Hal Lambert Pt Bridge

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clearview facial recog thiel

chuck johnson neo-naZI LAWSUIT

MOFRACKER FUND

backed desantis

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kera 2017

A North Texas money manager wants to make America great again, one investment at a time.

For people concerned about a portfolio that undermines their partisan preferences, a new exchange-traded fund – ticker symbol: MAGA – was built from the most GOP-friendly companies. The fund’s founder calls it “politically responsible investing,” likening it to cause-based, social responsibility investment strategies.

The MAGA fund is the brain child of Hal Lambert. He’s a longtime Republican fundraiser, an ardent supporter of Ted Cruz, and the founder of Point Bridge Capital in Fort Worth. Lambert said he did get on board with, and raise funds for, Donald Trump after he became the GOP nominee. Now, the tagline on the Point Bridge Capital website is "Make Investing Great Again."

Lambert says he first started thinking up the idea of a politically inflected investment vehicle more than a year ago. He’d been bothered by CEOs of major companies taking political stances; mostly out of political correctness, he thought. It's a trend he's seen play out more and more.

"A lot of these companies' CEOs are speaking up now. They boycotted President Trump, got off of his advisory panels. They’re speaking about DACA. And quite frankly, those things don’t have anything to do with the products that they’re making” Lambert said. “This is very new in my opinion, as far as companies’ CEOs actively becoming political and making statements about things that have nothing to do with their companies."

Take Target, he said. The company announced it would let transgender customers use restrooms in its stores that match their gender identity last year in response to transgender bathroom bans backed by Republicans in state legislatures. Conservatives pledged to boycott, and Lambert said he immediately sold off stocks in the company.

“I think politically it made no sense ... And I’m looking at it going, 'How many people own this that are out their boycotting Target?’” he recalled.

So Lambert hired a data guy, and started digging into campaign finance records for companies on the S&P 500. He came up with a list of the 150 companies whose political action committees and employees gave the most to Republican candidates in the last election. The list includes host of household names, including AT&T, John Deere and pretty much all the oil and gas firms. Lambert rolled them into the MAGA fund, which launched in September.

“Maybe people don’t want to give directly to politicians or they don’t have the money to give to politicians, or they want to save for retirement or they’re trying to save for their kid’s education,” Lambert said. “This is a way to participate in the political process while also investing.”

Credit Courtesy of Hal Lambert

Hal Lambert founded Point Bridge Capital in Fort Worth.

'A different animal'

Lambert says he’s trying out a new idea in finance, calling it “politically responsible investing.” It’s a play on socially responsible investing which tailors portfolios based on an investors’ values or causes -- avoiding investments in companies that, for example, make weapons or cigarettes or pornography, or divesting from companies that pollute or have bad human rights records.

“This MAGA fund is a different animal. This is like taking the culture wars into the stock markets,” said Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Eric Balchunas.

While not explicitly partisan, Balchunas points to Environment, Social, Governance funds as a functional counterweight to the MAGA fund. The mix of companies that makes up funds that seek to invest only in companies that prioritize environmental stewardship, social equity and transparency are mostly missing from the MAGA fund. Whereas MAGA is heavy on industry and energy and has virtually no technology companies, Balchunas says, ESG funds tend to be tech-heavy and light on oil and gas.

“You could almost rename ESG ‘Democrat’ and call this MAGA fund ‘Republican,’ and divide the stock market into red and blue,” Balchunas said. “And I don’t see this stopping. I see this as something that could have some traction.”

As an investment, Balchunas said MAGA has been off to a pretty strong start, though he says the absence of tech could cause more limited returns in the future. And there’s clearly an appetite for this kind of partisan investing; the fund has grown to more than $30 million in a few months.

Why corporations donate

Even as some investors are looking for ways to put their money where their politics are, it’s not clear that corporations use their political action committees for the same reasons.

“There is no consensus view of why corporate-linked PACs make campaign contributions,” said Brian Richter, who studies business and politics at UT Austin’s McCombs School of Business.

A lot of companies shy away from funding candidates with their linked PACS. For those that do, the logic is complex. While some industries tend to favor one party over the other – oil and gas likes Republicans, whereas tech likes Democrats – Richter said political donations from corporations are more often about access than ideology.

"This is a way to participate in the political process while also investing."

“They want to get in the door, they want their lobbyist to get in the door, and that way they can give their pitch for why a policy outcome they want is something a politician should be interested in,” he said.

That’s why Richter said that political spending from big, publicly traded companies often shifts back and forth over time.

“In years where Democrats are in power, there’s a shift away from Republican candidates towards Democratic candidates, and vice versa,” he said. “Money tends to follow power out of corporate-linked PACs….because corporate-linked PACs tend to not want to be seen as having a strong partisan bias.”

Hal Lambert said he plans to rejigger the mix of companies after every election cycle to make sure the MAGA fund is always the most GOP-friendly mix.

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wiki

Point Bridge Capital is an American investment management company based in Texas that was founded by Hal Lambert in 2013. It is best known for its "MAGA ETF", an exchange-traded fund that invests in companies that are especially supportive of the United States Republican political party. The name is a nod to Make America Great Again, the 2016 presidential campaign slogan of Donald Trump. In addition Point Bridge provides investment management advice to high-net-worth individual.

The MAGA ETF fund is traded on the BATS Global Markets exchange. Its selection criteria uses Federal Election Commission data to select the top 150 US public companies that meet the political target. The fund is administered by Point Bridge and distributed by Foreside Fund Services.^[1]

History

Point Bridge Capital was established by Hal Lambert in 2013.

Point Bridge capital launched the MAGA ETF on September 6, 2017 in reaction to Target Corp's inclusive bathroom policy in 2016 and Donald Trump's nomination.^[2] It has a higher expense ratio of 0.72% than simple trackers and funds, which run from 0.04% to 0.08%.^[3][4]

In 2018 the holdings ($39 million) were about 21% industrials, 20% finance, 17% oil and gas, and only 0.6% in tech, with top holdings in Freeport-McMoRan, Apache Corporation, Marathon Oil, TechnipFMC, and Williams Companies.^[2]

By February 29, 2020, the top holdings were L Brands, Apache Corp, Rollins, Inc., NextEra Energy, and Old Dominion Freight Line.^[3]

Hal Lambert was previously a director at Credit Suisse and manager at JP Morgan. Politically, Lambert is a Republican donor and finance chair, and was on the 2017 Trump inaugural committee.^[2] Lambert is a frequent guest on Fox Business and has promoted the MAGA ETF at FreedomFest 2018,^[5] and on CNBC,^[2] Hugh Hewitt, Mike Gallagher, Fox News, Fox Business, One America News Network, i24 News, and Yahoo! Finance.^[6]

References

"Why MAGA ETF? | Point Bridge Capital". Point Bridge Capital. Retrieved 8 March 2020. Point Bridge Capital, LLC serves as the investment advisor, and Vident Investment Advisory, LLC serves as the sub-advisor to the fund. The fund is distributed by Foreside Fund Services, LLC, which is not affiliated with Point Bridge Capital, LLC or Vident Investment Advisory, LLC.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b ^c ^d Lovelace, Berkeley Jr.; Belvedere, Matthew J. (8 January 2018). "'Make America Great Again' ETF, pegged to Trump's agenda, outperforms the stock market". CNBC. Retrieved 8 March 2020.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b "Point Bridge Stock Tracker as of 2/29/2020" (PDF). investpolitically.com. Retrieved 8 March 2020.
Rachel Evans (17 May 2018). "The MAGA ETF Has Only One Strategy". Bloomberg.com. Archived from the original on 22 May 2018. Retrieved 8 March 2020.
"Hal Lambert's schedule for FreedomFest 2018". freedomfest2018.sched.com. Retrieved 8 March 2020.
"Media Appearances - Invest Politically". Invest Politically. Retrieved 8 March 2020.

External links

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big lawsuit

scary link?

[### United States : GEOINT champion Umbra at centre of ...

Intelligence Online

https://www.intelligenceonline.com › 2023/11/29 › geo...](https://www.intelligenceonline.com/corporate-intelligence/2023/11/29/geoint-champion-umbra-at-centre-of-dispute-between-investors-with-historic-ties-to-far-right,110113116-eve)

Nov 29, 2023 — Charles Johnson, a controversial former political operative, alleges that investment manager Hal Lambert and his firm Point Bridge Capital ...

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sjpl

Hatewatch reviewed a trove of emails, first reported on by Buzzfeed, that detailed the relationship between the NYPD and Clearview AI. Clearview AI founder Ton-That put the NYPD and the non-profit group Thorn in contact after meetings with Ashton Kutcher, Thorn’s cofounder. Kutcher and Ton-That discussed possible investment, according to a former associate of Ton-That who spoke to Hatewatch.

Ton-That sent the email to NYPD Lt. Felix Rivera and a person whose name and email were redacted by the NYPD’s Records Access Office.

Ton-That, March 19, 2019, 6:23 p.m. ET: Hi [redacted], Felix Rivera can tell you more about how he’s used our software to solve cases.

A source close to Thorn confirmed that someone introduced Thorn and Clearview AI in 2019. Demi Moore and Kutcher founded Thorn in 2012. Thorn uses facial recognition technology for its Spotlight program, which is designed to help law enforcement identify victims of child sex trafficking. Thorn claims officers in “all 50 states and Canada” use Spotlight.

The introduction “went nowhere,” the source told Hatewatch in a call. There “were concerns with how that technology was deployed, and there was no interest in working with Clearview AI.” Still, the email further demonstrates Clearview AI’s ambitions to integrate itself in law enforcement operations across the U.S.

It is unclear if Rivera responded to Ton-That’s email. Thorn no longer has emails related to the introduction, according to the source, who declined to elaborate. Hatewatch requested further emails from the NYPD, but a records officer said there were no more emails to release.

Hatewatch emailed an NYPD spokesperson for a comment on the email. The spokesperson referred Hatewatch to its policy on facial recognition technology adopted in March 2020 and said their “previous practices did not authorize the use of services such as Clearview AI nor did they specifically prohibit it.”

Ton-That responded to Hatewatch’s request for comment via email, saying the “questions relate to old assertions regarding myself and my company. There are factual inaccuracies and these questions are irrelevant with regard to the myriad crimes we have assisted law enforcement in solving over the years.”

Ton-That did not respond to a follow-up request asking him to point out the purported factual inaccuracies in Hatewatch’s reporting.

‘Terrifying’ app

Clearview has links to the authoritarian hard right, and Ton-That associates with white supremacists, as HuffPost previously reported. Privacy experts have raised alarm about the company because it amassed a reservoir of over 3 billion images by scraping photos from the web, without the consent of those photographed.

Research shows facial recognition technology is prone to racial bias. One study found it produces “higher rates of false positives for [Asian, Indigenous and Black people] at a factor of “10 to 100 times,” depending on the technology.

Clearview AI began as Smartcheckr in 2017. Extremist Charles “Chuck” Johnson claimed involvement in the company’s facial recognition algorithm that January, HuffPost reported.

Hatewatch and others have documented Johnson’s activism in detail. An associate of reactionary billionaire Peter Thiel, he has repeatedly collaborated with white supremacists and helped amplify a Russian intelligence-backed plot to sway the French elections in May 2017 through his now-defunct website GotNews.

Johnson set up a far-right crowdfunding platform, WeSearchr, in 2017. Former Breitbart editor Katie McHugh shared messages from the WeSearchr Slack channel, a nexus for far-right figures including Ton-That, Johnson, neo-Nazi Andrew Auernheimer and more, with HuffPost and Hatewatch.

Johnson said in the messages he hired Ton-That to create facial recognition software and that the software could be used to “identify every illegal alien in the country.”

Johnson confirmed to Hatewatch that he views himself as a co-founder of Clearview AI. Ton-That has denied this. Johnson, who challenges his designation as an extremist, also told Hatewatch that Ton-That met with Kutcher in early 2019 about a possible investment in the company. Johnson was “against the meetings,” which he claimed led to Ton-That introducing Thorn and the NYPD.

Clearview AI began seeking funding from investors in 2018,The New York Times reported. The company secured an initial seed investment of $1 million in July 2018 from backers including “Thiel, the venture capitalist David Scalzo and Hal Lambert.” Lambert is the creator of MAGA ETF, an investment fund that tracks companies aligned with Republican beliefs.

Investors and Schwartz’s friends had versions of Clearview AI on their phone in 2018, according to The New York Times.

Kutcher referenced a facial recognition “beta app” on his phone during an appearance on YouTube program “Hot Ones” that premiered Sept. 26, 2019. He called the app “terrifying.”

Kutcher is a successful investor, and co-founded Sound Ventures and A-Grade Investments, two venture capital firms.

Hatewatch contacted Kutcher’s publicist and Sound Ventures for comment on the alleged meeting with Ton-That. Neither responded. Sound Ventures denied it invested in Clearview AI to Business Insider in 2020.

Hatewatch attempted and failed to find up-to-date contact information for A-Grade Investment. Thorn did not respond to a follow-up request for comment on Johnson’s claims.

NYPD connection

Clearview AI has ingrained itself in law enforcement culture by offering trials to departments and bureaus from local to federal levels. The FBI agreed to pay Clearview AI $18,000 for a licensing contract on Dec. 31, 2021, according to public records. The Army, Justice Department and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have also signed contracts with Ton-That’s company.

The contract between ICE and Clearview AI, signed on Sept. 3, 2021, totals $500,000, records show.

The NYPD began speaking to Clearview AI about a trial period for its technology in October 2018. Richard Schwartz, a longtime New York political player and former aide to mayors Rudy Giuliani and Ed Koch, began arranging meetings with Deputy Inspector Christopher Flanagan. Schwartz mentioned his ties to former NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton and former Deputy Commissioner Jack Maple when arranging meetings. Ton-That also attended.

Schwartz, Oct. 17, 2018, 5:55 p.m. ET: “Hi Inspector Flanagan, A pleasure meeting you. My partner, Hoan, and I would very much like to meet with you on our facial-recognition app, as Greg suggested. I am personally highly committed to the success of the NYPD as I served as Mayor Giuliani's Senior Advisor and introduced him to [Bratton] and [Maple]. Please let me if there's a date that's convenient for you.”

Flanagan, Oct. 18, 2018, 10:58 a.m. ET: I would be interested in meeting up. Does Tuesday Oct 23 work?

Schwartz, Oct. 19, 2018, 08:56 a.m. ET: Good Morning Inspector Flanagan. Just wanted to follow up on your kind email from yesterday regarding a meeting on Oct. 23. Hoan and I are free anytime that day between 10:45 am and 4 pm. What works for you? Look forward to getting together.

Flanagan, Oct. 19, 2018, 10:06 a.m. ET : 11:00 is good. Our office is at 300 Gold street [84^th Precinct] in Brooklyn or I can stop by your office on my way in. Either is fine with me.

Emails show Ton-That visited NYPD at least three more times before Ton-That signed a contract for an NYPD trial of Clearview AI that ran from December 2018 to March 2019.

Officers continued using Clearview AI long after the trial period ended, the emails show. NYPD Det. Damon Gergar wrote to Clearview AI to get a trial version in Dec. 2019.

Gergar, Dec. 17, 2019, 9:09 a.m. ET: Hi! I’m a detective with the NYPD and on a Homeland Security Investigations task force where I conduct mostly child pornography and pedophile investigations. Other members of my team investigate a wide variety of other crimes. I was wondering what I need to do to get a trial version of clearview? We would love to test it out, if possible. You can reach me at 914-[redacted], also. Thanks so much!

Clearview, Dec. 19, 2019, 10:37 a.m. ET: Hi Damon Gergar, you have been invited to Clearview! To active your account please click the button below”

Gergar and Clearview AI fostered a collaborative relationship that went beyond the NYPD. Gergar referred three ICE employees to Clearview AI, the emails show.

The first ICE referral was sent to Clearview AI on Jan. 6, 2020, at 1:32 p.m. ET. The next was a special agent, whose name is redacted, on Jan. 14, 2020, at 1:34 p.m. ET. Another came on Jan. 21, 2020, at 12:17 p.m. ET.

That same day, Gergar sent Ton-That his resume.

Gergar, Jan. 15, 2020, 10:54 a.m. ET: Hi, Hoan! Let me know if you receive this and what you think. Thanks so much.

NYPD officers continued using and requesting access as late as Jan. 2020, according to an email sent from NYPD and U.S. Homeland Security Det. Lynn McCarthy to Jessica Garrison, Clearview AI’s vice president of government affairs.

McCarthy, Jan. 22, 2020, 2:48 p.m. ET: Hi, I am hoping to obtain access to Clearview, the facial recognition program. The program assisted to identify a subject of a case that we are currently working on. Thank you in advance.

The NYPD spokesperson told Hatewatch, “A facial recognition match is merely a lead; no one has ever been arrested solely on the bases of a computer match alone.”

Nora Benavidez, senior counsel and director of digital justice and civil rights at advocacy organization Free Press, responded to Hatewatch’s request for comment on the email and Clearview AI’s relationship with the NYPD by saying it “was troubling from the start.”

Benavidez concluded: “The department lied over several years to the public about the extent of its relationship with the facial recognition app – all while allowing officers outside the department's facial recognition team to use the controversial tool.”