Former American hedge fund manager (retired in 2012), one of the few American criminals directly exposed in the 2016 Panama Papers scandal, and current Rockefeller / Soros style ‘philanthropist’ who is among the world’s wealthiest and largest supporters of radical environmental groups, left-wing causes, Democratic candidates, and even radical groups such as Antifa. Steyer built his multi-billion-dollar fortune by investing and promoting the coal industry, which has attracted criticism from even left-wing environmental groups. He is the billionaire behind the $20 million ‘Impeach Trump’ ad campaign. Steyer is buddies with John Podesta and is in the e-mails exchanged with him using pedophile code and exposed by Wikileaks. He is the founder of NextGen America, a political organization working to “to prevent climate disaster, promote prosperity, and protect the fundamental rights of every American,” according to its website. In 2010, Steyer and his wife Kat Taylor signed onto the Giving Pledge of Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett, agreeing they would gift half of their wealth to charity during their lifetime.
Steyer founded Farallon Capital, a very successful hedge fund — he turned $8 million into $30 billion in 20 years, according to Men’s Journal. He graduated first in his class from Phillips Exeter Academy and summa cum laude from Yale. He then went to Stanford business school before beginning a two-year stint at Goldman Sachs. According to Forbes, his personal fortune is an estimated $1.61 billion.
Steyer was implicated, though never indicted, in an influence-peddling scandal that resulted in the resignation of Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber in 2015. Steyer is also one of the few Americans directly exposed in the 2016 Panama Papers scandal, the leaking of 11.5 million documents that illustrate how wealthy individuals keep personal financial information private and engage in fraud and political corruption.
A big bundler of campaign funds for Democratic candidates – including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton – Steyer is the biggest individual donor to Democratic candidates and outside groups that supported Democrats in the 2016 election cycle.
In July 2016, the Energy & Environment Legal Institute, a non-profit watchdog group, released a report titled “Buying the Democrat Party Lock, Stock and Barrel,” which details how Steyer “is seeking to protect his solar energy investments by spending tens of millions of dollars on key 2016 races, buying a plank in the 2016 Democrat platform, and trying to silence debate from those who challenge his view on ‘climate change’ by using select attorneys general to prosecute ‘dissenters.’”
Steyer’s total political spending in the 2016 elections came to $89,794,744. That amount was $12 million more than the leading conservative donor, and nearly as much as the next three liberal contributors combined. As CBS reported, he spent more than $75 million to “mobilize millennials for progressive causes. ”The New York Times reported on January 8, 2018 that Steyer pledged to spend $30 million to get Democrats elected to Congress with the aim of impeaching President Donald Trump. If you add in the $73,725,000 Steyer spent in the 2014, he has dedicated more than $193 million of his personal fortune to elect Democrats, mostly at the federal level, in just three federal election cycles. In none of those cycles has Steyer’s goal of giving Democrats control of Congress come to pass.
In October 2017, the billionaire launched a campaign, calling for the impeachment of “mentally unstable” President Donald Trump, who has brought America “to the brink of nuclear war.” He addressed the public in a video:
Background and Fortune Building
Steyer was born in New York City on June 27, 1957. His father, Roy Henry Steyer, was a partner in New York Law Firm Sullivan & Cromwell and served as a prosecutor at the Nuremburg Trials. Tom attended the prestigious boys’ schools Buckley and the Phillips Exeter Academy, eventually graduating summa cum laude in economics and political science from Yale University. Steyer went on to earn an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. His brother James P. Steyer became a child advocate and civil rights attorney, and is now a director at several Steyer-backed organizations. Steyer’s other brother, Hume R. Steyer, became a trust and real estate lawyer. Tom Steyer currently serves on the Stanford University Board of Trustees and is a director of the left-wing think tank the Center for American Progress and long-time friend of the organization’s founder, John Podesta.
After graduating from Stanford Business School, Steyer worked at Goldman Sachs as an associate before becoming a partner and member of the Executive Committee at equity firm Hellman & Freidman. After leaving Hellman & Friedman in 1986, Steyer took $15 million in seed capital to found Farallon Capital Management, a high performance hedge fund headquartered in San Francisco. By 2011, Farallon Capital Management was the 12th largest hedge fund in the world, managing $21.5 billion in assets.
In 2004, Steyer was on the receiving end of left-wing criticism when student activists at Yale began investigating the methods Steyer used to amass his fortune, seeking disclosure of private equity at universities. Over the past decade, Farallon has become the pre-eminent financer of coal transactions in Asia and Australia, allowing him to accumulate a $1.6 billion net worth. The students formed a group called UnFarallon.info, a repository of negative news on Tom Steyer covering what the site identified as hypocrisy in many his investments. The site revealed Steyer has had direct, personal involvement in assembling a portfolio of strategic investments in overseas coal mines and coal-fired power plants unprecedented in scale. These investment interests promote the exploitation of one of the largest sources of thermal coal in the world, an energy source that Steyer has repeatedly condemned as an environmental hazard. The financing provided by this fund has enabled coal producers to restructure and recapitalize, leading to significant expansion of thermal coal production.
Political Giving and Activity
In 2013, NextGen Climate Action began its work by spending $8 million on TV and digital ads to support then-Virginia gubernatorial candidate and scam artist Terry McAuliffe (D) and more than $1 million to elect Massachusetts Democrat Ed Markey to the Senate.[6][7]
During the 2014 election cycle, the group spent $74,032,090 (nearly $67 million of which was funded by the Steyers alone).[8] The group’s efforts focused on six races—the Senate contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, Michigan and Colorado, and the governor’s races in Maine and Florida. Led by Chief Strategist Chris Lehan, the group’s goal was to “be on the offensive as much as possible” to force Republicans and conservatives to react. Creative measures included rolling fake barrels of oil into New Hampshire to criticize then-Republican Senate candidate Scott Brown and towing an ark around Florida to criticize Gov. Rick Scott (R).[9]
During the 2016 election cycle, NextGen Climate Action spent $96,036,921. During that cycle, the group made seven endorsements of Democratic candidates, among them Hillary Clinton for President; Tammy Duckworth for U.S. Senate in Illinois, Catherine Cortez Masto for U.S. Senate in Nevada, Maggie Hassan for U.S. Senate in New Hampshire, Deborah Ross for U.S. Senate in North Carolina, Ted Strickland for U.S. Senate in Ohio, Katie McGinty for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, and Roy Cooper for the Governor of North Carolina.[10]
In addition to supporting candidates and campaigning against Republicans, NextGen Climate Action also spent more than $25 million in polling, advertising, and canvassing to encouraging millennials to vote. According to NextGen Climate PA state director Pat Millham, the group choose to make that investment because “Polling has consistently shown that millennials are more likely to support a candidate who will make addressing climate change a top priority, and NextGen Climate PA is proud to play a role in ensuring young people’s voices are heard at the ballot box in November.”[11]
Steyer is the biggest individual donor to Democrats and outside groups that support Democratic candidates in the 2016 election cycle, totaling just less than $90 million in the 2016 elections, according to OpenSecrets.org, That total led all spenders. The New York Times reported on January 8, 2018 that Steyer pledged to spend $30 million to get Democrats elected to Congress with the aim of impeaching President Donald Trump.
Steyer’s political involvement can be traced back to 1983, in which he worked on the former Vice President Walter Mondale’s presidential campaign. Since then, Steyer has fundraised for the presidential campaigns of Bill Bradley, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Steyer served as a delegate to the Democratic National Conventions in 2004 and 2008 and was allegedly considered for the positions of Energy Secretary as well as Treasury Secretary. Steyer was among the top donors of the 2014 election cycle, and has since become an unofficial environmental advisor to Barack Obama with frequent meetings and briefings to the White House.
Steyer used his fortune to become a high-dollar Obama bundler in 2008, urging campaign leaders to persuade candidate Obama to include global warming in his speeches. He donated $50,000 to Obama’s inauguration celebrations, earning him frequent access to senior White House officials and a personal friendship with transition team leader John Podesta, founder of the Center for American Progress (CAP), a left-wing think tank highly influential within the Democratic Party. Steyer donated $350,000 to CAP in 2009 through his TomKat Charitable Trust, a foundation founded by Steyer to fund left-wing causes.In 2010, Steyer gave $1 million to CAP and was appointed to the board of directors, where he has served since 2014 according to the CAP IRS Form 990.
Steyer campaigned in 2010 with former Republican Secretary of State George Shultz to defeat a California ballot measure to repeal a law imposing a “clean energy” tax on large industries. In 2012, he served as chairman for a California ballot measure that imposed punitive taxes on out-of-state businesses. His continued donations and activism made him a delegate and hand-picked speaker at the 2012 Democratic National Convention. During this time, John Podesta recommended Steyer as a replacement for departing Energy Secretary Steven Chu. It was during this period that many of Steyer’s eco-activist organizations came into being and quickly went into action, making Steyer a high-profile opponent of the Keystone XL pipeline.
Steyer is one of 110 partners in the Democracy Alliance, an extensive network of wealthy donors that regularly coordinate their political donations to progressive organizations. He hosted a fundraiser for President Obama in his home during the 2014 election cycle and directed his organization, Fahr LLC; his 501(c)(4) political campaign and lobbying group, NextGen Climate Action; and his Super PAC, NextGen Climate Action Committee, to spend $74 million against Republican candidates for the House and Senate. Only three of the 11 U.S. Senate candidates Steyer’s Super PAC supported won their races.
During his political and financial career, Steyer created a network of at least 13 entities of infrastructure, operatives, analysts, public and corporate supporters, and a constituency mobilization system (See list at bottom of profile). The capacity of these organizations as a political attack and defense mechanism, with a series of complex of alliances, are unparalleled among the Big Green Leaders.
Examples of his influence include attendance at White House staff briefings at the invitation of President Barack Obama, and private meetings with the governors of Washington and Oregon – as well as secret collusions with Oregon government officials to form a multi-state alliance in support of Obama’s Climate Action Plan. According to the Washington Free Beacon, “top advisers to the billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer helped run a green group, the Clean Economy Development Center (CEDC), financed in part by Steyer himself, that was at the center of a corruption scandal” that forced the resignation of Democratic Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber.
In August 2015, Steyer launched the Fair Shake Commission on Income Inequality and Middle Class Opportunity, purportedly an implicit announcement of candidacy for the 2018 California gubernatorial race.
On August 9, 2018, representatives from NextGen Rising and NextGen Climate Action held a brief phone call to discuss strategy and goals ahead of the 2018 midterm elections. Jeremiah Chapman, Erin Carhart, Ben Wessel, and Tom Steyer were present and spoke on the call. The representatives revealed that NextGen Rising’s targets for the election include 33 House of Representatives races, 7 U.S. Senate races, and 8 gubernatorial races. Its voter mobilization goal was to register 100,000 voters by the election (75,000 by November 6, 2018), particularly college students and new voters under 35 years of age. To accomplish this, NextGen sought 15,000 volunteers nationwide.[12]
Environmental Giving
Steyer’s environmental non-profit network is so extensive as to resemble an entire government, founded and supported by overseas tax havens and hypocritically, thermal coal production. Steyer has benefited immensely by winning the hearts of left-wing environmentalists while simultaneously profiting from the very mechanisms he purportedly seeks to destroy.
In 2011, Steyer formed the Center for the Next Generation, also known as NextGen, also based in San Francisco. The 501(c)(3)’s mission statement is to promote “solutions to two of the biggest challenges confronting the next generation of Americans: The risk of dangerous climate change, and the threat of diminished prospects for children and families.” NextGen has received $2,280,520 from Steyer himself, $1.25 million from the Kellogg Foundation, $500,000 from the Ford Foundation, and three grants from donor advised funds totaling $4,265,000 from six non-Steyer grants, according to the Foundation Search databank. In 2013, the IRS Form 990 reported total assets of NextGen to be $4.5 million.
The most prominent member of NextGen’s board of directors is Mike McCurry, former White House Chief of Staff for President Bill Clinton and consultant for Public Strategies Washington, Inc. In July 2015, former White House Director of Broadcast Media Andrea Purse took on the role of NextGen’s head of communications. Steyer’s Super PAC Nextgen Climate Action Committee has donated to pro-Clinton Super PACs American Bridge and Americans United for Change, an advocacy group run by the president of pro-Hillary-Clinton organization Correct the Record; Democracy Alliance-backed America Votes; the Truman Project, which backed Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran; and the Virginia arm of the League of Conservation Voters. Steyer’s philanthropic entities include the TomKat Charitable Trust, TomKat Foundation, Beneficial State Foundation, and The Ranch, managed by TomKat Ranch Educational Foundation. The “TomKat” in the names of several Steyer organizations refers to Tom Steyer and his wife Katherine “Kat” Taylor Steyer. Both are participants in the Giving Pledge, committed to dedicate the majority of their wealth to philanthropy.
Steyer is the founder and chairman of the board at the Advanced Energy Economy Institute, the 501(c)(3) educational affiliate of Advanced Energy Economy, Inc. The institute was created in 2009 as the Clean Economy Network Education Fund, a project of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and was bought out in 2011 by Steyer for $4 million in 2011-2012. Steyer took over as chairman of the board, phasing out the existing board from 2011 to 2012 and putting his own board members in place. He changed the name but kept the existing EIN (EIN 80-0373801) (the federal Employer Identification Number), which eliminated the need to go through the IRS application process for a new 501(c)(3) tax-exemption. The Institute’s mission is to “raise awareness of the public benefits and opportunities of advanced energy.” This conglomerate of corporate giants and financial experts is a major challenger to the fossil fuel industries. One board member, venture capitalist Hemant Taneja, is also the chairman of the board of Advanced Energy Economy, Inc. The institute’s revenue has ranged from $11.3 million (2012) to $3.1 million (2013) – with most funding from a $1.5 million donation from hedge fund billionaire Julian Robertson, and another $400,000 from the far-left Energy Foundation.
In 2012, Steyer stepped down from Farallon to become a leading figure in environmental and progressive causes, founding Fahr, LLC, a California Limited Liability Corporation based in San Francisco. Fahr has since become the command and control center under which Steyer coordinates his extensive business, policy, political, and philanthropic environmental efforts. The corporation focuses mainly on “climate change, advanced energy, sustainable food systems, and socially responsible finance, largely focused on accelerating the country’s transition to a clean energy future.”
Steyer also used his Farallon fortune to create an extensive philanthropic and political network, including the creation of the TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy at Stanford, the Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance at Stanford, Advanced Energy Economy, Inc. (AAE), NextGen, and other organizations. AAE is a 501(c)(6) trade association representing the advanced energy industry. The organization is active in lobbying and campaigning against fossil fuels and promoting “advanced energy” subsides with a unified industry voice. Corporate members of the group include GE, Microsoft, Intel, Apple, Phillips, Verizon, and many energy-related companies. Steyer was a co-founder of the AEE, but did not remain on its board of directors, opting to run the educational arm of his other tightly connected groups.
In July 2016, the Energy & Environment Legal Institute, a non-profit watchdog group, released a report titled “Buying the Democrat Party Lock, Stock and Barrel,” which details how Steyer “is seeking to protect his solar energy investments by spending tens of millions of dollars on key 2016 races, buying a plank in the 2016 Democrat platform, and trying to silence debate from those who challenge his view on ‘climate change’ by using select attorneys general to prosecute ‘dissenters.’”
According to a story at the Daily Caller, The Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT) filed a Freedom of Information Act request in hopes of unearthing details of the activities of the Attorneys General United for Clean Power Coalition, which was formed exclusively for the purposes of conducting an inquisition against global warming skeptics.
“Our legal system was not designed to be used as a tool to persecute, intimidate and silence individuals and groups just because they hold certain viewpoints,” Matthew Whitaker, executive director of FACT, said in a press statement. “This unlawful effort is a blatant, Orwellian attack on the First Amendment’s right to free speech and we are going to expose their unconstitutional and unethical actions.”
Panama Papers
Steyer is one of the few Americans directly exposed in the 2016 Panama Papers scandal, the leaking of 11.5 million documents that illustrate how wealthy individuals keep personal financial information private – and often set up shell corporations for illegal purposes, including fraud, kleptocracy, tax evasion, political corruption, and evading international sanctions.
The Washington Free Beacon reported in May 2016 that the Panama Papers revealed that Steyer helped finance a company used by China’s former head of state to park investments in overseas tax havens. According to the Beacon, “Steyer’s hedge fund joined a firm with ties with the family of China’s then-premier in an early investment round for a British Virgin Islands-based company, according to incorporation documents on file with New Horizon Capital, a Singaporean corporate law and accounting firm infamous for scandal over opaque financial activity.”
Other
Tom Steyer didn’t disclose his role in a controversial campaign to get state and local governments to file climate change lawsuits against energy companies. The bombshell report connected the dots about NextGen’s role in what turns out to be a campaign designed to use taxpayer dollars to fund a dubious legal strategy. A Daily Mail report also gave credence to speculation in the New York Post that New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s probe into energy companies “smacks of politics,” as former New York Attorney General Dennis Vacco put it. Indeed. The New York Post obtained a March, 2016 email suggesting Schneiderman was using his bizarre investigation to solicit Steyer cash to prop up a potential 2018 New York gubernatorial bid. Steyer attorney Ted White wrote that “Eric Schneiderman would like to have a call with Tom regarding support for his race for governor . . . regarding Exxon case.”
Schneiderman drew widespread rebuke for his over-zealous execution of Steyer’s agenda to instigate taxpayer-funded litigation. He even floundered when trying to enlist other Democrat state AGs in his probe, which targeted not only energy companies, but think tanks which raised questions about climate change policies. When it became impossible to deny NextGen’s role, the super PAC was eventually forced to come clean, at least partially, admitting to Politico’s Morning Energy, “It’s not something that Tom personally is pushing, though some of our teams on the ground have participated in rallies or events to support our coalition partners.”
Steyer isn’t one of those mega-donors who generally operates in the shadows. He features himself in his multi-million dollar ad campaign calling for the impeachment of President Trump. So why would he go so far as to impeach his own credibility by denying his role in pushing elected officials to initiate climate litigation?
A major clue came out late in December, from the most unlikely of sources: Steyer himself. The lawsuits were supposed to look as if they were initiated by elected officials, acting on the will of the people, rather than as part of a comprehensive strategy backed by an eccentric billionaire activist. He wants it to camouflage his record-breaking political spending by making it appear that the only outcome of his mega-spending is fostering a better-informed electorate.
So it’s no wonder he’d go to great lengths to hide his central role in creating the appearance of support for his agenda. For instance, the Free Beacon reported that the New Hampshire division of Next Gen “held a rally in April explicitly billed as an effort to advance Schneiderman’s anti-Exxon legal campaign.” As questions were raised about NextGen’s involvement, the group scrubbed the press release from its webpage. Except it was sloppy, and @NextGen NH left up the tweet about it. (Don’t bother, @NextGen NH, I’ve taken a screenshot.)
Steyer, according to The Washington Post was the biggest spender in the ugly 2016 election. So it must be awkward for him, especially amongst allies on the left, to explain his hedge fund-derived political influence.
While his unlimited super-PAC spending must be disclosed, his strategy dictates that he downplay his climate-change influence when possible. And, apparently, even when not possible.
Whether it’s deleting webpages or dissembling to Politico, Steyer and his political organization try to make it appear that their only impact is informing the public. In reality, Steyer’s operation is like an astroturf-generating team of well-paid lawyers, consultants and of course, campus organizers to get bodies to rallies. All that doesn’t come cheap. Next Gen’s president and CEO, Matt James received compensation in excess of $750,000, according the group’s 2014 tax filing.
Perhaps it was money well-spent, given the group’s ability to keep the litigation campaign secret until the last quarter of 2017.
Yet the disclosure of his group’s active involvement in spurring taxpayer-backed climate change litigation undermines the very strategy Steyer described in his New York Times talk.
For its part, Steyer’s outsized electoral spending has been effective. Consider the $30,000 he spent supporting San Francisco’s late Mayor Ed Lee, whose leading opponent, a Green Party candidate, received only 15 percent of the vote. Shortly after being re-elected, Lee filed one of the first climate change lawsuits by a city against energy companies. Steyer, retired from his hedge funds, still knows how to invest.
Tom’s brother, Jim Steyer, was behind SB 18, the so-called “Bill of Rights for Children and Youth in California.” Authored by Senator Richard Pan, the bill established a list of inherent rights, staggering in their breadth, to which all of California’s minors are supposedly entitled. Even the LA Times editorial board is shocked, calling the new bill “overly ambitious” and “troubling.”
Even though Jim is not as well known as his richer brother Tom, he is just as well connected to the elite political class. He interacted with the state’s oligarchy while teaching political science at Stanford over the last 25 years. Some of his former students include New Jersey Senator Cory Booker and President Obama’s National Security Advisor Susan Rice. He even taught Chelsea Clinton and has been close with the Clinton family for several decades. According to Politico, both Jim and his brother Tom have ambitious plans for America, saying, “we are trying to change the world.” (source)
The Steyer Empire
Fahr, LLC, San Francisco, California. Coordination center for all Steyer enterprises and subsidiary organizations. Those organizations are:
- Center for the Next Generation: 501(c)(3) Policy development, social mobilization, dissemination.
- Nextgen Climate Action: 501(c)(4) Opposition attack and political action committee.
- Nextgen Climate Action Committee: Super PAC electoral power.
- Nextgen Climate America, Inc.: 501(c)(3) Political development center.
- Advanced Energy Economy, Inc.: 501(c)(6) Industry trade association.
- Advanced Energy Economy Institute: 501(c)(3) Subsidy policy development and dissemination.
- TomKat Charitable Trust: 501(c)(3) Private foundation, major giving.
- TomKat Ranch Educational Foundation: 501(c)(3) Private foundation for children, natural food.
- TomKat Foundation: 501(c)(3) Private foundation, small grants.
- Beneficial State Foundation: (formerly One PacificCoast Foundation) 501(c)(3) Community foundation with related business income.
- TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy at Stanford: Research and Development Institution
- The Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance at Stanford: Research and Development Institution.
Sources:
