Free Republic

A powerful array of the Republican Party’s largest financial backers remains deeply resistant to Donald J. Trump’s presidential candidacy, forming a wall of opposition that could make it exceedingly difficult for him to meet his goal of raising $1 billion before the November election. Interviews and emails with more than 50 of the Republican Party’s largest donors, or their representatives, revealed a measure of contempt and distrust toward their own party’s nominee that is unheard of in modern presidential politics. More than a dozen of the party’s most reliable individual contributors and wealthy families indicated that they would not give...

Billionaire David Koch will bankroll Libertarian candidate and former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson’s third party presidential run with tens of millions of dollars, according to a report. The eight-figure sum may help Johnson win the Libertarian Party nomination and break into the mainstream. Johnson also ran for president in 2012 as a third party candidate and won some 1.275 millon votes, 0.99 percent of the popular vote. Libertarian candidates may have cost the GOP several congressional race victories that year. (David Koch himself was the Libertarian Party’s vice presidential nominee in 1980 when he and Ed Clark set the...

WASHINGTON — A new study details how President Barack Obama has been inviting his Obama Foundation donors to events at the White House, a venue that obviously won’t be available to him to entertain mega contributors in a few months. The Obama Foundation, created on Jan. 31, 2014, has to date only 39 contributors, with the money coming either from individuals or foundations controlled by Obama supporters. The nonprofit, nonpartisan Maplight Foundation found that 15 of the 39 have been to the White House for small meetings

Billionaire businessman and philanthropist David Koch has pledged “tens of millions of dollars” to help bankroll the campaign of Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson, according to a source within Johnson’s campaign. Koch’s money will be made available should Johnson, a former two-term Republican governor of New Mexico, secure his second consecutive Libertarian Party presidential nomination, the source said. The Libertarians will select their presidential ticket during the party’s national convention later this month in Orlando.

Donald Trump won't self-fund his general-election campaign, and will instead create a "world-class finance organization," the presumptive Republican nominee said in an interview on Wednesday. For a campaign expected to cost more than $1 billion, "I'll be putting up money, but won't be completely self-funding, as I did during the primaries," Mr. Trump said. The New York businessman, who did receive some mostly small unsolicited donations, lent his campaign $36 million of the $47 million he spent through March. That plan represents a shift for Mr. Trump, who has for months portrayed his Republican opponents as "puppets" for relying on...

Donald Trump won’t self-fund his general-election campaign, and will instead create a “world-class finance organization,” the presumptive Republican nominee said in an interview on Wednesday. For a campaign expected to cost more than $1 billion, “I’ll be putting up money, but won’t be completely self-funding, as I did during the primaries,” Mr. Trump said on Wednesday. The New York businessman, who did receive some mostly small unsolicited donations, lent his campaign $36 million of the $47 million he spent through March. That plan represents a shift for Mr. Trump, who has for months portrayed his Republican opponents as “puppets” for...

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) has received more than $7,000 worth of gifts since he took office in January 2015, mostly modest trinkets and items from well-wishers after the governor made his cancer diagnosis public. The gifts range from a $1 Livestrong bracelet to a $500 membership at Baltimore’s posh members-only Center Club, according to a filing with the State Ethics Commission. Hogan even reported two rosaries blessed at the Vatican, given to him and his wife by Pope Francis in Washington. The disclosure also shows the outpouring of support for the governor after he announced in June that he...

Donald Trump will likely become the Republican presidential nominee after a decisive victory in the Indiana primary and the departure of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz on Tuesday night.

Ted Cruz, in his outsider’s bid for the White House, has depended heavily on the largesse of just three wealthy donors to establish credibility and stay afloat amid a chaotic nominating process that killed off most of his rivals. Now, at perhaps the most desperate moment in his quest to win the Republican nomination, Cruz is learning the perils of relying on strong-willed magnates who carry their own agendas and have demanded an unprecedented level of control in how their money is spent. ...

It seems like a logical pairing: Republican donors who despise Donald Trump, and two GOP presidential hopefuls sticking it out to keep him from the nomination. Yet such a financial cavalry never arrived for Ted Cruz and John Kasich, ignoring their impassioned pleas for financial help.

<p>Senator Cruz has done very poorly and after his New York performance, which was a total disaster, he is in free fall and as everyone has seen, he does not react well under pressure. Also, approximately 80% of the Republican Party is against him. Governor Kasich, who has only won 1 state out of 41, in other words, he is 1 for 41 and he is not even doing as well as other candidates who could have stubbornly stayed in the race like him but chose not to do so. Marco Rubio, as an example, has more delegates than Kasich and yet suspended his campaign one month ago. Others, likewise, have done much better than Kasich, who would get slaughtered by Hillary Clinton once the negative ads against him begin. 85% of Republican voters are against Kasich.</p>

LOS ANGELES (CN) - A federal judge has ruled a requirement that a Koch brothers' charitable foundation release tax information to the California attorney general that includes donor information is unconstitutional.     In a 12-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Manuel Real said that while the disclosure requirement was not "facially invalid," it is "unconstitutional as applied to Americans for Prosperity Foundation, especially in light of the requirement's burdens on the foundation's First Amendment rights."     The foundation, a conservative advocate of free-market economic policies, sued California Attorney General Kamala Harris in 2014 arguing that it should be allowed to keep donor names secret.     Backed by...

If Trump’s delegates can’t make it to the Republican convention in Cleveland this July, he could become just a weird footnote in primary history. So why isn’t he paying to get them there? MAKE AMERICA BEG AGAIN! Trump’s Delegates Are Now Begging for Money Online If Trump’s delegates can’t make it to the Republican convention in Cleveland this July, he could become just a weird footnote in primary history. So why isn’t he paying to get them there? Donald Trump may be really, really rich, but it’s not apparent that he’s using his great fortune to get his delegates...

Half a billion. Minimum. That’s how much funding Donald Trump is likely to need if he becomes the GOP presidential nominee and runs against Hillary Clinton in the fall. The estimate comes from Anthony Scaramucci, founder of the hedge fund Skybridge Capital, who’s a prominent Republican donor. “If you do the math, he’ll need 15,000 $33,000 checks,” Scaramucci tells me in the video above. “That’s $495 million. He’s late to the party on that. If he’s going to be the nominee, he needs to start organizing that now.” Scaramucci is referring to the maximum amount individual donors can give each...

A victorious Donald Trump coming out of the Republican National Convention would have a hard time raising the money he needs to beat the Democratic presidential nominee in November. Interviews with leading GOP fundraisers, donors and outside conservative groups reveal that Trump is so deeply disliked by large parts of the Republican Party’s donor community that he will have trouble winning their favor in a general election. Then, he’d need more than $1 billion to defeat the money machine of the Hillary Clinton campaign, the presumptive Democratic nominee.

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) has spent a lot of time denying any interest in the presidency. Out out a 43-second video, the Drudge Report tweeted an all-caps siren reading “Paul Ryan launches first campaign ad?” Despite the video so resembling a campaign ad that even NPR’s Steve Inskeep joked this morning that he got choked up by the swelling music, Mr. Ryan’s people have aggressively swatted down speculation that the Congressman and unsuccessful 2012 vice presidential candidate was indeed waiting in the wings to be drafted should a consensus not be reached on any of the candidates who have...

Document Release Raises New Questions about State’s FOIA Responses, Court Statements(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today it has obtained new documents from the Department of State containing the telephone transcripts from the evening of September 11, 2012, in which then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton informs then-Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Kandil that the deadly terrorist attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi “had nothing to do with the film.” The documents include previously unreleased telephone transcripts with world leaders about the Benghazi attack. Clinton’s admission to Kandil was first produced to the Select Committee on Benghazi on October 13, 2015...

The next time you hear Mark Levin on the radio, or watch Glenn Beck on TV, or read Erick Erickson, RedState.com on the Internet, you might just ask yourself who is paying for the message? And why is it so stridently anti-Trump? Don’t fool yourself. They’re doing it for the money. As the spearhead of the “Dump Trump” movement, the same GOP establishment big-dollar donors and PACS that are pushing House Speaker Paul Ryan as a dark-horse presidential candidate, despite the big-government omnibus-budget deals Ryan reached last year with President Obama, are funding Mark Levin, Erick Erickson, and Glenn Beck,...

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) has spent a lot of time denying any interest in the presidency. Last week, when his office put out a 43-second video, the Drudge Report tweeted an all-caps siren reading “Paul Ryan launches first campaign ad?” Despite the video so resembling a campaign ad that even NPR’s Steve Inskeep joked this morning that he got choked up by the swelling music, Mr. Ryan’s people have aggressively swatted down speculation that the Congressman and unsuccessful 2012 vice presidential candidate was indeed waiting in the wings to be drafted should a consensus not be reached on any...

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) has spent a lot of time denying any interest in the presidency. Last week, when his office put out a 43-second video, the Drudge Report tweeted an all-caps siren reading “Paul Ryan launches first campaign ad?” Despite the video so resembling a campaign ad that even NPR’s Steve Inskeep joked this morning that he got choked up by the swelling music, Mr. Ryan’s people have aggressively swatted down speculation that the Congressman and unsuccessful 2012 vice presidential candidate was indeed waiting in the wings to be drafted should a consensus not be reached on any...