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Booker claims to not know ‘much’ about dark money group Demand Justice, but has spoken at their events

March 23, 2022 | | Print Article

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Democrats like Sen. Cory Booker are reportedly trying to deny their ties to left-wing dark money groups, but the evidence contradicts their claims, suggesting that either they’re lying, or they suffer from extreme amnesia.

One specific left-wing dark money group, Demand Justice, has been accused by Senate Republicans of “acting as puppet master” to Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nomination to the high court, according to Politico.

“Senate Republicans signaled they plan to use Jackson’s confirmation hearing as a forum to slam Demand Justice — a liberal organization that advocates for adding seats to the Supreme Court and pushed for Jackson’s nomination — as a pernicious ‘dark money’ group acting as puppet master to her selection,” Politico reported Tuesday.

It’s reportedly an attempt by Republicans to give Democrats a taste of their own medicine: “It’s a playbook Democrats have employed in the past against conservative nominees and the organizations that work to promote them, such as the Federalist Society,” according to Politico.

However, Democrats like Booker have reportedly begun complaining that there’s somehow a difference between their link to Demand Justice and Republicans’ link to the Federalist Society.

“I honestly don’t know that much about them. If you pick the ACLU, or the [Center for American Progress] those are groups that we’ve worked with. They’re not to us what the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society are to [Republicans],” Booker said to Politico.

Yet according to Fox News, Booker has in the past attended multiple Demand Justice events.

“After former Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement in June 2018, Booker joined other Democratic lawmakers in speaking at a Demand Justice rally in front of the court building. … Earlier that same month, he spoke at a Demand Justice rally in front of the Capitol in protest of Trump judicial nominee Thomas Farr,” Fox News notes.

“Remind me who they are again?” Sen. Tim Kaine likewise said to Politico, though he then turned around and proceeded to defend the dark money group.

“I can see why Republicans would want to try to create some big bad wolf, but they’re not that big and they’re not that bad. And I don’t think that they’re wolves,” he said.

According to the Capital Research Center’s Influence Watch service, Demand Justice is a subset of the notorious Sixteen Thirty Fund. Politico ran a report about the dark money fund just a week ago.

“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,” the outlet reported last 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.”

What makes the group notorious is that it receives money from billionaires, the majority of whose identities “remain shrouded in mystery.”

Despite Democrats’ claim of being dark money free, even The New York Times, certainly no conservative outlet, has noted that they are swimming in dark money.

“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 in January.

More dark money, in fact, than even Republicans.

“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.,” according to the Times.

As noted by the Times, these ties “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.”

Vivek Saxena
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