James O'Keefe's Project Veritas is back at it with their entrapment style videos aimed at proving what idiots they are. This time, The Washington Post busted them when they sent their undercover faux victim to see if their writers would bite on an absurd fake sexual assault story on Roy Moore. Somehow, they reasoned that if they could get Wapo to print one false story, then that would cast doubt on all the other verified stories.
Here's a thought: how about getting a candidate that's not a pedophile? Just a thought.
Their website is full of videos and articles shrieking about how there's a giant liberal conspiracy running everything. Which is all very interesting since the Republicans are the ones that control everything. By that reasoning, the liberal conspiracy he cries about must be a conspiracy on how to lose elections.
Whatever. I refuse to spend any time on what may be going around that misguided brain of his. No, instead I care more about the morons who seem to think this is worth funding. I'd expected to find some billionaire, tin-foil hat wearing douche like Robert Mercer, but I didn't.
In the past, the majority of Project Veritas' funding came from a Koch Brothers enterprise -- two donor-advised funds designed to launder donations from billionaires to right-wing ventures. From 2012 to 2014, they donated over $1.7 million through their Donor Trust and Donors Capital Funds. Their contributions were almost that much in 2015 alone, $1.5 million. It would seem James is doing well and has somehow convinced these dark money donors to shell out oodles of cash for his little video projects.
Who is funding the two Donor funds run by the Kochs? Conservative Transparency shows that the top donors to their funds in the past were the Richard and Helen DeVos, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and the Searle Freedom Trust. All these foundations belong to the top 1%, those billionaires who are driving the current GOP tax cut that will hurt the poor and middle class simply to give themselves even more money.
The brilliance in using these large slush funds for billionaires is that it is nearly impossible without a court order to trace who is paying for what. We know most of the donors, but once all the money enters the fund, it becomes a nameless pile of cash, therefore offering everyone involved plausible deniability. It is also not clear if the Kochs themselves are the ones saying where the money goes or if the fund managers do the dirty work. We have no access to Veritas' 2016 records or this current year's. Just look at this article from Crooks & Liars Managing Editor, Karoli Kuns from 2011. Some of the donors are the same and some are not. Only time will tell.
If the Kochs and other billionaires are willing to jump into the mud with Veritas, they are playing in a pathetically dirty pool now. But guess who else is willing to roll around in the muck? Donald J. Trump! Trump's foundation gave two installments of $10,000 each.
It will be interesting to see as these organizations file their IRS paperwork and it becomes available for the public just who was giving to Project Veritas during this time. That's assuming they don't make congress pass a law against those disclosures.
Instead of wasting money on these ridiculously edited films and poorly considered sting operations, these Richie Rich families should spend their money on research and trying to argue their principles.
Oh wait, they have no principles. Never mind.
