Exclusive: Bill Gates Poured Millions into Dark Money Fund Attacking Elon Musk

[D. Schlenk]

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2022/05/23/exclusive-bill-gates-poured-millions-into-dark-money-fund-attacking-elon-musk/


EXCLUSIVE: Bill Gates Poured Millions into Dark Money
Fund Attacking Elon Musk


by Allum Bokhari

23 May 2022


https://media.breitbart.com/media/2021/02/Bill-Gates-hands-up-640x480.jpg
Bill Gates hands up
Michael Cohen/Getty Images

Research exclusively shared with Breitbart News identifies
hundreds of millions of dollars flowing from Bill Gates'
foundation to 11 of the 26 organizations that signed an
open letter last month urging Twitter advertisers to boycott
the company if Elon Musk restores free speech on the
platform.

https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/neo-philanthropy-formerly-public-interest-projects/

Breitbart News' report, based on research and analysis
from the newly-formed Foundation for Freedom Online (FFO),
analyzed public filings to trace hundreds of millions of
dollars in contributions from the letter signatories back
to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

https://media.breitbart.com/media/2022/04/Elon-Musk-CEO-of-Tesla-Twitter-2.jpg
(FREDERIC J. BROWN/Getty, BNN Edit)

https://media.breitbart.com/media/2022/02/Bill-Gates-Mask-Off.jpg
American Businessman Bill Gates attends a discussion
during the 'Munich Security Conference' in Munich, Germany,
Friday, Feb. 18, 2022. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)

In total, 11 of the 26 anti-Musk organizations received
funding from a Gates-backed entity.

The New Venture Fund, which in 2020 received the largest
one-year commitment the Gates Foundation had made in
more than half a decade, funds four of the signatories:

The Center for Media Justice
The Media Democracy Fund
The National Hispanic Media Coalition (via the Media
Democracy Fund)
Accountable Tech

The Tides Foundation, also a recipient of Gates Foundation
money, funds five of the signatories:

Free Press
Indivisible
NARAL Pro-Choice America
Media Matters
Black Lives Matter Global Network

Two other signatories are tied to Gates Foundation money:

Empowering Pacific Islanders Community (funded by
Gates-backed Community Partners)
Reproaction (a project of Gates-backed NEO
Philanthropy)

The open letter's connection to the billionaire Microsoft
founder is significant, as Gates is in the middle of a public
feud with free speech advocate Musk. Last month, Gates
revealed his $500 million short position against Musk-
owned Tesla, prompting Musk to call Gates a "b*ner" killer
alongside a meme of Gates as a pregnant man emoji.

Gates is also an outspoken censorship proponent, frequently
calling on tech companies to do more to stop "health
misinformation" spreading online.


Musk threatens to reverse Gates' strongly desired
censorship policies — and now faces the wrath of Gates-
funded NGOs.

Recently, Musk asked his 94 million Twitter followers to
uncover the funding behind the 26 NGOs who signed an
intimidation letter threatening to destroy the company's
advertising revenue if Musk reversed its censorship
policies.

Musk followed up his request by highlighting one
particular shadowy group, Accountable Tech, musing: "I
wonder who funds them".

His curiosity was prompted by a Washington Free Beacon
investigation into Accountable Tech, which sought to get to
the bottom of the nonprofit's financial sponsorship. The
Free Beacon visited Accountable Tech's corporate office in
Washington and concluded the organization doesn't
"actually exist."

Rather, "Accountable Tech" was merely a "registered trade
[name] for the North Fund, a shape-shifting nonprofit
group that uses aliases to push an array of left-wing causes
from a shell office in Washington, D.C."


Via the Free Beacon:

https://freebeacon.com/latest-news/the-shape-shifting-dc-dark-money-group-disguising-liberal-campaigns-across-country/

Free Beacon then spoke with Caitlin Sutherland, the
executive director of the watchdog Americans for Public
Trust, who identified North Fund as receiving significant
capital infusions from two further nonprofits, the
Sixteen Thirty Fund and the New Venture Fund:

Sutherland found that the North Fund received $19.3
million from the Sixteen Thirty Fund and over $11 million
from the New Venture Fund, two organizations that share
an address in D.C. Similar to the North Fund, the groups
operate under at least 50 trade names—including "Fix Our
Senate," "Floridians for a Fair Shake," and the "Voter
Engagement Fund."

However, the Sixteen Thirty Fund and the New Venture
Fund don't disclose their donors either, leading to a
dead end in the money trail.

But the trail may not be so cold.

What is known about New Venture Fund's dark money funding
is this: it is backed by hundreds of millions of dollars
from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Per FFO's analysis, disclosure files for the Gates
Foundation grantee list show a whopping 102 separate cash
grants to or through New Venture Fund, totaling an
incredible $457 million since 2008.

https://media.breitbart.com/media/2022/05/signal-2022-05-19-101113_001.jpeg
Source: Foundation for Freedom Online

Philanthropy watchdog Sludge noted that the $70 million in
cash grants it identified from the Gates Foundation to New
Venture Fund in 2020 is the single largest one-year
contribution that the Gates Foundation had made to any
other single grantee since 2014, and its second-largest ever.

That figure may be even higher. Influence Watch reports
$126 million in 2020, while FFO corroborated at least $85
million that year from public records. Per FFO, Gates
funding dropped all the way down to $11 million for 2021,
after the 2020 election cycle ended.

The sharp pullback in funding after the 2020 election
makes sense, given the political nature of the New Venture
Fund's work. It is the parent organization for what has been
described as one of the largest pro-Democrat dark money
groups in America, the Sixteen Thirty Fund — which
happens to be another megadonor to anti-Musk signatory
Accountable Tech.


Via Sludge:
https://readsludge.com/2021/09/14/gates-foundation-was-major-donor-to-pro-biden-dark-money-network/

Sixteen Thirty Fund was a major player in the 2018
midterm elections, but played an even more significant
role in the 2020 cycle, spending roughly $60 million
funding the most prominent pro-Joe Biden super PACs,
including seven-figure donations to Future Forward USA,
League of Conservation Voters Action Fund, Take Back 2020,
Priorities USA, Unite The Country, American Bridge,
America's Progressive Promise, Pacronym and other
groups that spent hundreds of millions of dollars
combined on anti-Trump and pro-Biden ads. The
Republican-led anti-Trump group the Lincoln Project
received $300,000 from Sixteen Thirty Fund in 2020.

The nonprofits of Arabella's network spend millions
funding other political organizations and dark money
groups, such as America Votes and Center for Popular
Democracy — but they also spend millions of dollars
annually on lobbying the U.S. government.

That means Gates's biggest one-year act of "charity" in
more than half a decade – while running the world's largest
"philanthropy" network – was functionally a pass-through
payoff to surrogates of the Joe Biden 2020 presidential
election campaign.

So much for ending AIDS, world hunger, and disease — by
the numbers, the Gates Foundation's top priority seems to
be electing Democrats.

Musk recently announced he'll be voting Republican for
the first time in 2022. On top of his stated intention to
reverse a half-decade of creeping censorship on Twitter,
that puts him square in the path of Gates's philanthropic
freight train of paid political proxies. Bill Gates is
funding a veritable NGO army — and it is zeroing in on Elon
Musk.

Breitbart News requested comment from the Bill & Melinda
Gates Foundation and the other organizations mentioned in
this article but has not received a response.

Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at
Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech's
Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.
Follow him on Twitter @LibertarianBlue.