Many posts have discussed media outlets on the left and right.
From 2016 to 2017, donations to the Real Clear Foundation more than quadrupled to $1.7 million, with nearly all of that coming from two entities that conservatives use to shield their giving from public disclosure requirements, Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund. In 2018, the Real Clear Foundation had its best year yet, reporting more than $3 million in donations. One donor whose identity is disclosed on tax filings is Andrew Puzder ... [onetime nominee for Secretary of Labor]
Public records from those years and interviews show how the leadership and donor base of Real Clear and The Federalist overlapped.
One of The Federalist’s major financial backers is ...Richard Uihlein, according to two people with knowledge of the website’s finances. Mr. Uihlein and his wife, Elizabeth, who runs their family’s multibillion-dollar packaging business, have been known to steer money toward hard-right candidates that many other Republicans have avoided, like Roy S. Moore, the former Alabama judge whose Senate campaign unraveled after women accused him of pursuing them and fondling them when he was in his 30s and they were teenagers.
Ms. Uihlein was also known for her outspokenness against public health lockdowns and revealed last week that she and her husband had contracted the coronavirus.
Together the couple have become one of the biggest sources of investment in conservative politics in recent years. They have given $250,000 to the Real Clear Foundation through their family nonprofit, tax records from 2017 and 2018 show.
The Federalist’s funding remains opaque, but its ties to Real Clear are detailed in public documents. Two top executives at Real Clear Politics were named in disclosures filed by Federalist entities. Mr. [John] McIntyre, the Real Clear co-founder, is listed as a director of The Federalist’s umbrella corporation on a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that also bears his signature.
The Real Clear publisher David DesRosiers was listed as a director with The Federalist’s nonprofit foundation. And as reported by BuzzFeed and others, The Federalist has used the same address that Real Clear Politics uses as the location of its Chicago office.
