Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) moved $200,000 from his campaign funds to his family’s nonprofit group, which claimed its mission is to “revitalize democracy.”
Fox News reported Wednesday the money was put into his wife’s nonprofit and alleged the organization does not do much, yet it pays her son six figures.
In 2017, Breitbart News described Sanders as “the Senator who hates rich people,” noting he made more than $1 million in 2016.
The recent Fox report continued:
The independent senator’s committee cut two $100,000 checks to the Sanders Institute for reported charitable contributions in January and March, its Federal Election Commission records show. The expenditures are the largest from the Sanders campaign to any entity this election cycle.
The Sanders Institute home page says its mission is to “revitalize democracy by actively engaging individuals, organizations and the media in the pursuit of progressive solutions to economic, environmental, racial and social justice issues.”
Sanders’ wife, Jane O’Meara Sanders, along with their stepson, who was identified as David Driscoll, established the organization in 2017.
Driscoll’s About page on the site said he helped establish the group “as an educational arm of the progressive movement.”
In 2019, the group said it would suspend operations as Sanders vied for the Democrat nomination for president, but it has since restarted operations, the Fox article read:
Its latest publicly available tax forms from 2021 show the nonprofit burnt nearly 40% of its donations on salaries while appearing to conduct minimal work and having very few identifiable accomplishments.
The tax documents indicate that the progressive lawmaker’s stepson is the big winner of the operation. In 2021, the institute raised $716,618 and drove $257,000 into wages, including $152,653 in salary and other compensation to Driscoll, who acts as its executive director.
Breitbart News reported in January that admission to Sanders’ anti-capitalists event may have cost nearly $100 on Ticketmaster, a site the Justice Department previously investigated for possible anti-trust violations.
During an April interview on CNN’s Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace, Sanders asserted that the federal government should confiscate wealth that is more than $999 million.
“I think people can make it on $999 million. I think that they can survive just fine,” he said.
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