Creation and funding The AAF was launched in December 2020. In its first year, it received $335,100 from the
Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI), led by former Trump chief of staff
Mark Meadows and former
Heritage Foundation president and Republican senator
Jim DeMint. This constituted over half of its funding. The next year, the CPI provided a further $210,000;
Russell Vought's
Center for Renewing America (CRA) provided $100,000; and
Stephen Miller's
America First Legal Foundation (AFL) provided $25,000. The AAF's executive director and co-founder, Tom Jones, previously worked for Republican senators
Ron Johnson,
Ted Cruz (directing opposition research for
Cruz's 2016 presidential campaign), Jim DeMint, and
John Ensign. Its other co-founder, Matthew Buckham, worked in the
White House Presidential Personnel Office during the
first Trump presidency. At its founding the AAF was directly controlled by Miller's AFL and Vought's CRA. By February 2025, the AAF's president, Tom Jones, said the AAF was an independent organization. Jones told Fox News in April 2021 that he aimed to "take a big handful of sand and throw it in the gears of the Biden administration". According to
Reuters: "Dark money" obscuring the donors has been contributed to AAF via
donor-advised funds including the
Goldman Sachs Charitable Fund, the
Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund, and the National Christian Charitable Fund.
Sarah Bloom Raskin to be vice-chair for supervision of the
Federal Reserve Board in 2022; and
David Weil for the
Wage and Hour Division of the
Department of Labor. In September 2021, the AAF filed an ethics complaint against representative
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for attending the
Met Gala. The AAF claimed that her attendance amounted to accepting an illegal gift since her estimated $35,000 ticket was paid for by
Conde Nast, a for-profit company, not a charity. The event itself is a charitable fundraiser. In 2023, during
Gigi Sohn's nomination to the
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) she faced an aggressive campaign funded by the American Accountability Foundation (AAF). Sohn, a consumer advocate nominated by President Joe Biden, aimed to expand free internet access and improve broadband competition. The AAF, not required to disclose its donors, launched an attack on Sohn, labeling her as too partisan, anti-police, and soft on sex trafficking. Despite being a historic nominee as the FCC's first openly
LGBTQ+ commissioner, Sohn faced opposition from moderate Democrats, leading to her withdrawal from the race. This instance showcased how dark money and untraceable donations influenced public opinion and nominee confirmations, shaping the political landscape. Telecom industry lobbyists were reportedly involved behind the scenes to thwart Sohn's nomination, emphasizing the power of such groups in American politics.
Websites targeting individual federal employees In 2024, AAF published a website targeting nonpartisan federal
civil servants working at the
Department of Homeland Security, the
Department of Justice, and the
Office of Management and Budget. The website, "DHS Bureaucrat Watch List", targets employees who it describes as the "most subversive immigration bureaucrats." The website publishes career civil servants' personal information, including names, titles, photographs, small-dollar political donations, and screenshots of employees' personal social media accounts. The organization received $100,000 from
The Heritage Foundation to complete the project. A federal employee union compared the effort to
McCarthyism and said it aimed to intimidate and frighten federal employees. which expanded its targeting of federal civil servants to health agencies, such as the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the
Food and Drug Administration. The website lists mostly Black people. Civil servants named on the lists have faced harassment, threats, destruction of property, and firing without cause by the Trump administration. By omitting details such as home addresses, the lists fall short of illegal violations of privacy. However, they, according to legal experts, have nevertheless had the effect of creating a chilling effect on the public service by deterring public servants from engaging in politically sensitive work. The AAF provides a portal for civil servants to ask for removal from its lists in exchange for providing evidence of being fired or resigning. == References ==