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DOJ expands probe of Republicans who allegedly tried to 'infiltrate' DNC before 2020 election: report

Alex HendersonJune 09, 2023

2020 was an incredibly tumultuous year in the United States, from the COVID-19 pandemic to the murder of George Floyd and the unrest that followed to a bitter presidential race. Former President Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election results are the focus of two separate criminal investigations: one by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and special counsel Jack Smith, the other by Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis.

Trump's MAGA supporters were willing to go to great lengths to get him reelected in 2020, including — according to CNN's Kara Scannell — possibly trying to "infiltrate" the Democratic National Committee (DNC) "ahead of the election."

Federal DOJ prosecutors, Scannell reports, have been investigating those efforts and "have subpoenaed Richard Seddon, a former British intelligence official, and Susan Gore, a Republican donor and heiress to the Gore-Tex fortune" in connection with their probe.

READ MORE: Jack Smith wants to go after Trump's 'good news boy' to crush his January 6 defense: legal expert

"The investigation appears to stem from a 2021 New York Times article that, citing interviews and documents, detailed 'an undercover operation by conservatives to infiltrate progressive groups, political campaigns, and the offices of Democratic as well as moderate Republican elected officials during the 2020 election cycle,'" Scannell reports. "One of the subpoenas, which was sent in the past two weeks, seeks documents and communications from January 2018 through the present involving numerous limited liability companies and individuals, including Gore; Seddon; Erik Prince, the security contractor and brother to former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos; and James O’Keefe, the former head of Project Veritas."

The CNN reporter adds, "The people familiar with the investigation said prosecutors are looking into whether any campaign finance laws were violated. No one has been accused of any wrongdoing."

Scannell notes that the New York Times "reported that two operatives trained by Seddonpledged sizable political donations ranging from $1250 to $10,000 to Democratic organizations and candidates."

"Some of the donations gained the operatives, a couple, entry to fundraisers and even a Democratic primary debate in Las Vegas," Scannell explains. "It is not clear where the couple got the money to make the donations. It is illegal to use another person's name to make political donations, and prosecutors have brought numerous so-called straw donor prosecutions in recent years."

READ MORE: Legal experts lay out 4 'significant hurdles' federal prosecutors face in Trump indictment

On June 25, 2021, New York Times journalists Mark Mazzetti and Adam Goldman reported that "conservatives" Beau Maier and Sofia LaRocca attended Democratic events in Las Vegas pretending to be "idealistic Democrats."

Mazzetti and Goldman reported, "During a cocktail reception…. they worked the room of party officials, rainbow donkey pins affixed to their lapels. In fact, much about them was a lie. Mr. Maier and Ms. LaRocca were part of an undercover operation by conservatives to infiltrate progressive groups, political campaigns and the offices of Democratic as well as moderate Republican elected officials during the 2020 election cycle, according to interviews and documents. Using large campaign donations and cover stories, the operatives aimed to gather dirt that could sabotage the reputations of people and organizations considered threats to a hard-right agenda advanced by President Donald J. Trump."

Ultimately, efforts to keep Trump in the White House failed. Now-President Joe Biden won 306 electoral votes and defeated Trump by more than 7 million in the popular vote.

READ MORE: Proud Boys verdict is in: Guilty of seditious conspiracy

CNN's full report is available at this link.

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https://www.alternet.org/trump-big-lie-2661170105/

2020 was an incredibly tumultuous year in the United States, from the COVID-19 pandemic to the murder of George Floyd and the unrest that followed to a bitter presidential race. Former President Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election results are the focus of two separate criminal investigations: one by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and special counsel Jack Smith, the other by Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis.

Trump's MAGA supporters were willing to go to great lengths to get him reelected in 2020, including — according to CNN's Kara Scannell — possibly trying to "infiltrate" the Democratic National Committee (DNC) "ahead of the election."...Scannell reports...;Richard Seddon, a former British intelligence official, and Susan Gore, a Republican donor and heiress to the Gore-Tex fortune" in connection with their probe....

READ MORE:  https://www.alternet.org/jack-smith-wants-to-go-after-trump-s-good-news-boy-to-crush-his-january-6-defense-legal-expert-2659896037/"...Jack Smith wants to go after Trump's 'good news boy' to crush his January 6 defense: legal expert. "The investigation appears to stem from& https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/25/us/politics/spies-conservatives-left-political-enemies.html"...a 2021 New York Times article that, citing interviews and documents, detailed 'an undercover operation by conservatives to infiltrate progressive groups, political campaigns, and the offices of Democratic as well as moderate Republican elected officials during the 2020 election cycle,'"  https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/08/politics/prosecutors-investigate-efforts-infiltrate-dnc/index.html"..."One of the subpoenas, which was sent in the past two weeks, seeks documents and communications from January 2018 through the present involving numerous limited liability companies and individuals, includingGore; Seddon; Erik Prince, the security contractor and brother to former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos; and James O’Keefe, the former head of Project Veritas."

The CNN reporter adds, "The people familiar with the investigation said prosecutors are looking into whether any campaign finance laws were violated. No one has been accused of any wrongdoing."

Scannell notes that theNew York Times "reported that two operatives trained by Seddon pledged sizable political donations ranging from $1250 to $10,000 to Democratic organizations and candidates."

"Some of the donations gained the operatives, a couple, entry to fundraisers and even a Democratic primary debate in Las Vegas," Scannell explains. "It is not clear where the couple got the money to make the donations. It is illegal to use another person's name to make political donations, and prosecutors have brought numerous so-called straw donor prosecutions in recent years."

READ MORE:Legal experts lay out 4 'significant hurdles' federal prosecutors face in Trump indictment

On June 25, 2021, New York Times journalists Mark Mazzetti and Adam Goldman reported that "conservatives" Beau Maier and Sofia LaRocca attended Democratic events in Las Vegas pretending to be "idealistic Democrats."

Mazzetti and Goldman reported, "During a cocktail reception…. they worked the room of party officials, rainbow donkey pins affixed to their lapels. In fact, much about them was a lie. Mr. Maier and Ms. LaRocca were part of an undercover operation by conservatives to infiltrate progressive groups, political campaigns and the offices of Democratic as well as moderate Republican elected officials during the 2020 election cycle, according to interviews and documents. Using large campaign donations and cover stories, the operatives aimed to gather dirt that could sabotage the reputations of people and organizations considered threats to a hard-right agenda advanced by President Donald J. Trump."

Ultimately, efforts to keep Trump in the White House failed. Now-President Joe Biden won 306 electoral votes and defeated Trump by more than 7 million in the popular vote.

READ MORE: Proud Boys verdict is in: Guilty of seditious conspiracy

CNN's full report is available at this link.

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erik Prince, an ally to former President Donald Trump and the former CEO of a security firm previously named Blackwater, reportedly helped raise funding for an effort designed to surveil Democratic, progressive and anti-Trump Republican candidates head of the 2018 midterm elections.

On Tuesday, February 8, The New York Times released a report consisting of documents and interviews that detailed Prince's role in the surveillance effort. Prince reportedly conducted a meeting withBritish spy Richard Seddon as they allegedly worked to dig up incriminating information on opposing politicians across multiple states.

Since Seddon previously served as an unofficial advisor to Trump administration advisors, the report sheds light on the connection between the Trump administration and the spy effort.

The report also reveals Susan Gore, founder of the right-wing organization, Wyoming Liberty Group and heir to the Gore-Tex waterproof brand, had become the main financial supporter of the effort.

Per NY Times:

"Mr. Prince took on the role of celebrity pitchman, according to interviews and documents, raising money for Mr. Seddon’s spying operation, which was aimed at gathering dirt that could discredit politicians and activists in several states. After Mr. Prince and Mr. Seddon met in August 2018 with Susan Gore, a Wyoming heiress to the Gore-Tex fortune, Ms. Gore became the project’s main benefactor."

The group reportedly developed a plan to begin their efforts in Gore's home state of Wyoming and eventually expand to more states including Arizona and Colorado.

Former Wyoming lawmaker Marti Halverson also provided the group with a shortlist of specific targets that they'd planned to surveil. Those individuals include: Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon (R), who is referred to as a RINO; John Cox, who previously served as the director of Wyoming's Department of Workforce Service; and Scott Talbott, the former director of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.

Read the full report at the Times.

...intercept

Take David Gore, an Oregon libertarian and think-tank founder whose family owns Gore-Tex, makers of the ubiquitous waterproofing fabric. Internal data provided to The Intercept reveals that between 2018 and January 2021, Gore donated almost $450,000 to the Tea Party Patriots, who co-sponsored the “March to Save America” rally that turned violent on January 6.

The Intercept also revealed the handful of megadonors behind millions of dollars in secret donations to the Bradley Impact Fund, part of a right-wing network that has channeled support for organizations like the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a leading group seeking to overturn the election in court.

Libertarian Gore-Tex heiress fuels hidden political donations

April 28, 2015 by Gregory Nickerson

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Susan Gore is arguably Wyoming’s most influential libertarian promoter.

She puts millions of her personal wealth into political activities and nonprofit groups that speak loudly in the Legislature and on the campaign trail.

Since 2008, Gore has founded and financed three non-profit organizations that seek to reshape Wyoming politics and loosen restrictions on campaign spending nationwide. These include the Wyoming Liberty Group, Republic Free Choice, and the Pillar of Law Institute. Her staff had a role in the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision that allowed corporations, unions, and certain nonprofits to ramp up their political spending.

Even so, many who oppose her activities seem somewhat in the dark about just who she is, where she came from, and what her ultimate goals are. WyoFile’s review of published biographies, court cases, land records, and historical documents reveals some of the facets of her life.

Gore, a resident of Cheyenne, has lived in Wyoming for almost 20 years. Her Wyoming roots go back three generations in the southwest part of the state. She came to Wyoming in the mid-1990s after living for more than a decade in a transcendental meditation community in Fairfield, Iowa. Before that she lived in Delaware and Vermont.

Healthcare policy advisor Charlie Katebi works in the offices of the Wyoming Liberty Group. The nonprofit organization is affiliated with the State Policy Network of conservative think tanks. (Gregory Nickerson/WyoFile)]

More widely known is that Gore grew up in the family that founded the company most famous for inventing Gore-Tex fabric. Through the course of her life, the private family company grew from a small operation in a basement to a global chemical engineering behemoth that makes more than $3 billion in annual revenue and employs 10,000 people.

Gore’s own assets have fluctuated. She was wealthy by the 1980s due to inheriting shares of a family trust, but nearly bankrupt by the late 1990s after falling ill and ending her support of the meditation movement. She later viewed her involvement in the movement as a mistake, according her testimony before a Delaware court.

Her mother then gave her enough shares of family stock to make her wealthy again in the 2000s. In 2003 she adopted her ex-husband in an unsuccessful attempt to boost her children’s share of the family inheritance.

Through it all, Gore pursued her version of a better world. And in Wyoming, she seems to have found her niche as a promoter of conservative-libertarian ideas.

Two of her sons, Joel Otto and Nathan Otto, also play a role by serving on the boards of her groups.

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Together, their efforts put pressure on Wyoming’s small-money elections, where nearly every legislative race costs less than $20,000.

Dan Neal, a long-time legislative observer who formerly directed the Equality State Policy Center, has followed Gore’s groups for years.

“I think they are getting more attention than they deserve,” Neal said. “This woman moves in from out of state and hires a bunch of people to come here and tell us what to do. It seems a little odd.”

“Everybody’s got a right to speak their mind,” he said, “but people need to recognize she’s got a lot of money, and she can make her voice a lot bigger and a lot louder than most people.”

Susan Gore’s rise in Wyoming is two intertwined stories: the work of three conservative-libertarian groups with national ambitions to promote anonymous political spending, and the journey of their founder, whose experience as an heiress to a successful family business informed the political changes she proposes.

WyoFile requested comment from Gore through her staff. She did not respond.

Inside Gore’s groups

Susan Gore’s philosophies were evident during WyoFile’s recent visit to the Cheyenne offices of the Wyoming Liberty Group. The headquarters is on the second floor of the Read Block building, just eight blocks from the Wyoming State Capitol.

Inside, the organization has a small library with books on politics and philosophy. Down a long hall policy workers and lobbyists work in individual offices.

Policy advisor Charlie Katebi, who grew up in Massachusetts, works on healthcare and free-market alternatives to the Affordable Care Act. In the next room attorney Boyd Wiggam works onprivate property rights. His family goes back generations in the farm country northeast of Cheyenne.

At the end of the hall, Maureen Bader, who previously worked for the libertarian Fraser Institute think tank in Vancouver, drafts briefs opposing state-funded economic development and proposing new ways to tax minerals.

Across the hall are the offices of Republic Free Choice, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit think tank that produces political-issue ads in Wyoming elections and shares several employees with the Wyoming Liberty Group. A third group called Pillar of Law Institute is an arm of the Wyoming Liberty Group, but pursues national campaign finance litigation from offices near Washington D.C.

Republic Free Choice is located across the hall from the Wyoming Liberty Group. RFC and several other independent groups sent out mailers in the 2014 election. Policy advisor and lobbyist Maureen Bader, at right, works for the Wyoming Liberty Group on revenue and taxation issues. (Gregory Nickerson/WyoFile)

Republic Free Choice offices are located across the hall from the Wyoming Liberty Group. Policy advisor and lobbyist Maureen Bader, at right, works for the Wyoming Liberty Group on revenue and taxation issues. (Gregory Nickerson/WyoFile)

Across the three related groups, employees have a large degree of autonomy to pursue their interests, with support from Gore.

It’s no coincidence that the groups have this libertarian structure. It mirrors the decentralized, entrepreneurial organization of W.L. Gore and Associates, the company Gore’s parents founded in 1958.

Unlike most companies with a hierarchical chain of command structure, W.L. Gore “associates” work in small ad-hoc units and pursue their own projects with leaders of their own choosing. That structure allows for better innovation and the flourishing of individual potential, the company believes.

Susan Gore’s philosophy

Susan Gore’s experience with the non-hierarchical family business seems to underlie the societal changes she proposes for Wyoming.

According to the Wyoming Liberty Group website, “[Susan Gore’s] aim is to ensure that the power of the people and individuals in Wyoming takes precedence over improper government presumptions of authority.”

With less government, Gore believes people would be free to associate and solve problems using private enterprise on a community basis.

In a 2013 radio interview with Glenn Woods of Bold Republic Radio, Gore said she appreciated Wyoming’s culture of neighbors helping one another.

“The reason I started this was because I wanted to live in a place where I had better quality of life,” Gore told Bold Republic Radio. “I didn’t want to see us overwhelmed by too much government, too many regulations, a loss of our culture.”

To that end, Gore seems to be bolstering the already conservative voter base in Wyoming politics. The Wyoming Liberty Group opposes federal involvement in healthcare and education. It champions a free-market philosophy of privatization, where government ideally would stay out of areas where it believes private business can do a better job.

Gore rarely publishes her own thoughts as an individual political commentator. She has written seven columns on the Wyoming Liberty Group webpage since 2010.

Key players

Charles Curley, a computer programmer who is active in the state Republican Party, serves is a Wyoming Liberty Group board member.  (Courtesy Wyoming Liberty Group)

Wyoming Liberty Group member Charles Curley of Thermopolis is a computer programmer and a member of the Wyoming GOP central committee. (Courtesy Wyoming Liberty Group)

The Wyoming Liberty Group was founded in 2008. It has a staff of about 11, plus board members Susan Gore, her son Joel Otto, Sen. Cale Case (R-Lander), and Charles Curley.

Charles Curley, a computer programmer by trade, is the Republican Party Chairman for Hot Springs County and a member of the Wyoming GOP central committee. He’s been active in Second Amendment issues and legalizing ownership of gold.

In 2014, Wyoming Liberty Group had seven registered lobbyists: Maureen Bader, former Rep. Amy Edmonds (R-Cheyenne), Jason Gay, Susan Gore, Steve Klein, former Rep. Lorraine Quarberg (R-Thermopolis), and Boyd Wiggam.

Many of the staff work across several divisions of the organization. Charles Curley and Amy Edmonds also do work for Republic Free Choice. Gore is on the board of both groups.

The State Policy Network

The Wyoming Liberty Group is part of a nationwide organization called the State Policy Network, founded in 1991. The organization has think-tank chapters in all 50 states, and receives money from a sophisticated network of donors.

Susan Gore told the Casper Star-Tribune in 2010 she founded the Wyoming Liberty Group after her brother David W. Gore formed a similar organization called the Cascade Policy Institute in Oregon, also a State Policy Network affiliate.

The Gore family company

Susan Gore provides the majority of financial support to the organizations through her family wealth, which she has also used to pursue personal interests, while supporting her sons and their entrepreneurial projects.

Gore’s parents Wilbert (“Bill”) and Genevieve “Vieve” (Walton) Gore were originally from Utah.

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Susan Gore’s life

Susan Gore was born in 1939. The family originally lived in Salt Lake City, but moved to Delaware in 1950. According to reporting by the Wilmington (Delaware) News Journal, she attended Newark High School in Delaware where she met her future husband Jan C. Otto. They both attended Middlebury College. Otto later earned a graduate degree in physics from Dartmouth and an M.B.A. from Harvard. She and Otto divorced in 1981, and he later moved to Boulder, Colorado.

During the 1980s Susan Gore put part of her resources into supporting the transcendental meditation movement, advocating for prisons to use meditation as part of rehabilitating inmates. She gave to the effort in Vermont, a state where she had lived with Otto.

Gore and her sons later lived near the Fairfield, Iowa, headquarters of the transcendental meditation movement started by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, one-time spiritual advisor to the Beatles. The community included a university and dozens of start-up businesses founded by followers of the Maharishi, including Gore and her sons.

Delaware Chancery Court documents cite Gore as testifying she became ill and was in “very, very bad shape” by the end of her time in the meditation movement. According to Susan Gore’s testimony as cited in a Delaware Supreme Court decision: “After leaving the [meditation] movement in 1995, Susan spent three years convalescing in a series of monasteries. By the end of the 1990s, Susan was facing the possibility of personal bankruptcy.”

Her financial troubles came after years of selling her shares of family stock and putting money into the meditation movement and her sons’ businesses, according to her siblings. At one point she invested $5 million into her son Joel Otto’s airplane business, according to the Wilmington News Journal reporting.

During Gore’s marriage to Otto, she sold a portion of her 3,900 shares in the Gore company to support herself and her family, according to court documents. She also put 1,340 of her shares into trusts to benefit her children and out of her own reach.

Susan Gore moved to Wyoming in about 1996. In an effort to resolve her financial situation Gore wrote a letter in 1999 to her mother asking for more Gore stock from the family’s Pokeberry Trust. Vieve Gore eventually released 336 shares of stock to support Susan, according to court documents. The shares together were potentially worth tens of millions of dollars.

Susan Gore’s political contributions

After coming back from the brink of bankruptcy, Gore showed interest in donating to political causes. She gave $5,000 in donations to the national Libertarian Party from 2003-2005. She’s also given to Wyoming candidates such as Mark Gordon, Cynthia Lummis, and Liz Cheney, according to campaign filings.

Overall, Susan Gore isn’t an especially active donor to specific candidates. Campaign records show she prefers giving to political action committees, issue groups and nonprofits.

Gore’s largest political gift of $500,000 went to the Red White and Blue Fund, a PAC that backed Rick Santorum in his 2012 campaign for the Republican primary for president. Jackson Hole resident Foster Friess gave $2.1 million to the group that same year.

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Even that amount pales in comparison to her political spending devoted to the groups she has founded.

Gore finances Wyoming Liberty Group

Despite the Wyoming Liberty Group’s appeal to grassroots conservatives, Susan Gore was the driving force behind the group’s financial survival in its first few years.

IRS documents from 2008-2012 show Gore — and one other unlisted donor — provided more than 75 percent of the group’s $4.3 million in funding up to that time.

Gore founded the Wyoming Liberty Group in 2008. Together with one other donor she has given more than $3.2 million to the nonprofit organization. (Gregory Nickerson/WyoFile)

Gore founded the Wyoming Liberty Group in 2008. Together with one other donor she has given more than $3.2 million to the nonprofit organization. (Gregory Nickerson/WyoFile)

Public documents indicate the unlisted person holds a position of authority in the organization. The donor could be another board member, or a Gore family member, but the Wyoming Liberty Group declined to comment on this point.

Overall, from 2008-2013, Susan Gore and the unlisted person contributed $3.2 million, while 109 individuals and eight foundations contributed a little more than $1 million. The IRS does not require nonprofits to list individual donors on 990 forms.

The foundations giving to Wyoming Liberty Group include the State Policy Network that gave $90,000 in 2009 and Donors Capital Fund that gave $485,000 between 2009-2011.

Donors Capital Fund is an aggregator of conservative mega-donors that gave $59 million to different groups in 2010.

Despite receiving large support from Gore, Bader said the Wyoming Liberty Group has “a lot” of public support, even among legislators.

Wyoming Liberty Group attorney Steve Klein agreed. “Susan as our president is always out there trying to do her best to raise money,” he said.

Susan Gore’s sons

Susan Gore’s sons Joel and Nathan Otto contribute to her efforts by serving on the boards of her nonprofits. A third son, Jan Peter Otto, is not involved with the groups.

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Adopting her ex-husband

Much of what is known about the adoption story as reported below comes from Delaware court rulings that are publicly available, and reporting by Wilmington News Journal reporter Cris Barrish based on additional court documents located in Delaware.

Nathan Otto’s interest in the family’s Pokeberry Trust led Susan Gore to adopt her ex-husband Jan C. Otto as her son in 2003.

Susan Gore had already disposed of many of her shares, and Nathan wanted to change the family stock distribution formula set up by his grandparents to boost the inheritance for him and his brothers, according to court rulings.

According to reporting by Cris Barrish of the Wilmington News Journal that cited Nathan Otto’s testimony, each share of Gore family stock was worth upwards of $66,000 in the 1990’s, an amount that has likely climbed since then. For most of the Gore grandchildren, their loss of dozens shares under Nathan’s proposed formula was worth millions, while the gain for Susan Gore’s branch was tens of millions of dollars.

While Vieve Gore refused to change the trust formula, and her four siblings and their children likewise disagreed, the Susan Gore branch contemplated her adopting another child. Doing so would automatically make all the distributions equal — 350 shares per grandchild.

Susan initially felt adoption was not the best way to change the trust. Yet by spring 2003 Susan settled on adopting one of her son’s children. Then her ex-husband Jan C. Otto jokingly suggested that she adopt him, according emails cited in court rulings.

Susan and her sons at first dismissed the idea, but within a few weeks Nathan emailed his father to say Susan wanted to move forward with the adoption, court papers say.

Gore adopted her ex-husband Jan C. Otto in Cheyenne in July 2003. As the Wilmington News Journal noted, he was 65 years old, she was 64. They did not inform Vieve Gore, the other grandchildren, or her siblings of the adoption, according to court rulings.

Initially, Jan C. Otto said he didn’t want the inheritance for himself, but he later decided to try to lay claim to the money, according to court documents.

Court battle

Susan Gore considered un-adopting her ex-husband, but before that could happen Vieve Gore died in January 2005. That brought the adoption out in public, and launched a multi-year court battle between the Gore grandchildren and the Susan Gore/Otto branch over whether Susan’s adopted son — her ex-husband — was entitled to benefit from the trust.

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Wyoming Liberty Group positions and Benjamin Barr

Attorney Benjamin Barr is perhaps Gore’s most influential advisor in shaping the organizations’ policy positions. Much of Barr’s work centers on election issues, with a focus on removing limits to campaign finance law.

Attorney Benjamin Barrworked at the Federal Elections Commission before joining the Wyoming Liberty Group and writing a brief that was cited in the Citizens United decision.(Courtesy Wyoming Liberty Group)

Attorney Benjamin Barr worked at the Federal Elections Commission before joining the Wyoming Liberty Group and writing a brief that was cited in the Citizens United decision.(Courtesy Wyoming Liberty Group)

A 1997 University of Wyoming graduate in German and political science, Barr earned his law degree at the Illinois Institute of Technology, and now lives in Rockville, Maryland.

From February 2007 to September 2008 Barr served as counsel to members of the Federal Elections Commission. He was lead counsel to FEC commissioner David Mason and to Don McGahn, a Republican appointee who worked for five years to relax campaign finance regulations.

Wyoming Liberty Group attorney Klein worked with Barr at the FEC as an intern for four months in 2008.

Barr’s experience at the FEC led to starting his consulting firm Government Watch and working with the Wyoming Liberty Group beginning in Sept. 2008. IRS documents show Barr received significant consulting fees from the Wyoming Liberty Group during its startup phase.

From 2008-2011 his total compensation was $774,397, according to IRS tax forms. After that he is not listed as an independent consultant making more than $100,000.

Barr’s first legal project with the Wyoming Liberty Group was a friend of the court brief that the Supreme Court cited in its 2010 Citizens United vs. Federal Elections Commission decision.

In part, the ruling struck down the ban on electioneering communications by corporations, unions, and nonprofits. That means such groups can spend money to advocate for or against candidates.

Republic Free Choice founded

Benjamin Barr’s work on Citizen United in 2010 helped open the door for 501(c)(4) social welfare groupsto engage in political speech without having to disclose their donors to the IRS.

Donations to 501(c)(4) groups are not tax-deductible, and the organizations are prohibited from spending a “substantial” part of their funds — more than 50 percent — on lobbying and elections.

The designation allows donors to give as much as they want, anonymously, without violating campaign finance laws.

To that end, Gore founded Republic Free Choice in 2012. The new group allowed Gore to diversify her spending and broaden her impact by creating direct mail campaigns on specific issues.

Contributions to the Wyoming Liberty Group topped $1 million in 2011, then dropped to $610,000 in 2012 — the same time that Gore founded Republic Free Choice with a budget of $358,000, according to IRS tax forms. In 2013 Republic Free Choice raised $803,000 in revenue.

IRS records don’t indicate if or how much Susan Gore may have given to Republic Free Choice.

The 501(c)(3) Wyoming Liberty Group think tank and lobbying organization, is co-located with the 501(c)(4) Republic Free Choice think tank and advocacy group. (Gregory Nickerson/WyoFile)

The 501(c)(3) Wyoming Liberty Group is co-located with the 501(c)(4) Republic Free Choice. (Gregory Nickerson/WyoFile)

Republic Free Choice in the 2014 elections

During the 2014 primary campaign several Wyoming candidates experienced the mass-mailing techniques that a group like Republic Free Choice can bring to bear.

Chris Knapp of Gillette was a Republican candidate for Wyoming House. In the weeks before the primary, voters in his district received multiple flyers from Republic Free Choice and other groups that questioned his conservative credentials.

“Obviously they had money behind them because literally it was about six different mailers to all the voters, and how do you compete with that?” Knapp said.

A 12-year veteran of the Campbell County Commission, Knapp says he is pro-life, pro-gun, and anti-Obamacare. Republic Free Choice didn’t call him or fact-check its claims before sending out the material, he said.

Knapp took to social media to rebut the mailers.

“Your tactics have been deplorable and don’t belong anywhere in Wyoming,” Knapp wrote in a public Facebook post to Republic Free Choice.

He suspected he became a target of the ads because he did not answer a position questionnaire sent out by the group.

“I hate to see politics when it gets slimy and goes there,” Knapp said in an interview with WyoFile.

Chris Knapp lost the primary election to Roy Edwards by 123 votes.

Attorney Steve Klein lobbies for the Wyoming Liberty Group. He recently moved to the Washington D.C. area to work on campaign finance litigation with Wyoming Liberty Group attorney and consultant Benjamin Barr at the group's Pillar of Law Institute. (Courtesy Wyoming Liberty Group)

Attorney Steve Klein lobbies for the Wyoming Liberty Group. He recently moved to the Washington D.C. area to work on campaign finance litigation with Wyoming Liberty Group attorney and consultant Benjamin Barr at the group’s Pillar of Law Institute. (Courtesy Wyoming Liberty Group)

Republic Free Choice also sent out mailers opposing Ed Opella,a former Casper mayor, city council member and county commissioner. He ran unsuccessfully against Rep. Kendell Kroeker (R-Casper). Another group called Wyoming Freedom Riders ran ads against Rep. Kroeker. Unlike most independent groups, Wyoming Freedom Riders has no public presence or website, and the only name associated is a registered agent who provides similar services to many companies.

“I didn’t like people with deep pockets trying to influence an election up here,” Opella said. “They came after me and bad-mouthed me and said things about me that weren’t true, and I didn’t appreciate it. But that’s politics. … They can do what they want. It’s a free country.”

Klein said hard-fought races are only a prelude to what lawmakers face in Cheyenne.

“If you can’t handle the high school nature of legislative election, you are going to be in for a big surprise when you get to the actual big show at the Legislature,” he said.

Anonymous money growing in Wyoming, nationally

At least six Wyoming groups used mass mailing to distribute “issue ads” in the 2014 election cycle without having to disclose their donors. That’s more groups than ever before, according to Wyoming Secretary of State Elections Division director Peggy Nighswonger.

The proliferation is happening across the country, according to election law expert and University of Montana law professor Anthony Johnstone.

“Citizens United and related cases released a flood of independent campaign spending from a mix of Super PACs and less transparent groups,” Johnstone wrote in an email. “Many disclosure laws no longer effectively follow the money funding these new groups.”

In pursuing campaign finance cases for Wyoming Liberty Group, Barr and Klein cast their position as a defense of free speech. Money is speech, and more speech — anonymous or otherwise — makes for more robust participation in elections, they argue.

“It is really disingenuous for them to say that,” said Adam Smith, spokesman for Every Voice, national group working for more transparency on money in politics. “The only thing they have helped is the wealthiest people to write bigger checks.”

“These donations are paid speech, and in this post-Citizens United world, free speech has gotten really expensive, and very few people can actually afford it,” Smith said.

The influx of money from donors using nonprofits and PACs can quickly outpace the small amounts of money raised by local interests and constituents, Johnstone said. It becomes an affordable way to support candidates that may end up making multi-million dollar decisions once in office.

Disclosure of funding sources allows average citizens to judge whether those donors share their interests, Johnstone argues.

More disclosure?

Attorney Boyd Wiggam, a native of southeast Wyoming, focuses on property rights issues for the Wyoming Liberty Group. He served as local counsel for group's 2014 case Brophy v. Maxfield, which ended with Secretary of State Max Maxfield (R) agreeing to stop enforcing aggregate campaign contribution limits for individual donors in Wyoming state races. (Gregory Nickerson/WyoFile)

Attorney Boyd Wiggam, a native of southeast Wyoming, focuses on property rights issues for the Wyoming Liberty Group. He served as local counsel for group’s 2014 case Brophy v. Maxfield, which ended with Secretary of State Max Maxfield (R) agreeing to stop enforcing aggregate campaign contribution limits for individual donors in Wyoming state races. (Gregory Nickerson/WyoFile)

It’s not possible to add up the growth in spending from independent groups because they are not required to file such information with the secretary of state. Yet anecdotally, the 2014 election brought an increased volume of mailers.

That raised calls for more disclosure from independent groups, and opposition to disclosure by the Wyoming Liberty Group.

In a November 2014 meeting of the Legislature’s Corporations Committee, lawmakers chose not to take up a proposed bill that would require independent expenditure groups to file reports about their activities with the secretary of state.

Wyoming Liberty Group lobbyist Steve Klein spoke against the bill at the meeting. So did committee chairman and Wyoming Liberty Group board member Sen. Cale Case (R-Lander). Sen. Charlie Scott (R-Casper) moved to table it.

Case later told WyoFile that he hadn’t violated any conflict of interest rules because there was no formal vote on the bill. Read this WyoFile feature for more.

The Pillar of Law Institute

The founding of the Pillar of Law Institute demonstrates Gore’s intentions to give more attention to campaign finance issues than would be possible with periodic litigation by the Wyoming Liberty Group.

Barr is general counsel of the Pillar of Law Institute, and Susan Gore is a director. Klein moved to Washington D.C. this March to work full-time with the institute.

The institute states its position:

“Campaign finance laws are suffocating political debate in America. Organized and professional operatives use these laws to silence conservative activists from sharing their political views publicly.”

Barr wrote a column after the 2014 election saying that the influence of money in politics isn’t as strong as people might think.

“Many will still disdain political spending, castigate the wealthy for being civic-minded, and claim the full ruin of our Republic. Don’t listen to them. Money speaks, but not very loudly. Voters matter most and no amount of spending on slick political advertisements transforms Americans into an army of corporate lemmings. We are a fiercely independent people fully capable of making important political decisions. We’d like to remain that way.”

Klein noted that campaign spending was important, but far from decisive in the 2014 Wyoming elections. Some candidates who outraised their opponents lost the vote in November.

A state flag stands next to a bookshelf containing books by prominent conservative authors in the Wyoming Liberty Group library. (Gregory Nickerson/WyoFile)]

A changing Wyoming

Looking back over the past century, Susan Gore’s influence in Wyoming represents something new and unusual, according to University of Wyoming history professor Phil Roberts.

“We’ve not had … a person who is really wealthy who has tried to develop around them a group with the goal of extensively lobbying the Legislature on a multitude of issues,” Roberts said.

With money at her disposal, Susan Gore seems to be pushing her own agenda that doesn’t necessarily reflect the popular will, Roberts said.

At the same time, the state has seen growing campaign spending over the past 20 years. Roberts worries the new money can bring a decline in the face-to-face culture of small-town politics.

“The lack of civility we saw in the last election I think is directly attributable to being no longer a state where politics is personal,” Roberts said. “When you have a campaign that is run on money and advertising and those circulars in the mail, there is no reason to talk to an opponent or compromise. [That’s] the corrosive effect of any substantial amount of money in a campaign.”

Ultimately, Roberts said the money nationalizes state issues, and devalues the civility that Wyoming politicians of both parties have long held in high regard.

“[You] basically start modeling yourself after that awful example of U.S. Congress that has become a fundraising machine more than a deliberating body,” he said.

“I don’t think it is good for democracy, and I don’t think it’s good for Wyoming.”

Roberts’ position squares with many groups that believe the growth of money in politics poses a threat to the process.

Yet for Klein, the Gore groups’ efforts to reduce campaign finance regulations would benefit not just the wealthy, but all donors who want to give to a group and speak their minds. He said the dangers are “vastly overemphasized.”

“[Americans] spend a heck of a lot more on Halloween than in an election cycle,” Klein said. “I think we are certainly out of danger.”

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https://trib.com/news/state-and-regional/new-dark-money-group-in-wyoming-prompts-call-for-campaign-finance-reform/article_ca7b7c79-e116-5fe8-868d-d8f5cf018262.html

New dark money group in Wyoming prompts call for campaign finance reform

NICK REYNOLDS 307-266-0634, Aug 15, 2018 UpdatedJun 25, 20190

Election Day

Some are calling for campaign finance reform in Wyoming after the appearance of a new dark money group.

File, Star-Tribune

NICK REYNOLDS 307-266-0634,

The registration of a new political action committee in Wyoming with dark money ties has one state legislator calling for a revival of a failed campaign finance reform bill in the coming session.

Rep. Dan Zwonitzer, R-Cheyenne – a chief architect of a failed financial reform bill put forth in the Legislature this past year – released a statement publicly condemning “dark money” political advertising in the 2018 gubernatorial race, specifically calling on all six Republican candidates as well as the state party to publicly condemn the various, anonymous mailers circulating this cycle.

On Monday, Zwonitzer, who serves as chairman of the Legislature’s Committee on Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions, claimed without specific evidence that “key Republican leaders in this state” have been behind numerous negative campaign mailings distributed throughout the state in the final weeks of the GOP gubernatorial race. His campaign finance bill, House Bill 67, will likely be revisited by his committee in the coming months, he said, and will be resubmitted in the upcoming legislative session.

“It’s only going to get worse from here,” he told the Star-Tribune. “We need to get some baseline laws in now.”

One group behind a set of mailers targeting Republican Mark Gordon, called Protecting Our Constitution, is neither listed with the Wyoming Secretary of State’s Office nor is it listed as an active political action committee with the Wyoming Board of Elections. The group shares an address and suite number with a Sheridan-based LLC called Advance LLC, which was incorporated anonymously in late March through a third-party corporate registry, according to documents filed with the secretary of state’s office.

PAC connections

But Zwonitzer’s chief concern lies with the latest PAC to appear on the state’s roster of political action committees, one which he said “set alarm bells” off in his head that a string of negative ad buys would be coming during the campaign’s final weeks.The group in question, called Jobs For Wyoming, bears eerie similarities to two other PACs involved in dark money-heavy races in Indiana and Tennessee, both of which were backed by GOP mega donor Joe Hollingsworth Jr., according to numerous media reports.

Jobs For Wyoming lists an anonymous P.O box in the Washington D.C. suburb of Herndon, Virginia, as its address and names two individuals – James McKay and Maria Wojchiechowski—as its chairman and treasurer. Registered with the state on Friday, it lists McKay’s phone number and Wojchiechowski’s email address on the form. That P.O. box, according to Federal Elections Commission records, has also been listed for the address of Convergence Media LLC, a D.C.-area media vendor that, most recently, has been utilized in races like that between Republican Rick Saccone and Conor Lamb in Pennsylvania. The firm is also a preferred vendor of the National Republican Congressional Committee and, on its website, touts its success in helping to elect Republican Karen Handel to victory in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District, a race that was described as “the most expensive congressional election ever run.”

It is unclear what groups or individuals are behind Convergence Media: its filings with the Virginia Secretary of State list Delaware as its jurisdiction of formation, which has some of the least restrictive corporate filing laws in the United States. Two separate filings for Convergence Media there were both registered through third-party corporate registrars.

A phone call and email to both McKay and Wojchiechowski from the Star-Tribune were not immediately returned.

Jobs For Wyoming shares its treasurer with a PAC called Tennessee Jobs Now, a PAC organized by Hollingsworth. Hollingsworth was also behind a similar PAC called Indiana Jobs Now, which he used to help elect his son, Trey Hollingsworth, to Congress. Hollingsworth has not spent any money in Wyoming, according to campaign finance disclosures.

Wojchiechowski, according to filings with the Federal Elections Commission, also served as treasurer for Donald Trump-supporting PAC called Future45, which committed nearly $25 million in opposition spending against Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race. That PAC, according to FEC filings, counts substantial financial support from billionaires Sheldon Adelson and TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts, who owns a ranch roughly 45 minutes outside of Jackson. Both he, along with gubernatorial candidate Foster Friess, were prime contributors to a Mitt Romney-supporting PAC, Restore Our Future, in 2012.

Coincidentally, Friess joined both the Koch brothers and GOP donor Paul Singer in donating to Ricketts’ son’s 2014 campaign for governor in Nebraska, with Friess personally contributing $20,000, according to filings with the Nebraska Accountability and Disclosure Commission. Ricketts’ son also received $25,000 in campaign contributions from Susan Gore, founder of the Wyoming Liberty Group, which has pushed against substantial expansion of Wyoming transparency law and whose presence, a pro-transparency group based in Cheyenne said, may have led to the failure of House Bill 67 back in the spring.

State lags in transparency

Campaign finance transparency here in Wyoming is among the worst in the nation, said Phoebe Stoner, executive director of the left leaning Equality State Policy Center. According to Stoner, the bill introduced into the House last spring took some “baby steps” in closing the state’s most gaping loopholes in line with similar reforms passed by 40 other states. However, she believes the bill was never heard largely because those on the House floor were given “slanted definitions” of campaign finance’s purposes.

“For me it’s really simple. It has nothing to do with the fact these folks are sending out mailers and exercising their First Amendment rights,” she said. “Where the rubber meets the road for us if I’m a voter, it is my right to be able to understand who is on the ballot, what they’re about and who’s behind them. The issue is not centered in the First Amendment, the issue is centered in those independent expenditures.”

According to Steve Klein, a campaign finance policy analyst with the Wyoming Liberty Group, campaign finance laws serve only to restrict free speech. Though he said he supports many aspects of House Bill 67, he said he has reservations around how much speech can or should be regulated by the state, adding the opinion that onerous regulations on top of hard to understand campaign finance laws is an affront to free speech on its own.

“I don’t see a compelling interest for donors in reporting themselves to the government or revealing what candidates they’re supporting,” he said.

Klein also noted that candidates and PACs in Wyoming are already required to disclose their contributions and expenditures, and said that improving the state’s financial disclosure system when other priorities – such as opening the state’s books around taxpayer spending — are still on the table.

Stoner believes that greater campaign finance transparency should be a priority.

“I think that sounds like a really terrible excuse,” she said in response to Klein. “It’s not OK to deny voters what they have the right to have because we claim we don’t have the resources. If we don’t have that, we need the money to make that possible.”

She noted several easy to fix loopholes, including the addition of something called rolling reporting, which can help address the fact that the state lacks a mechanism to report on last-minute contributions. Under the current system, where expenditures only have to be disclosed up to seven days prior to the election, massive expenditures can be made in the key final days of a race, she said.

Letting loopholes like that stand, she said, only gives Wyoming a reputation as a place where rules are not enforced.

Though Wyoming has campaign finance laws, Stoner said the existing reporting requirements “don’t have any teeth.” Improvements in the law, similar to those in place in other states, could fix the problem.

“We saw this as a problem, and we tried to find a solution knowing the 2018 election was around the corner, and we didn’t,” Stoner said. “That was really disappointing.”

Follow politics reporter Nick Reynolds on Twitter @IAmNickReynolds

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Zwonitzer Campaign Finance Dark Money Foster Friess Susan Gore Wyoming Liberty Group State Policy Center

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former British spy and Republican mega-donor Erik Prince, a founder of the private military contractor Blackwater (now rebranded as "Academi) and brother to former U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, recruited a motley crew of home-grown American operatives from the conservative group Project Veritas and elsewhere to lead an initiative to infiltrate state-level Democratic party organizations and campaigns, according to a new report.

Prince, alongside the ex-MI6 officer he recruited to head the project, Richard Seddon, also targeted moderate Republican officials and those deemed as insufficiently dedicated to the hardline right-wing agenda favored by former President Donald Trump, The New York Times reported Friday.

The duo were bankrolled by the longtime conservative donor and heiress to the Gore-Tex fortune, Susan Gore, and trained their operatives on a remote Wyoming ranch in areas like the "basics of espionage" and "political sabotage," according to the newspaper.

It remains unclear what level of success they were able to accomplish, though the Times notes Seddon and Prince placed two spies — Beau Maier, the nephew of conservative commentator Glenn Beck, and Sofia LaRocca, deep into Democratic political organizations in Wyoming, Arizona, and Colorado.

But then, at some point, Democratic operatives became suspicious of the story LaRocca was claiming, according to The Times:

Her behavior raised some suspicion. Ms. LaRocca and Mr. Maier lived in Fort Collins, Colo., only about 45 miles from Cheyenne, Wyoming's capital, but their residence prompted some Democrats to ask how they planned to organize a grass-roots campaign to flip the state while living in Colorado. Ms. LaRocca told others she could not rent a home in Cheyenne because she had a dog, an implausible explanation.

Ms. LaRocca had also introduced herself to party officials as Cat Debreau. She eventually told a story about why she later went by the name Sofia LaRocca: She had been the victim of an online stalker, she said, but decided to once again use her original name because the police had told her that her stalker had reformed.

"Her story from the start rang very untrue," said Nina Hebert, who at the time was the digital director for the Wyoming Democratic Party. "The police don't call you and say, 'Hey, your stalker is better.'"

Neither Project Veritas nor its longtime head and frequent Fox News guest James O'Keefe returned a request for comment Friday.

One of the most prominent targets of the operation was Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon, a Republican who many in Trump's corner viewed as overly moderate and whose candidacy Gore had vigorously opposed.

Maier and LaRocca were also able to install themselves within the Wyoming-based progressive organization, Better Wyoming, which only discovered the plot months later, after they had been well integrated into Better Wyoming operations. Nate Martin, the group's head, told the Times he suspected the idea was to "dig up this information and you sit on it until you really can destroy somebody."

Maier and LaRocca were married last week in Wyoming, according to the report. Glenn Beck delivered a toast at the reception.

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Gore married his third wife Sarah Louise "Sally" (née Ives) Coons in late 1977.[20] She was a divorced mother of three boys. One of her sons is Chris Coons, now a United States senator from Delaware,[21] who worked for several years as a legal counsel for the family company.[22]

Gore died on September 17, 2020,[4][23] in Earleville, Maryland.[24][25]

Philanthropy

A major focus of philanthropy for Gore was his alma maters, the University of Delaware and the University of Minnesota. He served on the board of trustees as an emeritus member from 1992 to 2010 and as vice chairman from 1999 to 2007.[6] He and other members of the Gore family have made a number of gifts to Delaware. These include:[6][26]

Awards

Gore was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1995 for his technical achievements.[7] In 2003, Gore was awarded the Winthrop-Sears Medal in recognition of "entrepreneurial achievement that contributes to the vitality of the chemical industry and the betterment of mankind".[31] In 2005, he received the Perkin Medal, awarded for "contributions to the improvement of the quality of life and the world competitiveness of the U.S. economy".[32] In recognition of his work in developing Gore-Tex, Gore was inducted into the American National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2006.[18]

Gore received an honorary doctorate from Heriot-Watt University in 2001.[33]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gore-Tex

Gore-Tex is a waterproof, breathable fabric membrane and registered trademark of W. L. Gore & Associates. Invented in 1969, Gore-Tex can repel liquid water while allowing water vapor to pass through and is designed to be a lightweight, waterproof fabric for all-weather use. It is composed of stretched polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), which is more commonly known by the generic trademark Teflon. The material is formally known as the generic term expanded PTFE (ePTFE).

Contents

History

External video

Gore-Tex was co-invented by Wilbert L. Gore and Gore's son, Robert W. Gore.[1] In 1969, Bob Gore stretched heated rods of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) and created expanded polytetrafluoroethylene (ePTFE). His discovery of the right conditions for stretching PTFE was a happy accident, born partly of frustration. Instead of slowly stretching the heated material, he applied a sudden, accelerating yank. The solid PTFE unexpectedly stretched about 800%, forming a microporous structure that was about 70% air.[1] It was introduced to the public under the trademark Gore-Tex.[2]

Gore promptly applied for and obtained the following patents:

Another form of stretched PTFE tape was produced prior to Gore-Tex in 1966, by John W. Cropper of New Zealand. Cropper had developed and constructed a machine for this use. However, Cropper chose to keep the process of creating expanded PTFE as a closely held trade secret and as such, it had remained unpublished.[3][4]

In the 1970s Garlock, Inc. allegedly infringed Gore's patents by using Cropper's machine and was sued by Gore in the Federal District Court of Ohio. The District Court held Gore's product and process patents to be invalid after a "bitterly contested case" that "involved over two years of discovery, five weeks of trial, the testimony of 35 witnesses (19 live, 16 by deposition), and over 300 exhibits" (quoting the Federal Circuit). On appeal, however, the Federal Circuit disagreed in the famous case of Gore v. Garlock, reversing the lower court's decision on the ground, as well as others, that Cropper forfeited any superior claim to the invention by virtue of having concealed the process for making ePTFE from the public. As a public patent had not been filed, the new form of the material could not be legally recognised. Gore was thereby established as the legal inventor of ePTFE.[3][5]

Following the Gore v. Garlock decision, Gore sued C. R. Bard for allegedly infringing its patent by making ePTFE vascular grafts. Bard promptly settled and agreed to exit the market. Gore next sued IMPRA, Inc., a smaller maker of ePTFE vascular grafts, in the federal district court in Arizona. IMPRA had a competing patent application for the ePTFE vascular graft. In a nearly decade-long patent/antitrust battle (1984–1993), IMPRA proved that Gore-Tex was identical to prior art disclosed in a Japanese process patent by duplicating the prior art process and through statistical analysis, and also proved that Gore had withheld the best mode for using its patent, and the main claim of Gore's product patent was declared invalid in 1990.[6] In 1996, IMPRA was purchased by Bard and Bard was thereby able to reenter the market. After IMPRA's vascular graft patent was issued, Bard sued Gore for infringing it.

Gore-Tex is used in products manufactured by many different companies.

Other products have come to market exploiting similar technologies following the expiry of the main Gore-Tex patent.[7]

For his invention, Robert W. Gore was inducted into the U.S. National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2006.[8]

In 2015, Gore was ordered by the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals to pay Bard $1 billion in damages.[6] The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the Federal Circuit's decision.[9][10]

Manufacture

Schematic of a composite :{Gore-Tex:(style="white-space:nowrap"):}: fabric for outdoor clothing

PTFE is made using anemulsion polymerization process that utilizes the fluorosurfactant PFOA,[11][12] a persistent environmental contaminant. In 2013, Gore eliminated the use of PFOAs in the manufacture of its weatherproof functional fabrics.[13]....

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