As billionaires pour millions into a second coup, Trump agitates against the vote in Pennsylvania

As part of his fascist campaign to capture the White House regardless of the vote, former President Donald Trump spread lies Tuesday that massive voter fraud was being committed in Pennsylvania, a state with more than 12 million residents and 19 electoral college votes. Current polls in the ‘battleground state’ show a virtual tie between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.

Former Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gestures at the end of a press conference at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, Friday, Oct. 25, 2024, in Austin, Texas. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

In an effort to sow doubt in the election and stir up his fascist supporters ahead of Election Day next Tuesday, Trump was present in multiple locations: an evening rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania, a mid-afternoon speech at his Palm Beach resort Mar -A-Lago and so on. social media claimed that ‘bad’ things were happening in the state.

“There are some bad places in Pennsylvania where serious things have been busted or are about to be busted,” Trump said at Mar-A-Lago, after posting on social media about alleged “counterfeit ballots and forms” that were found. in Pennsylvania. In a later message, Trump said that “law enforcement across the GREAT Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is watching and for Voter Fraud!”

Trump’s agitation against the vote is not just a personal vendetta, but part of a multi-million dollar coordinated effort to install Trump in the White House as a presidential dictator regardless of the vote count. Last week the Wall Street Journal published a long one report titled: “The Secret Billionaire Network Is Funding ‘Stop the Steal’ 2.0.”

The report makes clear that the same Republican megadonors who financed Trump’s coup less than four years ago have never stopped rewriting election laws, delaying vote counting and purging voter rolls to ensure their candidate wins . The newspaper reports that Republican donors have given more than $140 million to nearly 50 groups focused on “election integrity.” This is a euphemism used by the Republican Party to describe a massive effort to suppress likely Democratic votes, flood the courts with misleading legal claims, delay state and local certification of vote tallies, and promote far-right “ polls” in Democratic strongholds to threaten and intimidate election officials and voters.

The Magazine writes that Trump and “his allies have spent the past four years laying the groundwork for a more organized, better-funded and much broader effort to contest the outcome — a Stop the Steal 2.0 — if the vote doesn’t go his way.”

The current initiatives are not new, but are in fact ‘four years in the making’. The paper cites an email exchange that took place “(d)ays after the 2020 election” between “conservative scholars,” including Carson Holloway of the Claremont Institute. In the email, Holloway told fellow Republicans, “This will have to be another crusade of ours” to “clean up elections for the future.”

For decades, the Claremont Institute has served as an ultra-right den of ideological thinking and dictatorial conspiracies. From supporting Bill Clinton’s impeachment to providing the pseudo-legal justification for Trump’s January 6, 2021 coup, Claremont’s lawyers have played a major role in the Republican Party’s fascist trajectory.

Over the past four years, so-called “election integrity” efforts have been ramped up by millions of dollars from “dark money” nonprofits that are not required to publicly identify their wealthy donors. The Magazineciting open records requests, grants and other “disclosed contributions,” he identified several billionaires who funded the operation.

The donors include organizations tied to Wisconsin billionaires Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein and Hobby Lobby founder David Green.

Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein. (Photo: Uline (screenshot WSWS))

The Uihleins, the billionaire founders of Uline packaging, have been among the Republican Party’s most influential and generous backers since the 1990s. By 2023, Politics reported that the combined “The Uihleins’ “political giving” to federal candidates and right-wing causes over the past decade “amounts to more than $230 million, plus tens of millions more to state-level groups…”

The Magazine found that the Uihleins “have given more than $34 million since 2020 to organizations” involved in “election integrity work.” In August, Forbes identified the Uihleins as Trump’s seventh and eighth largest donors.

Another billionaire identified by the Magazine Hobby Lobby founder David Green is behind the effort to overturn the vote. The right-wing billionaire, with an estimated net worth of $13.7 billion, said Forbesdonates generously to The Servant Foundation, an organization that donated more than $7 million to the coup.

Before March 2020, the Servant Foundation had donated just $11,000 to a group called the Conservative Partnership Institute. In 2021, the Conservative Partnership Institute started the Election Integrity Network (EIN), which has been led by Republican attorney Cleta Mitchell since its inception. Mitchell was not only a “very dear friend” of Virginia Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, but also in the January 2021 phone call in which Trump harassed Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” him 11,780 votes ‘.

The Magazine noted that after the EIN was established, “the Servant Foundation’s contributions to the (Conservative Partnership) Institute skyrocketed. It earned $1 million in the year ending March 2022 and $5.4 million the year after.” The newspaper noted that the Institute also provided another $700,000 to three groups that describe themselves as “focusing on election integrity and voter fraud.”

Earlier this year, EIN agents attempted to change election rules in Georgia to allow local election officials to unilaterally stop vote counting and delay certification of vote totals if they had “reasonable questions.” At Mitchell and Trump’s urging, the Georgia Election Board also voted to require hand-counting of paper ballots at every election location. Although the rules were adopted by the election commission, judges in Georgia blocked them from taking effect this election.

The effort to suppress the vote and throw out ballots is also being facilitated by Leonard Leo, co-chairman of the far-right Federalist Society. The Magazine reported that Leo-controlled groups have given “more than $4.7 million” to the campaign to “stop the stealing.” Leo is an archconservative Catholic who began his career in George HW Bush’s White House to push through the nomination of Judge Clarence Thomas. Leo is an expert and high-level fundraiser and currently manages a fund worth an estimated $1.6 billion.

Other major organizations that fund the anti-democratic efforts led by the Magazine include “Donors Trust, the Bradley Impact Fund and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, which have collectively donated more than $48 million.”

Former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne is a key driver of Trump’s “stolen election lies.” He provided more than $23 million for the “forensic audit” of the 2020 Arizona election. Byrne told the Magazine he had given “as much as $60 million” to “election integrity” campaigns, including the America Project, a “nonprofit organization” run by him and Trump’s former national security adviser, retired Gen. Mike Flynn. The Magazine did not include the $60 million as part of the $140 million identified so far because it has not been made public.

In addition to running the America Project, Byrne also runs “America’s Future,” an entity used by Byrne to raise money for the Arizona Audit and other anti-democratic efforts. One of the biggest donors to America’s Future after Byrne took over in 2021 was Julie Fancelli, billionaire and heiress to the Publix Super Markets fortune.

Fancelli also funded Trump’s January 6, 2021 rally at the Ellipse before the attack on the Capitol. Despite being identified as one of the main financiers of the meeting, Fancelli was never charged with a crime or required to testify before the House of Representatives Select Committee on January 6.