XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, mn.politics, alt.atheism   
   XPost: talk.politics.guns, sac.politics   
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   The Breitbart funder Mercer's are liars and America hating traitors.   
      
   Rightists are their useful idiots, not their allies.   
      
      
   How one billionaire family bankrolled election lies, white nationalism —   
   and the Capitol riot Rebekah Mercer is “one of the chief financiers of   
   the   
   fascist movement,” says longtime GOP insider Steve Schmidt   
      
   Four years before Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., pumped his fist to a   
   supportive   
   mob that would soon overrun the Capitol Police and hunt lawmakers through   
   the halls of Congress, the former Missouri attorney general needed a   
   deep-pocketed patron. Naturally, he called on the man who helped bankroll   
   former President Donald Trump's rise: hedge-fund billionaire Robert   
   Mercer, whom he would soon describe as a friend while name-dropping him   
   to   
   court support from far-right figures like Steve Bannon, a longtime Mercer   
   ally. It's unclear what came of Hawley's meeting with Mercer, but the   
   Club   
   for Growth, which has received millions from the Mercer family, and the   
   Senate Conservatives Fund, which also got Mercer donations, quickly   
   became   
   Hawley's biggest financial backers, by far. Mercer's daughter Rebekah   
   kicked in a near-maximum donation to his 2018 Senate campaign for good   
   measure.   
      
   While Charles Koch and his late brother David have dominated Republican   
   fundraising in recent decades, the Mercers' recent strategic investments   
   in far-right candidates bought them a disproportionate level of influence   
   in the Republican Party before culminating in an effort to subvert the   
   election that fueled the deadly Capitol siege. Advertisement:   
      
   "The Mercers laid the groundwork for the Trump revolution," Bannon told   
   The New Yorker in 2017. "Irrefutably, when you look at donors during the   
   past four years, they have had the single biggest impact of anybody,   
   including the Kochs." Steve Schmidt, a former Republican strategist and   
   co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, sees it differently.   
   Rebekah   
   Mercer, he said in an interview with Salon, is the "chief financier or   
   one   
   of the chief financiers of the fascist movement, and that's what it is."   
      
   Hours after the pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol, killing five people   
   and   
   injuring dozens of police officers in a futile bid to stop the counting   
   of   
   electoral votes, Hawley joined with top Mercer beneficiaries in objecting   
   to the results to back Trump's "big lie" that the election was somehow   
   stolen. There was Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, whose super PAC got $13.5   
   million from the Mercers during the 2016 presidential campaign — before   
   the family dropped another $15.5 million to back Trump. There was House   
   Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., defending the majority of the   
   GOP House caucus voting to overturn legal election results after his   
   Congressional Leadership Fund received $1.5 million from the Mercers. And   
   there was Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala., who received $21,600 from the Mercers   
   before speaking at the rally that preceded the riot and objecting to the   
   results. Brooks was later named by "Stop the Steal" organizer Ali   
   Alexander as having helped orchestrate the event, though his office said   
   he has "no recollection communicating in any way with whoever Ali   
   Alexander is." Advertisement:   
      
   Alexander himself may have benefited from the Mercers' millions while   
   working for the Black Conservative Fund, a small and mysterious group   
   that   
   received $60,000 from Robert Mercer in 2016. Though the group did not   
   raise any money in 2020, it promoted the White House rally to tens of   
   thousands of followers, according to CNBC.   
      
   The Mercers funded numerous key players who helped foment the Jan. 6   
   insurrection, though their full involvement remains unclear. Along with   
   far-right candidates and groups, they have also funded the far-right   
   social network Parler, which was used to coordinate the Capitol siege,   
   and   
   Cambridge Analytica, the now-defunct London-based data firm that stole   
   Facebook user data to help Trump's 2016 campaign target potential voters.   
      
   "As I discovered first-hand, the Mercers are exceptionally skillful at   
   obfuscating and masking their political enterprises," David Carroll, a   
   professor at The New School in Manhattan who sued Cambridge Analytica for   
   his data in London, said in an email to Salon. "I marveled at how their   
   ownership of Cambridge Analytica was effectively shielded from the U.K.   
   courts where they were prosecuted." Advertisement:   
      
   Now that the Mercers have survived the scrutiny of the Federal Trade   
   Commission and former special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation,   
   Carroll added, "I would assume the family has doubled-down on investing   
   in   
   its own privacy."   
      
   Schmidt agreed that "it's hard to keep track of the money" the Mercers   
   have doled out to their pet causes.   
      
   "In this movement, the money is a fundamentally important part of it. It   
   fuels the movement and that movement is an extremist movement," he said.   
   "Is there a better than even chance that the Mercer money is flowing,   
   like   
   so many tributaries, right into a larger seditious stream on this? Of   
   course there is."   
      
   Lax laws surrounding dark money donated to nonprofit entities mean it   
   will   
   likely be "several years before the public will have a complete sense of   
   how much the Mercers spent," wrote The Intercept's Matthew   
   Cunningham-Cook.   
      
   Publicly available data shows that the Mercers helped fund numerous   
   players who pushed the "big lie." The family donated $3.8 million to   
   Citizens United, which is run by longtime Trump adviser David Bossie, who   
   was tapped to lead the former president's legal challenges. Though the   
   Mercers have pulled back their financial support in recent election   
   cycles   
   amid growing scrutiny, they donated $300,000 during this past cycle to   
   the   
   Republican National Committee, which joined Trump's legal battle.   
   Advertisement:   
      
   The Mercers were also the top donors to Arizona Republican Party   
   chairwoman Kelli Ward, a devoted Trump loyalist, The Intercept reported   
   last week. Ward joined the lawsuit led by the Republican attorney general   
   of Texas that sought to overturn the results of the election in multiple   
   states and spoke at a December rally that featured Alexander to push   
   Trump's election conspiracy theories. On Twitter, Ward promoted her   
   appearance at a "Stop the Steal" rally alongside former national security   
   adviser Michael Flynn, who urged Trump to invoke martial law to rerun the   
   election, and posted the hashtag "#CrossTheRubicon," a phrase that refers   
   to Julius Caesar marching his army into Rome to declare himself a   
   dictator. The Arizona GOP also promoted Alexander's tweets, which   
   included   
   his declaration that he was "willing to give up my life for this fight."   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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