Hansjorg Wyss is the new George Soros for the US right – 01/27/2024 – Market

His eyes are fixed in an icy stare, his lips curl into a snarl.

Below the portrait is a warning: “Foreign Influence in US Elections.”

What follows is a brief dossier on the mysterious figure in the photo — a “radical” Swiss billionaire with a “dark money ATM” and a secret plan for the United States, the text says.

This is Hansjorg Wyss, the man American conservatives are considering as a new George Soros, the businessman turned philanthropist and a villain for the right.

The eight-page report was prepared by Americans for Public Trust (APT), a group linked to Leonard Leo, an influential conservative.

And it also illustrates how Republicans are trying to portray Wyss as the left’s next hypnologist.

As the 2024 US presidential election approaches, troubling questions are emerging about the potential for further election interference.

The US intelligence community has warned that Russia is again using spies, social networks and state media to undermine democratic elections around the world.

But the Conservative campaign against Wyss offers a glimpse of something more familiar: how “dark money” [dinheiro obscuro, em tradução livre] difficult to trace is used by both the right and the left in today’s polarized US.

On one side are operators like Leo, who have spent decades pushing American courts to the right and are now raising millions for groups opposed to abortion rights, climate change initiatives, and “woke” companies and schools. [que apoiam causas identitárias, por exemplo].

On the other side are donor-influencers like Wyss, a longtime patron of environmental and health-related causes.

Wyss, 88, has few known connections to Soros other than a similar environmental agenda. But his wealth has been circulating through the US liberal ecosystem for years, even as Democrats have denounced dark money in American politics, which allows politically active groups to protect the identities of their donors.

For the right, his political views, wealth and foreign origins inevitably provoke comparisons with Soros. Soros, who is Jewish and a Holocaust survivor, was born in Hungary. Attacks against him are often seen as anti-Semitic.

“The best kind of defense is attack,” Caroline Fredrickson, a senior fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, a New York think tank, said of the conservative push.

Republican strategists like Leo want to take the spotlight off themselves and shine it on wealthy liberals like Wyss, he said. Fredrickson has worked for organizations that have received funding from Wyss, including the liberal think tank Demos.

Wyss and Leo declined to be interviewed for this story. When Leo faced scrutiny for his ties to conservative Supreme Court justices last May, he told the New York Times, “It’s long past time for the conservative movement to be among the ranks of George Soros, Hansjorg Wyss, Arabella Advisors and other philanthropists of left, fighting side by side in defense of our Constitution and its ideals”.

APT paid more than $480,000 to CRC Advisors, Leo’s consulting firm, last year, according to tax returns.

She receives almost all of her money from DonorsTrust, a conservative fund that has received hundreds of millions of dollars from groups linked to Leo, the affidavits show.

No one disputes that Wyss, a Swiss citizen who lives in Wilson, Wyoming, donated a lot of money in the US. He certainly has a lot of money to give away.

Founder of medical device maker Synthes and co-owner of Chelsea, Wyss has an estimated fortune of more than $10 billion, $3 billion more than Soros, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Wyss sold Synthes to Johnson & Johnson for $19.7 billion in 2012.

Since 2016, Wyss’s Washington-based philanthropic foundation, the Wyss Foundation, has donated more than $807 million in the U.S., mostly to environmental causes, according to a Bloomberg News analysis of tax returns.

Over the same period, the foundation’s advocacy and lobbying arm, the Berger Action Fund, donated more than $343 million to liberal groups, including those fighting Republican gerrymandering efforts and funding PACs. [political action committee, os comitês de ação política] Democrats.

Both Wyss groups say they restrict donations to be used directly to influence U.S. political campaigns or benefit specific candidates.

Federal law prohibits foreign nationals from making contributions or donations directly or indirectly in connection with federal, state or local elections or advertisements promoting political candidates in the United States.

At the same time, Wyss has occupied a central position in concentric circles of influence.

He is a board member of the Center for American Progress, a think tank with close ties to the Democratic establishment.

He revealed that he had donated more than $208 million to the Sixteen Thirty Fund, a left-wing clearinghouse that does not disclose its backers.

Sixteen Thirty said in a statement that it did not use any of Wyss’ money for election work.

The Fund for a Better Future, a left-leaning grant-making organization, said it “carefully manages and monitors” its funding to ensure Wyss’ money is not used for election purposes.

Marneé Banks, spokeswoman for Wyss’s two nonprofits, said they both “prohibit donations from being used to support or oppose candidates or political parties or otherwise engage in election activities.”

Even before Soros, 93, announced last year that he would step away from his political network, conservatives were searching for a would-be villain to replace him.

Another conservative group, the Capital Research Center, labeled Wyss in 2022 as “the new George Soros.”

Americans for Public Trust filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) in 2021 alleging that Wyss’s groups were violating U.S. campaign finance regulations that prohibit contributions from foreign nationals.

The FEC investigated and as of 2022 found no evidence of wrongdoing, although the agency’s general counsel criticized the groups for failing to provide evidence of the “restrictive donation agreements.”

The same year, the FEC cited Wyss for making $119,000 in direct political contributions in violation of federal law over about 16 years. The commission refused to take action because the statute of limitations had expired.

None of Wyss’s groups have been accused by federal authorities of abusing their status as tax-exempt nonprofits.

Banks, the spokeswoman for Wyss’s groups, said “dark money interests” are spreading misinformation about Wyss and denigrating his philanthropic efforts in areas such as conservation and health.

Its nonprofits are in full compliance with U.S. law, she said.

Wyss’ statements did not dissuade conservative groups from attacking him.

“Time after time, Wyss has made sweeping allegations without any evidence, and now he is attacking the only public report that exposes his political activity,” said Caitlin Sutherland, executive director of the APT. “Wyss has openly bragged about being able to operate unnoticed and is upset after being exposed.”

Scott Walter, president of the Capital Research Center, says the suggestion that Wyss doesn’t influence U.S. politics is “ridiculous in itself.”

However, the APT has no evidence that Wyss exceeded any limits. Walter said he is frustrated because the billionaire has not provided evidence that he is not exerting influence.

“You just have to take their word for it,” Walter said. “If there really are restrictions or safeguards in place, that should be easy to prove.”

Republicans on Capitol Hill are also attacking Wyss. Several House committees have announced that they are investigating the Swiss billionaire and his influence.

The House Ways and Means Committee is considering whether the law should prevent foreigners from creating tax-exempt advocacy groups.

An election reform bill co-sponsored by 127 House Republicans would ban all tax-exempt entities from spending foreign money in U.S. elections. Such proposals have little chance of passing in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

“The only people who should influence the results of American elections are Americans,” said Representative Jason Smith, Republican of Missouri, who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee and is an ally of former President Donald Trump, who has criticized the politically troubled investigation into Russian election interference.

Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, who has studied money in politics, says conservatives had to demonize Soros for years before turning him into a bogeyman for the far right.

Today, Republicans are “testing” Wyss and others to see who can become their next Soros.

“Replacing it won’t be something that happens overnight,” Ziegler said.