Opposition
Research, or “ Oppo-research” is a seemingly innocuous term that is used to
describe the practice of finding and distributing negative information on an
opponent usually in the context of a political campaign. While the practice of
finding dirt on one’s political opponent is clearly not the most savory of
tasks involved in getting a candidate elected – or more specifically, getting
another candidate NOT elected – oppo-research is an accepted and pervasive
tactic used in political campaigning. But the research and distribution of the
embarrassing or scandalous material is an expensive and distasteful process. So
the organizations involved in obtaining and disseminating this information have
discovered that they must find discrete yet reliably generous contributions to
fund their unsavory task. In Jane Mayer’s New
Yorker article, she goes into detail on one such organization – the methods
they use, their mission and most importantly, how they obtain and maintain a
steady flow of funding.
James
O’Keefe III is a conservative political activist and self-described “muckraker”
and “practitioner of political warfare.” He has worked as an investigative
journalist for the far right-wing news organization, Breitbart, and gained some
notoriety for his journalistic practices such as “undercover stings” which
often constitute the use of hidden cameras, disguises and lying, in order to get
his targets to say and do things he can later share to defame and discredit
them. Some of his tactics have gotten him into legal trouble, including being
arrested by the FBI in 2010 during an attempt to infiltrate a Democratic
Senatorial campaign in Louisiana by pretending to be a telephone repairman.
In
that same year, O’Keefe founded Project
Veritas – a 501(c)3 tax-exempt charity organization – and later, in 2014,
the Project Veritas Action Fund – a
501(c)4 tax-exempt “social welfare” organization. The mission of these
organizations, as stated on their website is to “further
the common good and general welfare of the citizens of the United States by
conducting investigations into waste, fraud, abuse, corruption, dishonesty,
self-dealing and other misconduct for the purpose of educating the public,
stakeholders, policymakers and communities in order to create a more ethical
and transparent society.”[i]
While
this goal has the appearance of credibility and could be seen as being
righteous and honorable, what is most relevant in this message is the phrase
“the common good.” What makes this significant relates to the tax statuses
theses organizations are filed under by the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS
breaks down the types of organizations that qualify for tax-exemption status in
the “501(c)” section[ii]
of the United States tax code. They distinguish 501(c)3s as charitable
organizations, 501(c)4s as “social welfare” organizations, 501(c)5s as unions and
labor organizations, and 501(c)6s as Business and Trade associations. While
there are a variety of other distinct classes of 501(c)s detailed under this
category, these few will prove relevant to the topic of “Dark Money” in
campaign financing operations.
So
why did O’Keefe create a charity and then a “social welfare” organization? The
answer to this is in the IRS definition of “social welfare.” Under their
definition, an organization is operated exclusively for the promotion of social
welfare if it is primarily engaged in
promoting in some way the common good
and general welfare of the people of the community. This vague, rosy-sounding
definition is the reason O’Keefe, as well as a vast and ever-increasing number
of political oppo-research organizations are filed under this section of the
tax code. The appearance of the phrase “the common good” in the official
literature of the Project Veritas Action Fund as well as the official
definition of a “social welfare” organization is no coincidence. As long as
such an organization spends at least 50.1% of their expenditures on anything
other than politics, they qualify for this 501(c)4 tax status. This leaves
49.9% of their expenditures open to use for any politically motivated research,
advertising or what became known in the Nixon era as “rat-***king” tactics, they
see fit to allocate their funds toward. After the 2010 United States Supreme
Court decision which has notoriously come to be known as Citizens United, organizations
of this classification have no obligation to report the sources of their
funding. This makes such organizations very attractive to large donors who may
not want their contributions to an organization, which will be responsible for
subversive and distasteful oppo-research, available for public scrutiny.
It
may seem to some reading this, that any donor who would want to keep their
spending a secret, is immediately suspect. One argument for the need for
secrecy in such charitable contributions cited in [iii]Drutman’s
The Rise of Dark Money, was the
Supreme Court ruling in the NAACP v. Alabama where the concern was that if the
donations to the NAACP were publicly available, the organizations donors could
be vulnerable to violent action in the racially divided, segregated south of
1958 when that case was being decided. While that is certainly a credible
argument in that context, it is a laughable comparison to make concerning the
current context of the proliferation of dark money influencing our electoral
and campaigning system.
The passage of
Citizens United and its subsequent loosening of rules regarding the
transparency of charitable donations opened the floodgates for politically
motivated 501(c) organizations like Project veritas and the related “Action
Fund” – its more blatantly dubious dark money arm. For example, one of the
largest contributors to project Veritas is the 501(c)3 Donor’s Trust. Donors
Trust prides itself on its promise to “keep your charitable giving private,
especially gifts funding sensitive or controvercial issues.” Donor’s Trust
along with many others like it are funded by such wealthy conservative donors
like the Koch Family and their various organizations and shell and umbrella
corporations, as well as none other than – surprise, surprise – Donald Trump.
The vast array of examples of these tax-exempt organizations and their habit of
secrecy when it comes to the sources of their funding is extensive.
What becomes most
troubling is the practice of these organizations trading money between each
other to further hide the original sources of funding. This is important
because the source of funding for things like political advertisements makes a
big difference in a voters choice in who they should vote for. For example, The
NRA is a 501(c)4. If you were a voter who cared a lot about gun-violence and
reforming the process by which an American citizen is allowed to procure a
firearm or the types of firearms that are allowed to be sold to the public, you
would want to know if they were backing a certain candidate. By funneling their
funding through another 501(c)4 and possibly another, and another, eventually
the fact that that funding was coming from the NRA would never be public
knowledge and the NRA would have successfully tricked you into voting for
someone they can now expect a quid-pro-quo relationship with, seeing as they
funded his election. In so doing, the uninformed voter just voted against their
own interests because they lacked the sufficient knowledge of the candidates
donor base, in order to make an informed decision.
James O’Keefe is
just the most blatantly distasteful example of the ways that dark money
influences politics. Recently he and Project Veritas have been involved in such
“journalistic investigations” including discrediting CNN and The New York Times
by getting employees to say things that suggest that these organizations have
the explicit aim of lying about Donald Trump. Knowing that Trump himself is
likely funding these journalistic practices speaks to a degrading of the fourth
estate by its attacks and influence from the executive branch of the United
States government. O’Keefe’s position that the influence of liberal
billionaires like George Soros and his organization The Open Society Foundation
is “ the most important topic undermining democracy” is incredibly hypocritical
and hilarious considering his organizations and the multitude of other like it
are being funded by undisclosed dark
money contributions from the likes of the Kochs and the Mercers, just to name a
few of the most influential and wealthy conservative mega-donors . We are
living in the age of dark money and the result seems to be that it is
incredibly hard for the typical American citizen to know what they are really
voting for. And James O’Keefe and Project Veritas, as just a small example of
this legal corruption, aim to keep it that way.
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