Grand Canyon Times

The Citizens United film “Rigged: The Zuckerberg Funded Plot to Defeat Donald Trump” is yet another indication that the right has woken up to the left’s manipulation of America’s elections, says Mollie Hemingway, editor-in-chief of The Federalist.

But she cautions for the right “not to rest on its laurels” just because Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who pumped millions into the offices of state and local election officials leading up to the 2020 general election, announced he will no longer fund election management – just days after the April 6 release of the film.

“The situation is far from resolved,” Hemingway, who authored “Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections,” told the Grand Canyon Times.

Hemingway’s book, published last fall, and the film, "Rigged," both show how Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, dumped nearly $400 million into two nonprofits - the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) and the Center for Election Innovation & Research (CEIR). The nonprofits then granted funds to election officials if they agreed to follow a list of election procedures, including encouraging the use of mail ballots and drop boxes.

Blue areas, the book and film show, received far more money than red areas as part of a get-out-the-vote effort for the Democratic Party.

Per the film, approximately 2,500 grants were awarded across the country by CTCL. The group has claimed that by the numbers more Trump jurisdictions received grants than did Joe Biden jurisdictions. Records, however, show that the assertion is misleading. Through an examination of 990 forms that nonprofits are required to file with the Internal Revenue Service, 'Rigged' shows that of the roughly 160 individual grants of $400,000 or more (totaling some $270 million) 9% of those funds were sent to jurisdictions carried by Joe Biden in 2020.

In addition, the film recounts how $5.1 million in CTCL grants were spent in Arizona, with about 75 cents of every dollar directed to Maricopa, Pima, Apache and Coconino counties -- counties all carried by Biden. Overall, Biden votes in CTCL-funded counties exceeded Hillary Clinton’s 2016 vote totals in the same counties by a massive 700,000 votes.

Hemingway also cites the work of the Caesar Rodney Election Research Institute out of Irving, Texas that demonstrates how Zuckerberg funds increased Biden’s vote margin in battleground states. An analysis of the group’s work was published in the New York Post.

“In places like Georgia, where Biden won by 12,000 votes, and Arizona, where he won by 10,000, the spending likely put him over the top,” William Doyle of Caesar Rodney wrote.

Hemingway’s book also covers the role big tech and the media played in the election.

“Very difficult for the media to defend all that happened in the election including changing hundreds of state law and processes, some legally some illegally, before the 2020 election,” she said.

While mainstream media has been critical of the film, many outlets including Politico and the Washington Post did not dispute the facts laid out in the film

Finally, Hemingway says not to trust CTCL’s announcement, which coincided with Zuckerberg’s announcement that he will no longer fund election management, that it has shifted gears;  it’s now focused on helping the needs of state and local election officials. The new $80 million project, U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence, is still being run by the same people, all past Democratic operatives, with the same agenda.

“I suspect the $80 million is the least of it,” she said. “They will have to be watched very carefully.”