In Their Domes: Chamber of Commerce Rattled by Breitbart News’s Reporting on Congressional Investigation into Foundation Financing
Top officials at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce indicated on Thursday that the organization is rattled by a series of exclusive Breitbart News stories on a blooming congressional investigation into the purportedly pro-business group’s financing of its related foundation, the Hill reported.
Back in March, Breitbart News uncovered tax filings from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation showing more than $12 million in donations to the group over several years from the hard-left Tides Foundation. The Tides Foundation is funded by a number of left-wing donors, including in part by leftist billionaire George Soros through his group Open Society Foundations. This original story also revealed that according to the U.S. Chamber’s foundation tax filings the organization had hired Democrat operatives including a top adviser to failed 2016 Democrat presidential candidate former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. The money from the Tides Foundation, as Breitbart News reported, went to support the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s work on its “Hiring Our Heroes” veterans jobs program.
Exactly who gave the money and why is a major point of contention because the Tides Foundation is what is called a “donor-advised fund.”
“Tracking the flow of money through donor-advised funds is akin to tracing its path through a washing machine. It is virtually impossible to follow the money that flows from start to finish with publicly available information: an individual donor into a massive donor-advised fund such as Tides, which ultimately distributes the money in the form of a grant to groups like the Chamber,” the Hill’s Taylor Giorno wrote Thursday. “Tides took in almost $574 million and distributed $667 million in grants in 2022, according to its most recent Form 990. Open Society Foundations reported giving Tides around $1.4 million in 2022, according to its most recent Form 990, which detailed grants for specific programs unrelated to the Chamber, its foundation or Hiring Our Heroes.”
After that original Breitbart News story, in the ensuing weeks, House Ways and Means Committee’s chairman Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO) began investigating the matter. The Ways and Means Committee is extremely powerful and controls legislation over the tax code, so this probe is no joke. As Breitbart News also exclusively reported a couple weeks ago, Smith launched a formal inquiry into the matter giving the Chamber and its affiliated foundation until early next week to comply with information requests regarding the donations.
Now, the Hill’s broader piece on the matter published on Thursday quotes a top official with the Chamber bashing Breitbart News multiple times for reporting these facts.
“Chairman Smith raised a series of questions based on an article published by Breitbart that was factually inaccurate, and we appreciate the opportunity to set the record straight about this false and misleading article,” Neil Bradley, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s executive vice president, told the Hill.
Later in the piece Bradley again rips Breitbart News.
“The Chamber will respond to Chairman Smith and talk with all of our allies about how Breitbart got it wrong, the important work of Hiring Our Heroes, and the many shared priorities we have including preserving competitive tax policy that raises wages and incomes for Americans,” Bradley said.
Interestingly, while Bradley says the Breitbart News stories on this were “false and misleading,” “factually inaccurate,” and that Breitbart News “got it wrong,” he does not specify anywhere where there was any alleged factual inaccuracy in any of the Breitbart News stories. This is a typical tactic by political insiders—blame the publication that reports the facts contained in public tax documents in an effort to dismiss the substance of the inquiries that result from the reporting—that rarely works out well when the articles in question are in fact accurate as they are in this case. Bradley does not dispute that the Chamber’s foundation got more than $12 million from the Tides Foundation, nor does he dispute that the organization hired a top Clinton campaign veteran. The only point of contention is exactly where the money came from via the Tides Foundation, which as of now is a secret that the congressional panel is investigating, and the various parties involved are thus far refusing to disclose. The good news here is despite Bradley’s constant whining about the Breitbart News stories in question the relevant players from the Hill newspaper to the Ways and Means Committee chairman and more do not seem to be buying what the Chamber of Commerce is selling.
Giorno wrote that Smith “made clear he was not satisfied with the initial response.” While Bradley says in that second quote which appeared at the end of the article that the Chamber would “respond to” Smith, he is also quoted earlier in the piece saying that the Chamber’s response will not include any disclosures about where exactly the Tides Foundation donations originated from.
“There’s a pretty strong left-center-right consensus about the importance of First Amendment freedom of associational rights and not being required to disclose,” Bradley said when as Giorno reported the Hill asked the Chamber “if it would disclose the ultimate source of Tides grants.”
Smith, meanwhile, is quoted in the Hill story as saying that not disclosing the funding source for the Tides Foundation donations would be unwise for the Chamber of Commerce. “They’ll want to disclose all their funding,” the Ways and Means Committee chairman told the newspaper.
“The mission statement for the Chamber is pretty obvious: to help American businesses,” Smith also said. “Getting $12 million from Tides and then trying to say it’s really not from Tides, it’s from someone else, that makes me want to look harder.”
A spokesperson for the Tides Foundation also sided with the Chamber of Commerce in bashing the inquiry to the Hill saying that the investigation “is a politically-motivated PR tactic during an election year, driven by actors who disagree with the social justice work of Tides and our partner organizations.”
Sources familiar with the matter told Breitbart News that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation Hiring Our Heroes program president Eric Eversole is likely to emerge as a major figure as this congressional investigation widens. Eversole makes an appearance in the Hill story as well on Thursday:
The Chamber and the foundation say the probe is based on a misunderstanding. Eric Eversole, president of the foundation’s Hiring Our Heroes program, told The Hill the funds the foundation received “were charitable contributions from corporations made to the donor advised fund,” a charitable giving vehicle that makes it virtually impossible to trace the ultimate source of the funds.
Perhaps most importantly about all of this, though, as Breitbart News has reported and as Giorno noted in her piece on Thursday, this probe represents a deep shift away from the pro-corporation past of the Republican Party. The Wall Street Journal’s Brody Mullins, who just published a new book on lobbying this month, tweeted out that this investigation is proof “our political world is turning upside down.” Mullins compared this complete realignment in U.S. politics to being like former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a top Democrat, deciding to investigate labor unions:
The latest sign that our political world is turning upside down … Important Republican lawmaker investigating Big Business. This is like Nancy Pelosi launching a probe of labor unions … this type of stuff just doesn’t happen … https://t.co/IdbRcCP3on
— Brody Mullins (@BrodyMullinsDC) May 16, 2024
“A decade ago, a Republican committee chair investigating Washington’s biggest business advocacy organization would have been unthinkable,” Giorno wrote. “But times have changed.”
Giorno added this is a “major shift” that could severely complicate the Chamber of Commerce’s efforts to advocate for its members on key policy items on Capitol Hill.
“If Republicans hold the House, Smith is expected to retain the Ways and Means gavel and run the House committee charged with tax policy,” Giorno wrote. “A sour relationship with Smith could compromise the Chamber’s ability to sway the 2025 tax fight and other priorities that fall before the panel.”
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