Report: Chuck Schumer-Aligned Dark Money Group Ran Deceptive Ads to Depress Republican Voter Turnout
A new report concludes that a group with ties to Senate Democrats spent millions in 2018 with the goal of doing what Democrats accuse Republicans of doing: Keeping voters from the polls.
The report from Axios states that “A dark-money group aligned with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer helped pay for deceptive ads aimed at depressing Republican general election turnout in 2018.”
“Dark money” refers to groups that do not have to disclose their donors.
Oh, here are some actual voter suppression efforts: “These attacks came not during GOP primaries, but within weeks of the 2018 general election, as Democrats explored ways to drive a wedge between Republican candidates and their most ideologically committed voters.” https://t.co/akAiFdnKlH
— Brian Phillips (@RealBPhil) June 2, 2021
The new report comes as Democrats accuse Republicans of voter suppression as Republican states approve election reform legislation to address holes in election integrity that emerged in the 2020 elections.
election integrity measures are widely accepted globally, and have often been adopted by countries after they’ve experienced fraud under looser voting regimes.https://t.co/fpxHRSc4x2
— patrickhenry2022 (@patrickhenry204) June 2, 2021
In this case, according to the Axios report, the food chain of money shows that funding that was used against Republican Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Mike Braun of Indiana, as well as others, began with a group called Majority Forward.
Majority Forward is a not-for-profit tied at the fiscal hip with Senate Majority PAC, a super PAC affiliated with Senate Democrats, who have been headed by Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York both as minority leader, when the spending took place, and as current majority leader.
A 2018 tax filing shows that Majority Forward shipped almost $2.7 million to the Coalition for a Safe Secure America. That amount was a hefty piece of the roughly $4 million that CSSA received that year, according to its tax filing.
The Western Journal has reached out to the Majority Forward super PAC for comment about the group.
Flush with money that has its roots with Senate Democrats, CSSA went on the attack in Nevada, Missouri, Indiana and Montana, according to Axios.
The group’s attack ads claimed the Republicans in those Senate races had betrayed the ideological roots of the Republican Party on issues such as immigration, gun control and taxes.
Although attack ads have become a dreary staple of American political life, Axios notes there was something else at work here.
“The timing suggests CSSA was seeking to depress GOP election day turnout or push Republicans to support third parties (some of the group’s ads promoted Libertarian Party candidates),” the Axios report stated.
For the next time you hear a Democrat decry “dark money” that pushes disinformation … https://t.co/CHD9HN5OF3
— Joe Pounder (@PounderFile) June 2, 2021
The report further noted that, “Laws allowing nonprofits to engage in limited political activity permitted Majority Forward to finance these ads in a way that made it impossible to trace the money until years after the elections at issue.”
And now that the group’s activities are coming to light, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has filed a complaint with the IRS about CSSA’s activities.
“In the days leading up to the 2018 election, Coalition for a Safe Secure America spent more than $200,000 on Facebook ads targeting state and federal candidates in at least four states. The organization also may have spent more than that on political activity,” Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics wrote in its May 11 complaint.
“The group reported on its 2018 tax return spending more than $2 million on direct mail in 2018, and news reports connected the organization to anonymous mailers targeting some of the same candidates and focusing on some of the same issues as the Facebook ads. On its 2018 tax return, however, Coalition for a Safe Secure America represented that it did not engage in any political activities and failed to disclose any activity on the IRS form used to report political expenditures,” the complaint said.
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