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Arabella

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SEE DEFUND LEFT

 is it a DAF?

see evil twin GAO EPA

horner 3

SEE CRC BREITBART ANTIFA WH MTG BS 10 25

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rww

12/12/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

ref

tony perkins

Rep. Chip Roy Highlights the latest on the Defense Bill & Looks Ahead to 2025 Agenda

0:00

And here we have Texas Congressman Chip

0:02

Roy who has joined us here in the media

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center at the Family Research Council.

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Uh a familiar face and voice on

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Washington watch. Uh Congressman, thanks

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so much for running off the hill and

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coming down here and joining us.

:{...

about something. You are hosting or

4:06

actually you're chairing, I should say,

4:07

a subcommittee hearing next week. You

4:09

chaired the constitution committee in

4:12

the judiciary committee on the southern

4:14

poverty law center that has in fact when

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you walk out the door of this room you

4:20

will see the bullet holes in the wall

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that was inspired a gunman to come into

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this building. Uh Congress is ready to

4:27

act on that. They're ready to move to

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expose these this long-term relationship

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that SPLC was had has had with

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government agencies.

4:35

Well, I'm certainly ready to do that. I

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think uh Congressman uh and chairman

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Jordan uh rightly agreed that we should

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have this hearing in the subcommittee on

4:43

the Constitution. And so we're going to

4:44

be doing this next week. Uh Tony will be

4:46

one of the witnesses. Uh uh Tyler Boyer

4:49

from TPUSA is going to be one of the

4:51

witnesses. Uh as well as an individual

4:54

who's pretty knowledgeable here in town,

4:55

a journalist named Tyler O'Neal about

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all of the dot connecting of all the

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money. Now, there's a lot to unpack

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here, which we probably don't have

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enough time to do in full, but the short

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version is anybody who loves and is

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familiar with with with F FRC knows what

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Southern Poverty Law Center meant with

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respect to the attack here over a decade

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ago uh here in this building. Um, but

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and now we've seen the connection to

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what happened with Charlie and and the

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extent to which your, you know,

5:21

crosshairs are put on you. Heck, my name

5:23

is now getting put in the crosshairs

5:25

because I'm daring to call out the

5:26

Islamification of America. So what we're

5:29

going to do in this hearing is expose

5:30

that, demonstrate what's actually

5:32

happening, but I want to take that a

5:34

step further so people understand the

5:35

vast array of networks that are funding

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all of it. The Soros operation, uh,

5:40

Arabella, all of the groups and all of

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the operatives that are involved, the

5:43

Islamification funding, the open borders

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groups, the NOS's, the United Nations,

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your taxpayer dollars, all of it coming

5:50

together in this vast network to have a

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red green alliance where you've got the

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Marxists and the Islamists who want to

5:56

take our country over. and it's all

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related and SPLC is right at the center

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of it. Antifa is at the center of it.

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All of these groups need to be exposed

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and we're going to be doing that next

6:05

week and we're just getting started and

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I've had some great conversation with

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Secretary Bessant with people in the

6:09

administration. Um I think there's a

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hunger to go break this network down

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because it's attacking our way of life.

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Well, it's it's

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finninging violence and it's and it's

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it's leading to death. Yep.

6:22

And it's chilling our First Amendment

6:24

freedoms. Chip Roy, always great to see

6:26

you. Thanks so much for joining us. Look

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forward to seeing you next week.

6:28

Absolutely.

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BS

GAI’s Seamus Bruner Reveals Left-Wing Funders Such as Roy Singham Behind Antifa Riots

PIX PEACE SIGN Elizabeth Weibel9 Oct 2025

Seamus Bruner, the Director of Research at the Government Accountability Institute (GAI) revealed that left-wing funders such as billionaire Neville Roy Singham were behind left-wing Antifa riots and protests.

During a roundtable event on Antifa with President Donald Trump, Bruner explained that he, GAI President Peter Schweizer, and their team “followed” a trail of money and “followed it to the top of what” they called the Protest Industrial Complex, or Riot Inc. Bruner explained that the so-called “Riot Inc.” was made up of many different divisions, and that “dozens of radical organizations” have received millions of dollars from Riot Inc.

“We found a network of NGOs, it’s not just the Soros network, the Open Society Network. It’s other funding networks, the Arabella Funding Network, the Tides Funding Network, Neville Roy Singham and his network, foreign cash,” Bruner explained. “And, it’s also big left-wing funders — some of them are not citizens of this country.”

Bruner continued to note that these left-wing funders were “pouring money into this entire ecosystem.”

Bruner continued to share “three money facts” about Riot Inc., explaining that there were “many divisions” such as “PR divisions, marketing divisions” and even a “well-funded legal division.”

“Number two, we have identified dozens of radical organizations, not just the decentralized Antifa organizations, but dozens of radical organizations that have received more than one hundred million dollars from the Riot Inc. investors,” Bruner added. “These would be the lawyer groups, these would be the groups that advocate for calling good, honest Americans fascists.”

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“And then, three, I think the most shocking thing is that we have found that more than one hundred million dollars in U.S. taxpayer funding has flowed into these funding networks, including at least four million dollars to these very groups themselves,” Bruner added.

Bruner’s mention of Singham comes after an investigation by the Breitbart News Foundation reported that while “records from the United Kingdom confirm” that Singham resigned from Thoughtworks, Inc., which he founded in 1993, “Chinese government records suggest otherwise.”

After founding Thoughtworks, Inc. in 1993 and building the company into a software consulting powerhouse, Singham helped orchestrate its sale in October 2017, for approximately $785 million to a group of funds managed by London-based private equity firm Apax Partners. Corporate records from the United Kingdom confirm Singham’s resignation from Thoughtworks the same month, and his own LinkedIn profile says he has been retired since 2017. Thoughtworks’ English-language website relegates him to its “alumni” section, reinforcing the image of a clean break.

But Chinese government records suggest otherwise. These records list Singham as a corporate officer of Thoughtworks’ Chinese subsidiary, Thoughtworks Beijing, as recently as June 17, 2025, and for at least as far back as 2022. These records are from the National Enterprise Credit Reporting System (NECIPS), China’s corporate registry. Other documents, including trade show profile and “help-wanted” ads, listed Singham as Thoughtworks Beijing’s official contact in 2021.

The New York Post reported in June that Singham was set to be called to testify before a congressional committee regarding him funding “radical anti-Israel and Marxist groups” behind the Los Angeles riots.

In an article written by Bruner in June, Bruner detailed how the GAI had uncovered how the “official partners” behind the “No Kings” protests “bagged $114.8 million since 2019 from the Arabella Avisors dark money network an how professional protest organizations use tax dollars as a force multiplier.”

Bruner reported:

The expected worldwide mobilization of protests against President Donald Trump this weekend will hardly be a spontaneous eruption. On the contrary, the tumult is a carefully plotted production organized by The Indivisible Project and financed by the progress dark money network managed/advised by Arabella Advisors, which has perfected the mounting of made-to-order protests. Since 2019, the Arabella network has dumped more than $100 million into the coffers of the official “No Kings” protest partners—including the creator of the official protest song book.

This “grassroots” “nationwide days of defiance” targets Trump and his “billionaire allies,” according to organizers. The Arabella network’s biggest benefactors are the left’s own billionaire heroes, including George Soros, Bill Gates, Hansjorg Wyss, Mark Zuckerberg, and Reid Hoffman.

During the roundtable event, Bruner vowed to “keep following the money,” and expressed that he appreciated “everything” Trump was doing.

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BS

Arabella Archives - The Automatic Earth

Arabella is the mothership of over 200 NGOs.

Trump Calls For RICO Charges Against Soros; Gates Foundation Severs Ties (ZH)}:

The “dark money” network operated by Arabella Advisors has reportedly lost one of its top funding sources: a leftist billionaire’s foundation. Equally significant in the news cycle this morning, President Trump stated on Truth Social that George Soros and his radical leftist son, Alex Soros, “should be charged with RICO because of their support of violent protests.” A New York Times report indicates that the Gates Foundation has halted funding to nonprofit funds managed by Arabella, choosing instead to work directly with some partners rather than through intermediaries. In its internal announcement, dated June 24 and sent to some Gates employees who oversee grant programs, foundation officials did not mention politics. Instead, they cited a desire to engage more directly with grant recipients and cut back on the use of intermediaries like Arabella entities.

*> Trump: "George Soros, and his wonderful Radical Left son, should be charged with RICO because of their support of Violent Protests, and much more, all throughout the United States of America." pic.twitter.com/KBxuyAaisF

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 27, 2025

“Teams are increasingly working directly with programmatic partners — organizations that are deeply embedded in the communities we serve and closely aligned with our mission,” the note reads. “As we look ahead, this is a chance to build deeper, more durable relationships with those partners — and to reinforce the kind of legacy we want to leave behind.” -NYT” Tracing the Arabella network’s donors is tricky. But according to the NYT, the Gates Foundation has plowed $450 million into the network since 2008, which in turn funneled money into other nonprofit entities, ranging from radical leftist climate groups to abortion initiatives, and even supporting the permanent protest-industrial complex against President Trump.

https://twitter.com/seamusbruner/status/1933626755358863457?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1933626755358863457%7Ctwgr%5E1e0fde66960c2c75df873fe2087d2cf266f22afb%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fgates-foundation-cuts-ties-arabella-advisors-linked-funding-radical-leftist-causes}:

With President Trump back in the White House and investigations focusing on corruption across the Democratic Party’s funding and nonprofit infrastructure, as well as ActBlue investigations, the risks for Bill Gates’ progressive NGO empire have never been greater. The move to cut ties could have happened even sooner, according to two people, one close to the foundation and one with knowledge of Arabella’s internal operations. Over the last few years, Arabella has become a target of conservative watchdogs because of its work with groups that funnel money toward progressive causes. With President Trump back in the White House, the political risks have only mounted. -NYT Peter Schweizer and Seamus Bruner of the Government Accountability Institute recently revealed a report that detailed how the rogue anti-Trump ‘No Kings’ front group, waging a permanent protest against all things Trump, “bagged $114.8 million from the Arabella dark money network.”*

The Gates Foundation told NYT that the move to sever ties with Arabella was “a business decision that reflects our regular strategic assessments of partnerships and operating models.” NYT’s report on Arabella comes hours after NBC News confirmed Gates met with Trump at the White House on Tuesday afternoon. More details from the report: • Some nonprofits are distancing themselves from Arabella to keep Gates funding. • Several groups have started exiting Arabella’s New Venture Fund (NVF), which serves as a fiscal sponsor for 170+ projects and has funneled billions into progressive causes. • While Gates once accounted for a significant share of NVF funding, in 2023 its contribution was only 2%. Still, losing Gates threatens Arabella’s influence and revenue streams.

:{Read more …

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PAID PROTEST // SOROS = CONSPIRACY

MMA MASS DEPORT PROTEST LA

February 3, 2025, edition of Fox News' The Five

DANA PERINO (CO-HOST): It does make you wonder if the climate groups are working with the immigration groups to be, like, the most hated groups in America.

GREG GUTFELD (CO-HOST): Do you know what, you just -- who's behind it?

PERINO: Exactly.

GUTFELD: Who's behind this? Is it USAID?

PERINO: Well, I don't think it's them, but I do think it is S-O-R-O-S --

GUTFELD: Soros, who is funded by --

PERINO -- types of people. Or Arabella Advisors.

GUTFELD: But they're funded by USAID. See? It's all making sense, Judge. It's all one tangled web of evil.

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aha note just mirror of std left charge:

https://www.alternet.org/ryan-zinke-accuses-deep-state/

United States Congressman Ryan Zinke (R-Montana) delivered a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives on Tuesday in which he proclaimed that a "deep state" along with "liberals" are engaged in a sinister agenda targeting himself and other conservatives.

Prior to his election to Congress in the November 2022 midterms, Zinke served as secretary of the interior under former President Donald Trump. He resigned in December 2018 amid a flurry of ethics scandals and suspicions of corruption.

Nonetheless, on Tuesday, Zinke declared himself a victim of a vast conspiracy and endorsed House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's (R-California) proposal to create a subcommittee tasked with investigating various federal agencies that have open inquiries into Trump.

READ MORE: Paul Krugman: House Republicans’ economics are as 'divorced from reality' as their election lies

"Mister Speaker, I rise today in support of a select committee to investigate the weaponization of the federal government, something I have a lot of experience firsthand. I proudly served as the fifty-second secretary of interior, and despite the deep state's repeatedly attempts to stop me, I stand before you as a duly elected member of the United States Congress andtell you that a deep state exists and it is perhaps the strongest covert weapon the left has against the American people," Zinke said.

"There is no doubt the federal government deep state coordinates with liberal activists and uses politicians and willing media to carry their water. The deep state runs secret messaging campaigns with one goal in mind – to increase its power to censor and persuade the American people. Dark money groups, funded by liberal billionaires and foreign investors, funnel money to shell organizations and repeatedly attempt to destroy the American West. They want to wipe out the American cowboy completely,remove public access to our lands, and turn Montana into a national park. They want to control our land and our lifestyle," Zinke alleged before claiming that he amassed so-called evidence from a right-wing non-profit.

"Mister Speaker," Zinke added, "I'd like to submit a five-part series of investigative articles by the Capitol Research Center entitled, Arabella's Long War Keep It in the Ground into the congressional record."

Watch below or at this link.

https://capitalresearch.org/article/arabellas-long-war-part-1

“Keep It in the Ground” | Web of “Pop-Up” Groups

Anatomy of an Arabella Campaign | Harried Until the End

Summary: For years “dark money” activists ran a coordinated campaign to sabotage and undermine the Trump administration from the offices of Arabella Advisors in Washington, DC. The campaign culminated in the most extreme environmentalist regime in American history under President Joseph Biden.This report goes inside that campaign to destroy Trump’s Department of the Interior and promote the Left’s war on affordable energy.

In 2019, the Capital Research Center’s groundbreaking report on Arabella Advisors exposed the half-billion-dollar network for the first time, dragging Arabella into the limelight as the posterchild of the Left’s “dark money.” Since then we’ve continued to uncover this now $730 million **activist empire**, tracing its shadowy campaigns on everything from abortion on demand to packing the Supreme Court to its war on the Trump administration.

This report on the Arabella network examines theprofessional Left’s years-long campaign to undermine President Donald Trump’s Department of the Interior, laying the groundwork for the Biden administration’s crusade against oil and the most radical environmentalist policies in American history.

“Keep It in the Ground”

The U.S. Department of the Interior is primarily responsible for managing roughly 450 million acres of federal land and conservation of their natural resources, most critically the nation’s vast reserves of oil and natural gas. It manages hundreds of dams and reservoirs, regulates drilling on public lands, runs the National Park Service, and maintains public monuments, including dozens attacked by radical Black Lives Matter activists in 2020.

The department also plays a role in foreign diplomacy and national security. Under President Trump that includedinternational wildlife trafficking bans, encouraging trade of precious metals and rare earths, and promoting his Indo-Pacific security and economic strategy.

But the department’s openness to expanding oil and gas production brought the sharpest attacks from the Left. Since the department is entirely under the president’s purview, halting all drilling on public land is far easier than attempting to halt private oil and gas production nationwide—the radical Left’s ultimate goal.

“The natural place to start phasing out supply is on our public lands and oceans where a ban on new leasing will keep up to 450 billion tons of carbon pollution in the ground,” Center for Biological Diversity director Kieran Suckling said in 2015. Bill McKibben, founder of the ultra-leftist 350.org, has also stated that “public lands are one of the easiest places for us to control the flow of carbon into the atmosphere.”

Unsurprisingly, that’s been the policy of Democratic presidents and their activist allies for years. President Barack Obama canceled lease sales in the Artic and Atlantic offshore sites and banned the leasing of coal on federal lands. Phasing down “extraction of fossil fuels from our public lands” was in the Democratic Party’s 2016 platform. That same year a 350.org activist asked Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton what she meant by “extraction on public lands is a done deal?” Clinton replied, “That’s where [President Obama] is moving: No future extraction. I agree with that.” Her running mate, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, later assured another 350.org activist that “I actually am now in that position.”

But even “phasing down” is too conservative for today’s “keep it in the ground” Left. No less than 20 Democratic presidential hopefuls vowed to ban drilling on public lands outright during their party’s 2020 primary. Ever the pawn of the radical Left, on January 27, 2021—exactly one week after his inauguration—President Biden indefinitely suspended development of new oil and gas wells on public lands, which the left-leaning San Francisco Chronicle cheered as “a first step to halting the granting of federal drilling leases permanently.”

Why does this matter? Federal lands account for roughly 24 percent of America’s oil, natural gas, and coal production. In 2019, total crude oil production reached an all-time high of 4.471 billion barrels, with a significant chunk of that growth coming from oil drilled on federal lands. Biden’s ban blocks future development of these key resources, removing them from the supply stream and hampering the energy independence the United States struggled to achieve in recent years. This means higher gasoline and household electricity prices, an estimated $11.3 billion in lost federal royalties and rental fees, and the destruction of hundreds of thousands of jobs across the economy.

With a single executive order, the Left could advance its crusade to “keep it in the ground” for years in the name of global warming. The stakes couldn’t be higher—all that stood in its way was the Trump administration.

In the next installment, watch Arabella Advisors target the Interior Department with two “pop-up” groups.

Tags: 350.org, Accountable.US, Arabella Advisors, Center for American Progress, Center for Biological Diversity, climate change, Department of the Interior, global warming, Hopewell Fund, natural gas, new vent, oil, public lands, Sixteen Thirty Fund, Western Values Project   Hayden Ludwig

Hayden Ludwig is a Senior Investigative Researcher at Capital Research Center. He is also a columnist at the Washington Free Beacon and writes regularly for the American Conservative. Ludwig is…+ MORE BY HAYDEN LUDWIG

pt 2

Web of “Pop-Up” Groups

Enter Arabella Advisors, a consulting firm based in Washington, DC, that quietly runs arguably the most powerful activist and lobbying network in politics. Arabella manages four in-house nonprofits collectively called the “sisters,” each of which controls a small army of activists and a legion of “pop-up” groups. And each pop-up group is made to look like a slick, stand-alone website. These pop-ups target virtually every issue in politics—control of the courts, abortion access, gun control, and voter registration and mobilization, even the Trump-Russia collusion hoax—pushing left-wing policies in every corner. What makes Arabella so powerful is how these “pop-ups” deceive individuals into believing they represent genuine local grassroots interests, such as one pop-up in Alaska created to oppose creation of the Pebble Mine run from Arabella’s plush offices in DC.

Arabella’s network is extraordinarily well-funded. In 2019 alone, the four “sisters” reported total revenues exceeding $730 million and poured out $648 million. Between the network’s creation in 2006 and its Form 990 filing for 2019 (the latest available), Arabella’s empire has received more than $3 billion and spent nearly $2.5 billion. Most of that funding was directed to the network’s flagship 501(c)(3) nonprofit, the New Venture Fund, whose largest known donors include the Gates, Ford, Hewlett, Packard, andBuffettFoundations.

Beginning in 2017, Arabella turned its guns on Trump’s Department of the Interior using a pop-up pair: Western Values Project (WVP) and its “sister,” Western Values Project Action (WVPA).

According to their websites, WVP and WVPA were created in 2013 in Helena, Montana, to expose corrupt corporate lobbyists preying on public lands in the West. In reality, WVP is run by the 501(c)(3) New Venture Fund while WVPA is run by the 501(c)(4) Sixteen Thirty Fund, Arabella’s in-house lobbying shop. Whatever staff the groups actually have would have been paid by one of Arabella’s nonprofits or possibly by Arabella Advisors itself; we’ll likely never know. But in its 2018 Form 990, New Venture Fund revealed that it is the “paymaster” for Sixteen Thirty Fund (which reported zero employees on its own 2018 Form 990) and “pays the salary and immediately invoices Sixteen Thirty Fund, which reimburses the full amount.”

It’s common for groups to use both kinds of nonprofit to maximize their ability to lobby through the 501(c)(4) and raise non-lobbying funds through the 501(c)(3), since donors may deduct donations to the 501(c)(3) from their taxes. But Arabella takes that tactic to another level, using pop-up fronts for its nonprofits that can take advantage of the New Venture and Sixteen Thirty Fund’s respective tax advantages without disclosing their relationship to one another. Donations to WVP and WVPA in fact benefitted the Arabella-run nonprofits behind the projects, as an archived version of WVP’s website from October 2019 reveals.

Until late 2019 the website for WVP and WVPA revealed a handful of staffers, including Chris Saeger, ex-communications director for the Montana Democratic Party and former Service Employees International Union (SEIU)staffer; Jayson O’Neill, a Democratic staffer for Montana’s legislature and Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D); and Yetta Stein, a staffer for the left-wing political action committee End Citizens United and staffer for the 2018 reelection campaign Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT). The archived website also showed a small advisory board consisting of:

WVP’s advisory board also included Caroline Ciccone, who in 2019 was executive director of the New Venture Fund pop-up and anti-Trump “oversight” group Restore Public Trust. Ciccone is a former communications director for the Democratic National Committee (DNC), Obama appointee to the U.S. Small Business Administration, and Democratic strategist. From 2014 to 2017 she led Americans United for Change (AUFC), a top left-wing strategy group whose national field director Scott Foval was recorded in late 2016 by undercover journalists from Project Veritasbragging that AUFC had paid mentally ill and homeless people to instigate violence at Trump campaign rallies. “We know that Trump’s people will [tend to] freak the f— out,” Foval said in the video. “It is not hard to get some of these assholes to ‘pop off.’” The scandal ultimately led back to Robert Creamer, co-founder of the powerful consulting firm Democracy Partners and a former general consultant to AUFC who directed parts of a vast network of advocacy groups all aligned in support of Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid. This led to speculation that his firm helped Clinton’s campaign violate collusion laws. Foval described Creamer’s role in the scandal as the “kingpin” who is “diabolical, and I love him for it.” Within days of the video’s release Creamer resigned, and Foval was fired.

Also present was Kyle Herrig, a New Venture Fund board member who sat on the advisory boards of at least five New Venture Fund projects, including American Oversight, a judicial activist and litigation group; Allied Progress, which attacked Trump cabinet officials; and the Ciccone-run Restore Public Trust.

In early 2020 it was announced that Western Values Project and these three Arabella “pop-ups” were being rolled into a new organization: Accountable.US, itself a former New Venture Fund project fully established as an independent nonprofit sometime later that year, headed by president Kyle Herrig and executive director Caroline Ciccone. (It appears that Western Values Project Action remains a project of Sixteen Thirty Fund, but that remains unclear as of writing.)

This reveals that Western Values Project, far from being a grassroots group, is enmeshed in a deeply networked, highly coordinated cabal of professional activists—and it always was.

In the next installment, break down the Arabella campaign against the Interior Department and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.

pt 3 zinke ad cartoon overturned boat

anatomy of anArabella Campaign

From 2017 to 2018, WVP ran an all-out attack against Trump administration Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke,publishing post after post savaging Zinke and his staff. WVP even published a massive website, DepartmentofInfluence.org, which compiled boatloads of data on nearly every appointee to the Trump administration’s Department of the Interior. The group’s goal was clear: Drive Ryan Zinke out of office and undermine the department’s policies. They finally succeeded in December 2018, and Zinke resigned in early January 2019 amid ethics complaints alleging he had misused public funds during official travel and spent large sums on frivolous things.

CRC has counted nine Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) cases filed by WVP between April 2017 and Zinke’s resignation, all sporting WVP’s supposed address: aUPS store in Whitefish, Montana (704C 13th St. E., #568, Whitefish, MT 59937). As investigative reporter Dave Skinner points out, “‘Suite 568’ is actually a $150-per-year private mail box, snugged next to a sales placard touting a ‘street address, not a P.O. box number.’”

In these complaints WVP describes itself as “a not-for-profit public interest organization” and “a tax-exempt organization within the meaning of Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code,” never mentioning its status as a project of the New Venture Fund or its connection to Arabella Advisors. At least one FOIA request was co-filed with American Oversight, another former New Venture Fund pop-up run by Kyle Herrig that also used a UPS Store address in its filings (1030 15th St., NW, Suite B255, Washington, DC 20005) and describes itself as “a nonpartisan, non-profit section 501(c)(3) organization.”

These FOIA complaints exclusively targeted the Department of the Interior. Highlights include:

On October 22, 2018, the Department of the Interior’s Office of Inspector General released its investigative report into Zinke’s alleged ethics abuses and recommended it to the Department of Justice. The office noted that it “initiated this investigation” in December 2017 “based on information we received while investigating [Zinke’s] use of noncommercial aircraft for U.S. Governmental travel.” The source of that information isn’t named, but it isn’t a stretch to believe it originated with Western Values Project.

Eight days later on October 30, WVP released its statement on the probe calling on Zinke to resign. It launched a website (HasRyanZinkeBeenFiredYet.com) demanding the same. On November 9, WVPA released a $30,000 attack ad in seven Montana newspapers accusing Zinke’s “priorities” of being “upside down” and calling for his resignation—presumably paid for by the Sixteen Thirty Fund, which controls WVPA’s finances. One month later Zinke resigned.

INSERT IMAGE: https://www.influencewatch.org/app/uploads/2021/02/Western-Values-Project-Zinke-Attack-Ad-2019.pdf

Big Green’s Campaign Rolls On

Joining WVP and WVPA was the Center for Western Priorities (CWP), a front for the California mega-activist group Resources Legacy Fund—by my count the 16th-largest environmentalist group in the country, spending over $42 million in 2018 alone. CWP painted Zinke as a feckless tool of the oil and gas industry, accusing him of “following President Trump’s marching orders to attack our public lands” and fomenting an “illegal attack on America’s national monuments.” When Zinke resigned in January 2019, CWP labeled him “the most anti-conservation Interior Secretary of all time.”

Almost immediately after Ryan Zinke resigned in December 2018, CWP and WVP turned their guns on undermining Deputy Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt, who became acting secretary on January 2, 2019, and was officially confirmed in April.

Bernhardt served in the George W. Bush administration’s Department of the Interior, leaving in 2009 as the department’s solicitor. After that he led the Denver firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck’s natural resources law practice, where his clients included Halliburton Energy Services and the Independent Petroleum Association of America, and he lobbied for Cobalt International Energy and Samson Resources. Before his appointment to the Trump administration, Bernhardt was also registered as a lobbyist for the Westlands Water District in California’s San Joaquin Valley.

On December 17, CWP policy director Jesse Prentice-Dunn published a long hit piece calling Bernhardt a “walking conflict of interest” who would continue “Ryan Zinke’s culture of corruption” and accusing the department of shilling for Big Oil. That same day WVP published the website DavidBernhardt.org, calling Bernhardt “the ultimate DC swamp creature” and an “ex-lobbyist who is too conflicted to be Interior Secretary,” while detailing a laundry list of ethics charges in an attempt to derail his confirmation to the post. Memos about Bernhardt’s background and conflicts of interest and more FOIA requests followed from WVP and CWP, including one from Democracy Forward, a leftist litigation group created by Clinton crony Marc Elias (of Perkins Coie fame) in 2017 to target the Trump administration.

In February, the Campaign for Accountability (CFA), a former “pop-up” of the Arabella-run Hopewell Fund, petitioned the Interior Department inspector general to investigate Bernhardt’s ties to Westlands Water District as a conflict of interest and urged the Senate to reject his confirmation. CFA, which specialized in targeting Trump political appointees, was founded by alumni of another left-wing litigation group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), and has been represented by the ex-Arabella pop-up American Oversight in past lawsuits.

The Center for American Progress joined in, labeling Bernhardt “the most conflicted Trump Cabinet nominee.” Greenpeace and the Center for Biological Diversity urged the department’s inspector general to investigate those conflicts of interest, melodramatically declaring him “the most dangerous man in America for endangered species and public lands.” The Sierra Club demanded the Senate reject his confirmation, as did the National Parks Conservation Association and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

In March, WVPA launched a six-figure television ad buy targeting Democratic Sen. Martin Heinrich (NM) and moderate Republican Sens. Cory Gardner (CO) and Martha McSally (AZ) to oppose Bernhardt’s confirmation. The assault continued until the Senate confirmed Bernhardt in April 2019. From then on the group’s crusade against Trump’s Department of the Interior focused on thwarting its agenda.

In the next installment, the professional Left’s years-long campaign culminates in the Biden Administration’s rush toward radical “green” policies.

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pt 4

Harried Until the End

WVP filed another five FOIA requests against the Department of the Interior between 2019 and 2020, almost certainly with the intent of discovering ammo for future ethics complaints. Among its requests were all communications between the department and Bernhardt’s former clients from Brownstein Hyatt and the Westlands Water District as well as copies of “all text messages sent by Secretary David Benhardt from July 1, 2017,” through February 2020. The leftist website Outside Online even set up a “David Bernhardt Scandal Tracker” days after his confirmation.

But much of the Left’s campaign shifted to halting Trump’s supposed war on public lands until he left office in January 2021. “Yes, Trump really is coming to take your public lands,” WVP howled in late 2019, claiming the administration was selling off federal land to oil interests bent on pillaging it. In reality, the Bureau of Land Management (which is part of the Interior Department) continued tolease lands to drilling companies in 5–10 year options, a decades-old practice. As a result, oil and gas production soared in 2019, particularly in New Mexico and Wyoming, which sit atop massive deposits.

The Department of the Interior disbursed a staggering $11.69 billion to the states in 2019 alone from energy production on federal and Indian-owned lands, a $2.76 billion increase over 2018. Gasoline prices dropped from a nationwide average of $2.813 in 2018 to $2.691 in 2019 to $2.258 in 2020. [NO MENTION OF EPIC PANDEMIC FAIL] And the United States achieved energy independence in 2019, with energy production exceeding consumption for thefirst timesince 1957. In a single year, energy production increased by an impressive 5.7 percent, with so-called fossil fuels accounting for 80 percent of all energy production and consumption that year.

WVP harried Trump and his cabinet out of office, blasting “Secretary David Bernhardt’s Wildly Destructive Track Record” in December 2020—which included such silliness as staging Trump’s May 2020 Fox News town hall inside the Lincoln Memorial, allowing national parks to be used as “centerpieces” for his reelection campaign, and holding “expensive military-infused Independence Day rallies on the National Mall” (the horror!).

Targeting Trump’s energy and environmental policies were among Biden’s first moves in office. Biden cancelled a planned expansion to the Keystone oil pipeline (Keystone XL or “export limited”), pledged to protect 30 percent of U.S. land and water by 2030, and froze new leases for oil and gas development on federal land.

Biden’s nominee for the department, Rep. Debra Haaland (D-NM), was confirmed in March 2021 on a nearly party line vote (four Republicans joined with every Democrat in the Senate). Haaland has been criticized by conservatives as a far-left extremist with a perfect 2020 score and 98 percent lifetime score from the League of Conservation Voters,which ranks politicians for their fidelity to leftist environmental legislation. (Incidentally, Haaland received a 100 percent score from the pro-abortion groups Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America.) While Haaland told Congress during her confirmation process that fossil fuels “will continue to play a major role in America for years to come,” she’s a global warming ideologue who trumpeted “keep fossil fuels in the ground,” voting “against all new fossil fuel infrastructure,” and transitioning to “100% clean energy” in her 2018 reelection campaign.

In May, the Biden administration proposed ramping up the Interior Department’s 2022 budget by $2.5 billion (17 percent) to $17.6 billion in order to “address the climate crisis” and create “good-paying union jobs.” Biden wants to conserve 30 percent of U.S. lands and waters by 2030 (it’s currently about 26 percent), a plan proposed by liberal groups in the states as “30 by 30” largely as a measure to “slow climate change” by storing carbon dioxide in plants and soil. He also wants to spend $86 million on the “Civilian Climate Corps,” a reboot of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal–era Civilian Conservation Corps. He also wants to spend $300 million “plugging orphan oil and gas wells” and $249 million to boost renewable energy production on public lands.

With pressure from the far Left and willing enablers embedded in the executive branch, the Biden administration will undoubtedly continue down the road toward ever more radical “green” policies—with Arabella’s support. Only one question remains: How much does Biden owe to Arabella’s long war against the Trump Department of the Interior?

end

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wow, it's an adjective!

an 3 22

Dark money groups have silently influenced election campaigns for many years but now some are complaining because it appears the tables have turned. The Washington Post's Glenn Kessler highlighted remarks from political action committees (PACs) raising concerns about U.S. Supreme Court Justice nominee Ketanji Brown.

On February 4, the Judicial Crisis Network released an ad that included a voiceover that said:

The U.S. Supreme Court’s “justices were to uphold the Constitution, to be above politics. Now, that legacy is being tarnished by secret money from liberals… a record amount of dark money, over a billion, put them [Democrats] in office, so they will put up an Arabella judge, a liberal activist, a Biden rubber stamp." [twt?]

then, on February 25, American Rising Squared tweeted, “Dark money groups, including Demand Justice, have been pushing Ketanji Brown Jackson for a SCOTUS spot for over a year. Once again, Joe Biden delivered for dark money groups and their wealthy donors.”

While it's not surprising that Republican conservatives are sounding off about the possibility of a Black woman joining the Supreme Court, Kessler highlighted the real problem with the groups' complaints: hypocrisy. According to Kessler, the same group complaining about Brown is actually funded by dark money themselves.

"What do the Judicial Crisis Network and American Rising Squared have in common?" Kessler asked, adding, "They are both 'dark money' groups complaining about the influence of dark money — when it comes from the other side of the political spectrum."

Offering facts about both groups, Kessler explained the pipeline funding both organizations.

He wrote:

"The conservative Judicial Crisis Network works to fill judicial vacancies across the country, including in state supreme courts and appellate courts. It received $17.9 million in 2016 and $17.1 million in 2017 from an undisclosed donor (or maybe two). It then turned around and used that money (and other contributions) to fight against the Supreme Court nomination of Merrick Garland in 2016 ($7 million) and for the nominations of Neil M. Gorsuch ($10 million), Brett M. Kavanaugh ($10 million) and Amy Coney Barrett ($10 million)."

Kessler also noted the problem with American Rising Squared and its own hypocrisy. "American Rising Squared’s tweet at least just focuses on Demand Justice," Kessler wrote. "But still, it’s another example of a conservative dark money group complaining about dark money."

He concluded with his take on the level of hypocrisy expressed between both organizations. "We can only marvel at the hypocrisy of these attacks. Perhaps the point is that only liberal dark money is a bad thing," Kessler wrote. "But if these groups are going to air such complaints, they need to disclose they engage in the same practice of collecting huge sums of money without revealing donors. They earn an upside-down Pinocchio — which is ordinarily for flip-flops — for their hypocrisy."

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https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/02/08/lawsuit-alleges-illegal-tactics-in-house-democrats-climate-probe-of-oil-companies/

no lnx twt

House Democrats are using privately funded staff to investigate oil companies for spreading “disinformation” on climate change, a possible violation of federal law and the chamber’s own rules, a lawsuit alleges.

A spokesperson for Democrats on the House Oversight and Reform Committee, which is conducting the yearlong investigation, said the committee has followed all relevant laws and rules in consulting with others.

Co-Equal, the private nonprofit group named in the federal public information lawsuit, denies being part of a major hearing in the climate-related investigation of oil companies.

Co-Equal, founded by two of House Democrats’ former staffers who led the congressional tobacco hearings in the 1990s, is sponsored by Arabella Advisors, a liberal megadonor. The group also received $300,000 from an organization backed by another major donor on the left, billionaire financier George Soros.

Virginia talk radio host Rob Schilling, a former reporter who won awards from The Associated Press and the Virginia Association of Broadcasters, filed the lawsuit seeking records from the House of Representatives. Schilling is represented by a private watchdog group called Government Accountability & Oversight.

Democrats v. Big Oil

The subject of Schilling’s lawsuit is the House Oversight and Reform Committee’s investigation alleging “disinformation” from oil companies misled the public about the dangers of climate change. The suit alleges that the Democrat-run committee violated the law in its zeal to go after oil companies.

Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., chairman of the panel’s environment subcommittee, told The Hill in September that the committee enlisted the aid of “a lot of people” who planned the 1990s hearings into tobacco companies chaired by then-Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif.

The first big public event from the probe was an Oct. 28 hearing by the full oversight panel questioning CEOs of six major oil companies. But, as Khanna said in a Reuters story published a day earlier: “This will be a yearlong investigation and the hearings mark the beginning of it.”

The committee held another hearing Tuesday at which climate activists and scientists testified about whether oil companies are acting to address global warming, as well as their alleged disinformation effort.

Congress must properly use its subpoena power, Schilling said.

“Congress has the power to issue subpoenas when it has a proper legislative purpose,” Schilling told The Daily Signal in an email. “This seems to be no more than scapegoating Congress’s failure to persuade the public about this agenda, after all this time and money. But members of Congress are getting ever more bold about confessing the true purpose here is not legitimate legislative inquiry.”

Lawsuit Alleges Violation of House Rules, Law

The lawsuit, filed Jan. 24 in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, seeks “access to certain records pertaining to the use of outside private donations, funds, or in-kind goods or services to conduct and support the activities of, or pay the expenses of, a congressional office in violation of House rules.”

The lawsuit seeks all emails and any Skype and other recordings regarding the House Oversight and Reform Committee and donor-provided consultants.

Congress exempted itself from the Freedom of Information Act, however, so the lawsuit refers to “common law” precedent for access to public records that preceded FOIA.

“During the Nixon administration, the courts repeatedly ruled that there was a common law right of access and that it was quite broad,” Schilling told The Daily Signal. “I hope that the courts haven’t forgotten the importance of the common law right since then.”

“The issue here is whether the public’s interest in these arrangements is outweighed by the interest in keeping these arrangements secret, and that does not seem to be a high bar,” the former journalist said.

His suit goes on to state that House Rule XXIV and federal law, specifically 31 U.S. Code Section 1342, prohibit the use of outside private donations and in-kind goods or services.

The Oversight and Reform Committee has followed all rules in its investigation, the spokesperson told The Daily Signal in an email.

“Congressional offices routinely speak with outside experts,” the spokesperson wrote. “The committee has followed all applicable House rules in this critically important investigation into Big Oil’s disinformation campaign to deny climate change, and will continue to do so in the future.”

The lawsuit notes that Democrat state attorneys general withdrew subpoenas to more than 100 think tanks, scientists, and others in a 2016 climate investigation after Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian think tank, challenged the subpoenas on First Amendment grounds.

Co-Equal Ties to Arabella, Soros

Co-Equal, a private nonprofit, has been helping to supplement congressional staff since at least 2019. 

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Schilling’s lawsuit identifies Co-Equal’s founders as similar to Khanna’s description of who is assisting in the probe of oil companies. That’s because two staffers who worked for Waxman during the tobacco hearings—counsel Phil Barnett and staff director Phil Schiliro—founded Co-Equal. 

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Schiliro held three White House positions during Barack Obama’s presidency. In his 25 years on Capitol Hill, Barnett also was staff director of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. 

Khanna said in September that “a lot of people” who planned the 1990s Waxman hearings into the tobacco industry were assisting Democrats in the oil company investigation.

However, Barnett said Co-Equal was not involved with the Oct. 28 hearing with oil company CEOs.

The Co-Equal website says: “Co-Equal is a project of the Hopewell Fund, a 501(c)(3) public charity. Co-Equal Action is a project of the Sixteen Thirty Fund, a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization.”

Arabella Advisors, a Washington-based consulting firm, is the fiscal sponsor of the Hopewell Fund, the Sixteen Thirty Fund, and other nonprofits that bankroll liberal organizations.

Moreover, the Open Society Policy Center, a group financed by Soros, earmarked $300,000 for the Co-Equal Action Fund in a donation to the Sixteen Thirty Fund, according to the policy center’s fourth-quarter 2018 report. The report said the donation was specifically “to support work to enhance congressional effectiveness and oversight.”

“It’s the kind of textbook Beltway insider scheme that Arabella deserves to be famous for: Funding from George Soros to shadowy nonprofits running a partisan campaign to push radical environmentalism on the country,” Hayden Ludwig, a senior investigative researcher with the conservative think tank Capital Research Center, told The Daily Signal.

Co-Equal met questions about the lawsuit from The Daily Signal by referring to a Jan. 31 letter from co-founder Barnett to Sally Dudley, an associate director at Arabella Advisors.

“The allegations in the complaint regarding Co-Equal are false. The Government Accountability and Oversight group claims that Co-Equal—and by extension Arabella—were involved in an Oct. 28, 2021, climate hearing held by the House Oversight and Reform Committee,” wrote Barnett, a former staffer for Waxman on two separate House committees, including the Oversight panel during the tobacco hearings of the 1990s.

Barnett added in the letter:

I want to make sure you know Co-Equal had no involvement in that [climate] hearing and no Co-Equal resources were used in connection with the committee’s investigation. Apart from the false allegation about Co-Equal, the theory of the complaint rests on an erroneous interpretation of House Rule 24 that conflicts with the history of the rule and how it has been interpreted by the House Ethics Committee.

The organization did not respond to a follow-up email from The Daily Signal asking whether the separate political action entity, Co-Equal Action, was involved in the hearing or the investigation.

Schilling said Co-Equal was responding to an allegation he doesn’t make in the lawsuit.

“They’re distracting from the issue and answering a claim I haven’t made,” Schilling told The Daily Signal. “Whether or not certain individuals attended a hearing is a very different issue from whether they were involved in the hearing and planning the hearing. And whether Co-Equal resources were used in connection with the investigation or any particular hearing is something that the appropriate officials ought to look into, rather than accept on faith, especially under these very unusual circumstances.”

Schilling’s lawsuit references a 2019 news report in The New York Times about Co-Equal forming to help Congress “reassert” itself by investigating the Trump administration.

Co-Equal’s website notes that the number of congressional staffers responsible for conducting oversight has declined since 1994. It says the organization can provide advice and “connect congressional offices with experts who level the information playing field.” 

Schilling’s lawsuit doesn’t directly allege that Co-Equal is part of the investigation, but says only:

Plaintiff states on information and belief, including based upon Chairman Khanna’s admissions and other materials in the public domain, that among the outside parties brought in as consultants to execute this new quasi-judicial pursuit of private parties are individuals operating through and as part of an organization called Co-Equal.

The lawsuit also refers to a June 15, 2017, memo from Barnett and Schiliro on climate issues that doesn’t appear to be related to Co-Equal, the group they founded.

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the URL or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.

Want to keep up with the 24/7 news cycle? Want to

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off bs sun logo!

http://epadvocates.org/

RECORDS LAWSUIT FILED AGAINST CONGRESSIONAL LEADERSHIP RE: USE OF DONOR-PROVIDED CONSULTANTS AS CONGRESSIONAL INVESTIGATIVE STAFF

Today, award-winning independent journalist Rob Schilling filed a lawsuit against Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and the Clerk and Chief Administrator of the House of Representatives to exercise the public’s common law right of access to records. Specifically, Schilling’s suit seeks certain described emails, and any Skype and similar recordings and logs, pertaining to the use by two committee chairs of donor-provided consultants as professional staff to perform official business.

This follows the revelation that Congress also had joined in a practice, initiated by Democratic governors and attorneys general with the assistance of major donors after the election of Donald Trump as President, ofusing privately funded staff to perform official business to advance the “climate” agenda.Public records show budgets for tens of millions of dollars of in-kind gifts to governors in the form of non-employee climate “staff” and media consultants, and that progressive state attorneys general took in donor-hired and -provided prosecutors.

Now, it appears that the House Committee on Oversight & Reform is using donor-provided consultants as staff to guide what Environment Subcommittee Chairman Ro Khanna told activists to expect will be a “year-long” investigation of private parties, already expanded, for political speech that Rep. Khanna believes has frustrated attempts to legislate the agenda.

Scapegoating congressional failures is not a constitutionally permissible use of Congress’s investigative powers — with or without the financial assistance of activist donors. While the constitutionality of this “year-long” investigation is not yet at hand, Schilling was one of two parties filing two complaints with congressional ethics watchdogs over this work, the Inspector General of the House and the Office of Congressional Ethics.

As the complaints noted, the gray area exploited by some governors and AGs is not present here: House Rules and federal law prohibit private financing of the performance of official House business, in-kind or otherwise.

This new congressional investigation began with oil company executives in October but, according to past behavior and recent hints, seems likely to extend soon to others the “climate” industry views as having impeded its desires. A previous AGs’ campaign noted in today’s suit led to subpoenas to over 100 think tanks, scientists, and others also in the name of pursuing energy companies for purported climate-related sins. This blew up on the AGs when the targets challenged the obvious violation of private individuals’ First Amendment rights, thanks to the   subpoena battle fought by the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

The AG leading that charge retreated. However, many of the same AG offices involved in that scheme then brought on attorneys privately hired and placed in their offices by a group created by billionaire climate activist Michael Bloomberg, which offices then resumed the investigations. It has thus become clear that none of these abuses of power, in the name of enormous payouts and massive new governmental authority, were ever truly abandoned.

If anything, they have expanded. The complaint also notes the prospect that the Committee objective is to engineer criminal referrals to the U.S. Department of Justice, in aid of a Biden-Harris campaign  promise to engage DoJ on behalf of the climate industry in its lawsuits against private industry. Indeed, the Oversight Chairmen told activists they were eyeing perjury charges against witnesses...a week before any testimony was taken or any questions posed.

Further, however, prompting Schilling’s requests was Committee leadership also letting slip that it had brought in consultants to help guide the campaign, describing them in a way strongly indicating — thanks both to the :{New York Times:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: and the group itself — use of a group funded by Arabella Advisors, the “mothership” behind a Democratic “Dark money juggernaut.”

The suit notes that this expansion of donor-provided climate “staff” comes after previous revelations of a $50 million per year budget request for off-books climate staff for progressive governors by 2020. Then came Bloomberg's millions to staff up AGs to, e.g., push climate prosecutions that — with ever-changing rationales but a constant demand for hundreds of billions of dollars to be politically distributed — appear to be little more than shakedowns.

Now the spawn of both disgraces prowls the halls of Congress, and in this case there is no room to excuse the behavior which on its face violates :{31 U.S. Code § 1342:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:, :{House Rules:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: and ethics requirements/prohibitions (House Rule XXIV and :{official:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: House :{interpretations:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: thereof).

Fortunately, the NYT launched the outside consultants’ effort,hiding it in plain sightwith a promotional piece that, tellingly, made no inquiry into what skeptical voices — let alone House Rules or federal law — say about what the Times nonetheless admits (if with understatement) is a “unique approach”. That same article, and the consultants’ website admissions, now tie the hands of the Members of Congress who brought in outside parties on the basis, indeed the confession, that the House did not grant them the level of professional staff the “climate” movement feels it should have to use the power of government to pursue political opponents.

Those opponents have apparently frustrated the “climate” movement beyond the point of caring about rules, a matter which House Inspector General has already declined to examine, about which the Congressional Office on Ethics which has a complaint, and the House Committee on Administration. The latter’s Ranking Minority Member Rodney Davis has already stirred to action out of his own frustration with what he views as coverup by the House leadership.

For now, Schilling’s common law right of access suit seeks to exercise the public’s right to know about this metastasizing of off-books private staffing to Congress, again (as was the case with the AGs) for adjudicative/quasi-judicial matters against private, political opponents.

Plaintiff Robert Schilling hosts The Schilling Show radio program broadcast on Newsradio 1070 and 98.9 FM WINA in Central Virginia, and is the founder and editor of a news, analysis, and commentary web site, SchillingShow.com, whose reporting and investigative journalism has been awarded multiple times by the Associated Press and the Virginia Association of Broadcasters, including two “Superior Awards for Best Investigative Reporting” from the Associated Press.

 GAO Board Member Matthew D. Hardin filed suit for Schilling, following requests for the records made in November and December 2021, which all of the named defendants ignored.

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https://www.axios.com/leonard-leo-crc-advisors-federalist-society-50d4d844-19a3-4eab-af2b-7b74f1617d1c.html

1/20

conservative powerhouse Leonard Leo tells Axios that he'll step aside from the daily running of the Federalist Society to focus on a new venture — inspired by Arabella Advisers on the left — that will funnel big money and expertise across the conservative movement.

Why it matters: Leo is considered one of the most powerful conservatives in the country, playing a key role in shaping President Trump's selections for the Supreme Court and raising hundreds of millions of dollars to fill the nation’s courts with conservative judges.

Behind the scenes: Leo told Axios that he and his business partner, conservative communications executive Greg Mueller, studied tax filings that led them to Arabella, a little-known yet powerful consulting firm that advises liberal donors and nonprofits about where to spend their money.

Leo and Mueller told Axios that after studying Arabella's structure they were impressed — and saw the opportunity to build a replica on the right.

Between the lines: The new venture will go beyond the anonymous money networks they've already built and weaponized in the conservative legal movement movement.

Go deeper:

gee for a scary secret take over the world org, lotta data here:

https://www.influencewatch.org/for-profit/arabella-advisors/#network-financial-overview

arabella Advisors (commonly called “Arabella”) is a philanthropic consulting company that guides the strategy, advocacy, impact investing, and management for high-dollar left-leaning nonprofits and individuals. [1] Arabella provides these clients with a number of services that ease their operations and that enable them to enact policies focused on environmentalism and other left-of-center issues. [2] The company was founded in 2005 by Eric Kessler, a Clinton administration alumnus and long-time staffer at the League of Conservation Voters who remains a senior managing partner and principal at the firm. [3]

Arabella Advisors manages four nonprofits that serve as incubators and accelerators for a range of other left-of-center nonprofits: the New Venture Fund, the Sixteen Thirty Fund, the Hopewell Fund, and the Windward Fund. These nonprofits have collectively hosted hundreds of left-wing policy and advocacy organizations since the network’s creation (referred to by critics as “pop-up groups” because they are little more than websites.) [4] [5] A fifth nonprofit, the North Fund, is significantly funded by Arabella’s nonprofits, is housed at the company’s address, and pays Arabella consulting fees.

In 2020, Arabella’s nonprofit network boasted total revenues exceeding $1.67 billion and total expenditures of $1.26 billion, and paid out $896 million in grants largely to other left-leaning and politically active nonprofits. [6] In 2019, Arabella’s four nonprofits reported combined revenues of $731 million. [7]

Altogether, between 2006 and 2020 Arabella’s network reported total revenues of $4.7 billion and total expenditures of $3.3 billion. [8] A January 2020 profile of Arabella Advisors’ network by Inside Philanthropy noted that the company “handles over $400 million in philanthropic investments and advises on several billion dollars in overall resources.” [9]

These funds originate primarily with major left-of-center foundations and individual donors, not with the company Arabella Advisors, and are controlled by the nonprofits, which in turn “hire” Arabella Advisors to consult in exchange for a fee. Many of Arabella’s top officials, including firm founder Eric Kessler and former managing director Bruce Boyd, are current or former principal officers on the nonprofits’ boards of directors. [10] Between 2008 and 2020, Arabella’s nonprofits paid the company over $182 million in contracting and management services fees. [11]

Arabella’s nonprofit network has implemented over 300 different “pop-up” projects targeting a range of issues, including net neutrality, free speech, abortion access, Obamacare, and President Donald Trump’s judicial nominees, and was highly active in funding pro-Democratic Party advertisements in the 2018 and 2020 elections. Its groups were also active in trying to manipulate the outcome of the 2020 U.S. Census in left-leaning states and the subsequent 2021-22 redistricting process, when state legislative and congressional districts were redrawn by state legislatures. [12] [13] [14] Multiple former Arabella employees have also been traced to the Biden administration. [15]

Arabella Advisors specifically highlights projects in which it has helped its clients divest millions of dollars from traditional energy companies, invest in risky experimental companies, boycott the historically Republican-leaning U.S. Chamber of Commerce, enact a ballot initiative that freed 4,000 criminals in California, and lobby for a labor union-friendly policy in Oregon that was supported by the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and the Oregon Nurses Association. [16]

Arabella and its nonprofit network have been criticized as “dark money” funders both for channeling hundreds of millions of dollars from left-leaning foundations to left-wing organizations and for hosting hundreds of “pop-up groups”—websites designed to look like standalone nonprofits that are really projects of an Arabella-run nonprofit. [17] However, Arabella’s nonprofit network also manages a number of “philanthropic projects” engaged in genuine charity, not political advocacy. [18]

In April 2021, the New York Times criticized Arabella’s “system of political financing, which often obscures the identities of donors,” as “dark money,” calling the network “a leading vehicle for it on the Left.” [19]

In November 2019, Politico criticized theSixteen Thirty Fund, the 501(c)(4) advocacy wing of Arabella’s nonprofit network, as a “little-known,” “massive ‘dark money’ group [that] boosted Democrats” in the 2018 midterm elections with $140 million. “The money contributed to efforts ranging from fighting Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and other Trump judicial nominees to boosting ballot measures raising the minimum wage and changing laws on voting and redistricting in numerous states,” the left-leaning website reported. Politico also noted that Sixteen Thirty Fund’s biggest single donation (made anonymously) was for $51.7 million, “more than the group had ever raised before in an entire year before President Donald Trump was elected,” adding that “the group’s 2018 fundraising surpassed any amount ever raised by a left-leaning political nonprofit.” [20] However, Politico failed to fully connect the Sixteen Thirty Fund to Arabella Advisors’ nonprofit network.

The left-leaning Washington Postfurther criticized Arabella’s Sixteen Thirty Fund as a “big campaign donor” in a November 24, 2019 opinion by the editorial board, which called on Congress to change nonprofit disclosure laws, noting in particular a $26.7 million anonymous donation to the Fund. [21] However, the Postalso failed to connect the Sixteen Thirty Fund to Arabella Advisors and its other three nonprofits.

In a November 24, 2019 letter to the editor published by the Washington Post, Capital Research Center (CRC) president Scott Walter identified the $26.7 million donation as originating with the New Venture Fund, the largest of Arabella’s in-house nonprofits, and confirmed Politico’s suspicion that the Sixteen Thirty Fund is “part of a larger network of dark money.” [22]

In 2021, The Atlanticcalled Arabella’s network “the massive progressive dark-money group you’ve never heard of” and Arabella Advisors the network’s “mothership,” adding: “Democrats have quietly pulled ahead of Republicans in untraceable political spending. One group helped make it happen.” In the Atlantic’s interview with Arabella CEO Sampriti Ganguli it called the Sixteen Thirty Fund “the indisputable heavyweight of Democratic dark money” which funneled “roughly $61 million of effectively untraceable money to progressive causes,” making it the “second-largest super-PAC donor in 2020.” [23]

CONTENTS

Organizational Overview

Arabella Advisors is a strategic consulting and management company founded in 2005 that works with individual donors and large left-of-center nonprofits. [24]

Arabella has an estimated 150 employees across its three offices in Washington, DC, San Francisco, California, and Chicago, Illinois. [25] [26] The company helps its clients implement center-left political agendas through (sometimes risky) programming investments or the creation and incubation of new agenda-driven initiatives or organizations. [27] Arabella claims to have carried out more than 150 domestic and international projects for clients with combined assets worth more than $100 billion. [28] More current estimates place the number of projects Arabella’s nonprofits have initiated at between 300 and 400; the company has not disclosed an exact figure. [29]

Arabella boasts of helping its clients develop and implement programs and campaigns that produce left-of-center-social and policy changes, bringing its wide-range of left-wing nonprofits together to collaborate and exchange ideas on how to implement left-of-center policies. [30]

In 2017, in response to the election of President Donald Trump, Arabella founder Eric Kessler called for donors to increase their support for organizations that planned to take bold actions on liberal environmentalist, gender-preferential, and government-funded healthcare policies. [31]

In 2020, Arabella launched a podcast hosted by senior staff members featuring guests from various nonprofit and for-profit organizations centered on race and gender equity. The podcast discusses the guests’ organization and their professional work, along with the subjects of racial and sexual discrimination. [32]

“FAKE” GROUPS

In practice, Arabella Advisors’ fiscal sponsorship means sponsoring hundreds of “fake” groups via Arabella’s four in-house nonprofits; these “fake” groups are little more than websites designed to look like standalone nonprofits. Since the Arabella network’s inception, it’s sponsored at least 340 such groups. These “fake” groups rarely disclose their relationship to Arabella Advisors or any of its four in-house nonprofits; nevertheless, many of them accept donations from the public, funds which go to Arabella’s nonprofits. This system also allows these groups to hide their funders, since it’s virtually impossible to trace individual grants to Arabella’s four nonprofits to any particular “fake” group. [33]

Controversies

“DARK MONEY” CRITICISM

Arabella and its nonprofit network have been criticized as “dark money” funders both for channeling hundreds of millions of dollars to left-wing organizations and for hosting hundreds of “pop-up groups”—websites designed to look like standalone nonprofits that are really projects of an Arabella-run nonprofit. [34] [35]

In April 2021, the New York Timescriticized Arabella’s “system of political financing, which often obscures the identities of donors,” as “dark money,” calling the network “a leading vehicle for it on the Left.” [36] In May 2021, the New York Times criticized Arabella’s New Venture Fund and its 501(c)(4) “sister” nonprofit, the Sixteen Thirty Fund, for their close ties to and funding from the foreign-funded Wyss Foundation, calling Sixteen Thirty Fund one of the “leading dark money spenders on the Left” responsible for distributing more than $63 million in super PAC donations that hurt Republicans and aided Democrats in the 2020 election, as well for “help[ing] create and fund dozens of groups, including some that worked to block Mr. Trump’s nominees and push progressive appointments by Mr. Biden.” [37]

In November 2019, Politico criticized the Sixteen Thirty Fund, the 501(c)(4) advocacy wing of Arabella’s nonprofit network, as a “little-known,” “massive ‘dark money’ group [that] boosted Democrats” in the 2018 midterm elections with $140 million. “The money contributed to efforts ranging from fighting Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and other Trump judicial nominees to boosting ballot measures raising the minimum wage and changing laws on voting and redistricting in numerous states,” the left-leaning website reported. Politico also noted that Sixteen Thirty Fund’s biggest single donation (made anonymously) was for $51.7 million, “more than the group had ever raised before in an entire year before President Donald Trump was elected,” adding that “the group’s 2018 fundraising surpassed any amount ever raised by a left-leaning political nonprofit.” [38] However, Politico failed to tie the Sixteen Thirty Fund to Arabella Advisors and its other three nonprofits.

The left-leaning Washington Postfurther criticized Arabella’s Sixteen Thirty Fund as a “big campaign donor” in a November 24, 2019 opinion by the editorial board, which called on Congress to change nonprofit disclosure laws, noting in particular a $26.7 million anonymous donation to the Fund. [39] However, the Postalso failed to connect the Sixteen Thirty Fund to Arabella Advisors and its other three nonprofits.

In a November 24, 2019 letter to the editor published by the Washington Post, Capital Research Center president Scott Walter identified the $26.7 million donation as originating with the New Venture Fund, the largest of Arabella’s in-house nonprofits, and confirmed Politico’s suspicion that the Sixteen Thirty Fund is “part of a larger network of dark money.” [40]

PRIVATE FUNDING OF ELECTIONS (2020)

In 2020, the Arabella-run New Venture Fund provided close to $25 million in funding to the Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTCL), a left-of-center nonprofit that passed roughly $350 million to thousands of elections offices in the form of COVID-19 “relief funds” ahead of the 2020 election, money which originated with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. [41]

New Venture Fund’s grant was CTCL’s second-largest donation in 2020. [42]

CTCL’s private funding of election offices was widely criticized. In January 2022, the Wall Street Journaleditorial board called for the practice to banned by the states: “Zuckerbucks Shouldn’t Pay for Elections” because “it fans mistrust to let private donors fund official voting duties.” [43]

The Capital Research Center (which publishes InfluenceWatch) has noted in its analysis of CTCL spending that the group “consistently gave bigger grants and more money per capita to counties that voted for [Joe] Biden” in the 2020 election. In Georgia, for instance, CTCL grants averaged $1.41 per capita in counties won by President Donald Trump versus $5.33 in counties won by Biden. [44]

UNLAWFUL PRIVATE FUNDING OF ELECTIONS LAWSUIT (2020)

Also see Center for Secure and Modern Elections (Nonprofit) and Center for Tech and Civic Life (Nonprofit)

On October 2, 2021, Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landrysued the New Venture Fund (the parent organization of the Center for Secure Modern Elections, or CSME), the Center for Technology and Civic Life (an allied organization), and the consulting firm Full Circle Strategies (which represented both organizations locally) “to prevent the injection of unregulated private money into the Louisiana election system and to protect the integrity of elections in the State by ensuring against the corrosive influence of outside money on Louisiana election officials.” According to the lawsuit, “private contributions to local election officials are unlawful and contrary to the methods for election funding established by law in the State of Louisiana”; the Attorney General sought to have CTCL’s funding declared illegal and be permanently enjoined. [45]

The lawsuit alleged that CTCL and New Venture Fund (under the name “Center for Secure and Modern Elections”) had unlawfully “targeted 13 parishes” for elections grants, some of which exceeded $500,000, requiring local registrar’s offices to provide “detailed information about [their] operations, conduct, and expenses” in turn. These transactions were allegedly facilitated by Dawn Maisel Cole, the principal for Full Circle Strategies, who “directly solicited registrars and clerks of court to accept contributions from CTCL and New Venture for the operation of their respective offices.” Besides breaking state law, the Attorney General’s office argued that private funding of elections is barred by the Louisiana state legislature and U.S. Congress for “obvious” reasons: [46]

  1. The influence that would inevitably accompany private financial contributions to local elections officials;
  2. Outside donations to local election officials sow distrust in the administration of the election system;
  3. Private contributions would inevitably spawn competition for party and corporate control over local election funding and would lead to bidding for election favor by party and private interests;
  4. Private contributors are likely to be political parties or large corporations that have partisan and/or economic objectives to foster with their contributions to election officials;
  5. Private interests, as in this instance, fund particular parishes and particular aspects of the election that they believe advance their election goals and objectives;
  6. Should registrars and clerks become reliant upon private funding of their governmental activities, they may well be compelled to respond to the objectives of those providing the funding in order to ensure that the funding continues;
  7. Such private funding, washed through non-profit organizations, invites the potential for contributions from foreign governments to the Louisiana system and its election officials;
  8. Private contributions open the door to election suits and contests based upon perceived or actual influence on the part of local election officials in the conduct of an election.

A state judge ruled against the state on October 26, 2020, on the grounds that the Attorney General’s office had “no cause of action” for the lawsuit and it was dismissed. [47]

HIDING POLITICAL AGENDA BEHIND “FAKE NEWS SITES”

The nonprofit watchdog OpenSecrets (published by the Center for Responsive Politics) reported in May 2020 on Arabella’s involvement in numerous “fake news sites,” pouring millions of untraceable dollars into advertisements and other digital content “masquerading as news coverage to influence the 2020 election.” [48]

OpenSecrets identified five Facebook pages (Colorado Chronicle, Daily CO, Nevada News Now, Silver State Sentinel, Verified Virginia) that “gave the impression of multiple free-standing local news outlets,” but are in fact “merely fictitious names used by the**Sixteen Thirty Fun**d,” Arabella’s 501(c)(4) lobbying nonprofit. [49] These pages published Facebook political advertisements that favored Democrats and left-wing causes during the 2020 election. After the report was published a number of these pages were deleted.

States Newsroom, which runs another network of left-wing “fake news” websites, was originally created as “Newsroom Network,” a project of the Arabella-run 501(c)(3) Hopewell Fund. In June 2019, States Newsroom was spun off as an independent nonprofit with its own 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status, but a number of its local affiliates are used by the Hopewell Fund as its own legal aliases. [50]

While States Newsroom does not disclose its donors (and is not required to by the IRS), [51]

IRS application records obtained by OpenSecrets show the States Newsroom was offered a $1 million donation from the Wyss Foundation, a private foundation primarily funded by Swiss billionaire Hansjorg Wyss, who made his fortune as CEO of a controversial medical device manufacturer called Synthes.

A financial statement in the IRS records obtained by OpenSecrets shows that the States Newsroom plans to bring in more than $27 million in contributions before the end of 2021.

And in 2018 the Hopewell Fund gave $1.72 million to News for Democracy, which OpenSecrets points out “was at the crux of a network of seemingly independent Facebook pages disguised as news outlets that started spending on digital ads in 2018,” with backing from the Sixteen Thirty Fund and Investing in US, an investment vehicle funded by LinkedIn founder and liberal billionaire Reid Hoffman. [52]

Also among these “dark money” groups was ACRONYM, which raised $9.4 million from “secret donors” through April 2019, including $250,000 from Arabella’s 501(c)(3) New Venture Fund. ACRONYM is affiliated with a super PAC, PACRONYM, which spent close to $18 million aiding Democrats and hurting Republicans through independent expenditures in the 2020 election. [53] ACRONYM also owns and operates Courier Newsroom, which in turn manages a network of left-wing websites that present themselves as local news outlets while spreading “hyperlocal partisan propaganda,” according to the centrist watchdog Newsguard. [54] Courier Newsroom spent at least $20,000 in digital advertising campaigns on Facebook between March 2019 and May 2020; its total spending in Facebook ads as of June 2021 is nearly $1.4 million. [55] [56]

POLITICAL ACTIVISM MASKED AS PHILANTHROPY

Arabella’s increasing prominence as the head of a large and influential network of political groups has earned the company attention from both left- and right-leaning media, which respectively praise or criticize Arabella’s political activism as it exists in the guise of “philanthropy.”

InsidePhilanthropy, a left-leaning website that examines trends in charitable giving, praised Arabella Advisors founder Eric Kessler in July 2021 as one of the 100 “most powerful players in philanthropy” for aiding “progressive causes” through his nonprofit network: [57]

Since he founded Arabella Advisors in 2005, Kessler has built a complex network of nonprofit funds and pass-through entities that now channel hundreds of millions toward progressive causes annually—giving that soared under Trump.

Arabella Advisors maintains that its nonprofit network primarily serves philanthropic, not political, causes. A November 2021 interview with the Atlanticobserved that “Arabella hates [the] narrative” that it controls a set of “innocuous-sounding . . . and promiscuously spawn[ed] mini-organizations” engaged in political causes. In its interview with Arabella CEO Sampriti Ganguli, the Atlantic wrote: [58]

The organization’s CEO, Sampriti Ganguli, insisted to me that she runs a relatively small business-services organization that does HR, legal compliance, accounting, etc., for clients such as the Sixteen Thirty Fund. Ganguli comes from a consultant background, and she talks like it: Arabella’s mission is to make philanthropy more efficient, effective, and equitable, she told me.

Of Arabella’s political spending, the Atlantic wrote: [59]

Do you feel good that you’re the Left’s equivalent of the Koch brothers?

Ganguli: Yeah.

. . .

[Interviewer]: Okay. You guys have a narrative around you, which associates you with dark-money spending in America. I want to give you a clean opportunity to explain why you think that narrative is wrong.

Ganguli: I’m super surprised at the attention that Arabella Advisors gets. We’re a pretty small professional-services business. We make sure things get done on time, that the checks go where they need to go. We help donors figure out how to maximize their effectiveness. I struggle to fully diagnose the narrative.

What I will say is, on the work of the Sixteen Thirty Fund in particular, the narrative is often spun by a set of actors and agents who benefit equally, if not more, from the same legal structure. One of the reasons we don’t engage in this narrative is that it’s not at all the bulk of what Arabella Advisors does. Whenever organizations are looking to profile the work of philanthropy, we’re super excited to talk about that. But it has been my observation that the slog of day-to-day change doesn’t warrant headlines in a 24/7 media cycle.

[Interviewer]: Look, I take your point. But just to give you insight into the reporter brain: In 2020, the Sixteen Thirty Fund was the second-largest giver to super PACs in the entire country. The first was One Nation, a right-wing organization. The Sixteen Thirty Fund gave $61 million to super PACs. They’ve scaled up at a speed that is unprecedented. Your organization’s structure has even prompted people on the [R]ight to say, “Hey, I love what you’re doing. I’m going to reorganize in order to mirror you.”

I don’t think it’s that reporters don’t have a taste for covering long, slow, hard work. This political spending is newsworthy. And Arabella shares an address, resources, legal services, HR services, and all kinds of other things with the Sixteen Thirty Fund.

Ganguli: I don’t dispute your wanting to ask the question. I just worry that you’re asking the question to the wrong person.

The Atlantic attributed Arabella’s vast political influence to “the rush of panicked political giving on the Left during the Trump years” but added that “Arabella, as a mission-driven, progressive organization, is caught in a major tension on the [L]eft: How can progressive groups justify using billionaires’ money to influence American politics and civic life while earnestly advocating for a wealth tax or political-spending reforms?” [60]

Fiscal Sponsorship: The Arabella Advisors Network

Arabella Advisors manages four nonprofits, three of which are 501(c)(3) entities and one of which is a 501(c)(4) organization. All serve as incubators and accelerators for a range of other left-of-center activist groups, almost none of which become fully-fledged standalone nonprofits. [61] Since the network’s inception, Arabella’s four “sister” nonprofits have sponsored roughly 340 such groups targeting a number of different issue areas, including healthcare, net neutrality, abortion access, gun control President Donald Trump’s U.S. Supreme Court confirmations, and others. [62] [63]

These four nonprofits form a single network that provides funding to other left-of-center nonprofits as well as fiscal sponsorship (or “incubation”) services to hundreds of activist groups associated with Arabella Advisors:

The New Venture Fund is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and the oldest of Arabella Advisors’ four nonprofits, originally created in 2006 as the “Arabella Legacy Fund.” The New Venture Fund is the largest of Arabella’s nonprofits by revenues, expenditures, and number of activist groups it’s sponsored; as such, it’s been described as the “flagship” of Arabella’s nonprofit network. [64] The New Venture Fund claims it has sponsored over 280 projects across a range of left-of-center issues. [65] In 2020, NVF reported $975 million in revenues. [66]

The Sixteen Thirty Fund is Arabella’s sole 501(c)(4) advocacy nonprofit and the second-oldest of its nonprofits, created in 2009. The Sixteen Thirty Fund sponsors lobbyist groups such as the judicial advocacy group Demand Justice, and engages in political advocacy, including independent expenditures targeting Republican politicians during elections. [67] [68] [69] In 2020, the Sixteen Thirty Fund reported $389 million in revenues. [70]

The Hopewell Fund is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit created in 2015 that primarily sponsors activist groups focused on abortion access and other social issues. [71] In 2020, the Hopewell Fund reported revenues of $152 million. [72]

The Windward Fund is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit formed in 2015 that primarily sponsors environmentalist groups. [73] In 2020, the Windward Fund reported revenues of $159 million. [74]

NETWORK FINANCIAL OVERVIEW

Arabella Advisors’ four “Funds” have grown rapidly since their inception, reporting total revenues of $4.7 billion and expenditures of $3.4 billion between 2006 and 2020. [75] A summary is available below:

Total Revenues:

Arabella Advisors Nonprofit Network: RevenuesArabella Advisors Nonprofit Network: RevenuesArabella Advisors Nonprofit Network: RevenuesArabella Advisors Nonprofit Network: RevenuesArabella Advisors Nonprofit Network: RevenuesArabella Advisors Nonprofit Network: RevenuesArabella Advisors Nonprofit Network: Revenues
New Venture FundSixteen Thirty FundHopewell FundWindward FundAnnual Total
2020$975,483,022$389,684,866$152,371,332$158,611,799$1,676,151,019
2019$460,798,902$138,371,684$86,964,726$44,404,708$730,540,020
2018$405,281,263$143,837,877$66,892,414$19,238,519$635,250,073
2017$358,858,641$79,559,836$130,616,293$12,656,323$581,691,093
2016$357,581,316$21,258,592$16,552,056$15,812,062$411,204,026
2015$318,405,056$5,617,209$6,895,271$1,297,000$332,214,536
2014$179,424,945$16,523,735--$195,948,680
2013$112,942,320$5,269,965--$118,212,285
2012$52,519,099$812,500--$53,331,599
2011$36,542,348$93,600--$36,635,948
2010$16,813,261---$16,813,261
2009$26,812,567$4,828,000--$31,640,567
2008$6,011,782---$6,011,782
2007$1,663,363---$1,663,363
2006$545,100---$545,100
Sum:$3,309,682,985$805,857,864$373,327,366$252,020,411
Grand Total:$4,740,888,626$4,740,888,626

Total Expenditures:

Arabella Advisors Nonprofit Network: ExpendituresArabella Advisors Nonprofit Network: ExpendituresArabella Advisors Nonprofit Network: ExpendituresArabella Advisors Nonprofit Network: ExpendituresArabella Advisors Nonprofit Network: ExpendituresArabella Advisors Nonprofit Network: ExpendituresArabella Advisors Nonprofit Network: Expenditures
New Venture FundSixteen Thirty FundHopewell FundWindward FundAnnual Total
2020$658,874,215$410,038,247$127,636,237$70,257,223$1,266,805,922
2019$420,857,504$98,641,867$107,689,308$20,844,825$648,033,504
2018$373,007,693$141,396,752$78,113,237$13,579,180$606,096,862
2017$329,784,536$46,893,083$28,843,397$11,024,111$416,645,127
2016$264,546,947$19,660,860$7,818,000$7,452,824$299,478,631
2015$214,351,188$8,660,897$839,522$58,293$223,909,900
2014$134,487,602$10,880,643--$145,368,245
2013$74,982,490$2,721,133--$77,703,623
2012$39,574,786$353,098--$39,927,884
2011$24,722,363$93,600--$24,815,963
2010$14,893,390$447,394--$15,340,784
2009$13,847,145$4,380,606--$18,227,751
2008$3,983,417---$3,983,417
2007$1,315,615---$1,315,615
2006$40,399---$40,399
Sum:$2,569,269,290$744,168,180$322,125,544$123,216,456
Grand Total:$3,336,736,834$3,336,736,834

Grants Paid:

Arabella Advisors Nonprofit Network: Grants PaidArabella Advisors Nonprofit Network: Grants PaidArabella Advisors Nonprofit Network: Grants PaidArabella Advisors Nonprofit Network: Grants PaidArabella Advisors Nonprofit Network: Grants PaidArabella Advisors Nonprofit Network: Grants PaidArabella Advisors Nonprofit Network: Grants Paid
New Venture FundSixteen Thirty FundHopewell FundWindward FundAnnual Total
2020$447,092,573$324,931,044$80,113,710$44,017,016$896,154,343
2019$242,710,382$64,973,649$78,913,765$8,115,107$394,712,903
2018$205,351,216$91,386,301$60,039,868$3,955,493$360,732,878
2017$154,740,778$13,336,144$21,562,711$2,476,502$192,116,135
2016$114,285,885$14,584,591$5,662,344$2,339,698$136,872,518
2015$87,322,893$6,768,578--$94,091,471
2014$56,602,126$9,719,545--$66,321,671
2013$29,520,729$1,322,500--$30,843,229
2012$17,076,406$152,500--$17,228,906
2011$9,217,867---$9,217,867
2010$4,105,145$146,569--$4,251,714
2009$3,206,141$3,336,624--$6,542,765
2008$2,172,460---$2,172,460
2007$10,000---$10,000
2006-----
Sum:$1,373,414,601$530,658,045$246,292,398$60,903,816
Grand Total:$2,211,268,860$2,211,268,860

Arabella Advisors’ Consulting and Management Fees:

Between 2008 and 2020, Arabella’s four nonprofits paid the company at least a combined $182 million in management fees. A summary is provided below (note that the IRS does not require nonprofits to report payments of less than $100,000 to consultants): [76]

Arabella Network: Contracting FeesArabella Network: Contracting FeesArabella Network: Contracting FeesArabella Network: Contracting FeesArabella Network: Contracting FeesArabella Network: Contracting FeesArabella Network: Contracting Fees
New Venture FundSixteen Thirty FundHopewell FundWindward FundAnnual Total% Growth
2020$26,982,304$9,066,157$6,657,691$2,918,654$45,624,80635%
2019$23,261,222$3,462,967$4,858,669$2,159,679$33,742,53724%
2018$18,920,327$3,483,127$3,763,563$1,037,742$27,204,75922.4%
2017$17,678,314$2,066,194$1,507,771$980,466$22,232,74543.4%
2016$13,167,207$789,891$807,425$740,180$15,504,70314.2%
2015$13,167,207$239,739$170,953-$13,577,89957.1%
2014$8,299,366$342,066--$8,641,43249.7%
2013$5,509,532$201,906--$5,771,43835.9%
2012$4,246,022---$4,246,02269.5%
2011$2,505,465---$2,505,465101%
2010$1,246,232---$1,246,232-17.3
2009$1,345,054$162,604--$1,507,658171%
2008$555,931---$555,931-
Total:$136,884,183$19,814,651$17,766,072$7,836,721
Grand Total:$182,301,627

NEW VENTURE FUND

For more information, see New Venture Fund (Nonprofit)

The New Venture Fund (NVF) (formerly the Arabella Legacy Fund) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit created in October 2006. The group funds a number of center-left causes, but is primarily known for hosting over 280 fiscally sponsored projects. [77] Former Arabella Advisors managing director Lee Bodner serves as president of NVF.

The NVF sponsors the Media Democracy Fund, a group supported by George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, and which pushes for left-of-center internet-related policies, including net neutrality regulations. [78] [79]

SIXTEEN THIRTY FUND

For more information, see Sixteen Thirty Fund (Nonprofit)

The Sixteen Thirty Fund is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit created in 2009. The Fund provides similar fiscal sponsorship services to that of the New Venture Fund and Arabella’s other nonprofits; but the Sixteen Thirty Fund’s projects are often hosted as lobbying arms in conjunction with an “education” or fundraising arm hosted by one of its 501(c)(3) “sister” nonprofits (usually the New Venture Fund). [80]

The Sixteen Thirty Fund has been described as a “progressive advocacy group” because of its lobbying efforts, and the group has created a number of offshoot entities that advocate for liberal policies. [81] One such group, Americans For Tax Fairness Action Fund, advocates for “progressive tax reform.” Another organization, Make It Work Action, pushes for liberal labor policies. [82]

The Sixteen Thirty Fund funneled nearly millions of dollars from Atlantic Philanthropies to “Unity ’09: Moving a Progressive Policy Agenda in America” a liberal effort to support President Barack Obama’s healthcare policy (popularly known as Obamacare). [83] In 2017, the Sixteen Thirty Fund gave over $600,000 to the left-wing Center for Community Change Action, a group organizing opposition to the Trump administration. [84]

HOPEWELL FUND

For more information, see Hopewell Fund (Nonprofit)

The Hopewell Fund is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit created in 2015. It primarily manages pro-abortion projects, including Equity Forward, which attacks Trump administration “political appointees at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for opposing the left-wing abortion agenda.” [85]

WINDWARD FUND

For more information, see Windward Fund (Nonprofit)

The Windward Fund is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit created in 2015. The Windward Fund primarily sponsors environmentalist projects, such as the Climate Resilience Fund.

Issue Areas

Arabella’s main issue areas focus on left-of-center environmentalist, gender, and food policies. [86]

SHAREHOLDER ADVOCACY AND OIL DIVESTMENT

Arabella has issued reports touting how nonprofits use shareholder advocacy to push for environmentalist prerogatives including carbon reduction mandates and a boycott against the Republican-leaning U.S. Chamber of Commerce. [87] Arabella also pushes for financial divestment from traditional energy companies in favor of experimental environmentalist energy companies and issued a report touting that companies holding $1.3 trillion in assets have pledged “to both divest and invest in clean energy and climate solutions.” [88]

MANDATORY PAID SICK LEAVE

Arabella touts that it worked to create the Everybody Benefits Coalition in 2012, a project of Family Forward Oregon funded by the Rockefeller Family Fund, to lobby for a statewide paid sick leave mandate in Oregon. The coalition included a number of labor-aligned advocacy groups including the Working Families Organization alongside labor unions such as United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and the Oregon Nurses Association. [89]

LOOSER SENTENCING LAWS

In 2014, Arabella coordinated grant funding from a number of left-leaning nonprofits including the Ford Foundation, George Soros’ Open Society Foundations (OSF), the Public Welfare Foundation, and other to form the Vote Safe 501(c)(4), which successfully funded a $10 million ballot initiative campaign to loosen California sentencing laws and release approximately 4,000 convicted criminals. [90]

OTHER ISSUES

The company also helps its clients carryout programs across other left-of-center issue areas including economic, education and healthcare-based issues; “equity and social justice” issues; and global redistribution issues. [91]

Leadership

FOUNDER

Eric Kessler is the founder, principal, and senior managing director of Arabella Advisors. He has been a board member or chair of Arabella’s four nonprofits at various times; in June 2021 he resigned as chair of the Sixteen Thirty Fund. Kessler previously served as the national field director for the League of Conservation Voters and as a White House appointee managing conservation issues for President Bill Clinton. [92]

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER AND CO-PRINCIPALS

Sampriti Ganguli is the chief executive officer of Arabella Advisors. [93]

Bruce Boyd is a co-principal and senior managing director at Arabella. Previously Boyd worked for 13 years as executive director of the Illinois chapter of the Nature Conservancy. [94] Boyd is an adviser to the New Venture Fund and a board member for the Hopewell Fund and the Windward Fund.

STAFF

Scott Nielsen is Arabella’s managing director of advocacy. [95] He also serves on the board of advisors at the Funders Committee For Civic Participation, a donors’ trade group which Arabella Advisors is a member of. Nielsen has also worked with the MacArthur Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the Democracy Alliance, the State Infrastructure Fund, and the Open Society Foundations. [96]

References

  1. “Arabella Advisors.” Devex. Accessed April 19, 2018. https://www.devex.com/organizations/arabella-advisors-62136 ^

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