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SEE LEO

SEE SCHWAB DAF

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PKO

Kimberly Leonard and Gary Fineout

08/27/2026

JACKSONVILLE, Florida — Democrats are using a leaked grand jury report on Hope Florida as a fresh line of attack against Sunshine State GOP incumbents, seizing on findings that Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration “misappropriated” $10 million in taxpayer funds from a health care settlement intended to help needy children.

The controversy — first uncovered by GOP state lawmakers — has given Democrats an opening to tie two prominent Republicans to a dispute over millions of dollars in taxpayer money that ultimately flowed into a DeSantis-backed political committee.

The long-running scandal involved a charity connected to an initiative spearheaded by Florida first lady Casey DeSantis, called the Hope Florida Foundation, and has entangled GOP Sen. Ashley Moody and Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, both of whom were appointed to their current jobs by the governor and are up for elections in November.

On Wednesday, a grand jury report looking into the funds was leaked to CBS Miami. According to the report, jurors concluded that state officials shifted upwards of $10 million as part of a “sophisticated scheme to fund political activities” because the money eventually went to a political committee and the Republican Party of Florida to defeat an amendment that would have broadly legalized marijuana in the state. Some of the money also flowed into a political committee tied to Gov. DeSantis himself, according to the grand jury.

But the report — which was apparently issued in January but has been kept under seal since then — also concluded there wasn’t enough evidence to criminally charge anyone because “nobody will take responsibility” for routing the money to the foundation or “had any memory of who made it.” At the time money was shifted, Moody was state attorney general while Uthmeier was the governor’s chief of staff.

CBS Miami published its story on the grand jury report on Wednesday, the same day state Rep. Angie Nixon, the Democrat running against Moody, launched her campaign kickoff event in Jacksonville. Ahead of her kickoff, Nixon called on Moody to resign and described the funds transfer as “corrupt” and “disrespectful” in an interview with POLITICO. She drew attention to the report in her stump speech before a crowd of around 200 people who gathered for her campaign launch later that night.

“It just came out today,” Nixon said of the news report. “She stole $10 million for medically needy kids in order to defeat two citizen-led ballot initiatives that you all placed on the ballot that would have allowed you all to have healthier lives.”

Asked about this before the revelations in the grand jury report were published, Moody’s campaign pointed to how Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration, which is responsible for setting health policy and planning, negotiated and settled the agreement with health insurer Centene after Centene overbilled Florida’s Medicaid program. The settlement ultimately led to the health insurer paying back the state $57 million, with another $10 million flowing into Hope Florida.

Moody’s Senate office spokesperson, Will O’Grady, said Thursday the leaked report “confirms what we have said all along,” regarding how AHCA negotiated the agreement “and the settlement funds were disbursed according to its terms.”

“Neither the Department of Legal Affairs nor the former attorney general had knowledge of how the settlement money would be spent,” he said. “Attempts to characterize this any other way are disingenuous.” Moody released a similar statement on X, blaming the news on the “political season” where “there may be a tendency to misrepresent the facts.”

But the grand jury report concluded Moody knew about the plans to divert the money to the foundation and “authorized” John Guard — then a top official in her office — to sign the settlement agreement. The report additionally stated Guard worried about the transfer and raised it with Moody, and as a result the settlement was rewritten so that AHCA was directing the funds instead of the attorney general. In her statement, Moody said “multiple agencies” signed the final agreement.

President Donald Trump nominated Guard for a federal judgeship last year but did not renominate him this year. Guard appeared before the grand jury, though Moody and Uthmeier didn’t. Asked about the leaked grand jury report on Thursday, DeSantis said during a press conference in Lake City, Florida, that “the only crime that was apparent” was its leak.

“There was no diversion of any Medicaid funds. It was a private settlement,” he said. The governor also argued that the “whole reason” the investigation came up was to “smear” his wife, though he didn’t raise the fact that the news had reached a fever pitch last year while Casey DeSantis was weighing a run for governor. The first lady is only mentioned in the grand jury report in the context of describing what Hope Florida is, not in regard to any transfer of funds.

Uthmeier was not only the governor’s chief of staff when the money was transferred but was also leading the political committee the governor was pushing to try to convince the public to vote against the pot ballot measure. Asked about the report Thursday, Uthmeier during a press conference in The Villages called it a “politically motivated witch hunt” and “hoax,” and maintained “nobody did anything wrong here.” He accused Democrats of collusion with the press to leak the report, though didn’t offer evidence of how CBS obtained the report, and pointed out how he wasn’t allowed under Florida law to comment on grand jury proceedings.

Democrat José Javier Rodríguez, who’s running against Uthmeier for Florida attorney general, called on his rival to “resign, come clean and turn himself in.” He pointed out that the report also said that Uthmeier was a key figure in the diversion of the funds and later was among those who’d been blocking the release of the report.

“This report pulls back the veil on the corruption Floridians have been seeing for years,” Javier Rodríguez said. “Enough is enough.”

David Jolly, the Democratic nominee for governor, pledged Thursday to “reopen” an investigation “into the laundering of Medicaid funds” if elected. Jolly, in a statement posted on X, noted that those involved — including Uthmeier and Moody — had been appointed to key posts by DeSantis, which he asserted was designed to “further insulate anyone from accountability and hide the truth from Floridians.” The campaign for Rep. Byron Donalds, the Republican nominee for governor, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Nixon said she wasn’t certain whether her campaign would be able to run ads on the matter — she has raised about $2.5 million since launching her campaign in January, an amount that falls far short of what would be needed to run a statewide ad. She added, however, that she would “hit [Moody] hard on it.”

“Kids are probably going to die because they didn’t get the resources that they needed,” she told POLITICO.

Annette Taddeo, the Democratic candidate for Florida chief financial officer, used the report to criticize current CFO Blaise Ingoglia, another DeSantis appointee, for “ignoring stealing in plain sight” and spending time criticizing local government instead of focusing on issues in state government.

Ingoglia was not in his position at the time the transfer occurred, but Katie Strickland, now a top aide for him, worked in the DeSantis administration at the time and was identified by other witnesses “as a participant in meetings and conversations.” The grand jury found her testimony “not credible” and called her testimony “least informative” because “she could hardly recall any details or information” about the settlement. Strickland did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Meanwhile, state Senate Democrats called on both Moody and Uthmeier to resign.

Democrats aren’t the only ones raising concerns. The initial investigation was started by GOP members of the state House before the grand jury took it up. The GOP state representative leading the investigation, Alex Andrade, had sent his records to the Second Judicial Circuit. GOP Sen. Rick Scott, a two-term former governor, had praised the state House’s work and said the money should be paid back. When asked about the latest report, Scott called it “deeply concerning.”

“Money designated to help poor kids was diverted to political ads,” he said. “Florida families deserve accountability, not more finger pointing in Tallahassee.”

Andrade declined to comment on the leaked report.

Former GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz, now a host on One America News Network, praised CBS Miami’s Jim DeFede over X for producing a “great scoop” and later drew attention to the fact that Uthmeier had been leading the political committee against the marijuana amendment.

When Uthmeier celebrated a $1.2 million settlement on X with consulting firm Deloitte over its diversity, equity and inclusion practices, Gaetz taunted with, “What PAC are you sending the settlement money to?”

Kimberly Leonard reported from Jacksonville, and Gary Fineout reported from Tallahassee.

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https://www.alternet.org/playing-fast-loose-megadonor-watchdog/

an no lnx

How a Republican megadonor is 'playing fast and loose' to push 'dangerous, extreme agenda': watchdog

Maya Boddie June 18, 2023

Republican billionaire Leonardo Leo's trust fund, Marble Freedom Trust's latest Internal Revenue Service (IRS) filing, revealing the former President Donald Trump donor's mission to control right-wing politics, Truthout reports.

Progressive watchdog Accountable.US obtained the recent IRS filing, which according to Truthout, shows the Federalist Society leader "has dumped at least $411 million into fueling right-wing infrastructure in the U.S. since mid-2020."

Furthermore, according to Truthout, the filing reveals "Leo has spent at least $182 million during the Biden administration to fund right-wing groups from May 1, 2020, through April 30, 2022," noting, "This surge has come as Leo has become more publicly outspoken in attacking reproductive rights as well as efforts to protect our environment and crucial measures that advance Americans' equality."

READ MORE: Conservative activist arranged for Clarence Thomas’ wife to get secret payouts

Additionally, it "adds to the growing public knowledge of how Leo's for-profit business works in tandem with nonprofit groups he funds to change the rules in our democracy, and also provides a glimpse of how lucrative this effort is."

The news outlet reports prior to Accountable's findings, "the Campaign for Accountability filed an IRS complaint against Leo based on other filings showing that seven of his affiliated nonprofits had sent $73 million to his for-profit CRC Advisors."

Truthout also notes:

As Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) has noted, before the public learned of the existence of Marble Freedom Trust, Leo rose to prominence as a volunteer advising Trump by creating the list of Supreme Court candidates that Trump chose from, as well as by helping to secure the confirmation of three controversial high court nominees — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett (and helped get numerous other lower court judges appointed). As True North documented, Leo's network played a central role in this right-wing court packing, raising over $600 million from 2014 through the 2020 election. This dark money network has received more than $2 billion when accounting for Marble.

Accountable President Kyle Herrig told Truthout he believes "Leonard Leo is playing fast and loose with his $1.6 billion slush fund, enriching himself and doling out paychecks and favors for his cronies," adding, "This kind of corruption is par for the course for Leo. It clearly pays to do his bidding."

READ MORE: Charities often move 'dark' money that shapes public policy: report

Herring said, "This is just the latest development in Leonard Leo's decades-long scheme to push his dangerous, extreme agenda and get rich while doing it. From personal enrichment for himself and his inner circle to his machine of nonprofits advancing the MAGA agenda, we’ve only scratched the surface of Leo’s devastating impact on our democracy."

READ MORE: 'Largest political donation ever': Trump ally received $1.6 billion through Federalist Society contact

Truthout's full report is available at this link.

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ref no lnx

Judicial activist directed fees to Clarence Thomas’s wife, urged ‘no mention of Ginni’

Leonard Leo told GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway to bill nonprofit, then use money to pay spouse of Supreme Court justice

By Emma Brown, Shawn Boburg and Jonathan O'Connell

May 4, 2023

Leonard Leo, a conservative judicial activist, speaks at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in D.C. in 2019. (Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post)

Conservative judicial activist Leonard Leo arranged for the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to be paid tens of thousands of dollars for consulting work just over a decade ago, specifying that her name be left off billing paperwork, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post.

In January 2012, Leo instructed the GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway to bill a nonprofit group he advises and use that money to pay Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the documents show. The same year, the nonprofit, the Judicial Education Project, filed a brief to the Supreme Court in a landmark voting rights case.

Leo, a key figure in a network of nonprofits that has worked to support the nominations of conservative judges, told Conway that he wanted her to “give” Ginni Thomas “another $25K,” the documents show. He emphasized that the paperwork should have “No mention of Ginni, of course.”

Conway’s firm, the Polling Company, sent the Judicial Education Project a $25,000 bill that day. Per Leo’s instructions, it listed the purpose as “Supplement for Constitution Polling and Opinion Consulting,” the documents show.

In all, according to the documents, the Polling Company paid Thomas’s firm, Liberty Consulting, $80,000 between June 2011 and June 2012, and it expected to pay $20,000 more before the end of 2012. The documents reviewed by The Post do not indicate the precise nature of any work Thomas did for the Judicial Education Project or the Polling Company.

The arrangement reveals that Leo, a longtime Federalist Society leader and friend of the Thomases, has functioned not only as an ideological ally of Clarence Thomas’s but also has worked to provide financial remuneration to his family. And it shows Leo arranging for the money to be drawn from a nonprofit that soon would have an interest before the court.

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End of carousel

In response to questions from The Post, Leo issued a statement defending the Thomases. “It is no secret that Ginni Thomas has a long history of working on issues within the conservative movement, and part of that work has involved gauging public attitudes and sentiment. The work she did here did not involve anything connected with either the Court’s business or with other legal issues,” he wrote. “As an advisor to JEP I have long been supportive of its opinion research relating to limited government, and The Polling Company, along with Ginni Thomas’s help, has been an invaluable resource for gauging public attitudes.”

Of the effort to keep Thomas’s name off paperwork, Leo said: “Knowing how disrespectful, malicious and gossipy people can be, I have always tried to protect the privacy of Justice Thomas and Ginni.”

Leo’s statement did not address questions about whether he had arranged other work for Ginni Thomas or how much money he directed to her in all from the nonprofit.

Conway, who was a senior adviser in the Trump White House, did not respond to messages seeking comment.

Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, on Capitol Hill last year. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

The Thomases did not respond to messages seeking comment. Ginni Thomas, a political activist and former GOP aide on Capitol Hill, has long maintained that she and her husband keep their careers separate.

In December 2012, the Judicial Education Project submitted an amicus brief in Shelby County v. Holder, a case challenging a landmark civil rights law aimed at protecting minority voters. The court struck down a formula in the Voting Rights Act that determined which states had to obtain federal clearance before changing their voting rules and procedures. Clarence Thomas was part of the 5-to-4 majority.

Thomas issued a concurring opinion in the case, arguing that the preclearance requirement itself is unconstitutional. Thomas’s opinion, which was consistent with a previous opinion he wrote, favored the outcome the Judicial Education Project and several other conservative organizations had advocated in theiramicus briefs. He did not cite the Judicial Education Project brief.

Legal ethics experts disagreed about whether the arrangement outlined by Leo and the payments from Conway should have led Thomas to recuse himself from the Shelby case.

Federal law requires justices to recuse if their “impartiality might reasonably be questioned,” a standard that has not been well-defined as applied to filers of amicus briefs, the experts said. Law professor Kathleen Clark of Washington University said that if the Judicial Education Project paid Ginni Thomas $100,000 in the year and a half before it filed its brief, the size and timing of the payments would have been enough to cast doubt on Clarence Thomas’s impartiality and require his recusal. Law professor Stephen Gillers of New York University, however, said that as the rule is now interpreted, the link appeared too “attenuated” to require recusal.

But both experts said the arrangement shows that current ethics rules and disclosure requirements fail to protect public confidence in the independence of the courts. For example, although justices must report the name of companies that pay their spouses, they are not required to report the names of the companies’ clients. In this case, even if there were such a requirement, it is not clear that the Judicial Education Project would have been listed as a client, because the fees intended for Ginni Thomas were to go through Conway.

“The idea that Leonard Leo, who has a passionate ideological interest in how the court rules and who has worked hard for years to advance that interest, could pick up the phone and generate substantial compensation to Virginia Thomas, which also benefits Clarence Thomas — that idea is bad for the country, the court and the rule of law,” Gillers said. “It’s not the way the Supreme Court should do its business or allow its business to be done.”

The effort to keep Ginni Thomas’s name off paperwork makes the arrangement seem “more egregious,” said Clark.

In his statement to The Post, Leo said that Ginni Thomas’s work had no bearing on her husband’s opinions.

“I have known Clarence and Ginni Thomas since 1990. They are dear friends and are people of tremendous good will and integrity. Anybody who thinks that Justice Thomas is influenced in his work by what others say or do, including his wife Ginni, is completely ignorant of who this man is and what he stands for. And anybody who thinks Ginni Thomas would seek to influence the Supreme Court’s work is completely ignorant of the respect she has for her husband and the important role that he and his colleagues play in our society.”

Leonard Leo and the Supreme Court's push to the right

28:51

Conservatives are winning the battle for America’s courts, a triumph decades in the making. This is how they did it. (Video: Dalton Bennett, Jesse Mesner-Hage, Jorge Ribas/The Washington Post)]

Leo, 57, has for years been the behind-the-scenes leader of a network of interlocking nonprofits that has raised and spent hundreds of millions of dollars to support conservative judges and causes. Marble Freedom Trust, one of the organizations Leo chairs, received a contribution worth $1.6 billion in 2020 from a Chicago businessman, Barre Seid.

The Judicial Education Project was part of that network, although Leo was not listed on its tax filings or incorporation records. Leo’s allies founded the Judicial Education Project in 2004. Its mission was to “conduct research and educate the public on the role of the judiciary as laid out in the U.S. Constitution,” according to its tax filings. It secured tax-exempt status in 2011 and was not initially well-funded, filing paperwork with theIRS indicating it brought in less than $50,000 annually.

In 2012, it received about $1.5 million from donors whose identities were not publicly disclosed,the tax filings show. The Judicial Education Project spent $150,000 on “polling” that year, according to its tax filing. The filing does not identify which firm did the work.

The president of the Judicial Education Project that year was Neil Corkery, a Leo ally and bookkeeper for several of his nonprofit groups. Corkery certified on the group’s 2012 tax filing that no one other than the group’s officers or key employees had control over the nonprofit.

Corkery declined to comment.

Clarence Thomas has been under scrutiny since ProPublica revealed in April that Texas billionaire Harlan Crow took him on lavish vacations and also bought from Thomas and his relatives a Georgia home where Thomas’s mother lived; the transaction was not listed on the justice’s annual disclosure forms.

Senate Democrats this week held a hearing focused on Supreme Court ethics. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. declined an invitation to testify, offering instead a statement signed by all the justices in which they reaffirmed their commitment to abide by “foundational ethics principles and practices.”

During the hearing, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) mentioned Leo, who The Post has reported used the nonprofit network during the Trump administration to conduct publicity campaigns in support of nominees he helped select. “This guy doesn’t have business before the court,” Whitehouse said. “His business is the court.”

Leo’s ties to the Thomases go back decades and span their personal and professional lives.

Leo advised Clarence Thomas through his contentious confirmation process in the early 1990s and made Thomas the godfather of one of his children. Leo also has hosted the justice at his New England vacation home, according to the New York Times.

At a Federalist Society event in 2018, Thomas shared a stage with Leo and jokingly told him, “You’re the Number Three most powerful person in the world.”

The year before that, Ginni Thomas called Leo a “mentor to me” and “a hero” when she honored him with one of her Impact awards for conservative activists.

“Leonard Leo has single-handedly changed the face of the judiciary,” she said at the awards dinner, held at what was then the Trump International Hotel in Washington. “He has many hats. That isn’t even all he does. He does not really tell all that he does. But I know enough to know the man is a force of nature.”

In 2009, when Thomas founded a tea party-aligned nonprofit called Liberty Central, Leo served on the board, tax filings show. Corkery was the nonprofit’s accountant, public records show.

Thomas stepped away from Liberty Central in late 2010 amid controversy over whether its anonymous funding — including one donation for $500,000 — posed a potential conflict of interest for her husband. (Politico reported the following year that thedonation had come from Crow.)

She then formed Liberty Consulting, a for-profit firm. On her LinkedIn page, Thomas describes her work as collaborating with “citizen activists, leaders and nonprofits to succeed and have impact in defending the principles that have made America an exceptional nation.”

Liberty Consulting began receiving payments from Conway’s firm within months of its creation in 2011, documents reviewed by The Post show. On multiple occasions, Thomas contacted the Polling Company to discuss her payments, the documents show.

The documents do not indicate whether Thomas knew of Leo’s role in the arrangement with Conway’s company, or of the Judicial Education Project’s role. (Conway sold the company in 2017 to what is now known as CRC Advisors, another firm that Leo chairs.)

Since its first amicus brief, in the voting rights case in 2012, the Judicial Education Project has submitted about a dozen amicus briefs to the Supreme Court. It has argued for limiting or rolling back race-based college admissions policies,regulations on greenhouse-gas emissions and gun-control measures.

In 2014, the group filed a brief in theHobby Lobby case, which challenged a mandate in the Affordable Care Act that employers make contraception available to workers at no cost to the workers. The court’s ruling struck down part of the requirement in a split decision, with Clarence Thomas again in the narrow majority.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas at the White House in 2018. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)]

Thomas’s votes were aligned with the Judicial Education Project in six of the cases in which it filed briefs, including the Hobby Lobby case and two involving affirmative action at public universities. Thomas, a longtime critic of affirmative action, voted with the majority to uphold Michigan’s prohibition on race-based admissions at its public universities, and he dissented in a ruling that upheld admissions policies at the University of Texas.

Thomas’s votes did not align with the group’s position in three other cases, including one that largely upheld the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions. The court did not take up all the cases in which the Judicial Education Project filed briefs.

The group’s interest in the Supreme Court extended beyond the courtroom. It spent money on campaigns to support President Donald Trump’s nominations of Brett M. Kavanaugh and Neil M. Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. And it is listed as a funder in the credits of a 2020 documentary that celebrated Thomas. Clarence and Ginni Thomasare featured extensively in the documentary, titled “Created Equal: Justice Thomas In His Own Words,” talking about the justice’s upbringing and his judicial philosophy.

As the Judicial Education Project pushed for a conservative court, the group grew into a financial juggernaut and was rebranded as the 85 Fund. Between 2020 and 2021, its revenue nearly doubled from about $66 million to more than $117 million, tax forms show.

Even so, the group has never had more than a handful of employees, tax filings show. It has listed its main office address as a UPS Store situated amid rowhouses and retail stores in the Georgetown neighborhood of D.C.

Alice Crites contributed to this report.

an ah 1 23

Thanks in part to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the phrase “dark money” is heard a great deal these days in connection with U.S. politics. Citizens United, with its majority opinion by libertarian then-Justice Anthony Kennedy, defined campaign and election spending as a form of constitutionally protected “speech.” And it opened the “dark money” floodgates in a major way.

The Daily Beast’s Roger Sollenberger, in an article published by the Daily Beast on January 19, examines the “dark money machine” of former President Donald Trump. According to Sollenberger,that operation is only getting worse — and is purposely designed to be “confusing.”

“Just when it seemed like former President Donald Trump’s dark money maze couldn’t get any darker, it looks like someone shot the lights out,” Sollenbergerreports. “At least, that’s the impression experts in nonprofit law took away from a pair of previously unreported tax filings from the dark money arm of Trump’s political machine, America First Works. Those experts said it appears from the filings and other incorporation records that the advocacy group — which raised almost no money in 2021 — has closed down its original Virginia entity and opened another one in Washington, D.C. under the same name, with the same board of directors. The question is why — and it comes as Trumpworld is laying the groundwork for a second Trump term.”

On December 21, 2022, Axios’ Lachlan Markay reported that if Trump wins the 2024 election, he “will enjoy a key asset absent from his 2017 White House transition: a sprawling infrastructure already preparing to staff a new administration and immediately enact major policies.” Allies of the former president, Sollenberger notes, cite that infrastructure as a key difference between Trump and a MAGA Republican he may be running against in 2024’s GOP presidential primary: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — that is, if DeSantis decides to run. Firebrand author Ann Coulter, pundits at Fox News and Fox Business and writers for the National Review have all been pushing DeSantis for 2024.

“2021 was essentially a rebuilding year for Trump’s dark money machine,” according to Sollenberger. “That work not only came at a cost, it also appears to have happened in a black box, adding another layer of opacity on top of a fundraising and advocacy network that’s already grown so convoluted even legal experts have a hard time untangling it. In this instance, not only is it hard to follow the money, it’s hard to say for sure whether there’s all that much money to follow in the first place. At least, there appears to be a lot less of it flying around in the fractious 12 months after Trump left the White House.”

Sollenberger goes on to explain why America First Works fits the definition of a dark money operation.

“AFW is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization, which are often colloquially called ‘dark money’ groups,” Sollenberger explains. “These groups can raise funds in unlimited amounts, and while they don’t have to disclose their donors’ identities, the organizations can use a chunk of that unattributed money for political activity. According to its 2021 tax filing, which was first obtained by The Daily Beast,AFW — which raised about $51 million the previous year — doled out millions of dollars in transfers and grants. That filing shows that the funds all went to a handful of groups that make up a financial and political support network behind the former president.”

The Daily Beast reporter adds, “Those transactions included a $3 million grant to AFW’s 501(c)(3) counterpart, America First Policy Institute, and an additional $250,000 to Make America Great Again Policies — a lesser-known entity which has reported having a cost-sharing agreement with a new pro-Trump super PAC. AFW also paid another $250,000 for ‘research’ to Republican opposition research firm America Rising, according to the document.”

Sollenberger points out that if Trump’s dark money “maze” is “maddeningly difficult to follow,” that is “almost certainly part of the point,” according to government and campaign finance watchdogs.

Interviewed by the Beast, Brendan Fischer (who serves as deputy director of government for the watchdog group Documented), discussed the drop that occurred with America First Works in 2021 and told the Beast, “America First Works served as the dark money arm of Trump’s campaign in 2020, and it is not uncommon for a politically active dark money group to see a decline in revenue during a non-election year. But this drop is precipitous, and can’t be explained by election cycles alone…. The in-kind contributions of staff time and office space indicate that AFW employees were still working and on the payroll in 2021…. It also would be understandable if AFW was just going to spend down its existing funds and close up shop, but that’s not what’s going on either.”

The “name changes” with Trump-associated “dark money” operations, according to Sollenberger, are designedto be confusing.

“Last December,” Sollenberger reports, “an AFW spokesperson told The Daily Beast it wasn’t a name change; America First Policies had been ‘sold’ to America First Works 'in a private deal’…. However, previously unreported tax filings now show that another ‘America First Works’ was created that same year, this one in Washington, D.C. AFW1 reported a $140,100 grant to the new America First Works (AFW2), which AFW1 cites as a related entity.”

Sollenberger continues, “But The Daily Beast also obtained AFW2’s tax filing, which shows that the two groups share a slate of directors and that the grant comprised all of AFW2’s revenue for 2021. Almost all the money — around $132,000 of it — was spent on a ‘security deposit,’ the document shows, though it discloses no other underlying assets. Again, all of these moves and name changes seem designed to do one major thing: confuse.”

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17 (so gop) states pass laws to prot dark $

nc policy

four out of five Americans, across the political spectrum, consistently support transparency when it comes to contributions to organizations that spend money on campaigns. Unfortunately, a growing number of states, now including North Carolina, are advancing so-called “donor privacy” bills to block public access to information about who is spending big money to secretly influence our vote and our government.

Senate Bill 636, is one such bill that is on track to pass the state Senate this week. What’s more, the mandate in this bill to conceal donor information applies not just to 501(c)(3) charitable, religious, and education organizations, but also to 501(c)(4) organizations that regularly engage in substantial partisan campaign activity, 501(c)(5) labor organizations and 501(c)(6) organizations like chambers of commerce.

Basically, if someone wants to spend big in North Carolina elections, all they will need to do under this legislation is to find some nonprofit groups through which they can route the money and they can be certain that the public won’t be able to trace the cash back to them. The effect will be to render limits on campaign contributions even more meaningless than they already are.

Sadly, all these new so-called donor privacy bills work toward the same general goal: preventing the public identification of big donors to nonprofit organizations. These bills strike at the heart of the “important government interests” that the U.S. Supreme Court identified in the seminal 1976 case,Buckley v. Valeo,in which the justices found that disclosure informs voters about the sources of political spending and helps to guard against corruption.

And it’s no surprise that these “donor privacy” bills are straight out of the ALEC playbook. The organization even has a “toolkit” for it.

Under current North Carolina law, so-called IE-only (independent expenditure) PACs are subject to disclosure, and so are the groups that donate to IE-only PACs.But in dark money shell games, that only accounts for the first two entities that are spending in North Carolina elections. If the money trail goes back further, through three or four nonprofits, the state Board of Elections and the public likely won’t be able to investigate those transactions. Current campaign finance statutes don’t require such nonprofits that are a few steps removed to disclose their donors, and if the SBOE wants to investigate, the nonprofits will be able to point to the provisions that would become law in SB 636 to say that they are not even allowed to disclose those transactions.

These shell games already exist of course, but SB 636 puts up another new wall, saying that the public can’t get access to this information if the money trail goes through more than just one or two nonprofits. The proposal would make it easy for wealthy special interests to route their money through a few groups just to avoid transparency and accountability.

During the 2020 election cycle, North Carolina voters were inundated with ads that distorted the facts. For example, in state Senate District 31, the innocuously named Citizens for a Better NC Senate sent mailers that lied about candidate Terri LeGrand’s policy views. Reporters traced the ultimate funding source for the mailers back to a Virginia nonprofit that was funded, in part, by donations from other nonprofits.

The beneficiary of those false ads was state Sen. Joyce Krawiec, who is now through her sponsorship of SB 636, helping to lead the charge to allow fat-cat donors to hide their political contributions by funneling them through nonprofit groups.

A few big-name examples of 501(c)(4) groups on the GOP side that have abused these loopholes would be the NRA, Club for Growth, and Heritage Action, the 501(c)(4) sister group to the Heritage Foundation. Democratic-leaning groups, like the 1630 Fund and Future Forward, may have less name recognition, but they have also engaged in similar tactics. Even small groups with one or a few wealthy funders can take advantage of the loophole, routing their money through a series of shell LLCs and 501(c)(4) groups before it gets to the Super PACs, at which point it’s impossible to determine where the money ultimately came from.

Donor privacy laws codify these practices and prevent the public from ever finding out who is funding our elections.

The bottom line: We all pay a price when political contributions influence our government. With the Greg Lindberg scandal, the now-imprisoned insurance company executive was trying to buy favorable treatment from regulators, putting North Carolina consumers at risk.When Duke Energy lobbies officials whose campaigns it helped fund to avoid paying its fair share of environmental cleanups, we all pay the price with higher utility bills.

We can all agree that the current political system isn’t working as well as it should for regular North Carolinians and their families. And now with Senate Bill 636, state legislators are threatening to make things even worse, by making it nearly impossible for voters to learn the identities of the big-money donors trying to influence our elections.

Rather than carving our legal protections for nonprofits’ political spending, state lawmakers should require real transparency regarding the sources of big money in our elections to create more government accountability, less influence for wealthy special interests, and less political corruption.

Melissa Price Kromm is the executive director of N.C. Voters for Clean Elections.

judd

12 22

andrew Ross Sorkin speaks with FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried during the New York Times DealBook Summit on November 30, 2022 (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, better known as SBF, burst onto the political scene and cast himself as the financial savior of the Democratic Party. In May, SBF said he was prepared to spend up to $1 billion to help Democrats win in 2022 and 2024.

Like many of SBF's claims, that turned out to be bluster. Public campaign finance filings show that SBF spent just $41 million in the 2022 midterm elections. Much of that was spent propping up unsuccessful Democratic primary candidates, including $11 million to Carrick Flynn, who lost a Congressional primary in Oregon. Still, SBF made substantial donations to Democratic Super PACs, including $6 million to the House Majority PAC, the Super PAC affiliated with Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). The spending made SBF one of the top two donors to Democrats in the 2022 cycle. (Billionaire George Soros technically spent more, but most of it was donated to Soros' own PAC and not distributed.)

When FTX collapsed and declared bankruptcy, the media portrayed it as a serious blow to Democrats.

[gfx]

Even based on public campaign finance reports, this was an oversimplification. SBF donated to Republicans favorable to crypto, including Senator-elect Katie Britt (R-AL), Senator John Hoeven (R-ND), and Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK). SBF also donated to the National Republican Campaign Committee, which supports the election of Republicans to the House. Further, another FTX executive, Ryan Salame, publicly donated about $23 million in the midterms, and almost all of it went to Republicans.

FTX itself donated to a slew of Republican Super PACs just before the election, including $1 million to the Senate Leadership Fund (SLF), $750,000 to Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF), and 150,000 to the American Patriots PAC. These donations would have almost certainly required the approval of SBF, the company's then-CEO.

Now, SBF has admitted that his image as a top supporter of Democratic candidates was a ruse. After FTX's bankruptcy, in a phone interview with crypto content creator Tiffany Fong, SBF said that he gave just as much money to Republicans in the 2022 cycle. SBF just made sure that those donations were secret.

I donated about the same amount to both parties this year. That is not generally known because, despite Citizens United being literally the highest-profile Supreme Court case of the decade and the thing everyone talks about when they talk about campaign finance, for some reason, in practice, no one can possibly fathom the idea that someone in practice actually gave dark. All my Republican donations were dark. And the reason was not for regulatory reasons. It's just reporters freak the fuck out if you donate to a Republican. They are all secretly liberal and didn't want to have that fight. So I made all the Republican ones dark.

If SBF is telling the truth, it would make him one of the Republicans' top donors.Since much of SBF's spending on behalf of Democrats went to failed Democratic primary candidates, it's possible that SBF spent significantly more helping Republicans than Democrats in the general election.

SBF blames "reporters" for his deception, but he chose to hold himself out as someone who was willing to spend $1 billion to elect Democrats. That generated an enormous amount of media coverage and raised the profile of FTX. All the while, he was engaged in the much more mundane task of buying influence from both parties. How did SBF do it?

The top Super PAC for Republican Senate candidates was Mitch McConnell's SLF. But the largest donor, by far, to the SLF is One Nation. Through September 30, 2022, One Nation donated $53.5 million to the SLF. Like the SLF, One Nation is run bySteven Law,a former Chief of Staff to McConnell. But unlike the SLF, One Nation is organized as a 501(c)4 non-profit organization and can keep its donors secret. One Nation can collect unlimited donations from people like SBF, keep their identities secret, and then pass the money on to the SLF. The top Super PAC for Republican House candidates, CLF, also has anaffiliated non-profit, the American Action Network, that operates the same way.

The truth about SBF's political spending is an example of his duplicity. But, more importantly, it illustrates how the public has no idea who is actually funding candidates in the United States. The largest sums of money spent on elections come from anonymous donors. Making disclosure effectively optional allows unscrupulous individuals like SBF to manipulate public perception.

The DISCLOSE Act is one solution to this problem. It would require "organizations spending money in elections – including super PACs and 501(c)(4) dark money groups – to promptly disclose donors who have given $10,000 or more during an election cycle." If the DISCLOSE Act was law, SBF's donations to all candidates would be public. The bill would also "crack down on the use of shell corporations to hide the identity of the donor by requiring companies spending money in elections to disclose their true owners."

The Senate brought the DISCLOSE Act up for a vote in September. All Democratic members voted for it, and all Republican members opposed it. Since the bill required 60 votes to pass, it failed.

"The American people are fed up with dark money influence campaigns that rig their government against them and stymie their priorities," Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), who sponsored the legislation, said. "The DISCLOSE Act would shine a light on special interest spending to neutralize its toxic effect, giving Americans’ voices a chance to be heard. Republicans heeded the wishes of dark money donors today, but the fight to pass this bill isn’t over."

grassrootsbeer...Koch-Controlled Organizations Spent More Than $1.1 Billion During the 2020 Election Cycle

Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) series,Part 1 of 4!

Connor Gibson

Sep 7

I recently wrote a four-part barrage of articles on Charles Koch’s advocacy network for the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD). I’m crossposting them here, with CMD’s permission: see part 2.

Part 1: Koch-Controlled Organizations Spent More Than $1.1 Billion During the 2020 Election Cycle

In the 2020 election cycle, 28 organizations controlled by Charles Koch, his family, and Koch Industries executives spent a combined $1.1 billion, primarily to influence public policy and politics in the U.S., and had net revenues of $2.7 billion.

By the end of 2020, the combined assets of these nonprofits totaled $2.8 billion, an increase of $1.5 billion from the beginning of the year.

Other comparably large conservative financiers such as the Bradley, Scaife and Searle foundations show significantly less in net revenue, expenditures, and assets.

Click image to open the interactive table!

These latest figures eclipse the political spending disclosed by Koch Industries, the company that serves as the engine for all Koch-controlled nonprofits. In comparison, Koch Industries spent only $22.4 million on federal lobbying and campaign contributions in the 2020 election cycle.

But Charles Koch's organizations regularly spend over half a billion dollars annually, with a total of $607.9 million in expenses in 2019, and $638.6 million in 2020.

In 2020 alone, Koch-controlled organizations raised over $2.2 billion dollars—more than four times what they collectively raised the previous year. Before 2020, the combined revenue of Koch-controlled nonprofit organizations never reached the $1-billion threshold, with $501.1 million in net revenue in 2019, and approximately $650 million in 2018.

In order to avoid any double-counting, these net revenue and net expense totals account for all grants and expenses exchanged between Koch-controlled organizations. Those payments can be viewed here:

Click image to open interactive table!

These calculations likely fail to account for the total policy and political spending overseen by Charles Koch since Koch Industries and a fleet of Koch-controlled limited liability companies (LLCs) do not disclose similar finances. In rare instances of disclosure, Koch Industries and members of the Koch family have been known to invest millions more in policy-influencing organizations.

Charles Koch's Return on Political Investments

Despite waning news coverage, Charles Koch’s donor network remains unique in terms of its size and its top-down control by executives of a single company.

Unlike large donor-advised funds that finance a wide array of charities and nonpolitical causes, the bulk of Koch's "Stand Together" cluster of groups has coordinated around election and policy priorities.

Charles Koch's political fleet played a significant role in steering the policy priorities of the Trump administration, due in part to its influence in staffing the former president's cabinet.Even though Koch told reporters he was so displeased with Trump that he might even support Democrats—a rhetorical trick he pulls every few years—the tens of millions of dollars his organizations invested in U.S. Senate and House races went almost exclusively to Republicans.

In addition to showing obvious partisan preferences, Koch has financed groups involved in extremist activity, including the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. In 2022, Koch Industries is still financing many politicians who worked to invalidate the results of the 2020 presidential election, despite signaling to Politico that it would discontinue such support.

This political spending continues to pay off during the Biden presidency. Last year Koch exploited the Democrats' weak majority by undermining the comprehensive climate and infrastructure legislative package known as Build Back Better. The Koch machine also spent heavily to tank the voting and election reform policy known as the For the People Act, despite knowing full well that doing so went against popular sentiment across the political spectrum.

Each of these counterattacks fed into another major priority for Koch: installing radical judges to the U.S. Supreme Court who are willing to do the bidding of the wealthiest people and corporations in the country. His astroturf organization Americans for Prosperity (AFP) spent "seven figures" on efforts to support the confirmations of Trump nominees Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney-Barrett—for a total price tag of between $3 and $10 million.

This corporate-captured Supreme Court is already delivering victories to the Koch network. The Court supported an attack on IRS donor disclosure rules advanced by the AFP Foundation—the sister group of the organization that supported the confirmations of Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Coney-Barrett. Most recently, at the behest of a number of Koch-controlled or Koch-funded organizations and attorneys general, the Court struck down key aspects of the Environmental Protection Agency's climate change mitigation regulations.

The next two articles in this series will explore more about the rapid growth and evolution of Charles Koch's powerful political machine.

Methodology notes:

The figures reported here are drawn from the financials of 25 nonprofits regulated by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and three super PACs regulated by the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

Our calculations include money raised and spent by three Koch-controlled super PACs: AFP Action, Stand Together PAC, and Freedom Partners Action Fund, even though two of these (Stand Together PAC and Freedom Partners Action Fund) have been terminated. Asset totals for these FEC-regulated organizations were sourced from each super PAC’s reported cash on hand at the end of each year, based on year-end reports or termination reports filed with the FEC.

For the purposes of this article, "Koch-controlled" specifically means organizations under direct operational control of Charles Koch, his family members, or his fellow executives at Koch Industries. Most of these groups were founded by the Koch family.

Noteworthy groups heavily financed by Koch Industries or governed in part by Koch executives were excluded if they are not operated at the ultimate discretion of Charles Koch, his family, or his company. Among the many groups excluded are the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the Cato Institute, the Kansas Policy Institute, the Independent Women's Forum, and the American Institute for Economic Research.

Our calculations exclude numerous Koch-controlled LLCs that are part of the network's overall political operations, such as i360 and Stand Together Communications (formerly, In Pursuit Of). Many expenditures to these LLCs are disclosed in the IRS 990 filings of Koch-controlled organizations and super PACs, but given that the revenue and expenditures of the LLCs themselves are undisclosed, those figures have been excluded.

While most of these organizations exist primarily to influence matters of policy or politics, groups such as the Koch Cultural Trust and others are involved in philanthropic activity. Some spending by the Koch Family Foundation (formerly known as the Fred C. and Mary R. Koch Foundation) relates to student scholarships for dependents of Koch company employees. The Stand Together Foundation finances many charities that are not inherently political, but are generally tied to Koch's ideology of limited government and unregulated markets. The Stand Together Foundation was born out of a crisis communications push following Koch’s poor public relations in the 2010s, a topic that will be examined in part three of this series.

connor g emil CMD

pt 1 https://substack.com/redirect/4dc75e64-2da4-4533-a381-7a9ba81848d5?r=1n6e6

...a previously unreported 501(c)(4) “social welfare” political nonprofit called CCKC4 received a giant cash injection of $1.2 billion in 2020, making it a potentially formidable political player.

CCKC4 is controlled by Charles Koch’s son, Chase Koch. Chase Koch is the president of Koch Disruptive Technologies (KDT), the venture capital subsidiary of Koch Industries.

The cash transfer increased CCKC4’s assets from $37 million in 2019 to $1.3 billion at the close of 2020, significantly exceeding the value of the other largest Koch-controlled nonprofits like the Charles Koch Foundation ($462 million) and Charles Koch Institute ($364 million).

The $1.2 billion received by CCKC4 represents over half of the $2.7 billion in combined net revenue received by 28 Koch-controlled nonprofit organizations from 2019-2020. Most of the organization’s massive cash injection appears to have been invested as a basis for the organization’s endowment.

CCKC4 presumably stands for “Charles Chase Koch 501(c)(4).” It has no website nor public presence. CCKC4 filed IRS 990s in 2018 and 2019, and received its determination letter confirming its tax-exempt status in May of 2020.

The group lists its purpose simply as “grant-making,” but it has only made two grants since coming into existence. In 2019, CCKC4 gave $10 million to the Charles Koch Foundation, of which Chase is a board member.

Unlike the majority of Koch-controlled 501(c)(3) nonprofits that cannot primarily engage in political activity, CCKC4 is a dark money 501(c)(4) “social welfare” organization that can legally funnel up to half of its spending into political races. This indicates Chase Koch’s continued interest in political influence, contradicting his public relations push as he took on a prominent role at Koch Industries.

The group’s IRS tax filings list the $1.2 billion infusion as unspecified payments from individuals, $953 million of which was in the form of stock and other securities.

“The $1.2 billion funding of CCKC4 makes it one of the largest section 501(c)(4) social welfare organizations and a potential major player in political and policy circles,” said Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer in an email to the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD). Mayer is a law professor at the University of Notre Dame Law School.

The scale of the organization is unusual for a 501(c)(4) organization, but not unprecedented. Professor Mayer compared the organization’s sizable assets to $3.4 billion reported by Fund for Policy Reform in 2019. The Fund is one of many organizations linked to the liberal political financier George Soros.

“The decision by the Koch family and these other billionaires to fund 501(c)(4)s at this level demonstrates the important role that 501(c)(4)s serve as philanthropic and policy vehicles that are not subject to the limits on political activity faced by 501(c)(3) charities,” said Mayer, whose research expertise relates to politically active nonprofit organizations.

“It also demonstrates the importance of an obscure tax law change in 2015 that exempted gifts to 501(c)(4)s from the federal gift tax. Before that statutory change, it was uncertain whether the gift tax applied to such gifts,” Mayer said. “Gifts that exceed the annual gift tax exclusion ($16,000 per recipient as of 2022) generally count toward the exemption amount, and most very wealthy individuals use up the lifetime exemption through gifts to their children and other family members.”

CMD contacted a Koch Industries executive who serves as director of several Koch-controlled nonprofits for comment, but received no response.

CCKC4 routed $125 million to a Koch-owned LLC

IRS disclosures show that Chase Koch’s nonprofit circulates substantial amounts of dark money between limited liability companies (LLC) controlled by the Koch family.

CCKC4 paid $125 million to the Non-Profit 1888 Feeder Fund, LLC in 2020.

Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings indicate the Non-Profit 1888 Feeder-Fund has gross assets exceeding $2.1 billion as of May 2022. It is an asset allocation fund that manages diversified portfolios of investments, registered to operate in the states of Colorado, Delaware, and Kansas.

Professor Mayer noted the possibility that the $125 million sent from CCKC4 to the Nonprofit 1888 Feeder Fund could reflect the value of a specific investment the LLC is managing for CCKC4. “It is common for large investors to make their investments through LLCs that pool funds from multiple investors,” Mayer said.

The Non-Profit 1888 Feeder-Fund is one of several subsidiaries of 1888 Investments, LLC, which reported several key facts in recent SEC filings:

It manages over $16.5 billion in assets for 60 clients.
Its clients include 41 “high net wealth individuals.” It is unclear if these wealthy individuals include donors to Charles Koch’s political network.
Its clients include 13 nonprofits, which are not specified. It’s unclear if these are only Koch family trusts, or if they include Koch’s politically oriented organizations like the Stand Together Chamber of Commerce or Americans for Prosperity.
It has 11 employees. Its employees and board overlap significantly with Koch Industries.
Its most recent SEC investment disclosures show a total of $78.3 million invested in four publicly traded companies. $72 million of that total is invested in Blue Owl Capital.

Both 1888 Investments and the Non-Profit 1888 Feeder-Fund are subsidiaries of 1888 Management Fund.

1888 is the year that Charles Koch’s grandfather, Harry Koch, immigrated to the United States.Bloomberg was first to report on the company in 2016:

With little fanfare, the Kochs are building an operation called 1888 Management LLC to manage part of their personal wealth. Initially tucked inside the private Koch Industries Inc.,1888 has been quietly scouting for personal investments for the Kochs, whose money and influence have helped shape the modern conservative movement in the U.S.

The ultimate size of the parent LLC, 1888 Management, is unclear. Bloomberg reported that someone familiar with 1888 Management claimed it was managing over $2 billion in investments.

CCKC4 received $30 million from another Koch-controlled LLC, EFPRP Investments, LLC. The purpose of this transaction is not clear, and little public information exists regarding EFPRP Investments.

The arrangement between nonprofits and LLC’s allows donors to skirt nonprofit disclosure laws and spend more dark money on political causes, both domestic and international. The Koch-funded Philanthropy Roundtable advocates this strategy:

LLCs are not subject to annual distribution requirements; they give donors the latitude to invest in domestic and foreign for-profit ventures; they can be used to fund ballot initiatives, direct lobbying, political campaigns, and individual candidates; and they can be used to support foreign charities without the requirement imposed on private foundations to determine that prospective foreign grantees are the equivalents of Section 501c3 public charities.

The next article in this series will examine one large grant that CCKC4 made to an independent donor advised fund, which the Koch network appears to be using to further obscure its spending.

YIKES SEE AMICUS

attempt to use NAACP v Ala/14th to make corp dark $ CONST PROTECTED?!

...

The negative effects that these new amicus campaigns have on our democ-

racy are twofold. The wealthy few fund the campaigns, excluding the majority

of Americans from the process and exacerbating preexisting countermajoritarian

and inequality concerns. And without a mechanism for disclosure, the general

public currently does not, and cannot, know how judicial reasoning is influenced

by masked private actors.

...

Donors have reaped enormous returns on their investments. As I have doc-

umented, the :{Roberts Court has handed down over eighty partisan Republican

5-4 decisions 87 that benefit an easily identifiable Republican Party-donor inter-}:

est.88

:{:{These include decisions that remove constraints on anonymous giving

(e.g., Citizens United v. FEC, 89 Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta 90), as}:

well as decisions that weaken the power of countervailing institutions like labor

unions (e.g., Janus v. American Federation of State, City & Municipal Employees,}:

158:{

Council 3191), regulatory agencies (e.g., Seila Law v. Consumer Financial Protection}:

Bureau92), and the civil jury (e.g., Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis93).

The effects of this litigation strategy on our democracy are frightening: the

courts are becoming an arena for enacting policies by judicial decree that are too

unpopular to pass through democratically elected legislatures. These coordi-

nated efforts warp the judiciary toward anonymous, ultrawealthy donor inter-

ests, all without the public ever learning about the role of dark-money interests

in shaping the law. The Supreme Court was already, by its nature, an avenue for

countermajoritarian ideas and policies to prosper.

But as Barry Friedman explains, especially when the Court is acting during a period of judicial supremacy—as it arguably is now—

the counter-majoritarian aspect of the institution will

flourish.94 Alongside those concerns, the emergence of the dark-money amicus

machine increases the probability that the Court’s rulings will run counter to the

will of the American people (i.e., counter to democracy), and instead for the

benefit of the hidden interests that had a secret hand in putting Justices on the

Court and then filed masked amicus briefs...

151

:{Sure enough,:{ Chief Justice Roberts’s}: ruling in favor of the Koch network—a:{6-3 decision with all Republican-appointed Justices in the majority—cast doubt}:

on the constitutionality of disclosure requirements of any kind, turbocharging

the kind of secretive influence through which the Koch operation and its allies

already dominate the public sphere.56}:

:{:{Significantly, many of the donors behind these amici lobbied for the confir-}:

mation of the Justices hearing the case. For instance, Americans for Prosperity,

the 501(c)(4) group directly affiliated with the plaintiff Foundation, spent “mil-

lions” of dollars on a “Full Scale Campaign” to confirm Justice Barrett to the

bench while AFPF’s cert petition was pending before the Court.57}:

Yet, in spite of all this lobbying on her behalf by an affiliate of one of the parties, Justice Barrett

rebuffed calls for her recusal in this matter by me and others—a recusal seem-

ingly required under the Court’s own due-process precedent58—and heard the

case anyway.59

D. Amicus Briefs and Dark-Money Influence on the Courts

Amicus briefs play an important role in the appellate process. Indeed, I have

filed many myself.60 Interested parties should be able to use amicus briefs to ad-

vance their view of the law or their conception of the public interest or to educate

...

https://www.yalelawjournal.org/pdf/F7.WhitehouseFinalDraftWeb_v4zwakx5.pdf

https://rollcall.com/2019/08/06/conservative-judicial-group-is-top-donor-to-gop-state-elections-arm/

the dark money group that spent millions on ads supporting Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court was the biggest contributor to Republicans’ state legislative campaign arm in the first half of 2019, in what may be an effort to affect judicial races.

The Judicial Crisis Network, a group dedicated to elevating conservative judges, spent a combined $22 million to promote the confirmations of Gorsuch and Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, and contributed $1 million of the roughly $8.2 million theRepublican State Leadership Committeeraised through June 30 of this year, according to a report the RSLC filed last week. The RSLC then transferred about $1.2 million to itsJudicial Fairness Initiative — nearly all of what the state judicial campaign group raised all year.

**[Trump’s federal judge pace matches recent presidents — but with a big twist]

The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, the equivalent to the RSLC, raised a similar amount from unions.

Representatives for the RSLC and Judicial Crisis Network did not return messages seeking comment. Democrats and other critics have slammed the Judicial Crisis Network for refusing to disclose their donors. As a 501(c)(4) organization, the group is not legally required to.

**[The GOP senator who hasn’t raised any campaign money so far]

Douglas Keith, a lawyer with theBrennan Center for Justice, a liberal legal group housed at New York University’s law school, said the contribution was likely meant to affect state judicial races, though the campaign finance disclosures didn’t say definitively.

“The disclosures are what they are, so for all we know — more importantly, for all the public knows — it could be that the Judicial Crisis Network is giving money to be spent on state legislative races,” Keith said. “But it could also be that they’re just giving this money so that it can be spent on state Supreme Court races.”

It’s unclear how closely the RSLC and Judicial Crisis Network work together, but they often support the same candidates, Keith said.

“Their interests certainly seem to be aligned in these races,” he said.

In the 2018 cycle, the Judicial Crisis Network also spent on lower-court races in Arkansas and West Virginia, Keith said.

Conservative groups have long targeted state races, which has been crucial to building their power since the 1970s, said Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, a professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University who has written about conservative efforts to affect state politics and policy.

“Conservatives have made a concerted effort to invest in building cross-state power,” he said. “That is to say, not just having a presence within states but moving between states to wage electoral campaigns and legislative campaigns to push state policy and politics to the right.”

The RSLC also had backing from top pharmaceutical and energy companies in the first half of 2019.

Though conservatives have focused more than liberals on state-level campaigns, there are signs that is changing, Hertel-Fernandez said.

The 2019 midyear reports show unions provided something of a counterweight for the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, the national group working on Democrats’ state legislative campaigns. The DLCC raised $1.15 million from its top seven labor contributors, including its largest single contributor, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which gave $500,000. Six other unions gave the group at least $100,000 each.

The DLCC does not have a wing dedicated to judicial races.

The Democratic group raised about $8.5 million in the first half of the year, securing contributions from the same pharmaceutical companies — including $175,000 from the industry’s lobby group, PhRMA — and oil and gas companies that gave to Republicans, though the RSLC tended to receive larger contributions from those sectors.

The DLCC had an apparent advantage on gun issues, raising $100,000 from the gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety. The National Rifle Association didn’t write a check to the RSLC in the first half of 2019, though the group did contribute $85,000 to the Republican Governors Association.

The DLCC held a significant advantage over the RSLC in the number of donors above the reporting threshold of an aggregate of $200. The Republican group listed just over 900 contributors, while the DLCC listed 11,900.

===

ref

https://wallstreetonparade.com/**2021/01**/the-untold-story-of-how-the-republican-attorneys-general-association-funded-with-large-sums-from-corporate-felons-including-oxycontin-drug-pusher-purdue-participated-in-recruiting-the-mob-that-atta/

ifthere was ever a DEFCON 1 warning to Americans that campaign finance reform must be a top priority of the incoming President Biden administration, it is the cautionary tale of the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA) and their recruitment efforts of the mob that descended on the Capitol of the United States on January 6. Five people are now dead from that siege, including a Capitol Police officer, and dozens injured. The U.S. Attorneys office for Washington, D.C. has also confirmed that two live pipe bombs with timers were found in front of the Republican National Committee and Democrat National Committee, both located near the Capitol.

When one thinks of a group with the word “Association” in their name, it invokes the idea that this is a fraternal organization or a trade association. What doesn’t come to mind is that it is a campaign financing group to elect Republican Attorneys General – the highest law enforcement officer in a state – by taking vast sums of money from the very companies committing crimes in those states. But that is what RAGA has been doing for many years now.

RAGA defines itself as follows on its website:

“The Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA) is the only national organization whose mission is electing Republicans to the Office of State Attorney General (AG). RAGA collaborates with our current Republican attorneys general and recruits outstanding candidates, providing them assistance with research, message development, and financial support.”

The day after the attack on the nation’s Capitol, Jamie Corey at the watchdog group,Documented, released an audio tape of robo calls being made by a unit of RAGA. The robo call message went like this:

“I’m calling for the Rule of Law Defense Fund with an important message. The ‘March to Save America’ is tomorrow in Washington D.C. at the Ellipse in President’s Park between E St. and Constitution Avenue on the south side of the White House, with doors opening at 7:00 a.m. At 1:00 p.m., we will march to the Capitol building and call on congress to stop the steal. We are hoping patriots like you will join us to continue to fight to protect the integrity of our elections. For more information, visit MarchtoSaveAmerica.com. This call is paid for and authorized by the Rule of Law Defense Fund, 202-796-5838.”

By January 5, the date of the above robo calls to potentially thousands of people urging them to “stop the steal,” there was no evidence of any significant election fraud. No one was in a better position to know that as a fact than the State Attorneys General who had just watched their states certify the votes in early December. In addition, William Barr, the Attorney General of the United States who was selected for that position by Donald Trump, told the media on December 1 that the Justice Department had uncovered no evidence of widespread voter fraud that would have changed the outcome of the presidential election.

The Executive Committee of RAGA includes Attorneys General from nine states (see above graphic). Its Chairman is Chris Carr, Attorney General of Georgia. For RAGA to participate in fomenting a riot at the Capitol on incendiary information it knew to be false demands a thorough and formal FBI and Congressional investigation. RAGA has thrown a bone to the media by firing its Executive Director, Adam Piper. But the entire structure of RAGA needs deep scrutiny.

The Rule of Law Defense Fund is the dark money fundraising arm of RAGA and located at the same address and suite number as RAGA according to its IRS filings. Both the Rule of Law Defense Fund and RAGA were at varying times listed as “Coalition Partners” on websites set up to promote the January 6 event. While many of these websites have been taken down, we were able to access them at the Internet Archives’ Wayback Machine, which captures website content on past dates. Website names used to promote the January 6 event include: TrumpMarch.com, MarchtoSaveAmerica.com, and WildProtest.com, among others. The obvious question, of course, is why would State Attorneys General want to associate themselves as a Coalition Partner with a group calling itself WildProtest.com, not to mention a false claim of a stolen election.

The WildProtest.com website told its readers this on the day before the event:

“We the People must take to the US Capitol lawn and steps and tell Congress #DoNotCertify on #JAN6! Congress cannot certify this fraudulent Electoral College. Our presence in Washington D.C. will let Members of Congress know thatwe stand with Rep. Mo Brooks and his colleagues in the House of Representatives who will bravely object to the certification of the Electoral College. We’re in need of at least one Senator. We’ve identified six (seven including Senator-elect Tommy Tuberville) that could join our cause. StopTheSteal.us is working closely, whipping the vote up, with patriots in the Congress.”

Yesterday, 34 Democrats in the House of Representatives signed a letter asking for an investigation by the Capitol Police and Sergeant of Arms in the House and Senate into unnamed persons giving potentially “reconnaissance” tours in the Capitol building the day before the attack. The letter states that on the day before the attack, January 5, “there were unusually large groups of people throughout the Capitol who could only have gained access to the Capitol Complex from a Member of Congress or a member of their staff.”

The Rule of Law Defense Fund is structured as a dark money, tax exempt 501(c)(4) group so that its donors can remain anonymous. Each year it provides hundreds of thousands of dollars to RAGA, in part to pay large salaries.

Exactly why RAGA needs a dark money group is hard to say. RAGA itself is accepting millions of dollars a year in contributions from some of the creepiest corporations in America, including those that have admitted to multiple felony counts brought by the U.S. Department of Justice.

RAGA is structured as a 527 tax-exempt organization that is allowed to raise unlimited funds from individuals and corporations.The IRS requires that it file an 8872 form each quarter showing its contributions and expenditures. We’ve spent this week looking at those forms. It’s not a pretty picture.

Purdue Pharma has given more than $570,000 to RAGA in just the three-year spanbetween 2015 and 2017. In 2007, Purdue Pharma was fined $600 million by the U.S. Department of Justice on charges that it “illegally marketed and promoted OxyContin by falsely claiming that OxyContin was less addictive, less subject to abuse and diversion, and less likely to cause withdrawal symptoms than other pain medications — all in an effort to maximize its profits.” The company clearly viewed that as a slap on the wrist. Last October, the Justice Department brought three felony charges against Purdue and $8 billion in fines. At the time of last year’s announcement by the Justice Department, Tim McDermott of the Drug Enforcement Administration said this: “This resolution closes a particularly sad chapter in the ongoing battle against opioid addiction. Purdue Pharma actively thwarted the United States’ efforts to ensure compliance and prevent diversion. The devastating ripple effect of Purdue’s actions left lives lost and others addicted.”

ADDICTION = EXTRACTION? AHA]

RAGA seems to have a fondness for companies addicting young people. Reynolds American, whose cigarette brands include Camel, Newport, Pall Mall and others, has given more than $400,000 to RAGA since 2014. Altria, parent of Philip Morris, whose brands include Marlboro, Parliament, Benson & Hedges, Virginia Slims and others, has enriched RAGA to the tune of $484,154 since 2014.

In 1999, the U.S. Department of Justice sued Philip Morris, Reynolds and seven other large tobacco companies under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). The government charged that the tobacco companies engaged in a 40-year conspiracy to mislead the public about the dangers of smoking, distort the dangers of secondhand smoke, and target the youth market as “replacement smokers.” In 2006, following a nine-month trial, Judge Gladys Kessler of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued a 1,683 page opinion. The Court found that “Cigarette smoking causes disease, suffering, and death.”

When we saw Big Tobacco was funding RAGA, we knewfossil fuel companies would be there also. Indeed they were, to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars from Koch Industries and Anadarko Petroleum. Why did we know that fossil fuel companies would be donating if Big Tobacco was funding RAGA? Because the makeup of RAGA’s donors looks very much like donors to a Koch brothers’ front group called Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE), a 1984 group founded by the late David Koch of Koch Industries and Richard Fink, a former professor of economics at George Mason University, who had a long career at Koch Industries beginning in 1990.

In 2013 the health professionals’ journal, Tobacco Control, published a comprehensive report funded by the National Institute of Health (NIH), a federal agency. The report was titled ‘To Quarterback Behind the Scenes, Third Party Efforts’: The Tobacco Industry and the Tea Party.

The report explains that Citizens for a Sound Economy, which split into the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity (a big funder of the Tea Party movement) and FreedomWorks in 2004, “supported the agendas of the tobacco and other industries, including oil, chemical, pharmaceutical and telecommunications, and was funded by them.” The report indicates that between 1991 and 2002, Philip Morris and other tobacco companies gave CSE at least $5.3 million.

Philip Morris and other tobacco companies launched an offensive in 1994 and 1995, using nonprofit front groups including CSE, to undermine the credibility of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) which was attempting to regulate second-hand smoke.One Philip Morris memo in late 1994 indicated that CSE and other front groups were working “to define the FDA as an agency out of control and one failing to live up to its congressional mandate regarding regulation of drugs and medical devices.”

As we have previously reported, Koch Industries and its front group, Freedom Partners, have played a central role in the Trump administration. See our report here.

The largest funder of RAGA is theJudicial Crisis Networkwhich has contributed $5 million to RAGA since 2015. The bulk of the money flowing to the Judicial Crisis Network has come from a dark money group called the Wellspring Committee, which abruptly shuttered its operations in December 2018. Wellspring has given the Judicial Crisis Network over $52 million from unknown sources. If that sounds likelegalized money laundering, you’re thinking correctly.

An IRS public tax filing by the Wellspring Committee for tax year 2016 shows that it received a whopping $32 million (more than three times its prior year’s income) in dark money. According to MapLight, $28.5 million of the $32 million came from a single, anonymous donor. In 2016, Wellspring took 72 percent of its annual income and gave it to the Judicial Crisis Network, a stunning $23,454,997. In turn, the next year, 2017, the Judicial Crisis Network handed a whopping $2.9 million in a single year to RAGA. (What kind of Attorneys General group would accept $2.9 million and have no idea from whom the money was actually coming?)

The Center for Responsive Politics has connected Wellspring to Charles Koch’s network, writing: “Since Wellspring’s birth from a short-lived union of the Koch network and GOP political operatives leading up to the 2008 election, it has accounted for more than 90 percent of JCN’s [Judicial Crisis Network’s] total funding.” Charles Koch is the billionaire Chairman and CEO of the fossil fuels juggernaut, Koch Industries, one of the largest private corporations in the world, with vast interests in oil, refineries, chemicals, paper and trading.

In addition to taking money from the opioid criminals, cigarette manufacturers, and climate change denial funders, RAGA also accepted large sums from two Wall Street banks that have also pleaded guilty to criminal charges brought by the U.S. Department of Justice.

JPMorgan Chase had donated more than $86,000 to RAGA since 2017. In the span of the last six years, JPMorgan Chase has pleaded guilty to six felony counts. Throughout that period, its Board has allowed its Chairman and CEO, Jamie Dimon, to keep his job. Dimon’s annual compensation is now $31.5 million.

Citigrouphas just one felony count, to which it has admitted guilt, but its long rap sheet strongly suggests a criminal enterprise. See our 2017 report: A Private Citizen Would Be in Prison If He Had Citigroup’s Rap Sheet. Since 2014, Citigroup and its subsidiaries have donated $331,745 to RAGA.

If we step back and look through a wider lens at the mob attack on the Capitol on January 6, and delve deeply into the money and groups involved, it becomes a screaming battle cry to reform campaign financing and dark money groups in America.

recall in api denial $ some recip GAVE 50K$ to donors?

https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/kim-guilfoyle/

Inside sources with knowledge of the controversy surrounding Kim Guilfoyle appear to be doing damage control in response to the reports raising questions about her $60,000 payout prior to the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

A number of unnamed sources, who may likely be allies of Guilfoyle, have come forward with details about the origin of the reported $60,000 she allegedly received for her brief appearance at the "Stop the Steal" rally on Jan. 6.

According to Mediaite, the funds are said to have come from "a single wealthy donor." The latest claims come just days after Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), a member of the House Select Committee investigating the Capitol insurrection, sparked a media firestorm when she divulged details about the five-figure payment to CNN's Jake Tapper.

According to Lofgren, Guilfoyle had received $60,000 for a speech that lasted all of "two and a half minutes” when she did the introduction for former President Donald Trump's appearance at the rally. On Tuesday, June 14, New York Times correspondent Maggie Haberman spoke with CNN where she revealed “People in Trumpworld are sharing that clip.”

“They are aghast that this is the amount of money that she got for a speech to introduce her boyfriend. They couldn’t really get over, I had one former adviser say to me, essentially, these were folks who were raising money in small amounts from retirees, telling them this was going to some legal fight that didn’t really happen,” Haberman said.

Hours later, two inside sources spoke with The Washington Post‘s Isaac Stanley-Becker and Beth Reinhard. Offering an explanation for the payout, they indicated that the fee paid to Guilfoyle had been siphoned through a political action committee known as through Turning Point Action and was paid by one donor.

For her appearance, she was compensated $60,000 by Turning Point Action, a conservative nonprofit led byCharlie Kirk, according to two people with knowledge of her compensation who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.

The two people said the sponsoring donor was Julie Fancelli, the 72-year-old daughter of the founder of the Publix grocery store chain.

Eight days before the Jan. 6 rally, Fancelli wired $650,000 to several organizations that helped stage and promote the event.

In addition to the reports about the payment Guilfoyle received, the House Select Committee also revealed Trump raised approximately $250 million for his "official election defense fund” that reportedly does not even exist.

DAF $ c3 c4 shuffle?

FTM$

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

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