"Newly available tax documents show that his giving through the Berger Action Fund, which describes itself as advocating for ’solutions to some of our world’s biggest problems,’ swelled in 2021 to $72 million, cementing Wyss’ status as a Democratic-aligned megadonor," the AP reports.
Wyss, who built his fortune creating the medical device company Synthes USA, which was sold in 2012 to Johnson & Johnson for $20 billion, has routed nearly $340 million through the Berger Action Fund to left-wing organizations like Sixteen Thirty Fund and the New Venture Fund since 2016.
Both groups have worked to build support for President Joe Biden’s agenda.
Specifically, Sixteen Thirty Fund is a left-wing lobbying organization that promotes “equity and racial justice” as well as universal healthcare and climate change legislation. The Sixteen Thirty Fund also shifts money to left-wing political organizations like the scandal-plagued Lincoln Project and the pro-Biden group Unite the Country.
As Politico reported in 2021, the group spent $410 million in the 2020 presidential election to unseat then-President Donald Trump and win Democrats a Senate majority with ad campaigns and a huge get-out-the-vote effort. Since 2016, Wyss has donated $208 million to the Sixteen Thirty Fund.
Politico reported:
The Sixteen Thirty Fund’s multi-million dollar grants singlehandedly powered some other organizations on the left, and it also incubated other groups, as a “fiscal sponsor,” that fought against Trump’s Supreme Court nominees, backed liberal ballot measures and policy proposals in different states and organized opposition to Republican tax and health care policies. [Emphasis added]
Its massive 2020 fundraising and spending illustrates the extent to which the left embraced the use of “dark money” to fight for its causes in recent years. After decrying big-money Republican donors over the last decade, as well as the Supreme Court rulings that flooded politics with more cash, Democrats now benefit from hundreds of millions of dollars of undisclosed donations as well. [Emphasis added]
Meanwhile, the New Venture Fund, which has received almost $40 million in donations from Wyss since 2016, centers its nonprofit work around the tenants of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI).
Related:
Hansjörg Wyss: 2023-04-06 Swiss billionaire-backed environmental groups spent big targeting millions of Biden voters
Hansjörg Wyss: 2022-01-31 NYT: Democrats' ‘Dark Money' Outspent Republicans' by 66% in 2020
Hansjörg Wyss: 2021-05-12 Democrats' HR1 election bill boosted by liberal dark money group financed by foreign national
Hansjörg Wyss: 2023-04-06 Swiss billionaire-backed environmental groups spent big targeting millions of Biden voters
Hansjörg Wyss: 2022-01-31 NYT: Democrats' ‘Dark Money' Outspent Republicans' by 66% in 2020
Hansjörg Wyss: 2021-05-12 Democrats' HR1 election bill boosted by liberal dark money group financed by foreign national