A watchdog group has set its sights on foreign donors funneling cash through nonprofits ahead of the 2024 elections after liberal Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss provided significant funds to organizations with links to campaigns backing President Biden and Democrats.
Americans for Public Trust (APT) recently released a report highlighting how Wyss’ nonprofits doled out $425 million in funding to left-wing groups in recent years and called for “the foreign influence loophole to be closed.” This money has potentially made its way to groups pushing multi-million dollar drives to boost Biden’s record.
Wyss has subsidized a group that manages Climate Power, which recently teamed up with Future Forward USA Action and the Way to Win Action Fund to elevate Biden. Future Forward USA Action’s affiliated political committee, Future Forward, will act as the president’s main outside super PAC in this upcoming election.
“This is exactly why we must close the loophole that allows foreign money to influence American elections,” APT Executive Director Caitlin Sutherland told Fox News Digital.
“But the liberal politicians who shout about protecting our democracy from foreign interference have been noticeably silent about legislation that would do just that. And now we have President Biden’s handpicked super PAC tangled up in the web of organizations funded by Swiss billionaire Hansjorg Wyss. The staggering amount of foreign money that is propping up Biden’s agenda needs to be stopped.”
Wyss’ activity has also caught the attention of Republican lawmakers, who are working on legislation to prevent foreign nationals from “influencing the American political system,” Axios reported.
The Biden-backing campaigns are not the first time Wyss-funded groups have launched initiatives backing Democrats. The League of Conservation Voters (LCV) Victory Fund, LCV’s independent political action committee, and Climate Power shelled out $15 million last year for a “sophisticated targeting project unlike anything they’d ever undertaken before” to propel Democrats, Politico reported earlier this year.
The LCV and Climate Power are two prominent far-left environmental groups that push aggressive green transition policies and have received extensive funding from Wyss’ nonprofits.
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As part of the operation, LCV Victory Fund and Climate Power hired BlueLabs Analytics, a Washington, D.C.-based data science organization, to mine data of more than two million Biden voters in crucial swing states with advertisements and mailers ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.
The operation, and other similar funding schemes for political activity during last year’s midterms potentially tied to Wyss, raises legal questions given the billionaire’s nationality. Under federal election law, foreign nationals — Wyss is listed as recently as 2021 in financial filings as a “citizen of Switzerland” — are prohibited from contributing directly or indirectly to U.S. political campaigns.
For over two decades, Wyss has been financially involved in various left-wing causes. Wyss founded the Wyss Foundation in the late 1990s as his main tax-exempt funding arm and the Berger Action Fund in 2007. The billionaire has pushed hundreds of millions of dollars to his two nonprofits, which have then spread his money to a vast array of groups, many of which, like the LCV, are actively involved in political issues.
According to tax filings, a single anonymous donor, likely Wyss himself, wired a staggering $278.9 million to the Berger Action Fund between April 2021 and March 2022. The group, in turn, contributed $72.7 million to 12 separate dark-money organizations.
LCV was among the 12 groups and received $3.5 million from Wyss’ nonprofit. Other groups, including the Center for Popular Democracy, Moms Rising Together, National Redistricting Action Fund, and WorkMoney, received millions of dollars in additional contributions from the Berger Action Fund. The groups are involved in political campaigns.
The Berger Action Fund also funneled $20.3 million to a group called Fund for a Better Future (FBF), according to the tax documents. While FBF is not required to disclose its donors in its tax forms, Wyss’ contribution amount was the largest anonymous donation FBF reported that year, meaning the Swiss national was FBF’s biggest donor.
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FBF sent nearly $10.7 million to LCV in 2021, the most significant contribution FBF gave to any group that year. Additionally, FBF oversees Climate Power, providing the group financial, legal, technological and human resources support.
Climate Power was initially founded as a project of the LCV, Center for American Progress (CAP), and the Sierra Club in 2020. Wyss has donated to CAP and remains a board member of the influential left-wing think tank.
Climate Power, meanwhile, boasts advisory board members who are also members of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council. For example, both South Carolina state Rep. Harold Mitchell and Jerome Foster II, the executive director of the youth-led political advocacy group OneMillionOfUs.
Additionally, FBF contributed over $2.9 million to Building Back Together, an advocacy group primarily promoting the Biden administration’s policy agenda.
Wyss’ Berger Action Fund also contributed about $42.5 million to the Sixteen Thirty Fund, a key cog in a billion-dollar dark money network.
“The Berger Action Fund and Wyss Foundation support efforts to increase access to public lands, lower the cost of healthcare, and address income inequality,” Marneé Banks, a spokesperson for the nonprofits, told Fox News Digital.
“Both organizations comply with all rules governing their activities and prohibit their grants from being used for get-out-the-vote or voter registration,” Banks added. “They do not support political candidates or parties, or otherwise engage in political campaigns. They support increasing transparency and accountability in our campaign finance system through the DISCLOSE Act.”
