MeidasTouch News: Congressional Integrity Project Launches Investigation To Expose Funders of Extremist MAGA Org ‘Capital Research Center’
Congressional Integrity Project launched a new public online database Friday to track and document dark money donors to longtime D.C. firm Capital Research Center (CRC), a right-wing organization with extremist ties that regularly attacks progressive donors, organizations, and civil society groups on behalf of the Trump White House.
Congressional Integrity Project states the mission of the new database, called Who Funds Capital Research Center, is to identify and expose the donors who are behind the so-called “watchdog” that is in reality a bigoted MAGA attack machine that spreads disinformation and supports right-wing extremist activity.
CRC claims it is a “nonpartisan” watchdog group organized to research and identify private dark money donors to politicians and political organizations. But despite claiming to be nonpartizan, CRC has been the unofficial research arm of the RNC and the Trump movement for years.
CRC President Scott Walter has routinely briefed senior White House officials and testified before Congress at least four separate times about the identity of progressive donors and who they support. One of CRC’s researchers, Ryan Mauro, even admitted openly that one of his late 2025 reports was designed to “equip the Trump administration with what they need in order to take action” against “George Soros.”
Despite claiming that their goal is to root out dark money in politics, CRC is itself a dark money-funded group that refuses to identify their donors. Despite their secrecy, several major right-wing foundations have been identified as funders of CRC, including The Charles Koch Foundation, Donors Trust, The Bradley Foundation, and the Sarah Scaife Foundation.
In 2003, CRC funneled $600,000 in dark money funding to a right-wing activist group led by Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. By acting as a fiscal sponsor for the group, Crowdsourcers for Culture and Liberty, CRC was able to shield the donors’ identity and the activities of Thomas’ group from public view.
Scott Walter even appeared in the discredited 2002 film “2000 Mules,” produced and directed by Trump-pardoned convicted felon Dinesh D’Souza, which claimed to present hard evidence of the 2020 election being stolen for Joe Biden.
D’Souza later admitted his film was a work of fiction after his production company was sued for defamation. CRC has also published articles comparing climate science to white supremacist eugenics, and historically was the research arm of the tobacco industry that worked to undermine public health anti-smoking campaigns. Tobacco giant Phillip-Morris referred to the CRC in internal memos as “a long-time friend.”
The CRC itself is also rife with bigotry and ties to extremism. A former CRC employee, Ashley Rae Goldenberg, was a supporter of the so-called “Groyper” movement: online fans of neo-nazi podcast host Nick Fuentes, who promote white supremacy and violent misogyny. Goldberg publicly justified the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man who was murdered while jogging in a Georgia neighborhood by three White men who were later found guilty of attempted kidnapping and violent hate crimes.
Goldberg remained employed by CRC for months despite the organization being alerted to her conduct.
Walter himself is a Christian Nationalist extremist who has compared gay marriage to polygamy, bestiality, and pedophilia. CRC Vice President Matthew Vadum wrote that registering low-income Americans to vote was akin to “handling out burglary tools to criminals,” in an article titled, Registering the Poor to Vote is Un-American.
“Capital Research Center has made a business out of demanding transparency from everyone else while hiding behind a wall of foundations, dark money conduits, and donor-advised funds that keep its own backers off the public record. That ends today,” Congressional Integrity Project Spokesperson Jeremy J. Funk said in a statement.
“We followed the money — more than $16 million from nearly 200 funders — and we are putting it all in one place for every reporter, lawmaker, and citizen who wants to know who is bankrolling the machine that fuels these baseless, partisan attacks on civil society. CRC wants to talk about transparency. Let’s start with theirs. No entity should go to the Capital Research Center for information – they are nothing but a discredited, partisan outfit.”
WhoFundsCRC.org allows reporters, researchers, and the public to search the full donor database, trace the network of influence, and read the receipts documenting CRC’s record.
Almost 200 funders have directed at least $16 million to CRC between 2017 and 2025. The largest documented funders include DonorsTrust, widely described as the conservative movement’s dark money ATM, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, and the Diana Davis Spencer Foundation.
These donations include:
- $3.2 million from Donors Trust, a donor-advised fund that is a notable recipient of contributions from the Koch family, and is known as “the dark-money ATM of the right.” Other Donors Trust grantees include climate change denial initiatives, SPLC-designated hate groups, nonprofits closely associated with Donald Trump, and even groups linked to white supremacy.
- $2.4 million from the Sarah Scaife Foundation, one of the nation’s largest foundations funding “the development of conservative thought” including climate change denial in the US and internationally.
- $1.8 million from Fidelity Charitable, the nation’s largest grantmaker. Fidelity Charitable’s contributors have used the fund to funnel money to anti-Muslim, anti-abortion, anti-immigration, and white supremacist groups.
- $1.4 million from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, “one of the most powerful philanthropic forces behind America’s conservative movement” that is particularly known for funding media outlets that align with its leadership’s policy priorities. Co-founder Harry Bradley was also a founding member of the far-right, conspiracy-minded John Birch Society.
- $1.2 million from the Diana Davis Spencer Foundation, which is led by affiliates of the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation.
- $615,000 from the Fred A Lennon Charitable Trust and the Lozick Family Foundation, two closely-related foundations established by the estate of a secretive Republican donor who was the nation’s top political contributor for several years in the 1990s.
- $445,000 from the Lloyd and Vivian Noble Foundation and the Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation, two closely related foundations. Virginia Noble Heckman, president of the former foundation and board member of the latter, is a Heritage Foundation trustee.
- $325,000 from the Searle Freedom Trust, which has contributed “more money to conservative non-profits than nearly any other private foundation in recent years,” including funding climate change denial.
- $225,000 from the JP Humphreys Foundation, whose Vice President currently leads the SEC after being appointed to the position by Donald Trump.
- $200,000 from the John William Pope Foundation, whose leader is known for donations that “have shifted the political culture of North Carolina to the right” in collaboration with the Heritage Foundation.
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