Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
I am please to have my nextguest coming on the show right now.
His name is Scott Walter. Heis the president of Capital Research Center and
a very well known expert on moneyand politics. He's got a book out
called Arabella, The Dark Money Networkof Leftist Billionaires Secretly Transforming America. Scott,
welcome to the show. Great tobe with you. I actually talked
(00:20):
to my colleague Ross Kaminski and hesaid, oh, I talked to Scott.
That book is mind blowing, andhe said it was really infuriating to
have the conversation we're about to have. So let's infuriate my listeners too.
How about that, Scott, soundsgood to me. So what is Arabella.
Let's start at the beginning. Thebest word to understand it is it's
(00:42):
a network. And the twenty secondversion is think of a pyramid. At
the top of the pyramid, youhave Arabella Advisors, which is a for
profit PR consulting firm Beltway Bandit theycall him in DC. It creates and
operates everything below low that in thepyramid. Now, in the middle of
(01:03):
the pyramid, you have half adozen non profits of different legal types,
and that's where the money comes.In if you're Zuckerberg, Sorrows whatnot,
you write checks to those nonprofits andthen at the base of the pyramid you
have what you and your listeners see, and that's hundreds and hundreds of little
(01:25):
fake groups. You know, Floridiansfor a Fair Shake, Keep Iowa Healthy,
Opportunity Wisconsin. They want you tothink this is your neighbors upset about
something, when in fact, it'sjust some dufics in a DC office who's
been given a new accounting code andcreated a website and maybe bought some Facebook
(01:45):
apps. So basically, what you'resaying is that the alleged grassroots operations are
AstroTurf exactly. Think of this asan industrial AstroTurf factory. Well, let
me ask this question. So,Arabella Advisors is at the top. Where
does their money come from? Becausethe nonprofits can't funnel the money up to
(02:07):
them, can they or are theypaying them for services? Kind of walk
me through where the money comes infor them and then goes down or out.
Sure the you guessed it, andthat is the nonprofits can write checks
to them as a vendor. Please, I mean this is the legal fiction
(02:30):
which Arabella hilariously tries to pretend thatis the reality. Oh, our clients
just hire us, they're the bosses. And of course the answer is how
many businesses create their own clients rightright? And do they have their actual
fingerprints? I mean, are theythe registered agent on these other five O
(02:52):
three c's or five O four c's. How do you know that connection is
there? Well, the nonprofits arerequired that the middle level nonprofits are required
to file IRS disclosures each year.And so they say, oh, well,
we spent you know, twenty milliondollars at Arabella Advisors for consulting services.
(03:15):
But is Arabella actively involved in thecreation of those middle tiers or are
they just oh, yes, okay, that's that's what I was asking now,
Yeah, yeah, No, theycreate them and then legally speaking,
those nonprofits hire Arabella. That kindof sounds like a grift, Like right
(03:36):
out of this did the shoot youknow what I mean? Like, Oh,
we're going to create a nonprofit tobring in money tax free and they're
going to pay ourselves out of thatmoney. That does seem like a bit
of a grift. Plenty of peoplewould raise eyebrows. They're not the they
weren't the first or the only placeto do this, and it isn't simply
(03:57):
crazy because you know, are youcan argue that it helps the nonprofit to
have this very professional PR firm,you know, doing work for it.
But it is certainly out of theordinary. And you know, my biggest
complaint would be the bad stuff thatthey are actually doing right. They're supporting
all kinds of bad left wing thingsright, using this elaborate organization. Who
(04:21):
is the they? Who are thepeople, the big money people behind all
behind Arabella and therefore behind everything else. Well, the short answer to almost
any Arabella question is everyone or everythingright. So it's pretty much every lefty
donor you've ever heard of. Itis Soros. It's also Zuckerberg, Bill
(04:45):
Gates, Warren Buffett, Pierre ohmityarthe Abay billionaire and one of the ones
that people need to know much better, though they probably have never heard of
Hans yurg Vis. He's a Swissbillionaires, a foreign national US citizen,
therefore by law and not supposed tobe messing in our politics at all.
(05:06):
But he has given Arabella a quarterbillion dollars holy almost from the very beginning.
Now, how does okay? Soobviously, I mean this sounds like
the mob. Right, there's somany levels between the top and the bottom.
But when you're talking about political expenditures, in theory, this should be
so tightly regulated that there's no waya Swiss billionaire can drop two hundred and
(05:30):
fifty million into a company in theUnited States that then trickles that money down,
or is the money trickling down?I mean, I'm I'm a little
bit confused as to how the moneytravels here, because if you're giving money
to a five on one C threeor five to one C four and then
they're giving it to someone else,there are rules that have to be followed.
Or there are so many levels betweenthe Swiss billionaire and that political donation
(05:56):
that there's plausible deniability. Well thereis, you know, semi plausible deniability.
And by the way, years agothis was so outrageous. He just
did the completely illegal thing of writingchecks to you know, political committees like
friends of Dick Durbin or out closeto you Inflee Governor Insley when he was
(06:17):
in Congress got money from him.One of the you do all congressmen got
money from him. But luckily hewasn't lucky for him. Nobody discovered this
until the statute of limitations was over. Now the way it works is he
gives to a C four at Arabellaand then the C four gives money to
a superpack, which he's not allowedto do. Gotcha. They claim,
(06:40):
Oh, it wasn't his money,it was different money. But as money
is fungible, that doesn't have thatdoesn't really matter because money's fungible and it's
you know, it's it's doesn't matterif it was directly his check or not.
If you've gotten huge donations from foreigndonors, that's that's a huge issue.
How much are they influencing our currentpolitical pros? Where have they had
the most success? Wealth Buffet's moneyis mainly used for abortion advocacy, and
(07:09):
they've been one of the biggest doatyou know, they're activists or advisty groups
in the abortion space. One example. Another would be you remember the Title
nine regulation that came down this month. That's from the Department of Education saying
you have to have women or sorrymen and women's sports. Well, that
was an Arabella operation. They've donedozens of regulations like that in this administration.
(07:32):
They were plotting it all the wayback, starting in twenty nineteen.
Another example I would use is theyactually put twenty five million on top of
Zuckerberg's four hundred and twenty million inthe Zuckbucks operation that happened in twenty twenty.
And sadly, the group that gotmost of that money, the charity
that got most of that money,is still operating and collaborating with Arabella.
(07:57):
Those are a few of the ofthe best examples I would give. So
I'm guessing there's nothing illegal about anyof this in scenery, you can manage
all of this legally. Now,there's a serious lawsuit by a former employee
who claims that not only did theyshe's a black woman, and not only
she claims did they illegally discriminate againsther, but they also retaliated against her
(08:22):
when she complained that they were notcomplying with all the rules that you have
to comply with if this is tobe kosher. So perhaps who's going to
hold them accountable? Scott? Andthat's the frustrating thing is like, we
can talk about this, You've obviouslydone a ton of research and your book
has all of this stuff laid out, But who's going to stop them?
(08:43):
We have a weaponized DJ that's nevergoing to go after the people that are
driving policy, or are they drivingpolicy in such a way that is creating
an issue for democratic leadership because they'reobviously not controlling it. The democratic leadership
isn't controlling it, you know,I see conflict there. Well, you're
right, it's you know, accountabilityis in short supply these days. I
(09:07):
will say, just this morning,there was a hearing in the House Administration
Committee, which covers election work thatdealt with foreign money in politics as well
as non citizen voting, and misterVS and Arabella showed up there. I've
testified to Congress half a dozen timesabout Arabella and related problems in the last
(09:28):
couple of years. Now. Theunfortunate thing is that, you know,
the committees ought to be having misterVS and the heads of his organizations and
the heads of Arabella come testify andget a good elise staphonic treatment, but
that hasn't happened yet. Is thereany chance that's going to happen in the
near future, Scott, I mean, we're talking about a level of manipulation.
(09:50):
I'm guessing that some sort of Arabellaoperation is what's funding the pro Palestinian
protests on campuses. Right now.I mean, there have been some stories
about these people getting paid. Arethey part of that operation that? Are
you aware of that? So far, there's not much evidence that Arabella's network
has been mixed up in those Thereis, however, another dark money left
(10:13):
wing network. It's also been aroundfor a long time. You've probably heard
of them, the Tides Foundations,Oh yeah, and their various network.
There is evidence that they've given moneyto some of the entities mixed up in
the protests this. You know,I realize that money is always going to
be a part of politics, andI guess maybe my frustration is is that
(10:35):
the left has figured out how touse it better than my team has.
I mean, you know, it'slike it's frustrating that they can have so
much of an impact while remaining orappearing to remain at a distance. And
that is, how do they getaround campaign finance reform because of the reason
(10:56):
that you gave earlier. They're saying, oh, yes, wist National gave
this thing money, but we gavedifferent money to a political party. Well,
you know, it's great for youin Colorado to be asking that,
because, of course Colorado pioneered alot of the left's billionaire politics right.
The four billionaires that took your statefrom Republican to Democrat around two thousand and
(11:18):
four to two thousand and eight area classic example of what billionaires can do
with good left wing infrastructure. Butthe you know it's there, just isn't
any substitute for fighting back. Butthe consolation you should have is most people
actually agree mostly with you. Theythe left has to spend all this money
(11:41):
and build this huge infrastructure in orderto hold it bay the opinions of most
Americans. I hope that that's it, Scott Walter. The book Arabella the
Dark excuse me, the dark moneynetwork of leftist billionaire are secretly transforming America.
I put a link on my blogtoday if you want to buy.
It's not very long. This isan easy read, Scott, for something
(12:03):
that is dealing with such a densetopic, you did a really good job
making this accessible. Well. Thanksso much well, Scott Walter, thank
you so much for your time.Keep doing what you're doing, and the
next time you want to write moreabout this, let me know. Will do
I am please to have my nextguest coming on the show right now.
His name is Scott Walter. Heis the president of Capital Research Center and
a very well known expert on moneyand politics. He's got a book out
called Arabella, The Dark Money Networkof Leftist Billionaires Secretly Transforming America. Scott,
welcome to the show. Great tobe with you. I actually talked
(00:20):
to my colleague Ross Kaminski and hesaid, oh, I talked to Scott.
That book is mind blowing, andhe said it was really infuriating to
have the conversation we're about to have. So let's infuriate my listeners too.
How about that, Scott, soundsgood to me. So what is Arabella.
Let's start at the beginning. Thebest word to understand it is it's
(00:42):
a network. And the twenty secondversion is think of a pyramid. At
the top of the pyramid, youhave Arabella Advisors, which is a for
profit PR consulting firm Beltway Bandit theycall him in DC. It creates and
operates everything below low that in thepyramid. Now, in the middle of
(01:03):
the pyramid, you have half adozen non profits of different legal types,
and that's where the money comes.In if you're Zuckerberg, Sorrows whatnot,
you write checks to those nonprofits andthen at the base of the pyramid you
have what you and your listeners see, and that's hundreds and hundreds of little
(01:25):
fake groups. You know, Floridiansfor a Fair Shake, Keep Iowa Healthy,
Opportunity Wisconsin. They want you tothink this is your neighbors upset about
something, when in fact, it'sjust some dufics in a DC office who's
been given a new accounting code andcreated a website and maybe bought some Facebook
(01:45):
apps. So basically, what you'resaying is that the alleged grassroots operations are
AstroTurf exactly. Think of this asan industrial AstroTurf factory. Well, let
me ask this question. So,Arabella Advisors is at the top. Where
does their money come from? Becausethe nonprofits can't funnel the money up to
(02:07):
them, can they or are theypaying them for services? Kind of walk
me through where the money comes infor them and then goes down or out.
Sure the you guessed it, andthat is the nonprofits can write checks
to them as a vendor. Please, I mean this is the legal fiction
(02:30):
which Arabella hilariously tries to pretend thatis the reality. Oh, our clients
just hire us, they're the bosses. And of course the answer is how
many businesses create their own clients rightright? And do they have their actual
fingerprints? I mean, are theythe registered agent on these other five O
(02:52):
three c's or five O four c's. How do you know that connection is
there? Well, the nonprofits arerequired that the middle level nonprofits are required
to file IRS disclosures each year.And so they say, oh, well,
we spent you know, twenty milliondollars at Arabella Advisors for consulting services.
(03:15):
But is Arabella actively involved in thecreation of those middle tiers or are
they just oh, yes, okay, that's that's what I was asking now,
Yeah, yeah, No, theycreate them and then legally speaking,
those nonprofits hire Arabella. That kindof sounds like a grift, Like right
(03:36):
out of this did the shoot youknow what I mean? Like, Oh,
we're going to create a nonprofit tobring in money tax free and they're
going to pay ourselves out of thatmoney. That does seem like a bit
of a grift. Plenty of peoplewould raise eyebrows. They're not the they
weren't the first or the only placeto do this, and it isn't simply
(03:57):
crazy because you know, are youcan argue that it helps the nonprofit to
have this very professional PR firm,you know, doing work for it.
But it is certainly out of theordinary. And you know, my biggest
complaint would be the bad stuff thatthey are actually doing right. They're supporting
all kinds of bad left wing thingsright, using this elaborate organization. Who
(04:21):
is the they? Who are thepeople, the big money people behind all
behind Arabella and therefore behind everything else. Well, the short answer to almost
any Arabella question is everyone or everythingright. So it's pretty much every lefty
donor you've ever heard of. Itis Soros. It's also Zuckerberg, Bill
(04:45):
Gates, Warren Buffett, Pierre ohmityarthe Abay billionaire and one of the ones
that people need to know much better, though they probably have never heard of
Hans yurg Vis. He's a Swissbillionaires, a foreign national US citizen,
therefore by law and not supposed tobe messing in our politics at all.
(05:06):
But he has given Arabella a quarterbillion dollars holy almost from the very beginning.
Now, how does okay? Soobviously, I mean this sounds like
the mob. Right, there's somany levels between the top and the bottom.
But when you're talking about political expenditures, in theory, this should be
so tightly regulated that there's no waya Swiss billionaire can drop two hundred and
(05:30):
fifty million into a company in theUnited States that then trickles that money down,
or is the money trickling down?I mean, I'm I'm a little
bit confused as to how the moneytravels here, because if you're giving money
to a five on one C threeor five to one C four and then
they're giving it to someone else,there are rules that have to be followed.
Or there are so many levels betweenthe Swiss billionaire and that political donation
(05:56):
that there's plausible deniability. Well thereis, you know, semi plausible deniability.
And by the way, years agothis was so outrageous. He just
did the completely illegal thing of writingchecks to you know, political committees like
friends of Dick Durbin or out closeto you Inflee Governor Insley when he was
(06:17):
in Congress got money from him.One of the you do all congressmen got
money from him. But luckily hewasn't lucky for him. Nobody discovered this
until the statute of limitations was over. Now the way it works is he
gives to a C four at Arabellaand then the C four gives money to
a superpack, which he's not allowedto do. Gotcha. They claim,
(06:40):
Oh, it wasn't his money,it was different money. But as money
is fungible, that doesn't have thatdoesn't really matter because money's fungible and it's
you know, it's it's doesn't matterif it was directly his check or not.
If you've gotten huge donations from foreigndonors, that's that's a huge issue.
How much are they influencing our currentpolitical pros? Where have they had
the most success? Wealth Buffet's moneyis mainly used for abortion advocacy, and
(07:09):
they've been one of the biggest doatyou know, they're activists or advisty groups
in the abortion space. One example. Another would be you remember the Title
nine regulation that came down this month. That's from the Department of Education saying
you have to have women or sorrymen and women's sports. Well, that
was an Arabella operation. They've donedozens of regulations like that in this administration.
(07:32):
They were plotting it all the wayback, starting in twenty nineteen.
Another example I would use is theyactually put twenty five million on top of
Zuckerberg's four hundred and twenty million inthe Zuckbucks operation that happened in twenty twenty.
And sadly, the group that gotmost of that money, the charity
that got most of that money,is still operating and collaborating with Arabella.
(07:57):
Those are a few of the ofthe best examples I would give. So
I'm guessing there's nothing illegal about anyof this in scenery, you can manage
all of this legally. Now,there's a serious lawsuit by a former employee
who claims that not only did theyshe's a black woman, and not only
she claims did they illegally discriminate againsther, but they also retaliated against her
(08:22):
when she complained that they were notcomplying with all the rules that you have
to comply with if this is tobe kosher. So perhaps who's going to
hold them accountable? Scott? Andthat's the frustrating thing is like, we
can talk about this, You've obviouslydone a ton of research and your book
has all of this stuff laid out, But who's going to stop them?
(08:43):
We have a weaponized DJ that's nevergoing to go after the people that are
driving policy, or are they drivingpolicy in such a way that is creating
an issue for democratic leadership because they'reobviously not controlling it. The democratic leadership
isn't controlling it, you know,I see conflict there. Well, you're
right, it's you know, accountabilityis in short supply these days. I
(09:07):
will say, just this morning,there was a hearing in the House Administration
Committee, which covers election work thatdealt with foreign money in politics as well
as non citizen voting, and misterVS and Arabella showed up there. I've
testified to Congress half a dozen timesabout Arabella and related problems in the last
(09:28):
couple of years. Now. Theunfortunate thing is that, you know,
the committees ought to be having misterVS and the heads of his organizations and
the heads of Arabella come testify andget a good elise staphonic treatment, but
that hasn't happened yet. Is thereany chance that's going to happen in the
near future, Scott, I mean, we're talking about a level of manipulation.
(09:50):
I'm guessing that some sort of Arabellaoperation is what's funding the pro Palestinian
protests on campuses. Right now.I mean, there have been some stories
about these people getting paid. Arethey part of that operation that? Are
you aware of that? So far, there's not much evidence that Arabella's network
has been mixed up in those Thereis, however, another dark money left
(10:13):
wing network. It's also been aroundfor a long time. You've probably heard
of them, the Tides Foundations,Oh yeah, and their various network.
There is evidence that they've given moneyto some of the entities mixed up in
the protests this. You know,I realize that money is always going to
be a part of politics, andI guess maybe my frustration is is that
(10:35):
the left has figured out how touse it better than my team has.
I mean, you know, it'slike it's frustrating that they can have so
much of an impact while remaining orappearing to remain at a distance. And
that is, how do they getaround campaign finance reform because of the reason
(10:56):
that you gave earlier. They're saying, oh, yes, wist National gave
this thing money, but we gavedifferent money to a political party. Well,
you know, it's great for youin Colorado to be asking that,
because, of course Colorado pioneered alot of the left's billionaire politics right.
The four billionaires that took your statefrom Republican to Democrat around two thousand and
(11:18):
four to two thousand and eight area classic example of what billionaires can do
with good left wing infrastructure. Butthe you know it's there, just isn't
any substitute for fighting back. Butthe consolation you should have is most people
actually agree mostly with you. Theythe left has to spend all this money
(11:41):
and build this huge infrastructure in orderto hold it bay the opinions of most
Americans. I hope that that's it, Scott Walter. The book Arabella the
Dark excuse me, the dark moneynetwork of leftist billionaire are secretly transforming America.
I put a link on my blogtoday if you want to buy.
It's not very long. This isan easy read, Scott, for something
(12:03):
that is dealing with such a densetopic, you did a really good job
making this accessible. Well. Thanksso much well, Scott Walter, thank
you so much for your time.Keep doing what you're doing, and the
next time you want to write moreabout this, let me know. Will do
The Mandy Connell Podcast News
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