The Lincoln Project’s Spending Is Raising Eyebrows and Prompting Critics to Question: What Are They Up To?
The Lincoln Project/YouTube
The anti-Trump super PAC, the Lincoln Project, has raised some eyebrows so far this year with its foray into media and content creation, beyond the online ad campaigns which made it famous.
Politico’s Brittany Gibson took a deep dive this week into the group’s spending and declared the so-called “Never-Trump” group has “morphed into a content farm.”
Gibson ran through the history of the PAC, which has gone from a much-hyped and welcomed attack dog in the 2020 election cycle to a spurned group of political operatives embattled by scandal and accusations of self-enrichment.
“The original operatives who founded the organization in 2019 became a magnet that attracted $90 million, and subsequently $50 million found its way to firms connected to the owners, according to an investigation by the AP,” notes Gibson, who also dubbed the group one the “most successful super PACs in history.”
Gibson breaks down the group’s spending so far this year, writing:
During the first six months of 2023, the super PAC doled out more than $265,000 on podcasting expenses, $218,000 went to a creative content firm owned by a horror movie screenwriter and another $100,000 was spent on a self-identified “corporate comedy” firm. The group spent thousands of dollars on advertising award submissions and a contest for its web ads, for which, it should be noted, garnered two prizes.
Of the $3.5 million amount it doled out from January to June 2023, only $100,000 was for online and digital advertising, according to its latest financial disclosures released on Monday.
She also notes that Rick Wilson, one of the group’s founders, brought his son, Andrew Wilson, on as “an independent contractor responsible for corporate campaign management.”
The money the group spent on entry fees and tickets to ad award shows resulted in two Webby Awards – “for a series of ads to drum up support for the war in Ukraine and an ad for Holocaust Remembrance Day.” Gibson noted that the PAC paid $12,000 “on event tickets to the Webby Awards.”
All of this begs the question, just what is the Lincoln Project up to in 2024 and are they still a force to be reckoned with? A question that some critics posed on Twitter in response to the Politico article:
The group still maintains some 2.7 million followers on Twitter, now known as “X,” and with Trump still dominating the news has no shortage of material to turn into online ads.
In recent days, the group as taken aim at other entries into the election cycle – like the third-party movement group “No Labels.” “REMINDER: If @NoLabelsOrg had their way, we would never have known the information behind these indictments. They stood with Trump, Taylor Greene, Kevin McCarthy and the rest of the MAGA cult against the January 6 Committee’s work,” wrote the Lincoln Project on Wednesday in response to Trump’s latest indictment.
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