A "nonpartisan" project accusing conservative Supreme Court justices of ethics violations while highlighting right-leaning "dark money" is now housed under a charity bankrolling groups in the largest secretive Democratic-linked donor network in the United States.
Revolving Door Project is helping to lead a campaign demanding Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito recuse from certain cases and also raising concerns over their relationships with right-leaning billionaires. But the self-described "watchdog" has its own dark money affiliations — its current and prior sponsors have either taken cash from charities in the left-wing Arabella Advisors dark money consultancy empire or funded the nonprofit organizations, according to tax forms reviewed by the Washington Examiner.
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"These left-wing funded dark money groups claim there is billionaire-funded undue influence and conflicts of interest at the Supreme Court," said Mark Paoletta, ex-general counsel for President Donald Trump's Office of Management and Budget and a close friend of Thomas and his wife, Ginni Thomas. "But that’s not true — it’s true of them. The Left employs the technique of accusing the opposition of that which they themselves are guilty."
Revolving Door Project's ties to influential liberal dark money hubs, and pressing for investigations into conservative justices, could undercut its position as a watchdog that engages in "nonpartisan research and analysis" to "hold the executive branch accountable." Along with groups such as Fix the Court and Campaign for Accountability, RDP has recently taken aim at Thomas and Alito for not disclosing certain gifts or trips with Texas real estate developer Harlan Crow and hedge fund manager Paul Singer, who ProPublica in June said had "business before the Supreme Court." Conservatives argue there were no laws requiring disclosure.
RDP personnel have published multiple articles pointing out purported right-leaning dark money connections, including between Thomas and Leonard Leo, co-chairman of the board of the Federalist Society, a major conservative legal group. RDP published an op-ed Monday in the American Prospect, a "progressive" website, urging Thomas and Alito once more to recuse from a case on funding the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The calls followed a ProPublica report on Thomas attending donor summits by Stand Together, a right-libertarian group funded by billionaire Charles Koch.
One of the advocacy arms of the Koch network, Americans for Prosperity, filed an amicus brief in the CFPB case, while another filer against the agency was ex-Thomas law clerk and Claremont Institute fellow John Eastman. Thomas this week recused from a since-rejected appeal by Eastman related to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. RDP also cited research from Accountable.US, an ex-project of the Arabella Advisors-managed New Venture Fund, to argue Alito should recuse from the CFPB case over Singer holding "at least $90 million in financial companies overseen by the CFPB."
Still, in early March RDP, which isn't a stand-alone charity, became a project of Goodnation Foundation, a social justice cause grantmaker, Director of the RDP Jeff Hauser told the Washington Examiner. A donation button on RDP's website also notes it is "powered" by the foundation, which provides projects with legal, HR, marketing, and compliance services, according to Goodnation's website.
Hauser did not answer a follow-up series of questions from the Washington Examiner on Goodnation and RDP funders.
Goodnation touts on its website how it "accepts tax-deductible donations and distributes them according to a donor’s wishes," an arrangement Scott Walter, president of the conservative think tank Capital Research Center, said "allows people to anonymize donations." It granted $100,000 in its most recent fiscal year to Arabella's Hopewell Fund and $380,000 combined in the last two years to New Venture Fund and its Voting Rights Lab project, tax forms show.
Washington, D.C., Attorney General Brian Schwalb issued subpoenas on Sept. 22 to Arabella Advisors and nonprofit organizations it manages following allegations from tax-exempt experts that Arabella illegally lined the pockets of its founder, ex-Clinton aide Eric Kessler, and that Arabella exerted control over certain groups. Arabella has been dubbed a dark money "behemoth" over its network entities sponsoring others that, in turn, don't have to file tax forms with the IRS. The attorney general's office also opened an investigation in late August into Leonard Leo and his affiliated nonprofit network.
To Walter, RDP is "no above-the-fray watchdog on anybody's ethics."
"Its latest sponsor, Goodnation, is a cheap knock-off of Arabella," he told the Washington Examiner.
Meanwhile, prior to Goodnation stepping in, RDP had been sponsored since 2016 by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a left-wing think tank, according to tax forms. Spokesman for the think tank Dan Beeton told the Washington Examiner RDP was "independently run, managed, and financed."
The think tank, which organized an August trip funded by the George Soros-backed Foundation to Promote Open Society for House Democrats to Latin America, received $138,000 in recent years from New Venture Fund and $325,000 from the Hopewell Fund. Soros's Open Society Policy Center, a dark money lobbying group, contributed $420,000 to the Center for Economic and Policy Research in 2021, tax forms show.
Tax forms also show that the Revolving Door Project pocketed $330,000 combined between 2020 and 2021 from Democracy Fund, a liberal grantmaker funded by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar that steered $2.7 million to New Venture Fund projects in 2021. Democracy Fund Voice, the dark money advocacy arm of Democracy Fund that spent hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying on liberal policies in recent years, has granted millions of dollars to Sixteen Thirty Fund, according to financial disclosures.
"All of these groups and so-called journalists are nothing more than professional left-wing activists seeking to tear down the court because it disagrees with their opinions," said Paoletta, also referring to ProPublica. "Everything else is noise and lies."
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Revolving Door Project is not alone among groups behind the Supreme Court ethics campaign that are also tied to dark money. Fix the Court, which used to be managed by New Venture Fund, admitted it failed to disclose lobbying in 2021 and 2022 after the Washington Examiner published a story quoting tax experts saying it likely violated federal law. Fix the Court Executive Director Gabe Roth did not file tax forms until the Washington Examiner brought the discrepancy to his attention.
Goodnation Foundation did not return a request for comment, nor did New Venture Fund and the Hopewell Fund.