Tag: dark money
Ohio's Women Organize Against A Wealthy And Fanatical 'Knight Of Malta'

Ohio's Women Organize Against A Wealthy And Fanatical 'Knight Of Malta'

The Catholic Church does some good things around the world. Think of the nuns and priests murdered by death squads for supporting peasants in Central America. Or Pope Francis, reminding humanity to hold some compassion for the poor and downtrodden every Sunday from his Vatican balcony. Then there are its fanatics and extremists, men-without-women in red hats and red shoes, obsessed with controlling female reproductive organs and protecting pedophile priests. The descendants of Galileo’s jailers might be history’s longest running club of sick puppies. Increasingly, their medievalism is encroaching on Americans.

This week, Catholic extremism’s most high and efficient emissary in Washington, Knight of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta Leonard Leo, will discover whether billions in anonymous donor money and a lifetime of DC networking will meet the limits of power in the voters of the state of Ohio.

On Tuesday, Ohio voters will decide whether to approve Issue 1, a ballot initiative that would establish an individual “right to make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions” in their state constitution. The fact that the ballot initiative exists at all is a triumph. The Ohio legislature is captured by right-wing extremists engaged in an audacious experiment in despotism. They have ignored their own state courts and the will of the Ohio voters with respect to gerrymandering. They are bought and paid for by oligarchs and oil and gas interests for whom they have shut down environmental regulations and even legalized the sale of radioactive fracking waste as a road de-icer. (For more on this dirty business read David Pepper’s Laboratories of Autocracy: A Wake-up Call from Behind the Lines.)

When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, Ohio was one of the states that instantly became Handmaids Tale territory, with forced birth the actual law of the state. Other states had the same kind of ban on the books, just waiting for the SCOTUS green light, but Ohio made national news when a ten year old rape victim was impregnated, and the state refused to allow the child to get an abortion. Her trauma was compounded by having to travel out of state to get care.

Against great odds, prochoice forces in Ohio managed to get a constitutional right to abortion on the ballot. Ohio voters will now get to decide whether to follow states like Kansas and Michigan in returning bodily agency to women and girls.

The fight is ugly and expensive. Pro-choice forces have money and the wind at their backs with wins in other states. Desperate anti-choices in Ohio are flooding the zone with misinformation, claiming the amendment will lead to “abortion on demand” or “dismemberment of fully conscious children” if voters approve it. These lies are promoted on the official government website of the Republican-controlled Ohio Senate. (Issue 1’s text explicitly says “abortion may be prohibited after fetal viability.”)

Ohio Republicans have also used the levers of government they control to change the rules to make it harder to get initiatives on the ballot (they failed) and now, they’ve initiated last-minute voter purges. In a roundup on the Ohio tactics in Talking Points Memo yesterday, Kate Riga wrote, “The abortion rights supporters have money, polls and the recent history of other red-state abortion proposals on their side; the opponents have various schemes of essentially legalized cheating on theirs.”

Who helps pay for this effort to trick Ohio voters into privileging rapist sperm cells over 10-year old rape victims? The same strange little man behind the overturning of Roe, of course.

Leonard Leo -- the Knight-Errant in Italian loafers on a camel above -- is an ideological time traveler from the 11th Century, and he’s proud of it. He likes to include his status as a Knight of Malta in his official bios. The Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta is a Roman Catholic organization founded in 1048 in Jerusalem as a monastic order that ran a hospital for Christian pilgrims, later tasked by Rome with military duties defending Christians from the local Muslim population. Ejected from Jerusalem when the Turks retook it, the order eventually settled on Malta, ruling it until Napoleon’s army dispersed them in 1798. They did not disband.

According to Foreign Policy magazine, the modern day Knights are a nonstate entity with 13,000 members, maintaining diplomatic relations with 104 countries. After centuries in which membership was restricted to European aristocrats, in 1956 a new rank, ''knights and dames of grace and devotion,'' was opened to commoners. The order operates out of a single building in Rome, with a famous “keyhole view” of the Vatican. Their leader is referred to as the prince and grand master, is elected for life in a secret conclave and must be approved by the pope.

Leo has enjoyed four decades of success in Washington, advising Republican presidents on conservative lawyers to fill the federal judiciary. He is responsible for the U.S. Supreme Court rightist quintet of Roberts, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Coney Barrett. As a young man, he helped Clarence Thomas through his nomination fight in 1991. Now he is using donor money to get extremists into state judgeships around the country.

The Knight mostly jousted in the K Street shadows. But since the overturning of Roe, and his historic $1.6 billion dark money treasure haul last year, which I covered for The New Republichere, reporters are paying more attention to him. He leads an increasingly lavish lifestyle in a coastal Maine palazzo (purchased from another Knight of Malta). I’ve been told he bought his own church, made his wife choirmaster and so has his own priest, like the Sicilian noble in Lampedusa's novel Il Gattopardo. His fans in the Catholic Church are pushing for sainthood for a deceased daughter.

Investigations at Pro Publica and Politico turned up accounting and other irregularities, prompting the DC attorney general to look into his networks. (In Ohio, anti-choice activists funded by his network have reportedly paid his consultancy some $2 million.) Shameless Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan recently announced he will investigate the Attorney General for opening that investigation.

Leo would clearly like to keep a low profile in Ohio. As recently as September, he was listed as President of Students for Life America, one of the most active anti-choice groups in Ohio. As the Issue 1 vote nears, his name disappeared off the website, where he has been on the board since 2008. Investigators at The Lever discovered one of Leo’s many pots of money, the Concord Fund, donated $18 million to an anti-choice outfit called Protect Women Ohio Action, with more than $6 million in the past two months.

Last year, the Catholic Information Center (CIC), with offices on K Street, gave Leo an award as a “champion of the rule of law.” The CIC describes itself on its website as "the closest tabernacle to the White House.” In his acceptance speech, which can be viewed on video, the Knight-Errant let loose: “Catholicism faces vile and immoral current-day barbarians, secularists and bigots. These barbarians can be known by their signs. They vandalized and burned our churches after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. … Our opponents are not just uninformed or unchurched. They are often deeply wounded people whom the devil can easily take advantage of."

Calling pro-choice women devil-manipulated barbarians and bigots is both laughable and a kind of hate speech. Most American pro-choice women are like Thera Parks, 51, an Ohio insurance saleswoman, whom the Washington Post interviewed recently. Parks is a Republican who volunteered this spring to collect signatures to get the abortion amendment on the ballot.

Why would a Republican work to overturn her party’s signature achievement - the abrupt end of a right to privacy that women have enjoyed for 40 years? Here’s what she told the Post: “When reproductive rights are banned, parents don’t have a choice or say over their kids or their families or even their own bodies,” Parks said. “A little girl had to leave Ohio to receive care. A thought of forcing young girls to stay pregnant and carry to term is just terrible to me.”

Parks is one of the million points of democratic light around America who will prove to Washington’s Knight of Malta that medieval mores have no home here. As long as democracy exists in some form in the states of the United States, common sense will ultimately prevail over fanatical lunacy.

Nina Burleigh is a a journalist, author, documentary producer, and publisher ofAmerican Political Freakshow, a Substack on politics. Her journalism has been published in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Airmail, and New York. She is the author of seven books including most recently Virus: Vaccinations, the CDC, and the Hijacking of America's Response to the Pandemic and an adjunct professor at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.

Trump's Dark Money Machine Is Designed To Deceive The Public

Trump's Dark Money Machine Is Designed To Deceive The Public

Thanks in part to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the phrase “dark money” is heard a great deal these days in connection with U.S. politics. Citizens United, with its majority opinion by libertarian then-Justice Anthony Kennedy, defined campaign and election spending as a form of constitutionally protected “speech.” And it opened the “dark money” floodgates in a major way.

Roger Sollenberger, in an article published by The Daily Beast on January 19, examines the “dark money machine” of former President Donald Trump. According to Sollenberger, that operation is only getting worse — and is purposely designed to be “confusing.”

“Just when it seemed like former President Donald Trump’s dark money maze couldn’t get any darker, it looks like someone shot the lights out,” Sollenberger reports. “At least, that’s the impression experts in nonprofit law took away from a pair of previously unreported tax filings from the dark money arm of Trump’s political machine, America First Works. Those experts said it appears from the filings and other incorporation records that the advocacy group — which raised almost no money in 2021 — has closed down its original Virginia entity and opened another one in Washington, D.C. under the same name, with the same board of directors. The question is why — and it comes as Trumpworld is laying the groundwork for a second Trump term.”

On December 21, 2022, Axios’ Lachlan Markay reported that if Trump wins the 2024 election, he “will enjoy a key asset absent from his 2017 White House transition: a sprawling infrastructure already preparing to staff a new administration and immediately enact major policies.” Allies of the former president, Sollenberger notes, cite that infrastructure as a key difference between Trump and a MAGA Republican he may be running against in 2024’s GOP presidential primary: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — that is, if DeSantis decides to run. Firebrand author Ann Coulter, pundits at Fox News and Fox Business and writers for the National Review have all been pushing DeSantis for 2024.

“2021 was essentially a rebuilding year for Trump’s dark money machine,” according to Sollenberger. “That work not only came at a cost, it also appears to have happened in a black box, adding another layer of opacity on top of a fundraising and advocacy network that’s already grown so convoluted even legal experts have a hard time untangling it. In this instance, not only is it hard to follow the money, it’s hard to say for sure whether there’s all that much money to follow in the first place. At least, there appears to be a lot less of it flying around in the fractious 12 months after Trump left the White House.”

Sollenberger goes on to explain why America First Works fits the definition of a dark money operation.

“AFW is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization, which are often colloquially called ‘dark money’ groups,” Sollenberger explains. “These groups can raise funds in unlimited amounts, and while they don’t have to disclose their donors’ identities, the organizations can use a chunk of that unattributed money for political activity. According to its 2021 tax filing, which was first obtained by The Daily Beast, AFW — which raised about $51 million the previous year — doled out millions of dollars in transfers and grants. That filing shows that the funds all went to a handful of groups that make up a financial and political support network behind the former president.”

The Daily Beast reporter adds, “Those transactions included a $3 million grant to AFW’s 501(c)(3) counterpart, America First Policy Institute, and an additional $250,000 to Make America Great Again Policies — a lesser-known entity which has reported having a cost-sharing agreement with a new pro-Trump super PAC. AFW also paid another $250,000 for ‘research’ to Republican opposition research firm America Rising, according to the document.”

Sollenberger points out that if Trump’s dark money “maze” is “maddeningly difficult to follow,” that is “almost certainly part of the point,” according to government and campaign finance watchdogs.

Interviewed by the Beast, Brendan Fischer (who serves as deputy director of government for the watchdog group Documented), discussed the drop that occurred with America First Works in 2021 and told the Beast, “America First Works served as the dark money arm of Trump’s campaign in 2020, and it is not uncommon for a politically active dark money group to see a decline in revenue during a non-election year. But this drop is precipitous, and can’t be explained by election cycles alone…. The in-kind contributions of staff time and office space indicate that AFW employees were still working and on the payroll in 2021…. It also would be understandable if AFW was just going to spend down its existing funds and close up shop, but that’s not what’s going on either.”

The “name changes” with Trump-associated “dark money” operations, according to Sollenberger, are designed to be confusing.

“Last December,” Sollenberger reports, “an AFW spokesperson told the Daily Beast it wasn’t a name change; America First Policies had been ‘sold’ to America First Works 'in a private deal’…. However, previously unreported tax filings now show that another ‘America First Works’ was created that same year, this one in Washington, D.C. AFW1 reported a $140,100 grant to the new America First Works (AFW2), which AFW1 cites as a related entity.”

Sollenberger continues, “But The Daily Beast also obtained AFW2’s tax filing, which shows that the two groups share a slate of directors and that the grant comprised all of AFW2’s revenue for 2021. Almost all the money — around $132,000 of it — was spent on a ‘security deposit,’ the document shows, though it discloses no other underlying assets. Again, all of these moves and name changes seem designed to do one major thing: confuse.”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Big Oil's Dark Money Outfit Targets Democrats

Big Oil's Dark Money Outfit Targets Democrats Over Gas Prices

The dark money group American Action Network has launched a multimillion dollar ad campaign against vulnerable House Democrats, dishonestly blaming them for gasoline prices. The ads make no mention of the group's history of accepting oil and gas industry money.

According to a press release on Wednesday, the tax-exempt 501(c)(4) group is spending $2 million on ads against five Democratic incumbents seeking reelection in toss-up districts this November.

The ads against Reps. Marcy Kaptur (OH), Annie Kuster and Chris Pappas (NH), and Frank Mrvan (IN) claim that each is to blame for gasoline prices because they stand with President Joe Biden in opposing unlimited oil and gas drilling.

"This summer the signs are all around us. It was their plan all along," claims the ad against the two New Hampshire representatives, before a clip is shown of President Joe Biden in mid-sentence saying, "... no ability for the oil industry to continue to drill. Period."

The spot urges people to call Kuster and Pappas to tell them to "unleash American energy" and "lower prices."

This out-of-context partial quote comes from a March 2020 Democratic debate, at which Biden said that he would oppose offshore drilling and new drilling leases on public lands.

"Number one, no more subsidies for fossil fuel industry. No more drilling on federal lands. No more drilling, including offshore. No ability for the oil industry to continue to drill, period, ends, number one," he said. CNN has previously debunked claims that that statement indicated a desire to shut down all drilling.

Another new spot by the group attacks Rep. Dina Titus (D-NV) with the same misleading partial Biden quote. It claims, "Now gas costs $5 a gallon ... but Dina Titus wanted it to cost more," before playing clip of her saying, "Well, you've got to raise the gas tax."

Titus made the comment in a Feb. 21, 2020, podcast interview as part of a discussion about how to address infrastructure challenges facing the Highway Trust Fund, a federal gas tax-funded source of money for highway construction and mass transit. At the time, gasoline cost less than $2.50 a gallon on average.

She has since signed on a co-sponsor of a bill to temporarily suspend the federal gas tax entirely given the current national price spike.

Though the group blames current prices on the lack of domestic drilling under Biden, experts agree that this is not a major factor.

The cost of gasoline began to rise under former President Donald Trump in 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic reduced supply and the reopening of the economy boosted demand. It then went up much more this year following Russia's invasion of Ukraine and Congress' nearly unanimous decision to suspend Russian oil and gas imports in response.

Democratic lawmakers and consumer groups have also blamed some of the increase on price gouging and greed on the part of oil and gas companies.

The American Action Network was founded in 2010 and is chaired by former Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN), who has been a registered lobbyist for Saudi Arabia in recent year. It has spent millions of dollars in dark money on attacking Democrats, supporting Republicans, and opposing fossil fuel regulations.

While it does not disclose its donors, in the ads or elsewhere, public records show that American Action Network and its affiliated American Action Forum think tank have received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the American Petroleum Institute, the trade group for the oil and gas industry, and tens of thousands more from the American Natural Gas Alliance.

A spokesperson for the American Action Network did not immediately respond to an inquiry for this story.

Reprinted with permission from American Independent.

The Dark Money Outfit Behind Far-Right ‘Truck Convoy’ Movement

The Dark Money Outfit Behind Far-Right ‘Truck Convoy’ Movement

One dark-money conservative group that was developed to fund efforts challenging the outcome of the presidential election pivoted its financial efforts to support the trucker convoy, per a new report published by The Daily Beast.

By Wednesday, February 23, the American Foundation for Civil Liberties and Freedoms (AFCLF) had raised a total of $464,731 for what is protesters have billed “the People’s Convoy.” In recent days, the group's fundraising amount has tripled and is expected to continue to increase in the coming days.

The far-right group, which previously focused on raising funding to push former President Donald Trump's false election claims, has stated that “100% OF THE DONATIONS GO TO SUPPORTING THE CONVOY!”

“Convoy up, America — the donate button is going toward the funding of the ride to Freedom: we are going to take back our country for ourselves and future generations!” the group's website says. The group explained that donated funds will “reimburse fuel and hard costs of the trucker,” as they noted that “the fund is being handled by volunteer accountants and overseen by a law firm.”

Since the group is categorized as a non-profit structured under section 501(c)3 of the tax code, the AFCLF has the advantage of getting the best of both worlds: tax-deductible donations, which would be considered "gifts," and the ability to conceal the identity of its donors.

When The Beast contacted AFCLF chair Chris Marston, it asked him another of critical questions about the funding along with who would qualify to receive it. However, according to The Beast, Martson offered no solid answers saying “everything came together too quickly to establish rules.”

“Trucker leaders are on finance committee to determine where needs are but methods depend on the nature of expense,” Marston said via text message. “This all came together too fast to have pre-determined rules so we set up a committee with Lawyer, account, and trucker oversight.” [sic]

Martson went on to add that a lot of the group's planning efforts are still undetermined.

“We don’t have agreements with truckers on destination plans,” Marston explained. “We are supporting fuel, food, signage and basics for their journey,” he said, adding that the organization “coordinated with local authorities along the path to be cooperative.”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet