It is certainly true that not everything comes down to money, humans are complicated and are motivated by many influences. But it isn’t nothing. In fact, it’s a huge factor in politics and we’ve gone out of our way in recent years to empower it even more with loose laws designed to give vastly wealthy players (who benefit massively from laws that enable them to gobble up more and more of the earth’s wealth) more and more power.
There’s a lot of rot in our political system, but this is right at the heart of it:
Efforts to overturn the election. Jan. 6 organizers. White supremacist groups. And more than a dozen private and public universities. They all have one thing in common: They received anonymous funding funneled through a single conservative dark money behemoth.
That’s the news in the latest IRS filing from Donors Trust—a conservative, Koch-aligned nonprofit which does not need to reveal the names of its donors and has been called the “dark money ATM of the right.”
The disclosure, first obtained by CNBC, shows the group channeled major support for entities which fought to overturn President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory and organized the Jan. 6 rallies in Washington, D.C.
Donors Trust also gave more than $2 million to groups linked to white supremacists, including the VDARE Foundation.
Norm Eisen, a government ethics expert and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, analyzed the filing with colleagues and remarked that it was “profoundly concerning for the future of our democracy.”
“The Donors Trust is taking advantage of the dangerous opacity of our tax and related laws and regulations to fund alleged white supremacist and white nationalist associated groups, those who were bad actors in wrongly attempting to spread misinformation about or overturn the legitimate 2020 election results, and even groups that were responsible for the rally that helped trigger the Jan. 6 insurrection,” he told The Daily Beast.
But the same vehicle that quietly fuels white supremacist rhetoric also fanned money out to major educational institutions, including state public schools like the University of Texas, Virginia Tech, Michigan State University, and Florida State University. Leading private colleges like Georgetown, Vanderbilt, and a conservative think tank headquartered at Brown University also drew anonymous support.
At the same time, the fund shipped millions of dollars to right-wing organizations agitating for education reform, including to groups pushing unfounded fears about critical race theory.
The Donors Trust primarily funds right-leaning, libertarian, and free-market advocates. It describes itself as “a charitable savings account”—a go-between that allows wealthy donors to deposit money in lump sums, where it gets invested at tax-free growth. They can later direct contributions at any time while remaining anonymous.
People think that the anonymity is the problem and it surely doesn’t help. But honestly, I don’t think the electorate is sophisticated enough to care if some rich people are backing causes they don’t like and, in any case, there seems to be very little they can do about it. Some donors don’t want to be shunned by other rich people for donating to right wing causes but honestly, I don’t think it would make much difference if they were exposed. They’d find a way.
After decades of campaign finance reform we have very little to show for it. Even blatant defiance of the weak laws we have rarely result in any accountability for political players much less for donors.
Asked about the money raised for white supremacist and anti-democratic groups, Donors Trust president and CEO Lawson Bader provided a statement touting the fund’s financial success, claiming the organizations they support are “worthy causes” and that the donations “serve the public good.”
“2020 was a year of great uncertainty and change. Despite this, donors stepped up to support public charities, especially those embroiled in alleviating and addressing the vast economic and health challenges facing the country,” the statement said. “Many account holders held ‘rainy day’ charitable funds in their respective accounts, which made it possible for many to extend their generosity and serves as a reminder about the essential nature of donor-advised fund providers during times of crisis.”
Bader, who pulled a $390,000 salary in 2020, said the $186 million distributed last year was “to serve the public good.” He claimed the group has, since its 2001 inception, “distributed more than $1.5 billion to thousands of worthy causes and institutions focused on science, medicine, religion, public policy, the arts, civics and health.”
A representative from a public relations firm that serves the company told The Daily Beast that the organization exists to give legitimate groups “a seat at the table” and “not to advance any cause,” including “those they may disagree with.”
But that appears to contradict with the mission statement on the group’s IRS filing, which states that its purpose is “to promote liberty through limited government, personal responsibility, and free enterprise by providing financial support to other publicly supported charities that share in its purpose.”
It is unclear from Bader’s statement which goals the Donors Trust organization shares with some of its “worthy causes,” including groups that have been associated with white identity and white supremacist movements, like VDARE, Young Americans for Liberty, and the New Century Foundation.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, VDARE, which received $70,000 last year and nearly $2 million in 2019, “regularly publishes articles by white supremacists.” YAL, which received $1.3 million through Donors Trust in 2020, has been affiliated with the white nationalist and the neo-Nazi organization Identity Evropa. The group removed its president after multiple women leveled allegations of sexual assault in January. And another $600,000 went to the New Century Foundation, which SPLC, the Anti-Defamation League, and academics consider a white supremacist group.
The Donor Trust’s self-described efforts to “serve the public good” included bankrolling an array of groups which challenged the 2020 election and seeded unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud. Those organizations received nearly $10 million in anonymous cash last year, according to an analysis of the filing.
Two of those entities played key roles in the events surrounding Jan. 6. One of them, the Tea Party Patriots, was listed as a rally organizer and received $250,000. The second, Turning Point—the right-wing youth group run by Charlie Kirk—provided buses to D.C. and participated in the “March to Save America” ahead of the event. Turning Point groups took in a total $780,000 from trust contributions in 2020.
Articles on the VDARE website also rejected Donald Trump’s loss and “cheered on” the rioters.
Sure, it was a grassroots uprising — with a little help from their friends, the vastly wealthy mega-donors who just happen to think that authoritarian autocracy is “a public good.”
Money can’t unilaterally make this happen. Or at least it couldn’t. Now that they are financing the destruction of our election processes, they might just be able to get it done.