Politics

Hillary Expands Her Arsenal Going Into 2020

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Hillary Clinton has created a new nonprofit to supplement her post-2016 advocacy work, corporate records indicate.

The Onward Together Foundation was formed on June 3 by Ezra Reese, an attorney at Perkins Coie, Clinton’s longtime law firm, according to District of Columbia incorporation records. Its listed address is the same as that of Onward Together, the dark-money nonprofit that Clinton formed in 2017, and a sister political action committee, the Onward Together Committee.

A spokesperson for the former secretary of state and Democratic presidential candidate did not respond to questions about the new organization.

Public records suggest the foundation will be a 501(c)(3) arm of Clinton’s existing nonprofit, a 501(c)(4) that can legally spend on more overt political activity. During the 2018 election cycle, Onward Together steered funds to a handful of progressive and Democratic organizations. This year, it’s also rented out Clinton’s formidable email list to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

In a fundraising email sent last month, Onward Together boasted that it “brought in $12 million for progressive groups, candidates, and committees during the 2018 midterm elections.”

The new c3 arm will be far more restricted in how it can spend its money—such groups are barred altogether from spending on politics or donating to political organizations—but unlike the original Onward Together, it will be able to offer tax breaks to its donors. Politically oriented organizations that maintain c3 and c4 arms generally use the former to craft nonpartisan policy research and other products that stay within the apolitical lane that the IRS requires of such groups.

It’s not clear whether the Onward Together Foundation has yet received its tax-exempt status. The IRS database of registered charitable groups turns up no record of an organization by that name.

But the appearance of the group in D.C. corporate records indicates that Clinton plans to expand the organizational tools at her disposal headed into the 2020 campaign. As she told supporters in that fundraising email, “We’re just getting started. I can’t wait to see what else this team comes up with over the next months and years.”

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