Free Republic

A top financial backer of left-wing causes in the US has been accused of sexually harassing a female employee, pushing for “threesomes” with her and her future husband while they worked at his California winery — and then retaliating against them for calling out his “lewd” conduct. Swiss billionaire Hansjorg Wyss exposed himself, “brazenly groped,” and made other unwanted sexual advances toward Madison Busby before forcing her to resign her job, according to a jaw-dropping lawsuit filed April 25 in San Luis Obispo County Superior Court. ... Wyss, a resident of Teton County, Wyo., purchased the property in 2000 and...

Over the past two decades, a reclusive Swiss billionaire has poured more than $800 million into left-wing causes across America, and now states are fighting back. Hansjörg Wyss, 89, a Swiss national with an estimated net worth of roughly five billion dollars, has quietly become one of the most influential donors on the American left. He has spent more than $800 million bankrolling hundreds of left-wing causes across the United States, donating millions to climate change groups, abortion activists, and the Clinton Foundation. Information about him is sparse, but his sister once wrote that Wyss seeks to “(re)interpret the American...

Tesla CEO Elon Musk reacted to former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney‘s endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris in the upcoming 2024 presidential election by retweeting a 2020 post highlighting her hypocrisy. During a speaking engagement at Duke University in North Carolina on Wednesday, Cheney sparked a backlash from Conservatives over he decision to endorse a candidate with such “radical and dangerous” views.

𝐁𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐊𝐈𝐍𝐆: @actblue is matching donations for the@KamalaHQ campaign by up to 900 PERCENT! The Harris campaign has revealed that donations have topped $100M since Biden's exit from the race… They also announced that in this record 24-hour period of fundraising, $81M… https://t.co/Ipq0F1Qaod pic.twitter.com/tzCHXf8Cwt— legislation (@legislationpage) July 23, 2024

It’s a story that goes to the very heart of the Left’s mountain of shadowy funding and professional activism: a foreign billionaire infamous for illegally funding Democrats, enriched by selling ghoulish medical treatments that resulted in multiple deaths, and bankrolling a multimillion-dollar “dark money” campaign to transform America. Meet Swiss-born Hansjörg Wyss (pronounced “Hans-yurg Veese”), perhaps the most important mega-donor you’ve never heard of. His Wyss Foundation, founded in 1998, quietly commands a stunning $2.7 billion in assets (as of 2021) and annually pours out tens of millions of dollars to activist groups—around a billion dollars between 2002 and 2021—so...

The Berger Action Fund, one arm of liberal Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss’ philanthropic empire, gave tens of millions to one of America’s most prolific Democrat-aligned dark money groups. The Berger Action Fund, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization, gave $35 million to the liberal dark money group Sixteen Thirty Fund in 2022, tax documents show. Sixteen Thirty Fund in 2022 poured tens of millions into Democrat-aligned PACs, groups supporting left-wing ballot measures and voter mobilization operations designed to increase turnout among Democrat-friendly demographics, according to tax forms. Wyss, a Swiss billionaire who made his fortune selling medical devices, had not disclosed publicly...

A green nonprofit that is indirectly funded by a foreign billionaire is pressuring broadcasters to drop advertisements that criticize the Biden administration’s massive electric vehicle (EV) agenda. Climate Power wrote to numerous broadcasters this week demanding that they stop airing American Fuel and Petrochemicals Manufacturers (AFPM)-funded advertisements in swing state markets that rail against President Joe Biden’s plans to impose widespread EV adoption in the coming years. The charitable organization affiliated with Hansjorg Wyss, a Swiss health care mogul and billionaire philanthropist, donates millions of dollars to the Fund for a Better Future, which was the fiscal sponsor for Climate...

Billionaire Hansjörg Wyss, a Swiss national who lives in Wyoming, has become a “Democrat-aligned mega-donor,” according to the Associated Press (AP), thanks to his funneling hundreds of millions of dollars to left-wing groups. “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,...

Hansjörg Wyss, a Swiss citizen, has contributed millions to nonprofits that have benefited Democratic causes. Insiders say he will ramp it up leading to the November midterm elections.. A Swiss octogenarian billionaire has donated tens of millions of dollars to Democratic politicians and progressive causes in “dark money” contributions — and Hansjörg Wyss is likely funneling millions more to influence midterm elections in November, One Virginia-based think tank estimates that, since 2016, nonprofits linked to Wyss have funneled more than $253 million to Democratic candidates and related causes, such as voter registration initiatives that benefit the party and ... through...

Executive Summary The political Left often criticizes—and the mainstream media frequently report on—the network of center-right nonprofits funded by billionaire entrepreneurs Charles and David Koch. But few politicos know of a left-wing leviathan in Washington, D.C., with a reach rivaling that of the Koch network. This study by the Capital Research Center documents a shadowy web into which nearly $600 million flowed in 2017, the most recent year for which data are available. Operating under the aegis of “philanthropy,” this network is housed in and staffed by a for-profit, privately held consultancy called Arabella Advisors, LLC. Arabella manages four nonprofit...

A Swiss human experimenter, a Hungarian Nazi collaborator, and an Iranian tech tycoon walk into Washington D.C. What do you call them? The absentee owners of the Democrat Party. It’s not a joke. Unfortunately it’s grimly serious. Politico recently reported that the Sixteen Thirty Fund, the leading dark money machine of the Left, had pumped $410 million into Dem 2020 efforts to defeat Trump and Republicans. The Sixteen Thirty Fund had raised a record $390 million that year and half the money came from just 4 donors. While the names of the donors are secret, the article did note the...

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) formally launched her reelection bid on Thursday, seeking the Republican nomination for her seat for the fourth time amid rebukes from her own party. “Some things have to matter,” Cheney said in her announcement video. “American freedom, the rule of law, our founding principles, the foundations of our republic matter. What we do in this election in Wyoming matters.”

Hansjorg Wyss, who has an estimated net worth of $5.1 billion and in lives in Wyoming, has become a major donor to liberal groups in recent years, but remains tight-lipped about his citizenship status. Foreign nationals who don't hold US green cards are barred from making direct donations to candidates for office or political action committees, but they are are allowed to contribute to advocacy groups that seek to sway public policy. In recently filed lawsuit, watchdog group Americans for Public Trust challenged that distinction, accusing the Federal Election Commission of acting too slowly on a complaint it filed against...

As the GOP seems to think they have the next election in the bag, Obama & Holder – with corrupt attorney Marc Elias – are gaining ground with All On The Line. Through their organization All On The Line (AOTL) (formerly “Obama for America”), former President Barack Obama and his wingman, former Attorney General Eric Holder have aggressively targeted certain key states with strategic litigation wherever they believe Republicans hold an advantage in their electoral maps. A key point is that Obama/Holder are targeting “gerrymandering”, or the redrawing of electoral maps to give an advantage to a certain political party....

A liberal redistricting group funded largely through secretive donations by a Swiss billionaire is hitting the airwaves with a well-funded ad campaign attacking the "billionaires buying our elections." The new ad from the National Redistricting Action Fund, a partisan lobbying group helmed by former attorney general Eric Holder, goes after the power billionaires wield through anonymous "dark money" contributions. Unmentioned is the at least $3 million funneled anonymously to the National Redistricting Action Fund in recent years by Hansjörg Wyss, a foreign billionaire who has quietly emerged as a liberal megadonor in the United States. Wyss's dark money contributions made...

A liberal Swiss billionaire known for meddling in U.S. elections has funneled millions of dollars to former attorney general Eric Holder's effort to redraw electoral maps in favor of Democrats, newly obtained documents reveal. The Berger Action Fund, the advocacy arm of Swiss megadonor Hansjörg Wyss's Wyss Foundation, passed $3 million to the National Redistricting Action Fund (NRAF) between 2018 and 2020. The NRAF is the 501(c)(4) lobbying arm of Holder’s National Democratic Redistricting Committee, a self-described "centralized hub for executing a comprehensive redistricting strategy" to give Democrats an edge in congressional races. Holder, who chairs the National Democratic Redistricting...

In an interview last year, Mr. Freeman argued that the austere cuts enacted at his newspapers reflected a more realistic understanding of the industry’s direction and better positioned Alden-owned publishers for the pandemic’s downswing. “We were prepared for a real step down in terms of a recession because we were honest about what was needed in the future,” he said. “Numbers don’t lie.” The newspaper industry’s numbers looked bleak even before the pandemic. Annual advertising revenue dropped 70%, or $34 billion, between 2005 and 2018, according to estimates by the Pew Research Center. More than 1,800 newspapers closed between 2004...

It turns out that the left has no problem taking “dark money” when it benefits their own political ends. The New York Times published an explosive report naming liberal Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss as “one of the most important donors to left-leaning advocacy groups and an increasingly influential force among Democrats.” New tax filings showed that two of Wyss’s organizations “donated $208 million from 2016 through early last year to three other nonprofit funds that doled out money to a wide array of groups that backed progressive causes and helped Democrats in their efforts to win the White House and...

‘Louder and more hateful’: Big-city leaders say Trump’s attacks on Baltimore are escalation of his strategy to denigrate diverse, liberal areas President Trump’s denunciations of Baltimore as an uninhabitable city are the latest in a string of disparaging attacks on diverse, liberal enclaves as violent, dirty and outside the mainstream — rhetoric that paints those areas of the country as fundamentally less American than whiter, more conservative strongholds. Trump denigrated Maryland’s largest city over the weekend as “a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” and blamed it on Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), who is black, and claimed on Sunday...

In 2013, John Podesta was paid $87,000 by a shadowy foreign billionaire whose passion is preventing energy exploration on American land. Just two years later, Podesta is a member of President Obama’s inner circle, and the driving force inside the White House to block 12 million acres of land in Alaska’s Artic National Wildlife Refuge from oil drilling. The circumstances suggest Podesta may have run afoul of Obama’s highly-touted ethics pledge, which requires political appointees to disqualify themselves in matters relating to the interests of a former employer or client. Podesta — who is preparing to leave the White House