A consulting firm with dark money ties to the climate litigation campaign has taken the unusual and blatant step of editing its Wikipedia page in order to scrub away criticism and block transparency of its finances.
Arabella Advisors bills itself as a consulting firm that helps clients “increase their philanthropic impact” but has come under some scrutiny in recent years for setting up “dark money” non-profits that go beyond the realm of charitable giving and into political activism that benefits Democratic candidates and left-leaning causes.
Now it’s attempting to cover its tracks on the internet, as The Daily Beast reports:
“A network of progressive groups that’s seeded some of the most influential Democratic activist groups in the country is turning its attention and considerable resources to another task: sanitizing its Wikipedia page.
“Arabella Advisors, a philanthropic consulting firm, has enlisted a digital consultant to push for the deletion of portions of its Wikipedia page that the group deems biased or unreliable. It’s targeted excerpts on the page sourced to conservative news organizations and a leading good-government watchdog group, according to Wikipedia edit logs.”
Arabella Advisors has a set up a number of affiliated 501(c)(4) organizations, also known as “dark money” groups, which in turn have worked to seed dozens of left-leaning political groups.
This type of set-up comes with distinct advantages, including not having to disclose donors, as The Daily Beast notes:
“For Arabella’s page, Gaulke’s proposed changes included the deletion of information about how the organization and its affiliated 501(c)(4) ‘dark money’ group, the Sixteen Thirty Fund, effectively hid financial information about groups they support.
“Sixteen Thirty acts as a ‘fiscal sponsor’ for those groups, meaning, in effect, that they are not independent entities, but are, for legal and tax purposes, part of the Sixteen Thirty Fund itself. That means that they don’t have to independently disclose financial information to the Internal Revenue Service.
“Instead, Sixteen Thirty discloses its overall finances, lumping together all the income and expenditures for its scores of fiscal sponsorees into a single financial filing. That makes it all but impossible to divine the sums that those sponsorees themselves are bringing in or spending.”
Last week, Energy In Depth reviewed Arabella Advisors and Sixteen Thirty Fund’s role in the climate litigation campaign after cybersecurity group Citizen Lab released a report that attempted to dubiously link ExxonMobil to a hacking scandal through a group they call “Dark Basin.”
Citizen Lab is funded by many of the same groups supporting the “Exxon Knew” campaign and the Dark Basin report acknowledged the financial contributions of Mountain Philanthropies, which is a project of Arabella Advisors and the group’s CEO is a former treasurer of the Sixteen Thirty Fund.
Another group managed by Arabella is the Windward Fund, whose website states that it:
“Seeks to build a more impactful environmental movement by connecting people across diverse geographies, sectors, and communities, enabling them to share expertise and resources, and providing a vehicle for effective, community-based, grassroots grant making that elevates the voices of those most impacted by environmental degradation.”
One board member for the Windward Fund is Chuck Savitt, who serves as Director of Strategic Client Relationships for Sher Edling – the plaintiff’s law firm that is at the center of public nuisance lawsuits against ExxonMobil.
The major funders of the climate litigation campaign like the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Rockefeller Family Fund contribute to Arabella-managed funds.
Arabella Advisors is also involved in the divestment campaign, where it has published reports with wildly overexaggerated financial numbers to make the campaign look far more successful than it is.
Last year, Politico reported on the “gusher of secret money” coordinated by the Sixteen Thirty Fund in the 2018 midterm elections supporting Democratic candidates and left-leaning causes and noted that “megadonor Michael Bloomberg gave $250,000 to a super PAC linked to Sixteen Thirty Fund.”
Bloomberg created and funded the State Energy & Environmental Impact Center and the New York University Law School that that has placed Special Assistant Attorneys General in state attorney general offices to carry out Bloomberg’s agenda, including legal support for lawsuits against fossil fuel companies.
OpenSecrets.org reported that the Sixteen Thirty Fund has sponsored “pseudo local news outlets” that are made to appear as if they are actual news organizations but are instead pushing a partisan agenda:
“Facebook pages operating under the auspices of the Colorado Chronicle, Daily CO, Nevada News Now, Silver State Sentinel and Verified Virginia gave the impression of multiple free-standing local news outlets with unique names and disclaimers.
“But the sponsors of those ads are merely fictitious names used by the Sixteen Thirty Fund, according to digital ad data and incorporation records from the D.C. government.”
Read more at EID Climate
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