Bernie Sanders siphons off $75,000 in campaign donations to family organization

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) moved tens of thousands of dollars from his campaign chest to his wife and stepson’s “progressive” think tank, Federal Election Commission records show.

The $75,000 cash transfer occurred on Aug. 8 and was listed as a “charitable donation” to the Sanders Institute, a nonprofit group founded in 2017 by the senator’s wife, Jane O’Meara Sanders, and her son, David Driscoll, Fox News reported. While not necessarily unlawful, ethics experts and attorneys have long expressed dismay over politicians funneling campaign money to relatives, holding the practice could lead to powerful families enriching themselves with donor funds.

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“The fact that the group is run by family is one of the things that encourages advance scrutiny,” Dan Backer, a Republican campaign finance lawyer, told the Washington Examiner.

It’s unclear what project under the think tank the $75,000 will be used for, and the Sanders Institute did not return a request for comment. The think tank was formed in the fallout of the senator’s failed 2016 presidential campaign, though it shut down briefly when he sought the White House in 2020, “so there could not even be an appearance of impropriety,” Jane Sanders said at the time.

The Sanders Institute seeks to “revitalize democracy by actively engaging individuals, organizations, and the media in the pursuit of progressive solutions to economic, environmental, racial and social justice issues,” according to its mission statement. Tax forms filed in 2022 show Driscoll pulled in over $152,000 in compensation for an average of 40 hours per week, while other board members were not paid.

The think tank had a revenue of over $716,000 in 2021 and spent about $373,000, according to financial disclosures. Its resources have in some cases gone toward seemingly boosting the senator’s image, including by spending almost $160,000 for a “timeline project” on its website based on his “work over four decades” on various policy areas, documents show.

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The Sanders Institute did not disclose on its most recent publicly available tax forms dishing out grants to like-minded organizations. News of the $75,000 transfer comes after the senator’s campaign between January and March reported $200,000 to the Sanders Institute — similarly for “charitable donations.”

In April 2021, Sanders’s presidential campaign sent $350,000 to the think tank, according to Federal Election Commission records. That same year, a nonprofit group directed by James M. Walton, son of James Carr Walton, heir to the Walmart fortune and one of the wealthiest businessmen in the world, granted $350,000 to the think tank.

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Combined, both 2021 donations made up 84% of the $716,000 that the think tank received during the fiscal year, Fox News reported.

The Sanders campaign did not return a request for comment.