Meet the Anti-Trump Scam PAC Getting Rich Off the Resistance

Since Trump’s rise, a huge wave of energy has captivated progressives, who’ve in turn launched actions like organizing the largest protests in this country’s recorded history, surges in voter turnout in special elections, and creating a new ecosystem of PACs dedicated to the #Resistance—which has helped line the pockets of a new brand of political grifter.

According to a piece out on Wednesday by The Daily Beast, one of these new anti-Trump PACs, the Democratic Coalition Against Trump, has been sinking its donors’ money into consultants and its own legal expenses rather than tangible action to fight back against the president.

As the site reports, the group brought in half a million dollars last year, $130,000 of which was paid to the Bulldog Finance Group—a consulting firm run by political operative Scott Dworkin, who is also a senior adviser at the Democratic Coalition. More than half of the money raised by the Democratic Coalition last year was funneled to its employees or their consulting firms. In 2016, the numbers were even worse: “Dworkin and other staff members received more than 90% of all of the Democratic Coalition’s expenditures, either personally or through a consulting company.” (Dworkin’s Twitter handle is literally @funder.)

Dworkin’s PAC scam isn’t some sort of new invention—such groups proliferated among conservatives who exploited the backlash against Obama for their own profit. Unfortunately, the grift is bipartisan and will endure until the laws that lightly police these organizations are tightened. Wherever there are people with money who are mad about politics, scammers like Dworkin are sure to follow.