Exposing the Financial Backers of The Lincoln Project: Google, Wal-Mart Heir, and More
Anti-Trump PAC Drags Honest Abe's Good Name Through the Mud
Note: My September 20 War Room segment with Dr. Peter Navarro on this topic can be viewed via this link.
The Lincoln Project, formed by self-described “former Republican strategists,” first came to prominence in 2020 with the production of rabidly anti-Trump television ads.
Using these ads as a front, along with Abraham Lincoln’s famous likeness and good name, the Lincoln Project’s founders, including Reed Galen, Rick Wilson, and George Conway, successfully exploited the unbridled, teeth-gnashing rage of donors in the far left and ‘Never Trump’ camps, taking more than $87 million in contributions from these easy marks during the 2020 election cycle and engaging in what Politico calls “breathtaking self-dealing and personal enrichment…[as] a primary purpose.”
Of the funds contributed to the Lincoln Project by early 2021, more than half had been paid out, as ‘consulting fees’ and the like, to firms controlled by the group’s leaders, with only around a third of the funds raised directly paying for advertisements that aired on television.
In addition to this, during the 2020 election cycle, Lincoln Project co-founder Reed Galen launched a dark money organization called Project Yellowstone that was reportedly directly linked to the Lincoln Project, with the stated mission of educating voters on how to vote by mail.
And accusations against Lincoln Project co-founder John Weaver – by more than 20 individuals – of sexual harassment and misconduct, which the group had reportedly covered up for months, led to Weaver leaving the group and George Conway calling, in February 2021, for the group to be shut down. (Conway has also left The Lincoln Project, though he appeared on a New Yorker magazine podcast this month to boast about his work there. He has started a new PAC, which has spent more than $500,000 against President Trump this election cycle, including for a reported six-figure ad campaign.)
Despite all this, the Lincoln Project continues to drag Honest Abe’s name through the mud in 2024.
Since January 2023, the Lincoln Project has raised over $14 million from donors, including billionaire Wal-Mart heiress Christy Walton, nonagenarian billionaire Charles Bronfman of the family that formerly owned the Seagrams liquor empire, and raging Never Trumper Rob Reiner.
From this haul, the Lincoln Project has spent more than $12 million so far, roughly one third of which has been funneled to firms owned by the Lincoln Project’s leaders. This includes approximately $531,000 to Reed Galen’s firm Summit Strategic Communications, $664,000 to Rick Wilson’s firm Intrepid Media, and $106,000 to Rick Wilson’s son Andrew Wilson, who is described as a pollster. These payouts to firms owned by Lincoln Project leaders are in addition to reported salary and payroll costs of approximately 16% of the Lincoln Project’s expenditures since the beginning of 2023.
To further raise eyebrows, an entity named as "Resolute Squre PBC" contributed more than $24,000 to the Lincoln Project in 2023. This entity’s name is strikingly close to Resolute Square, the name of a separate media company founded by Lincoln Project leaders in 2022, which is vehemently anti-Trump and now publishes podcasts hosted by Lincoln Project leaders, among other content.
And there’s more than self-dealing and nepotism.
According to Open Secrets, Google has donated over $57,000 to the Lincoln Project during this election cycle, in at least four separate contributions ranging in amounts from $7,000 to $22,000. In turn, during this election cycle, the Lincoln Project, in its documented expenditures, has paid more than $34,000 to Google.
In an interview, Trump Administration Assistant Attorney General Jeff Clark (who has recently called for investigation of suspicious donations being made through the ActBlue Democrat fundraising platform) pointed to recent undercover reporting by the O’Keefe Media Group, in which a Google growth strategist in Los Angeles admitted, on camera, that Google has been actively working to manipulate its search engine advertisements to favor Kamala Harris over President Trump in the 2024 presidential election.
“I can see in that kind of world how money could be going in both directions,” Clark told me, adding that Google wants “to sponsor the general ‘Get Trump’ ethos of the Lincoln Project” and “the Lincoln Project wants to send some money back [Google’s] way so that they’ll skew the search results of what people get on Google.”
Clark further cited research by Dr. Robert Epstein, Senior Research Psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology, on how Google uses ephemeral experiences to control thinking and behavior.
“Things people see skew them in the direction of one candidate or the other, and this can be shown statistically to actually move votes,” Clark said. “And so that’s what that effort seems like to me, in terms of the money flow in each direction to and from Google.”
Clark cast further doubt on the Lincoln Project founders’ self-described status as “former Republicans,” suggesting that, ideologically, they were never really Republicans and are in league with the deeply entrenched establishment ‘uniparty,’ which encompasses large swaths of both the Democrat and Republican parties.
“To me, the real danger of the Lincoln Project is the idea that they’re masquerading as members of one party when they’re really essentially operatives for the opposing party,” Clark said, adding that he doesn’t “believe for a second” that Lincoln Project leaders are “conservative Republicans who simply can’t stomach Trump.”
“Even if they formally were registered Republicans in the past, they did that in order to infiltrate the party and because they were largely good with the ‘uniparty.’ And so being on the Republican side helped them to try to moderate things,” Clark said. “And the reason why they’ve dropped that pretense and are attacking President Trump is that President Trump is the dire threat, the dagger pointed at the heart of the ‘uniparty.’ And they hate that. They want to block that if at all possible.”
When asked what should be done to blunt any meaningful damage that the Lincoln Project may have the potential to inflict in the run-up to the presidential election, Clark answered that “disclosure about [the Lincoln Project] revealing them as disguised Democrats is probably the best short-term medicine.”
Clark added that both the Lincoln Project and ActBlue should be “investigated thoroughly by federal criminal and civil authorities,” which he said would be “highly likely” during a second Trump administration.