It’s always been an open secret in the political world that the top officials at the Lincoln Project were making out like bandits while raising massive amounts of money for trolling anti-Trump ads, but it was hard to nail down.
Now the AP, in a report occasioned by the John Weaver allegations, has added a little more detail to the picture in a devastating report:
Since its creation, the Lincoln Project has raised $90 million. But only about a third of the money, roughly $27 million, directly paid for advertisements that aired on broadcast and cable, or appeared online, during the 2020 campaign, according to an analysis of campaign finance disclosures and data from the ad tracking firm Kantar/CMAG.
That leaves tens of millions of dollars that went toward expenses like production costs, overhead — and exorbitant consulting fees collected by members of the group.
“It raises questions about where the rest of the money ultimately went,” said Brendan Fischer, an attorney with the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center in Washington. “Generally speaking, you’d expect to see a major super PAC spend a majority or more of their money on advertisements and that’s not what happened here.”
The vast majority of the cash was split among consulting firms controlled by its founders, including about $27 million paid to a small firm controlled by Galen and another $21 million paid to a boutique firm run by former Lincoln Project member Ron Steslow, campaign finance disclosures show.
But in many cases it’s difficult to tell how much members of the group were paid. That’s because the Lincoln Project adopted a strategy, much like the Trump campaign they criticized, to mask how much money they earned.
While several firms did collect payments, Weaver and Wilson are not listed in publicly available records. They were likely paid as subcontractors to those firms, an arrangement that avoids disclosure. Schmidt collected a $1.5 million payment in December but quickly returned it.
More:
Public records reveal that the unexpected success of the Lincoln Project has extended a lifeline to some founders who have spent much of the past decade under financial distress.
Over the past decade, Weaver has repeatedly failed to pay taxes, defaulted on loans and faced lawsuits from creditors seeking to collect. In October, he paid off $313,000 in back taxes owed to the IRS dating back to 2011, records show. A separate case in Texas is still pending over $340,000 back rent his family owes after shuttering a children’s boutique they operated, records show.
Others used the money earned during their time with Lincoln Project to refinance homes, or purchase a new one. Schmidt purchased a $1.4 million “Mountain Modern” custom home in Kamas, Utah, with five bedrooms, seven baths and a “stunning” view of the Uinta Mountains, according to property records and real estate listings. He is currently trying to resell the home for $2.9 million.
It was inevitable that people would eventually realize what was going on — although not until after the election, when the Lincoln Project was no longer as useful to the Democrats.