Recently, current and former Democrats have received emails recruiting for a “grassroots advocacy letter” campaign. Signed “FROM: A Deeply Concerned Democrat,” the email describes Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s candidacy as a “disaster for Joe Biden,” imploring recipients to “sign the letter” to “DEMAND he drop out of the 2024 Presidential race.”
Links in the email lead readers to an online survey. Rather than enabling users to sign an open letter, the survey asks a series of politically-charged questions, ending with a request for donations to “help Democrats take back the House, hold the Senate, and KEEP the White House in 2024.”
It is remarkably similar to last summer’s campaign to “BAN RFK JR.” from the ballot, rallying Democrats to action with hyperbolic language. Also like the former, this new attempt is DNC-endorsed, Big Pharma-friendly, and supported by funds of questionable origin—including from FTX, the world’s most notorious criminal cryptocurrency exchange enterprise.
The survey is hosted by a political action committee called AMERIPAC: The Fund For A Greater America. AMERIPAC was founded in 1992 by U.S. Representative Steny Hoyer to help get Democratic candidates elected to Congress. Hoyer served as second-in-command to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from 2007-2011 and again from 2019-2023, placing him near the top of the Democratic Party hierarchy. AMERIPAC boasts that Hoyer has “given or raised over $63.5 million to help elect Democrats to public office.”
Data published by the Federal Election Commission reveals that AMERIPAC has raised nearly $3.5 million in the current election cycle, under half of the $7.5 million it raised for the 2022 and 2020 elections, respectively. Apart from a $5 million haul in 2017-2018, the rest of AMERIPAC’s history suggests a “small potatoes” vehicle compared to the $154 million behemoth that is the DNC.
Where has this money come from? A review of AMERIPAC’s latest FEC filings reveals a large number of donations from Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue. ActBlue is facing increasing scrutiny following allegations by investigative reporter James O’Keefe that the platform is laundering donations using the identities of senior citizens without their knowledge.
But even among AMERIPAC’s legitimate small donations, many appear to have been generated through “pandemic profiteering.” In a November 2022 report, TrialSite News wrote that Hoyer and AMERIPAC “shamelessly use the [COVID-19] pandemic and vaccine politics to elicit visceral, impulsive responses of the most stalwart Democratic party supporters to advance cash.” Pointing to a November 22 Booster Vaccine Survey, TSN highlights the interplay between the Biden administration’s aggressive COVID-19 vaccine marketing and Democratic fundraising efforts.
Among the larger AMERIPAC donors disclosed in FEC paperwork are weapons manufacturers General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman, known as the “big five” members of America’s “military-industrial complex.” General Atomics, another major defense contractor, also donated through its PAC, as did Leidos and BAE Systems.
In fact, many of the corporations and labor unions funding AMERIPAC do so through either custom-made PACs or employee funds, inserting a convenient barrier between the organizations and their lobbying.
A good example is PowerPAC, the political advocacy branch of the Edison Electric Institute, whose anti-environmental lobbying activities during the George W. Bush administration were scrutinized by Kennedy in his 2004 book, Crimes Against Nature: How George W. Bush & His Corporate Pals are Plundering the Country & Hijacking Our Democracy.
EEI is an energy industry association whose members include Exelon, PG&E, and even state-run power corporations owned by the governments of Canada, Saudi Arabia, and China. Another member, General Electric, is named by Riverkeeper as the cause of “grave injustices that will continue for generations” due to its “legacy of toxic PCB pollution in the Hudson River.” Another AMERIPAC donor is the Nuclear Energy Institute, also an environmental adversary and Bush ally criticized by Kennedy in Crimes Against Nature.
Wall Street behemoth BlackRock is also an AMERIPAC donor, alongside Bank of America, BNY Mellon, Morgan Stanley, PNC, Prudential, and UBS. Even Big Tobacco gets its kick of the AMERIPAC can with Altria Group, formerly known as Philip Morris International, and Swisher International.
Then, there’s Big Pharma money, with AMERIPAC quite literally “Brought to You By Pfizer.” Another donor, the Advanced Medical Technology Association PAC, is a biotech lobby representing the interests of its members, including Pfizer, Bayer, Eli Lilly, and Johnson & Johnson, to name a few.
And we can’t forget Big Tech: Google is an AMERIPAC donor through the tech giant’s NetPAC, which lobbies the federal government on legislation related to “cybersecurity, privacy, employment policies, and immigration policies” – all topics which are firmly on the ballot in 2024. Microsoft and Amazon are also donors.
Finally, in 2022, AMERIPAC received funds from Nishad Singh, then-Director of Engineering at cryptocurrency firm FTX.
Singh and his boss, Sam Bankman-Fried, attracted media attention for their aggressive political spending during the 2022 election cycle, funneling millions of dollars into Democratic “dark money” operations (with token donations to Republicans, too). In February 2023, Singh pled guilty to six criminal charges related to wire fraud, money laundering, and campaign finance violations. Bankman-Fried was recently sentenced to 25 years in prison following the downfall of FTX, described as “one of the biggest financial frauds in U.S. history.”
The collective capacity of these industries to fuel a political machine is on full display with AMERIPAC; while a cursory glance at the FEC data shows most donations ranging from $2,500-5,000, many of the above-named companies and affiliated individuals have donated multiple times in the same year, resulting in a compounded financial impact of millions of dollars.
Despite AMERIPAC’s posturing, it appears increasingly like a shell organization playing its part in the DNC’s escalating campaign against Biden’s political opponents. AMERIPAC’s website features the candidates it endorsed for the 2020 race, with an equally outdated news section. Yet somehow, AMERIPAC remains well-funded by the country’s most powerful industry lobbies. While most Americans are unable to scrape together $1,000 in a pinch, the font of Democratic Party money never seems to run dry for those advancing the party line. Ironically, AMERIPAC’s email blast and survey do very little to advocate for Biden (or any other candidate) beyond bemoaning RFK Jr.’s “anti-vaccine views” and “COVID-19 conspiracy theories.”
When the nation’s military-industrial complex teams up with Big Pharma, Big Tech, Big Energy, and Big Banking to launch a “grassroots campaign,” it becomes all too obvious which groups feel most threatened by a third party candidacy like Kennedy’s.
Liam Sturgess is an investigative reporter for The Kennedy Beacon. He is also a writer for the Canadian Covid Care Alliance and founder of White Rose Intelligence. He was the founding co-host and producer of the Rounding the Earth podcast, and publishes a Substack series called Microjourneys.
