The DDT Network: A Rich Never Trump Machine Built to Last

Summary: Defending Democracy Together (DDT), a Never Trump advocacy group created by former Republicans Bill Kristol and Sarah Longwell, has sprawled into a network of left-leaning political action committees, policy nonprofits and media properties. The DDT Network has raised at least $151 million since 2018 and—if anything—the money flow appears to be increasing. So far, it looks built to last, and is beginning to resemble a political party infrastructure.

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Erstwhile Republicans William “Bill” Kristol and Sarah Longwell are the managers of a financially flush Never Trump network that has raised a minimum of $151 million since the pair began working together in 2018. For lack of a better description, what they have created can be called the “DDT Network.”

Kristol is the principal officer and Longwell the executive director of both Defending Democracy Together (DDT) and the Defending Democracy Together Institute (DDTI). Longwell is also listed as treasurer of a political action committee (PAC) named the Republican Accountability PAC.

DDTI was the launching pad for The Bulwark, a Never Trump media property (profiled elsewhere in this report) that is now operated as a for-profit concern through the Longwell-owned Center Enterprises.

All these entities and others with financial ties to them share the same office address in Washington, DC, with Longwell Partners, Ms. Longwell’s consulting firm.

Founder of the Weekly Standard, a now defunct neoconservative magazine, Kristol is a DC dinosaur who has been orbiting federal power so long that he was literally an intern in the Nixon White House. A 2019 report for the New York Times described him as “someone who has probably picked over as many greenroom fruit plates as anyone in Washington” and a member of “the category of affable gasbag that Trump marginalized as a relic of whatever nonpopulist establishment still exists inside the G.O.P.”

According to her Longwell Partners biography, the less well known (and less ancient) Longwell is “a long-time Republican strategist and former national board chair of the Log Cabin Republicans.”

Hoovering Up Democratic dollars

Although Kristol and Longwell share Republican roots, well over half the known loot landing on the DDT Network has been hoovered up from hefty donors to regime Democrats and causes.

Through 2023, according to the most recently provided IRS reports, Defending Democracy Together has raised a cumulative total of $77.7 million, with $17.5 million of that total (23 percent) provided by just seven lefty donor nonprofits.

In 2020, the Sixteen Thirty Fund provided a $10,050,000 grant to DDT. Part of the Arabella Advisors network, a May 2021 New York Times credited Sixteen Thirty with giving “more than $63 million to super PACs backing Democrats or opposing Republicans in 2020” and described it as “among the leading dark money spenders on the left” (emphasis added).

As that implies, it is not clear who gave Sixteen Thirty the money for DDT. And overall, DDT spent $15.4 million to help defeat Donald Trump in 2020, winning it the top spot on the OpenSecrets ranking of largest “dark money” spenders.

So, while it is reasonable to guess that most of DDT’s support came from similar left-leaning donors, a fully transparent public accounting of DDT’s financial sources is neither legally required nor likely to be provided. There is a long tradition of anonymous political speech in America that dates back to Ben Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and other founding Patriots.

Some of the known hefty lefty givers to DDT since 2018 include Democracy Fund Voice ($4.4 million cumulative since 2018), American Future Republic ($1 million), Pacific Environmental Coalition ($1 million), Ground Game Texas ($625,000), All Americans Vote ($250,000), and the Center for Election Innovation & Research ($200,000).

Democracy Fund Voice is a giving vehicle for billionaire eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, a serial donor to Democratic and left-leaning causes. Similarly, American Future Republic is a donor vehicle for LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, another billionaire funder of the Democratic Party and its causes.

Hoffman has also given $9.5 million to the DDT Network’s Republican Accountability PAC. Other Democratic billionaires shoveling funds to the Never Trumper PAC included:

• Lefty investor and donor Seth Klarman ($7.7 million.)
• Netflix co-founder and billionaire Democratic donor Reed Hastings ($6.9 million.)
• San Francisco real estate billionaire John Pritzker ($3 million.)
• Sam Rawlings Walton, one of the Walmart fortune’s lefty donors ($1 million.)
• Kathryn Murdoch, the lefty daughter-in-law of the Fox News founder ($2 million.)
• Susan Mandel, wife of hedge fund manager Stephen Mandel ($2 million.)
• DDT also transferred $5 million to Republican Accountability PAC in 2024.

The $38.2 million combined from those seven left-leaning billionaires and DDT’s dark money infusion accounts for almost 70 percent of the $55.3 million raised by the Republican Accountability PAC through the 2024 election.

DDT also sent nearly $6.8 million during the 2020 election to Republican Voters Against Trump (RVAT). This was more than two-thirds of the $10.1 million raised by RVAT for the 2020 race. Pritzker and billionaire carbon dioxide warrior Michael Bloomberg also gave $500,000 each to RVAT in 2020.

RVAT disbanded after 2020, and the DDT Network appears to have shifted most of its explicitly political activities to the Republican Accountability PAC, which was not active until after the 2020 races.

Donors to the DDT Institute educational nonprofit reported a cumulative total of $21.1 million in revenue through 2023, almost half of which ($10.4 million) arrived in 2023. Here again, $6.5 million of the 2023 revenue (62 percent) came from eight foundations with a history of bankrolling left-leaning causes:

• The Hopewell Fund is, like the Sixteen Thirty Fund, a dark money group managed by Arabella Advisors. Hopewell gave $2 million to DDTI in 2023.
• The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, one of the nation’s largest lefty donors (with net assets of $13 billion) gave $5 million.
• The Catena Foundation, a funding vehicle for the aforementioned Sam R. Walton, gave $1 million.
• The Skoll Fund, a lefty funding vehicle for former eBay president Jeffrey Skoll, gave $1 million.
• The David and Lucile Packard Foundation (another giant lefty donor foundation with net assets of $8 billion) gave $600,000.
• The Democracy Fund, another Omidyar-financed fund, gave $250,000.
• The Rockefeller Brothers Fund gave $75,000.
• The Amalgamated Charitable Foundation, a donor-advised fund spun off from the bank affiliated with the Service Employees International Union, gave $50,000.

The above is just a summary of the large, known donors to the three main branches of the DDT Network. There is no reason to assume that most of the lower-dollar donors are anything but Democratic-leaning givers as well.

Funding Priorities

A lot of what the DDT Network has done with its donations is consistent with the presumed intent of its Democratic Party–aligned donors.

The Republican Accountability PAC, for example, spent all of its $5.2 million in independent expenditures for 2022 either supporting Democrats or opposing Republicans. And in 2024, of its $33.8 million in independent expenditures 99.9 percent was spent either to oppose Trump or to support the campaign of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.

The DDT Institute educational nonprofit reported spending a cumulative total of almost $3.6 million developing The Bulwark’s Never Trump media platform before spinning it off to Longwell’s for-profit firm after 2021. As explained in the nearby profile, The Bulwark is profitable but sells confirmation bias for Never Trumpers and anti-Trumpers rather than helpful commentary.

Beginning in 2023 the DDT Institute began funding a very different media property: The Liberal Patriot. Co-founded by political analysts Ruy Teixiera and John Halpin, the Liberal Patriot criticizes—from a left-center perspective—the Democratic Party’s abandonment of the working class in favor of failed “woke” culture and climate agendas. Rather than be an anti-energy party driven by the agendas of left-wing nonprofits such as the Sierra Club, the Liberal Patriot sells the vision of a centrist Democratic Party that prioritizes prosperity and energy abundance.

As of this writing, the Liberal Patriot has 49,000 subscribers on Substack, including yours truly, a nonpaying subscriber who signed up before knowing the connection to the DDT Network. Unlike the more popular, but intellectually light content at The Bulwark, the Liberal Patriot provides an important perspective for anyone who wonders if there are any sane Democrats remaining.

The DDT Institute reported a $1.3 million grant to the Liberal Patriot nonprofit in 2023. The Liberal Patriot nonprofit’s first IRS filing was for 2023, and it listed the DDT Network address as its mailing address.

The DDT Network has funded two groups run by Never Trumper George Conway. Another erstwhile Republican, Conway is also one of several estranged co-founders of the Never Trump Lincoln Project and the spouse of Trump political consultant Kellyanne Conway. (One might presume poor George’s recent Christmas party invitations have become . . . complicated.)

As of 2023, Conway was listed as the principal officer for both the Society for the Rule of Law and Democracy (an educational nonprofit) and the C & B Group (an advocacy nonprofit that now does business as the Society for the Rule of Law Institute.) Both nonprofits share the same office address as the other DDT Network groups and appear to be funding vehicles for the Society for the Rule of Law (SFL), an attorney network for Never Trump Republicans such as Conway.

IRS filings through 2023 show the two Conway-run nonprofits received nearly $663,000 combined from the two DDT Network nonprofits. In reports for 2022 and 2023, DDT reported giving a cumulative total of $312,500 to C & B Group advocacy nonprofit; and for 2023 the DDT Institute reported a $450,250 grant to Conway’s SFL educational nonprofit.

Similarly, Principles First, a Never Trump movement group that seeks to eclipse the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), has a pair of nonprofits that have received a combined total of $612,500 from DDT Network groups. In 2023, DDT gave a $212,500 grant to Principles First for America Ltd (an advocacy nonprofit) and the DDT Institute gave another $400,000 to the Principles First For America Foundation (an educational nonprofit.)

As with the Conway groups, the pair of Principles First nonprofits also report their home to be the same address as The Bulwark and the rest of the DDT Network.

Since 2020, Longwell Partners, the communications firm owned by Sarah Longwell, has received a combined total of $21.3 million as a contractor for the DDT Network. This includes more than $12.5 million in cumulative payments from DDT, $2.8 million from the DDT Institute, and more than $5.9 million cumulative, combined payments from the two political action committees.

The most recent filings with the IRS for the DDT Institute and the Federal Election Commission for the Republican Accountability PAC show both having their strongest fundraising years since the creation of the DDT Network in 2018. The shift to funding the Liberal Patriot, the Conway groups, and Principles First could also be interpreted as an effort to create—and control—the movement infrastructure that is normally associated with a political party.

Are they trying to help Democrats win . . . or replace them?

The Never Trumper DDT Network was built to oppose the MAGA movement and prevent Trump from winning the presidency. It may have failed at that. But like its ideological enemy, the DDT Network looks like it may also be around for a while.

Source: https://capitalresearch.org/article/the-ddt-network-a-rich-never-trump-machine-built-to-last/