Hawley hearing shines rare light on dark money sources funding unrest in America

Billions in federal funds for vulnerable citizens stolen in Minnesota and elsewhere have actually gone on to pay for anti-government protests and riots here, Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley announced at a Senate hearing this week.

Some $9 billion has been stolen from Medicaid in Minnesota alone, Hawley noted.

“Nine billion vanishing into luxury cars, overseas vacations, billions going to fund foreign adversaries, billions shipped out of the country,” Hawley said in his opening remarks while chairing the subcommittee hearing Tuesday on “Fraud & Foreign Influence in State and Federal Programs.”

“In the last two years alone, get this now: nearly $700 million in cold, hard cash was stuffed into suitcases and flown out of Minneapolis; $700 million. That is 14,000 lbs. of $100 bills in suitcases, flown out of our country overseas.”

Hawley pointed to testimony “that American taxpayers nationwide are losing north of a trillion dollars a year in government programs. That’s the Pentagon’s entire budget – a trillion dollars a year. 

“This isn’t isolated crooks gaming the system. I wish it were. It’s transnational criminal syndicates siphoning money out of America; 70% of that loot flows overseas, funding cartels, terrorists, adversaries like North Korea, China, Iran, Russia. 

“Money meant for American grandparents, working families, the elderly, the sick, is instead funding organized crime, arming our enemies, and subsidizing the trafficking of children.”

Anti-ICE protests organic?

To add injury to insult, Hawley said much of that and other foreign money has helped fund highly coordinated and planned anti-ICE protests and riots.

“These were not spontaneous protests in many cases; it’s manufactured chaos,” he told the hearing. “And who is behind it? Dark money networks and foreign actors, some of whom have ties to the Chinese Communist Party.”

Hawley expounded on the scandal in an exclusive interview with The Heartlander on Wednesday.

“What we know is that millions and millions of dollars have flowed into the United States from overseas through dark money groups to fund so-called protests,” he told us. “What we saw in L.A., where cars were being burned on the freeway, what we saw on campuses where pro-Hamas groups were assaulting students, Jewish students and others, taking over buildings, smashing things, what we saw in Minneapolis with these pop-up protests – these weren’t organic, not most of them. 

“What we’ve learned is, they’re funded. They’re funded and they’re organized. And a good bit of that money, it turns out, is coming from overseas, including from people who are associated with and have ties to the Chinese Communist Party. It’s unbelievable. It’s a dark money web. 

“This is why dark money, by the way, is so bad – foreign dark money flowing through all of these left-wing front groups, essentially, so that you can’t ever trace it. But fortunately, we’ve got researchers who have traced it. 

“I held a hearing [Tuesday] where we were able to put $60 million on the board in terms of where we know it was coming from: overseas, going to protests here in the United States, left-wing protests. This needs to stop. We need to secure the integrity of our political system against these foreign left-wing actors.”

So who’s funding these protests?

Indeed, at the hearing Hawley elicited testimony from Seamus Bruner, associate director of research at the Government Accountability Institute – who said the nonprofit research organization found that at least 14 far-left nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are behind the $60 million funding unrest in Minnesota.

“Groups like the ACLU provide the legal defense as well as facilitate the trainings for some of the tactics” of the agitators, Bruner told Hawley – who asked exactly where the money is flowing from.

“A group named Democracy Forward,” Bruner answered. “Take Action Minnesota has gotten over $10 million from these large NGO networks, including the Neville Roy Singham Network; Indivisible; National Lawyers Guild; CTUL [Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en Lucha]; the Council on American Islamic Relations-Minnesota (CAIR); Minnesota 350; Voices for Racial Justice, on and on – like I said, over $60 million, just according to the latest 990 disclosures.”

Hawley told the hearing this scandal involves “the integrity of our public funds and the integrity of our political system. …

“As early as the Constitutional Convention, Alexander Hamilton warned that foreign powers would try to exploit America’s freedoms to sow divisions inside our country. Threats from foreign influence, he said, should never be dismissed as idle or as hypothetical. 

“And today we are confronting a raft of allegations and reports that foreign influence and foreign money is making its way into the American political system and is financing activities that [are] not only destructive, detrimental and divisive, but also potentially illegal. …

How must ordinary folks feel?

“You know, I’ve often thought, watching and reading reports here in recent months, that if you are a hardworking American taxpayer – if you’re somebody who wakes up every morning, goes to your job, plays by the rules, pays your taxes – you must feel like such an idiot. 

“I mean, you must feel so taken advantage of. Because here we have reports, credible reports, and we’re going to hear more about it today with some substantiation of billions of dollars of taxpayer money, your money, your tax funds, being taken and spent on illicit activities, on foreign overseas activities, on other illegal and criminal activities.  

“It’s absolutely outrageous, and it’s time that we got accountability for how America’s hard-earned tax dollars are being spent – and how the integrity of our political system is being protected. …

“These activities are funded and coordinated by a dense network of nonprofits and foreign-linked actors who use layer upon layer of pass-through entities to hide the money trail – a classic dark money money-laundering to take foreign money and foreign influence and to dump it into our political system. 

“It’s sort of like Riot Incorporated – pre-planned tactics designed not to protest, but to destabilize, to erode faith in our institutions and to force political change through manufactured crises. 

“Listen, at the end of the day, this hearing is about a simple question: Is our government equipped to safeguard taxpayer dollars, protect the rule of law and defend our institutions for exploitation? Because right now, it sure doesn’t look like it. And it’s time we got some answers for the American people.”