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Joe Biden Sets ‘Dark Money’ Record, Raises $145 Million From Outside Groups

   DailyWire.com
TOPSHOT - US President Joe Biden delivers his Inauguration speech after being sworn in as the 46th US President on January 20, 2021, at the US Capitol in Washington, DC.
PATRICK SEMANSKY/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

Despite Democrats’ objections to “dark money” — money raised from outside groups that collect it from anonymous donors so that it cannot be traced back — President Joe Biden raised a record amount of “dark money” during the 2020 presidential campaign, according to a Tuesday report from Bloomberg.

“Biden raked in about $145 million in donations from anonymous donors to outside groups backing him, far outstripping the $28.4 million spent on behalf of his rival, former President Donald Trump,” Fox News added. “It also tops the previous record of $113 million in dark money donations spent on behalf of Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney in 2012.”

“Priorities USA Action Fund, one of the most prominent Democratic super PACs supporting Biden, used $26 million in funds originally donated to its nonprofit arm, called Priorities USA, to back the then-candidate, according to Bloomberg. The donors of that money do not need to be disclosed,” the outlet added.

Democrats set fundraising records across the board. According to Fox, Biden, the Democratic presidential candidate, raised an astounding $1.5 billion to bankroll his largely non-traditional presidential run, which saw him out of the spotlight for days at a time. And Democrats raised a whopping $326 million in dark money, nearly twice what Republicans hauled in.

Ironically, Biden campaigned on ending dark money in federal campaigns. His 2020 campaign website lists dark money as a “corrupting influence in politics” and he claims to support publicly financed campaigns, effectively ending the current fundraising model.

“Biden strongly believes that we could improve our politics overnight if we flushed big money from the system and had public financing of our elections,” his campaign’s “government reform” pledge reads. “Democracy works best when a big bank account or a large donor list are not prerequisites for office, and elected representatives come from all backgrounds, regardless of resources. But for too long, special interests and corporations have skewed the policy process in their favor with political contributions.”

Democrats, likewise, have been adamant about outlawing dark money, and back in 2019, the House passed legislation effectively banning the practice by “requiring Super PACs, 501(c)4 nonprofit groups and other organizations spending money in elections to disclose donors who contribute more than $10,000. It would also require digital platforms to maintain a public database of political ad buy requests of more than $500,” according to NBC News.

Fortunately for Biden, that law never got further than the House, because both Senate Republicans and then-President Donald Trump opposed the measure. No longer needing the largesse, Biden says he may, in fact, sign a similar bill, if Democrats can get it past opposition in the Senate — and if Democrats can convince the dark money groups they raise funds from that the idea makes sense.

As it turns out, those groups are not interested in immediately ending the practice of raising large sums of anonymous money.

“We aren’t going to unilaterally disarm against Donald Trump and right-wing conservatives, but look forward to the day when unlimited money and super PACs are a thing of the past, even if it means putting our own PAC out of business,” Priorities USA’s chairman told NBC.

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