A walk down memory lane, asking questions about dark money in the 2020 and 2022 election cycles and ties in Oklahoma to a powerhouse 501C4 with admitted Marxist donors, including George Soros.
The bulk of this research was conducted December 9, 2021. I ran across this file recently and realized that this would be a perfect review of the influence of dark money in our elections, as the 2024 election season is in full swing, and with just a month and a half before November 5. The issue of our corrupted election system has been obfuscated the last few years and the peripheral problematic issues that surround our elections have been largely ignored by officials in most states. In Oklahoma, the Governor’s task force on elections not only didn’t address any of the research and data available that’s troubling about our elections, but they came out with the recommendation that we allow MORE dark money into Oklahoma as a way to shore up our elections. If one ignores the actual problems, then any solutions will not touch those problems, and those advocating for the status quo can claim that the problems with the broader issue have been addressed. Nothing to see here anymore, so let’s move on. Meanwhile, the ‘solution’ exacerbates the actual problem, the status quo is maintained, and the busy and distracted public is pacified. It’s a massive shell game.
The 2020 election brought to public light a number of 501C4 organizations that funnel billions of dollars through the American political system without, by law, being required to list their donors. The term for that type of political contribution has been labeled ‘dark money’, because the public is kept in the dark about where the money is coming from. Due to current federal law, this type of dark money contribution is perfectly legal, and the donors do not enjoy tax breaks when making contributions to this type of organization. Tax payers and the public do not know, unless the donors admit to their contributions, who is funneling money to what campaign, what lobbyist organization, or even what individual candidate through campaign contributions. What the public can see are the tax filings and the recipients of this 501C4 money.
The Sixteen Thirty Fund, a subsidiary of an organization called Arabella Advisors, is listed as a Charitable organization with an address in Oklahoma City and a home office in Washington DC. The OKC branch opened in 2015, and renewed it’s license with the Oklahoma Secretary of State’s office. There was one person listed as being at the helm of this ‘company’ in 2015, Eric Kessler. Who is this person? Click here and it becomes clear the ties that this individual has to leftist organizations and politicians such as the Clintons. Arabella is an umbrella organization for companies such as the Sixteen Thirty Fund and the New Venture Fund, with branches of the Sixteen Thirty Fund located all over the country.
Leading up to the 2020 election cycle, the financial summary from 2016 to 2020 shows a breathtaking amount of money coming into this organization. Most of it is “soft” money contributions from corporations, which added up to $55,000,000.
It is affiliated closely with the Lincoln Project, which was forced to rebrand and remake it’s board shortly after the 2020 election due to allegations of pedophilia by co founder John Weaver. The group also was panned for their pretense as white supremacists before this year’s Virginia elections. They are desperately trying to retain the pretense, as well, of being the ‘standard bearers’ of conservatism by continuing to claim that the January 6th ‘riot’ was instigated by then President Trump, while completely ignoring the actions of FBI undercover agents and Capitol Police in perpetrating the violence that day.
WHY does such a liberal organization that gives exclusively to leftist causes and democrats, with ties to an organization that has ties to someone accused of pedophilia and the sexual harassment of 20 young men, have an office in OKC? In the article on the Lincoln Project please make note of the founding members besides John Weaver. Other members of the board at that time were Steve Schmidt, who ran John McCain’s campaign, and George Conway, married to Kelly Ann Conway, who ran President Trump’s 2016 campaign.
The Sixteen Thirty Project spent a lot of money opposing Trump’s Supreme Court picks and other judicial appointments and on lobbyists to fight for leftist bills.
Now why, again, was the Lincoln Project, supposedly a conservative organization by their self description, taking Sixteen Thirty Fund money? Who is Eric Kessler again, the former head of Arabella? And what does this have to do with Oklahoma? Except that the Sixteen Thirty Project has a store front window in OKC and has been registered with the SOS to operate in Oklahoma, a registration that was recently renewed, and has been raising money in Oklahoma? Who is contributing? Well, because it’s a 501C4 we cannot know that. See how that works?
Another organization under the umbrella of Arabella, The New Venture Fund, partnered with The Center For Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) Zuckerburg’s organization that was used to distribute “Zuckerbucks” to states including Oklahoma, a potentially illegal activity as we do not allow private interference or funding of our public elections systems, in order to funnel millions of dollars into swing states and specific precincts. The money was not tracked after granted and the stipulations to receive this money were removed by CTCL. The money could literally be used for anything by the entity which received the money. A listed goal of CTCL was to pass an infrastructure bill that would create sweeping changes to our elections processes.
Arabella and CTCL were under investigation in Louisiana for interference in their elections. CTCL gave over half of Oklahoma County Election Boards grants for the 2020 election. View the list of counties receiving grants from CTCL in 2020 from across the United States here. Many states, including Oklahoma, have now passed laws making such private contributions to public elections illegal.
The Sixteen Thirty Fund also has other interests besides elections, including “man made climate change”, “social justice”, and other leftists ideals. It is very interesting how all of this is tied together with winning elections and paying a fortune to lobby for legislation that will benefit certain companies and organizations. And they got the infrastructure bill they wanted, with billions for green energy initiatives, benefiting certain companies and including foreign owned corporations.
To get an idea of what dark money is doing in our elections, let’s look at the Sixteen Thirty Fund’s public records from the 2022 election cycle.
Looking at the public tax records of the Fund, the tax filings show a very shadowy structure with millions in expenditures but less than $200,000 going for salaries of executives in the year 2022.
- The money for the organization doubled from 2017 to 2018, but where is that $4 million in wages going? It’s not going to the officers of the Sixteen Thirty Project.
- In 2022 The Sixteen Thirty Fund gave over $2 million to a group in Michigan called Protect Michigan Vote for their elections.
- Who is this PAC and who are they giving THEIR money to?
- One of PMV’s main expenditures is to this company, Ground Game who is listed out of Missouri but who has offices in Colorado.
- The largest expenditure for PMV was over $1.5 million to this left wing consulting group. Now without a central office and with people working for them all over the country.
Who would have thought that consulting could be so lucrative?
The question remains as to why such an organization has a store front in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, the state with the most conservative population in the country? The organization is raising money for the 2024 election cycle and we have done precious little in this state to stop the flow of dark money into the campaigns here. Multiple citizens have now researched, extensively, the ties between organizations that are associated with multiple campaign consulting firms and are pushing for reform into how campaign money is reported in our state while the governor’s unconstitutional task force on election integrity is pushing for MORE freedom to bring in more funds freely into this state, when our constitution states that our elections are to be free and fair. The legal definition of free is ‘un-interfered with’, basically, unfettered by outside influence, so the recommendation from this task force would be for Oklahoma to move even farther away from following our constitution when it comes to our elections.
In Oklahoma, we need to continue to ask more questions, and push for full transparency into the money being spent by campaigns in our state.
*This is an edited version of an article that was originally published at my personal Substack Rock Girl’s Musings and crossposted in the Substack for Restore Liberty Oklahoma.
Wendi Montgomery Dial is the current Oklahoma Deputy State Director of Restore Liberty and Principal Co-Founder of Oklahoma Liberty and Integrity Group. She has been analyzing election data in Oklahoma for 3.5 years and travels around the state to inform the citizens about the issues regarding election integrity in Oklahoma. She conducts research and writes on a wide-ranging array of subjects of local, state, and national interest. Her articles can be found at https://restorelibertyoklahoma.substack.com/, and realrockgirl.substack.com.
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