A dark money nonprofit associated with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer topped $100 million in secretive donations for the first time as the New York politician publicly crusaded against dark money’s influence in Washington, tax documents show.
Majority Forward, a nonprofit that obscures its funders and is linked to the Schumer-aligned Senate Majority PAC, pulled in $104.7 million between July 1, 2020, and June 30, 2021, according to its most recent tax forms. The latest cash haul was a $13 million increase over its previous calendar year.
The record year came as Schumer and other Democrats railed against dark money even as they continued to outpace Republicans in its use. Majority Forward, in turn, used its shadowy war chest to steer substantial amounts into electoral activity and bankroll voter engagement efforts.
According to the tax forms, Majority Forward doled out $125 million to other liberal groups during the most recent calendar year – an increase of more than $100 million from what it had passed to different groups the year before, the tax forms show.
The Senate Majority PAC, which works to elect and keep Democrats in Congress’s upper chamber, was the biggest beneficiary, receiving $47.6 million from the group between July 2020 and late June 2021.
Majority Forward, meanwhile, maintains close ties to the Senate Majority PAC. J.B Poersch, a long-time Schumer ally, is president of both Majority Forward and the PAC. Both groups also share office space and personnel.
Majority Forward was the Senate Majority PAC’s largest donor throughout the 2020 election cycle, meaning Democratic Senate candidates benefited from considerable amounts of dark money during the election.
Majority Forward has sent nearly $15 million in donations to the PAC and added hundreds of thousands more for salaries, insurance and IT security for the 2022 midterm election cycle, Federal Election Commission records show.
The group also directed $20.3 million to Duty and Honor, another liberal nonprofit affiliated with the Senate Majority PAC. Additionally, tens of millions went to outside groups like America Votes ($32 million) and the Lincoln Project ($1.35 million), according to the records.
Majority Forward did not respond to a Fox News Digital inquiry into their fundraising and record amounts of dark money.
As Majority Forward quietly pulled in the record amounts, Schumer pushed legislation against dark money and demanded that right-leaning judicial groups identify their donors, even as Democrats benefit from such groups.
As part of the legislation push, Schumer has championed the For the People Act, which contains provisions to make political nonprofits disclose donors who give more than $10,000. The bill also calls for nonprofits to file disclosure reports to the Federal Election Commission when they push more than $10,000 into election-related activities.
Schumer, outspoken dark money critic Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and other Democratic politicians also called on the Judicial Crisis Network, a right-leaning organization, to release a list of donors who provided the group with more than $10,000.
The senators criticized the group for concealing “the identity of its donors” who “have contributed tens of millions of dollars used to fund political advertising campaigns in support of nominees like Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch.”
The politicians made the demand as they reaped rewards from their own judicial dark money groups, including Demand Justice and the Alliance for Justice. Both groups have undertaken initiatives to influence President Joe Biden on judicial nominations, including recently-confirmed Supreme Court Justice Kentanji Brown Jackson.
The Senate Majority Leader has since trekked on with public outcries against dark money.
“During the State of the Union, President Biden called for the Senate to pass the DISCLOSE Act, so Americans can know who is funding our elections,” Schumer tweeted in March.
“And he’s absolutely right. I’m working for the Senate to pass the DISCLOSE Act to fight the scourge of dark money in politics,” he wrote.
And throughout it all, Democrats have benefited from dark money far more than Republicans.
The New York Times reported that 15 of the most active Democratic dark money nonprofits spent $1.5 billion in 2020. By comparison, 15 of the most active Republican nonprofits spent around $900 million during this time.
One liberal dark money network run by the Washington, D.C.-based Arabella Advisors consulting firm single-handedly equaled the total amount spent by the top 15 Republican nonprofits that year.
The Arabella-manged nonprofits raised a staggering $1.6 billion in anonymous cash and pushed nearly $900 million in contributions and grants to liberal groups in 2020, Fox News Digital previously reported.
Reporting from Fox News.
