The way the Koch brothers tell it, they are only interested in promoting "free enterprise" and try not to get muddied up in other issues that the Republican Party has built its brand around, like the assault on women's reproductive rights.
But their tax records tell a very different story. Adele M. Stan at RH Reality Check did some digging into available records to expose the many, many ways the billionaire brothers are funding anti-reproductive rights groups like the Susan B. Anthony List, Americans United for Life and the Concerned Women for America Legislative Action Committee:
RH Reality Check’s review of tax records filed by the Center to Protect Patient Rights (CPPR), taken together with a Politico report on the tax records of Freedom Partners, show these so-called free-market organizations, both linked to the Koch brothers, dispensing tens of millions of dollars to groups whose mission it is to end reproductive rights. CPPR was founded in 2009, and is described by the Los Angeles Times as “a primary conduit for anonymous political money in the 2010 midterm [congressional] election.” Freedom Partners was founded two years later, just in time to help shape the landscape of the 2012 presidential, congressional, and legislative races.
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RH Reality Check, examining CPPR’s tax filings, confirmed reporting by NARAL Pro-Choice America and American Bridge that in 2010, it granted more than $1 million to the Susan B. Anthony (SBA) List, about half of the $2 million the group spent that year on advertising for anti-choice candidates and against pro-choice candidates in state and federal races across the country. The CPPR grant accounted for nearly 15 percent of the group’s overall revenues that year.
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So where does CPPR get its money? Like other 501(c)(4) non-profits, it doesn’t have to disclose its donors. But tax filings from Freedom Partners, a 501(c)(6) organization, show, according to an investigation by Politico’s Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei, that since November 2011 CPPR took in some $115 million from Freedom Partners, which Politico editors dubbed “the Koch brothers’ secret bank.”
You can (and should) read the rest here, and check out a inforgraphic linking the brothers to these groups below.
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