Four years after President Joe Biden won the 2020 election, mystery still surrounds the source of a $64 million donation from an anonymous source that helped him defeat then-President Donald Trump.
The money was given to Biden's campaign through the Impetus Fund, which got the donation from a lone anonymous source after the funds were routed through several accounts, reports CBS News.
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The mystery money shows a system that could be used to throw more such funding to a scale that will reach higher proportions than ever, and that's a problem, said Anna Massoglia, an editorial and investigations manager for OpenSecrets, the nonpartisan watchdog organization that tracks how money influences politics.
"Without information about who is funding groups spending to influence elections, voters won't know who is trying to color their views, won't be aware of any potential conflicts of interest that a funder has or what stake they may have in the outcome of the election," she commented.
Most of the speculation about the $64 million centers around the money originating from one wealthy Biden supporter. However, the donation may have come from a corporation funded by several donors, which is legal but has come under fire.
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The donation landed in The Impetus Fund, a 501c4 tax-exempt organization before going through several entities in a series of steps that shielded the source's identity. As a 501c4 nonprofit, the IRS would have required Impetus to promote social welfare but not disclose its donors.
At first, $55 million of the initial donation shifted to Future Forward USA Action, the primary super PAC supporting Biden's reelection.
A few weeks before the 2020 election, the super PAC moved $60 million over to FF PAC, which is how Biden's main campaign is known. The committee, also a super PAC, must disclose its donors, but since it got the money from its own nonprofit organization, the donation's original source was able to be kept under cover.
According to Influence Watch, the organization was founded in July 2020 and is managed by the Arabella Advisors consulting firm. That year, the group got $67 million in anonymous donations, according to tax records, In addition to Future Forward USA Action, the nonprofit arm of FF PAC, money went to America Votes, the Center for Voter Information (CVI), and ACRONYM.
Arabella oversees several nonprofits and helps donors remain anonymous, notes CBS News. Its nonprofits brought in nearly $3 billion in the 2022 election cycle, with the Sixteen Thirty Fund raising almost $380 million.
The Sixteen Thirty Fund steered $410 million during the 2020 election cycle, helping defeat Trump and returning the Democrat majority in the Senate.
This year, Arabella-managed organizations are helping to fund progressive causes and have poured money into ballot initiatives in several states.
Arabella spokesman Steve Sampson declined to comment on the Impetus donation, pointing out that the company provides consulting services and that it does not donate funds for campaigns or candidates.
Meanwhile, critics are calling Democrats' complaints about the lack of transparency in campaign finances hypocritical, considering Biden in 2022 advocated for the Disclose Act, which would require political groups and nonprofits to disclose donations above $10,000. The legislation has been reintroduced this year.
One Biden adviser, though, told CBS News that as the "stakes of this election are sky high" the president's camp will "protect our democracy with every tool that is legally available."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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