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One of the GOP’s most influential families may simply walk away financially from Donald Trump’s new campaign for the White House, after years of distancing themselves from him, according to other people familiar with the matter.
Robert Mercer and his daughter, Rebekah, have not yet made a final decision on whether to publicly endorse Trump, the resources said. But the Mercers remain friends with key players in Trump’s orbit, including former senior adviser Kellyanne Conway, according to some people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to punctuate the main points about the Mercer family’s curiously personal thinking.
The Mercers donated millions to a super PAC and other efforts to bolster Trump in 2016, before retiring around 2018.
A representative for the Mercer family did not respond to a request for comment.
As they weigh their opinions on whether to get involved again to help Trump, the Mercer family has a virtually unprecedented personal war fund ready to be deployed.
The Mercers entered the 2024 presidential election cycle with just over $88 million stashed away in their personal nonprofit, the Mercer Family Foundation.
If they are going to fund efforts to prop up Trump, as they did in the 2016 election, that money can provide critical resources for influential conservative political causes, according to experts who reviewed the documents.
“The Mercer Family Foundation relies on a massive donation that can (and will) go toward pushing politics to the far right,” Brendan Fischer, deputy executive director of special interest watchdog Documented, told CNBC after reviewing the group’s 990 tax. return.
The $88. 4 million the Foundation raised at the end of 2022 was due in part to last year’s sale of more than $20 million in publicly traded securities and other securities, according to tax bureaucracy 990 reviewed via CNBC. The money he had through 2023 was down from last year, with the base starting last year at just over $96 million.
Robert Mercer, co-CEO of hedge fund Renaissance Technologies, donated just over $6 million to the base in 2021, according to the group’s tax records from that year. Although the foundation is only funded through the Mercers, according to the new documents last year, no donations were made to the organization through the circle of relatives.
The Mercers have a history of supporting conservative causes, and they are proper co-owners of the conservative newspaper Breitbart.
While the Mercers have largely disappeared from the public eye since helping Trump win in 2016, they have continued to try to exert influence in Republican political circles with their money, adding through the founding of the circle of relatives.
Last year, they donated $31 million to DonorsTrust, a 501(c)(3) donor advisory fund that funnels cash for right-wing purposes on behalf of its clients. This is the highest amount ever recorded through the Mercer Family Foundation in terms of donations to an organization through its charity, according to ProPublica’s knowledge base.
Rebekah Mercer was an investor in the now shuttered Parler that was supposed to be a social media space for conservative voices.
She is also a co-founder and investor in 1789 Capital, a money corporation run by Wall Street veteran Omeed Malik, who led a $15 million investment in a new media company owned by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and his former spouse Neil. , according to the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal.
Rebekah Mercer is also part of a coalition of Republican donors called the Rockbridge Network, which includes fellow Republican financier Peter Thiel, according to the New York Times.
Experts who reviewed the tax documents say the family could donate as many assets from their foundation as they need to political organizations that could have an impact on the upcoming election.
Shanna Ports, senior general counsel at the Watchdog Campaign Legal Center, told CNBC after reviewing the 990s that while 501(c)(3) charities are prohibited from “directly interfering in elections or endorsing candidates,” those organizations “can still engage in a variety of activities that have an effect on elections. “
This includes voter registration and voter drives, legal investment efforts, taking positions on public policy issues, contributing to the investment of adverse voting committees, or assisting with systems run by more politically engaged nonprofit teams that do have to publicly list the names of their voters. donors. according to Ports.
“A charity like the Mercer Family Foundation, with more than $88 million at its disposal, could have a huge impact on the 2024 election by engaging in those kinds of activities,” Ports told CNBC.
DonorsTrust contributors, for example, funnel their money to desired causes, without the public ever knowing the original source of the budget, as they publicly reveal the names of their donors. Conservative-leaning FreedomWorks, State Policy Network, Constitutional Defense Fund and Project Veritas all raised investments last year through DonorsTrust, according to the Center for Media and Democracy.
In 2021, the Mercer family donated just under $6 million to DonorsTrust, according their tax records from that year. In 2020, the year of the pivotal election that saw Joe Biden defeat Trump, the Mercer foundation gave around $20 million to DonorsTrust.
DonorsTrust raised more than $300 million last year and lists an anonymous contribution of $31 million on its 2022 Forms 990, which would have possibly come from the Mercer family. This is the third-highest indexed gift in DonorsTrust’s recent peak tax records.
Some of DonorsTrust’s most sensible beneficiaries in 2022 were the same conservative teams that the Mercer Foundation had funded in the past. DonorsTrust awarded more than $240 million in grants last year alone, according to its tax records.
Among the teams that earned millions from DonorsTrust last year was $7. 9 million donated to the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, a nonprofit organization that challenges the concept of human-caused climate change. Last year, DonorsTrust also donated $1. 5 million to the Government Accountability Institute. an organization co-founded by Steve Bannon, Mercer’s longtime best friend, and chaired by Rebekah Mercer herself.
The Government Accountability Institute is guilty of a litany of politically motivated investigations. He was involved in the investigations into Hillary and Bill Clinton that led to the book written by the group’s president, Peter Schweizer, titled “Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Governments and Corporations Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich. “
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