Behind the app that delayed Iowa’s voting results is a dark money operation
funded by anti-Sanders billionaires. Its top donor, Seth Klarman, is a
Buttigieg backer who has dumped money into pro-settler Israel lobby groups.
By Max Blumenthal
At the time of publication, twelve hours after voting in the Democratic Party’s
Iowa caucuses ended, the results have not been announced. The delay in
reporting is the result of a failed app developed by a company appropriately
named Shadow Inc.
This firm was staffed by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama campaign veterans and
created by a Democratic dark money nonprofit backed by hedge fund billionaires
including Seth Klarman. A prolific funder of pro-settler Israel lobby
organizations, Klarman has also contributed directly to Pete Buttigieg’s
campaign.
The delay in the vote reporting denied a victory speech to Sen. Bernie Sanders,
the presumptive winner of the opening contest in the Democratic presidential
primary. Though not one exit poll indicated that Buttigieg would have won, the
South Bend, Indiana mayor took to Twitter to confidently proclaim himself the
victor.
Pete Buttigieg
✔
@PeteButtigieg
Iowa, you have shocked the nation.
By all indications, we are going on to New Hampshire victorious. #IowaCaucuses
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The bizarre scenario was made possible by a mysterious voting app whose origins
had been kept secret by Democratic National Committee officials. For hours, it
was unclear who created the failed technology, or how it wound up in the hands
of Iowa party officials.
Though a dark money Democratic operation turned out to be the source of the
disastrous app, suspicion initially centered on former Hillary Clinton campaign
manager Robby Mook and his Russiagate-related elections integrity initiative.
Leveraging Russia hysteria into lucrative election opportunities
While Iowa Democratic Party Chairman Troy Price refused to say who was behind
the failed app, he told NPR that he “worked with the national party’s
cybersecurity team and Harvard University’s Defending Digital Democracy
project…” Price did not offer details on his collaboration with the Harvard
group, however.
The New York Times reported that this same outfit had teamed up with Iowa
Democrats to run a “drill of worst-case scenarios” and possible foreign
threats, but was also vague on details.
Robby Mook, the former campaign manager for Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016
presidential campaign, was the co-founder of Defending Digital Democracy. His
initiative arose out of the national freakout over Russian meddling that he and
his former boss helped stir when they blamed their loss on Russian
interference. Mook’s new outfit pledged to “protect from hackers and propaganda
attacks.”
He founded the organization with help from Matt Rhoades, a former campaign
manager for Republican Mitt Romney whose public relations company was sued by a
Silicon Valley investor after it branded him “an agent of the Russian
government” and “a friend of Russian President, Vladimir Putin.” Rhoades’ firm
had been contracted by a business rival to destroy the investor’s reputation.
As outrage grew over the delay in Iowa caucus results, Mook publicly denied any
role in designing the notorious app.
Franklin Leonard
✔
@franklinleonard
· 16h
You know it’s bad when...
https://twitter.com/robbymook/status/1224555538790395904 …
Robby Mook
✔
@RobbyMook
Sorry, folks. I did NOT have anythjng to do with building the Iowa caucus app.
I dont know anything about it, had no role in it, and dont own a company that
makes mobile appa. Please contact @iowademocrats with questions about it.
Franklin Leonard
✔
@franklinleonard
.@RobbyMook, you may not have built the app, but the @nytimes is reporting that
you were involved in stress testing it.
Any comment?
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/31/us/politics/iowa-caucuses-hacking-security.html
…
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Hours later, journalist Lee Fang reported that a previously unknown tech outfit
called Shadow Inc. had contracted with the Iowa Democratic Party to create the
failed technology. The firm was comprised of former staffers for Obama, Clinton
and the tech industry, and had been paid for “software rights” by the Buttigieg
campaign.
FEC filings show the Iowa Democratic party and Buttigieg campaign paid Shadow
Inc.
An Israel lobby moneyman’s path to Mayor Pete’s wine cave
Shadow Inc. was launched by a major Democratic dark money nonprofit called
Acronym, which also gave birth to a $7.7 million Super PAC known as Pacronym.
According to Sludge, Pacronym’s largest donor is Seth Klarman. A billionaire
hedge funder, Klarman also happens to be a top donor to Buttigieg and Amy
Klobuchar.
Though he has attracted some attention for his role in the campaign, Klarman’s
prolific funding of the pro-settler Israel lobby and Islamophobic initiatives
has gone almost entirely unmentioned.
Seth Klarman is the founder of the Boston-based Baupost Group hedge fund and a
longtime donor to corporate Republican candidates. After Donald Trump called
for forgiving Puerto Rico’s debt, Klarman – the owner of $911 million of the
island’s bonds – flipped and began funding Trump’s opponents.
The billionaire’s crusade against Trump ultimately led him to Mayor Pete’s wine
cave.
By the end of 2019, Klarman had donated $5600 to Buttigieg and pumped money
into the campaigns of Amy Klobuchar, Cory Booker and Kamala Harris as well.
The billionaire’s support centrist candidates appears to be not only by his own
financial interests, but by his deep and abiding ideological commitment to
Israel and its expansionist project.
As I reported for Mondoweiss, Klarman has been a top funder for major Israel
lobby outfits, including those that support the expansion of illegal
settlements and Islamophobic initiatives.
Klarman was the principal funder of The Israel Project, the recently disbanded
Israeli government-linked propaganda organization that lobbied against the Iran
nuclear deal and backed the Israeli settlement enterprise.
Klarman has heaped hundreds of thousands of dollars on the Middle East Media
Research Institute (MEMRI) and the American Jewish Committee. And he funded The
David Project, which was established to suppress Palestine solidarity
organizing on campuses across the US and battled to block the establishment of
a Muslim community center in Boston.
Through his support for the Friends of Ir David Inc, Klarman directly involved
himself in the Israeli settlement enterprise, assisting the US-based tax exempt
arm of the organization that oversaw a wave of Palestinian expulsions in the
occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan.
Other pro-Israel groups reaping the benefits of Klarman’s generosity include
Birthright Israel, the AIPAC-founded Washington Institute for Near East Policy,
and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), a neoconservative
think tank that helped devise Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign of economic
warfare on Iran.
Klarman is the owner of the Times of Israel, an Israeli media outlet that once
published a call for Palestinian genocide. (The op-ed was ultimately removed
following public backlash).
In recent weeks, Buttigieg has sought to distinguish himself from Sanders on
the issue of Israel-Palestine. During a testy exchange this January with a
self-proclaimed Jewish supporter of Palestinian human rights, the South Bend
mayor backtracked on a previous pledge to withhold military aid to Israel if it
annexed parts of the West Bank.
IfNotNow🔥
@IfNotNowOrg
NEW: The day after Trump unveiled his plan green-lighting Israeli annexation
and Netanyahu’s announcement of a cabinet vote on annexation this Tuesday,
@PeteButtigieg backtracked on his repeated promise that the "U.S. will not foot
the bill for annexation." #StopFundingOccupation
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Another recipient of Klarman’s funding, Amy Klobuchar, has taken a strongly
pro-Israel line, vowing to support Trump’s relocation of the US embassy from
Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Back home in the US, Klarman has contributed heavily to funding the CIA
Memorial Foundation. He is listed alongside former CIA Director George Tenet as
a top individual contributor to the group.
As The Grayzone reported, Klarman’s support for Buttigieg has been complimented
by a surprisingly long roster of former high-ranking CIA officials,
regime-change architects, and global financiers.
Battling Bernie with hedge fund money and sexism claims
Like Klarman, Donald Sussman is a hedge funder who has channeled his fortune
into Pacronym. He has given $1 million to the Super PAC and was also top donor
to Clinton in 2016.
Sussman’s Paloma Partners operates through a series of offshore shell
companies, and received tens of millions of dollars in the 2009 federal bailout
of the banking industry.
His daughter, Democratic operative Emily Tisch Sussman, declared on MSNBC in
September that “if you still support Sanders over Warren, it’s kind of showing
your sexism.”
Ibrahim
@ibrahimpols
MSNBC pundit says if you support Bernie Sanders over Elizabeth Warren it’s
“showing your sexism.”
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As Democratic elites like the Sussmans braced for a Bernie Sanders triumph in
Iowa, a mysterious piece of technology spun out by a group they supported
delayed the vote results, preventing Sanders from delivering a victory speech.
And the politician many of them supported, Pete Buttigieg, exploited the moment
to declare himself the winner. In such a strange scenario, the conspiracy
theories write themselves.
Max Blumenthal
Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and the author of several books,
including best-selling Republican Gomorrah, Goliath, The Fifty One Day War, and
The Management of Savagery. He has produced print articles for an array of
publications, many video reports, and several documentaries, including Killing
Gaza. Blumenthal founded The Grayzone in 2015 to shine a journalistic light on
America’s state of perpetual war and its dangerous domestic repercussions.
