Dark Money And The Billionaires Who Decide National Issues
Barry Seid (or Barre Sied), Leonard Leo, Pierre Morad Omidyar, Johann Georg Wyss and George Soros, the Wellspring Foundation, Marble Freedom, The Hub Project, Arabella Advisors and the Federalist Society are among the most powerful people and groups in America, on both the left and right wings, and most people have never heard of them.
That is because Seid, Omidyar, Wyss and Soros have donated billions in so-called “dark money” to influence political causes and candidates but the law allows these donors’ names and their politics to be kept secret. Leo, meanwhile, has funneled billions in donations to right wing groups like the Wellspring Foundation and the Federalist Society that have been successful in winning conservative Supreme Court appointments and supporting conservative political candidates. Dark money has not been only for Republicans as organizations like Arabella Advisors and the Hub Project have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for liberal causes.
“Dark money” generally refers to donations to nonprofits that get involved in politics but do not disclose their donors, a practice that was approved in the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010. Voters never know the identities or the politics of the influential donors of dark money. The latest massive example involves reports of a $1.6 billion donation to the nonprofit, right wing, Marble Freedom Trust. The trust has funneled more than $200 million to other conservative organizations, according to published reports.
Marble Freedom is led by Leo, the co-chairman of the conservative Federalist Society, a powerful, conservative group that advised former President trump on his Supreme Court picks and that lords over a huge network of other right-wing nonprofits that don’t disclose their donors of dark money. The Federalist Society has championed ideas that have become mainstream Republican mantras, including opposing most of the New Deal; claiming the administrative state is unconstitutional; that corporations have free speech and free religion rights; that women and LGBTQ people are not “protected classes” under constitutional law; and that there is no right to privacy implied by the due process clause of the Constitution.
The name of the donor of the $1.6 billion was not made public but published reports identified him as Barre Seid, a 90-year-old billionaire owner of the Chicago-based electrical device firm Tripp Lite. Seid’s previous donations have been tied to smaller anonymous contributions to other right-wing groups, according to reports. The $1.6 billion is considered the largest dark money contributions ever made to a non-profit, political group.
A 2010 story in Salon reported that a donor named “Barry Seid” was listed in tax documents as the anonymous donor who gave nearly $17 million to a group that produced an anti-Islam documentary and sent DVDs of the movie to millions of households during the 2008 election.
Other reports identified Seid as having pledged $20 million over five years to George Mason University’s law school in order to rename it for former, conservative Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia in 2016.
Marble Freedom Trust, led by Leo, has funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to other dark money groups. At the end of April 2021, Marble Freedom had more than $1.4 billion in assets.
The largest beneficiary of Marble Freedom’s largess was a $153 million gift to the Rule of Law Trust, a dark money nonprofit led by Leo that has funded other conservative organizations. The Rule of Law Trust was formed in 2018. Its only employee is Leo. In 2020, the trust had net assets of $43,683,753 and distributed $21,500,000 to another non-profit, political group, the Judicial Crisis Network.
The Judicial Crisis Network was formed in 2009 to push through President George W. Bush’s conservative judicial nominees. It later led the effort to block President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court and to support the trump appointment of Neil Gorsuch. The network is headed by Leo protégé Carrie Severino, a devout, conservative Catholic who was a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
The Judicial Crisis Network spent more than $5 million to oppose Obama’s 2016 nomination of Garland and another $10 million for Gorsuch’s appointment. During the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings for Amy Coney Barrett, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., referred to a “$250 million dark money operation” to influence the selection of judges. The network also has spent millions of dollars on local judicial and attorney general races across the country.
Leo has supported Catholicism and has shown a bias against Islam. While serving as chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), Leo was accused of leading a culture of anti-Muslim bias that permeated the agency. He also was active in the opposition to the construction of an Islamic community center near the World Trade Center site in lower Manhattan. The commission’s principal responsibilities are to review the facts and circumstances of violations of religious freedom internationally and to make policy recommendations to the President, the Secretary of State, and the Congress.
Leo also sits on the Board of Governors at the Council for National Policy, a secretive, Christian Right organization founded in 1981 by activist Morton Blackwell, commentator Paul Weyrich, direct-mail pioneer Richard Viguerie, right-wing activist Phyllis Schlafly and “Left Behind” author Tim LaHaye. The council was described by The New York Times as “a little-known club of a few hundred of the most powerful conservatives in the country” who meet three times yearly behind closed doors at undisclosed locations for a confidential conference. The Nation has called it a secretive organization that “networks wealthy right-wing donors together with top conservative operatives to plan long-term movement strategy.”
Marble Freedom also contributed $41.1 million to Donors Trust, a nonprofit that distributes money to conservative and libertarian groups in addition to nonpolitical organizations. Donors Trust has funneled millions of dollars to groups that have made false claims about election fraud and advocated for more restrictive voting rules.
Additionally, Marble Freedom donated $16.5 million to The Concord Fund, a nonprofit that has advocated for conservative nominees to the Supreme Court and other judgeships and is associated with a group that has pushed for restrictive voting laws.
Leo’s foundation also gave more than $250,000 to the Heartland Institute, a think tank that rejects the scientific consensus on climate change and the negative health impacts of smoking.
The Wellspring Committee, led by Ann and Neil Corkery, is another non-profit that doles out millions in dark money to conservative causes. It was founded out of the Koch network in 2008. Wellspring raised $24 million from 2008–2011, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The Corkerys have leveraged the network to boost conservative judicial nominees, most of whom have been devout Catholics.
The Corkerys have been staff members or directors at the extreme-right Catholic League; the anti-gay National Organization for Marriage; and Leo-affiliated organizations like the Becket Fund and the Judicial Crisis Network. The Corkerys are members of the extreme, ultra-orthodox Catholic sect known as Opus Dei.
The liberal side of dark money includes Soros, a 92-year-old Hungarian born, Jewish philanthropist and businessman who has donated more than $32 billion to various foundations. During the 2003–2004 election cycle, Soros donated $23,581,000 to various tax-exempt groups that supported efforts to defeat President George W. Bush. Soros donated $1 million to the super PAC backing President Barack Obama’s reelection. In 2015, he donated $1 million to the Super PAC Priorities USA Action, which supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race. In the second quarter of 2020, Soros gave at least $500,000 to Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.
Johann Georg Wyss, 87, is a Swiss billionaire businessman and donor to politically liberal and environmental causes in the United States. Between 2004 and 2008, Businessweek estimated that Wyss personally donated nearly $277 million. In 2013, he signed The Giving Pledge, agreeing to give away the majority of his fortune. As of 2015, Wyss and the Wyss Foundation had donated more than $350 million to environmental protection. In 2018, Wyss donated $1 billion to the Wyss Campaign for Nature, with a goal of conserving 30 percent of the world’s land and oceans by 2030.
In 2015, the Wyss Foundation started The Hub Project, “to shape media coverage to help Democratic causes.” The goal of The Hub Project is to help Democrats be more effective at conveying their arguments through the news media and directly to voters. The project is part of Arabella Advisors, a leading vehicle for funneling “dark money” on the political center-left. The Hub Project is housed within Arabella-sponsored groups the New Venture Fund and the Sixteen Thirty Fund. Between 2007 and 2020, the Wyss Foundation donated around $56.5 million to the groups.
Pierre Morad Omidyar, 55, is a French-born Iranian-American billionaire and founder of eBay. Since 2010, Omidyar has been involved in online journalism as the head of investigative reporting for the Honolulu Civil Beat. In 2013, he announced that he would create and finance First Look Media, a journalism venture to include Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and Jeremy Scahill.
In 2010, Omidyar joined Bill Gates and Warren Buffett as a signatory of The Giving Pledge, with intentions of giving away most of their wealth. In 2019, Omidyar donated around $500 million to charitable causes.