Best of CRC Media Hits for December 2020

December, generally a quiet month in DC, was still quite busy for the Capital Research Center, thanks in no small part to our report on Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s election grants to states received. Those grants, administered by the Center for Tech and Civic Life, ended up playing a fairly significant role in helping Democrat candidates win in critical states. CRC President Scott Walter presented CRC’s report on how much each state received and testifies about how the money was used at a special post-election state legislative hearing in Georgia, convened to determine if there were any irregularities in that state’s Election Day practices.

As a result of that testimony, Walter was asked for quotes, op-eds, and appearances by national media outlets, most notably Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News a day after the hearing.

In other areas, our analysts continued their superb work exposing the foreign funding of nonprofits and the green energy activism of the left. They continue to be cited and quoted on the ongoing issue of who funds Black Lives Matter.

All in all, December 2020 was a highly productive month for CRC, despite the election and pandemic drawing nearly all attention. We look forward to carrying that momentum into 2021.

Scott Walter on Tucker Carlson: CTCL and Zuckerberg Election Grants
Fox News, December 14, 2020

CRC President Scott Walter appeared on Fox News’s Tucker Carlson Tonight on December 4, 2020, to discuss Mark Zuckerberg’s and wife Priscilla Chan’s massive $350 million grant to the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL). CTCL then re-granted the funds to thousands of governmental election officials around the country to “help” them conduct the 2020 election, with a discernable preference for Democratic-leaning counties.

“Leftwing Activist Sets Himself Up to Profit from His Own Climate Plan”
Washington Free Beacon, Hayden Ludwig (Column), December 18, 2020

The leader of an activist group pushing for sweeping policy change to combat global warming has positioned himself to rake in money from those changes.

Bracken Hendricks is cofounder and senior adviser to Evergreen Action, an activist group formed in April by former staffers of Washington governor Jay Inslee’s (D.) failed 2020 presidential campaign.

Evergreen published an “Action Plan“—which echoes many of the policies put forward in the Green New Deal—in April pushing the Biden administration to adopt a “Zero-Carbon Building Standard” that would mandate that all new buildings meet climate change “resilience” standards. If enacted, the policy would also require substantial retrofitting to nearly every building in the country as part of Evergreen’s “Rebuild America energy retrofit program.”

Enacting such demands could be lucrative for Hendricks, who is also CEO of Urban Ingenuity, a Washington, D.C., consulting firm that, according to its website, “provides innovative solutions to develop and finance advanced energy projects, building retrofits, and state of the art clean energy infrastructure” to construction developers.

Hendricks did not respond to a request for comment on his company’s potential conflict of interest by the time of publication.

“Biden Transition Illustrates Need for Foreign Funding Transparency”
Washington Examiner, Robert Stilson and Sarah Lee (Op-Ed), December 15, 2020

As Politico noted in November, Agency Review Teams provide “the most thorough look to date on what the Biden administration will look like. Members of review teams often end up taking jobs at the agencies they are assigned to and will influence who the Biden administration eventually hires.”

Accordingly, the Capital Research Center has begun tracking these appointments to make learning about and analyzing exactly who is involved in the budding Biden presidency an easier and more transparent task. One of a number of patterns that stands out is just how many Agency Review Team members are, or have been, affiliated with the nonprofit sector. The CRC’s Michael Hartmann recently noted many connections to “left-of-center philanthropic foundations or grant-making entities.”

And that world, as the CRC has covered here and here, has been shown to be worryingly vulnerable to foreign infiltration and influence, particularly from China, and has of late not been the best about meeting federal transparency and reporting requirements with respect to foreign funding, to put it mildly.

“What is Mark Zuckerberg’s Election Money Doing in Georgia?”
The Federalist, Scott Walter (Op-ed), December 7, 2020

As head of Capital Research Center, a watchdog on the use and abuse of nonprofits, I would sympathize with the angry politicians and happily critique the scheme publicly. But I know of no such effort by right-leaning donors or nonprofits.

I do know, however, of a scheme by left-leaning out-of-state donors Mark Zuckerberg and wife Priscilla Chan to give $350 million to an allegedly “nonpartisan” nonprofit, the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), which in turn re-granted the funds to thousands of governmental election officials around the country. CRC has begun state-by-state studies of how these funds were used, beginning with Georgia (Pennsylvania is next). As I testified Friday to the Georgia state Senate, the Georgia data are startling.

“Are Billionaires Infecting Elections in Georgia and Elsewhere?”
Marietta Daily Journal, Rep. Bob Barr (R-GA) (Op-Ed), December 17, 2020

“Follow the money.” If you really want to discover who is behind something, it is money that talks, and in this year’s election balloting, Mark Zuckerberg’s money talked loudly—some $400 million.

That was the amount the California billionaire donated in the months leading to the Nov. 3 election to the Center for Tech and Civic Life, a little-known nonprofit that until one year ago had revenue of just $1.4 million. Zuckerberg’s $400 million was then was funneled by CTCL to hundreds of local election offices across the country, including at least $27.6 million to election offices in my home state of Georgia, according to research by the Washington, D.C.-based Capital Research Center.

“Scott Walter Discusses Mark Zuckerberg’s Election Influence”
Sandy Rios in the Morning, December 30, 2020

Best of: Scott Walter discusses Mark Zuckerberg’s Election influence in Georgia, and Ken Blackwell discusses the greatest electoral heist in American history.

“Black Lives Matter Movement Imploding over Internal Power Struggle, Money Grabs”
Washington Times, Valerie Richardson, December 2, 2020

Then there’s the money or, rather, where’s the money?

Before the protests, the foundation listed about $3.4 million in assets, according to a 2019 financial audit by Thousand Currents, which served as the group’s fiscal sponsor from 2016 until July, when the philanthropic giant the Tides Center took over.

“This puts Black Lives Global Network Foundation squarely in the middle of a massive political network, with total revenues that exceeded $636 million in 2018 alone,” Capital Research Center researcher Hayden Ludwig said in a July 28 post.

“Investigation Warranted into Nonprofit’s Millions for Elections in Biden Counties, Group Says”
Legal Newsline, W.J. Kennedy, December 7, 2020

A recently completed investigation by the Capital Research Center (CRC), a Washington-based group that investigates the integrity of nonprofits, showed that CTCL grants to local election officials in Georgia, rather than ensuring a safe election environment for all, actually heavily favored the campaign of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.

The CRC investigation is a follow-up to an earlier one that showed that the affiliations of CTCL’s founders and officers undermine the group’s claim of non-partisanship—they are former Barack Obama proteges, or formerly aligned with left wing groups, or both.

The group had plenty of money on hand to influence the Georgia vote for President, and still does; it is involved in the run-offs in the two races for the U.S. Senate. Two months before the Nov. 3 general elections, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan dumped $250 million into CTCL’s bank account. A little over a month later, the pair contributed another $100 million to CTCL.

Scott Walter Discusses CTCL on NTD Television
Epoch Times, 11/2, 2020

In this episode, we talk to Allum Bokhari, investigative journalist and author of “#DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal the Election” and Scott Walter, president of Capital Research Center, about how Silicon Valley influenced voters in 2020.

“Dark Money Behemoth That Hosts BLM Foundation Received $16 Million in Government Grants”
Washington Free Beacon, Joe Schoffstall, December 23, 2020

The Tides Center, a California-based nonprofit incubator, reported the government grants on its 2019 tax forms. It operates by acting as a fiscal sponsor to several left-wing nonprofits, including the BLM Global Network Foundation, which has advocated for abolishing the nuclear family and defunding the police. This arrangement lets the nonprofits avoid disclosing their financial activity, and thus makes it difficult to know where the taxpayer-funded cash ultimately ends up.

The center’s 2019 windfall adds to the $170 million it has received in government grants since 2001—grants that have drawn criticism from nonprofit watchdogs. Scott Walter, president of the Capital Research Center, has called Tides as “liberal and politically active as they come” and questioned whether American tax dollars should be awarded to groups housed at such networks.