{"id":179445,"date":"2018-02-07T08:14:00","date_gmt":"2018-02-07T13:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/02\/07\/the-resistance-grift-edition\/"},"modified":"2018-02-07T08:14:00","modified_gmt":"2018-02-07T13:14:00","slug":"the-resistance-grift-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/02\/07\/the-resistance-grift-edition\/","title":{"rendered":"The Resistance: Grift Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scott Dworkin aggressively raised funds for his anti-Trump “resistance” group, the Democratic Coalition Against Trump, and then he kept most of the money for himself and his friends<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Omar Siddiqui couldn\u2019t make it to an August fundraiser in Beverly Hills for the Democratic Coalition Against Trump. But he ponied up the $2,000 ticket price after the group\u2019s senior adviser, Scott Dworkin, sent him a personal invitation.<\/p>\n

Months later, Siddiqui, the Democratic challenger to Rep. Dana Rohrabacher<\/a> (R-CA), was surprised to discover his money\u2014or three of every four dollars of it\u2014had gone to the coffers of consultants and lawyers the group leaned on to fight a libel suit, rather than pushing back against the president. <\/p>\n

When told by The Daily Beast how the group had spent his money, Siddiqui was, charitably speaking, not pleased. <\/p>\n

\u201cBeing an attorney,\u201d he said, \u201cI intend to investigate this further and look forward to receiving a full explanation about the use of donations.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Democratic Coalition, one of the many new progressive-minded organizations to bloom in the age of anti-Trump fervor, brought in nearly half a million dollars last year. Its donors include Siddiqui, a pair of Hollywood television producers, a former Real Housewife of Miami, and a member of the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors. The vast majority of its funds, however, have come from people whose names don\u2019t make it into Federal Election Commission<\/a> disclosures: the small, \u201cunitemized\u201d donors who give $200 or less.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s what the group has done with its money\u2014not how much it has brought in\u2014that has raised eyebrows among other operatives. <\/p>\n

The Democratic Coalition paid more than half of the money it raised last year to its employees or their consulting firms, according to Federal Election Commission records. Dworkin\u2019s Bulldog Finance Group was the chief beneficiary, drawing more than $130,000 from The Democratic Coalition.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is what is wrong with the Democratic Party establishment in a nutshell.<\/p>\n

The DNC requires candidates that it supports to spend a large proportion of their money on a consultant from their list, and Scott Dworkin is most assuredly on their list, at least until this story came out.<\/p>\n

First, we need to end the grifting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scott Dworkin aggressively raised funds for his anti-Trump “resistance” group, the Democratic Coalition Against Trump, and then he kept most of the money for himself and his friends: Omar Siddiqui couldn\u2019t make it to an August fundraiser in Beverly Hills for the Democratic Coalition Against Trump. But he ponied up the $2,000 ticket price after …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[701,513,368,374],"class_list":["post-179445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-activism","tag-campaign-finance","tag-corruption","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179445"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179445\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}