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Liberal Democrats appear to hate billionaires, except when said billionaires funnel money into their pockets through ostensible nonprofits like the Sixteen Thirty Fund.
“The Sixteen Thirty Fund has become a massive force on the left in recent years, growing from an operation that moved a few million dollars per year early in the last decade to a $400 million behemoth in the final year of Donald Trump’s presidency,” according to a Politico report filed Friday.
“Sixteen Thirty Fund spent widely on a range of liberal causes, from swing-state TV ads and left-leaning ballot measures, to campaigns opposing Trump’s judicial picks and his health care and tax policies. It played a major role in the 2018 midterms as well, when Democrats flipped control of the House of Representatives,” the report continued.
The nonprofit obtained over $100 million from just one nonprofit, billionaire megadonor Hansjörg Wyss’ the Berger Action Fund, between April 2016 and April 2021. Roughly $31 million was moved specifically between April 2020 and March 2021.
The Sixteen Thirty Fund obtained another $45 million from tech billionaire Pierre Omidyar and his wife.
The rest of its donors “remain shrouded in mystery,” including the mysterious donor who funneled $86.2 million into its coffers in 2020.
Yet to hear Democrats tell it, only Republicans rely on “dark money.”
🛑 Stop scrolling 🛑
Can you chip in $5 or $10 right now? Dark money groups have flooded New Hampshire with millions of dollars to unseat me. If we’re going to protect this seat and our Senate majority, it’s going to take all of us working together. https://t.co/Dwz4eublDE
— Maggie Hassan (@Maggie_Hassan) March 16, 2022
“In 2020, nearly 200 nonprofits, groups, and individual donors sponsored projects through Sixteen Thirty Fund, helping us grow immensely from 2019 to 2020,” Sixteen Thirty Fund president Amy Kurtz said to Politico about the group’s donors.
“Apart from the growth we saw in 2020, we continued to sponsor advocacy projects supported by the Berger Action Fund’s grants around biodiversity, tax fairness, and preserving the Affordable Care Act,” she added.
News of all this billionaire money flowing into the Democrat Party comes a few months after The New York Times ran a bombshell report revealing that, despite spending years decrying dark money, Democrats have eagerly embraced it ever since the rise of former President Donald Trump.
NY Times: Democrats embraced dark money with ‘fresh zeal’ to win in 2020, topping GOP totals https://t.co/CfTMYMnI69
— American Wire News (@americanwire_) January 30, 2022
“Spurred by opposition to then-President Trump, donors and operatives allied with the Democratic Party embraced dark money with fresh zeal, pulling even with and, by some measures, surpassing Republicans in 2020 spending,” the Times reported.
“The analysis shows that 15 of the most politically active nonprofit organizations that generally align with the Democratic Party spent more than $1.5 billion in 2020 — compared to roughly $900 million spent by a comparable sample of 15 of the most politically active groups aligned with the G.O.P.”
These findings, the Times noted, “reveal the growth and ascendancy of a shadow political infrastructure that is reshaping American politics, as megadonors to these nonprofits take advantage of loose disclosure laws to make multimillion-dollar outlays in total secrecy.”
As previously reported, the language about “a shadow political infrastructure” closely echoed the language of a 2021 Time magazine piece about the “cabal of powerful people” who’d worked together in a “shadow campaign” to “control the flow of information” and “change voting systems and laws” ahead of the 2020 election
All this seems to point to Democrats being willing to bend all the rules and norms — their own stated rules and norms, to be clear — to win elections.
As usual, the obnoxious over-representation of affluent media liberals (i.e. Warren’s base) in media narratives obscured what a failure her candidacy was. And it was kept on artificial life support by a single, anonymous dark money donor who spent $14.5 million to drag it around: pic.twitter.com/ApDtDpGBxg
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) May 21, 2020
Conservative commentator Mark Levin warned about this “dark money” during a Fox News monologue delivered in October of 2021.
In sharing his warning, he cited three pieces, including Time’s “cabal” piece, a New York Post story about Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg funneling $419 million to various nonprofits in 2020 and a Breitbart story about a “top Democrat lawyer [who] uses dark money network to fund progressive lawsuits.”
He also linked it all to Trump losing the 2020 presidential election.
“Ladies and gentlemen, our election system is in fact under attack, and it is under attack by very, very wealthy people in combination with radical left-wing Democratic Party organizations. There is no getting around it. There is no question about it,” he said.
“Dark money, all this money flowing into the coffers, organizations that don’t have to report who is giving what to whom. A combination of the corporatists and the left-wing groups, and it goes on and on and on. And they are there today and they are plotting right now,” he continued.
Plotting, specifically, to put in power Democrats by any means necessary.
“And of course, you’re not allowed to talk about this because the media has said this is all conspiracy stuff, and the media has said, well, if 66 lawsuits were brought in, and you couldn’t win a single one. This has nothing to do with bringing lawsuits. This has everything to do with changing the voting system so we have a corrupt, fraudulent voting system,” he added.
Listen:
Writers and editors can be contacted at [email protected] with feedback, tips, or corrections.
V. Saxena is a staff writer with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University. Saxena also contributes to BizPac Review.
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