A truck with the sign “Fire Gay” drives through Harvard Square. Harvard University President Claudine Gay’s testimony before Congress on December 10 caused a stir on campus. 2023.
Pat Greenhouse | Boston Globe | Getty Images
A far-right activist group that doxxes college students participating in pro-Palestinian protests revealed that it is funded by top Republican political donors and nonprofits backed by wealthy business leaders, according to a tax return reviewed by CNBC emerges.
The Accuracy in Media group disclosed in its federal tax return a list of donors who collectively gave nearly $1.9 million to the tax-exempt nonprofit between May 2022 and April of last year.
Donors listed on the tax return include billionaire Republican major donor Jeff Yass, who gave $1 million, according to Accuracy in Media.
Shipping magnate Richard Uihlein’s family foundation is also named in the tax return, saying the Ed Uihlein Family Foundation donated $10,000. The Milstein Family Foundation, run by real estate executive and Republican donor Adam Milstein, donated another $10,000, the group reported to the IRS.
According to its tax return, Accuracy in Media reported receiving $15,000 from the Coors brewing family’s charitable foundation. According to the foundation’s most recent tax filings, the Adolph Coors Foundation is led by former Molson Coors executive Peter H. Coors.
Yass, Uihlein, Milstein and Coors have regularly donated to Republican campaigns over the past decade.
But Yass stands out from the rest. The co-founder of options trading group Susquehanna International Group and his wife Janine are the biggest political donors in the 2024 election. According to the nonpartisan campaign finance database OpenSecrets, Yass and his wife have donated $70 million to dozens of Republican candidates and committees so far.
Tents and signs fill Harvard Yard next to the John Harvard statue at Harvard University’s pro-Palestinian camp in Cambridge, Massachusetts on May 5, 2024.
Joseph Prezioso | Afp | Getty Images
Accuracy in Media blamed its accountant when CNBC told the group that its 2022 federal tax return had been filed with a list of major donors and the contribution amounts included. This data is typically for the IRS only.
Accuracy in Media did not dispute the authenticity of the nonprofit’s tax return. The accuracy of 25 of the 26 listed donations was also not questioned.
But AIM President Adam Guillette told CNBC that Yass had been misidentified and that he had given nothing to the organization.
Yass’ name and business address appear on two separate pages of AIM’s 2022 tax return. The amount Yass donated, $1 million, is the largest contribution listed in the filing for that year.
“Jeff Yass is not and never has been an AIM donor. I think our accounting firm made a big, big mistake,” Guillette told CNBC.
Accounting firm JBS & Co. said the information in the tax return was provided by client Accuracy in Media. It also said the return contained a “wrong donor.” But it didn’t say who the donor was or who claimed it was false.
“We submitted a Form 990 authorized by our customer and identified an incorrect donor. We apologize on behalf of our client and those who were incorrectly identified as donors from non-donor organizations. We have no further comment,” Phil Headley, a certified public accountant with JBS, told CNBC in an email.
A spokesman for Yass did not respond to a query from CNBC about whether or not he made the donation. Milstein, Uihlein and representatives from the Adolph Coors Foundation did not respond to requests for comment.
CNBC was able to independently confirm the accuracy of the Uihlein and Coors Foundation donations listed by AIM by comparing the amounts with the foundations’ publicly available donation records. However, it was reported that the Yass entry came from an individual and not a foundation.
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Nonprofit groups are not required to publicly disclose the names of their donors, but they are required to report to the IRS the names of donors who have given $5,000 or more. Typically, tax-exempt groups omit the names of these major donors from public versions of their tax returns. But in this case, AIM did not do so.
Instead, the organization filed its 2022 tax return with the IRS earlier this year, with the names of major donors still attached. The forms were later published online in Candid’s nonprofit database and ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer.
While it’s rare for a tax-exempt group to reveal the names and contribution levels of its donors, this isn’t the first time a nonprofit has accidentally released a tax return that included this information.
The conservative Independent Women’s Forum included the names and amounts of its major donors in a 2021 tax return it filed with the South Carolina Secretary of State. This is what the IMF submission revealed Amazon had donated $400,000 to the group.
The secretary of state’s office defended its handling of the records, telling CNBC that the IWF failed to redact the names of its donors before filing the statement. Shortly after CNBC alerted the office that IWF donor data was online, the pages were removed.
AIM’s aggressive tactics
The only employee Accuracy in Media reports on its most recent tax return is Guillette. As a former vice president of Project Veritas, the far-right camera sting group, many of AIM’s tactics are similar to those of Project Veritas.
For months, Accuracy in Media has been running a doxxing campaign against students and faculty who the group believes are either too supportive of Palestinians or not supportive enough of Israel. Gaza has been under siege by Israeli forces since October 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel.
Just days after the attack, Accuracy in Media placed a mobile billboard at Harvard University with names and photos of college students who were said to be part of groups that had signed a letter blaming Israel for the Hamas attack made. Above the students’ names and photos was written “Harvard’s Leading Antisemites.”
A student demonstrator stands in front of the statue of John Harvard, Harvard College’s first major benefactor, draped in the Palestinian flag, at a camp of students protesting the war in Gaza at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Thursday, April 25, 2024.
Ben Curtis | AP
AIM’s poster campaign didn’t stop at Harvard. The group says on its website that it has conducted similar billboard campaigns featuring names and photos of college students on trucks at the City University of New York, Berkeley Law School, the University of Southern California, Columbia University and Stanford, among others .
The group has also launched websites aimed at students and universities.
Last fall, Accuracy in Media drove trucks to the homes of three university presidents: Claudine Gay of Harvard, Liz Magill of the University of Pennsylvania and Sally Kornbluth of MIT. The trucks were covered with photos of the women and accusations of anti-Semitism.
Gay and Magill later resigned after their testimony at a congressional hearing about anti-Semitism on college campuses sparked widespread criticism. Both administrators defended their responses to the protests on campus.
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2024-05-13 19:03:13
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