Dark Money Group That Sponsored Rally Before US Capitol Attack Quadruples Its Revenues

Open Secrets, a US NGO track­ing mon­ey and pol­i­tics, report­ed in late July that a so-called “dark mon­ey” group more than quadru­pled its rev­enue dur­ing its most recent fis­cal year. Accord­ing to the report, Turn­ing Point Action helped spon­sor the ral­ly that pre­ced­ed the attack on the U. S. Capi­tol on Jan. 6, 2021,

July 22, 2022 A “dark mon­ey” group that helped spon­sor the ral­ly that pre­ced­ed the attack on the U. S. Capi­tol on Jan. 6, 2021, more than quadru­pled its rev­enue dur­ing its most recent fis­cal year, accord­ing to OpenSe­crets’ review of tax returns. Turn­ing Point Action is the 501(c)(4) advo­ca­cy arm of Turn­ing Point, a con­ser­v­a­tive stu­dent group that flour­ished under for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s admin­is­tra­tion. Turn­ing Point is spear­head­ed by its 501(c)(3) arm, Turn­ing Point USA, and is best known for con­ser­v­a­tive youth engage­ment efforts and dig­i­tal oper­a­tions, which were used to pro­mote the Jan. 6 ral­ly. The 501(c)(4) advo­ca­cy arm, Turn­ing Point Action, was one of nine groups list­ed as “par­tic­i­pat­ing” in the Jan. 6 ral­ly. Car­o­line Wren, a top Trump fundrais­er cam­paign who was list­ed as a “VIP Advi­sor” on the per­mit grant­ed by the Nation­al Park Ser­vice for the Jan. 6 ral­ly, alleged­ly “parked funds” for the Stop the Steal ral­ly in Wash­ing­ton, D. C., with Turn­ing Point and two oth­er groups involved in the ral­ly ahead of Jan. 6. New­ly released tax fil­ings cov­er­ing Turn­ing Point’s most recent fis­cal year, reveal details of the organization’s finances in the six months before and six months after the ral­ly – the peri­od when it report­ed­ly parked funds for the ral­ly. From July 2020 through June 2021, Turn­ing Point Action raised more than $11.2 mil­lion, up from about $2.5 mil­lion the pri­or year and an all-time high for the orga­ni­za­tion, accord­ing to OpenSe­crets’ review of its tax records.

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The Open Secrets report goes on to say that much of Turn­ing Point Action’s boost in fund­ing in the fis­cal year span­ning from July 2020 through June 2021 is due to two sev­en-fig­ure anony­mous donors – giv­ing $1.25 mil­lion and $1.19 mil­lion — and mul­ti­ple oth­er donors giv­ing hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars each.

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) has report­ed on oth­er dark mon­ey groups, includ­ing in August on a huge dona­tion made to a group led by what is described as a “promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tive lawyer” close to Don­ald Trump and known for run­ning a net­work of rightwing “dark mon­ey” non-prof­its that don’t dis­close their donors.