Artwork by Michael DiMilo
By Geoff Carter
On January 20th, 2021, when Joseph Biden was formally inaugurated as our forty-sixth president, America—and the world—heaved a huge sigh of relief. Donald Trump, the man who had only two weeks before instigated an assault on the Capitol Building in an attempted coup d’etat, was finally removed from the Oval Office—and Washington. It seemed that finally, after four years of bullying, posturing, lying, and corruption, our democracy had been saved. That’s what we thought. But, like the horror icons Jason from Friday the 13th or Michael Myers of Halloween, Trump’s equally horrific legacy will just not die. It keeps crawling from the depths of the money swamp.
Today, nearly ten months after the fact, Trump’s assertion that the election was stolen—his monstrous lie—lives on, cultivated by Republican dominated state governments. Even though he no longer has a voice on social media and no longer steers—as much as he ever did—the course of our nation, Trump still retains a major influence on the Republican Party. Those that have broken with him, or merely defied him, have been ostracized and blackballed by his denizens. Liz Cheney, who refused to acknowledge Trump’s election lie, is fighting for her political life. On May 13th, House Republicans ousted Cheney from her number three leadership position for repeatedly repudiating Trump’s lies; now she is facing Harriet Hageman, a primary opponent, who has been endorsed by Trump.
The party has continued—in ridiculous displays of excess—to investigate Trump’s claims of voter fraud. Arizona Republicans have conducted multiple recounts and investigations into so-called election irregularities, some bordering on the absurd. After the state legislature balked at paying for a second recount when the first revealed no wrongdoing, the Republicans accepted private funding, all of which had ties to the party, to continue the investigations. Talk about letting the fox into the henhouse.
Wisconsin, despite absolutely no evidence of voter fraud, is presently, at taxpayer expense, conducting its own audit of the 2020 election. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos has appointed ex-Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice and conservative mouthpiece Michael Gableman to lead the $700,000 investigation. Pressured by the former President, other battleground states are following suit in these quixotic quests for mythical stolen votes.
These are concerted and coordinated effort to discredit the American electoral system. While Trump is one of the driving forces behind this, coercing and threatening to endorse primary opponents against those state Republicans who refuse to do his bidding, he is not acting alone. Donors Trust, a conservative dark-money group, has funded a number of groups, including Turning Point U.S.A., that have challenged the validity of the past election, along with election laws in general.
According to a January 13th CNBC article, “in 2019, the group Donors Trust gave over $20 million to at least a dozen organizations that would go on to question the integrity of the election process, according to the group’s 990 tax return.” Which of course begs the question—who is funding Donors Trust? Apparently, the fund has been around for years, supporting such groups as climate deniers The Heartland Trust, legislative lobby group ALEC, and has even been linked to the 2011 Wisconsin assault on collective bargaining.
The Mother Jones article states that Donors Trust is funded largely by charities fronted by the Koch Brothers, the DeVos family, and the Bradley Foundation. All the usual suspects. A comprehensive list of backers can be found at The CMD Sourcewatch page. Cyber Ninjas, the company which has been auditing the Arizona election results since last April, has received over $5.7 million dollars in private donations from the group.
Besides mounting these relentless efforts to discredit election results, state Republicans have been proposing legislation—restricting voter access (much of it coming from ALEC)—to curtail this alleged “fraud”. By discrediting election results, Trump and his henchmen—mostly spineless Republicans—will find it easier to hamstring the entire democratic process. These groups are also sponsoring candidates for state offices who will be in charge of administering and regulating elections. In short, they will be seeking to rig every election in every state.
This didn’t begin with the January 6th assault on the Capitol Building. Donors Trust and other benefactors had been chipping away at our democracy for years. The Heritage Foundation, ALEC, and other ultra-right groups have been sucking up this dark money for a long, long time. Legislation churned out by ALEC has been attempting to curtail voting rights since at least 2010. Trump’s recent assaults on the electoral process is not his idea—it’s a continuation of a conservative policy that’s been years in the making.
January 6th seems a logical—and horrific—step in that process. Trump might seem like the driving force behind this surge, but he is merely the mouthpiece for the powers behind this dark money, and he—like so many others, will—if he is not already—be beholden to them.
Not to sound like Hilary Clinton warning of a “vast right-wing conspiracy”, but our democracy could be in serious and very real danger. Maybe Hilary was right. In the last ten years, McConnell has managed to place three conservative justices on the Supreme Court. New tax laws have benefited the ultra-rich, people like the Koch Brothers and DeVos family. Election laws are becoming more and more restrictive. If these forces succeed in crippling American faith in our own elections and install their own lackeys into positions of power, they will have succeeded in wresting our republic from the people.
Is this their endgame? To control the United States as they would one of their own corporations? If so, they are more than halfway there. They own the Republican Party. Except for a few stalwarts like Liz Cheney and George W. Bush, the rest follow—or submit to—Donald Trump. They have convinced nearly half the population that their freedoms (and guns) are being taken away from them, and that being vaccinated is an oppressive measure designed to brainwash them.
We are not out of the woods. Not by a long shot. Dark money is being poured into the coffers of Republican candidates everywhere. Should Republicans win the Senate or the House, or a majority of battleground statehouses, we might be witness to the passing of one of history’s greatest experiments: a functioning democracy.
Like Jason and Michael Myer and Pennywise (he’ll be back), this blight on our democracy, Trump and this legacy of dark money and darker intentions, lying just underneath the surface of the bottomless black swamp, will never ever die.
Sweden, anyone?
Yeah, I’m there.