"Do you think anyone knew Hawley was going to do that [attempt to overturn the election]? Sometimes politicians deceive their donors."
Yass is a staunch Republican donor, the eighth-largest the last election cycle, who has donated about $30 million to conservative Super Political Action Committees (PACs).
Most of those donations went to the Club for Growth that backed the effort to de-legitimize the electoral college votes on January 6 in which Sen. Hawley participated.
Uline shipping supply co-founder Richard Uihlein, a contributor to the Koch network, gave at least $2 million to get Josh Hawley elected.
He also donated more than $4 million to the "Tea Party Patriots," one of 11 groups behind the "Stop the Steal" coalition responsible for the assault on the Capitol.
The Guardian adds:
"In 2019, more than $20 million was funneled through Donors Trust, a donor-advised fund that disguises the source of major giving to nonprofits, to a dozen organizations that would ultimately contest the integrity of the 2020 presidential election, including $103,000 to Tea Party Patriots. In a statement provided to the Intercept, Tea Party Patriots cofounder Jenny Beth Martin denied spending any money on the Stop the Steal rally and condemned the violence that occurred."
That means there is a straight line stretching from deep-pocketed right-wing donors to the politicians they own, whether or not the money was "intended" to subvert the Electoral College count.
We should point fingers at Sens. Hawley and Cruz.
We should point fingers at the right-wing donors.
But the real problem is money in politics.
Until we have a Supreme Court willing to overturn 1976's Buckley v. Valeo, 2014's McCutcheon v. FEC, and 2010's Citizens United decisions, we will continue to have the best democracy money can buy.
The most effective--albeit most arduous--task is passing a constitutional amendment like the pledge the non-profit organization Move to Amend links on its website:
"We, the People of the United States of America, reject the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling and other related cases, and move to amend our Constitution to firmly establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights."
A future where "corporate personhood" is again a thing of fiction is possible.
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