We're back with another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emily Jasinski,
culture editor here at the Federalist. As always, you can email the show
at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on Twitter at fdr LST.
Make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcasts as well. Today,
I'm really excited to be joined by investigative reporters senior investigative reporters at the Washington
Freebeacon, Andrew Kurt and Joe Simonson. They are out with a bombshell news
story that gets documents from the Arabella Advisor's network and gets a sort of rare
glimpse inside what is a very shadowy but very very powerful group on the left.
So Joe Andrew, thanks for joining the show. Thanks for having us.
Absolutely this is a phenomenal report that's already caught the attention folks like Ken
Vogel at the New York Times, who does some good investigad reporting on dark
money on his own. But this story is the documents that you guys have.
This is a very very rare glimpse inside a very very powerful network and
some folks probably recognize the name Arabella Arabella Advisors that probably is familiar to them,
but maybe some other people that aren't, you know, super super super
into the daily news cycle have missed it. So if you guys could both
start just by telling us what you think people should know, the basics about
what Arabella is, that'd be great. Yeah. So, Arabella Advisors think
about like a pyramid, so Ba said at the top, and they manage
five dark money nonprofit funds, the two most prominent being the New Metro Fund,
which is a billion dollars charity, and the sixteen thirty Fund, which
is one of the largest political nonprofit groups in the country. And Arabella Advisors
is a for profit consulting firm that publicly states that they're just a back office
hr administrator. They kind of handle the boring stuff for the network, but
the documents that we obtained show that Arabella has much more granular involvement. And
then and this start money network and they led on publicly. Um, they're
these funds, uh, each of them run and them uh dozens if not
hundreds of what are called pop up groups, So they're like nebulous. Um.
You know, they call themselves nonprofit grassroots initiatives, but in reality they're
you know, part of this massive multi billion dollars dart Money network and Arabella
Advisors as a team of employees that oversee each one of these these projects.
So um, so we've got this multi billion dollars network that has this uh
uh you know for profit consulting firm and Arabella that is kind of, you
know, directly managing um, you know, every aspect of this uh of
of the network and all the projects that they run. And it's you know,
it shows it's really a coordinated, top down effort, you know,
from the start money And I think Emily like one of the up shots from
the reporting is that I think it answers a lot of questions that your listeners
might have or you know, average people who or might be on the right
or turn on the news and you know, you look at some protests going
on in DC, whether it's about like packing the court or releasing Trump's tax
returns, and you know, I certainly thought this way for a long time.
When you look at these protests, you see that they're usually actually very
organized. A lot of the participants all have these signs that seemingly come out
of nowhere, and it's not that it's super complicated to arrange these these protests
or social movements or whatever. But one thing that you know this reporting show
is that well there's actually like a very central player who is behind um,
you know, core packing protests and stuff like that, and it's Arabella.
And so when you have these huge left wing nonprofits like New Venture Fund,
on the drop of a dime, um, all they have to do is
call Arabella Arabella and say, hey, like, I want something on this
court that discords out of control. Arabella says, that's fine, will set
up something called a fiscal sponsorship m. We'll send in some of our staff
and then overnight you have now what seems like a very complex nonprofit dedicated to
a single issue. But but it's really easy to spin these things up.
And you know they really are omnipotent um. A lot of protests that you
see TV ads, I mean I've seen ads from Arabella, the kind of
stuff that we're talking about. Arabella connected groups in playbook. I mean,
they're all over and it's just really they have it down to a science.
Somehowen House spin up these things. Yeah, really important point and actually this
is speculative and I want to get into some of the broader stuff obviously,
but one quick question. I think a lot of people, and we've heard
this actually from Justice Alito and Justice Thomas's camps, have read into something perhaps
coordinated by all of the recent pitches that ended up in media on Supreme Court
ethics, etc. And to your point, Joe, about how when something
sometimes feels really coordinated, it may be worth thinking there is in some ways
a central player and all of this. So maybe you guys don't want to
get too speculative on that question, but I'll just toss it open to both
of you if either of you wants to take it. Is that potentially the
kind of maybe campaign that you could see coming out of the Arabella in network.
Well, on the question of Justice Thomas and Alito, yeah, I
wouldn't feel comfortable speculating I'm connecting that to Arabella, But what I can say
is that similar type movements to sort of restructure the Supreme Court left wing movements,
I believe it's fitched the court right Andrew. Yeah, one of the
most prominent Arabella pop up groups is called a Demand Justice, and they broke
away from the network a few years ago. But in twenty eighteen, during
the Capital hearings. You know, all of a sudden there was a state
you know, ground swell of liberal protesters at the at the Supreme Court,
and a lot of those being organized by Demand Justice. Well Demand Justice at
the time, was there just a creation of the Arabella network. I mean,
you have you know, they have multi billionaire donors throwing a ton of
money into these into these networks, and which I was describing with the physical
sponsorship arrangement, they're able to at the drop of the hat and you create
groups like Demand Justice, and you kind of create a ground swell of what
appears to be grassroots, independent support, but in reality it's you know,
this creation of this UM, this massive dark money network that's that's kind of
operating in the shadows. So they're able to spin up these initiatives that operate
like legitimate nonprofit groups very quickly, and they just become the go to place
for UM for liberal dark money. And on the question with the Thomas and
Alida stuff in particular, again, you know, I don't have any evidence,
very particular reason to believe like Arabella is behind this, although I feel
quite confident saying if you do start seeing UM more organized protests against those who
justices in particular like we saw against Cavanaugh. It's a very it's a very
good chance that there's probably some connection to Arabella or the New Venture fund it.
And so I think like when it comes to you know, dumping OPO
research or whoever is um is going after Thomas or Aldo, that is,
there is some type of stuff that they that Arabella, a new venture fund
does, It's similar to that, But I think more when it comes to
on the ground protests and in your face organizing or that astroturfed type behavior that
Andrew was referring to. That's more where any venture fund comes in. It's
this idea that we can create kind of political mobilization overnight. Yeah. The
thing that raised a flag in my mind was the connection between George Soros and
Pro Publica, and then obviously source is one of the funders of Arabella.
And that's a question I want to toss open to you guys. A lot
of Arabella gets pinned directly to Soros, and you'll know the answer to this
better than idea than Maybe that's because the proportion of financing that comes from him,
but also, as you note, it comes from Pierre Oh Midyar and
others. So what can you tell us about at least what we know about
some of those multi billionaires as you mentioned, that are behind this fairly vast
network. Yeah, I don't have the exact dollar figures in front of me,
but of the societies, they published their um that they may public their
donations and they're a major funder of the network. Pierre Amadar is also a
major funder is UM. Again it's something exact figure, something like twenty thirty
million dollars in the previous elections cycle UM that they that that he dumped into
the sixteen thirty fund, if I'm not mistaken, And the sixteen thirty fund
is there. UM it's a five to one C four group, which means
that they can engage in and direct political activity. So yeah, these the
air bell networkers who say, uh, um, it's They've got a lot
of major multi billionaire donors like that. And the thing with nonprofits or with
dark money groups is they have to disclose who they get money too, so
you're able to but they don't have to disclosure they received money from. So
we can see, like with Pierre Amadar, he has his nonprofit groups and
UM and George sars Is Open Society Network, Like we can see that they're
disclosing donations to sixteen thirty fund, New Venture Fund and the other Arabella Advisors
controlled funds. The challenge those that we don't know UM from that from those
disclosures, what specific projects they're supporting, So you know the various UM projects
that are being run by New Venture Fund, you uh, you demand Justice,
which we discussed. They've got other innocuous sounding UM groups called like the
Student Experienced Research Network, Stop Deficits Talks, Americans for Tax Parent Fairness,
the Institute for Responsive Government. It's really impossible to tell, like you know,
which specific groups and initiatives gearge soros Is is funding or what pier Under
is sending their money too. So that kind of available secrecy, I think
is a kind of it attracts these big donors because they know that they can
they can pour tons of money in. Then Arabella is going to be able
to really pinpointing exactly where these funds need to go. And since they have,
you know, such granular control over this massive dark money network, they
can really maximize your value every dollar that's coming in, so they can get
their assure campaigns up and running as effectively as possible. So it's I mean,
it's a really um a good arrangement on their end that they can effectively
use their their vest resources like this. Yeah, and and on that note
too, And we don't even know to Andrew's point, we don't we know
where Soros is usually sending his money, even where pure Omedar is usually sending
his money, because he's just they have these non these foundations and they're public
of their grants. We don't know exactly what their donations to the Venture Fund
are you going to be earmarked for or whatever, But we know how much
money that um Soros gets to the New Venture Fund or whatever, but we
don't know like where New Venture Fund gets all its money. And there's a
lot of UM. One of them that I'm not sure if we actually included
UM in our peace, but that that I came across was, you know,
there are a lot of ships that sound rather banal, like there's something
called, I believe the Network for Teachers of the Year, which is connected
or you know, ostensibly connected to what I think. Everyone knows that there's
a Teacher of the Year award in every state and nationally as well, and
I think the wearer it gets like an award from the president or whatever.
But there's this other group called the Network for Teachers of the Year, and
that sounds like really harmless or whatever. And for I think like a two
or three year period, they were a fiscal sponsorship of the New Venture Fund,
and you could we looked at their the internet, their website using the
year an archive from before they were a fiscal sponsorship too. After they were
a fiscal sponsorship again they spun off, but in that two or three year
period, I mean, it's unrecognizable now now it's a left wing activist group.
And you know, the point of of that anecdote is two is twofold
is one is that the New Venture Fund has its tentacles or whatever in everything
I mean, and even saying things that aren't necessarily political, like teach the
Teacher of the Year award network or whatever. But also we don't know whose
idea that was, you know, we don't know who what what wealthy liberal
donor went to the New Venture Fund or Arabellam said hey, like I want
to like totally transform this group, and that's when they did. And so
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that's another thing that I wanted to ask you about. The you pick up
on a really interesting discrepancy, a chancial discrepancy in their IRS filings, and
this is related to the New Venture Fund. What can you tell us?
This is also sort of a broader question about compliance with r R i RS
regulations for C fours. I think many of these are C fours. They
are probably some C three sprinkles in and what you learn from the documents you
were able to obtain. Yeah, So when New Venture Fund applied for to
become a charity UM back in two thousand and six, around that time frame,
but they in order to become a charity, you sort of you have
to make your case to the i R S. They're like, Hey,
this is why you should allow us to essential use probably funds, task ductle
donations and operate as a charity, and they said that we have a management
support contract with Arabel Advisors and it's just going to be a temporary arrangement.
Um you know, for the first year, they're gonna you know, help
us with our like you help manage payroll, legal compliance, just you have
the boring behind the scenes back office work. And they specifically said that we
expect this um, this agreement to be temporary and only last for one year
term and then you know, after this period, we're gonna, you know,
when we have the necessary resources, we're gonna run our own back office
and kind of split away from Parabel Advisors. And this mattered. The DIRUS
was concerned about this arrangement because the folks running Arabella Advisors are the same folks
that are you know, the same board members behind new venture funds. So
IVIRUS was concerned. They're like, hey, you guys are paying you know,
this healty management feed to to Arabella Advisors. There's some of course who
are like self dealing going on that you guys are profiting from from your own
charity. And they made this case, we're only going to stay there for
a year and then we're gonna break away. Well, it's been well over
a decade and billions of dollars later, and Arabella Advisors is still controlling new
venture fund from the top down. So M yeah, some legal actutions that
we talked to so that you know that maybe something that IRIS could take an
interest in. Is this kind of like bait and switch that they pull in
order to get taxes M status in the first place. Though, it is
important to note that you know, arrangements with your for profit consulting firms like
Arabella and you know, helping manage charities in this manner is not unusual.
What's unusual with Arabella Advisors is that they've got this these networks of funds and
the fiscal sponsorship arrangement that we've been talking about with their hundreds of projects,
and how the funds they're all you know, transferring huge sums of money in
between each other, like well over one hundred million dollars just the past couple
of years UM. And so that's what's unusual about about this arrangement. This
is how like centralized control this um this uh Arabella Advisors has over over the
network. And it's not what they it's not what they describe to the IRS
that the when they first got taxes enter status. This is a totally different
thing than what Virus had. You had approved their their charity status over a
number of years ago, and on the and just in a joint or to
the the fiscal sponsorship um my model that they use. So this one operates
way more in a legal gray area. But it is important to note that
this fiscal sponsorship model that the New Venture Fund engages in, that's another kind
of carve out by the IRS that's granted to nonprofits. But the point of
them is supposed to be temporary. In other words, I want to start
a charity or a nonprofit, I don't really know how to do that.
I go to a larger charity or a nonprofit and say, hey, like,
I'm new to this. Can you guys just like basically run this for
me, show me how to do it, and then over a course of
like, you know, a few years. I think the IRS stipulates,
you know, it should be around three years, I'll spin off and go
independent. That's not always the case for fiscal sponsorships through the New Venture funds.
Sometimes they just stop existing, like in the case like I can't think
of a specific example, but a good one would be, you know,
if we want to protest Clarence Thomas, we can just spin up a fiscal
sponsorship for a year or two and then just you know, go away,
you know, if he retires or something that the idea of fiscal sponsorship is
not meant to eli. You can just pop up an interest the organization whatever
it's most convenient. It's supposed to be a way to help out new charities.
That's not really what the new Venture funded is doing a lot of the
time. Yeah, I'd actually never heard of that. It's so interesting and
a big question that I'm sure it's on a lot of people's minds because since
and before the Citizens United ruling, it was Democrats acting and the left acting
as though this was, you know, the right had a monopoly on dark
money. Are there any organizations on the right that you know, are are
flirting with this questionable territory when it comes to fiscal sponsorships, and are there
any networks on the right um that are sort of on the same operating at
the scale where I think, as you guys report, we're talking about dispersions
of some one hundred and eighty nine million dollars over the course of two years.
Yeah, UM, well I don't. Well, to be clear,
Arabella is unrivaled UM with its vast empire and the amount of money that it
that it processes every year. UM. I know that Leonard Leo I think
is trying to UM set up a similar type of organization. UM. I
think Andrew can speak more of that. Yeah, yes, UM considered to
make Dinnard Leonard Leo like he's UM trying to emulate this. There's been reporting
like an Axios a few years ago that he's trying to take the Arabella model.
This nowhere anywhere close to the scale that Arabella has going. And there's
other networks in the on the left, like the Tides network that that also
UM you know these mega charities such as a sponsor, UM, you know,
it doesn't about hundreds of groups. A great example is the National Black
Lives Matter group. For a long time they were physically sponsored by a group
less had a convicted terrorists on his board and then uh a U and then
they later shifted over to the Tides Foundation before they became their own charity in
late twenty twenty. So UM, yeah, the left is really taken this
model and run with it and this is uh, you know, nothing on
the right that really compares um that Yeah, and on the on the right
as well. I mean, I don't know what where Leonard Leo's project is,
um, where it is headed. I know he has a lot of
money now, um, and I'm you know, I mean given my phone
number whatever he wants it. But I think that and you're without a number,
yeah, I mean I don't know me Emily, you can pass it
along, as you know, but I'm happy to take his money. But
I think, like, on a serious note, one of the things that's
um that distinguished and Arabella or even at Tides is that Arabella is staffed with
season pros on how like all these people do who worked at Arabella is work
on compliance, accounting, all sorts of stuff. I mean, you know
they probably I'm sure your average senior Arabella person has launched like a dozen fiscal
sponsorships. I mean that's speculation, but the point he still stands. Yet
these people are professionals, um and yeah, I was looking at some other
bios. I mean they have like master's degrees in nonprofit management, which is
probably usually a complete waste of time unless you actually want to work for Arabella.
There's probably like, you know, two firms, three firms in the
country where that's useful, and Arabella is like is one of them. So,
I mean, these people are fluent in how to operate these type of
groups. And you know, I don't know, maybe Leonard Leo is is
you know a hunch people is staffing up with people similar backgrounds. But you
know, this has just been going on for so many years that the left
just has a tremendous human capital advantage on top of a fiscal advantage as well.
Well. I think another good point from all of that is that it's
it's sort of the right, whether or not Leonard leon and I assume he
is, you know, trying to match the vast scale of this that's behind.
You know, it's it's the right attempting to catch up with years of
organizing from this progressive network. And so the FEC you, as you report
closed an investigation into some of these issues or some of these I rsque questions,
M not that long ago, am I right? Like twenty twenty?
Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Yeah? So U
the one of the Air Bill's funds of sixteen thirty funds, was said with
a Federal Election Commission complaint UM related to their foreign Magdona called Hunt Huntsberg Weiss,
a Swiss billionaire, and so the complaint was alleging that Weiss was,
you know, a foreign downer was pouring money into the sixteen thirty fund,
which was then using those funds for partisan political activity. And so the allegation
was that they were um, you know, taking foreign funds i legally using
them for elections. The FEC's General Council was the top you know attorney at
the FEC rule that or advised the commission that, you know, the sixteen
thirty fund is spending so much money on politics that they really should be registered
as a as a political committee. But the commissioners actually you voted against sticking
any action against the sixteen thirty fund. What's interesting about this is that in
twenty twenty, sixteen thirty fun spent about forty percent of its budget on electioneering,
which the someth like one hundred and sixteen million dollars. It's a massive
amount of money. But what the FEC commissioners said was that, well,
since since they kept it under fifty percent, then they don't have to register
as a political committee. So that's a kind of a what's so interesting about
the air Bell network is that they operate at such a scale that you know,
any normal nonprofit group, you know, spending one hundred and sixty million
dollars on politics would have to register as a political committee. Like clearly they're
they're they're pouring huge sums of money into into politics. But in twenty twenty
sixteen thirty fun they had a total budget of about four hundred million dollars.
So as long as they kept that political spending under two hundred million, then
they don't have to, you know, essentially follow the rules that that any
other nonprofit group would would have to follow, you know, in resture room
into FEC. So that's another interesting aspect to their Bell network is that they're
operating at such a scale that they're able to do things that normal nonprofit groups
just can't do. And it seems like it's just like snowballing. The longer
they're around, Like you know, the morning that Left Point megadiers are saying
like, yeah, this is this is where we need to park our money,
um and and to most effectively use it as as little disclosed as possible
and also on the that arbitrary and I believe actually one of the appointed Republicans
on the FEC commission, a great you know, was one of the votes
against taking action. But I think, you know, when we talk about
what is political spending, that that's also an important question. I mean,
there's a difference between direct political spending and you know, something like the example
that we lead on lead in on on our first piece about the Student Experience
and Research Network. Um, you know, is that a political group?
I mean probably not. It certainly doesn't seem that way to the naked eye.
But if you start seeing what the Student Experience Research Network does, it
what it does is it lobbies for left wing initiatives such as like increasing diversity
or um, you know, getting rid of scaredize testing and university and stuff
like that. And so you know, again that's kind of one of those,
um, totally a political sounding group that really has this left wing agenda.
And yes, it's not like normal campaigning or politicking, um, you
know, like setting up you know, an issue advocacy campaign or backing a
candidate. But you know, you wonder how this type of stuff DI and
all that stuff seeps into these organizations or what or whatever, um and and
a lot of it is through these nonprofits um and and that helps him avoid
that forty percent or fifty percent threshold that the FEC kind of arbitrarily came up
with. And we should we should mention that this is the first of to
investigator. This is you just reference the first investigative peace there there are two
of them, um And the second one we've talked about a bit, alludes
to vote rights questions and the lead up to the election. And so this
is another big question, but a really interesting one. Um. You know,
we're talking about the days before the twenty twenty election. We've mentioned other
causes that Arabella focuses on. Can you tell us a little bit about what
you know, if it's possible to step back from thirty thousand feet and look
down at what issues Arabella is tackling? Are there some themes? Are there?
Some like really some issues that are are bigger focuses of Arabella that folks
should know, the kind of as you said earlier, Joe, how they're
tentacles in. I mean, the thing is like, this is a network
that breaked in three point three billion dollars in twenty twenty and twenty twenty one.
So they're they're kind of active everywhere. They've got a really kind of
a capture on really anything left the center in DC and apolitism, if you
know. Their tendles are everywhere. So when when you have that much money
coming in, you know, billions of dollars a year, year, I
mean, it's just year active in everything. So, um, I'll give
you an example. UM, I mean Andrew's right that. I mean,
you know, any you know left wing issue of the month, they're you
know, they're there, I mean Coronel Justice. Um, you know,
I mean I mean literally everything. I mean, they're you know, they're
backing cancer or you know, scientific research organizations that now have to do all
sorts of d I stuff. I mean, they're they're literally everywhere. But
I'll give you an example, which I think is good. Um. I
was reading Politico about a month ago, and I wrote the playbook Play a
playbook, which is a newsletter. Um, and I noticed at the top
of the newsletter every day they have a spot, you know, sponsored by
you know whatever, Chevron whoever, And one of the for a few days
there it was sponsored by this group called Stopped physical hawks, stopped deficits squawks,
stopped to stop deficits squawks. And I was like, what is that.
I've never heard of that before. It's not usually like Chevron or whoever
is normally sponsoring it. And I click on the link and it was an
entire organization dedicated to UM opposing UM. I believe the Center for Responsible Federal
Budget, which is a kind of like center centrist center left almost I mean
they're pro taxes, high taxes. Because that group had basically scored Biden's budget
really poorly, and and and and has you know, kind of been needling
Biden like you need to do more about the deficit. That you need to
do more about the deficit, but stop deficit squawks. Low and behold is
a fiscal sponsorship by the New Venture Fund. And it just seemingly came out
of nowhere. It's dedicated to a single think tech. I mean, imagine
if there was an entire nonprofit dedicated to stopping like the Federalist or AI or
Brooking since I mean completely devoted. They the whole fancy website, they're buying
playbook advertisements, they're sponsoring playbook And this wasn't around a year ago, and
it might not be around in another year. And so the point of that
story is like you start going crazy. I mean, if you start,
if you start you know, looking around, like home, where do they
come from? Blah? And a lot of the time we found is that
literally a physical sponsorship, um, you know, made by Arabella And so
it's just remarkable. I mean. And when I say any pet issue,
I mean literally any pet issue. Some donor or someone whoever doesn't like a
report by a think tank, a center left thing tank. Um, you
know you're gonna you're gonna build boards against you. Yeah, don't give them
ideas. Is there anything that we haven't touched on it you think is really
important? Either of you thinks it's really important to understand about the story or
maybe you know that's new when you're reporting. You mentioned the second report that
we had, and I don't know if we have no time to go into
a lot of the records that we have plenty of time by the way.
So and it's really really interesting, especially as it pertains to twenty twenty and
the pandemic and law it's getting changed. So please feel free to dive in.
Yeah, so a lot of a lot of the records that we got
to pertained to the specific UM the Aventure fun project called the Voting Rights Lab.
And what the record show is that UM they and interviews with former employees
that had that projects, UH, you know, lead to the twenty twenty
elections. They wanted to challenge right state voting laws, but they knew that
no Republican lawmaker at the state of federal level is that We're going to work
with a group tied to Arabella. So what they did was it is seized
control of the supposedly independent nonprofit group called Secure Democracy and use that as a
vehicle to UH to lobby and and and persuade Republicans to to UM to ease
up on their on voting rights or voting access legislation and like mail and voting
and in issues like that, and and it worked, and employees told us
that perform employees told us that, you know, especially every lawmaker that they
that they worked with was was misled and the at a really high level when
it this voting rights is supposedly indpendent voting access group Secure Democracy. They also
engaged in and political activity. They were they were running political ads against Republican
Senators email sort of their attorney was saying, you need to classify these as
as as political activity. The problem for the Venture Fund as a charity is
that their employees were approving all of these activities, and that's a big no
no for a charity because charities are absolutely prohibited from engaging in even a dollar
of political activity. So we got a number of attorneys that told us on
the record that like these emails, these records that they, you know,
showed some serious potential misconduct and the Irish should investigate, um, you know,
the um uh Venture Fund using it's it's charitable resources to advance the political
activities and control this uh, the supposedly independent um you know, voting rights
nonprofit group, UH. This arrangement that was done so they could essentially you
tricked Republicans into working with them and lead that to the twenty twenty elections and
also in twenty twenty one. UM. And so it just what we found
so interesting about this story was just like it gas the links that the Arabella
goes to, you know, to achieve its it ends, you know,
even to the point of you know, controlling groups that aren't necessarily inside of
it's it's umbrella. And it just raises the question of just you know,
how many other groups out there are being you know, secretly controlled by this
h by this Megan dark money group. It's it's hard to tell without you
having your internal records like this. But and and and again it speaks to
kind of the vast size of Arabella. UM and and inevitably if any large
organization, UM, you're going to run into compliance issues. I don't I
don't think that in the case that we wrote about that it was a question
making a mistake. We have evidence that it was a it was a it
was a person ignoring um, their council's legal advice. But um, but
you know, I can think of all sorts of like you know, at
and examples of an organization you know, running a foul of I r ask
their fec laws because they just they don't know enough or or whatever. They're
disorganized. But the problem is is that Arabella, you know, deals largely
in the in the realm of politics. And when you have a network this
big, when you're not complying with the law. You know, Democrats like
to talk about democracy or whatever, and I'm not one who does. But
you just start running into into problems like that. And if you have a
huge, multibillion dollars network that is so big that it can't possibly always follow
the law all the time, I think that's worthy of scrutiny. And I
think you know, in the case that we wrote about here what's being alleged,
and we've records to show this is not just Oath wrote the law.
Let's go fix it. It's Oaks. We wrote the law. Let's try
to hide it from the government. And you know, an issue related to
that as well is that, you know, all sorts of charities not political
politically related. You know, if you pull out a random nonprofits nine nineties,
which is their task forms that are made publicly, um, you can
get anyone's. Basically, it's really easy to find all sorts of discrepancies.
You know, people don't have good accountants, so they're doing it themselves.
And you know it's technically you're in violation of the law. You really should
fix it. But you know, at the end of the day, if
like some small cancer organizations like nine nineties don't match up, it's probably it's
it's not really meaningful. But but when you have an organization at this scale
involved in politics and in the case that we talked about, you know,
lobbying to change voting laws, which I know a lot of conservatives believe is
in large part why President Joe Biden one in twenty twenty m And you know
they're natively engaged in in illegal activity. You know that that's not just a
oops. We you know our payroll is off. I mean, this is
a huge, huge problem. And you know it's impossible to say whether secure
democracy or voting rights lab is the reason why so many states change their red
states as well change their voting laws in twenty twenty. But you know there's
ceraarly a primary actor and when that happened. Yeah, that's an important point
because it reminds me of the like indicta han Hand Sandwich like weaponization of government
in general. Um, these are such byzantine financial structures and the laws are
you know, reflect the same byzantine structures. So it's just it's such a
mess. The entire world is such a mess. Is there anything else?
Guys? Well, have you heard that you we haven't talked about that you
think is important? No? I mean I just think that, you know,
going back to um kind of the less advantage structial advantage on this kind
of stuff. UM. You know, I hope that it provides some answers
to people who wonder how the left is so organized and um you know,
if you know your history, actually there's there's been a lot of wealthy foundations
involved in left wing and issues in this country for for a very long time.
But where we are now today, Um, it's like gone corporate.
Um. And it's it's far more professional. It's not just like the Forward
Foundation or whatever cutting a check to the black panthers. Um. You know,
we have a very complex network um that operates, Um that that's taking
full advantage of our of our tax laws right now. Um. And and
again it's not a question of like some air to a fortune, um,
you know, cutting checks into sixties and seventies to some left wing pet Cause
it's really a I use this word not it's not a loaded I say it's
a conspiracy. I mean it is a it is a huge, huge network
um that that is involved in all sorts of political issues. UM. And
um you know, I think that that probably explains I think a lot of
confusion that the average American has when they see these protests or whatever. Um
And I think that that, to me was the biggest takeaway. It answered
a lot of questions I had about why the left seems so good at this.
Yeah. No, that's actually a really helpful way to look at it.
Well, Senior investigative reporters Andrew Kerr and Joe Simonson from the Washington Free
Beacon, you do not want to miss their reporting. You can go check
it out at the Free Beacon's website. It's really really, really excellent,
such high quality. Thanks to both of you for coming on and breaking it
down. Thanks, thank you. Emily. Of course you've been listening to
another edition of The Federalist Radio Hour. I'm em Elijashnski, culture editor here
at The Federalist. We'll be back soon with more. Until then, be
lovers of freedom and anxious for the prey.