How US$145 million in ‘dark money’ donations helped Joe Biden win the presidency

That amount of anonymous donations dwarfs the US$28.4 million spent on behalf of his Republican rival

Democrats have long decried the fundraising method, but they embraced it in their effort to defeat Trump

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Published: 11:14pm, 23 Jan 2021Updated: 11:14pm, 23 Jan 2021

President Joe Biden benefited from a record-breaking amount of donations from anonymous donors to outside groups backing him, meaning the public will never have a full accounting of who helped him win the White House.

Biden’s winning campaign was backed by US$145 million in so-called dark money donations, a type of fundraising Democrats have decried for years. Those fundraising streams augmented Biden’s US$1.5 billion haul, in itself a record for a challenger to an incumbent president.

That amount of dark money dwarfs the US$28.4 million spent on behalf of his rival, former president Donald Trump. And it tops the previous record of US$113 million in anonymous donations backing Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney in 2012.

Democrats have said they want to ban dark money as uniquely corrupting since it allows supporters to quietly back a candidate without scrutiny. Yet in their effort to defeat Trump in 2020, they embraced it.

For example, Priorities USA Action Fund, the super political action committee that Biden designated as his preferred vehicle for outside spending, used US$26 million in funds originally donated to its non-profit arm, called Priorities USA, to back Biden.

The donors of that money do not have to be disclosed. Guy Cecil, the chairman of Priorities USA, was unapologetic. “We weren’t going to unilaterally disarm against Trump and the right- wing forces that enabled him,” he said in a statement.