Billionaire Ronald Lauder has donated $1 million to the Republican State Leadership Committee, a corporation working to elect at the least two state-level candidates who’re disputing the outcomes of the 2020 presidential election.
Lauder’s $1 million donation, made on Sept. 12, is listed on the group’s third-quarter report recently filed to the IRS. He provided a piece of the $17 million the group raised from July through September.
Lauder is the heir to the Estee Lauder fortune and has a net price of $4.5 billion, in line with Forbes.
A spokesman for Lauder declined to comment. A representative for the Republican State Leadership Committee didn’t return a request for comment.
Lauder is the newest of over two dozen wealthy business leaders and firms themselves which have contributed to candidates who’ve solid doubts on the outcomes of the 2020 election — or outside organizations boosting them. Lauder’s donation to the Republican State Leadership Committee, which has gone unreported, is one in all the highest individual contributions to the group throughout the third quarter, in line with the filing.
An excellent larger donation got here from the Concord Fund, a bunch previously often called the Judicial Crisis Network that has ties to former President Donald Trump’s former judicial advisor Leonard Leo. The Concord Fund, which previously spent tens of millions of dollars on ads backing Trump’s judicial nominees, gave $1.5 million to the Republican State Leadership Committee in September.
The Republican State Leadership Committee is taken into account a tax exempt politically energetic group under section 527 of the Internal Revenue Code. These organizations can raise and spend an infinite sum of money, but they have to disclose their funds to the IRS.
State-level midterm elections across the country are projected to boost over $7 billion because the parties jockey for control of legislatures, governor’s offices and secretary of state posts, in line with OpenSecrets. The Democratic Association of Secretaries of State, a 527 group backing Democrats running for secretary of state, saw a $500,000 contribution earlier this 12 months from an excellent PAC financed largely by billionaire George Soros.
The Republican State Leadership Committee is supporting dozens of candidates running to turn into secretaries of state, lieutenant governors, state legislators and judges on state courts. Multiple Republican candidates running for secretary of state and lieutenant governor in the overall election have echoed Trump in claiming that the 2020 election was stolen or rigged.
If those secretary of state candidates win, they’d have a critical role in each administering the election and counting ballots in 2024 — when Trump could again lead the GOP presidential ticket.
The Republican State Leadership Committee has ties to state legislative leaders who either questioned the election results, backed efforts to stop the counting of Electoral College votes or downplayed the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. capitol.
On this 12 months’s state legislative races, the Republican State Leadership Committee has bolstered some candidates who raised doubts in regards to the 2020 election results.
The Republican State Leadership Committee has supported Wisconsin state Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu through digital ads starting in August, in line with its Facebook ad archive. LeMahieu, who fended off a primary challenge and is on the ballot in November, has pushed election conspiracies on the campaign trail.
“We may never know the complete impact of the illegal use of unmanned ballot drop boxes, nursing home abuses, or ‘Zuckerbucks’ had on the 2020 election, but we will ensure those violations never occur again in Wisconsin,” he told a local Wisconsin news outlet.
LeMahieu was one in all three state Senate Republican leaders who last 12 months authorized the Senate Elections Committee to review an election audit that they said “paint[s] a grim picture of the Wisconsin Election Commission and their careless administration of election law in Wisconsin.”
Biden won Wisconsin by less than a percentage point in 2020.
Earlier this 12 months, LeMahieu said, “By a raw vote count, yes, Biden did get more votes within the state of Wisconsin but we do not know — there was obviously numerous concerns with how those votes were solid.”
The Republican State Leadership Committee also began running a digital ad in October in support of Pennsylvania state Rep. Lori Mizgorski, who’s running to turn into a state senator, the group’s Facebook ad archive shows. Mizgorski was one in all the state GOP officials who called for an election audit within the Keystone State after President Joe Biden defeated Trump there within the 2020 election by a margin large enough to avoid an automatic recount.
Republican state lawmakers allied with Trump launched an audit last 12 months. While the GOP-led effort just isn’t a recount and can’t change results, it goals to look at the state’s voting procedures, and will in the method solid doubts on whether the 2020 election was fair.
“This just isn’t about who won or lost but about restoring faith in the inspiration of our government. All of us need to know our votes were fairly counted on this election and we wish to make sure they shall be fairly counted in all future elections,” Mizgorski said in a press release when she sided with state party leaders in backing an election audit.
The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania earlier this 12 months blocked a third-party company from inspecting voting machines supplied by Dominion Voting Systems — a standard goal for conspiracy theories in regards to the election — as a part of the audit.
Trump, who could run for president in 2024, still claims that the election was rigged against him despite the fact that officials from each side of the aisle have said there was no widespread voter fraud. Republicans running for state and federal office have echoed lots of his false claims.
Though she supported an audit, Mizgorski has not explicitly denied the election results. Lawsuits from the Trump campaign, and state-mandated audits from each Pennsylvania county, didn’t uncover evidence of problems that will have swayed the election result.
As well as, the Republican State Leadership Committee’s own members have backed false claims in regards to the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 attack on Capitol Hill.
Karen Fann, the Arizona Senate president, listed on Republican State Leadership Committeee’s website as a legislative campaign committee member, called for an audit of Dominion Voting Systems following the election. Fann just isn’t in search of reelection.
Mike Shirkey, the Michigan state Senate majority leader, can also be listed as a member of the group’s legislative campaign committee. He called the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol a “hoax” and “prearranged,” in line with a recording obtained by the Detroit News. The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack also subpoenaed Shirkey.
He just isn’t up for reelection this 12 months because of term limits.
Bryan Cutler, the Pennsylvania state House speaker, is on the group’s state legislative committee. He was amongst a bunch of state lawmakers that co-signed a letter to Pennsylvania’s congressional delegation, urging them “to object, and vote to sustain such objection, to the Electoral College votes received from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania throughout the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021.”