The left-wing organization backing the non-profit news outlet ProPublica that is attacking Justice Samuel Alito also has a history of funneling millions into organizations attacking Clarence Thomas, showing a larger effort to delegitimize conservatives on the Supreme Court.
The organization, called The Sandler Foundation, started ProPublica in 2007 and has given the outlet $40 million since 2010 for general support, according to a Tuesday report from the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF). That same organization has been funding dark-money groups that seek to oust Thomas from the Supreme Court and pack the court with left-leaning justices.
Concurrently, ProPublica has published several investigations aimed at exposing an alleged financially inappropriate relationship between Thomas and billionaire real estate developer Harlan Crow. Those investigations have included quotes from activists who belong to groups that have received millions from The Sandler Foundation, according to the report.
The Sandler Foundation Hydra
Besides spending millions to prop up ProPublica, The Sandler Foundation has helped to launch and/or fund various other left-wing groups, including The Center for American Progress, The ACLU, Human Rights Watch, and Sierra Club, the organization’s grant page states.
The Daily Caller investigation, citing tax forms, found that The Sandler Foundation has given more than $7.5 million to the Campaign Legal Center (CLC) since 2015 and more than $6 million to American Constitution Society (ACS) for general support since 2010.
Both of the CLC and ACS supported referring Justice Thomas to the Department of Justice (DOJ) in response to ProPublica’s reporting this year about various alleged “luxury trips” Thomas accepted from Crow, a property sale between Thomas and Crow, and a claim that crow paid for the private school tuition for Thomas’s great nephew, even though judicial ethics rules do not require disclosure for most family members – including great nephews, which is the only one relevant here.
“CLC wrote a letter to the Judicial Conference in April requesting the body refer Thomas to the Department of Justice (DOJ) ‘for potential criminal and civil penalties’ after ProPublica reported that Thomas did not disclose expense-paid trips he took with Crow—allegations that legal experts told the DCNF did not demonstrate wrongdoing,” according to the report. “American Constitution Society President Russ Feingold backed this call for a DOJ investigation in April, and he argued Congress ‘has a duty to check the Supreme Court’ by imposing ethics rules and ‘rigorously investigating violations of federal law and flagrant ethics lapses.'”
Feingold formerly served as a U.S. senator from Wisconsin, and is a liberal partisan Democrat who aggressively opposed confirmation of conservative judicial nominees.
ProPublica’s initial report on Thomas notably quoted CLC and ACS activists, including Kedric Payne, senior director for ethics at CLC and retired federal judge Nancy Gertner, who sits on the ACS’ board of directors, according to the report.
Tax forms additionally show that The Sandler Foundation has given millions of dollars to The New Venture Fund since 2019, an organization which is part of a dark-money network of left-wing nonprofits managed by Arabella Advisors.
In 2019, The Sandler Foundation earmarked a $500,000 grant to the New Venture Fund for Demand Justice, an hardline group that advocates aggressive tactics against Republican judicial nominees. Demand Justice supports court packing and investigating Justice Thomas, and its deputy chief counsel Katie O’Connor called for “immediate ethics reforms” following ProPublica’s reporting on Thomas and even called for him to resign during a press conference.
“It is no coincidence that several organizations smearing Justice Thomas are funded generously by many of the same donors,” Parker Thayer, an investigative researcher at Capital Research Center, told the Daily Caller. “The ‘pop-up’ public pressure campaign, where just a few donors pay dozens of ‘grassroots’ activist groups to give the appearance of broad public support for a particular issue, has long been a favored tactic of the Left’s wealthy special interests.”
Not Just The Sandler Foundation
This latest effort is part of a years-long massive dark money web going after conservative justices, especially Thomas and Alito.
Tax documents shows that George Soros-backed “Foundation to Promote Open Society” has given more than $3 million to ProPublica, while also giving $2.7 million to CLC and $2.5 million to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) since 2011, according to the report. The Washington Free Beacon found that Soros’s Open Society Foundations has also donated $4.5 million to Demand Justice over three years beginning in 2021.
More tax documents show that, between 2014 and 2021, The Silicon Valley Community Foundation gave more than $8 million to ProPublica, $60,000 to CLC, and $252,200 to CREW, a group which also called on Justice Thomas to resign following ProPublica’s reporting. ProPublica notably quoted CREW’s chief ethics counsel Virginia Canter and its Vice Chair Richard Painter in its initial article about Justice Thomas, according to the report. The Marisla Foundation has also given over $2 million to ProPublica and $1 million to CREW since 2016, tax forms show.
Both The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and The Ford Foundation have given ProPublica millions of dollars, while also giving millions to left-wing groups targeting Justice Thomas, according to the report. The Hewlett Foundation gave $3 million to ProPublica, more than $5 million to CLC, $808,000 to ACS, and $703,000 to the Alliance For Justice (AFJ) since 2013. AFJ “has been a leading voice in the campaign against Thomas and recently launched an ad campaign calling for his resignation,” the report states.
The Ford Foundation has given $20 million to ProPublica, while also giving $4.1 million to CLC and $500,000 to ACS between 2013 and 2021, the report continues. The Ford Foundation also gave $8 million to AFJ and has “funded multiple groups behind campaigns calling for Supreme Court ethics reform in the wake of ProPublica’s reporting,” the report states, citing tax documents. Some of those groups include $42 million for Center for Popular Democracy and $23 million to the National Women’s Law Center.
“ProPublica seems to be taking marching orders from the same extreme left-wing donors who are also funding other left-wing activist groups making similar attacks on Justices,” Mark Paoletta, a prominent D.C. lawyer who served in multiple presidential administrations and also worked on the confirmations of Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, told the Daily Caller. “It’s all coordinated. ProPublica is just another left-wing attack dog and their motivations are clear.”
Justice Samuel Alito is Next
The nonprofit news outlet appears to be taking aim at another conservative Supreme Court Justice, Justice Samuel Alito, who notably penned the Dobbs decision, overturning Roe v. Wade last year.
On Tuesday, ProPublica published a story about Alito with a similar theme to the stories about Justice Thomas. That story alleges that Alito took a “luxury fishing vacation” in 2008 with GOP billionaire Paul Singer, who later had cases before the Supreme Court. Justice Alito refuted the article’s claims in an op-ed that ran in The Wall Street Journal on the same day and accused ProPublica of misleading its readers.
Notably, recipients of funds from The Sandler Foundation, ProPublica’s “largest donor,” have also called for investigations into Justice Alito, including Demand Justice, the American Constitution Society, The Center for American Progress, as well as CREW, and other left-wing organizations.
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