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Senate Dems Demand JCN Disclose Donors, Ignore Own Dark Money freebeacon.com/politics/senat…
However, the Democratic senators decrying JCN over its funders—and demanding their names— are themselves closely affiliated with dark money groups, including those that work in the same realm as the JCN.
Sen. Schumer is tied to Majority Forward, which hides its donors and was the biggest dark money spender throughout the entirety of the 2018 election cycle.
Majority Forward is a Democratic nonprofit incorporated in 2015 by Marc Elias, the go-to attorney for national Democrats who acted as the top lawyer for Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign and filling the same role now for Sen. Kamala Harris's (D., Calif.) campaign.
Majority Forward is closely affiliated with the Senate Majority PAC, a political action committee aligned with Schumer. The two organizations share office space, staff, and count J.B. Poersch, a Schumer ally, as their president.
Additionally, the Senate Majority PAC marks its contributions from Majority Forward as rent, salary, and insurance. Watchdog groups have described the relationship between Majority Forward and the Senate Majority PAC as "ridiculously cozy."
Majority Forward poured $46 million into supporting Democrats and opposing Republicans during the midterm elections, which saw liberal dark money groups far outpace conservative dark money groups in total spending, 54 percent to 31 percent.
Majority Forward accounted for nearly a third of the combined $150 million in dark money pushed into the midterm elections by both Democratic and Republican groups.
Senate Democrats additionally rely on groups such as Demand Justice, another liberal dark money group, in fights against President Donald Trump's federal judicial appointments.
Demand Justice poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into advertisements highlighting the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford during the Kavanagh hearings; the ads ran in Washington, D.C., and on cable and broadcast networks in Alaska and Maine.
April 2018, before the group publicly launched, Fallon was spotted by the Washington Free Beacon at an Atlanta gathering of the Democracy Alliance, the left's largest donor collaborative whose members have funneled $1.83 billion into progressive infrastructure since its founding.
The Democracy Alliance counts billionaire financiers George Soros and now-presidential candidate Tom Steyer among its members. Fallon was a featured guest of the group and appeared on a panel.
Sen. Whitehouse, one of the co-signers of the letter calling for JCN to release its donors, is a frequent critic of dark money in politics, but has never called out Demand Justice for its role in court fights.
Demand Justice is also a project of the Sixteen Thirty Fund, an entity that acts as a "fiscal sponsor" for 501(c)4 nonprofits, and a pass-through entity for donors. The fund is an arm of an intricate dark money umbrella that facilitated $1.6 billion of spending in recent years.
