A Swiss billionaire whose personal goal is to “re )interpret the American Constitution in the light of progressive politics” has given hundreds of millions of dollars to a left-wing organization that is putting millions of dollars into state ballot initiatives, according to a new report from Americans for Public Trust ( APT ).
Hansjörg Wyss, through his Berger Action Fund, has donated$ 243 million to the Sixteen Thirty Fund, which “uses its war chest … to support large get-out-the-vote drives, problem advocacy efforts bolstering President Biden’s plan, progressive pet projects from pregnancy to immigration, and strike advertising against Republican politicians, ” according to APT.
The group also pours resources into state ballot initiatives — to the tune of$ 97,593,151 over the past decade, according to the report. The cash injections are “often concentrated in battleground national states such as Arizona, Michigan, and Ohio or state with aggressive U. S. Senate races like Colorado , Missouri, and Nevada. ” The lion’s communicate of that money has gone to Michigan, Ohio, Colorado, Nebraska, Missouri, and Nevada, but the Sixteen Thirty Fund even targets ballot initiatives in strong red state like Arkansas, North Dakota, and South Dakota.
The Sixteen Thirty Fund has dumped practically$ 34 million into Michigan— a express former President Donald Trump won in 2016 — since 2017 to, in part, “rewrite the state’s election laws, ” according to the report. In Nevada, the team “was the number one donation to a poll concern that implemented automated voter registration ” in 2018.
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The Sixteen Thirty Fund is a member of the Arabella Advisors network, which has been referred to by The Atlantic as the “Massive Progressive Dark-Money Group You Never Heard Of, ” as The Federalist’s Mark Hemingway pointed out in a RealClearInvestigations article. ”
Additionally, Wyss has contributed to organizations like the Center for American Progress and Priorities USA, which ran voter registration and recruitment campaigns to increase Democrat attendance, and established media outlets that were accused of slanting the information in favor of Democrats and attempted to block Mr. Trump’s nominees, prove he colluded with Russia and push for his impeachment, ” the New York Times reported.
It’s unsurprising that Wyss’s beneficiaries push Democrat voter turnout, since part of Wyss’s long game is expanding the left’s voter base. In 2015, the Wyss Foundation “put forth a plan to ‘fundamentally change the composition of the [American ] electorate’ in a way that another leaked memo indicated would help ‘achieve the foundation’s policy goals, ‘” as Logan Washburn explained in these pages.
On Wednesday, Tennessee Sen. Bill Hagerty introduced the Prevent Foreign Interference in American Elections Act, which seeks to stop foreign nationals like Wyss from funding ballot initiatives as well as “ballot harvesting, get-out-the-vote activity, public communications that promote a political party, or ‘Zuckerbucks’-type election administration activity. Additionally, the legislation would forbid foreigners from indirectly funding election activities by using intermediaries like the Sixteen Thirty Fund to make contributions.
Democrats have recently benefited from hundreds of millions of dollars in election-related contributions from a shadowy foreign billionaire, bypassing the federal ban on foreign-national contributions in U.S. elections, according to a hysteria over Russiagate and alleged foreign influence in American elections. S. elections, ” Hagerty said in a statement. This kind of influence threatens democracy and self-government in America, and its enormous scope ought to be alarming. ”
House Republicans began an investigation last year that looked into whether businesses that meet the requirements for Section 501 of the U.S. were tax-exempt. S. The Code adheres to the statutory and regulatory prohibitions against… foreign funding being funneled through such organizations to influence American elections. ”
Unfortunately, “the opaque nature of 501( c)4 independent political expenditure groups makes it impossible to tell whose donations are spent on what, ” Hemingway explained.
“With Arabella, donors ’ money is extremely fungible, ” Hemingway wrote. It is difficult to know how donations from foreigners like Wyss are distributed because they are routed through two or three organizations before being spent. ”
APT filed a complaint with the FEC over Arabella Advisors and Wyss a few years ago, according to Hemingway. APT urged the FEC to check the flow of funds between Arabella Advisors and other super PACs to make sure foreigners do n’t break current laws ‘ security. After the FEC was deadlocked 3-3, the complaint was dismissed.
Elections correspondent at The Federalist is Brianna Lyman.
