Inside Ziklag, the Christian-Proper Group Making an attempt to Sway the 2024 Election — ProPublica

A community of ultrawealthy Christian donors is spending practically $12 million to mobilize Republican-leaning voters and purge greater than one million individuals from the rolls in key swing states, aiming to tilt the 2024 election in favor of former President Donald Trump.

These beforehand unreported plans are the work of a gaggle named Ziklag, a little-known charity whose donors have included a number of the wealthiest conservative Christian households within the nation, together with the billionaire Uihlein household, who made a fortune in workplace provides, the Greens, who run Pastime Foyer, and the Wallers, who personal the Jockey attire company. Recipients of Ziklag’s largesse embrace Alliance Defending Freedom, which is the Christian authorized group that led the overturning of Roe v. Wade, plus the nationwide pro-Trump group Turning Level USA and a constellation of right-of-center advocacy teams.

ProPublica and Documented obtained 1000’s of Ziklag’s members-only e mail newsletters, inner movies, technique paperwork and fundraising pitches, none of which has been beforehand made public. They reveal the group’s 2024 plans and its long-term purpose to underpin each main sphere of affect in American society with Christianity. Within the Bible, the town of Ziklag was the place David and his troopers discovered refuge throughout their battle with King Saul.

“We’re in a religious battle and locked in a horrible battle with the powers of darkness,” says a method doc that lays out Ziklag’s 30-year imaginative and prescient to “redirect the trajectory of American tradition towards Christ by bringing again Biblical construction, order and fact to our Nation.”

Ziklag’s 2024 agenda reads just like the work of a political group. It plans to pour cash into mobilizing voters in Arizona who’re “sympathetic to Republicans” so as to safe “10,640 further distinctive votes” — virtually the precise margin of President Joe Biden’s win there in 2020. The group additionally intends to make use of controversial AI software program to allow mass challenges to the eligibility of a whole lot of 1000’s of voters in aggressive states.

In a recording of a 2023 inner technique dialogue, a Ziklag official careworn that the target was the identical in different swing states. “The purpose is to win,” the official mentioned. “If 75,000 individuals wins the White Home, then how will we get 150,000 individuals so we be certain that we win?”

Based on the Ziklag information, the group has divided its 2024 actions into three completely different operations concentrating on voters in battleground states: Checkmate, targeted on funding so-called election integrity teams; Steeplechase, targeting utilizing church buildings and pastors to get out the vote; and Watchtower, aimed toward galvanizing voters across the problems with “parental rights” and opposition to transgender rights and insurance policies supporting well being take care of trans individuals.

In a member briefing video, one in all Ziklag’s religious advisers outlined a plan to “ship swing states” through the use of an anti-transgender message to encourage conservative voters who’re exhausted with Trump.

However Ziklag is just not a political group: It’s a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt charity, the identical authorized designation because the United Method or Boys and Women Membership. Such organizations wouldn’t have to publicly disclose their funders, and donations are tax deductible. In alternate, they’re “completely prohibited from instantly or not directly taking part in, or intervening in, any political marketing campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public workplace,” in response to the IRS.

ProPublica and Documented offered the findings of their investigation to 6 nonpartisan legal professionals and authorized specialists. All expressed concern that Ziklag was testing or violating the legislation.

The reporting by ProPublica and Documented “casts severe doubt on this group’s standing as a 501(c)(3) group,” mentioned Roger Colinvaux, a professor at Catholic College’s Columbus College of Legislation.

“I believe it’s throughout the road and not using a query,” mentioned Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer, a College of Notre Dame legislation professor.

Ziklag officers didn’t reply to an in depth checklist of questions. Martin Nussbaum, an lawyer who mentioned he was the group’s common counsel, mentioned in a written response that “a number of the statements in your e mail are right. Others aren’t,” however he then didn’t reply to a request to specify what was misguided. The group is looking for to “align” the tradition “with Biblical values and the American structure, and that they are going to serve the widespread good,” he wrote. Utilizing the official tax title for Ziklag, he wrote that “USATransForm doesn’t endorse candidates for public workplace.” He declined to touch upon the group’s members.

There are not any shiny strains or magic phrases that the IRS would possibly search for when it investigates a charitable group for partaking in political intervention, mentioned Mayer. As an alternative, the company examines the details and circumstances of a gaggle’s actions and makes a conclusion about whether or not the group violated the legislation.

The most important danger for charities that intervene in political campaigns, Mayer mentioned, is lack of their tax-exempt standing. Donors’ means to deduct their donations could be a main promote, to not point out it may create “a halo impact” for the group, Mayer added.

“They are able to get extra money this fashion,” he mentioned, including, “It boils all the way down to tax evasion on the finish of the day.”

“Dominion Over the Seven Mountains”

Ziklag has largely escaped scrutiny till now. The group describes itself as a “non-public, confidential, invitation-only neighborhood of high-net-worth Christian households.”

Based on inner paperwork, it boasts greater than 125 members that embrace enterprise executives, pastors, media leaders and different distinguished conservative Christians. Potential new members, one doc says, ought to have a “concern for tradition” demonstrated by previous donations to faith-based or political causes, in addition to a internet price of $25 million or extra. Not one of the donors responded to requests for remark.

Tax data present speedy development within the group’s funds in recent times. Its annual income climbed from $1.3 million in 2018 to $6 million in 2019 and practically $12 million in 2022, which is the most recent submitting out there.

The group’s spending is just not on the size of main conservative funders reminiscent of Miriam Adelson or Barre Seid, the electronics magnate who gave $1.6 billion to a gaggle led by conservative authorized activist Leonard Leo. However its funding and technique signify one of many clearest hyperlinks but between the Christian proper and the “election integrity” motion fueled by Trump’s baseless claims about voting fraud. Even a number of million {dollars} funding mass challenges to voters in swing counties could make an affect, authorized and election specialists say.

Ziklag was the brainchild of a Silicon Valley entrepreneur named Ken Eldred. It emerged from a earlier group based by Eldred known as United In Function, which aimed to get extra Christians lively within the civic area, in response to Invoice Dallas, the group’s former director. United In Function generated consideration in June 2016 when it organized a significant assembly between then-candidate Trump and a whole lot of evangelical leaders.

After Trump was elected in 2016, Eldred had an thought, in response to Dallas. “He says, ‘I would like all the rich Christian individuals to come back collectively,’” Dallas recalled in an interview. Eldred advised Dallas that he needed to create a donor community just like the one created by Charles and David Koch however for Christians. He proposed naming it David’s Mighty Males, Dallas mentioned. Feminine members balked. Dallas discovered the passage in Chronicles that references David’s troopers and skim that they met within the metropolis of Ziklag, and they also selected the title Ziklag.

The group’s stature grew after Trump took workplace. Vice President Mike Pence appeared at a Ziklag occasion, as did former Housing and City Growth Secretary Ben Carson, Sen. Ted Cruz, then-Rep. Mark Meadows and different members of Congress. In its non-public e-newsletter, Ziklag claims {that a} coalition of teams it assembled performed “a vastly vital function within the choice, hearings and affirmation course of” of Amy Coney Barrett for a Supreme Court docket seat in late 2020.

Confidential donor networks repeatedly make investments a whole lot of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} into political and charitable teams, from the liberal Democracy Alliance to the Koch-affiliated Stand Collectively group on the proper. However in contrast to Ziklag, neither of these organizations is legally arrange as a real charity.

Ziklag seems to be the primary coordinated effort to get rich donors to fund an overtly Christian nationalist agenda, in response to historians, authorized specialists and different individuals aware of the group. “It exhibits that this concept isn’t being dismissed as fringe in the way in which that it may need been up to now,” mentioned Mary Ziegler, a authorized historian and College of California, Davis legislation professor.

The Christian nationalism motion has quite a lot of goals and tenets, in response to the Public Faith Analysis Institute: that the U.S. authorities “ought to declare America a Christian nation”; that American legal guidelines “needs to be primarily based on Christian values”; that the U.S. will stop to exist as a nation if it “strikes away from our Christian foundations”; that being Christian is crucial to being American; and that God has “known as Christians to train dominion over all areas of American society.”

One theology promoted by Christian nationalist leaders is the Seven Mountain Mandate. Every mountain represents a significant trade or a sphere of public life: arts and media, enterprise, church, schooling, household, authorities, and science and expertise. Ziklag’s purpose, the paperwork say, is to “take dominion over the Seven Mountains,” funding Christian initiatives or putting in religious Christians in management positions to reshape every mountain in a godly manner.

To handle their considerations about schooling, Ziklag’s leaders and allies have targeted on the public-school system. In a 2021 Ziklag assembly, Ziklag’s schooling mountain chair, Peter Bohlinger, mentioned that Ziklag’s purpose “is to take down the schooling system as we all know it at this time.” The producers of the movie “Sound of Freedom,” that includes Jim Caviezel as an anti-sex-trafficking activist, screened an early lower of the movie at a Ziklag convention and requested for funds, in response to Dallas.

The Seven Mountains theology alerts a break from Christian fundamentalists reminiscent of Jerry Falwell Sr. and Pat Robertson. Within the Nineteen Eighties and ’90s, Falwell’s Ethical Majority targeted on working inside the democratic course of to mobilize evangelical voters and elect politicians with a Christian worldview.

The Seven Mountains theology embraces a special, much less democratic strategy to gaining energy. “If the Ethical Majority is about galvanizing the voters, the Seven Mountains is a revolutionary mannequin: You might want to conquer these mountains and let change circulation down from the highest,” mentioned Matthew Taylor, a senior scholar on the Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Research and an professional on Christian nationalism. “It’s a defined program for Christian supremacy.”

“The Amorphous, Tumultuous Wild West”

The Christian proper has had compelling spokespeople and fierce dedication to its causes, whether or not they have been ending abortion rights, permitting prayer in colleges or displaying the Ten Commandments exterior of public buildings. What the motion has typically lacked, its leaders argue, is ample funding.

“When you have a look at the proper, particularly the Christian proper, there have been at all times complaints about cash,” mentioned authorized historian Ziegler. “There’s a perceived hole of ‘We aren’t getting the assist from big-name, big-dollar donors that we deserve and wish and wish.’”

That’s the place Ziklag is available in.

Talking late final 12 months to an invitation-only gathering of Ziklaggers, as members are identified, Charlie Kirk, who leads the pro-Trump Turning Level USA group, named left-leaning philanthropists who have been, in his view, funding the destruction of the nation: MacKenzie Scott, ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos; billionaire investor and liberal philanthropist George Soros; and the 2 founders of Google, Larry Web page and Sergey Brin.

“Why are secular individuals giving extra generously than Christians?” Kirk requested, in response to a recording of his remarks. “It might be a tragedy,” he added, “if individuals who hate life, hate our nation, hate magnificence and hate God needed it greater than us.”

“Ziklag is the place,” Kirk advised the donors. “Ziklag is the counter.”

Equally, Pence, in a 2021 look at a non-public Ziklag occasion, praised the group for its function in “altering lives, and it’s superior the trigger, it’s superior the dominion.”

A driving drive behind Ziklag’s efforts is Lance Wallnau, a distinguished Christian evangelist and influencer primarily based in Texas who’s described by Ziklag as a “Seven Mountains visionary & advisor.” The fiery preacher is likely one of the most influential figures on the Christian proper, specialists say, a bridge between Christian nationalism and Trump. He was one of many earliest evangelical leaders to endorse Trump in 2015 and later revealed a ebook titled “God’s Chaos Candidate: Donald J. Trump and the American Unraveling.” Greater than 1 million individuals comply with him on Fb. He doesn’t attempt to conceal his views: “Sure, I’m a Christian nationalist,” he mentioned throughout one in all his livestreams in 2021. (Wallnau didn’t reply to requests for remark.)

Wallnau has remained a Trump ally. He known as Trump’s time in workplace a “religious warfare presidency” and popularized the concept that Trump was a “modern-day Cyrus,” referring to the Persian king who defeated the Babylonians and allowed the Jewish individuals to return to Jerusalem. Wallnau has visited with Trump on the White Home and Trump Tower; final November, he livestreamed from a black-tie gala at Mar-a-Lago the place Trump spoke.

Wallnau didn’t provide you with the notion that Christians ought to attempt to take management of key areas of American society. However he improved on the concept by introducing the idea of the seven mountains and urged Christians to set about conquering them. The idea caught on, mentioned Taylor, as a result of it empowered Christians with a way of objective in each sphere of life.

As a preacher within the unbiased charismatic custom, a fast-growing offshoot of Pentecostalism that’s unaffiliated with any main denomination, Wallnau and his acolytes consider that God speaks to and thru modern-day apostles and prophets — a model of Christianity that Taylor, in his forthcoming ebook “The Violent Take It By Power,” describes as “the amorphous, tumultuous Wild West of the fashionable church.” Wallnau and his concepts lingered on the fringes of American Christianity for years, till the increase from the Trump presidency.

The Ziklag information element not solely what Christians ought to do to overcome all seven mountains, but additionally what their objectives can be as soon as they’ve taken the summit. For the federal government mountain, one key doc says that “the biblical function of presidency is to advertise good and punish evil” and that “the phrase of God and prayer play a major function in coverage choices.”

For the humanities and leisure mountain, objectives embrace that 80% of the flicks produced be rated G or PG “with an ethical story,” and that many individuals who work within the trade “function beneath a biblical/ethical worldview.” The schooling part says that homeschooling needs to be a “elementary proper” and the federal government “should not favor one type of schooling over one other.”

Different inner Ziklag paperwork voice robust opposition to same-sex marriage and transgender rights. One reads: “transgender acceptance = Closing signal earlier than imminent collapse.”

Heading into the 2024 election 12 months, Ziklag government director Drew Hiss warned members in an inner video that “looming above and past these seven mountains is that this evil drive that’s been manifesting itself.” He described it as “a controlling, evil, diabolical presence, actually, with tyranny in thoughts.” That presence was concentrated within the authorities mountain, he mentioned. If Ziklaggers needed to avoid wasting their nation from “the powers of darkness,” they wanted to focus their energies on that authorities mountain or else none of their work in some other space would succeed.

“Operation Checkmate”

Within the fall of 2023, Wallnau sat in a grey armchair in his TV studio. A big TV display behind him flashed a single phrase: “ZIKLAG.”

“You virtually hate to place it out this clearly,” he mentioned as he detailed Ziklag’s electoral technique, “as a result of if someone else will get ahold of this, they’ll freak out.”

He was joined on set by Hiss, who had simply turn out to be the group’s new day-to-day chief. The 2 males have been there to report a particular message to Ziklag members that laid out the group’s bold plans for the upcoming election 12 months.

The forces arrayed towards Christians have been many, in response to the confidential video. They have been locked in a “religious battle,” Hiss mentioned, towards Democrats who have been a “radical left Marxist drive.” Biden, Wallnau mentioned, was a senile previous man and “an empty go well with with an agenda that’s written and managed by someone else.”

Within the information, Ziklag says it plans to offer out practically $12 million to a constellation of teams engaged on the bottom to shift the 2024 citizens in favor of Trump and different Republicans.

A distinguished conservative getting cash from Ziklag is Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer and Trump ally who joined the January 2021 telephone name when then-President Trump requested Georgia’s secretary of state to “discover” sufficient votes to flip Georgia in Trump’s favor.

Mitchell now leads a community of “election integrity” coalitions in swing states which have spent the final three years advocating for adjustments to voting guidelines and the way elections are run. Based on one inner e-newsletter, Ziklag was an early funder of Mitchell’s post-2020 “election integrity” activism, which voting-rights specialists have criticized for stoking unfounded fears about voter fraud and looking for to unfairly take away individuals from voting rolls. In 2022, Ziklag donated $600,000 to the Conservative Partnership Institute, which in flip funds Mitchell’s election-integrity work. Inside Ziklag paperwork present that it offered funding to allow Mitchell to arrange election integrity infrastructure in Florida, North Carolina and Wisconsin.

Now Mitchell is selling a software known as EagleAI, which has claimed to make use of synthetic intelligence to automate and velocity up the method of difficult ineligible voters. EagleAI is already getting used to mount mass challenges to the eligibility of a whole lot of 1000’s of voters in aggressive states, and, with Ziklag’s assist, the group plans to ramp up these efforts.

Based on an inner video, Ziklag plans to take a position $800,000 in “EagleAI’s clear the rolls venture,” which might be one of many largest identified donations to the group.

Ziklag lists two key aims for Operation Checkmate: “Safe 10,640 further distinctive votes in Arizona (mirroring the 2020 margin of 10,447 votes), and take away as much as a million ineligible registrations and round 280,000 ineligible voters in Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, and Wisconsin.”

In a recording of an inner Zoom name, Ziklag’s Mark Bourgeois careworn the electoral worth of concentrating on Arizona. “I care about Maricopa County,” Bourgeois mentioned at one level, referring to Arizona’s largest county, which Biden received 4 years in the past. “That’s how we win.”

For Operation Watchtower, Wallnau defined in a members-only video that transgender coverage was a “wedge difficulty” that could possibly be decisive in turning out voters uninterested in listening to about Trump.

The left had received the battle over the “gay difficulty,” Wallnau mentioned. “However on transgenderism, there’s an issue they usually comprehend it.” He continued: “They’re gonna wanna speak about Trump, Trump, Trump. … In the meantime, if we speak about ‘It’s not about Trump. It’s about dad and mom and their youngsters, and the state is a menace,’” that could possibly be the “goal on the brow of Goliath.”

The Ziklag information describe ways the group plans to make use of round parental rights — insurance policies that make it simpler for folks to manage what’s taught in public colleges — to prove conservative voters. In a fundraising video, the group says it plans to underwrite a “messaging and information lab” targeted on parental rights that may provide “successful messaging to all our accomplice teams to create unified focus amongst all on the proper.” The purpose, the video says, is to make parental rights “the difference-maker within the 2024 election.”

Based on Wallnau, Ziklag additionally plans to fund poll initiatives in seven key states — Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Montana, Nevada and Ohio — that take purpose on the transgender neighborhood by looking for to ban “genital mutilation.” The seven states focused are both presidential battlegrounds or have aggressive U.S. Senate races. Not one of the initiatives is on a state poll but.

“Folks which can be torpid in regards to the election or, worse but, they’re gonna be all Trump-traumatized with the information cycle — this difficulty will get individuals to come back out and vote,” Wallnau mentioned. “That poll initiative can ship swing states.”

The final prong of Ziklag’s 2024 technique is Operation Steeplechase, which urges conservative pastors to mobilize their congregants to vote on this 12 months’s election. This venture will work in coordination with a number of distinguished conservative teams that assist former president Trump’s reelection, reminiscent of Turning Level USA’s faith-based group, the Religion and Freedom Coalition run by conservative operative Ralph Reed and the America First Coverage Institute, one in all a number of teams carefully allied with Trump.

Ziklag says in a 2023 inner video that it and its allies will “coordinate in depth pastor and church outreach by means of pastor summits, church-focused messaging and occasions and the creation of pastor assets.” As preacher and activist John Amanchukwu mentioned at a Ziklag occasion, “We want a church that’s prepared to do something and every little thing to get to the purpose the place we reclaim that which was stolen from us.”

Six tax specialists reviewed the election-related technique discussions and ways reported on this story. All of them mentioned the actions examined or ran afoul of the legislation governing 501(c)(3) charities. The IRS and the Texas lawyer common, which might oversee the Southlake, Texas, charity, didn’t reply to questions.

Whereas not all of its political efforts gave the impression to be clear-cut violations, the specialists mentioned, others could also be: The said plan to mobilize voters “sympathetic to Republicans,” Ziklag officers brazenly discussing the purpose to win the election, and Wallnau’s name to fund poll initiatives that will “ship swing states” whereas on the similar time voicing express criticism of Biden all raised pink flags, the specialists mentioned.

“I’m troubled a few tax-exempt charitable group that’s arrange and its most important operation appears to be to get individuals to win workplace,” mentioned Phil Hackney, a professor of legislation on the College of Pittsburgh and an professional on tax-exempt organizations.

“They’re planning an election effort,” mentioned Marcus Owens, a tax lawyer at Loeb and Loeb and a former director of the IRS’ exempt organizations division. “That’s not a 501(c)(3) exercise.”