A secret billionaire defender for Josh Hawley and other right-wing lawmakers suggested that he had been “tricked” by the Republican senator from Missouri, who led the effort to overturn the 2020 election results.
Jeffrey Yass is a co-founder of Susquehanna International Group – headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a decisive state – which has donated tens of millions of dollars to hardline Republican groups that have supported Donald Trump’s efforts to invalidate his defeat in the polls for Joe Biden.
Yass privately told a longtime associate that he had not anticipated how his contributions would lead to attempts to overthrow democracy in the United States.
“Do you think anyone knew that Hawley would do that?” Yass wrote to Laura Goldman, a former stockbroker who has known him for more than three decades.
“Sometimes, politicians deceive their donors.”
Yass, who does not give interviews and generally avoids publicity, also told Goldman that he did not believe that the 2020 elections were “stolen”, although he directly and indirectly supported right-wing Republicans who repeatedly – and falsely – tried to discredit the results.
The latest consequences of the Jan. 6 attempt to invalidate the election, in which 147 Republicans in Congress opposed the polling station’s results after the attack on the Capitol, occur when Hawley and his donors face pressure and criticism for their role.
Hawley said he opposed counting electoral votes in order to instigate a “debate” on the issue of electoral integrity. He denied that his actions helped to incite the violent explosion and violation of the Capitol, in which five people died, including a police officer.
Goldman told the Guardian that he sent an email to Yass because she was upset to learn about her support for Hawley and other Republicans, especially as lawmakers were trying to invalidate the election results in her home state of Pennsylvania, which helped Biden to conquer the White House.
“I approached Jeff Yass upset after reading the Guardian article [about his involvement in donations] because I was shocked that he would allow my vote and the vote of his neighbors to possibly be invalidated by politicians to whom he gives millions of dollars, ”she said.
She added: “Yass lives here. He knows the local politicians … he could just call them and ask questions if he thought the election results were bad, which they absolutely weren’t. He doesn’t need Josh Hawley, a Missouri senator, or Ted Cruz, a Texas senator, to question the election results in the state he has lived in for nearly 40 years. “
Goldman posted excerpts of Yass’s private comments to her on Twitter. The Guardian was able to verify the authenticity of the statements.
Yass, a poker trader and aficionado who is an active Republican donor and has been a force in the Pennsylvania elections, donated about $ 30 million to conservative Super Pacs in the 2020 election cycle, making him the eighth largest donor in the election, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.
Most of these donations were made to the Club for Growth, an anti-tax group that in 2018 and 2020 supported 42 hardline Republicans who voted to overturn election results, even after the rebels invaded the U.S. Capitol.
The Growth Club has been a big supporter of Hawley and Cruz, his partner in an attempt to invalidate the election.
Yass did not respond to the Guardian’s requests for comment. He also did not answer questions about whether he will continue to donate to the Growth Club or whether he discussed issues with Hawley and others. Goldman said he sought to argue with him in part because he knows he is an “active” political donor.
The Growth Club did not respond to a request for comment. The group’s president, David McIntosh, has been an avid supporter of some of the most anti-democratic lawmakers elected in 2020, including Lauren Boebert, a follower of QAnon and a Colorado arms rights defender, who has been criticized for tweeting the location of the mayor. , Nancy Pelosi, during the Capitol riot, against the police council.
In a July 2020 endorsement by Boebert, McIntosh praised the restaurant owner and political newcomer for her understanding of “irreparable harm” caused by “government overreaction” and said she had no doubt that Boebert would be a “conservative arsonist” in Washington .
Yass told Goldman that he donated to Club for Growth a year ago and suggested that he could not have predicted what Hawley and others could do.
But public records show that Yass also donated $ 2.5 million to the Protect Freedom Pac on November 10, 2020, a week after the election in the United States. Protect Freedom Pac, affiliated with Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul, ran ads against Democrats before two January elections in Georgia, including ads that claimed Democrats were trying to get money out of the police, institute “socialist health” and raise “trillions in new taxes”.
The Protect Freedom Pac website currently – and falsely – claims that Democrats “stole” the 2020 elections and used the Covid-19 crisis to illegally change electoral laws. It also endorsed a personal voter identification law, a policy that would disproportionately block minority voters.
Yass received far less attention than other billionaire donors, such as Mike Bloomberg or the late Sheldon Adelson, but has been known to be involved in local politics, donating money to candidates who support charter schools.
Goldman told the Guardian that Yass is a longtime supporter of the Republican majority in the Pennsylvania legislature, who led the fight to prevent postal ballots from being counted until election day. Pennsylvania’s final results were not known until days after the election, and Biden’s victory was won largely because of the hundreds of thousands of postal ballots that were counted after the personal ballots.
Hawley’s office did not respond to a request for comment.