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The prominent pro-Trump Mercer family doled out millions of dollars to leading conservative groups in 2017, but neither patriarch Robert Mercer nor his daughter Rebekah contributed a single dollar to the family foundation.
The Mercer Family Foundation’s latest annual tax filing, which covers calendar year 2017, lends credence to reporting that Robert Mercer has decided to step back from his status as a leading political financier. That role earned him plenty of public attention—as well as some scorn—over his prominent backing for Donald Trump and some of the entities, such as controversial data firm Cambridge Analytica, that he used to back the president and other prominent Republicans.
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The foundation did bring in more than $9 million in 2017, the tax form indicates, but nearly all of that income came from selling off shares in the Medallion Fund, a famous hedge fund run by Renaissance Technologies, the firm that Mercer led until late 2017, and a newer RenTec fund called the Renaissance Institutional Diversified Alpha (RIDA) fund.
That income structure is a significant departure from 2016, when Mercer donated a whopping $25 million to the family foundation. But its 2017 income trends more closely to prior years, when the group brought in most of its income from sales of its Medallion holdings.
As Mercer’s contributions to his foundation dropped off in 2017, so too did his political donations. Though still considerable, the $6.4 million that the billionaire financier donated to political campaigns during the 2018 election cycle represented a significant dropoff from the 2016 campaign.
The family foundation nonetheless provided significant cash infusions in 2017 for some high-profile conservative groups. It granted $2 million to the Media Research Center, $800,000 to the Heartland Institute, $500,000 apiece to pro-life group Susan B. Anthony List and conservative legal advocacy outfit the Federalist Society, and more than $1.7 million each to a pair of nonprofits focused on advancing conservative policies in Florida and New York.
The foundation also made a number of more traditional charitable contributions, including six-figure donations to the Museum of Natural History, UCLA’s Mathematical Science Research Institute, and New York’s Hospital for Special Surgery.
Even if the foundation doesn’t take in another penny from the Mercers themselves, it will have plenty more money to dole out in the future. It ended the year with more than $25 million in its two RenTec funds, and an additional $4.5 million in cash.
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