Left-Wing Dark Money Groups Boost Dem Candidate Who Pledged To Fight Dark Money, Records Show

A Democratic Wisconsin Senate candidate who has railed against “dark money” in politics is being supported by a left-wing dark money network, Federal Election Commission (FEC) records show.

Mandela Barnes, whose top Senate primary opponents dropped out of the race in July, said in February “Dark money has no place in democracy” and pledges on his website “to stand up to the corrupting influence of dark money.” At the same time, Barnes was endorsed Monday by theFamily Friendly Action PAC — which is dumping millions in his race to unseat Republican Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson and is largely funded by the dark money groups Sixteen Thirty Fund and America Votes, according to FEC filings.

Nonprofits with 501(c)(4) IRS exempt status are often referred to as “dark money” groups because they are under no legal obligation to disclose donors and can funnel unlimited sums to super PACs, according to OpenSecrets. Super PACs have to disclose their donors but can be “effectively dark money groups when the bulk of their funding cannot be traced back to the original donor,” according to OpenSecrets.

Sixteen Thirty Fund, which according to Politico is the “liberal dark money behemoth,” has donated $585,000 to Family Friendly Action PAC since September 2020, filings show.

America Votes gave the Family Friendly PAC more than $16 million since September 2020, FEC filings show. America Votes, which is a “coordination hub of the progressive community” and has over 400 national and state partners to increase voter turnout, reportedly received millions from left-wing billionaire George Soros in 2016.

“This issue of dark money, of course, is a broad problem across the political spectrum and influences organizations with both right and left leanings,” Laurie Styron, executive director of Charity Watch, a group probing nonprofit ethics, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The dark money donations from America Votes and Sixteen Thirty

Fund were first reported by the Free Beacon. Sixteen Thirty Fund notably granted America Votes almost $129 million in 2020, according to Sixteen Thirty Fund’s federal form 990 filing. Sixteen Thirty Fund spent more than $400 million to unseat former President Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election and flip the Senate blue, according to Politico.

“Hopefully we can all agree in principle that the public has a right to know who is funding politics in our country so we have adequate information with which to understand any biases influencing the messaging we collectively consume and any conflicts of interest that may be present,” Styron also said.

Family Friendly Action PAC will spend $5 million on canvassing for the Democratic Senate nominee in Wisconsin, Politico reported. The primary is slated for Aug. 9 and several Democratic candidates viewed as competitive, including Milwaukee Bucks executive Alex Lasry, have dropped out of the race, clearing the path for Barnes to win the primary, according to The Hill.

Barnes led his primary opponents in a June Marquette Law School poll, receiving the support of 25% of voters.

“Hypocrite Mandela Barnes claims to stand up against the corrupting influence of dark money while pocketing every dark money dime he can get,” a spokesman for Johnson’s campaign told the DCNF.

Barnes’ campaign did not respond to a request for comment, nor did spokespeople for the Family Friendly Action PAC, America Votes or Sixteen Thirty Fund.

https://dailycaller.com/2022/08/03/mandela-barnes-dark-money-democrats-pac/

Senator Johnson told Hannity these groups have already dumped $40 million into defeating him. We need to pray he stays.

Reminder SC team intentionally wiped, erased, destroyed numerous cell phones before turning them over to IG vs DOD wiping in phones

Members of Mueller’s team ‘wiped’ phones during Trump probe: DOJ

By Yaron Steinbuch September 11, 2020 8:0

More than two dozen cellphones belonging to members of special counsel Robert Mueller’s team were “wiped” clean of their data before the Justice Department’s inspector general could check them, according to a report.

Newly released DOJ records show the phones were wiped of the data because of forgotten passcodes, irreparable screen damage, loss of the device and intentional deletion, among other reasons, Fox News reported.

Mueller deputy Andrew Weissman “accidentally wiped” his device twice after he entered the wrong passcode too many times in March 2018, according to the documents cited by Fox News.

Attorney James Quarles’ phone “wiped itself” of the data without his input, say the records, which were released after a lawsuit from the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch, the network reported.

The documents also show that a phone belonging to then-FBI attorney Lisa Page — who exchanged anti-Trump texts with fellow agent Peter Strzok — was restored to factory settings when the Inspector General’s Office got it, according to Fox News.

https://nypost.com/2020/09/11/members-of-muellers-team-wiped-phones-during-trump-probe-doj/

DOJ records show members of Mueller’s team ‘wiped’ phones during Trump probe

The documents were released after a lawsuit from Judicial Watch. Newly released records from the Department of Justice show that the cell phones of multiple people on then-Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigative team were "wiped" for various reasons during the probe.

The records show at least several dozen phones were wiped of information because of forgotten passcodes, irreparable screen damage, loss of the device, intentional deletion or other reasons– and came before the DOJ’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) could review the devices.

The documents show that Mueller deputy Andrew Weissman "accidentally wiped" his phone twice after entering the wrong passcode too many times in March 2018. Lawyer James Quarles’ phone “wiped itself” without his intervention, the records say.

The records indicate Attorney Greg Andres phone was also wiped due to a forgotten passcode. And they say the phones of both Mueller deputy Kyle Freeny and Rush Atkinson were wiped accidentally after they entered the wrong passcode too many times.

The records say that a phone belonging to FBI lawyer Lisa Page – whose anti-Trump texts with FBI agent Peter Strzok were of interest to investigators – was restored to factory settings when the inspector general’s office received it.

Other officials, whose names are redacted, claim to have unintentionally restored their phone to its factory settings, deleting all records of communication. Next to the name of one redacted person, the record says: “Phone was in airplane mode, no passcode provided, data unable to be recovered so had to be wiped.”…

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/doj-records-mueller-team-wiped-phones

>>16971774

‘Just Astounding’: Defense Department Wiped Jan. 6 Text Messages From Key Officials, Watchdog Finds

(Once they let HRC off of violations of the federal records act and treason, the government set a precedence they no one will get convicted of this. And If someone from the SC Mueller team was prosecuted for violating the law, maybe other agencies wouldn't be so free to do it all the time.)

The Department of Defense (DOD) wiped messages from devices belonging to Trump administration officials involved in the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riots, according to court filings.

The American Oversight watchdog group filed

Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Pentagon and Army to obtain records from former Acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller, his former chief of staff Kash Patel and former Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy, as well as other key Defense officials, in March 2021. DOD responded in March 2022 that “text messages were not preserved and could not be searched,” possibly erasing information that could provide transparency behind the events of Jan. 6.

The DOD officials whose records were allegedly destroyed would have participated in making the decision to deploy the National Guard after the Jan. 6 riots began. “I did not wipe the phone before I turned it in (or ever that I can recall),” former DOD General Counsel Paul Ney told CNN. “When I turned the phone in, I did not know what was going to be done with that device nor do I know what actually was done with the device.

“If DoD represented in litigation that the device was wiped after I left DoD on Inauguration Day, I believe that is very likely what happened and when it happened, but I do not know why,” Ney added.

DOD said in its response to American Oversight that “when an employee separates from DOD or Army he or she turns in the government issued phone, and the phone is wiped.”It acknowledged that text messages were completely deleted,although copies of some messages could live in other records systems, like email.

Federal records laws require any federal records of informational value to be preserved indefinitely.

American Oversight initially submitted FOIA requests for DOD communications records on Jan. 12, 2021, less than a week after the Capitol riots and before the Biden administration’s transition. The DOD acknowledged the requests on Jan. 15, CNN reported, but allegedly stonewalled producing a response until September.

However, government attorneys told the organization earlier in 2022 that the DOD had neglected to ensure communications data was transferred from personnel devices to secure storage, according to CNN.

“It’s just astounding to believe that the agency did not understand the importance of preserving its records — particularly [with regards] to the top officials that might have captured: what they were doing, when they were doing it, why they were doing, it on that day,” Heather Sawyer, American Oversight’s executive director, told CNN.

American Oversight petitioned current Attorney General Merrick Garland to initiate an investigation into the DOD’s failure to preserve the text messages Tuesday. The Secret Service acknowledged earlier in July that text messages from Trump administration personnel disappeared during a scheduled data migration on Jan. 27, 2021. The Department of

Homeland Security’s inspector general failed to reveal that the IG knew about the loss for more than a year after the House Select Committee on Jan. 6 subpoenaed the Secret Service for the apparently deleted records on July 17, CNN reported.

The Justice Department and Pentagon declined to comment. The Army and the Jan. 6 committee did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

https://dailycaller.com/2022/08/03/pentagon-phones-wiped-jan-6-witnesses/