Gary Ruskin (202) 387-8030
Spooky Business: A New Report on Corporate Espionage Against Non-profits
Giant corporations are employing highly unethical or illegal tools of espionage against nonprofit organizations with near impunity, according to a new report by Essential Information. The report, titled Spooky Business, documents how corporations hire shady investigative firms staffed with former employees of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Security Agency (NSA), US military, Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), Secret Service and local police departments to target nonprofit organizations.
"Corporate espionage against nonprofit organizations is an egregious abuse of corporate power that is subverting democracy," said Gary Ruskin, author of Spooky Business. "Who will rein in the forces of corporate lawlessness as they bear down upon nonprofit defenders of justice?"
Many of the world's largest corporations and their trade associations -- including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Walmart, Monsanto, Bank of America, Dow Chemical, Kraft, Coca-Cola, Chevron, Burger King, McDonald's, Shell, BP, BAE, Sasol, Brown & Williamson and E.ON - have been linked to espionage or planned espionage against nonprofit organizations, activists and whistleblowers.
Many different types of nonprofit organizations have been targeted with corporate espionage, including environmental, anti-war, public interest, consumer, food safety, pesticide reform, nursing home reform, gun control, social justice, animal rights and arms control groups.
Corporations and their trade associations have been linked to a wide variety of espionage tactics against nonprofit organizations. The most prevalent tactic appears to be infiltration by posing a volunteer or journalist, to obtain information from a nonprofit. But corporations have been linked to many other human, physical and electronic espionage tactics against nonprofits. Many of these tactics are either highly unethical or illegal.
Founded in 1982 by Ralph Nader, Essential Information is a Washington, DC-based nonprofit, tax-exempt organization. It is involved in a variety of projects to promote corporate accountability, a more just economy, public health and a sustainable planet. It has published a bi-monthly magazine, books and reports, sponsored conferences, provided writers with grants to pursue investigations, published daily news summaries, operated clearinghouses that disseminate information to grassroots organizations in the United States and developing countries worldwide, and has hosted scores of conferences focusing on government and corporate accountability.
The Center for Corporate Policy is a non-profit, non-partisan public interest organization working to curb corporate abuses and make corporations publicly accountable.
'Bullsh*t': Trump Slammed for Trying to Distance Himself From Project 2025
"Trump is now desperately trying to run from his deep ties to Project 2025... MAGA extremists' radical wish list for a second Trump term," President Joe Biden's campaign said.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday attempted to distance himself from a conservative coalition's agenda for a far-right takeover of the federal government, prompting derision from observers who underscored close ties between the presumptive 2024 Republican nominee and the blueprint's authors.
Trump took to his Truth social media platform to claim the knows "nothing about Project 2025," a sweeping initiative spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation to boost the power of the presidency and purge career federal civil servants, who would be replaced with Trump loyalists.
"I have no idea who is behind it," Trump added, a claim that numerous observers quickly countered.
In an email entitled, "Donald Trump & Project 2025: One and the Same," Democratic President Joe Biden's reelection campaign said that "Trump is now desperately trying to run from his deep ties to Project 2025—the Heritage Foundation's 900-page deeply unpopular manifesto drafted by former Trump officials that offers Americans a preview of MAGA extremists' radical wish list for a second Trump term."
"Project 2025 is the extreme policy and personnel playbook for Trump's second term that should scare the hell out of the American people," Biden campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa said in a statement. "Project 2025 staff and leadership routinely tout their connections to Trump's team, and are the same people leading the [Republican National Committee policy platform, Trump's debate prep, campaign, and inner circle."
"Trump's Supreme Court and Project 2025 have designed the playbook for Trump to achieve his dream of being a dictator on day one, with unchecked, imperial power," Moussa added. "Allowing a self-absorbed convicted felon that kind of power would be devastating for our democracy and middle-class families. This November, voters must stop Trump from turning the Oval Office into his throne room."
As CNNdetailed Friday:
Paul Dans, the head of Project 2025, was chief of staff at the Office of Personnel Management during the Trump administration, and the group's roadmap for the next administration includes contributions from others who have worked for the former president, including his former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, former acting Deputy Homeland Security Secretary Ken Cuccinelli, and former deputy chief of staff Rick Dearborn. John McEntee, Trump's former director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office and one of his closest aides while in office, is also a senior adviser for the project.
Mother Jones Washington, D.C. bureau chief David Corn said: "This is B.S. Christian nationalist Russell Vought, who is one of the Trump allies in charge of the GOP platform effort, is a coordinator of Project 2025. Trump is gaslighting once again."
Others noted that Trump's own Make America Great Again, Inc. super PAC is running ads highlighting Project 2025.
Critics have called Project 2025 a "blueprint for autocracy"—an assessment bolstered by last week's U.S. Supreme Court ruling bestowing the president with what experts described as king-like powers, which Trump's advisers have reportedly vowed to exploit if he wins November's election.
The Associated Pressreported last month that a right-wing group allied with the presumptive GOP nominee was drafting a list of federal employees who are disloyal or insufficiently dutiful to Trump, an undertaking compared with the McCarthyite anti-communist crusade during the second Red Scare in the 1950s.
Kevin Roberts, who heads the Heritage Foundation, raised eyebrows earlier this week after he said that the coming right-wing "revolution" will "remain bloodless if the left allows it to be," which some observers took as a thinly veiled threat of violence.
In his Friday Truth post, Trump said that he disagrees with some of Project 2025's agenda and that "some of the things they're saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal."
"Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them," he reiterated.
Journalist Mehdi Hasan responded to Trump's claim in a social media post saying, "What's revealing about Donald Trump loudly disavowing Project 2025 and falsely denying any knowledge of it is that clearly he knows how damaging it can be to his election bid."
"So why on earth did neither Biden nor the CNN moderators bring it up at the debate last week?" he asked.
Kansas Supreme Court Affirms Abortion Rights, Strikes Down Restrictions
"This is an immense victory for the health, safety, and dignity of people in Kansas and the entire Midwestern region, where millions have been cut off from abortion access," said one advocate.
Reproductive rights defenders on Friday cheered a pair of Kansas Supreme Court decisions reaffirming the right to abortion and striking down various restrictions—rulings expected to impact people beyond the Midwestern state, given how many patients must now travel for care.
"The state devoted much of its brief to inviting us to reverse our earlier ruling in this case that the Kansas Constitution protects a right to abortion. We decline the invitation," Justice Eric Rosen wrote in the decision against Senate Bill 95, which outlawed a common abortion procedure for second-trimester pregnancies called dilation and evacuation (D&E).
Rosen was referring to the court's 2019 ruling that "Section 1 of the Kansas Constitution Bill of Rights affords protection of the right of personal autonomy," which "allows a woman to make her own decisions regarding her body, health, family formation, and family life—decisions that can include whether to continue a pregnancy."
The justice wrote Friday that "S.B. 95 does not further patient safety, it compromises patient safety," noting that "as the district court found and the state did not contest, S.B. 95 eliminates a safe and common medical procedure and leaves patients subject to procedures that are rarely used, are untested, and are sometimes more dangerous or impossible."
The court's other new ruling was about what critics call targeted restrictions on abortion providers (TRAP) policies. Both decisions were 5-1—with Justice Stegall Caleb dissenting and Justice K.J. Wall not participating—and followed Kansas voters rejecting a proposed anti-choice amendment to the state constitution in August 2022.
"Now the Kansas Supreme Court has decisively reaffirmed that the state constitution protects abortion as a fundamental right."
"Kansas voters made it loud and clear in 2022: The right to abortion must be protected. Now the Kansas Supreme Court has decisively reaffirmed that the state constitution protects abortion as a fundamental right," said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which was involved with both cases.
"This is an immense victory for the health, safety, and dignity of people in Kansas and the entire Midwestern region, where millions have been cut off from abortion access," Northup added. "We will continue our fight to ensure Kansans can access the essential healthcare they need in their home state."
The anti-choice ballot measure's failure two years ago came shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court's right-wing supermajority reversedRoe v. Wade with Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization—which bolstered GOP efforts to further restrict reproductive rights at the state level, forcing patients to more frequently travel for abortion care.
Kansas allows abortion care up until 22 weeks of pregnancy and has seen an influx of healthcare refugees from states that have imposed bans. The Guttmacher Institute said last month that "in Kansas, clinic numbers increased by 50% (from four to six) between 2020 and 2023, and the number of abortions rose by 152% (an increase of 12,440)."
Despite the fresh wins in court, the broader battle for reproductive freedom continues in Kansas. As KMUWreported Friday:
Several new abortion laws took effect in Kansas earlier this week, but one of them—a law requiring doctors to ask patients getting abortions their reason for doing so—is being challenged in court. A Johnson County judge said Monday that doctors could add the law to a larger lawsuit they brought against a handful of older state abortion restrictions, including a 24-hour waiting period. The judge agreed to temporarily block the older laws while the case proceeds.
The Kansas Department of Health and Environment told providers it will "not, for now" enforce the abortion reasons law, providers said Monday. The health department has not responded to requests seeking to confirm that.
The Center for Reproductive Rights noted Friday that it "is currently representing abortion providers in another ongoing challenge to several onerous restrictions including a law forcing providers to falsely tell their patients that a medication abortion can be 'reversed,' an unproven claim not based on medicine or science."
'Jewel Thief' Bolsonaro Among 12 Indicted for Alleged Embezzlement in Brazil
The former right-wing president and others including his personal aide allegedly sold state property including jewelry and other gifts worth more than $1 million in the United States.
Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro's legal woes increased dramatically Thursday as he and 11 others were indicted for embezzlement and other crimes in connection with the alleged misappropriation of diamond jewelry and other state property received as gifts from the Saudi and Bahraini monarchies during the right-wing leader's presidential tenure.
Carta Capital reported that Brazil's Federal Police indicted Bolsonaro with embezzlement, money laundering, and criminal association. If convicted on all counts, he faces up to 25 years in prison. Bolsonaro maintains his innocence.
Eleven other people were also indicted in the case, including former Mines and Energy Minister Bento Albuquerque and former Bolsonaro personal aide Lt. Col. Mauro Cid. The office of Brazilian Attorney General Jorge Messias must now decide whether to proceed with a federal case against the indicted individuals.
According to authorities, Bolsonaro failed to properly register high-value gifts from the Saudi and Bahraini governments near the end of his presidential term. Those items were later sold in the United States by the president's associates.
While visiting Saudi Arabia in October 2019, the Saudi monarchy gifted Bolsonaro a white gold kit containing a diamond-encrusted Rolex watch. This and another luxury Swiss watch—a Patek Philippe—were later allegedly sold in a mall in Pennsylvania.
This diamond-encrusted Rolex watch (left) is part of the white gold kit (right) that was allegedly sold by Bolsonaro associates in the United States. (Photo: Brazilian Federal Police)
On an October 2021 trip to Saudi Arabia, Albuquerque received a gold rosé kit with a watch, cuff links, pen, ring, and an Islamic rosary made by Chopard and failed to properly report the gift upon returning to Brazil. Investigators say the kit was then taken aboard an official flight on which Bolsonaro was a passenger and subsequently sold at a New York auction.
Proceeds from the sale of the undeclared goods—which investigators say totaled more than $1 million—were pocketed by the indicted individuals.
Army Gen. Mauro Lourena Cid—the father of Lt. Col. Mauro Cid, Bolsonaro's personal aide—allegedly kept some jewelry and sculptures received by Bolsonaro at the end of the Arab-Brazilian Chamber of Commerce Business Seminar in Manama, Bahrain in November 2021.
This photo shows some of the diamond jewelry cited in the Brazilian Federal Police indictment of former President Jair Bolsonaro and 11 others.(Photo: Brazilian Federal Police)
Police recommended criminally charging the younger Cid, who signed a plea deal. Cid's lawyer claimed his client was following orders from Bolsonaro—an allegation the ex-president denies.
O Globoreported Bolsonaro allegedly stored 175 boxes containing numerous gifts at a property owned by former Formula One racer Nelson Piquet. While some of the gifts were determined to be the president's rightful property, other items given to Bolsonaro while he served in his official presidential capacity are legally owned by the state.
This is the second set of federal criminal charges for Bolsonaro, who in March was
federally charged with allegedly falsifying his Covid-19 vaccination data and criminal association in a case that could result in a prison sentence of 12-16-years if he is fully convicted.
Bolsonaro—who denies any wrongdoing—is also banned from seeking any political office for eight years due to his alleged abuse of power related to baseless claims of fraud in the 2022 presidential election.
A 2023 Brazilian congressional inquiry also found that Bolsonaro was the "intellectual and moral author of a coup movement" that culminated in the January 8, 2023 attacks on government buildings, and he and scores of his supporters should be criminally indicted for their "willful coup attempt."
Bolsonaro's autocratic actions have been compared to those of former U.S. President Donald Trump, long ago earning him the nickname "Trump of the Tropics." Bolsonaro sought refuge in the United States following the January 2023 attacks and the inauguration of leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who defeated him in the runoff round of the 2022 presidential election.
"Bolsonaro the Jewel Thief" trended on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, following Thursday's indictments.
"Today is a great day for people who believe in justice," said one Socialism and Liberty city councilwoman in Belo Horizonte.