President Donald Trump last week told the Justice Department to investigate Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue, and claimed in a fact sheet that the order was aimed at “foreign contributions in American elections.” Republicans quickly touted the order as cracking down on hidden sources of funds in US elections. “The Democrats’ Dark Money scam has gone on long enough,” Republican National Committee Chair Michael Whatley said last week. ActBlue last week called Trump’s order part of his “brazen attack on democracy in America,” adding that the act is “blatantly unlawful and needs to be seen for what it is: Donald Trump’s latest front in his campaign to stamp out all political, electoral and ideological opposition.” Trump’s claim that he can order the Justice Department to investigate a fundraising platform used by his political foes based on vague allegations is part of his ongoing effort to use the government’s powers to target political enemies. It’s not a particularly realistic accusation—the fact sheet claims it’s targeting “straw donor” schemes, where one person donates on behalf of another person. Given the fairly strict limitations on campaign contributions—$6,600 in 2024—any straw donor scheme that wants to inject any noticeable amount of money into an electoral system that had $15.5 billion run through it, is a great deal of tedious high-risk work for a scammer. On the other hand, in the post-Citizens United era, there are plenty of ways to inject unaccounted-for-money—even theoretically foreign money—into the election. Super-PACs can accept unlimited donations from fairly easy to obscure sources, for instance, which makes the idea of anyone using a small-dollar conduit like ActBlue (or the GOP equivalent, WinRed) fairly silly. And, notably, the funding for some of Trump’s “data” on an alleged ActBlue “fraud” seems to have come from just such a source: a super-PAC bankrolled by Elon Musk. Last year, an opaque group called the Fair Election Fund began promising to pay “whistleblowers” who cited election fraud “with payment from our $5 million dollar fund.” That never panned out, but the same organization found more success with a claim that “60,000 people who were named as small-dollar donors in the Biden-Harris campaign’s July [FEC] report but did not recall making the contribution when contacted by the Fair Election Fund.” As Mother Jones reported last year, the Fair Election Fund appears to have generated this finding by blasting out ominous sounding texts and emails telling ActBlue donors their donations had been “flagged,” then tallying people who responded – accurately or not – by checking a box saying they did not recall making the contribution. But the Fair Election’s fund’s findings have nevertheless become part of an array of GOP efforts to attack ActBlue, which the White House’s fact sheet cited, vaguely, on Thursday. “Press reports and investigations by congressional committees have generated extremely troubling evidence that online fundraising platforms have been willing participants in schemes to launder excessive and prohibited contributions to political candidates and committees,” the fact sheet says.  The Fair Elections Fund shared its findings, which it said cost $250,000 to produce, with conservative media. And in a subsequent ad questioning Kamala Harris’ fundraising, the group exaggerated them. “The Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue has been accused of stealing our identities to conceal donations from bad actors,” the ad said. The group’s accusations were later cited by state attorneys general and House Republicans investigating ActBlue. Right-leaning media outlets continue to cite the Fair Election Fund’s findings as the product of a “conservative watchdog group.” The group’s claims, however, appear to have resulted not from any independent watchdog effort, but as part of a vast dark money effort by Musk aimed at helping elect Trump last year. The New York Times reported in October that the fund was financed by a nonprofit called Building America’s Future, which was bankrolled in part by Musk. The Fair Election Fund went silent after election day last year. A former spokesperson for the group did not respond to requests for comment. In a March the Investigative watchdog site Documented reported additional details tying the Fair Election Fund to Musk. The report noted that the Fair Election Fund is housed within a non-profit now called Interstate Priorities, formerly known as For Which It Stands Fund, formed in 2023 with a single $8.2 million donation. The group is led by Tori Sachs, a Michigan GOP Republican operative who appears to have set up the groups to support Ron DeSantis’ presidential run, which Musk initially supported. The groups appear to have been repurposed in 2024 to boost Trump’s campaign. The Fair Election Fund allegations last year were part of what appeared to be a broader attack by Republicans on ActBlue. The group’s efforts last year piggybacked on on a 2023 campaign by far right activist James O’Keefe, who accused ActBlue of assigning large numbers of donations to the names and addresses of people who did not remember donating so often. Various GOP probes into ActBlue, which incorporated the Fair Election Fund findings, have largely failed to turn up evidence of significant donor fraud or foreign donations being channeled through ActBlue.  They have instead focused on ActBlue’s past acceptance of some donations without requiring card verification values—the 3- or 4-digit codes on credit cards used to confirm their validity. That is, they allege the possibility of fraud via the platform, without documenting much actual fraud, or any indication that ActBlue is more susceptible to fraud or straw donor schemes than WinRed. A  House Judiciary Committee report released earlier this month did point to 22 suspected “fraud campaigns”  in recent years involving ActBlue, including nine with a “foreign nexus.” But a close look at the report’s findings reveals these were suspected fraud efforts identified by ActBlue itself. And the donations involved were generally tiny. For instance, the report touts suspected fraud efforts from “Iraq, Jordan, Myanmar, the Philippines, and Saudi Arabia.” But the ActBlue document that claim is based on indicates it was not an effort at electoral influence but a scam targeting platform users. And the suspect contributions were “all for $1.” The alleged fraud cited—if real—also represent an infinitesimally small proportion of the donations that went through ActBlue last election. Even if fraud were real, the basic mechanics of ActBlue’s operation as a pass-through for small dollar donations makes the allegation of foreign donors accounting for more than a negligible portion of ActBlue’s fundraising implausible. In the third quarter alone, ActBlue reported to have more than 6.9 million unique donors using their site and channeled $1.5 billion in donations. Republicans have not produced evidence that ActBlue was used for any straw donor scheme at a significant scale, and such a scheme would be extremely challenging to arrange, or hide. Musk, meanwhile, spent hundreds of millions of dollars to back Trump last year, much of it through dark money PACS that shrouded their spending in secrecy. If Trump really wanted to crack down on secretive election influence efforts, he would start not with small dollar Democratic donors, but with Elon Musk.

On March 17, Elon Musk appeared on Sen. Ted Cruz’s podcast and falsely alleged that Democrats were giving undocumented immigrants fraudulent access to programs like Social Security and Medicare to lure them to the US.   “By using entitlement fraud the Democrats have been able to attract and retain vast numbers of illegal immigrants,” Musk claimed. “And buy voters,” Cruz added. “And buy voters, exactly,” Musk said. “They basically bring in 10, 20 million people who are beholden to the Democrats for government handouts and who will vote overwhelmingly Democrat as seen in California.” “It’s an election strategy,” Cruz said. “It’s power.” > When Musk was heckled during the rally, he blamed it on “Soros operatives,” > without any acknowledgment that he was the only billionaire quite literally > handing out million dollar checks in the race.   Republicans have been alleging for years that Democrats have been buying elections, usually with the help of liberal billionaires like George Soros. Indeed, election deniers, including Musk, widely promoted a conspiracy theory that the 2020 election was “bought by Mark Zuckerberg” because an organization he funded directed election grants to blue areas to juice Democratic turnout. (In reality, it gave grants to both red and blue areas for routine election administration activities to help offset the Covid-19 pandemic.) These claims are particularly ironic in light of how Musk has engaged in the most openly brazen scheme to buy an election in modern American history, with groups linked to him spending more than $20 million and aggressively pushing the boundaries of legality to flip the Wisconsin Supreme Court in an election on Tuesday that will decide the court’s ideological majority. It’s not just how much Musk and his groups have spent—more than any donor to a judicial election in US history—but how he has spent this money that makes Musk’s intervention in Wisconsin so alarming. In addition to funding two dark money political groups that ran TV ads against liberal Judge Susan Crawford and sought to get out the vote for conservative candidate Brad Schimel, Musk resurrected a controversial scheme from 2024, paying voters $100 for signing a petition from his America PAC opposing “activist judges.” He then awarded Scott Ainsworth, a mechanical engineer from Green Bay, $1 million for signing the petition. On the Friday before the election, he dramatically escalated this sketchy tactic, saying he would travel to Wisconsin to “personally hand over two checks for a million dollars each in appreciation for you taking the time to vote.” Unlike paying a Wisconsin resident to sign a petition, these million-dollar checks were contingent on someone actually voting. Legal experts quickly pointed out that Musk’s pledge violated the state constitution, which prohibits offering “anything of value…in order to induce any elector to…vote or refrain from voting.”  Musk backtracked, saying the money would only go to people who signed his PAC’s petition, holding a rally in Green Bay on Sunday where he hand-delivered two $1 million checks. The Wisconsin attorney general sued to stop him, but the Wisconsin Supreme Court declined to intervene before the event. The recipients were allegedly chosen at random, but the winners aroused suspicion on closer inspection. One check went to Nicholas Jacobs, the chair of the state College Republicans. Another went to Ekaterina Diestler, a graphic designer at a packaging company in the Green Bay area that is owned by a Republican donor who has given tens of thousands of dollars to the Trump campaign and other GOP candidates, including $7,500 to Schimel. Diestler filmed a video for Musk’s America PAC linking her payment to voting—the very thing that is illegal under Wisconsin law. “I did exactly what Elon Musk told everyone to do: sign the petition, refer friends and family, vote, and now I have a million dollars,” she says. (Musk’s PAC has since deleted the post.) When Musk was heckled at one point during the rally, he blamed it on “Soros operatives,” without any acknowledgment that he was the only billionaire quite literally handing out million dollar checks in the race.   Undeterred by legal challenges, Musk unveiled a new scheme on Sunday to recruit “block captains” for Schimel, paying people $20 a pop to “hold a picture” of Schimel with a thumps up, with a bonus $20 for those who posts pictures of themselves on social media with a polling site in the background (Wisconsin law forbids electioneering within 100 feet of a polling place). “You could make over $1000 in one day just by getting out the vote in Wisconsin!” Musk wrote in one post on X. “Easiest money you ever made!” he said in another. The scale of Musk’s spending and the scope of his aggressive pay-to-play tactics has dramatically raised the stakes of Tuesday’s election. “Musk has made this a referendum on the idea of an American oligarchy,” Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler told me when I visited the state last week. “Voters casting a ballot for Susan Crawford are not only voting for their own freedom and their own democracy in their own state,” Wikler added, “they’re also sending a national message about whether wealth has unchecked power in this country, or whether the people still rule.”

This story was published in partnership with The Trace, a nonprofit newsroom covering gun violence in America. A version of this story was first published online in July. For decades, McLean Bible Church has served as the place of worship for many of DC’s Republican elite. The sprawling evangelical megachurch in Vienna, Virginia, boasts a roster of former parishioners that includes everyone from Ken Starr to Mike Pence. Donald Trump once dropped in after a round of golf. McLean Bible is also where, in 2017, a senior pastor named Dale Sutherland formed a nonprofit called Act2Impact, described in state records as an “auxiliary” of the church that would “preach the gospel” and “conduct evangelistic and humanitarian outreach.” That mission was short-lived. Two years later, Sutherland—once an undercover narcotics officer in DC—left McLean Bible and filed papers to rename Act2Impact. It became the Constitutional Defense Fund (CDF), which would “promote and secure” constitutional rights. “We aim to defend and strengthen those rights through methods that will include litigation and other means,” the filing stated. > “We want to get a case before the Supreme Court.” Around this time, Sutherland also leaned into a new persona: the Undercover Pastor. “Buying cocaine and preaching Jesus. A weird combo,” notes his website, which touted a newsletter—“get biblical wisdom delivered to your inbox”—and YouTube channel. “I used to lock people up,” he likes to say. “Now I’m trying to set people free.” Sutherland is much less forthcoming about CDF, which since its re­christening has been at the center of a ­far-­reaching, multimillion-dollar legal campaign to dismantle America’s gun laws. From 2020 to 2023, CDF funneled more than $14 million to the DC law firm Cooper & Kirk and a constellation of gun rights groups, which together have helped file at least 21 lawsuits challenging gun restrictions. These suits, aimed at getting an ­eventual Supreme Court hearing, concern bans on semiautomatic assault-style rifles and high-capacity magazines, as well as restrictions on young adults buying and carrying handguns. In October, the court heard one of the cases, a challenge to the government’s ability to regulate home-assembled, unserialized “ghost guns.” Most of the money that CDF spent on this vast effort came via Donors Trust, a pass-through fund founded in 1999 with the aim of “safeguarding the intent of libertarian and conservative” philanthropists who seek to channel their wealth into right-wing causes. The trust has more than $1 billion in assets and is not required to identify its donors. In short, anonymous funders bankrolled a legal attack aimed at giving the Supreme Court’s conservative majority an opportunity to rewrite firearms laws. It’s akin to the Christian right’s abortion playbook—but for guns. THE FIRM In August 2019, before stepping on a podium in Colonial Williamsburg, Charles Cooper was introduced as a “legend” of the conservative legal world. He began by warming up the crowd at a gathering of the Convention of States Project, which seeks to amend the Constitution and eliminate what supporters consider ambiguous language that has enabled liberal advances. “Are there any freedom-loving, anti-communist patriots in this room?” The audience cheered. “Do any of you cling to your Bibles and your guns?” The day before, Cooper had lost his decades-long­ gig as the National Rifle Association’s outside counsel. As details of financial abuses at the organization became public, many rallied around then-CEO Wayne ­LaPierre. Cooper did not and was purged. Before representing the NRA, Cooper held a key role in the Justice Department. His Reagan-era DOJ opinions—for instance, one finding that employers could refuse to hire those with AIDS—burnished his reputation as a strident conservative. Cooper tapped Samuel Alito to be his deputy and, two decades later, would guide him through the Supreme Court confirmation process. By then, Cooper had founded Cooper & Kirk, which became known as the conservative movement’s prestige advocate. It hired zealots from elite law schools, including Sens. Ted Cruz and Tom Cotton, as well as Noel Francisco, who would become Trump’s solicitor general in his first term. Cooper defended Proposition 8, California’s ban on gay marriage, and represented Jeff Sessions when the then-attorney general was under scrutiny for his contacts with Russian officials in 2016. Cooper’s Williamsburg speech was titled “The Real Threat to the Second Amendment.” He described how his work had contributed to split circuit court rulings on whether people have a right to carry guns outside the home for self-defense. A case that would resolve that question, he noted, was before the Supreme Court. Cooper was referring to New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which challenged a state law requiring applicants for concealed carry permits to demonstrate a heightened need for protection. At the time, Cooper & Kirk was representing the plaintiffs. Although the firm did not argue the case before the court—that job was given to star Supreme Court advocate Paul Clement—invoices show that in April 2021, the month the justices agreed to hear Bruen, Cooper & Kirk managing partner David H. Thompson conferred with lead attorneys on the case about an “amicus panel,” a body of subject experts that advises on litigation strategy. CDF money went to attorneys and advocacy groups that filed briefs backing the plaintiffs. Such filings, known as amicus briefs, are integral to legal strategy and are often cited in higher court rulings. Thompson filed an amicus brief in Bruen on behalf of the Second Amendment Foundation, which has received CDF funding. Another partner at the firm did so on behalf of J. Joel Alicea, himself a Cooper & Kirk attorney identified in the brief only as a professor at Catholic University. The CDF-funded Firearms Policy Foundation (since renamed FPC Action Foundation) and a closely related group, the Firearms Policy Coalition, filed their own amicus brief. So did the archconservative Claremont Institute, which got a $105,000 CDF grant in 2021 to support gun rights. John Eastman—the lawyer who helped rally Trump’s faithful before they stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, and is now under indictment in Georgia and Arizona for attempting to subvert the 2020 election—wrote the Claremont brief. (Eastman’s law license has been temporarily suspended in California and DC.) The Supreme Court’s 6–3 decision in Bruen was momentous. Conservative justices not only struck down New York’s law, but also established a new test for the constitutionality of all gun restrictions. No longer should courts weigh the government’s interest in reducing violence or promoting public safety against the right to bear arms, the majority said. Rather, the ­constitutionality­ of gun laws should depend on whether they’re similar enough to restrictions in place when the Second Amendment was adopted in 1791, or when the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868—points at which, the justices said, the original meaning of the Second Amendment is best discerned. Thanks to Bruen, lower courts have been deluged with gun law challenges. In the last two years, judges have issued, on average, more than one Bruen-related ruling daily, and firearms restrictions are being struck down at an unprecedented clip. “We are more excited than ever about the future,” declared Brandon Combs, who directs both the Firearms Policy Foundation and the Firearms Policy Coalition, after the Bruen ruling. “Indeed, FPC is already working with the exceptional litigators at Cooper & Kirk—truly the best in the space—on the largest Second Amendment litigation program in the country.” THE PLAINTIFFS Of course, before Cooper & Kirk can get involved, a plaintiff is needed. That’s where the Second Amendment Foundation and the Firearms Policy Coalition come in. They not only act as plaintiffs themselves, but they also recruit individuals who can claim standing, a direct injury from the law that’s being challenged. Since 2020—the year Trump replaced Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg with Amy Coney Barrett—a torrent of funding from CDF has helped turn the groups into juggernauts. In the three years prior to 2020, they were plaintiffs in 22 federal actions; in the three subsequent years, that number jumped to 61. “We want to get a case before the Supreme Court,” Second Amendment Foundation founder Alan Gottlieb said in 2023. “And the quicker these cases move, the better for gun ownership and for gun rights.” Gottlieb is known for direct-mail and marketing savvy, and for cashing in on right-wing causes through private companies that have business arrangements with his advocacy groups. He created the Second Amendment Foundation in the early 1970s, and in 1984, he pleaded guilty to felony tax fraud. He was sentenced to a year in prison, which he served largely on work release. (More recently, the attorney general of Washington state investigated Gottlieb, who sued in response, claiming political harassment.) In the late 1980s, Gottlieb gained public notice as an architect of the Wise Use movement, which capitalized on a backlash to federal control of land in Western states and environmental regulation. “I’ve never seen anything pay out as quickly as this whole Wise Use thing has done,” Gottlieb said in an interview from the time. “It touches the same kind of anger as the gun stuff, and not only generates a higher rate of return, but also a higher average dollar donation. My gun stuff runs about $18. The Wise Use stuff breaks $40.” When news stories linked the movement to the Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church, Gottlieb described them as “overplayed.” In 2023, he headlined the Rod of Iron Freedom Festival, an event hosted by the Rod of Iron Ministries, which is led by a son of Moon. The MAGA-allied church glorifies AR-15-style rifles—the type of gun used in an attempt to assassinate Trump at a campaign rally—seeing in them the biblical “rod of iron,” Christ’s prophesied instrument of dominion at Armageddon. In November 2022, Gottlieb gave a deposition as part of a challenge to an Illinois gun law. He testified that an anonymous funder was paying his counsel, Cooper & Kirk, which had given him a statement outlining how much money the donor had spent to support roughly a dozen foundation lawsuits underway in 2021. When asked whether he knew who was paying Cooper & Kirk, Gottlieb testified, “I wish I did.” Ricardo Tomás That remark alarms some experts, who argue that rules of professional responsibility require that a client knows who is paying their counsel before consenting to representation. “He’s either just lying or the firm is delinquent in getting informed consent,” said Dru Stevenson, a professor at South Texas College of Law Houston who specializes in legal ethics and firearms regulation. In response to written questions, Gottlieb said that his deposition answers were “accurate” and that “merely because a third party may have paid for some services rendered, the Second Amendment Foundation retains control over all legal direction, strategy, and settlement authority, which is wholly ethical.”   Gottlieb is not the operation’s only player who is apparently unaware of his beneficiary’s identity. In 2021, CDF paid Gary Kleck, a professor emeritus at Florida State University whose work has been touted by gun interests for decades, $6,900, according to an IRS filing. Kleck told me the money was a consulting fee from Cooper & Kirk for work he’d done on Bruen. “I have no idea what the Constitutional Defense Fund is,” he said, “and had never heard of it before you contacted me.” THE PROFESSOR Even when they go before a friendly court, the lawyers and plaintiffs need research to bolster their case. Enter Georgetown assistant professor William English, who in 2021 received a $58,750 CDF grant and the same year filed a key brief supporting the Bruen plaintiffs. Last June, in an investigation revealing CDF’s dark money operation, the New York Times detailed how English’s Bruen brief was filed jointly with the Center for Human Liberty—which had been incorporated in Nevada two months earlier. (The center shares an address and leadership with the Firearms Policy Coalition and Firearms Policy Foundation.) The brief was prepared by a Manhattan attorney, Edward Paltzik, whose firm received $80,000 from CDF in 2021. It argued that, based on English’s own research, there was no link between right-to-carry laws, higher numbers of gun carry permits, and violent crime. The research had not been peer-reviewed. English’s work suited the plaintiffs perfectly. Clement cited it during oral arguments, and Charles Cooper’s pal Alito did so in a concurring opinion. An update English later published concluded that assault rifles are in “common use,” a finding central to the movement’s legal advocacy post-Bruen. Gun interests have cited English’s work in dozens of motions and pleadings nationwide. Academics on both sides of the gun debate have found defects in his scholarship. During a 2023 deposition in an Oregon case, Kleck, the Florida State professor, said English’s survey can’t be relied on. “He’s vague about exactly how he developed his sample,” Kleck said. “And there is nothing in his report to contradict the assumption that what he had was a self-selected sample.” I’d been trying to get English and Georgetown to answer questions about his work since the Bruen ruling came down. Only after I paid a visit to the gated community where then-Georgetown President John DeGioia lived did the university’s communications office respond, stating: “Georgetown respects and supports academic freedom, including the right of its faculty members to conduct independent research. The University’s Institutional Review Board reviewed this study before the survey began, and the survey costs were supported by an external grant that did not flow through the University.” However, the tax ID number that CDF reported to the IRS in conjunction with English’s grant is Georgetown’s. Asked to clarify the meaning of “did not flow through the university,” a Georgetown spokesperson said the university is “unable to identify any record of Constitutional Defense Fund funds flowing through Georgetown and is uncertain why the University’s tax identification number appears in CDF’s records.” In late June, English published a Wall Street Journal op-ed in which he defended his work, bashed the Times, and characterized attempts by me and other reporters to get answers from him as “harassment.” English wrote that media outlets “are signaling that they will cancel academics who state inconvenient facts…Those of us who want to foster an evidence-based public-­policy discourse should reject these tactics, and courts should take note of them.” THE MIDDLEMAN Lawyers and academics all need to be paid, which brings us back to the Undercover Pastor. Sutherland likes to tout his time with the DC police, but not all of his undercover work ended smoothly. In one early 1990s case, Sutherland and his partner Joseph Abdalla—who would later sit on the board of CDF—handled an informant named Arvell “Pork Chop” Williams, who was shot multiple times and killed. When federal prosecutors tried members of the drug crew suspected in the killing, it emerged that Williams had been allowed to continue making street buys for Sutherland, who was posing as a Georgetown University construction worker seeking crack, despite the fact that Sutherland’s presence caused dealers unease, according to court transcripts. At trial, evidence went missing, including a pager in Sutherland’s possession that defense attorneys argued could shed light on the crimes. “I am going to get the chief of police and the United States attorney in here and read them the riot act,” the judge said at one point. “To lose evidence of various kinds day after day is just not satisfactory.” Prosecutors dropped the murder charge but obtained drug conspiracy convictions against the defendants. After Sutherland left the DC police force in 2013, his role at McLean Bible, where he’d long held staff positions, grew. In 2016, he began talks with the Southern Baptist Convention on a partnership to “plant” churches in the DC region. Sutherland founded an entity called New City Network, an arm of McLean Bible, to carry out the work. Concerned that the partnership violated McLean’s constitution, which requires the church to remain unaffiliated, a group of members filed suit against McLean in 2022. The legal battle revealed a complex series of money transfers totaling more than $7 million between McLean, the convention, and New City Network. Satisfied that records and testimony demonstrated the partnership had indeed violated McLean’s constitution, the plaintiffs dropped the suit in 2023. In a letter summarizing the case, however, their attorney made clear that questions remain: “Current and former church leaders deposed could not explain the reasons for this unorthodox payment structure, or state with confidence where the money went specifically.” A church webpage allows that “financial transactions for the church planting were sometimes confusing,” but says an independent audit accounted for the money spent.  In a deposition, Sutherland said he’d left McLean Bible and his role leading New City Network in May 2019. He was unable to name any churches the network had started, save for one in Falls Church, Virginia, where he and his son-in-law now preach. “For Heaven’s sake,” Sutherland said. “I can picture all the pastors in my head. I just can’t think of the names they gave their churches. Boy oh boy.” One of the plaintiffs in the suit, Jeremiah Burke, said Sutherland’s limited recall was an act. “He repeatedly recounts, in his podcast and on his Instagram page, in vivid detail, events from 20 and 30 years ago with absolute precision, events in which he is the hero,” Burke said. “However, in his deposition, having sworn under oath to tell the truth, Dale somehow couldn’t call to mind details of significant events from the recent past.” A former McLean Bible elder, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal church matters, described Sutherland as “kindhearted” and a “warrior for the Lord,” but also “deceptive.” During the church planting drive, he said, Sutherland “did things the way he wanted to, he just kind of ran rogue.” The elder said Sutherland “is a pretty good talker, he can sell pretty well,” and would “cuddle up next to” the church’s “big donors.” As Sutherland left McLean Bible and established CDF, he began to collect more money from his array of nonprofits, including Code 3 Association, whose stated goal is better relations between police and the public. (Abdalla is a director there, too.) In 2020, these nonprofits paid Sutherland and his private company, Code 3 Consulting, more than $200,000. Over the next three years, Sutherland collected more than $1 million from his nonprofits. He also began flipping DC properties, buying at least a dozen homes valued at $7 million and selling them for more than $11 million. In short, Sutherland has been awash in cash since he filed paperwork to create CDF. In one sense, he’s an odd middleman. People who know him can’t recall Sutherland expressing support for scuttling gun laws. “I never heard him talk about the Second Amendment or gun rights,” the former elder said. “I never did, nope, and I was with him a lot.” But Sutherland’s history overlaps with another of the operation’s main figures. Speaking to an interviewer in 2023, Thompson, the Cooper & Kirk managing partner who has overseen much of the firm’s Second Amendment work, praised the church that was his spiritual home for two decades. “I grew up Episcopalian,” said Thompson, who did not respond to written questions for this story, “and about 20 years ago, I became a born-again Christian and went to McLean Bible Church.” Twice while investigating this story, I knocked on the door of Sutherland’s home to no avail. Attempts to reach him by phone failed. Then, in mid-June, he answered. I asked him how he’d come to be running money through CDF to Cooper & Kirk. “Sir, I am in the car with my grandson,” Sutherland said, “and I am not talking.” THE DARK MONEY In 2016, a young man in Washington state, angry and jealous after a breakup, bought an AR-15-style rifle, 60 rounds of ammunition, and multiple 30-round magazines. Then he killed three people, including his ex-girlfriend, at a house party. He later blamed his actions in part on easy access to guns. The killings prompted the state legislature to enact a ban on high-capacity magazines and assault rifles. The Second Amendment Foundation and the Firearms Policy Coalition, as co-plaintiffs, filed suits in 2022 and 2023 to strike down the bans. Cooper & Kirk is their counsel in the magazine capacity case. English’s survey findings were cited by the plaintiffs in both ongoing suits. But after the state subpoenaed English in the assault rifle case, the plaintiffs agreed not to rely on his work. Autumn Snider’s son, 19-year-old Jake Long, was the first to be shot and killed at the party. Snider said those with the means to fund litigation meant to affect public policy should be free to do so—as long as they do so openly. “You have the obligation to reveal who you are and should have the confidence to provide transparency to the public,” Snider told me. “If you can’t be forthcoming with who you are, that is a red flag.” Defenders of using dark money to support litigation liken the practice to anonymous political speech, which enjoys First Amendment protection. But such arguments have limits, said Adam Winkler, a constitutional law professor at UCLA who has written a book on the gun debate. “First Amendment rights are mitigated by the need to ensure the integrity of the judicial system,” Winkler argues. “We generally don’t allow parties in a case to be anonymous.” Anonymous funding arrangements—not uncommon in the realm of impact litigation—effectively allow an “end run” around judicial ethics safeguards, he said. “How do you know whether there is any impropriety, any influence peddling?” Winkler said. “It’s fundamentally problematic.” Seth Endo, an associate professor at Seattle University School of Law, said the debate involves fundamental questions about the role of courts. If courts are neutral arbiters of the rights and responsibilities of disputing parties, then it’s easy to argue that disclosure is irrelevant. However, if courts are not detached umpires but themselves political agents that drive social change—certainly a charge leveled at the Supreme Court—then the public has a strong interest in knowing who’s enabling litigation. Given Cooper & Kirk’s ties to deep-­pocketed conservatives, there are any number of suspects who may be routing millions of dollars through Donors Trust to Sutherland’s CDF—and on to the advocacy groups and their lawyers. Donors Trust is a pass-through that effectively conceals the identities of individuals and groups backing right-wing causes. (On the left, organizations like the Tides Foundation do the same.) Those who give to Donors Trust can say how they’d like their money to be spent, but they don’t have the final word. In exchange for giving up that control, they get upfront tax benefits. Prominent funders and architects of the modern conservative movement, including the Koch brothers, the Bradley Foundation, and hedge fund tycoon Robert Mercer, have all moved money through Donors Trust.  Sutherland’s CDF ended 2023, the last year for which IRS filings are available, with $330,000 in Donors Trust cash on hand. In 2022, he formed a similarly named nonprofit in Virginia, and in 2023, he did so in Utah. In September 2024, six weeks after this story was initially published, Sutherland dissolved CDF, according to state records. A French documentary series on Sutherland called Dale ­L’Infiltré, or Dale Undercover, was unveiled early last year. In it, Sutherland describes himself as an avid shapeshifter whose undercover guises included a drug kingpin, arms dealer, and Mafia boss. Several of the operations that the series highlights were aimed at getting guns off the street in DC. “I had to come up with these crazy schemes and then try and convince people that it was true,” Sutherland says. “This is where my faith made a big difference. I felt an extra confidence, a strength, to be able to face dangerous situations mentally.” THE JUSTICES On October 8, Pete Patterson, a partner at Cooper & Kirk, stood before the Supreme Court and argued that the Biden administration had overstepped by enacting a rule to crack down on ghost guns. The firm, which was once again representing the Firearms Policy Coalition, had successfully steered the case through the right-wing 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. One of the individual plaintiffs—a former police officer and teacher named Jennifer VanDerStok—said in an interview with a gun rights group that she was “representative of the average American patriot” and warned of “deep state involvement” in an effort to “subvert our nation.” Informed of Sutherland’s ties to the case, a former colleague, retired DC police Sergeant Gerald Neill, said: “I don’t understand why he would do that. From my point of view of the world, and probably Dale’s, we don’t want people to have ghost guns.” Patterson told the justices that the 2022 rule—which requires serial numbers and background checks for “ready-to-build” gun kits—was improper because such products shouldn’t be covered by a federal law regulating items that can be “readily converted” into firearms. The argument quickly turned into one of competing food analogies: “I put out on a counter some eggs, some chopped-up ham, some chopped-up pepper, and onions. Is that a Western omelet?” Alito asked Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, who was defending the ghost gun rule. No, she replied, because those ingredients could be made into something other than an omelet. Barrett then offered a more apt comparison: “Would your answer change if you ordered it from HelloFresh and you got a kit, and it was, like, turkey chili, but all of the ingredients are in the kit?” Yes, Prelogar said. A majority of the justices seemed to agree with Prelogar, though a ruling isn’t expected until the middle of 2025. Other cases tied to the dark money operation continue to advance. The court is currently considering one of them, a challenge to Maryland’s assault rifle ban, that could topple similar laws across the country.

This story was produced in partnership with the National Catholic Reporter. Millions of dollars in last-minute money is pouring into the battle over a pair of abortion-related ballot measures in Nebraska, and it is coming through an unusual and circuitous route. Much of that cash is being spent by a new group called Common Sense Nebraska, which has shelled out a remarkable $4.9 million in the three weeks since it was formed—largely on ads opposing an initiative that would enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution and supporting a separate initiative that would ban abortion. As of the most recent campaign finance filings, the organization still had another $500,000 in the bank. Nebraska is one of 10 states with abortion-related measures on the ballot. Last week, the National Catholic Reporter and Mother Jones reported that Catholic organizations around the country had contributed more than $1.9 million to the fight, with millions more flowing in from wealthy individuals with close ties to the church. But what’s especially notable about the Common Sense Nebraska spending is the labyrinthine path that the money has taken. Most of the funds appear to have originated with the conservative, billionaire Ricketts family and with the conservative group CatholicVote, both of which have made the bulk of their donations since mid-October, according to state campaign finance records. Common Sense Nebraska then routed the Ricketts and CatholicVote money to the campaigns of three local political candidates, including two incumbents running for reelection to the University of Nebraska’s board of regents.  These local candidates, in turn, purchased massive amounts of television air time, which they then donated to the anti-abortion-rights PAC Protect Women & Children for ads about the ballot initiatives. Elements of this arrangement were first reported last week by local news outlets, including the Lincoln Journal Star. Gavin Geis, the executive director of Common Cause Nebraska—a watchdog group unrelated to Common Sense Nebraska—told the Journal Star that shuffling money this way is not illegal but obscures the true source of donations and provides significant benefits for the political committees involved. “By contributing airtime to ballot initiatives, candidates can shield donors from disclosing their support for the proposal and give them a financial advantage over their opponents due to federal rules that give candidates discounted airtime,” Geis said. None of the candidates participating in this funding arrangement—University of Nebraska Regents Jim Scheer and Robert Schafer, and state legislative candidate Tanya Storer—responded to requests for comment for this story. The sudden spending by Common Sense Nebraska has greatly increased the amount of money available to abortion rights opponents in the state. Through early October, Protect Women & Children, the PAC leading the anti-abortion ballot push, had raised and spent just over $4 million on the two initiatives. Almost all that money came from the Ricketts and another wealthy family, the Peeds; both families are well-known donors to Nebraska’s Catholic dioceses. But since Common Sense Nebraska was established on Oct. 14, it has raised an additional $5.4 million, almost all of which ended up going to Protect Women & Children in one form or another. Of that $5.4 million, Common Sense Nebraska has donated $3.2 million to Scheer. Scheer, in turn, purchased $3.2 million worth of commercial airtime, which he then donated to Protect Women & Children for anti-abortion ads. Another $687,000 of Common Sense Nebraska funds went to Schafer, who donated $667,000 worth of advertising time to Protect Women & Children. And Common Sense Nebraska contributed $283,000 to Storer’s campaign, which has made $231,000 worth of in-kind advertising donations to the Protect Women & Children. Common Sense Nebraska has also donated $781,000 directly to Protect Women & Children, including donations as recently as Nov. 1. More donations may have occurred that have yet to be filed with the state campaign finance system.  The majority of the money moving through Common Sense Nebraska’s coffers—$3.9 million—was donated by Marlene Ricketts, the wife of TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts. Another $830,000 was donated by the group CatholicVote on Oct. 21 and 23. The Ricketts family are prominent Catholics, and Joe Ricketts has given millions to the Catholic Church in Nebraska, including an estimated $34 million on the creation of a Catholic religious retreat center. The Ricketts family is also well known for their ownership of the Chicago Cubs baseball team and their involvement in Nebraska state politics. Joe Ricketts’ eldest son, Pete Ricketts, a Republican, previously served as the governor and is currently Nebraska’s junior senator.   Under the leadership of its president, Brian Burch, CatholicVote has become a major player in conservative Catholic political circles. Like much of the MAGA-aligned right, the Wisconsin-based organization was initially reluctant to embrace Donald Trump. In 2016, it refused to endorse him, saying he was “problematic in too many ways.” More recently, CatholicVote has touted Trump’s praise for the organization. In 2020, the group drew national media attention for using geofencing to capture Catholics’ cell phone data while they were attending Mass. The $10 million project then sent targeted political ads to Catholics in battleground states. In this cycle’s Republican primary, CatholicVote hosted a rally for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis but eventually endorsed Trump. Initially a project of the Catholic branch of the Christian Coalition, CatholicVote later became part of the Fidelis Center for Law and Policy, founded by Burch in 2005. Fidelis’ most recent tax documents, from 2022, indicate revenue of $9.4 million—up from $4.8 million the previous year.

Elon Musk, far and away the richest man on the planet, is pouring tens of millions of dollars into efforts to get Donald Trump elected. In addition to his massively valuable promotion of Trump’s messaging on X—an in-kind donation if ever there was one—he reportedly gave $50 million to a group linked to immigrant-hater Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s morally abominable family separation policy. And then there’s the legally problematic $100 payments and $1 million lottery-style giveaways he’s been offering registered swing-state voters who sign a petition stating the following: > The First and Second Amendments guarantee freedom of speech and the right to > bear arms. By signing below, I am pledging my support for the First and Second > Amendments. Weird, right? But Musk’s return on investment could be huge if Trump prevails and gives him even more power over the very government at whose teat Musk’s companies were nurtured to profitability—and on which they continue to depend. Also, let’s remember, tens of millions for this dude is the equivalent of pocket change for the rest of us. Here’s how much of Musk’s net worth $50 million represents: 0.000183486238532 But what of his philanthropy, you ask? Didn’t Musk sign Bill Gates’ “Giving Pledge,” vowing to give at least half of his wealth to charity? Yes, he signed up in 2012, for what it’s worth. But he’s running behind on his giving. Consider that, in all of 2022, according to his foundation’s latest tax filing, he gave $160.5 million to charitable causes. Musk made more than that just yesterday—a great deal more. Forbes Real Time Billionaires That’s right, Musk’s net worth increased by $2.7 billion on Friday, according to Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaires, a database that serves as a reminder of just how far our supposedly egalitarian American experiment has devolved into plutocracy—or oligarchy, if you prefer—a situation that founder John Adams had hoped we would avoid (though he wasn’t terribly confident that we would). Put another way, the amount Musk gave to charity in one year is this much of what he gained in a day: 0.05962962962963 Six percent! Musk, by the way, is now roughly 100 times as rich as he was when he signed the pledge—a scenario Andrew Carnegie would consider grotesque. He’d best start acting more like MacKenzie Scott. Because, as a trusted advisor to industrialist John D. Rockefeller once warned his boss: > You must distribute it faster than it grows! If you do not, it will crush you, > and your children, and your children’s children! Now, Musk did contribute almost $2.3 billion in Tesla stock to his foundation in 2022, earning a fat tax break and locking in a huge, tax-free capital gain at the expense of America’s taxpayers. But our rules governing philanthropy are so toothless that he need only disburse a small fraction of these “charitable” assets. His foundation’s nest egg—roughly $7.2 billion at the end of 2022—generated $309 million in investment income that year, and the value of its unsold assets gained at least $373 million. Yet the amount it gave to charity was about the same as the previous year. Federal law requires private foundations to spend down 5 percent of their assets annually (which includes overhead). Musk’s 2022 obligation was about $358 million—he didn’t give even half that. The government lets foundations average their disbursements over five years, but he’ll have to pick up his pace considerably. Lest you were hoping the Musk Foundation’s tax documents would reveal sinister causes to which he may have donated, sorry to disappoint. His public giving is unobjectionable. What you have to watch out for, though, is the transfers to donor-advised funds. His foundation has, since 2018, has moved more than $75 million over to a fund at Fidelity Charitable. For some unfathomable reason, the government lets such transfers count toward a foundation’s mandatory charitable payout. Donor-advised funds are even more problematic than private foundations—although both cost taxpayers a fortune and are, as I explained in our must-read American Oligarchy issue, profoundly undemocratic. Not only are the creators not obligated to dole out a minimum of their assets each year, they are not obliged to reveal whom they are giving to. It’s dark money, in other words— convenient for anyone who wants to give secretly to odious nonprofits, including groups willing to subvert the democratic process if it will help put a certain candidate back in the White House.

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. A right-wing organization is attacking efforts to educate judges about the climate crisis. The group appears to be connected to Leonard Leo, the architect of the right-wing takeover of the American judiciary who helped select Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominees, the Guardian has learned. The Washington, DC-based nonprofit Environmental Law Institute (ELI)’s Climate Judiciary Project holds seminars for lawyers and judges about the climate crisis. It aims to “provide neutral, objective information to the judiciary about the science of climate change as it is understood by the expert scientific community and relevant to current and future litigation,” according to ELI’s website. The American Energy Institute, a right-wing, pro-fossil fuel think tank, has been attacking ELI and its climate trainings in recent months. In August, the organization published a report saying ELI was “corruptly influencing the courts and destroying the rule of law to promote questionable climate science.” ELI’s Climate Judiciary Project is “falsely portraying itself as a neutral entity teaching judges about questionable climate science,” the report says. In reality, the American Energy Institute claims, the project is a partner to the more than two dozen US cities and states who are suing big oil for allegedly sowing doubt about the climate crisis despite longstanding knowledge of the climate dangers of coal, oil, and gas usage. In a PowerPoint presentation about the report found on its website, the group says the Climate Judiciary Project (CJP) is “wholly aligned with the climate change plaintiffs and helps them corruptly influence judges behind closed doors.” “Their true purpose is to preview the plaintiffs’ arguments in the climate cases in an ex parte setting,” the presentation says. > “The idea that [the Environmental Law Institute] is corruptly influencing the > court from the left…is complete disinformation.” Both the report and the PowerPoint presentation link the American Energy Institute to CRC Advisors, a public relations firm chaired by right-wing dark money impresario Leo. Given his outsize role in shaping the US judiciary—Leo helped select multiple judicial nominees for former president Donald Trump, including personally lobbying for Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment—his firm’s role in opposing climate litigation is notable. “He was greatly responsible for moving our federal court systems to the right,” said David Armiak, the research director for Center for Media and Democracy, a watchdog group tracking money in politics, of Leo. CRC Advisors’ work with the American Energy Institute, Armiak said, seemed “to delegitimize a group that’s seeking to inform judges or the judicial system of climate science, something that [Leo] also opposed with some of his other efforts.” The American Energy Institute report’s document properties show that its author was Maggie Howell, director of branding and design at CRC Advisors. And the PowerPoint’s document properties lists CRC Advisors’s vice president, Kevin Daley, as the author. Neither CRC Advisors nor Leo responded to requests for comment. In an email, the institute’s CEO, Jason Isaac, said: “American Energy Institute employed CRC Advisors to edit and promote our groundbreaking report on the corrupt relationship between our federal court system and leftwing dark money groups.” But Kert Davies, the director of special investigations at the nonprofit Center for Climate Integrity, who shared the report and PowerPoint with the Guardian, said ELI is “far from leftwing.” The institute’s staff include a wide variety of legal and climate experts. Its board includes executives from Shell Group and BP—oil companies that have been named as defendants in climate litigation—and a partner at a law firm that represents Chevron. Two partners with the firm Baker Botts LLP, which represents Sunoco LP and its subsidiary, Aloha Petroleum Ltd, in a climate lawsuit filed by Honolulu, also sit on ELI’s leadership council, E&E News previously reported. “ELI’s seminars are giving judges the ABCs of climate change, which is a complicated subject that they ought to know about,” said Davies. “The idea that they’re corruptly influencing the court from the left…is complete disinformation.” Asked for comment about ELI’s connection to oil companies, the American Energy Institute CEO, Isaac, said that “all of those companies have embraced and/or are pushing political agendas” that are “contrary to the best interest of Americans, American energy producers, and human flourishing,” including environmental, social, and governance investing and diversity, equity and inclusion. > Isaac described oil and gas as keys to prosperity. “I live a high-carbon > lifestyle,” he said. “I wish the rest of the world could, too.” “They are the appeasers, the ones feeding the crocodiles,” he said. He did not respond to questions about the extent of the relationship between the American Energy Institute and CRC Advisors. In a statement, Nick Collins, a spokesperson for ELI, called the American Energy Institute report “full of misinformation and created by an organization whose leadership regularly spreads false claims about climate science,” and described the CJP curriculum as “fact-based and science-first, developed with a robust peer review process that meets the highest scholarly standards.” The American Energy Institute’s attack on the judicial climate education program comes as the supreme court considers litigation that could put big oil on the hook for billions of dollars. Honolulu is one of dozens of cities and states to sue oil majors for allegedly hiding the dangers of their products from the public. Hawaii’s supreme court ruled that the suit can go to trial, but the defendants petitioned the US Supreme Court to review that decision, arguing the cases should be thrown out because emissions are a federal issue that cannot be tried in state courts. This past spring, far-right fossil fuel allies launched an unprecedented campaign pressuring the Supreme Court to side with the defendants and shield fossil fuel companies from the litigation. Several of the groups behind the campaign have ties to Leo. In June, the Supreme Court asked the Biden administration to weigh in on the defendants’ request. Biden officials could respond as soon as this week. “It’s doubtful that AEI’s timing of their report release was a coincidence,” said Davies. The Supreme Court may soon weigh in on another case, too: In April, 20 Republican state attorneys general filed “friend of the court” briefs asking the court to prevent states from being able to sue oil companies for climate damages. All of the signatories are members of the Republican Attorneys General Association, to which Leo’s Concord Fund is a major contributor. In the weeks since its publication, the American Energy Institute report attacking ELI has received a surge of interest from right-wing media. Fox News featured the report, as did an array of conservative websites. On Thursday, The Hill published an op-ed by Ted Cruz attacking the ELI project. Other right-wing groups have previously questioned the motives of ELI. CRC Advisors has counted Chevron, one of the plaintiffs in Honolulu’s lawsuit, as a client. In 2018, the Leo-led PR firm also worked on a campaign aimed at exonerating the Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh from accusations of sexual assault. Davies said it “would not be surprising” if CRC Advisors had a “large role” in the creation or promotion of the report attacking ELI’s judiciary trainings. “They’re known for running campaigns for corporate interests and rightwing interests,” he said. In addition to his work with the American Energy Institute, Isaac also serves as a fellow at Texas Public Policy Foundation—a think tank backed by oil and gas companies that has recently garnered scrutiny for its role in drafting the ultraconservative policy playbook Project 2025. A former Republican Texas state representative, Isaac has dedicated much of his career to disputing climate research and promoting misinformation to justify deregulation of the fossil fuel industry. Isaac recently responded to a Twitter post about Climate Week by the EPA, calling the conference on climate change “nothing more than a celebration of people suffering from mental illness, #EcoDysphoria, with those attending insisting the rest of us catch it.” On a September 25 episode of the right-wing Wisconsin talk radio program “The Vicki McKenna Show,” Isaac offered a defense of the fossil fuel industry, describing oil and gas as keys to prosperity. “I live a high-carbon lifestyle,” he said. “I wish the rest of the world could, too.” Formerly known as Texas Natural Gas Foundation, the American Energy Institute on its face appears to contribute little more than public relations work in defense of the fossil fuels industry. The group publishes blog posts defending carbon emissions and denouncing the push for climate action. It has also produced a handful of longer reports promoting laws that restrict environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing and opposing the widespread adoption of electric vehicles. Among its board members are Steve Milloy, who served on Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency transition team, once ran a tobacco industry front group, and is a well-known climate denier. Milloy did not respond to a request for comment. According to the group’s most recent tax filings, the American Energy Institute, which lists four staffers and a CEO on its website, is not a lavish operation. The group brought in about $312,000 in revenue in 2022 and appears to fund its operations at least partly by selling merchandise—among other products, branded T-shirts, tote bags, and beer koozies emblazoned with the words, “I Embrace The High Carbon Lifestyle.”

This story was reported by Floodlight, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powerful interests stalling climate action. Former Florida state Sen. Frank Artiles was convicted by a Miami-Dade Circuit Court jury Monday evening, the latest fallout from the state’s 2020 “ghost candidates” scandal. Artiles was convicted on three felony counts related to $44,000 in payments he made to Alex Rodriguez, a no-party candidate whose role was to siphon votes from Sen. Jose Javier Rodriguez, the Democratic incumbent. The six-member jury deliberated for seven hours before reaching its verdict. Artiles was acquitted on a fourth count of aiding and abetting a false voter registration. Artiles sat stone-faced as the guilty verdicts were read. “They won. They were successful. They beat JJR,” public corruption prosecutor Tim VanderGiesen said in his opening argument. “They beat the incumbent named Rodriguez.”  “They stole an election,” he said.  Artiles’ defense attorney Frank Quintero had reminded jurors that ghost candidates are legal “so long as Florida election law is not violated.” But that’s precisely what the jury found.  > Florida Power & Light’s then-CEO Eric Silagy had instructed underlings to make > Florida state Sen. Jose Rodriguez’s life “a living hell.” The term “ghost candidate” is used to describe a candidate who has no chance of winning, but runs to harm an actual contender’s chances. Ghost candidate Rodriguez was part of an opaquely funded 501(c)(4)—or “dark money”—effort enabled by consultants working for Florida Power & Light, a subsidiary of the NextEra utility conglomerate. Florida Power & Light CEO Eric Silagy, who was never charged with wrongdoing, had ordered his underlings to “make [Sen. Rodriguez’s] life a living hell.” Silagy retired abruptly in January 2023 in the wake of reporting by Floodlight and its media partners about FPL’s involvement in the ghost candidate scandal. Artiles was charged with conspiracy, making campaign contributions above the $1,000 limit, and “false swearing” for instructing Alex Rodriguez—who actually lived outside District 37—on how to fill out paperwork to get on the ballot.  Artiles, who faced up to five years in prison per count, sat quietly throughout the two-week trial. He was flanked by his attorneys, Quintero and Frank Quiñon. Behind him in the Miami courtroom was a revolving cast of friends and family. The charges stem from efforts to achieve a Republican supermajority in the Florida Senate by running three ghost candidates to take votes away from Democratic candidates in key 2020 races. The spoiler candidates were backed, in part, by a series of nonprofits controlled by Jeff Pitts, then-CEO of Matrix LLC, a consulting company that was working for Florida Power & Light, according to reporting by Floodlight and other news outlets The nonprofits in question were 501(c)(4)s, which are not required to disclose their donors’ identities, and the prosecution stopped short of tracing the money back to its original source. On September 27, Florida federal judge Aileen Cannon dismissed a shareholder lawsuit accusing FPL’s parent company, NextEra Energy, of issuing misleading statements about its political activities. From the utility’s perspective, as noted in our earlier, in-depth story on the scandal, expanding GOP dominance—by whatever means—would help fulfill the utility’s legislative priorities: > Those priorities included escaping liability for damages related to power > outages in the wake of Hurricane Irma; ousting J.R. Kelly, the state’s > long-serving (unsympathetic) consumer utility watchdog; and winning approval > from the Senate-confirmed Public Service Commission for Florida’s largest-ever > hike in electricity rates.  > > > The defeat of Sen. Rodriguez had the added benefit of kneecapping one of the > state’s most prominent backers of rooftop solar, which reduces carbon > emissions and lowers utility bills—and against which FPL had waged a > decade-long counterinsurgency campaign. He was defeated by 32 votes by Ileana Garcia, founder of Latinas for Trump. Prosecutors said consultants implicated in the scandal had withheld records that had been subpoenaed. Key evidence in the form of hundreds of text messages between Artiles and Rodriguez also went missing, they said. Much of the trial revolved around the credibility of the state’s star witness, ghost candidate Alex Rodriguez, who admitted under cross examination that he had a difficult relationship with the truth. To buttress his credibility, prosecutors laid out the broader effort to influence the 2020 election.  Their first witness was a reticent Pat Bainter, a north Florida peanut farmer and powerful operative for the state Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee.  In a pretrial deposition, Bainter, whose company, Data Targeting, did work for GOP candidates, had acknowledged he paid Artiles $15,000 a month for six months for on-the-ground research in the District 37 race, including running a spoiler candidate. Bainter also acknowledged he sent a $100,000 no-strings-attached payment to a 501(c)(4) nonprofit controlled by Artiles.  Testimony and evidence presented at trial revealed that Bainter held meetings with Artiles and Garcia campaign consultants who had a business relationship with Pitts, then-CEO of Matrix. > “There is no other explanation for why the defendant is giving tens of > thousands of dollars to Alex Rodriguez,” the prosecutor said. Garcia’s campaign manager testified that Bainter held the purse strings for that campaign. Bainter, too, testified that his company worked for Garcia’s campaign. Rodriguez took the stand late on the fourth day of the trial. Prosecutor VanderGiesen showed him totals from the 2020 race, in which he got 6,000 votes. “Did you come about getting those votes honestly?” “No,” Rodriguez responded.  Rodriguez, who had pleaded guilty to election-related charges and served six months of home detention and three years of probation, also testified that Artiles offered him $50,000 to run as a spoiler: $25,000 before the election and $25,000 after. But he was afraid Artiles would never come through on his promise to pay, so he “fabricated” a series of business deals involving construction equipment, diesel engines and COVID masks to extract money from Artiles. He also asked Artiles to help cover his rent and his daughter’s private school tuition, Rodriguez testified.  At one point, he admitted, he invented a story about a Range Rover he was going to buy at auction for Artiles, asking the former state senator for a $10,900 payment. His reason for all the scams? “I was concerned I wasn’t going to get the $50,000.” The defense grilled Rodriguez, working to establish reasonable doubt about the nature of his transactions with Artiles. They portrayed the former senator as the victim in a series of fraudulent business deals and requests for financial help from Rodriguez. “The evidence is going to show that Rodriguez is a con artist, a professional con artist, a pathological liar,” Quintero told the jurors. On the stand, Rodriguez didn’t defend himself, replying to Quintero’s increasingly forceful questions in a quiet monotone.  The key question posed by the defense was: Could the state prove—incontrovertibly—that the payments at the heart of the case were illegal campaign contributions?  “There is no other explanation,” VanderGiesen posited, “for why the defendant is giving tens of thousands of dollars to Alex Rodriguez.” When approached by a reporter from Floodlight, Rodriguez declined to speak on the record until the end of the trial. He took the reporter’s phone number and said he would call. As he walked down the escalator, he shot the reporter a wink.  The reporter also spoke to Artiles shortly before the verdict was handed down. Artiles called the trial “a colossal waste of time.” “The press won’t report what’s really happening,” he said.  The reporter replied that he’d be happy to write the whole story—if he could ever find out precisely what it was.