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[quote=Anonymous]Here Are the Billionaires Funding Trump’s Voter Suppression Lawsuits
Dozens of billionaires have donated to the RNC's legal fund that is being used to fight against expanded access to mail voting.

PUBLISHED ON JUL 31, 2020 4:27PM EDT
DEMOCRACY PRIMARY CATEGORY IN WHICH BLOG POST IS PUBLISHED

Donald Shaw
EDITED BY
DAVID MOORE
With millions of people out of work and struggling to keep up with their bills because of the coronavirus shutdown, the federal government has passed new tax breaks for the rich and created trillions for bailing out large corporations. The 2020 election could give voters a chance to remove the politicians who enacted these policies, but if the Trump administration and Republican Party get their way, many voters will be forced to put their health at risk by voting in-person in November, almost certainly before a vaccine or a reliable treatment for the coronavirus is available.

For the past several months, national Republican have been at war in the courts over state policies—advanced mainly by Democrats, but also by Republicans in some states—designed to make it easier for people to safely vote. In more than a dozen states, including battlegrounds like Wisconsin and Michigan, the Republican National Committee (RNC) has initiated or joined lawsuits to block states from expanding vote-by-mail systems or to oppose Democratic lawsuits in states that have resisted putting universal vote-by-mail systems in place. The lawsuits are financed by a $20 million litigation budget that the Republicans have amassed for fighting Democrats on voting issues.

Trump and Republicans have repeatedly said that mail ballots are more susceptible to electoral fraud, though nonpartisan groups like Brennan Center for Justice say there is “no evidence” that voting by mail results in significant levels of fraud. Trump has said that he believes high levels of voting hurts Republicans.

“My biggest risk is that we don’t win lawsuits,” Trump told Politico in June. “We have many lawsuits going all over. And if we don’t win those lawsuits, I think—I think it puts the election at risk.”

In Pennsylvania, a key swing state, the RNC has sued to stop state officials from making remote drop boxes available for voters to submit their ballots and from counting ballots that are mailed without being sealed in internal secrecy envelopes. In Iowa, another swing state, the RNC joined a motion to dismiss a lawsuit brought by Democratic groups that seeks to overturn a law barring election officials from using voter rolls to look up information missing on mailed ballots. In California, the RNC filed a lawsuit in partnership with other Republican groups to prevent state election officials from following an executive order from Gov. Gavin Newsom to mail absentee ballots to all voters, but recently conceded after the legislature passed a legislative version of the order.

In a tweet on Thursday, now pinned to his profile, Trump said, “With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history,” adding, “Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???” Election experts like Rick Hasen, Professor of Law and Political Science at UC Irvine, interpret Trump’s tweet as encouraging the continued slowdown of the U.S. Postal Service and withholding of needed funding from state boards of election to prepare vote-by-mail systems.

Trump recently selected former RNC convention finance chair Louis DeJoy to the position of postmaster general. Besides helping to raise money for the RNC, DeJoy has donated $114,500 to the RNC legal fund.

The RNC legal proceedings account has raised more than $23 million so far in the 2019-20 election cycle, including transfers from a Trump joint fundraising committee and large donations from more than two dozen billionaires, according to Sludge’s review of Federal Election Commission records.

While a Biden administration is unlikely to substantially roll back upwards wealth redistribution, the billionaires backing the lawsuits would almost certainly fare better under another four years of Trump. Biden, for example, has said he would try to end Trump’s signature 2017 tax law, which has disproportionately benefited the wealthy. According to research from University of California, Berkeley economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, Trump’s tax bill reduced tax rates for the country’s 400 richest households below the level that any other income group pays.

Below is a table of the billionaires, per Forbes latest list, who have donated to the RNC legal proceedings account so far this election cycle, including donations from spouses of billionaires. The donations listed below comprise about 15% of the total amount that the RNC legal proceedings account has received from individuals this cycle.

Billionaire Donors to RNC Legal Fund 
Billionaire donors, according to Forbes, and their spouses who have donated to the Republican National Committee's legal proceedings account since Jan. 1, 2019.

Donors	Company	Position	Amount
Ricketts, John and Marlene	TD Ameritrade	Founder	$321,000
Fertitta, Frank and Jill	Stations Casinos	CEO	$213,000
Fertitta, Lorenzo and Teresa	Fertitta Capital	Chairman	$213,000
Warren, Kelcy and Amy	Energy Transfer Partners	CEO	$213,000
Schwarzman, Stephen	Blackstone	Chairman and CEO	$213,000
Perlmutter, Issac and Laura	Marvel Entertainment	Chairman	$213,000
Hendricks, Diane	ABC Supply	Co-founder and Chair	$213,000
Marcus, Bernard and Wilma	Home Depot	Co-founder	$213,000
Davis, James	New Balance	Chairman	$213,000
Catsimatidis, John and Andrea	Gristedes Foods, United Refining Company	Owner and CEO	$193,900
Paulson, John	Paulson & Co.	President	$106,500
Ruffin, Phillip	Treasure Island Hotel and Casino	Owner	$106,500
McMahon, Linda	WWE	Spouce Vince is CEO	$106,500
Deason, Darwin	Affiliated Computer Services (Xerox)	Founder	$106,500
Beal, Andrew	Beal Bank	Founder	$106,500
Schwab, Charles	Charles Schwab Corporation	Founder	$106,500
Dolan, James	Madison Square Garden Company	CEO	$106,500
Rahr, Stewart	Kinray (Cardinal Health)	Former owner	$102,400
Stephens, Warren (trust)	Stephens Inc.	CEO and Chairman	$90,500
Liemandt, Joe	Trilogy Software and ESW Capital	Founder	$52,400
Reyes, Jude (plus trust fund)	Reyes Holdings	Co-Chairman	$43,000
Reyes, Christopher	Reyes Holdings	Co-Chairman	$21,500
Fisher, Kenneth	Fisher Investments	Founder	$2,400
Lefrak, Richard	LeFrak	Chairman and CEO	$1,500
Table: Donald Shaw, SLUDGE  Source: Federal Election Commission  Get the data  Created with Datawrapper

At least 17 of the 24 billionaire donors to the RNC legal fund are among the top 400 wealthiest American households as ranked by Forbes magazine, including the following: Kelcy Warren, CEO of natural gas and propane pipeline giant Energy Transfer Partners, net worth $4.3 billion; Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of The Blackstone Group private equity firm, net worth $17.7 billion; and Charles Schwab, net worth $7.7 billion. Two more top donor families, those of Fertitta brothers Lorenzo and Frank III, fall just outside the top 400 richest Americans, with net worth around $1.6 billion apiece.

This is who we are up against, folks.  [/quote]

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