Amazon quietly donated to nonprofit that opposed recent antitrust bills

Amazon quietly donated $400,000 to a conservative nonprofit last 12 months because the group pushed back on antitrust bills being considered in Congress, in line with documents reviewed by CNBC.

The Independent Women’s Forum received the six-figure contribution from the e-commerce giant in 2021, the identical 12 months the group wrote columns speaking out against bills that might strengthen antitrust enforcement.

The donation is tied for the second-highest contribution listed on the documents showing last 12 months’s top donors to the conservative nonprofit. Amazon disclosed through annual political engagement statements that the Independent Women’s Forum was among the many nonprofits to receive a minimum of $10,000 last 12 months and in 2020 from the tech giant. Those disclosures didn’t list an actual dollar amount for the contributions, nonetheless.

Carrie Lukas, the forum’s president, said in a letter last 12 months to House Oversight Committee chair Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., that the group “is proud to receive support from a wide range of foundations, individuals of all income levels, and from a number of corporations. The overwhelming majority of our donors — 89% — are small, individual donors (under $5,000).” The letter was responding to a request from Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., a member of the Oversight Committee, in search of information on the group’s funding.

Along with its position against antitrust laws, the group also reportedly helped craft a letter opposing schools forcing children to wear Covid-19 protective masks, and its affiliate is reportedly involved in efforts to attenuate political blowback to Republicans consequently of the Supreme Court’s decision overturning the constitutional right to abortion.

Last February, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., introduced a bill that proposed to extend the budget of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division and the Federal Trade Commission, each of which have looked into whether big technology firms compete fairly.

Days later, the Independent Women’s Forum published a column with the headline “Sen. Klobuchar’s Recent Bill: A Dangerous Signal For Big Tech.”

Within the article, a director on the group, Patrice Onwuka, name-checks Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon, suggests the style of laws could hurt consumers and raves concerning the tech giants. “Big Tech is tremendously helpful to consumers, small businesses, students, and voters,” Onwuka wrote.

In October 2021, Klobuchar and Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, introduced a second bill that might give antitrust agencies more ammunition to tackle powerful tech firms. The American Innovation and Selection Online Act would prohibit tech firms from self-preferencing, or favoring their very own services and products over competitors. Such laws could affect how Amazon advertises its own products on its site.

One other provision would prevent firms from offering certain advantages to businesses who purchase or use other services and products. That move takes aim at Success By Amazon, a service where Amazon ships and stores goods for merchants who sell on its platform in exchange for a fee. FBA products are also eligible for fast delivery, which suggests they’ll display the all-important Prime logo on their listing. Amazon launched the third-party marketplace in 2000, allowing everyone from small businesses that operate out of their garage to established brands to sell on its site. The marketplace has since grown to change into a cornerstone of Amazon’s retail business, accounting for greater than half of its online retail sales.

In December, Onwuka targeted that laws with an essay entitled, “Amazon Prime May Not Be Around To Save The Day Next Christmas.” She wrote, “antitrust efforts reminiscent of this bill, aren’t protecting consumers, but reducing their selections and driving up prices.”

Neither bill has yet received a full Senate vote.

The Independent Women’s Forum also was amongst 30 organizations that co-signed an October 2021 open letter to Senate lawmakers pushing back on antitrust laws. “We urge you to reject any proposal that politicizes antitrust law or gives unelected bureaucrats much more power to manage the economy,” the letter said.

In a press release to CNBC, Lukas, the group’s president, confirmed to CNBC that Amazon supports its Center for Economic Opportunity, the department that frequently takes on antitrust proposals through authored columns, amongst other things. Onwuka is the middle’s director.

“IWF is proud to have received support from a wide range of organizations and individuals that consider in our mission. Amazon supports our Center for Economic Opportunity, which promotes women’s economic opportunity, employee flexibility, and entrepreneurship,” Lukas said in a press release to CNBC.

“IWF’s message has been consistent for a long time in our support for limited government and free markets. Now we have highlighted our concerns about big tech censorship and publicly criticized what we see as censorship of conservative views. Nonetheless, we have now also warned that government solutions could backfire when it comes to viewpoint diversity and for consumers,” she added.

Amazon didn’t immediately return requests for comment.

CNBC discovered the Amazon donation on a 990 form the Independent Women’s Forum filed to the secretary of state’s office in South Carolina.

Experts who study nonprofit groups and their financial records explained the general public disclosure of donors on that form was atypical, and might have been a mistake by the South Carolina secretary of state’s office. Mark Hammond, South Carolina’s Republican secretary of state, is currently up for reelection.

“To me, it looks just like the disclosure of this nonprofit’s donors was inadvertent. It looks like state regulators in South Carolina didn’t redact the names of the donors on the Schedule B of this tax filing by the Independent Women’s Forum,” Michael Beckel, a research director at watchdog group Issue One, told CNBC in an email.

Yet, in line with Shannon Wiley, a spokeswoman for South Carolina’s secretary of state, the Independent Women’s Forum sent the governing body its 990 form with the complete, unredacted list of donors. South Carolina state law allows nonprofits themselves to remove the identity of their donors before filing it with the secretary of state. On this case, in line with Wiley, this organization selected to send them the filing with the names of their top donors from 2021.

“The one on the web site is the one which was filed by the organization. Our office files the 990 that’s submitted by the organization,” Wiley said in an email. “The organization didn’t redact Schedule B when it filed the 990 online,” she added. After CNBC reached out to their office for comment, the secretary of state’s office decided to remove the list of names revealing the identity of the donors, Wiley said.

Amazon’s donation to the group is tied for the second-largest listed contribution in 2021, in line with the document. The one other $400,000 donation listed on the shape got here from the inspiration of the billionaire Walton family, whose wealth comes from Walmart. The Charles Koch Foundation, a nonprofit founded by energy and manufacturing billionaire Charles Koch, is listed as giving $150,000.

The highest donation to the forum in 2021 was a $2.4 million check from the Diana Davis Spencer Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit chaired by philanthropist Diana Davis Spencer, which has donated thousands and thousands of dollars toward conservative causes for years, in line with the group’s own 990 disclosure reports. Overall, it raised over $6.7 million last 12 months, a rise of greater than $1 million from 2020, in line with its 990.

The forum’s board chair and heiress to the Vicks VapoRub fortune, Heather Higgins, boasted at a personal donor retreat that the organization is an element of the “Republican conservative arsenal” and conceded that it isn’t neutral politically, in line with reporting by the Center for Media and Democracy.

“Being branded as neutral, but actually having individuals who know, know that you simply’re actually conservative, puts us in a singular position,” Richardson reportedly said on the 2016 retreat.

The Washington Post reported that the Independent Women’s Forum helped craft a letter opposing schools forcing children to wear Covid-19 protective masks. The newspaper also reported that Independent Women’s Voice, the affiliated 501(c)(4), is attempting to help minimize blowback against Republicans from the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Amazon is just not the group’s only Big Tech supporter. In previous years, Facebook and Google have also been listed as organization sponsors for its annual galas, in line with the events programs. Google also has listed the Independent Women’s Forum as one among the skin groups that “receive probably the most substantial contributions from Google’s U.S. Government Affairs and Public Policy team,” even though it doesn’t show an amount.

Google and Facebook aren’t listed as sponsors of probably the most recent Independent Women’s Forum gala that took place earlier this month, in line with this system the group made public.

Sarcastically, Vivek Ramaswamy, a businessman and longtime critic of tech giants, received an award at that gala.

Ramaswamy said in a temporary interview he was unaware before talking to CNBC that the Independent Women’s Forum had funding from Amazon and Google. He has no plans to present his trophy back and declined to comment concerning the group specifically. He did concede, though, that donations like these are a part of an effort by tech giants to make use of their money to attempt to sway public discourse.

“The usage of capital as a weapon and using their market power as a weapon to tilt the scales of public discourse, I believe, has change into a routine,” Ramaswamy said.