This article is a stub [additional content pending ...].
SOURCE: OpenSecrets.orb, 2020-10-07
This page last modified: 2020-10-07 16:30:27 -0700 (PST)
|Lewis Topper||Executive (Integrated Food Systems, Inc.)||2020-07-16||$100,000|
|Robert J. "Bob" Shillman||Cognex Corporation||2020-07-07||$10,000|
[ExposedByCMD.org, 2020-10-01] Trump Megadonors, Freedom Caucus, and CEOs Bankroll QAnon-Supporting, Extremist Candidates.
A number of wealthy business executives and major GOP donors have donated to one or more of the most extreme congressional candidates of the 2020 election cycle.
GOP megadonor Lewis Topper, President of Fast Food Systems, Inc., and his wife, Margaret, of Jupiter, Florida, donated $11,200 to Laura Loomer's campaign, the maximum allowed amount for the primary and general elections. Lewis Topper, who has been a major Wendy's franchisee and lists himself as operating a Domino's pizza franchise, also contributed $2,800 to the Marjorie Taylor Greene campaign in June.
The Toppers have made over $2.6 million in federal contributions so far in the 2020 election cycle, including $595,000 to the RNC, $575,000 to Trump Victory, and $235,000 to the National Republican Congressional Committee. In addition, Lewis Topper donated $25,000 to the pro-Trump super PAC American First Action and another $25,000 to Club for Growth Action.
Some of Topper's largest contributions went to the American Liberty Fund, a Super PAC mostly financed by Topper. The fund has reported spending nearly $100,000 on independent expenditures, much of it on digital advertising, benefiting four GOP House candidates, including close to $27,000 backing Loomer.
|Lewis Topper: Political Campaign Contributions.|
The only other donor to the American Liberty Fund is Robert J. "Bob" Shillman, the wealthy founder of machine vision systems company Cognex Corporation, who gave $10,000. He and his wife, Judy, also maxed out to Loomer, each giving $5,600.
The Shillmans have given nearly $400,000 to the RNC and $306,000 to Trump Victory. The couple has also given the maximum allowed campaign contributions to Reps. Devin Nunes (R-CA) and Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), and vulnerable GOP incumbent Sens. including Thom Tillis (NC), Joni Ernst (IA), Cory Gardner (CO), and Martha McSally (AZ), out of a total of $882,000 in federal contributions this cycle.
Shillman has a history of funding right-wing extremist organizations and was previously a board member of anti-Muslim hate group the David Horowitz Freedom Center, to which he has also donated. He helped finance a movement against Syrian refugees and has funded ACT! for America, another anti-Muslim hate group, and right-wing sting operation Project Veritas. Loomer and British anti-Muslim figure Tommy Robinson were "Shillman Fellows" at the far-right Rebel Media, which had previously employed neo-Nazi sympathizer Faith Goldy.
Shillman also joined an amicus brief filed by the American Freedom Law Center, another hate group, on behalf of "national security experts" supporting Trump's 2018 proposal for "extreme vetting" of incoming refugees.
Shillman's charitable foundation has given hundreds of thousands of dollars each year to Friends of the Israel Defense Forces, but it appears that he does the bulk of his giving through the Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund, a donor-advised fund sponsor that allows donors to anonymize their contributions. In 2016, the Shillman Foundation gave $5 million to Fidelity Charitable, meaning that Shillman could then instruct the fund to disperse his donations to other charities without public record of his contributions.
Shillman also runs the International Freedom Alliance Foundation, a nonprofit that sponsored trips to the U.S. by Dutch nativist politician Geert Wilders. The foundation paid a Dutch law firm $214,000 "on an individual's behalf ... for legal defense fees in defense of free speech" in 2017. In late 2016, judges found Wilders guilty of inciting discrimination of the Netherlands' Moroccan immigrant community.
In an anti-Muslim speech during an event honoring Shillman at the David Horowitz Freedom Center in August 2017, Wilders said that Shillman "knows that it is our duty to defend our superior Western civilization" from Islam.
Return to BuriedTruth.com