Zuckerberg-funded nonprofit heavily favored Dems in allotting millions in election aid: IRS filings
A Chicago-based nonprofit funded by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to local election offices in what critics charge was a bid to elect Democrats in the 2020 elections, newly released IRS filings show.
The Center for Technology and Civic Life's IRS Form 990 filing for 2020, which Just the News obtained, reveals thousands of grants to election offices across the country. IRS 990s detail where organizations received and spent money.
Zuckerberg funneled some $328 million through the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, a grant-making organization with billions in assets that donates to left-wing causes. According to the Capital Research Center, an investigative think tank that's digging through the 990 filings, the tech billionaire has pushed nearly $2 billion through the foundation since 2010.
The foundation's massive grant to the Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTCL) was its second largest of 2020.
In another big transfer, the New Venture Fund gave a $25 million grant to CTCL.
Defenders of CTCL argue that the group is nonpartisan because it gave more grants to counties which voted for President Trump than for President Biden. However, the nonprofit gave significantly more to Democratic areas on a per-capita basis.
As the Capital Research Center notes, CTCL grants to Pennsylvania counties where Biden won averaged $3.11 per capita compared to $0.57 in counties where Trump won. In Arizona, the figures were $5.83 per capita in counties where Biden won and $1.29 in counties where Trump won.
CTCL, which was founded by Democratic campaign operatives, received federal COVID-19 relief funds. The nonprofit says the funds were spent in an effort to make voting safer amid the pandemic, without any political preference. However, House Republicans found in an investigation that less than 1% of the funds were spent on personal protective equipment.
In some states, such as Wisconsin, there are ongoing probes to find out what officials did with money they received from CTCL. One now-retired elections clerk in a key Wisconsin county told Just the News in June that election management was turned on its head after a massive injection of cash from CTCL.
Critics say the CTCL money, ostensibly meant to shore up voting systems and infrastructure amid the pandemic, was actually used to fuel efforts by Democratic politicians to change voting rules and create an unprecedented flood of mail-in ballots.