Powerful Tea Party Group's Internal Docs Leak—Read Them Here

Get 'em while they're hot....

Powerful Tea Party Group's Internal Docs Leak—Read Them Here

FreedomWorks, the national conservative group that helped launch the tea party movement, sells itself as a genuine grassroots operation, and for years it has battled accusations of "astroturfing"—posing as a populist organization while doing the bidding of big-money donors. Yet internal documents obtained by Mother Jones show that FreedomWorks has indeed become dependent on wealthy individual donors to finance its growing operation.

Last month, the Washington Post reported that Richard Stephenson, a reclusive millionaire banker and FreedomWorks board member, and members of his family funneled $12 million in October through two newly created Tennessee corporations to FreedomWorks' super-PAC, which used these funds to support tea party candidates in November's elections. The revelation that a corporate bigwig like Stephenson, who founded the Cancer Treatment Centers of America and chairs its board, was responsible for more than half of the FreedomWorks super-PAC's haul in 2012 undercuts the group's grassroots image and hands ammunition to critics who say FreedomWorks does the bidding of rich conservative donors.

Big donations like Stephenson's are business as usual for FreedomWorks. According to a 52-page report prepared by FreedomWorks' top brass for a board of directors meeting held in mid-December at the Virginia office of Sands Capital Management, an investment firm run by FreedomWorks board member Frank Sands, the entire FreedomWorks organization—its 501(c)(3) and (c)(4) nonprofit arms and its super-PAC—raised nearly $41 million through mid-December. Of that total, $33 million—or 81 percent of its 2012 fundraising—came in the form of "major gifts," the type of big donations coveted by nonprofits and super-PACs. (FreedomWorks' nonprofit components do not have to disclose their funders.)

....

Well-heeled individual contributors ponied up $31 million—or 94 percent—of those major gifts, according to the FreedomWorks board book. Eight donors gave a half-million dollars or more; 22 donated between $100,000 and $499,999; 17 cut checks between $50,000 and $99,999; and 95 gave between $10,000 and $49,999. Foundations contributed $1.6 million in major gifts, and corporations donated $330,000. Corporations once accounted for more of FreedomWorks' hefty donations.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/201 ... pac#update

UPDATE: In an interview with Media Matters for America's Joe Strupp, Dick Armey shed more light on FreedomWorks' financial arrangements with Glenn Beck's media network and Rush Limbaugh's radio show. Those deals were first reported by Mother Jones. Armey said FreedomWorks paid Beck upwards of $1 million to promote Freedomwork last year, calling the deal with Beck "basically paid advertising for FreedomWorks." But Armey questioned that deal, saying it provided "too little value" to FreedomWorks. Read the entire Media Matters story here .


Lift up the rock, and watch 'em run...

Shocked! The rubes were played? Shocked just shocked.

I KNOW... All that AstroTurf and so little time...

Why would these "reclusive" millionaires support candidates who had little chance of winning? Instead be like the corporations who support Obama and get big pork like the huge tax breaks Hollywood gets to film in America.

Almost believable until I came across the term "Media Matters" then it all became clear. MM is O-man's media machine for swaying public opinion, so if they're in it, the truth is most likely not.

And will Mother Jones also be pointing out who supports OWS financially? I doubt it. Mother Jones more slanted?

Gee, I don't know...But since we KNOW that OWS has the F.B.I. crawling up its butt, and we can safely assume that no such corresponding infiltration of Freedom/Astroturf-R-Us/Works exists, if it's important, I'll bet we find out.

Yes the FBI investigates dangerous organization like the OWS bridge bombers. The TEA party is pretty much all talk.

Some people say.......