Taylor Lorenz’s Power User - The Shocking Truth About Dark Money and Influencers

Episode Date: September 3, 2025

SUPPORT ME ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/c/taylorlorenzBuy a subscription to my Tech and Online Culture newsletter, User Magazine to support my work!!!! 🙏 https://www.usermag.co Dark money orgs spend millions to shape our political system without having to reveal where their money comes from. Now, they're paying influencers too. Last week, I published an article on WIRED titled "A Dark Money Group Is Secretly Funding High-Profile Democratic Influencers." The story describes an initiative aimed at boosting Democrats online that offers influencers up to $8,000 a month in dark money funding. Since the story came out, a bunch of influencers in the program have tried to mislead people about what dark money is and isn't. Anna Massoglia is one of the top journalists in the country covering dark money. She is the director of investigations at the Sunlight Research Center and writes the newsletter Influence Brief. We break down what dark money is, what it isn't, who the biggest dark money power players are, and why even left-leaning undisclosed dark money can harm our political system. We also chat about how dark money is increasingly shaping content on the internet and being used for foreign propaganda campaigns. OPEN SECRETS GUIDE TO DARK MONEY: https://www.opensecrets.org/dark-money READ MY WIRED STORY: https://www.wired.com/story/dark-money-group-secret-funding-democrat-influencers Follow me:https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz3.0 https://www.tiktok.com/@taylorlorenz

One of the arguments that I've heard over the years from Democratic activists is that you have to fight fire with fire, that if they did stop using dark money as a vehicle to win elections, that conservatives would get ahead. But from what I've observed, it's more that they're feeding the fire and just make it even bigger. Last week, I published an article on Wired titled, quote, A Dark Money Group is secretly funding high-profile Democratic influencers. The story describes an initiative aimed at boosting Democratic Democratic. online that offers influencers up to $8,000 a month. The program is funded by a powerful liberal dark money group called the 1630 Fund.

And per the contracts we reviewed, the creators involved are not allowed to disclose the details of the funding agreement publicly. But what is the 1630 fund? And why is it a problem if influencers are participating in dark money related schemes? What does dark money even mean anyway? Anna Massagolia is the director of investigations at the Sunlight Research Center, and she She writes the newsletter, influence brief that uncovers the hidden forces of money, power, and influence shaping public policy in our political system. She is one of the top journalists in the country covering dark money.

And today, we're going to be talking all about what dark money is, what it is not, and how it's being wielded on the internet. Hi, Anna. Welcome. Thank you for having me. So to start off, what is dark money? What does the term mean and what is a dark money group? Different organizations have different definitions of dark money, but open. An organization that tracks money in politics where I used to work for almost a decade defines dark money as money from undisclosed sources going to influence political outcomes or elections. After the Supreme Court Citizens United decision in 2010, that was really when we started to see a rise in what we traditionally think of as dark money at this point.

The Supreme Court Citizens United decision opened the door for incorporated entities such as corporations and nonprofits to be able to pour more money into U.S. elections. Why did that Supreme Court ruling give birth to these massive funding machines? In combination with another ruling called Speech Now, the Supreme Court Citizens United ruling created what are now called super PACs, which are a type of political committee that can raise and spend a limited sum so long as they do disclose their donors. And one of the big increases, at least recently, in dark money, has been funneling money through these super PACs. So while super PACs are legally required to disclose their donors, they can just disclose a

dark money group like a 501c4 nonprofit that are not legally required to disclose as much information, effectively evading disclosure requirements. Dark money groups can also spend directly on elections with much less disclosure and very few rules. Got it. So in a lot of cases now, these super PACs have to disclose, but they're getting massive amounts of money from these dark money groups that don't have to disclose. Like it's a big black box. Absolutely. And super PACs taking money from dark money groups is becoming increasingly common in recent election cycles. So the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. What are the names of some major dark money groups on both sides of the political system? Like, you know, for somebody that's just trying to pay attention to

dark money, what are some big names that they should know? Some of the biggest spenders through dark money groups are actually aligned with party leadership in Congress. During the last election cycle, we saw a group called Majority Forward on the left and House Majority Forward for Democrats, as well as One Nation and American Action Network on the right. These are some of the biggest players who account for a huge chunk, hundreds of millions of dollars of the dark money going into elections. I conducted an analysis for the Brennan Center, being able to track about $1.9 billion in dark money, which is just a huge sum, and hundreds of millions of dollars of that was just those four groups that are aligned with party leadership in Congress. But you also see a variety

of other smaller group names as well. One example for the most recent election cycle was building America's future, which had ties to Elon Musk. And similar to 1630 Fund actually had different projects under its umbrella that appear to the average member of the public as an independent group, but actually were just fiscally sponsored projects or aliases that it went by, which is another element of that as well, which effectively makes that even less transparent. Why should the average voter care about dark money? I feel like we all know that there's so much money in our political ecosystem. A lot of people have heard of super PACs, but why should they care about dark money specifically? Dark money is an important topic for voters to understand because they are

being targeted by the messaging. And if you do not understand that the information you're relying on when you go to the ballot box or building your own political opinions could be colored by someone who has staken the outcome of the election or outcome of a policy fight, then you might not know to weigh that into your decisions. I wrote a story for Wired last. week about this dark money group called the 1630 fund and how it is involved in this influence scheme where these content creators were taking money through this funding program and not disclosing any of it. A lot of people are wondering, what is the 1630 fund? Is this an organization that is powerful in the dark money space?

How did it emerge? I know you've done some reporting on them. Can you kind of explain who they are and how they came to be so well known? The 1630 fund is a very powerful liberal dark money group that operates as a 501c4 nonprofit. I have started reporting on the organization back in 2018, so it's been on my radar for a while. But first got me interested in the 1630 Fund was Supreme Court nominations when they were the first major counter to conservative groups spending in support of or attacking Supreme Court Justice nominees through a group called Demand Justice that is since spun off from the 1630 Fund.

At that point, one of the major functions of the 1630 Fund was to act as a fiscal sponsor or incubator for a variety of different groups that operated under its umbrella. Because of the way it was structured, they didn't have to have their own independent 501c3 status or file any other independent paperwork, which made it a very opaque situation. That's not to say that all fiscal sponsorship situations are dark money or opaque or sketchy in any way, but in this case, sometimes they would start the group by the same people who were running the 1630 fund, the group would run its course, serve its function, and then disappear. It never spun off, which is typically the focus of incubators and traditional fiscal sponsorship.

And how did the 1630 fund evolve? I know that they've raised, I think, political reported hundreds of millions of dollars, allocated a bunch. How has it operated more in more recent years? The 1630 fund has grown substantially in more recent years and become much more of a public presence. Twenty-18 marked a real turning point when they started to gain national media and also started to attract much more substantial donors. The way that 1630 Fund was structured with their fiscal sponsees, they had some projects that were very political and some that were much less political or not political at all. One of the tests that the IRS uses to determine whether a 501c4 nonprofit can be tax exempt can continue to operate is whether its primary purpose is social welfare

or whether it is politics. And technically, less than half of its activities can be political. And so when you group together all of these organizations that otherwise could have been independent, the groups that are much less political effectively water down all the political activity by the groups that are more political. And also decrease disclosure. There's much less disclosure around it. Got it. So the point is to sort of like fund all of these kind of seemingly independent things and group them all together and basically kind of like get out of disclosure requirements that would be required if you were just funding political activity. Is that right? It's hard to know what the aim was initially, whether that was to create a powerhouse or to create kind of a counter to what the conservative movement had created for so many years. But what 1630 fund created was somewhat unique.

Fiscal sponsorsies had existed for several years, but had not really been in the political space to that effect. There had been donor advised funds such as donors trust on the right, but there had not been an equivalent on the left to any means. And so I think it was a somewhat innovative move for them at the time. And who donates to the 1630 fund? Do we have any idea? I mean, I know this is a fund, a dark money group that has amassed hundreds of billions of dollars. Who is funding it? We do know some of the donors to the 1630 fund because of either voluntary disclosures by individuals,

organizations or corporations, as well as foundations that have given or other nonprofits that have given. While nonprofits are not generally legally required to disclose their own donors, do have to disclose outgoing grants. So it's very easy to see when one nonprofit has given to another nonprofit and you can piece together those networks. Many bigger foundations also voluntarily disclose their grants, and so you're able to see it that way as well. Some of the bigger donors to 1630 fund in more recent years include Open Society Foundation, Democracy Fund, many of those big name left-leaning or center-left foundations and philanthropic organizations that do actually disclose their grants on their website.

I am currently doing a reporting fellowship for the Omidyar Network, which is run funded by Pierre Omidyar. And actually, I think because of a lot of confusion between how all of this stuff works, people were accusing me of being funded by the 1630 fund. Not true, completely false. The Omidyar Network actually came out and issued a statement saying we have not taken any funding from 1630.

In fact, the billionaire Pierre Omidyar once donated to 1630 himself years ago. So basically, like, the billionaire, is funding the dark money. Dark money groups don't generally fund billionaires. Exactly. You certainly aren't going to see dark money groups contributing to billionaires. Yeah, it's very silly. A bunch of people, I think, have been really confused about the concept of dark money,

where they are asking, okay, well, what about a group like the NWACP or Planned Parenthood? Like, these are nonprofits? Are they inherently dark money? Can you explain the difference between maybe some of these like civil rights nonprofits or advocacy groups and like a dark money fund? Absolutely. I think a common misconception is that all nonprofits or all 501c4s are dark money. Many 501c4 nonprofits and advocacy organizations do disclose their sources of funding are very transparent

and do go above and beyond in that way. When they do not disclose that information and spend on politics, on election outcomes, on political influence, that is when they become dark money. Got it. So it's also important to have that second part of their spending on elections and political influence and things like that. Absolutely. I think a lot of people hear about these dark money groups and actually in my story, we quoted a lawyer who was talking to these content creators and said something to the effective.

You guys don't have to worry about these blah, blah, blah, blah disclosures. You don't have to worry about your name appearing in the FEC because we're structuring the program, you know, in this way with like through this nonprofit. What are the rules around this? Like how effective are organizations like the FEC and IRS or whatever in tracking dark money? And is there any sort of legislation aimed at bringing more transparency to the system? Dark money groups are largely left unchecked at this point. Even very brazen examples have been entirely unenforced.

The FEC has a reputation of being underfunded, understaffed, not having a quorum, which means that they don't have enough people to even vote on whether to pursue enforcement action. The IRS similarly is very much lacking resources in that enforcement division for tax-exempt organizations. And so there's, it's not necessarily a priority when there's so much else that they are juggling. Even then it's hard to catch as well. What is the dark money system on the right look like compared to the left? Because I feel like we hear so much about the Coke Network and all of these like right-wing, you know, organizations. Like where do those sort of political divides fall more broadly in the dark money ecosystem? So over the years, the political divide in dark money has evolved.

Traditionally, after the Supreme Court Citizens United Decision, Conservatives were the first to really embrace dark money. But starting during the 2018 midterm election cycle, liberal dark money groups started to spend more on either supporting Democrats or opposing Republican candidates. And that is something that has continued in more recent election cycles. Every cycle since 2018, we have seen liberal dark money groups spend more than conservative dark money groups. Democrats benefit more than Republicans. And again, that is just the traditional dark money looking at 501C4 nonprofits. either giving through super PACs or spending directly on advertising themselves. But every year consistently, we have seen liberal dark money groups outspending their conservative

counterparts. But that's not to say that conservative dark money is going away. It's just that it is getting bigger. Yeah. So this is something that I feel like a lot of people were responding to me saying last week. Like, it's good that liberals are engaging in more dark money politics because finally, maybe we can stick it to the Republicans. I guess what do you think about the.

expansion of this dark money ecosystem. Like, is this good for democracy? I think one thing I'm concerned about is somebody that cares a lot about transparency and open government. Like liberals always sort of criticize the Republicans for this system. Now they're buying into it, as you mentioned, even more. And now it seems like we have both parties really embracing dark money. Do you think that that could be a problem for democracy?

One of the arguments that I've heard over the years from Democratic activists and liberal dark money activists is that they're, you have to fight fire with fire. that if they did stop using dark money as a vehicle to win elections, that conservatives would get ahead. But from what I've observed, it's more that they're feeding the fire that as liberal dark many groups adopt new tactics, you're then seeing conservative dark money groups using those same tactics and starting to meet each other and feed off of each other's new ideas and new tactics and just make it even bigger. What ethical concerns arise when voters don't know who's funding these campaigns in political efforts?

When voters don't know who is trying to influence their views, they may rely on a piece of information that they read online or that they consume through an advertisement on TV and not know that it is colored by an organization that actually has stake in the outcome of the election. And in some cases, we don't even know what interest that is. And so it becomes very hard to assess what the bias of those pieces of information we're consuming are. In some cases, they can be very subtle, especially online. They do not fit the traditional mold of political advertising. They don't always fit into what regulations actually are required to enforce. They don't have the traditional vote for or vote against language. But they can be even more effective because they can look like news articles.

They can look like much more organic posts. And even enlist things like enlist influencers and other tactics that are very effective. And without disclosure, someone may consume that information as a, fact, whereas information from a trusted source. Yeah, it seems like influencers are playing a bigger role. Like obviously I wrote about this on the Democratic side in my wired story, but there's been plenty of examples of Republicans engaging in influencers. And it seems like influencers also, because that industry is so unregulated, are out here

presenting themselves as journalists while taking tens of thousands of dollars in this funding, you know, on both sides of the aisle. Could you talk a little bit about how dark money is shaping the internet? Are you seeing more of these online influence campaigns? And do you think that this is something that we'll see more of also as like the influencer industry continues to take over media? I think the conservative side certainly embraced influencers much earlier than Democrats have. Groups like Turning Point USA have been able to reach out to younger audiences and effectively create mouthpieces that they are able to use. It's a fine line between restricting speech and telling people what to say and providing them with scripts versus finding the right people to amplify your message who all right.

believe things. And I think that that's an interesting distinction between those things. It's also much harder to regulate influencers over the years. I think that the Federal Election Commission and other federal agencies have struggled with applying the laws on the books to these new applications as well. One big controversy also that I wrote about, this was months ago, was the tenant media controversy where this organization tenant media, which was sort of this front group for this Russian money, was funding these conservative content creators like Tim Poole and Benny Johnson giving them hundreds of thousands of dollars a month. How often does dark money overlap with foreign influence concerns? Increasingly so. One of the articles that I wrote for

Open Secrets a few years ago was about influencers who were enlisted as part of a pro-Chinese government pro-CCP campaign ahead of the Olympics in Beijing. And because of the way the influence operation was structured, they did have to disclose that they were enlisting influencers and that they were hiring a firm to do so, but the influencers themselves did not have to put any type of disclaimer on the content they were putting out there, because technically they had control over the content. The way the Foreign Agents Registration Act is written, if the foreign government or foreign political party does not have direction, control, or some other equivalent of that, you don't necessarily have to report all of that, the payments that are happening there. You don't

necessarily have to include disclaimers. And so there are a variety of new ways that this information is coming out there. That's just one example of influencers being deployed. That was one that was disclosed, at least the operation itself, was disclosed in Foreign Agent's Registration Act filings. But there's so much else that is not. Just using China's example, there's so many different YouTube videos where it can be very subtle at first, where it's puppy videos and food videos and then subtle pro-China messaging comes in. And it's certainly not limited to China by any means. Many other countries have them as well. Oftentimes it's very much like cleaning up their image. Saudi Arabia has even flown influencers out to their country to have effectively curated

trips. And because they give those influencers, technically they give them control over what they're posting, but they're controlling what they are experiencing. They are not legally required to have certain disclaimers or disclosures that otherwise would be required. And so this is a very new area of the law that has not been explored sufficiently in the past and is largely unregulated. I covered that Saudi Arabia influence campaign as well for the New York Times. And a lot of what those influencers told me was sort of similar to what these influencers in the chorus program have been saying of like, well, I was never given a script. I was never told exactly what to say. But I do think that it's worth asking questions of if you take part in an influence operation that is funded by dark money or some other group that you don't even know the funders of.

And maybe you're attending daily messaging sessions, but you're not explicitly told what to say. Like, yeah, I guess technically you don't have to disclose that. But it seems like we should have more laws, right, around transparency. Is there any legislative effort to crack down in this stuff? There have been some efforts in Congress, such as the Disclose Act, to increase transparency around 501C4 non-prisonance. There have also been some efforts specifically focused on foreign influence and increasing transparency. I am not aware of as much focused on influencers, however. I think it's much harder to regulate at this point.

There may be more recent legislation that I've missed, but at least as of the last time I checked, there has not been much, but because I think it is such a delicate area of the law and it's evolving so quickly. What is the most surprising or creative method that you've seen for hiding political spending? I would say some of the brazen examples have been kind of interesting for me, even when they were just traditional dark money, just how brazen they were. One case early on that I worked on at Open Secrets was about Carolina Rising, which was this 501C4 nonprofit that popped up shortly before a Senate election, a few months before it was created. It spent a little over $5 million. And then right after the election, it shut down.

That's all it ever did. other than spending, supporting one candidate, and opposing the other. And on election night, the person who ran the group actually had a few too many drinks and went on local news and said, 5.4 million, we did it and admitted to this on local news. And then eventually he became the head of the party in that state. Long story short, it went to the Federal Election Commission. They declined to even investigate, even with this very clear evidence that was, well documented on TV, which I found so fascinating. So I think that it's more that that surprises

me than the tactics themselves in many cases. What effect does dark money have on political candidates once they're elected? Like, does the spending stop as soon as they're elected, or can dark money funds continue to fund politicians once they're in office? Dark money does not at all stop when a candidate is elected. It continues throughout. And if anything, having a candidate elected and having them become an office holder gives the dark money. money group more content to be able to use in their advertisements, to be able to say that they are creating issue ads, saying, oh, this member of Congress is great on this issue or terrible on this issue, and gives them more leverage in Congress. So it can go both ways, either if a dark money group is focused on a specific issue, using the vote to be able to leverage against a case, say, oh, if you vote a certain way, we will or won't run ads against you and kind of using that as leverage or vice versa running ads trying to push them in one. way or the other. And so it can kind of be an interesting relationship throughout. Certainly not something that stops after an election cycle. However, disclosure is much more limited after elections are over.

And so it's much harder to track and requires going to online ad archives such as meta's ad archive and Google's ad archive and X's ad archive or through the Federal Communications Commission, which can be much harder to track than just through the Federal Election Commission. What sense do you have of like the mix of who's funding dark money just broadly? I mean, one of the issues is we really just don't know who is behind these groups. It could be a foreign oligarch. It could be the billionaire next door or it could be a major corporation. Some corporations, about half of the S&P 500 corporations do voluntarily disclose at least some information about their annual contributions to 501C4s and trade associations.

And so we do know some of that money going into 501C4s is coming from corporations. In some cases, we do see money coming from family foundations affiliated with major donors. In some cases, we have seen leaks that reveal the names of major donors. But it's hard to know there's so much that you just hit a brick wall. You just don't know who is actually behind it. And that's the nature of dark money. I know that you mentioned earlier that dark money funds PACs, but do PACs ever fund dark money? That is not something that I've seen before.

Typically, political action committees would not give money to. a dark money group since the political action committee is required to disclose its donors and has already gone through all of the scrutiny. So they would already have gone through all of that disclosure regime. It's not unheard of for a political action committee, especially a super PAC, to have in-kind donations in particular with a dark money group if they have a close relationship with them. For example, you may have a super PAC with an affiliated dark money group. One example that comes to mind is Tennesseans for a Better Tomorrow and Better Tomorrow for Tennessee, which were a Super PAC and a Dark Money Group that sound very familiar, shockingly.

One was the 501C4 nonprofit, one was the Super PAC. The Super PAC had to disclose its donors to the Federal Election Commission, had to disclose its spending. The Dart Money Group didn't have to disclose anything at all. Shockingly, the Super PAC was fully funded by the Dark Money Group. But you might also see in-kind contributions reported by the Super PAC going to the Dark Money Group if they share staff. That is something very common in particular

with party-aligned dark money groups and super PACs that we've seen. Both of the major parties in the Senate and the House, their leadership have dark money groups affiliated with them as well as Super PACs, One Nation and Majority Forward on both sides in the Senate, where you will see they are run out of the same office or have been at varying points and share staff.

And so you will see in-kind contributions, but not necessarily donations directly. They're not giving them money. typically. Say you're an influencer, a content creator, and you get offered one of these dark money deals, and maybe you're a little bit nervous about taking it, but you want to be transparent and you want to make sure that you're receiving money in sort of an ethical way. Is there a way to find out, like, where those dollars originated? It can be very difficult to get a full accounting of the money spent by a dark money group, and even harder to get a full picture

of who is funding a dark money group. You can get some information from their annual tax returns and from their voluntary disclosures online potentially, but by and large, you're never going to get that complete picture in most cases. Yeah, I guess that's why dark money is called dark money, because you don't know. You won't know. One influencer I was speaking to actually said that he was really scared. He didn't sign up for this program because he was scared of losing his security clearance. I guess with certain levels of security clearance, you have to be able to say that you've never received funding from a foreign adversary. And of course, if you take dark money funding, you don't actually know like if some foreign adversary has donated right to like a dark money group and then somehow you received like a portion of that funding that's one of the big issues with it is you don't know if it's even domestic money that is being channeled through these nonprofits some states have made initiatives and tried to tackle that issue of requiring disclosure of foreign dark money and donors but it's a very messy system and something that's very challenging and that by and large lawmakers are still figuring out and because it's evolving so quickly

that adds another layer to the puzzle. Where can average people that want to learn more about this dark money funding in the U.S. go? Like, where can people better learn about this system and familiarize themselves with some of these big dark money groups? If someone is trying to learn more about dark money or a group that they have seen and suspect might be a dark money group, I would recommend checking ProPublica in their 990 search. They have a great resource for looking at the annual tax returns of these groups. If you are wanting to roll back a bit and just get basic definitions, open secrets where I used to work has a wonderful resource called darkmoney.org where you can look and get a better understanding of dark money generally. Lots of great resources there as well. Anna, thank you so much for joining me today. You're literally one of the best reporters on dark money. And so I'm just so excited to be able to talk to you. Where can people continue to follow your work?

I write a newsletter called Influence Brief on Substack, so please subscribe. I also work with the Sunlight Research Center, which is a shared research desk for local news organizations providing investigative and data support. I also am an independent journalist and researcher, always looking for opportunities to collaborate. Thanks again for chatting. Oh, thank you. My pleasure. All right. That's it for the show.

Don't forget to subscribe to my tech and online culture newsletter, Usermag.com. That's Usermag.com, where I write about all of this and more. You can also support me on. Patreon. It's just Taylor Lorenz on Patreon for bonus episodes and extra content. If you like the show, give us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. I'll be back next week with a brand new episode of Power User. See you then.