It’s a story that goes to the very heart of the left’s mountains of shadowy funding and professional activism: a foreign billionaire infamous for illegally funding Democrats, backing ghoulish medical treatments resulting in multiple deaths, and bankrolling a multi-million-dollar “dark money” campaign to transform America.
Meet Swiss-born Hansjörg Wyss (pronounced “Veese”), perhaps the most important megadonor you’ve never heard of. His Wyss Foundation, founded in 1998, quietly commands a stunning $2.2 billion in assets (as of 2018) and annually pours out tens of millions of dollars to activist groups—more than half a billion dollars between 2000 and 2018—so it’s little wonder that he’s been called the “new George Soros.”
Wyss is one of the best-connected megadonors on the left. He’s a member of the Democracy Alliance, a cabal of the rich and powerful that meets regularly to strategize funding to leftist activists. He’s also a substantial contributor to and sits on the board of the Center for American Progress, a leading liberal think tank founded by Clinton crony John Podesta, who chaired Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 presidential campaign. Podesta has reportedly advised Wyss on his funding of public policy efforts.
To the degree Wyss is known, it’s for his contributions to green groups, such as the Wilderness Society, where he sits on the board (along with a top lieutenant, Molly McUsic). In the past two decades Wyss has made substantial contributions to environmental groups on the center left and far left, including the Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife, Trout Unlimited, National Religious Partnership for the Environment, and Natural Resources Defense Council.
But his money extends beyond environmental advocacy. For years Wyss has backed groups involved in getting out the vote for Democratic politicians, such as the League of Conservation Voters, Environment America, and even the infamous ACORN successor group Project Vote (defunct since 2017).
This brand of “philanthropy” has made this billionaire a hero to the same Acela Corridor liberals who loathe the very idea of billionaires and who howled over foreign meddling in U.S. politics for years after the 2016 election. The left’s hypocrisy aside, Wyss is the wrong horse to back.
He’s declined to tell even the New York Times whether he holds U.S. citizenship and as recently as 2014 stated that he does not hold a green card granting permanent residency. In 2016 he got into trouble when it was revealed that Wyss had contributed $41,000 to Democratic political action committees (PACs) in violation of the federal government’s strict ban on foreign nationals giving to U.S. political campaigns. This foreign national has also donated at least $1 million through his foundation to States Newsroom since 2018, a bundle of partisan attack sites posing as impartial news outlets spawned by Washington, D.C., consultants Arabella Advisors.
