American Oligarchy: Meet the Billionaire Mega-Donors Behind the Biden Presidency
Liberals used to decry the influence of money in politics. But in Joe Biden’s America, we have seen the rise of a noxious new generation of left-wing donors. I identify some of the biggest power players in Joe Biden’s American in my book New York Times bestselling book Breaking Biden.
Joe Biden is the quintessential oligarch. He has empowered America’s moneyed elite, and they have empowered him. Biden’s 2020 campaign was the first to raise over $1 billion. Democrats raised $600 million more in “dark money” than Republicans in 2020. Look for those numbers to explode even higher in 2024.
It is important to understand a key principle in modern Democratic politics: if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu. Today, it’s Joe Biden’s table, and he’s happy to provide the entertainment.
Remember, unlike Joe Biden, all of these oligarchs are good with money. They aren’t giving away tens of millions of dollars out of the goodness of their heart. They want something in return. In each and every case, Joe Biden serves a purpose for them — maybe many purposes.
Let’s meet Joe’s billionaire cabinet:
Dustin Moskovitz (net worth: $11.6 billion)
Dustin Moskovitz speaking at an event on November 8, 2017 in Lisbon, Portugal. (Horacio Villalobos – Corbis/Getty Images)
Perhaps no other megadonor has distinguished themselves in the Biden years as much as Dustin Moskovitz, a cofounder of Facebook. He is a rising power player on this list. It wasn’t until the Biden years that Moskovitz solidified himself as one of the major power brokers on the institutional left.
Dustin Moskovitz, co-founder of Facebook, delivers his keynote address on October 24, 2007, in San Francisco, California. (Kimberly White/Getty Images)
Moskovitz gave roughly $50 million total in the 2020 election cycle, including $20 million to the Future Forward PAC, one of the main committees supporting Biden. Future Forward (more on this PAC below) spent more than $180 million across the 2020 and 2022 elections. Employees of Asana, Moskovitz’ current company, contributed $6.1 million in 2022. The Biden campaign recently moved to make Future Forward the campaign’s main PAC for the 2024 election, making Moskovitz and his machine an integral piece of the Democrats’ infrastructure.
Moskovitz now has the ear of the administration at a crucial time for tech policy, especially artificial intelligence. In fact, one of his organizations is already bankrolling dozens of staffers helping shape AI regulations.
Eric Schmidt (net worth: $26.2 billion)
Google Chairman Eric Schmidt at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 22, 2015. (Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Eric Schmidt spent 20 years heading Google and its holding company, Alphabet, holding titles like CEO and executive chairman.
The political contributions Schmidt and related organizations have made over the years have been large and numerous. Google has given more than $11 million to mostly Democrat political causes and has a $75 million lobbying record. Since its founding, Alphabet has given $59 million, again to mostly Democrats, and lobbied the government with upward of $119 million. Joe Biden was the largest recipient of this largesse during the 2020 cycle, receiving just under $4.5 million. Schmidt gave $775,000 to the Future Forward PAC, which has also been funded by other top Democrat donors from Big Tech like disgraced crypto “entrepreneur” Sam Bankman-Fried ($10 million) and Facebook’s Dustin Moskovitz ($91.78 million).
Schmidt left the Alphabet in 2020 and has turned his focus to his philanthropic foundation, Schmidt Futures, which paid the salaries for two employees in Joe Biden’s Office of Science and Technology Policy. This raised ethics concerns, as there were “a large number of staff with financial connections to Schmidt Futures,” according to the office’s then general counsel Rachel Wallace.
Eric Schmidt speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on Feb. 23, 2021, during a hearing on emerging technologies and their impact on national security. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
Schmidt helps fund the A.I. tech companies Abacus.AI and Civis Analytics, which aided Democrat campaigns, including Biden’s 2020 effort to target voters.
When Democrats use A.I. to try to ensure victory in 2024 (and they will), pay attention to who is behind those efforts. I’ll bet big money on Schmidt.
Jeffrey Katzenberg (net worth: $900 million)
Jeffrey Katzenberg arrives at a state dinner in honor of Chinese Communist leader Xi Jinping at the White House in Washington, DC, on Sept. 25, 2015. (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Despite being the instigator of Hollywood’s decline (as thoroughly documented in Breaking Biden), Joe Biden has avoided the ire of the entertainment establishment. In fact, he continues to bag mountains of their cash. In the summer of 2020, Jeffrey Katzenberg and George Clooney held a virtual event for Biden and his vice-presidential running mate Kamala Harris that charged $100,000 per ticket. The following week, Tom Hanks held a fundraising event for Biden. By late August, Katzenberg had held events for Biden that had raised a reported $13 million that election cycle. In May 2023, Katzenberg told the Financial Times that he would pledge Biden “all the resources” he needs to win reelection in 2024.
Let me repeat that. In May 2023, Katzenberg told the Financial Times that he would pledge Biden “all the resources” he needs to win reelection in 2024.
DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg (third from right) with CCP representatives from Shanghai’s government unveil the master plan for the Shanghai DreamCenter on March 20, 2014 in Shanghai, China. (AP Photo)
Jeffrey Katzenberg filled up the Biden campaign with millions of dollars upon Kamala’s joining the ticket, and then the entertainment mogul minted a deal with Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping to create a Chinese Hollywood. Synergy or quid pro quo?
(There’s much more on the fascinating connection between Katzenberg, Biden, and Xi Jinping in Breaking Biden.)
Katzenberg’s influence over Biden has become a sore spot as strikes have brought Hollywood productions to a halt. A self-styled labor champion, Biden has avoided visiting Katzenberg in Los Angeles, though they have continued to praise each other at fundraisers for Biden’s reelection. “I have a lot of assets in my campaign, but none more consequential than Jeffrey Katzenberg,” Biden reportedly told the crowd at a June fundraising dinner. This is a perfect example of how Joe tries to present himself as a man of the people, but is actually a creature of the corporate elite.
Laurene Powell Jobs (net worth: $13.7 billion)
Laurene Powell Jobs speaks during the Clinton Global Initiative meeting on September 19, 2022, in New York City. (Noam Galai/Getty Images for Clinton Global Initiative)
Apple cofounder Steve Jobs’s widow is one of the richest women in the world and one of the most powerful people in Democrat politics and media. She is nearly as much a part of the Democrat machine as Joe Biden himself.
The heiress’s primary vehicle for spreading her wealth around is the Emerson Collective, which is a core subject of my first book, Breaking the News. Through the Emerson Collective, she gives lavishly to globalist social justice causes and candidates, funds establishment and alternative left-wing media, and provides jobs for Biden and Obama administration officials. Unsurprisingly, her media outlets tend to report favorably on her other causes.
Under the Biden administration, Jobs has reached a new level of influence. Vice President Kamala Harris is a close friend of hers.
Laurene Powell Jobs of Emerson Collective introduces Vice President Kamala Harris at an in event in Los Angeles, CA on June 7, 2022. (PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images)
Jobs’ Emerson Collective is a major backer of Galvanize Climate Solutions, where John Podesta was an advisor before joining the White House to oversee billions in climate-related spending. So far, according to visitor logs, Jobs has visited the White House ten times since Biden took office, including a private meeting with Podesta.
Jobs accepted the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Biden on behalf of her late husband in July 2022, and she attended a state dinner held by Biden in December 2022.
President Joe Biden kisses Laurene Powell Jobs during the Presidential Medal of Freedom ceremony honoring her late husband in Washington, DC, on July 7, 2022. (SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)
Also of note, Jobs has the dubious honor of being the richest person in America (as far as I could tell) to benefit from pandemic-era PPP government handouts. Ozy Media, one of the outlets under her control, obtained a PPP “loan” in the $2–5 million range. Ozy abruptly shut down after allegations of fraud surfaced in 2021. One of the company’s senior executives had impersonated a YouTube executive on a conference call in order to woo investors. CEO Carlos Watson has since been arrested.
This is the sort of company that Joe Biden’s White House likes to keep.
Reid Hoffman (net worth: $2.1 billion)
Reid Hoffman, partner at Greylock and co-founder of LinkedIn, speaks during the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California, on May 2, 2023. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)
Reid Hoffman, who made his billions from helping launch PayPal and cofounding LinkedIn, has become one of the most prolific funders of Democrats in the country. He uses nonprofits and takes advantage of lenient disclosure laws to make large contributions in relative obscurity.
Hoffman is said to be the “most connected man in Silicon Valley.”
He was an early investor in Facebook, had big bucks in Airbnb, and sits on the board of Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, the biomedical arm of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, which is named for Facebook cofounder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan. Hoffman’s venture capital firm, Greylock Partners, has made eight-figure contributions to Democrat PACs and interest groups in recent elections. LinkedIn and Microsoft donate almost exclusively to Democrats.
Hoffman was responsible for a “false flag” operation in Alabama that planted the idea that the Roy Moore U.S. Senate campaign in 2018 “was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet,” according to an internal report on the scheme reviewed by the New York Times. Hoffman apologized for the deception after it had become public knowledge. All the evidence suggests he’s not an ethical guy, so he’s an ideal person to bankroll the institutional Democrat Party in the Biden era.
Even among pro-China tech moguls, Hoffman stands out. He has stated that the U.S. should emulate the Chinese communist regime, and he occasionally collaborates with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). He advises the left-wing Berggruen Institute, which runs an artificial intelligence research center at Peking University and regularly has summit meetings with Xi Jinping to help the world better understand China.
LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman and Michelle Yee arrive at a state dinner in honor of Chinese Communist leader Xi Jinping at the White House on Sept. 25, 2015. (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
As Peter Schweizer reported in his book Red-Handed, LinkedIn managed to stay in compliance with Chinese censorship rules until 2021. (Facebook and Twitter were banned by 2009). Hoffman has been the “go-to guy” when it comes to helping all other Silicon Valley firms cut foreign deals, particularly with China, according to the New York Times. To put it bluntly, this guy really loves Communist China.
Hoffman funds Courier Newsroom and ACRONYM with Laurene Powell Jobs as well as the Good Information Foundation with George Soros, all of which are organizations that push left-wing ideology on social media. Attorney and legal commentator Preston Moore claimed he was offered money from the Good Information Foundation to make videos attacking Donald Trump and “Trump Republicans,” which is a no-no as far as federal tax law is concerned when it comes to 501(c)(3) organizations. It is unclear whether the IRS has taken action against the group. I personally filed a complaint against it in 2022.
Microsoft, where Hoffman sits on the board of directors, is a major vendor for Biden-backed defense and climate initiatives.
Tom Steyer (net worth: $2.1 billion)
Tom Steyer speaks at the TIME CO2 Earth Awards Gala on April 25, 2023, in New York City. (Mike Coppola/Getty Images for TIME)
A San Francisco–based former hedge fund manager and climate activist, Tom Steyer spent $73 million on left-leaning causes during the 2020 cycle.
After the election, Biden hired Steyer to advise him on climate change. Steyer has advocated for the halting of drilling permits and the blocking of pipelines, and thus shares responsibility for the skyrocketing gas prices during Biden’s administration, as well as other downstream effects I examine in Breaking Biden.
Though Steyer plays the part of climate change combatant in public, his Farallon Capital Management had large investments in a four thousand-acre Australian coal mine that is expected to pump carbon into the atmosphere for decades. In addition, the fund has invested vast sums in companies with coal-fired power plants and coal mines in China and Indonesia. At least four appointed Biden White House staff have financial disclosures tying them to Steyer’s businesses.
This isn’t even the full extent of the list of billionaires who have bought an outsized role in Joe Biden’s America. For more, please check out Breaking Biden: Exposing the Hidden Forces and Secret Money Machine Behind Joe Biden, His Family, and His Administration.
Breaking Biden is available now in hardcover, eBook, and audiobook read by the author.
Alex Marlow is the Editor-in-Chief of Breitbart News and a New York Times bestselling author. His new book Breaking Biden is available now. You can follow Alex on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @AlexMarlow.
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