Julie Kelly: Bill Kristol's NeverTrump Front Groups Are Funded By Billionaire Leftist Money

Who funds the Bill Kristol Retirement Fund?

NeverTrump "conservatives" are aiding Schiff and the media in their campaign to paralyze if not remove [new acting AG Matthew] Whitaker. Commercials attacking the acting attorney general were aired on several Sunday morning political shows. The ads were sponsored by "Republicans for the Rule of Law," a group founded earlier this year by Bill Kristol, the editor-at-large of The Weekly Standard. The group's primary role so far appears to be pimping for the Mueller probe, a political witch-hunt that Kristol and his fellow NeverTrumpers pray will lead to the impeachment and removal of the president. The Left and their NeverTrump footsoldiers fear Whitaker will thwart the special counsel's investigation instead of rubber stamping Mueller's ever-expanding investigation as Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has done over the past 18 months.

Buying primo air time on network television doesn't come cheap. So who is funding "Republicans for the Rule of Law" and their attacks on the Republican president and his acting attorney general? Is it big Republican donors?

We haven't found any, but we have learned learned that one of Kristol's benefactors is progressive billionaire Pierre Omidyar, the co-founder of eBay.

In addition to funding dissident ex-conservatives, Omidyar, 51, and his wife--who have pledged to give their more than $10 billion fortune to charity--operate an extensive network of nonprofits and foundations around the world. Omidyar has directed millions of dollars to a variety of progressive causes and political candidates: he and wife "have have given more than $500,000 to federal candidates and groups--nearly all of them Democrats--since 1999," including six-figure donations to the Democratic senate and congressional campaign committees.

The Omidyars have also been among the most prolific supporters of left-wing causes for years. According to a 2014 report by the Media Research Center, "Michael Bloomberg, Warren Buffett, Pierre Omidyar, Tom Steyer and George Soros's son, Jonathan are major funders of the left. Together, they have contributed at least $2.7 billion since 2000 to groups pushing abortion, gun control, climate change alarmism and liberal candidates." And lately, Omidyar seems to have become a big fan of Kristol's, probably because of their mutual hatred of Donald Trump. Digging a little deeper it looks like they may have more in common since Kristol has recently found his "inner socialist" and he now opposes Republican candidates.

The GOP tax bill's bringing out my inner socialist. The sex scandals are bringing out my inner feminist. Donald Trump and Roy Moore are bringing out my inner liberal.
WHAT IS HAPPENING?

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) November 21, 2017

One of Omidyar's nonprofits is the Democracy Fund. In 2015, the Democracy Fund awarded nearly $9 million in grants, "many of which went to left-wing organizations" One Democracy Fund recipient is currently in court fighting the results of the Georgia gubernatorial race, which was won by Republican Brian Kemp.

An affiliate of that fund disclosed on its website that it has given as least $600,000 to Kristol's umbrella group, Defending Democracy Together, since May. (Other NeverTrumpers involved in the group are author Mona Charen, strategist Linda Chavez, and former governor Christine Todd Whitman.) Republicans for the Rule of Law operates under the purview of Defending Democracy Together.

So why is a group of so-called principled "conservatives" accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars from a leftist billionaire who has shown zero dedication to conservative causes, an activist who finances interests that are inimical to conservative values and policies, and who bankrolls Democratic candidates hostile to mainstream conservatives?

Because the same phonies who claims to be all about principles and integrity are now the folks willing to do almost anything to take down Trump. (Remember that the next time they lecture pro-Trump Republicans about being a cult.)

Note that while Weekly Standard staff supposedly work for The Weekly Standard and not Bill Kristol (or his billionaire leftist tech donors), they seem to follow Bill Kristol in whatever his latest grift is:

Does the staff of the Weekly Standard belong to the actual Weekly Standard, or are they just all Bill Kristol's gofers?

Does the Weekly Standard have any kind of firewall or protocol about separating magazine business and magazine resources from Bill Kristol's leftist-funded extracurricular activities, or is it all just a sort of slush-fund Thunderdome?

Kelly also notes -- and I'm grateful for this -- that Kristol and his hangers-on have seemed strangely compulsive about defending the good name of the totally-not-a-socialist-sugardaddy George Soros lately. This strikes some of us as interesting, because, and see if you can follow this, Bill Kristol and his remora fish need a lot of money to continue living large while doing almost no work, and George Soros, by strangest of fortune, has a lot of money, and gives it to advance the leftist agenda.

She says "more on that later." Can't wait.

Note: The corporate owners of The Weekly Standard shuffled Bill Kristol off from his Editor in Chief job to an Editor at Large job -- not the editor. Supposedly just a senior writer.

And yet the staff seems to follow his every (leftist-funded) political directive.

Is he the editor in chief or is he not?

People have suspected that Bill Kristol never really left the Editor in Chief job, and that this move was mostly a fiction to try to insulate The Weekly Standard from fallout from Kristol's increasingly toxic persona.

Would the Weekly Standard like to confirm this suspicion? If a gofer like Michael Warren jumps to do Bill Kristol's political organization work, doesn't that mean Kristol is still calling the shots and his removal as editor in chief was always a scam?

Is there any separation between Bill Kristol's leftist-funded political work and the Weekly Standard's supposedly free-and-independent "journalistic" operations, or nah?

Question: Are any Weekly Standard personnel double-dipping -- collecting a check from both the Weekly Standard as well as from Kristol's left-wing political venture socialists?

posted by Ace of Spades at 12:01 PM

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