REPORT: CHARLES KOCH’S POLITICAL NETWORK

RAISES FEARS OF VOTER FRAUD WHILE LEAVING A

TRAIL OF ALLEGED ELECTION VIOLATIONS

(October 2020)

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Many right-wing politicians and think tanks funded by Charles Koch and his network of
billionaires are giving voice to false claims about the possibility of widespread voter fraud and
rigged elections due to expanded mail-in voting access by states seeking to minimize the spread of
COVID-19. Meanwhile, Koch’s consolidated political arm, Americans for Prosperity, has
announced that 2020 will be its biggest year ever in spending around the election and that it has
expanded door-to-door outreach during this pandemic.

However, there has been little coverage of the Koch network’s history of election violations or its
role in aiding voter suppression to help aid politicians that advance his political agenda. These
examples should be included in any coverage of Koch-funded electoral activities during this
election and during efforts by civic groups to ensure that Americans’ votes are counted. Here are
snapshots of some of the key parts of that history, with more detailed in this backgrounder:

✓ Vote-By-Mail Restriction Efforts [2020]. Koch-funded think tanks are currently

churning out pieces lamenting the supposed opportunities for voter fraud catalyzed by
increased accessibility of mail-in ballots. They fail to mention the Koch network’s past of
widely distributing false information about mail-in ballots. Meanwhile, Koch-funded
politicians are working to produce legislation that would restrict access to mail-in voting and
fighting efforts to limit the potential surge in COVID-19 cases due to crowded physical polling
stations in November.

✓ AFP Mailers [2010-2014]. Americans for Prosperity (AFP), one of the groups established
by Charles and David Koch, was involved in voter caging and misinformation campaigns
across multiple states from 2010-2014. In 2010, the Wisconsin branch of AFP was identified
as part of “a coordinated plot ... targeting minority voters and college students in a possibly
illegal ‘voter caging’ effort for voter suppression.” In 2011, AFP was accused of attempting to
suppress Democratic voter turnout in Wisconsin’s recall elections after AFP sent flyers to
Democratic voters encouraging them to vote by mail, but giving false information about the
deadline to submit ballots and giving a false return address; the address was actually the PO
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 box for the right wing group Wisconsin Family Action. Similar mailers relating to voter
registration deadlines were sent out by AFP in North Carolina in 2014, which provided the
wrong deadline for voter registration, the wrong state agency through which to register, and
the wrong ZIP code for returning registration forms.

✓ FEC Fines [2010/2016]. In 2013, another Koch front group, the Center to Protect Patient
Rights (CPPR), was found to have secretly channeled $11 million through Americans for
Responsible Leadership, an Arizona-based group, in order to oppose a tax increase and to
support a proposal that would restrict the political power of unions. Then-California Attorney
General Kamala Harris announced the civil settlement which ordered CPPR and Americans
for Responsible Leadership to pay a fine of $500,000 each--the largest election fine in
California history. Similarly, in 2010, the FEC agreed to a $233,000 fine for three Koch
network-funded groups for illegally hiding the sources of their funding for political ads in
California. The groups in question obtained the millions spent on 2010 advertisements from
CPPR, the main cash distributor for the Koch brothers’ political operations.

✓ Triad Investigations [1996-1997] In 1997, the U.S. Senate investigated Triad

Management Services, a shell corporation which had spent more than three million dollars to
fund attack ads in 29 House and Senate Races. Most of the races took place in states where
Koch Industries had refineries, offices, or pipelines, and Triad was especially active in Charles
Koch’s home state of Kansas. Koch money financed an obscure entity known as the Economic
Education Trust, which in turn financed two separate shell groups which themselves were
controlled by Triad Management Services to produce the ads. The Triad case exemplified the
Koch’s recurring strategy of setting up “disposable front groups” through which to funnel
money for political expenditure, ultimately using their shell corporations as tools to evade
contribution limits and financial disclosure requirements.

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Introduction
In recent weeks, multiple right wing
political organizations backed by dark
money groups have launched advertising
campaigns opposing expansions of mail-in
voting access which would allow voters an
alternative way to participate in the election,
as coronavirus surges and voters are wary of
crowded polling stations. The groups are
converging around attempts by President
Trump and many Republicans to restrict
access to mail-in ballots, buoyed by Trump’s
false claims that mail-in voting is more
likely to be fraudulent or lead to a rigged
election.
Among the organizations opposing mail-in
voting expansions is the Honest Elections
Project (HEP), a right wing group which
emerged out of the network orchestrated by
Leonard Leo that helped secure the
nominations of Justices Brett Kavanaugh
and Neil Gorsuch. HEP, which has now
turned its focus to increasing voting
restrictions, is one of several groups funded
by the Koch fortune.
The current efforts of HEP and other
Koch-funded organizations to restrict voting
by touting false claims about fraud sit
against a backdrop of decades of efforts by
similar Koch-funded coalitions to mislead
and disenfranchise voters at the local, state,
and federal levels.
Their organizational strategy today follows
the Koch’s well-established pattern of
setting up a pipeline of corporate front
groups that funnel millions of dollars
towards their political goals, protected from
individual contribution limits by the ruse of
their many non-profits.
This blueprint for circumventing
anti-corruption laws was exposed in the
1997 Senate investigations of Triad
Management, one of Koch’s earlier attempts
at influencing elections through massive,
secret contributions.
It is the same formula followed in the many
similar subsequent efforts of the Koch
network, including the high-profile
campaign finance violations in California in
2010-2016 which landed Koch’s groups with
the largest fine in state history.
Equally egregious, if less convoluted, are the
multiple instances of direct misinformation
campaigns in which Americans for
Prosperity (AFP), the group founded by
Charles and David Koch, sent flyers to
Democratic voters in multiple states
providing them with false information about
registration and voting deadlines, leading to
accusations of attempting to suppress
Democratic turnout.
AFP Mailers [2011-2014]
HEP’s decrying of mail-in voter fraud is
particularly jarring when taken into
consideration with the widespread mail-in
voting misinformation campaigns led by
Americans for Prosperity.
In 2011, AFP was accused of attempting to
suppress Democratic voter turnout in the
state’s recall elections after it came to light
that AFP had sent flyers to Democratic
voters in Wisconsin encouraging them to
vote by mail, but giving false information
about the deadline to submit ballots. Voters
reported receiving absentee ballot
application forms from AFP instructing
them to mail the ballot back by August 11th,
two days after the true date of a contested
recall election set for August 9th. The
mailers also instructed voters to mail their
ballots to an address listed as “the absentee
ballot processing center,” but which was
actually the P.O. box for the conservative
group Wisconsin Family Action.
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Sample Fake “Absentee Ballot Application” sent by
Americans for Prosperity to voters
One year earlier, in 2010, the Wisconsin
branch of Americans for Prosperity was
identified as part of “a coordinated plot by
the Republican Party of Wisconsin,
Americans for Prosperity-Wisconsin and
organizations in the so-called Tea Party
movement targeting minority voters and
college students in a possibly illegal ‘voter
caging’ effort for voter suppression.”
The effort involved compiling a list of
minority and student voters in targeted
communities using the Wisconsin
Republican Party’s statewide voter file, and
sending mailers to those individuals which
threatened to remove them from voter
registration lists unless they called to
confirm their information.
That same year, the Koch Brothers and
Americans for Prosperity threw their
influence behind the election of Wisconsin
Governor Scott Walker. Walker quickly
signed a law introducing new restrictive
rules for voting, which echoed a priority of
the Koch-funded American Legislative
Exchange Council that makes it harder for
Americans to vote.
However, if mailers were returned to their
senders at Americans for Prosperity as
“undeliverable,” those voters would be
challenged at the polls by Tea Party recruits
for not legally residing at the addresses to
which their voter registration is attached.
The effort was exposed weeks before the
contested election as a consolidated effort to
strike as many as 70,000 voters from the
state’s voter rolls. The Tea Party Republican
candidate Ron Johnson won the race.
Americans for Prosperity has collaborated
with other groups with histories of voter
suppression and intimidation, including
True the Vote - a vote-monitoring initiative
with a “horrendous record of filing
inaccurate voter registration challenges.” In
2012, Rep. Elijah Cummings launched an
investigation into True the Vote, which has
been accused of voter intimidation, and of
promoting inaccurate claims about the
prevalence of voter fraud.
Similarly, in 2014, thousands of North
Carolina residents received mailers from
American for Prosperity which provided the
wrong deadline for voter registration, the
wrong state agency through which to
register, the wrong state office to which
voters should address questions, and the
wrong ZIP code for returning voter
registration forms. These, among other
inaccuracies in the mailers led to an official
complaint by the North Carolina
Democratic Party against Americans for
Prosperity, stating that “the recipients of the
communications would be misled,
intimidated, and/or discouraged from
voting” and that the mailers “are designed
to effect that result.”
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In response to the misinformation
campaigns in Wisconsin and North
Carolina, Americans for Prosperity simply
stated that “it was a mistake,” blaming the
inaccuracies on both typographical errors
and on the printer for sending the mailers to
the wrong voting districts. AFP’s voting
mailer mistakes were among many
examples of “oversights” by the
billionaire-funded group while undertaking
efforts to influence public opinion.
In 2012, AFP funded a radio advertising
campaign in Pennsylvania regarding the
Affordable Care Act. The advertisements
invited listeners to AFP’s “HANDS OFF MY
HEALTHCARE RALLY,” and described the
ACA as “an expensive, bloated law that puts
Washington bureaucrats between you and
your doctor.”
However, due to an alleged “inadvertent
oversight” the advertisement did not include
the disclaimers that are required of
electioneering communications by the
Federal Election Commission. It also
omitted the fact that AFP was responsible
for the content of the advertising and that
the ad was not authorized by any candidate
or candidate’s committee.
That same year, Herman Cain (the
conservative lobbyist who described himself
as the Koch’s “brother from another
mother”) launched an unsuccessful
campaign for the Republican Presidential
nomination. Cain’s chief of staff, Mark
Block, was the state director of the
Wisconsin chapter of AFP.
Cain also founded the right-wing
organization Prosperity USA, which was
investigated by the IRS for potential
campaign finance regulations by fronting
tens of thousands of dollars for Cain’s
campaign expenses, violating their 501(c)(3)
status.
(Cain recently passed away from Covid-19
after attending a Trump rally where few
people wore masks.)
Herman Cain at CPAC by Gage Skidmore.
Unlawful collaboration with outside groups
is a repeated tactic for Koch-funded
candidates. Similar charges were leveled in
2018 against Americans for Prosperity in
New Hampshire; lawmakers called for an
investigation into AFP, alleging that their
extensive political advocacy is a violation of
state regulations for nonprofit
organizations.
Later in 2018, Tennessee Citizen Action
(TCA) filed an FEC complaint requesting an
investigation into possible coordination
between Marsha Blackburn’s Senate
campaign and “at least three outside
groups,” which would be a “violation of the
Federal Election Campaign Act.” Americans
for Prosperity is one of the groups in
question, along with Club for Growth and
the Senate Leadership Fund, both of which
also receive funding from the Koch brothers.
2018 also saw a complaint from Montana
Republican Rep. Frank Garner, who filed
with the Montana Commissioner of Political
Practices alleging that Montana Citizens for
Right to Work, the state affiliate of the
National Right to Work Committee
(NRTWC), was actively recruiting
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candidates to oppose him in his district
race. Garner alleged that this was illegal
activity, given that the group was not
registered with state election officials as the
law requires.
The National Right to Work Committee has
deep ties to the Koch brothers; at least three
former Koch associates work as attorneys at
the NRTWC’s legal foundation, and the
Koch’s Freedom Partners group gave $1
million to the group in 2012.
FEC Fines [2010/2016]
A few years later, the “oversights” of the
Koch network resulted in multiple
Koch-funded groups being ordered to pay
what was then the largest election fine in
California history for campaign finance
violations.
In 2013, a group then known as the Center
to Protect Patient Rights (CPPR) was found
to have secretly channeled $11 million
through Americans for Responsible
Leadership, another Arizona-based group,
in order to oppose a tax increase and to
support a proposal that would restrict the
political power of unions.
The CPPR is the main cash distributor for
the Koch brothers. It was formed in 2009 by
Sean Noble, who served as the political
consultant to the Koch brothers and
attended their retreats. Noble founded the
group in conjunction with Republican donor
Randy Kendrick with the purpose of
opposing the Affordable Care Act, which the
Kochs also spent huge sums opposing
directly and through grassroots lobbying.
Sean Noble in an interview on Dark Money campaigns.
Source:http://arizonaspolitics.blogspot.com/2016/07/sean
-noble-interview-leads-to-233000.html
Then-California Attorney General Kamala
Harris announced the civil settlement in the
case which ordered CPPR and Americans
for Responsible Leadership to pay a fine of
$500,000 each. Sean Noble and the Kochs
denied wrongdoing. This million dollar fine
was then the largest election fine in
California history.
In 2016, the Federal Election Commission
(FEC) agreed to a $233,000 fine for three
other Koch network-funded groups for
illegally hiding the sources of their funding
for political ads in California.
The groups named in the FEC complaint are
the American Future Fund (AFF),
Americans for Jobs Security (AJS), and the
60+ Association. In 2010, the Arizona-
based CPPR funneled $25.5 million into
California elections by first sending the
money to AFF, AJS, and 60+; these three
groups then spent tens of millions of dollars
on advertisements supporting Republican
House candidates.
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Excerpt of FEC complaint vs. AFF, AJS, CPPR, and 60+.
Source: https://eqs.fec.gov/eqsdocsMUR/16044397100.pdf
Despite creating an artificial sense of
distance between CPPR and the political ad
campaigns by first channeling the money
through AFF, AJS, and 60+, Noble and
CPPR had extensive involvement in the ads.
Noble selected which races to get involved
in, researched and produced the ads
themselves, and made the decisions of when
to air the ads. Noble’s consulting firm,
Noble Associates, also worked as an
undisclosed subcontractor to the vendors
who produced the ads, and secretly received
millions of dollars for their involvement.
This level of participation by a donor in the
use of their grant would normally qualify
the donation as an “earmarked”
contribution -- a contribution made with the
specific purpose of supporting an
electioneering communication or a reported
independent expenditure. Recipients of
earmarked funds are required under FEC
rules to disclose the funds’ donors; however,
AJS, AFF, and 60+ all failed to report any
earmarked contributions from CPPR. After
investigation, the FEC found that Noble’s
deep involvement in the ad campaigns was
sufficient grounds to categorize CPPR’s
donations to the three groups as earmarked
for specific political expenditures and
therefore required to be disclosed as the
source of funding.
In response to the California fines, CPPR
claimed that their violations of campaign
finance rules were accidental and due to the
fact that they had “never before made
contributions in California.”
CPPR has also misrepresented millions of
dollars in donations to other organizations
which were purportedly given for “tax
exempt education and social welfare
purposes,” but which were spent on political
advertisements and campaign activities.
The revelations about the extent of Noble’s
involvement in the ad campaigns, and the
extent of his own financial profit as a result
of the undisclosed sub-contracting of Noble
Associates, came to light in 2014 when
Noble himself gave a detailed description of
the situation to the National Review.
Shortly before the FEC complaint against
CPPR was filed by CREW in May, 2014,
Noble dissolved the group and re-formed it
under the name American Encore.
This new iteration of the group continued to
fund many of the same organizations within
the Koch network, including the 60+
Association, the Legacy Foundation Action
Fund, and the Trees of Liberty -- a
short-lived front group for various Koch
enterprises set up in order to influence the
2014 Iowa Senate Republican primaries.
The Center for Media and Democracy filed
an official complaint against the group,
citing facts and circumstances indicating
that “Trees of Liberty was operated
primarily to advance the private interests of
Sen. Ernst and of the Koch political network
that created and funded Trees of Liberty, in
violation of its section 501(c)(4) tax-exempt
status.” Ernst and other Republican Senate
candidates later directly credited the
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intervention of the Koch network with evade contribution limits and financial
securing her “trajectory.” disclosure requirements.

The extensive and multifaceted financial In the Triad case, the Kochs and their
maneuverings of the Koch political network affiliated organizations established layers of
exemplify the undue influence given to artificial separation between themselves and
ultra-wealthy individuals and corporations their financial manipulations of
as a result of the Supreme Court’s Citizens congressional races. The first layer of
United ruling. They also demonstrate the separation came from an obscure entity
tenacious expertise of those involved in known as the Economic Education Trust
side-stepping the remaining anti-corruption (EET). Over half of the money used for the
laws governing political contributions-- ad campaigns in question came from EET,
despite the Koch network’s repeated which was believed by the Senate
insistence of their ignorance of the rules and Committee to be “financed in whole or in
claims of unintentional violations. part by Charles and David Koch of Wichita,
Kansas.”
Nevertheless, the influence of the Kochs in
American political systems was clear long
before Citizens United made their
electioneering legal. Their strategic
framework of financial sidestepping and use
of shadow groups in the CPPR scandal
takes after another effort backed by the
Kochs to influence elections in the early
1990s, when an unknown nonprofit -- Triad
Management -- financed two other
nonprofits to air $3 million in television ads
in twenty-six House races and three Senate
races.

Triad Investigations [1996-1997] Excerpt from the Senate Committee’s Final Report. Source:
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CRPT-105srpt167/p
In 1997, the U.S. Senate undertook df/CRPT-105srpt167-pt5.pdf
investigations of Triad Management
The EET then gave money to two separate
Services, a shell corporation which had
shell groups, dubbed Citizens for Reform
spent over three million dollars to fund
and Citizens for the Republic Education
attack ads in 29 House and Senate Races.
Fund, which were controlled by Triad
Most of the races took place in states where
Management Services - thus creating a
Koch Industries had refineries, offices, or
second layer of separation. In a preview of
pipelines, and Triad was especially active in
the strategy that played out again in the
Charles Koch’s home state of Kansas. The
2010 campaign finance violations of Sean
Triad case exemplified the recurring
Noble and CPPR, it appears that the funds
strategy of the Kochs’ to set up “disposable
from EET were given to Citizens for Reform
front groups” through which to funnel
and Citizens for the Republic Education
money for political expenditure, ultimately
Fund with the understanding that EET’s
using their shell corporations as tools to
consultant would oversee the advertising
campaign.

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While the Kochs refused to comment at the
time, the Wall Street Journal confirmed in
1998 that Republican political consultant
Kenneth Barfield, who was on the Koch’s
payroll, had indeed been involved in the
strategy. Furthermore, the Senate
committee’s investigation uncovered a
corporate check for $2,000 from Koch
Industries made out to Triad.
Beyond the shadowy nature of its funding,
Triad was found to have “used a variety of
improper and possibly illegal tactics to help
Republican candidates win election in
1996,” including providing “free services to
Republican campaigns in possible violation
of the federal prohibition against direct
corporate contributions to candidates.”
More egregiously, the report from the
Committee on Governmental Affairs
concluded that the evidence before the
committee suggested that Triad was
involved in a scheme to allow supporters to
circumvent the limits on maximum
permissible contributions to campaigns.
Triad obtained “names of supporters who
had already made the maximum permissible
contributions and solicited those supporters
for contributions to a network of
conservative PACs.
In many instances, the PACs then made
contributions to the same candidates. As
reported by the committee: “Triad exists for
the sole purpose of influencing federal
elections. Triad is not a political consulting
business: it issues no invoices, charges no
fees, and makes no profit. It is a corporate
shell funded by a few wealthy conservative
Republican activists.”
In the course of the Committee’s
investigation into Triad, they also unearthed
information about the funding sources of
myriad other “issue advocacy,” tax-exempt
organizations funded by the same donors
who supported Triad and its affiliated
groups.
The Issues with Koch’s Stealth “Term
Limits” Campaigns
Two such organizations, which were (and
still are) involved in political activity while
claiming to be non-partisan, are Americans
for Limited Terms, and U.S. Term Limits
(USTL). Both founded in the early 1990s,
the groups’ activities are nearly as similar as
their names.
USTL asks federal candidates to sign a
pledge promising that they will vote to limit
House members to three two-year terms,
and Senate members to two six-year terms.
ALT creates advertising campaigns labeled
as “issue advocacy,” targeting candidates
who refuse to sign the pledge put forward by
USTLs.
The groups also shared a website, used the
same advertising agency, and shared many
funders and board members. Howard
(Howie) Rich -- a long-time friend of
Charles Koch, and a board member of the
Koch-funded Cato Institute -- was both a
co-founder of Americans for Limited Terms
and the president of USTL. The president of
the Cato Institute, Ed Crane, also served on
the board of USTL. Eric O’Keefe also
worked extensively on Koch’s term limits
efforts. And Mike Pompeo, who is now
Secretary of State and who previously
represented Wichita in Congress, even
worked on the litigation on behalf of the
Koch term limit operations when he was a
new attorney at a law firm.
Contemporaneously with the 1996
campaign finance violations of Triad, USTL
was being criticized by the Secretary of State
for Washington State for “flouting state
campaign disclosure laws for more than two
months.” USTL had pushed forward an
initiative that would require state legislators
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to call for a constitutional convention of
Congress in order to propose congressional
term limits. Any delegate or legislator who
voted against the plan would be specifically
indicated by a notation on voting ballots,
marking them as someone who “disregarded
voter instruction on term limits.”
This followed on the heels of a 1995
Supreme Court decision in U.S. Term
Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, a case petitioned
by USTL in which the Court ruled that state
constitutions could not adopt
“qualifications” for congressional
representatives (such as term limits) in
addition to the qualifications enumerated in
the Constitution.
USTL continued to be active in political
activities in the following decades, and in
2008 was again hit with a complaint of
violating campaign finance laws. Citizens for
Responsibility and Ethics in Washington
(CREW) filed a complaint against USTL’s
advertising activity in Colorado, based on an
ad for U.S. Senate candidate Bob Schaffer
which failed to include a statement that the
person responsible for financing the
advertisement was responsible for the
content of the advertisement. Furthermore,
USTL failed to file a report describing their
expenditure within the 48-hour window
after the ad first aired.
These are the same campaign finance
violations which have been repeatedly cited
in FEC complaints against numerous front
groups tied to the Koch brothers, including
the 2012 complaints against Americans for
Prosperity mentioned above.
Vote-By-Mail Voter Restriction
Efforts [2020]
Today, Koch-funded think tanks are
churning out pieces lamenting the
supposedly fraudulent possibilities
catalyzed by increased accessibility of
mail-in ballots, despite their own past
efforts to incentivize mail-in voting through
fraudulent means. Meanwhile, Koch-funded
politicians are working to produce
legislation that would legally restrict
vote-by-mail efforts that are underway to
limit the potential surge in COVID-19 cases
due to crowded physical polling stations in
November.
Wisconsin voters lining up to vote in April. Source: Henry
C. Jorgensen/Shutterstock.
In Ohio, a state currently experiencing a
surge in cases of COVID-19, a freshman
legislator introduced a bill in the state
House that, as originally written, would
have prevented the state from mailing
absentee ballot applications with pre-paid
postage to every registered voter.
The legislator, Republican Rep. Cindy
Abrams, is a member of the Koch-funded
American Legislative Exchange Council
(ALEC), a corporate bill mill where state
legislators vote as equals with corporate
lobbyists and special interest groups on
“model” bills that advance legislation that
benefits the corporate bottom line.
Koch Industries and Charles Koch’s fortune
are key funders of ALEC, which has a long
history of promoting voter suppression
legislation; their 2009 Voter ID Act
disenfranchised many low-income,
minority, elderly, and student voters by
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requiring specific forms of identification to
be presented at polling stations.
The Heritage Foundation, a right wing think
tank which has received millions of dollars
from the Koch fortune, recently published a
piece on “the vulnerabilities of absentee and
mail-in ballots,” which makes
unsubstantiated arguments that “universal
absentee or mail-in voting leaves America’s
electoral system vulnerable to fraud,
forgery, coercion, and voter intimidation.”
The piece is by Hans von Spakovsky, a
Republican lawyer who served in the Bush
administration and who has long been an
advocate of voter suppression laws. He most
recently served on President Trump's
disbanded "election integrity" commission,
and has been a presenter at ALEC
conferences. Von Spakovsky’s piece profiles
four elections (two mayoral elections, one
Congressional race, and one race for the
Fresno County school board) in which the
results of the election were overturned by
courts after finding evidence of voter fraud
with mail-in ballots.
Setting aside the hypocrisy of citing these
examples when the Koch network itself has
been behind significant efforts to
disenfranchise and misinform voters, the
structure of von Spakovsky’s argument
foreshadows a troubling strategy. The
examples of elections in which the results
have been overturned by courts lay the
groundwork for precedent this fall, when
President Trump may contest election
results on the grounds of fraudulent ballots,
if the results are not in his favor. This would
leave the verdict to the courts, which his
administration (made up of Koch-funded
politicians and lobbyists) has methodically
stacked with conservatives over the past
four years.
Judge Amy Coney Barrett, President
Trump’s nominee to fill the vacancy on the
Supreme Court caused by Justice Ruth
Bader Ginsburg’s death, has refused to
recuse herself from any cases involving this
election. She has refused to commit to doing
so even though Trump has expressly said he
needs her on the Court to help rule on
challenges to ballots he plans to bring.
For decades, the many arms of the Koch’s
political network have evaded
anti-corruption laws. Their vast financial
power makes them practically immune to
violation fines, leaving them free to continue
their extensive suppression efforts and
corrupt lobbying practices.
Today, groups funded and founded by the
Koch brothers are attacking mail-in voting
in the 2020 election by reprising their
previous methods: propagating myths about
mail-in ballot fraud, hiding behind many
lines of shadow groups, and flooding
political campaigns with millions of
corporate dollars to prop up individuals who
will support policies that benefit the Koch’s
bottom line, at the expense of American
democracy.
Any story covering the role of Koch groups
in our election should make clear to readers
that Koch’s political operations have a long
and deep history of violating election laws,
misleading voters, and serious allegations of
practices that damage our electoral process.
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Annex

Chronological list of complaints or reports of violations by Koch network groups (including

those not elaborated in this report)

✓ 1996 backlash against US Term Limits in Washington

✓ 1998 Triad investigation
✓ 2008 FEC complaint against US Term Limits
✓ 2010 voter caging accusations against AFP
✓ 2011 accusations of voter suppression against AFP
✓ 2011 false absentee ballot applications - AFP
✓ 2011 Mark Block/Prosperity USA campaign violations
✓ 2012 investigation of True the Vote
✓ 2013 fines for ARL, CPPR
✓ 2014 North Carolina Democratic Party complaint against AFP
✓ 2014 FEC complaint against AFF, AJS, 60+, CPPR
✓ 2015 FEC complaint against Freedom Partners Action Fund (among others)
✓ 2015 FEC complaint against American Crossroads, Crossroads GPS, AFP, i360 (among
others)
✓ 2016 FEC fines for AFS, AJS, 60+
✓ 2016 complaint against Charles Koch, Charles Koch Trust (among others)
✓ 2018 investigation into AFP for violation of nonprofit status
✓ 2018 FEC complaint against Marsha Blackburn’s Senate campaign including Club for
Growth, Americans for Prosperity and Senate Leadership Fund.
✓ 2018 CREW v. FEC lawsuit against American Crossroads/Crossroads GPS
✓ 2018 complaint against Montana Citizens for Right to Work
✓ 2019 lawsuit against AFP for text message campaign
✓ 2020 Heritage Foundation thought pieces on mail-in ballot fraud
✓ 2020 ALEC bills restricting mail-in ballot access

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About Us
This backgrounder has been prepared by Lisa Graves and Caroline Jones for True North Research. Graves is the
Executive Director of True North Research, a watchdog that investigates corporate interests distorting American
democracy. She is also the co-curator of KochDocs.org and a co-leader of the Ben Franklin Project. She has previously
served as the Chief Counsel for Nominations for the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, a Deputy Assistant Attorney
General at the U.S. Department of Justice (where she worked on judicial selection and fair courts), and Deputy Chief
of the Article III Judges Division of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts (where she advised on anti-
corruption measures). She began studying the Federalist Society in 1989 and the nomination and confirmation
process in 1991. Her analysis has been cited in many books, articles, and interviews.
www.linkedin.com/in/thelisagraves. Jones is a researcher with True North, whose work primarily focuses on climate
change deniers, like many of the Koch groups, which have tried to obstruct efforts to mitigate climate change. True
North Research’s Evan Vorpahl and Alyssa Bowen also contributed to this report.

To arrange for an interview, please contact Kyle Moler at kyle@littlething.co, p: 321-345-1758

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