Sam Bankman-Fried’s mother helped craft a strategic memo that guided the Democratic Party’s 2020 election strategy – with shrewd tactics that proved to be wildly successful but which were also illegal, according to a bombshell report from a right-leaning political research firm.
Barbara Fried, who ran Democratic Super PAC Mind the Gap, authored a memo in late 2019 that encouraged Democrats to give to a 501(c)(3) known as The Voter Registration Project or Everybody Votes.
The Stanford professor argued that getting more Democrats registered to vote would be far more effective than simply donating to candidates, and encouraged donors to give 90% of their election contributions to Everybody Votes.
“Non- partisan voter registration” charities are “4 to 10 times more cost-effective” at “netting additional Democratic votes,” Fried wrote in the memo.
The charity ended up raising a whopping $190 million, according to recent filings cited by the Capital Research Center.
Unlike PACs which typically report donations quarterly, many charities don’t reveal donations until years after – in part because of the IRS’s backlog in releasing 990 forms.
Charities and foundations also are strictly forbidden by law to operate with the effect, much less the intent, of benefiting a political party, according to Parker Thayer, author of the bombshell report.
Indeed, Fried wrote that it was important to keep the strategy quiet.
It “managed to stay out of the news and as far as we know out of Republicans’ sight-lines,” Fried wrote. “It will come as no surprise to Republicans—and be of little interest—that yet another organization is trying to fund voter registration in battleground states.
“But the magnitude of our efforts, the details of targeting, and the names of the organizations we are recommending would be of great interest to them.”
“This is the darkest of dark money,” longtime GOP fundraiser and strategist told On The Money. “The 2020 presidential election witnessed an unprecedented and underreported influx of money from nonprofits.
The news comes just days after federal prosecutors accused Bankman-Fried of using $100 million in stolen customer funds for political donations. While there’s no evidence that he gave money to voter registration efforts or that his mother was involved in any wrongdoing, it underscores the impact the entire family had on politics.
In 2020, Vox reported on the memo from Mind The Gap and the millions the group raised aimed to raise.
But the new report from Capital Research Center reveals how effective the memo was with Democratic mega donors. Warren Buffett’s charitable foundation, the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, donated $5 million to voter registration efforts while George Soros donated $10.4 million, the report adds.