamy — but likely should — is the Mercer family.

Who Are the Mercers?

A DeSmog analysis of Federal Electoral Commission returns shows Robert Mercer, the reclusive hedge fund manager, has donated $30.1 million to politics since January 2015 (a further $2.3 million has come from daughter Rebekah and wife Diana).

Some $15 million of Robert Mercer’s money went into the Make America Number 1 super-PACthat was headed by Rebekah Mercer and that bankrolled the final months of Donald Trump’s campaign. One source told The Hill: “The Mercers basically own this campaign.”

But DeSmog has found the Mercers have also pumped at least $22 million into organizations that push climate science denial while blocking moves to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Trump too refuses to accept the evidence that climate change is caused by humans and has consistently called the issue a hoax.

Before diverting to Trump, the Mercers' cash was backing Senator Ted Cruz, who made climate science denial a main feature of his speeches.

Those positions on climate change, challenged by every major scientific institution in the world, are identical to those of the groups and individuals the Mercers have been handsomely funding through their own family foundation.

Climate science denial also fits well with Robert Mercer’s reported investment in Breitbart — the hyper partisan media outfit that calls climate change a hoax. Many see Breitbart as Trump’s very own propaganda vehicle — the Trump Pravda.

Steve Bannon, Breitbart’s former chief, was picked by Trump (or, more likely, by the Mercers) to lead his campaign. The controversial figure will be Trump’s chief strategist.

Climate Denial Funded

Very little is known about what the Mercers think about climate change or, for that matter, anything else. Both father and daughter avoid media interviews.

But Rebekah has been described as the most powerful woman in GOP politics and is a pivotal member of the Trump team. Rebekah also runs her father’s charitable foundation.

So, the best way to get a handle on what the Mercers think, is to see where they spend their millions.

DeSmog has analyzed the Mercer Family Foundation’s tax returns since 2005 and finds some $22 million has gone to groups pushing climate science denial.

Across the board, the groups funded by the Mercers have misrepresented climate science, promoted fossil fuels, denigrated renewable energy, and pushed to strip powers from the U.S.Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The Chicago-based Heartland Institute has received $4,988,000 from the Mercers, cashing its first $1 million check in 2008.

The Heartland Institute holds regular “international climate change conferences” where denialists, fossil fuel-funded scientists, and politicians come together to talk tactics.

In 2012, the institute famously started a billboard campaign that used a picture of terrorist Ted “Unabomber” Kaczynski next to the phrase: “I still believe in global warming. Do you?”

Despite the generosity of the Mercers, the Heartland Institute does not publicly acknowledge the funding, perhaps indicative of the Mercers' desire to stay below the radar.

The Mercer name was even left out of internal Heartland budget documents leaked in 2012. If the Mercers had asked for anonymity, then Heartland’s coyness is not unusual.

Another organization shy about getting cash from the Mercer Family Foundation is the George W. Bush Foundation, the organization set up in 2006 to look after the official archive of the George W. Bush presidency.

The George W. Bush Foundation publishes a lengthy list of its financial supporters and the Mercers are not on it. But tax records show the Mercers have given the Bush Foundation $4.1 million since 2010.

Oregon Petition

Alongside funding for Breitbart and the Heartland Institute, Robert Mercer has also spent $1.25 million supporting an obscure group known as the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, led by Art Robinson.

Robinson was behind a long-debunked “survey” of university graduates, known as the Oregon petition. First published in 1998, the petition claimed that 30,000 “scientists” had declared humans were not to blame for global warming.

Robinson also thinks climate change is a hoax. His institute sells nuclear survival manuals, is currently stockpiling human urine for testing, and sells home schooling kits for parents worried about their children being exposed to socialism.

Robert Mercer also supported Art Robinson’s failed 2010 Republican run for Congress.

As well as Robert and his family donating to Robinson’s campaign committee, Robert Mercer personally gave $643,750 to a super-PAC that ran attack ads against Robinson’s Democratic opponent (that opponent, Peter DeFazio, has noted that he had co-sponsored legislation to tax hedge fund transactions).

view this map on LittleSis

The biggest beneficiary of Mercer Family Foundation cash is the Media Research Center (MRC), a group which claims credit for convincing Americans that most of the media has a “liberal” bias.

The MRC’s outlets regularly give favorable coverage to climate science denialism, while ridiculing credentialed climate scientists and others who place a priority on cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

MRC alumnus Marc Morano, communications manager at the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, recruited his former employer to help him produce the climate science denial documentary Climate Hustle.Rebekah Mercer is an MRC director.

The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research is another group on the receiving end of the Mercers' generosity, to the tune of more than $1 million since 2011.

The institute’s researchers tend to argue against renewable energy while promoting fossil fuels and underplaying or ignoring the impacts of climate change.

Rebekah Mercer recently joined the institute’s board of trustees.

The Heritage Foundation is a relative newcomer to the Mercer family’s giving, but the think tank’s positions on energy, political ideology, and climate science fit the pattern perfectly — underplay and misrepresent the science, promote fossil fuels, and push for low government regulations.

Predictably, Rebekah Mercer is a trustee at Heritage, a think tank seen as influential in the Trump camp. The Trump team is drawing heavily from Heritage Foundation staff for its transition teams.

On the EPA “landing team” is Heritage’s David Kreutzer, who claims the recent run of record-breaking hot years globally is nothing unusual.

Rebekah Mercer is also on the board of the Moving Picture Institute (MPI), a group that helps finance and distribute movies which, according to its website, “make an impact on people's understanding of individual rights, limited government, and free markets.”

MPI even has a program to support stand-up comedians who promote this “freedom” ideology in their stand-up routines.

Climate Denial’s Most Powerful Ally?

Until now, the Mercer family’s funding of climate science denial groups has gone relatively unnoticed.

Most of the attention of investigative journalists had fallen on three overlapping groups that have either influenced or funded the climate science denial movement across the United States.

The first was the network of groups funded and orchestrated by the Koch brothers, who have invested millions into creating and sustaining conservative “think tanks” that take positions protecting the Koch brothers' fossil fuel interests.

Groups like the Cato Institute (which cashed a $300,000 Mercer check last year) and Americans for Prosperity have attacked the science of human-caused climate change while challenging the legitimacy of solutions, such as renewable energy and electric vehicles.

The second key funding stream for climate science denial organizations are two linked organizations called Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund.

Both Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund are “donor-advised funds” and are used by rich conservatives to funnel money to “libertarian” causes while hiding the identity of the donors.

A third major supporter of the climate science denial industry are those who stand to lose most from the public fully understanding the implications of climate change — the fossil fuel industry itself.

Companies including ExxonMobil, Peabody Energy, and Koch Industries, alongside trade groups representing the fossil fuel industry, have helped fund the machinery of doubt for decades.

Now, Robert Mercer’s fortune and the political prowess of daughter Rebekah have created another wealthy and powerful ally for the climate science denial industry.

President-elect Donald Trump is the most powerful vehicle yet for those billionaires willing to spend big to misrepresent climate science and gamble on society’s future.

Media Research Center

http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/white-house-propagandist-bannons-gravy-train-secretive-radical-right-wing-billionaire

Trump’s elevation of Breitbart News CEO Stephen Bannon to chief White House strategist is prompting many to ominously predict the Trump presidency will be like the worst of the campaign. But there’s an even more disturbing power play in the works.

Before Bannon turned “Breitbart News into Trump Pravda,” as one ex-Breitbart writer put it, Bannon backed 2016’s darkest ideologue, Republican Ted Cruz. Bannon went all-in for Cruz, not just because of his libertarian economics, but because his patron and ally, the family of hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, enlisted him and other Mercer-funded political assets for Cruz.

“Breitbart News was cranking out a stream of favorable Cruz stories,” Politico recounted in September. “And both the Mercer-backed pro-Cruz super PAC, ‘Keep the Promise I,’ and the Cruz campaign signed up Cambridge Analytica [Mercer's data research firm]. And only hours after the Texas senator officially launched his campaign at the Christian university Liberty University, he and his wife appeared at [daughter] Bekah Mercer’s extravagant Upper West Side apartment for a fundraiser.”

The Mercers, led by Rebekah, didn’t quit after Cruz's bid failed. They met with Trump’s children and the nominee, and in August their team, including Bannon and pollster Kellyanne Conway, were running Trump’s presidential campaign. As Politico noted, people who know the Mercers and their team said they were working for a far-right agenda, not any particular Republican candidate.

“I don’t think it’s about Trump. Trump is just a vehicle,” a Mercer family colleague told Politico. “It’s about wanting to be a player and wanting to beat Hillary, in tha

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Donald Trump’s elevation of Breitbart News CEO Stephen Bannon to chief White House strategist is prompting many to ominously predict the Trump presidency will be like the worst of the campaign. But there’s an even more disturbing power play in the works.

“I don’t think it’s about Trump. Trump is just a vehicle,” a Mercer family colleague told Politico. “It’s about wanting to be a player and wanting to beat Hillary, in that order. Because if you remember, they wanted to use Cruz as a vehicle before that. They do want to beat Hillary, but they also want to beat the Kochs and Paul Singer and the Ricketts [other far-right billionaires].”

This week, when Bloomberg described how campaign CEO Bannon directed Cambridge Analytics to test-market Brexit-like messages to white voters in Rust Belt states, Bannon had chilling words for anyone who believes in progressive federal government.

“This is not the French Revolution,” Bannon said, characterizing Trump's achievement and goals. “They destroyed the basic institutions of their society and changed their form of government. What Trump represents is a restoration—a restoration of true American capitalism and a revolution against state-sponsored socialism. Elites have taken all the upside for themselves and pushed the downside to the working- and middle-class Americans.”

Who’s Calling Who Elite?

Bannon’s revolution is being led by the very people Trump demonized in his final political ads in Rust Belt states—the elite players in American finance and media. No one epitomizes that contradiction as clearly as the billionaire Mercers, and their long embrace of Trump’s new White House strategist, Bannon, who made a fortune at Goldman Sachs and in Hollywood before taking over Breitbart.

Bannon, who grew up in a Democratic household in Virginia, was a Navy veteran who became a Wall Street trader before turning to media. He is among a handful of grantees and causes that have been boosted by multimillion dollar investments or infusions from the Mercer family. Breitbart received $10 million, and in turn, as Politico said, dutifully publicized Mercer grantees and causes, including some of the most notorious right-wingers, such as the activists who made the 2008 anti-Hillary Clinton movie that led to the Citizens United lawsuit and U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down the few remaining limits on campaign cash.

Breitbart, under Bannon, has relished vulgar attacks on liberals. It’s compared feminists and Planned Parenthood to Nazis, has had anti-Semitic headlines and embraced a spectrum of white supremacist causes. Two decades ago, Bannon’s wife filed domestic abuse charges that were eventually dropped. Early in the campaign, a Bannon-run non-profit, the Government Accountability Institute, astoundingly convinced the New York Times and other mainstream papers to partner with it and publish reports based on its latest attack on the Clintons, a book called Clinton Cash. As Bannon told Bloomberg in an extensive profile later in 2015, that "weaponized" the attacks, because old attacks broke out of the right-wing echo chamber and spread like a virus through the mainstream media.

Establishment Republicans have criticized Bannon's so-called alt-right publications, and he has drawn considerable wrath from Democrats. But his uncompromising posture and no-holds-barred tactics appealed to the Mercers, who saw other libertarian activists, such as the Koch brothers, as being too genteel—despite spending multi-millions against Democrats.

As AlterNet’s February profile of the Mercer family detailed, they embrace virtually every ultra-right posture, from backing the most ardent climate science deniers (Heartland Institute), to reviving the gold standard behind the dollar (American Principles Project), to encouraging physicians to stockpile drugs in response to Obamacare (Doctors for Disaster Preparedness). Their fights with the Internal Revenue Service make Trump’s $900 million write-off in the mid-1990s seem paltry. Mercer’s computerized trading firm, Renaissance Technologies, has spent years fighting a $6.8 billion tax bill, Bloomberg has said.

Family patriarch Robert Mercer is notoriously publicity averse. But one daughter, Rebekah, isn’t, and has become one of the most powerful women in Republican circles. Last summer, according to a series of reports in the New York Times, Politico, The Hill and other outlets, she persuaded the Trump family—the candidate, his daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner—to replace his campaign team with Bannon and their longtime pollster Conway, and to incorporate their data-mining operation, Cambridge Analytica, to expand the campaign’s voter targeting. That came after a series of conversations at Trump fundraisers and private dinners.

“A few days later, one of the guests, Stephen K. Bannon, the executive chairman of Breitbart News, would become Mr. Trump’s campaign chief in a sudden shake-up,” the Times wrote in mid-August. “But it was a guest without a formal role in the campaign, a conservative philanthropist named Rebekah Mercer, who has now become one of its most potent forces.”

The Times described the family's relationship to Trump’s new team. “Mr. Trump’s new campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, is a veteran Republican pollster who previously oversaw a super PAC financed by the Mercers. Mr. Bannon oversaw Breitbart, an outlet that has often amplified Mr. Trump’s message and attacked his perceived enemies. Mr. Mercer reportedly invested $10 million in Breitbart several years ago, and most likely still has a stake: A company sharing an address with Renaissance Technologies, the hedge fund Mr. Mercer helps lead, remains an investor in Breitbart, according to corporate documents filed in Delaware.”

“Mr. Trump is also relying on Cambridge Analytica, a voter data firm backed by Mr. Mercer, whose staff members are working with Mr. Trump’s vendors to identify potential Trump supporters in the electorate, particularly among infrequent voters," the Times said. "A Mercer-backed super PAC supporting Mr. Trump is now being shepherded by David Bossie, a conservative activist whose own projects [Citizens United] have been funded in part by the Mercers’ family foundation, according to tax documents. Mr. Bannon has worked particularly closely with the family in recent years.

“I think they have complete confidence, and rightly so, in Steve Bannon’s decisions and what he brings to the table politically,” Bossie told the paper. “He has been smart and successful in running these different political operations. And those things have come to the Mercers’ attention.”

It has become a cliche that no one knows how Trump will really govern because of a lack of specifics during the campaign. But it is clear what libertarians like the Mercers want—to remove any obstacle preventing corporations and the super-rich from enlarging their wealth; and what ideologues like Bannon want—the dismantling of federal safety nets, from the 1930s New Deal to Obamacare, the expansion of policing and immigration enforcement, and no action on climate change to create a post-carbon energy system.

For years, Robert Mercer quietly poured tens of millions of dollars into far-right political causes. But it took his daughter, Rebekah, to embrace the bulls in the GOP china shop—first Cruz and then Trump. When Trump assumes office in January, Bannon will be on the podium. And quietly observing the spectacle will be one of the real powers behind the throne, the libertarian billionaire Mercer family.

Steven Rosenfeld

Robert Mercer

The very conservative co-CEO of Renaissance Technologies, a quant hedge fund founded by a megadonor to the other party, Mercer and his wife Diana have given just shy of $24 million this cycle. A champion of returning the U.S. to the gold standard, Mercer has helped bankroll the conservative Heritage Foundation and Breitbart.com, the right-wing news site. He was deeply committed to Sen. Ted Cruz‘s (R-Texas) 2016 presidential bid, socking $13.5 million into a super PAC supporting him; eventually he signed on to back nominee Donald Trump, converting the previously pro-Cruz vehicle into one that benefited Trump and adding another $2 million to its coffers. His daughter, Rebekah, also was deeply involved with the pro-Trump effort. In the eight days ending Nov. 4, the super PAC, Make America Number 1, paid Mercer’s voter data firm Cambridge Analytica $1.4 million.

Like Trump’s campaign itself, the outside groups supporting him have been more disjointed, with several organizations appearing to compete for the attention of donors and the favor of the candidate.

Make America Number 1 is primarily financed by conservative billionaire and Renaissance Technologies CEO Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah, who have provided $13.5 million of the $16 million raised by the super PAC thus far. The group supported Ted Cruz in the primary, when it was run by Kellyanne Conway, now Trump’s campaign manager.

Great America PAC is an unusual outside spending group in that it relies substantially on small donations of $200 or less. It has suffered some hits in leadership, with Tea Party activist Amy Kremer leaving the group in May; its senior adviser, Jesse Benton, was convicted (and sentenced this week) on federal charges of public corruption. It has raised $11.2 million and says it has spent $7.2 million on independent expenditures, including online, mail and television advertising. The PAC’s treasurer is attorney Dan Backer; questions have been raised about the legitimacy of other super PACs with which Backer has been involved.

Several other outside groups have identified themselves as supporting the Trump effort, but they are generally small and appear less organized. But the Trump family doesn’t seem to have a cohesive strategy on this front, with the candidate’s two sons headlining fundraisers for two different groups. That has stoked the donor confusion: If they can’t pick a PAC, how will contributors know which one to fund?

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Mr. Trump’s elevation of Mr. Bannon and Ms. Conway also highlights the growing influence of Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah, conservative donors from Long Island. The Mercers are investors in Breitbart, and their foundation funds a host of other conservative activist groups. They spent millions on Senator Ted Cruz’s behalf during the Republican primary, an effort Ms. Conway helped lead. And they began bankrolling a pro-Trump “super PAC” in recent weeks after becoming friendly with Mr. Trump, his daughter Ivanka and her husband, Mr. Kushner.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/19/us/politics/robert-mercer-donald-trump-donor.html?_r=0

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How One Family’s Deep Pockets Helped Reshape Donald Trump’s Campaign

By NICHOLAS CONFESSOREAUG. 18, 2016

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