President Joe Biden’s favorite super PAC is in the eye of the storm for presenting “serious” financial discrepancies that could trigger a political scandal and serious legal problems for a key financier group for Democrats, according to an investigation by the online newspaper The Washington Free Beacon.
Future Forward, a group backed by the White House as a “pre-eminent super PAC” that supports Biden’s re-election, presented discrepancies in its finances of up to $12 million in 2021 in its tax returns and hundreds of thousands of dollars in other years.
According to the investigation, Future Forward “in 2021 claimed it received just $3.4 million in cash from its affiliated dark money group.”
However, that dark money group — the nonprofit Future Forward USA Action — “reported in its 2021 IRS tax return that it provided $15.3 million to the super PAC that year,” in a glaring accounting contradiction.
The revelation is important because this organization, run by former Obama campaign officials, has quietly raised a hefty $400 million over the past five years to run support ads for Biden and Democrats in swing states.
According to several legal experts interviewed by the Free Beacon, the twelve million not stipulated in their income tax return are just one of several errors in Future Forward’s finances, which should be enough for a federal investigation to be launched.
“The apparent numerous and blatant discrepancies in the recent filings by both the nonprofit and the super PAC are beyond troubling,” Kendra Arnold, executive director of the watchdog group Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust, told the Free Beacon. “This situation calls for an investigation.”
Arnold said the massive financial discrepancies represent accounting errors and more serious underlying problems.
Attorney Jason Torchinsky, a lawyer for nonprofit organizations, also said Future Forward’s million-dollar discrepancies could constitute “a serious matter that the Federal Election Commission would investigate.”
“It seems very odd to tell the IRS that you sent $15 million to a super PAC but to only have that super PAC report $3 million,” Torchinsky said. “If the FEC determined that there were $12 million in underreported receipts by a super PAC, that could result in a substantial fine because FEC penalties are often assessed based on the amount at issue.”
Political problems for Biden
An eventual investigation against Future Forward could lead to a political scandal for Joe Biden since the president himself has declared that dark money “is a problem for democracy,” and his campaign advisers have actively praised the group after it earned a prestigious place for its effectiveness in promoting ads.
“In 2020, when they really appeared from nowhere and started placing advertising, the Biden campaign was impressed by the effectiveness of the ads and the overall rigorous testing that had clearly gone into the entire project,” Anita Dunn, Biden’s senior adviser at the White House, told The New York Times about Future Forward. “[The group] really earned its place as the pre-eminent super PAC supporting the Biden-Harris agenda and 2024 efforts.”
The White House’s praise for Future Forward would not go unnoticed as the presidential campaign progresses.
In addition, in September 2022, the Democratic president himself warned of the dangers of dark money while his main PAC benefits from this controversial type of financing.
“Even foreign entities that aren’t allowed to contribute to political campaigns use dark money loopholes to try to influence our elections,” Biden said in 2022.
The discrepancies weren’t only in 2021
According to Free Beacon’s investigation, in addition to the twelve million unreported in 2021, the nonprofit also failed to declare hundreds of thousands of dollars between 2018 and 2020.
In 2020, Future Forward reported to the FEC that it received $467,204 in personal in-kind contributions from its dark money group. But the organization only reported $67,479 for the same contribution that same year. The figures should be exactly the same.
Likewise, in 2018 and 2019, the organization’s dark money group did not declare a dollar for personal in-kind services of the PAC. However, the group said it received $137,000 for the same type of funding.
These significant discrepancies could cause great legal damage to the organization, with fines and perhaps jail time for officials, election lawyers said.
“Future Forward USA Action admitted to making over $3 million in earmarked political contributions, where they apparently obscured the true super PAC donor’s identity by routing the money through the nonprofit,” Republican election attorney Charlie Spies told the Free Beacon. “The U.S. DOJ has sent people to prison for this sort of illegal activity, and the FEC has imposed major fines on conservative organizations accused of less blatant earmarking.”
