7/10/2023 0 Comments Koch spy networkAnd by the way, that includes the reporting I’ve done on the CIA. That said, the Kochs are more secretive than the others. I’ve written major investigative pieces about Bill Clinton’s fundraising shenanigans, when he was president, and about George Soros, the rich liberal donor, when he was pouring money into the 2004 presidential campaign. Both parties have wealthy and powerful interests trying to game the system. Big money and political corruption are not partisan problems, they are bipartisan problems. If the Kochs play rough or operate in secret in politics – or run a secret spy/political operative network as you write in your book – how is what they do different from what left-leaning mega-donors and activists do?Ī. ![]() People like Richard Mellon Scaife, the heir to the Gulf Oil fortune, for instance, whose unpublished memoir I obtained, describes having spent over $600 million on this largely unknown political project. My book, “Dark Money,” tells the stories of several other fascinating billionaires and multi-millionaires who have also devoted their family fortunes, often without public awareness, to remaking America in line with their own beliefs. Among the most active and financially important of these donors has been the Koch family. Why is that? One answer is that ultra-rich donors have been able to exert outsized influence to impose self-serving minority views on our elected officials by strategically deploying their fortunes. Despite the sizable majorities of Americans who share these views, nothing gets done about them in Congress. Most Americans also support raising the minimum wage, putting limits on campaign spending, and closing tax loopholes used almost exclusively by the super rich. The country is filled with pretty centrist voters who share a consensus on many issues, from the need to strengthen Social Security to the belief that climate change is a serious problem requiring government action. I can’t really imagine not covering it, given my beat.Ī: I actually never set out to cover the Kochs in particular – what I hoped to write about when I began reporting on them in 2010 was why politics seemed so dysfunctional. In short, this relatively tiny group of extraordinarily rich Americans is becoming almost like a shadow political party. The Koch network also has a budget that is as much as 20 times the size of its liberal corollary, the Democracy Alliance. ![]() According to Politico, the Koch network now has twice the budget and over three times more paid employees than the Republican National Committee did in 2012. They’ve put together a mostly-secret donor group that is planning to spend, by their own estimate, $750 million during this presidential election cycle, some $300 million of it directly on campaigns. These days, if you follow the money, you inevitably stumble across the Kochs. For the past 21 years I have covered politics for the New Yorker Magazine, and for the dozen years before that, I covered the White House and other beats for the Wall Street Journal, and following the money has always been a big part of any political reporter’s job. Why is it important to investigate and write about Koch political spending and Koch political activity?Ī.
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