OPINION:
The first sentence in the Wikipedia for Johann Georg Wyss is that he “is a Swiss billionaire businessman and donor to politically liberal and environmental causes in the United States.” In the next paragraph, it notes somewhat drily that “Wyss is a major donor of the Democratic Party.”
In 1998, he created the Wyss Foundation to fund environmental groups, especially in their efforts to lock up resource-rich lands in the West and to place even more land under control of the federal government. He sits on the board of the Center for American Progress, and at one time had John Podesta – Team Biden’s environmental czar – on the payroll.
In 2015, the Wyss Foundation started The Hub Project to help Democrats improve their messaging to the media and voters. The Hub Project engaged in paid advertising campaigns in 2018 that criticized Republican congressional candidates. The Hub Project is not your average nonprofit – it’s an “incubator” housed within the secretive Arabella Advisors, which also sponsors the Sixteen Thirty Fund. Wyss has donated $245 million to this fund, along with others, which get tangled up in ballot initiatives and give directly to political committees.
It is, of course, illegal for foreigners to give anything of value to American political campaigns. This prohibition exists for obvious reasons, mostly because it seems unwise to allow those without an immediate stake in American elections to be involved, especially if the foreigners in question have a bunch of disposable income that can materially alter the direction of United States policy.
There is a loophole in federal law however, that allows foreign nationals to finance ballot measures. In the 2024 election cycle, the crew over at the Sixteen Thirty Fund spent $37 million on ballot measures across the U.S. focused on topics like abortion and election law.
Along the same lines, recently, the California attorney general decided he wanted to litigate against an energy company that uses advanced technology to recycle plastics. Ironically, recycling is now on the environmentalist hit list. On cue, a batch of environmental groups announced that they were going to jump into the litigation as well.
Here’s where it gets interesting. Something called the Intergenerational Environmental Justice Fund is paying the bills of the private law firm representing these environmental activist groups in this litigation. What exactly is the Intergenerational Environmental Justice Fund? It’s a foreign non-profit organization based in Australia.
Why would an Australian non-profit care about litigating California’s plastic waste problem? Well, funny thing, it turns out that this Australian outfit is funded by Andrew Forrest, a mining billionaire who apparently has energy investments that compete with the American company being sued.
This whole thing smelled so bad that the U.S. Department of Justice required the private attorneys working for the environmental groups to register as foreign agents. It probably didn’t help that four partners at the firm donated a bunch of cash to the California attorney general’s political campaign around the same time the firm received payment for legal services from the Intergenerational Environmental Justice Fund.
On the surface, it looks a lot like a wealthy Australian is trying to use the American legal system to kneecap a potential competitor, all under the guise of environmental activism. Just like Mr. Wyss is using non-profits as a way to work around attempts to keep foreign cash from infecting American elections. Both of these foreign efforts are made possible thanks to a byzantine web of nonprofits that allow foreign actors to launder both their money and their agendas.
All of this is a sign that Congress and the incoming Trump administration should take the next step of changing the law to close the ballot initiative loophole. This would protect the integrity of American elections and measures on the ballot.
• Michael McKenna is a contributing editor at The Washington Times.
This post was originally published on here
