Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem secretly received $80,000 from dark money fund - a 10% cut of funds she raised - which she failed to disclo…
Brennan Center for Justice documented record-breaking dark money spending of $1.9 billion in 2024 federal election cycle, nearly doubling previous record. Dark money groups contributed $1.3 billion to super PACs, more than prior two election cycles combined, often routed through shell companies to …
The Arabella Advisors network, managing five nonprofit funds including the Sixteen Thirty Fund, raised $1.35 billion from anonymous donors in 2022, making it the dominant force in Democratic dark money operations. The Sixteen Thirty Fund alone spent $196 million on political causes including $66 …
Chicago businessman Barre Seid provided an unprecedented $1.6 billion donation to Leonard Leo’s Marble Freedom Trust through a strategic stock transfer of Tripp Lite to Eaton Corporation. This donation, the largest known to a political advocacy group in U.S. history, potentially avoided …
A leaked video obtained by the watchdog group Documented and shared with Mother Jones revealed that Heritage Action for America, the advocacy arm of the Heritage Foundation, was orchestrating a coordinated $24 million campaign to push voter restriction legislation across eight key battleground …
Stephen Miller launched America First Legal Foundation (AFL) on April 6, 2021, creating a conservative legal organization explicitly designed to serve as a right-wing counterweight to ACLU and SPLC while advancing Miller’s white nationalist policy agenda through litigation. Miller established …
The Federalist Society, funded by $250 million in dark money from anonymous donors, orchestrated the most systematic judicial capture in U.S. history. Trump outsourced judicial selection to the Society, appointing 231 federal judges including 3 Supreme Court justices, all from their pre-approved …
Richard Mellon Scaife, the billionaire heir to the Mellon banking and aluminum fortune who became the most important financial architect of the modern conservative movement, died on July 4, 2014, one day after his 82nd birthday, after a battle with cancer. Scaife’s death marked the end of a …
Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that aggregate limits on total contributions an individual can make to federal candidates, parties, and PACs over a two-year election cycle violate the First Amendment. Chief Justice Roberts authored the majority opinion, joined by Justices Scalia, Kennedy, and Alito, with …
Edwin J. Feulner Jr. retired as president of the Heritage Foundation on April 3, 2013, after an extraordinary 36-year tenure that transformed Heritage from a small Capitol Hill operation with 9 staff members and a $1 million budget into the most influential conservative think tank in Washington, …
By 2010, Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund had emerged as the primary “dark money ATM” for climate denial funding, fundamentally transforming how fossil fuel interests concealed their opposition to climate regulation. From 2002 to 2011, these two donor-advised fund organizations …
Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that corporations can spend unlimited amounts on elections through independent expenditures, enabling creation of Super PACs and dark money networks. The decision dramatically reshaped campaign finance, allowing corporations and unions to spend unlimited funds on independent …
Comprehensive organizational analysis reveals DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund as the central infrastructure for conservative dark money operations, earning designation as ‘Dark Money ATM of The Right.’ Founded in 1999 by Whitney Lynn Ball and Kimberly Dennis (both from Philanthropy …
Following Rick Santelli’s CNBC rant criticizing Obama’s mortgage bailout, the Koch brothers’ network immediately mobilized to create the Tea Party movement. Within hours, Americans for Prosperity registered TaxDayTeaParty.com, while other conservative organizations quickly …
The Heritage Foundation reached over 100 staff members and a $10 million annual budget by 1983, representing explosive growth during the Reagan administration’s implementation of Heritage policy recommendations. In just six years since Ed Feulner became president in 1977, Heritage had grown …
Comprehensive organizational analysis reveals the Federalist Society as the most successful judicial capture mechanism in American history, systematically placing conservative judges throughout the federal judiciary through a three-division structure spanning law schools, practicing attorneys, and …
The Council for National Policy (CNP) is founded by Tim LaHaye, Paul Weyrich, Richard Viguerie, Morton Blackwell, Phyllis Schlafly, Nelson Bunker Hunt, Joseph Coors, and approximately 50 other conservatives who begin meeting every Wednesday morning at Viguerie’s Virginia home. The CNP is …
Edwin J. Feulner Jr., co-founder of the Heritage Foundation in 1973, assumed the presidency of the conservative think tank in 1977, beginning what would become a transformative 36-year tenure that built Heritage from a modest Capitol Hill operation with 9 staff members into the preeminent …
Comprehensive organizational analysis reveals the Heritage Foundation’s structure as a systematic corporate capture mechanism. Founded by Paul Weyrich, Edwin Feulner, and funded with Joseph Coors’ $250,000 seed money, Heritage grew from startup to $100M+ annual revenue by 2010s, reaching …
Richard Mellon Scaife, heir to the Mellon banking and aluminum fortune, purchased the Tribune-Review newspaper in Greensburg, Pennsylvania for approximately $5 million in 1970, marking his entry into media ownership as part of a broader strategy to build conservative infrastructure across multiple …
Ramparts magazine publishes Sol Stern’s article “NSA and the CIA” in March-April 1967, exposing that the Central Intelligence Agency has been secretly funding the National Student Association and revealing “the whole system of anti-Communist front organizations in Europe, …
The John M. Olin Foundation, established in 1953 by chemical and munitions manufacturer John M. Olin, begins serving as a secret “bank” for the Central Intelligence Agency in 1958, according to Jane Mayer’s Dark Money. Between 1958 and 1966, the foundation launders $1.95 million …