POLITICS: Non-profit groups bank billions from political insiders

Starting to lift the lid off a far, far larger scam, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick just nixed $7 billion in “advance payments” that Biden administration staffers aimed to divert to a “nonprofit” controlled by other Democratic insiders.

The bigger scam being, of course, how the left (and lots of plain-old Dem machines) feeds off government-funded “charities.”

It’s a huge part of the “swamp,” though of course its denizens pretend their motives don’t reek.

In this case, the Bidenites were in too much of a hurry to make the theft fully legal: After President Donald Trump’s victory last November, high-level staff all across the executive branch rushed to corral cash that hadn’t yet gone out the door, lest the MAGA crew actually vet where it was going.

So some plugged-in Dems quickly created Natcast, a public-private not-for-profit — which the Bidenites immediately chose to direct tens of billions of dollars in subsidies to tech firms under the CHIPS Act.

Except that law never allowed for such a cut-out to handle the outlays — which made the diversion plainly illegal: Even if nobody ever goes to jail for it, Lutnick can at least claw back the funds.

That was just part of the looting frenzy; another scheme parked $20 billion at CitiBank with an eye on ensuring the “environmental justice” grants went to Democratic allies, such as one linked to Stacey Abrams, the failed Georgia gov candidate and election-denier.

EPA chief Lee Zeldin moved to rescind that insider dealing after getting wind of Bidenites at his agency “throwing gold bars” away before the Trumpies could take over.

Notably, the $2 billion Abrams-linked grant was destined for Rewiring America, which is tied — via a network of interlocking shell nonprofits — to Arabella Advisors, the billion-dollar Democratic dark-money network founded and run by a former Clinton staffer.

All this cash was appropriated in the name of noble causes (protecting America’s high-tech edge; fighting climate change, etc.), but it enriches an awful lot of middle men on the way to (maybe) doing actual good.

In New York, such arrangements feed much of the dominant Democratic (and further left) political ecosystem: tens of billions in taxpayer funds directed to tax-exempt charities that theoretically stay away from politics, lobbying or elections. 

But nobody polices them, so supposed charities like Legal Aid, Make the Road or the Arab American Association of New York regularly engage in political protests — and provide day jobs for political operatives and future candidates, in alliance with the officials who reward them with funding. 

Indeed, you can no longer distinguish the local Democratic Party from the web of nonprofits: They support each other at the expense of the public, even as they posture about keeping “money out of politics.”

It’s great to see Team Trump starting to excise these nonprofit scams that so deeply infect US politics — but the amount of rot to remove is mind-boggling.