For years, the funding behind the right-wing, pro-Trump publication The Federalist has been a total mystery. Many Twitter users have asked the website’s leaders, repeatedly, “Who funds The Federalist?” only to be blocked by the likes of publisher Ben Domenech, co-founder Sean Davis, or senior editor Mollie Hemingway. (This author is blocked by all three.)
Last year, Hemingway characterized the question as “a kind of a veiled threat” and a “clear, coordinated attempt to silence The Federalist.
However, a few months earlier, The Federalist’s affiliated nonprofit, FDRLST Media Foundation, had been certified as a 501(c)(3) charity by the Internal Revenue Service, meaning that donors could begin making tax-deductible contributions to the foundation. If the donor was a nonprofit organization like a family foundation or trade association, its grants to the FDRLST Media Foundation would eventually be part of the public record. Hemingway is a director and “governor” of the foundation.
Last week, CMD obtained the 2019 tax records of two right-wing funders who donated to the FDRLST Media Foundation that year: GOP megadonor and shipping supply billionaire Richard Uihlein and DonorsTrust, a donor-advised fund manager that has been dubbed “the dark money ATM” of the conservative movement.
The Uihleins
The Federalist may have once had a “never Trump” image, but the conservative publication moved quickly rightward as President Donald Trump became president and took over the Republican Party. The outlet is now known for vigorously defending Trump, for its trolling and conspiracy-laden posts, and for attacking liberal media. Sometimes trafficking in racism, The Federalist had a “black crime” tag until someone exposed the tag on Twitter.
It’s unclear when Uihlein, the Illinois-based founder of shipping supply company Uline, began funding The Federalist, but it makes sense that his foundation, the Ed Uihlein Family Foundation, donated $400,000 to the FDRLST Media Foundation last year. Uihlein and his wife, Liz, are influential Trump donors and among the Republican Party’s biggest funders; Uihlein is the fifth-biggest donor to outside political spending groups of the 2020 federal elections, having doled out over $63 million to super PACs such as the pro-Trump America First Action, Club for Growth Action, the Senate Leadership Fund, and Restoration PAC, which he funded nearly exclusively.
The New York Times reported in August that, based on interviews, Richard Uihlein was a donor to The Federalist, but his foundation’s 2019 tax return is the first evidence of his financial support to be made public.
As The Federalist published story after story denying science and opposing mask wearing during the coronavirus pandemic—including one story allegedly written by an anonymous small-town mayor claiming that health officials order mask mandates for political, not scientific, reasons—Liz Uihlein minimized the virus, calling it “overhyped,” and endangered Uline workers by allegedly using lax safety practices and initially discouraging employees from working from home. Liz Uihlein, the president and CEO of Uline, got an exemption from Canada’s quarantine requirement to visit a Uline facility in the country, which she reached via private jet. The Uihleins would eventually contract COVID-19 in November.
The Uihleins have endorsed fringe candidates such as Roy Moore, the far-right Alabaman who ran for Senate in 2017 and was credibly accused of sexual misconduct with minors by multiple women. Liz Uihlein was a member of the 2016 Trump campaign’s economic council.
The Ed Uihlein Foundation gave to additional right-wing media outlets in 2019, including The Daily Caller News Foundation ($25,000), the Media Research Center ($275,000), and the Real Clear Foundation ($350,000), which has ties to The Federalist (see below). It also donated $400,000 to the Center for Security Policy, an anti-Muslim hate group. Its largest 2019 contribution, $3.2 million, went to the Foundation for Government Accountability, a State Policy Network member that advocated kicking people off of Medicaid this year during the pandemic. Since 2014, the Uihleins have given the Foundation for Government Accountability over $11 million.
The “Dark Money ATM” of the Conservative Movement
One of the political right’s biggest funding vehicles, DonorsTrust, gave $249,000 to the FDRLST Media Foundation in 2019. CMD was first to report on DonorsTrust’s 2019 tax records and on the group’s major donation to the white nationalist hate group VDARE, as well as a smaller amount to the New Century Foundation, the nonprofit behind the white nationalist publication American Renaissance.
DonorsTrust also gave $1,350,000 to the Real Clear Foundation and nearly $400,000 to the Media Research Center in 2019, part of $15 million in grants to conservative media operations that year.
DonorsTrust is a donor-advised fund sponsor, meaning that it manages individual charitable accounts of its wealthy clients, who have included GOP megadonors such the DeVos, Koch, and Mercer Families. These clients can donate appreciable assets into their accounts and score a double tax benefit: they get both a capital gains tax break and a charitable tax deduction. Clients then direct DonorsTrust to donate their money to the nonprofits of their choice, as long as the DonorsTrust board approves the proposed recipient. Donor-advised fund managers allow their clients to remain anonymous, as the manager legally owns and disperses the money.
DonorsTrust and its sister organization, Donors Capital Fund, distributed $165 million in grants in 2019, much of it going to right-wing think tanks, advocacy groups, litigation centers, media outlets, extremists, and climate deniers.
Past Clues
The Uihlein and DonorsTrust grants are the first known donations to The Federalist, but one financial tie was already public. Journalist Andrew Perez found that the George E. Coleman Jr. Foundation is an investor in FDRLST Media, LLC, the company behind The Federalist. In 2018, the Coleman Foundation had $148,000 invested in FDRLST Media. The foundation’s trustee, Daniel Oliver, is a former Reagan official who was once executive editor of the conservative National Review, which receives significant funding from DonorsTrust through its affiliated National Review Institute.
In advance of a 2019 Buzzfeed News article that cited the Coleman Foundation investment, Domenech, The Federalist’s publisher, refused to comment but tweeted that this impending revelation of public information amounted to “doxxing” an investor. “They will do this because they want to shut us down,” he claimed.
Federal tax records for the FDRLST Media Foundation are not yet public, but the Washington, D.C. secretary of state has public records of the foundation. David DesRosiers, the publisher of Real Clear Politics and the former executive vice president of the Uihlein-funded Manhattan Institute, is a director. Hemingway is both a director and a “governor.” Attorney Alan P. Dye is the third director.
It’s possible that more FDRLST Media Foundation donors will emerge as CMD obtains additional 2019 tax records from conservative foundations.
In September 2017, FDRLST Media filed an offering of debt securities with the Securities and Exchange Commission. At the time, $200,000 of the $750,000 offered had been sold. Listed as a director of FDRLST Media was John McIntyre, president and CEO of Real Clear Media. Someone named Jenn McIntyre was also listed as a director and an executive officer. The filing located FDRLST Media at the same Chicago address as Real Clear Politics, the main publication of Real Clear Media.
Real Clear has taken a “sharp right turn” in recent years, likely due to its increased funding from right-wing donors and its reaction to Trump’s takeover of the Republican party. A CMD report showed that at least 99 percent of the 2015 to 2018 revenue of the Real Clear Foundation, which funds the outlet’s investigative stories, came from right-wing funders, including DonorsTrust, Donors Capital Fund, the Uihlein Foundation, and two foundations of Charles Koch.
“As the administration lurched from one crisis after another,” wrote The New York Times’ Jeremy Peters last month, “Real Clear became one of the most prominent platforms for elevating unverified and reckless stories about the president’s political opponents, through a mix of its own content and articles from across conservative media.”
Exit Node
So … the Usenet. The Federalist is a big, annoying problem on the Usenet. alt.politics and quite a few other boards are filled with posts by “Sven Petersen” that are rarely anything but links to The Federalist. I feel like the worst part about the fascist media is the way they abandon any knowledge of the past when it’s convenient.
Heather
Are we crying cause it’s not billions and trillions of dollars… 98% of the worlds money going to the deep state?? I’m not sure the point of this article. It’s the 1% of all things not owned by vanguard? Please explain your hypocrisy.
Byte Me
Thanks for the information. I wouldn’t have known about this otherwise.
I just donated $200 from my donor advised fund to The Federalist. Mollie Hemingway is one of the smartest journalists around.
As for you; learn to code.
Science
As for you: learn what journalism is.
Stevewe49
Conservatives donate to conservatives.
Geezer
…through a 3rd-party non-profit, to hide their donations from the voters & taxpayers, who are subsidizing these “charitable donations”. Got it.
dahnb2000
And fascists donate to fascists.
Gary N Harper
Thank You. I love how they paint their idiocy as being “Righteous Americans”. Their followers aren’t even fascists.. they’re wannabe fascists. Show them a light and they’ll follow it anywhere.
Rick James
Thanks for letting me know who to thank!
Creu
Thanks for your efforts and your clarity. Transparency is so important, whether or not The Federalist is “shut down.” Always bemused by the privacy protections sought by big money attempting to influence American politics with lies and disinformation. The people should be granted free and open access to all of these organizations and their moneyed handlers.
Sammy
Big Whoop, a conservative paper funded by conservatives. Where’s the conspiracy?
Topey Schwarzenbach
It’s worth knowing whom is buying all the conservative propaganda. Also worth learning that so much of the disinformation flooding the country is being bought and paid for by so very few. I think citizens would be shocked to know the extent of the noise coming from such a narrow source, so wealthy, so selfish a cluster of selfish people.
Paul Loop
my problem with this sort of chart is that it looks like pay is tracking with corporate profits. It looks like pay is sort of keeping pace, but wages started out as radically behind to begin with. The chart can be contextualized, but it’s easy to abuse/misuse it.
laurie
The Federalist should be designated a terrorist group. Instead our foolish government rewards them with a tax free full swamp existance.
Rees Chapman
State-of-the-art online investigative journalism! Refreshing!
Alexi
Great job & Big thank you! Transparency is what we need most.
I got here by way of a parker molloy (@ParkerMolloy) retweet of Alex Kotch’s tweet. Things are busy these days with election coverage and covid so I hope your work doesn’t get lost in the great miasma of headlines and clickbait. Good solid work. This needs MUCH more coverage.
24AheadDotCom
RedState banned me, stole my content, then smeared me afterwards so I’m no fan of anyone associated with them (whether Ben Domenech was involved at the time or not).
However:
1. The idea that moving towards Trump is moving “rightward” shows what little Kotch knows. Trump’s general ideas – ignore his incompetent implementation and his pandering – are more Red Tory. As the vote shows, he’s where 10s of millions of Americans are and he’d have done a lot better w/o his huge character flaws.
2. What’s wrong with a “black crime” tag? The MSM might as well have “white crime” and “scary white people” tags, despite white violent crimes being less per capita. Wanting to sweep NAM crimes under the rug is part of the reason why the MSM is so hated and why Trump is so popular.
3. Now that you know their funding (I stopped reading after the above so I assume there’s some sinister Evil Forces behind the Federalist), so what? Kotch and everyone else who agrees with is still incapable of showing them wrong to their base about anything. I can do that in my sleep, but those like Kotch obviously can’t.
Clive
Racism apologist alert. Racism apologists are just racists that hide.
And your MSM lies are just ridiculously blatant.
24AheadDotCom
The first sentences are just ad homs.
Within an order of magnitude, how many times have CNN/MSNBC/etc shown the “tiki torches” loop?
For just one of the dozens of examples I could post, how many times have those same sources focused on the Channon Christian/Christopher Newsom torture/rape/murders?
Tell you what: post an actual argument against anything Heather MacDonald has written (and not replied to), and I’ll try (I don’t know her, but I’ll try) to get her to respond.
Try to make an actual argument, not just childish smears.
Biff Magma
Just went to your website and, yup, you’re just exactly who I would have guessed from your comment. Better keep patching your bubble, though reality will eventually get in there.
Gerard
somehow I have the feeling you’re a rightwing libertarian, they’re big on the federalist society.
Obviously, an intentional hate comment, without any validity to what you’re saying.
John Jay
Who funds the “Center for Media and Democracy?”
David Armiak
Our readers and foundations. See our “About CMD” page for more.
mark deuce
information wants to be free.
propaganda wants to prostitute itself to the highest bidder.
Clive
Their funding is transparent unlike many right wing groups.
A swing and a miss.
An0nymous
The reason conservative sponsors needs to stay anonymous is because harassment from the likes of you.
Stev56
They want to remain anonymous is because they are out-of-step with the majority of Americans.
Derran Wimer
Wow. Very well done. Thank you for your persistence.
Clyde Slade
I’m interested in everything that exposes dark money donations, no matter who they are or their political party. Repeal Citizens United and expose all non-profit organizations spending of donations.
Geezer
YESSSS!!!
john o'neil
Alex…here’s a tip. Go back and check Domenech’s columns way back when for CBSNews.com. Can’t remember when but he contributed to their roster. Anyway, the guy wrote a wacko piece where he basically alleged that Elena Kagan was a lesbian. This was just after Obama nominated her to the court. Became a bit of a mess as CBS had to take down the column. Big Ben was left with egg on his face.