The Christian Nationalist Dark Money Group Behind Trump’s Election Interference Scheme
How Ziklag built the invite-only high net worth group & what it has to do with the 7 Mountain Mandate
The Christian Nationalist Dark Money Group Behind Trump’s Election Interference Scheme
A secret dark money network of ultrawealthy far-right evangelical donors is illegally spending $12M to fix the election in favor of Donald Trump. The sketchy AF nonprofit has been around playing the long game, but the bulk of this fresh funding is going to Trump-aligned organizations to disenfranchise more than 1M people in the swing states Trump lost in 2020.
The multi-millionaire and billionaire families, including the Uihlein family of the shipping and packing supplies company, Uline, and the now defunct Schlitz Brewing Company; the Green family of the arts and crafts behemoth, Hobby Lobby; and the Waller family of the underwear and sports apparel company, Jockey, are top benefactors of an invitation-only “charity” called Ziklag to fund far-right Christian legal and advocacy groups to realize the prophecy of the 7 Mountain Mandate. Ziklag is a biblical reference that the crazies on the far-right are using to justify their spiritual warfare.
The groups that these religious oligarchs have donated the bulk of these funds to will sound familiar. Ziklag has funneled money to far-right personality Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA, among other MAGA groups. But the most significant group is the Alliance Defending Freedom, which has been behind several Supreme Court cases, including Dobbs, which overturned Roe v. Wade, the recent mifepristone cases, which sought to restrict access to the medication, and last term’s infamous 303 creative case, which granted religious businesses to discriminate against LGBTQ+ customers even though the case was based on a lie. It has also been behind other cases, including the case against Southwest Airlines that sought to force religious indoctrination on the airline’s lawyers.
ProPublica and Documented obtained thousands of Ziklag’s documents, including newsletters, internal videos, strategy plans, and fundraising pitches—all revealing its goal of achieving Dominion over secular society. To do so, the nonprofit is centering its activities on influencing politics, which means it operates as a political organization. But it is not registered as one. Ziklag is registered as a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt charity and is legally barred from “directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office.” A big red flag is that Ziklag’s registered name is Usatransform and lists Southlake, Texas as its organization’s home base.
So it is very much breaking the law by throwing money into manufacturing Donald Trump’s win. Documents show a 3-pronged strategy for swing states: Checkmate (for Trump’s election integrity aka tampering), Steeplechase (for Church-organized GOTV), and Watchtower (for promoting Culture Wars and “parents rights”). In their minds, this will motivate non-MAGA voters who are Trump and/or Biden haters to pick Trump. Delulu is what these people are.
In terms of “delivering swing states” to Trump, Ziklag plans to manufacture the number of results that Trump demanded Secretaries of State to “find” in 2020. (Like the 11,780 Trump ordered from GA SoS Brad Raffensberger.) For example, documents highlight that the group aims to mobilize just enough Arizonans to secure “10,640 additional unique votes”—nearly the precise margin Biden won by in the state. Rinse and repeat this in Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
It is also providing funding for states to deploy AI software to challenge and invalidate hundreds of thousands of registered swing state voters/ballots. You know, just in case those Trump or double haters don’t reach the number needed for Trump to say, “We told you 2020 was rigged!” Spoiler Alert: Leonard Leo and Charles Koch’s dark money networks are also involved in this effort. (More on that in the news section.)
L. Martin Nussbaum, Ziklag’s general counsel who is based out of Colorado Springs, Colorado, and is a Federalist Society member who has argued cases for the far-right evangelicals before the Supreme Court, responded to ProPublica’s inquiries writing in an email, “USATransForm does not endorse candidates for public office.” He added that the group is simply working to “align” the culture “with Biblical values and the American constitution, and that they will serve the common good.”
For one, Nussbaum is lying and Ziklag’s documents substantiate it. For another, a group is not serving the common good by cheating and forcing its beliefs onto the public. Colorado Bar Association, you up?
What is Ziklag and Who’s Behind It?
Ziklag claims it has more than 125 members—all prominent conservative Christians in business, media, and the Church. Invites only go out to those with a high net worth of at least $25M and who have demonstrated a “concern for culture” via donations to evangelical or political causes.
During the Trump administration, Ziklag’s annual revenue spiked from $1.3M in 2018 to $6M in 2019. By 2022, it doubled to $12M, as shown in the latest filings.
Shockingly, the dark money group did not originate from humble beginnings. It sprung out of a now-disbanded Christian Nationalist Communications Network out of California’s Silicon Valley. And it has rebranded itself a few times now.
The Network was created by Bill Dallas as a classic religious grift by a white-collar criminal who spent 2 years in San Quentin for embezzling millions from his Real Estate company. The need for a money-making scheme came from the fact Dallas was also fined $772K for making illegal contributions to Oakland city officials and owed tens of thousands in taxes. So he emerged from prison as a Christian Nationalist and leaned into what Silicon Valley became famous for—Data mining.
With the assistance of George Barna, an evangelical pollster who founded Dallas-based Barna Group, and Ken Eldred, a tech investor and founder of the non-denominational funding arm based out of Southlake, Texas called Living Stones Foundation, Dallas created United in Purpose (UiP) in the mid 2000’s to collect data for the Christian Nationalists to more effectively appeal to the religious community. The group’s mission was “to unite and equip like-minded conservative organizations to increase their reach, impact, and influence through the latest technology, research, and marketing strategies.”
It funded the Tea Party movement, which helped the GOP flip the House in 2010, among other far-right religious groups attacking women’s reproductive freedoms, LGBTQ+ rights, etc. But it wasn’t until 2016 that UiP became infamous. UiP was responsible for an enormous U.S. voter records leak that exposed the information of 245M registered voters. It underscores how successful Dallas’ operation was in amassing data on US citizens and how cavalier it was with it.
This didn’t faze UiP or Dallas, who organized a meeting in June 2016 between Donald Trump and evangelical leaders, including Jim Garlow of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) movement, David Barton, a GOP political consultant and vice chairman of the Texas GOP, and Robert McEwen, a lobbyist and former Ohio Congressman.
Once it hitched its grifter coattails to Donald Trump, UiP began hosting events at Trump properties in which attendees included Leonard Leo, FOX News anchors Sean Hannity and Mark Levin, and Ginni and Clarence Thomas, among other far-right crazies. In 2017, Ginni presented a UiP awards ceremony where many of these Trump allies received awards.
By 2018, UiP went incognito and its website was disbanded. It was Eldred who came up with the idea of pivoting UiP into a wealthy-only donor network for Christians. He aimed to build something similar to the Koch Network and exclusivity was key to appealing to a high net worth member base.
Dallas’ contribution was naming this network, which he turned to the Bible for inspiration. The city of Ziklag where David’s soldiers grouped against King Saul was the Golden Ticket.
Historians, legal experts, and those familiar with Ziklag told ProPublica that the group is the first to fundraise the Christian Nationalist agenda by wealthy donors. Mary Ziegler, a legal historian and law professor at the University of California, Davis, said “It shows that this idea isn’t being dismissed as fringe in the way that it might have been in the past.”
Ziklag & The 7 Mountain Mandate
Ziklag’s “Seven Mountains visionary & advisor,” Lance Wallnau, is a Christian Nationalist influencer based in Texas, who operates as a counterpart to NAR’s Dutch Sheets—each serves as a medium between Donald Trump and the far-right evangelical movement.
Like Sheets, Wallnau was one of the earliest evangelical leaders to endorse Trump in 2015. He also published a book titled “God’s Chaos Candidate: Donald J. Trump and the American Unraveling” and refers to Trump’s term as a “spiritual warfare presidency.”
As part of the movement’s PR campaign to portray Trump as “God’s chosen one,” Wallnau was the one that successfully popularized the image of Trump as a “modern-day Cyrus.” Cyrus is the Persian king who defeated the Babylonians and was prompted by God to decree that the Jewish people be free to return to Jerusalem.
Ziklag picked up where UiP left off and has mirrored NAR’s efforts in courting Republican lawmakers and senior Trump administration officials, including Trump’s former Vice President Mike Pence, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, and former chief of staff Mark Meadows, as well as Senator Ted Cruz (R-Cancun) and others. Appearances by these GOP officials at Ziklag events gave the network legitimacy with wealthy prospective members and helped it advance the 7 Mountain Mandate.
Ziklag is rooted in two of the 7: Business and Religion. A business of religion, if you will. As I’ve reported on TikTok, Business Mountain is where the crazies amass the funding needed to gain control of the other six. Forging a connection with the Republican Party and its leader achieves a third: Government.
In an internal video, Ziklag executive director Drew Hiss warned members that if Ziklaggers (what the group calls members) wanted to save their country from “the powers of darkness,” they must focus on Government Mountain or the effort will fail. In one of its newsletters, Ziklag claimed that it assembled a coalition that played “a hugely significant role in the selection, hearings, and confirmation process” of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
Achieving near dominion over this mountain has benefited the Christian Nationalist agenda in spades. The law of the secular land has shifted toward its ideology, especially since Trump appointed 3 Supreme Court justices who align with it. One document states, “the word of God and prayer play a significant role in policy decisions” and that “the biblical role of government is to promote good and punish evil.”
This means there’s an opportunity to checkmate 2 more mountains and explains why the Christian Nationalists are hyper-focused on education and family (a 4th and 5th mountain). This is also where the second part of Ziklag’s 3-pronged strategy known as Watchtower comes in.
In a 2021 meeting, Ziklag’s education mountain chair and wealthy CA real estate developer, Peter Bohlinger, said that Ziklag’s goal “is to take down the education system as we know it today.” One document for Education Mountain states that homeschooling should be a “fundamental right” and the government “must not favor one form of education over another.” Other records describe tactics for the “parents’ rights” strategy. In a fundraising video, Ziklag outlined its plan to fund a “messaging and data lab” focused on the issue that will provide talking points to partner groups. It added that the goal is to make parents’ rights “the difference-maker in the 2024 election.”
In a members-only video, Wallnau explained that transgender policy is a “wedge issue” that can convince Trump haters in seven battleground states to vote for Trump. Documents show Ziklag plans to fund ballot initiatives in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, and Ohio that seek to ban gender-affirming care. To date, none have succeeded. But Wallnau is convinced “that ballot initiative can deliver swing states.” Additional internal documents underscore the group’s opposition to same-sex marriage and transgender rights, stating “transgender acceptance = Final sign before imminent collapse.”
Speaking of delivering states to Trump, Ziklag’s other core strategy—Checkmate—is centered around funding Trump’s “election integrity” scheme. In another internal video, Ziklag pledges to fund Leonard Leo-ally and indicted fake elector participant Cleta Mitchell’s election interference scheme. (More on that in the next section.)
As you can see, Ziklag is openly breaking the law by operating as a political organization. And it’s using wealthy donor money to fund its election interference campaign. Ziklag’s goal: To fix the 2024 Presidential election so the Christian Nationalist’s preferred candidate, Donald Trump, wins.
Marcus Owens, a tax lawyer and a former director of the IRS’ exempt organizations division, said it plainly, “They’re planning an election effort. That’s not a 501(c)(3) activity.”
Ziklag’s token preacher, John Amanchukwu, told Ziklaggers at an event, “We need a church that’s willing to do anything and everything to get to the point where we reclaim that which was stolen from us.”
Ziklag, Leonard Leo, and Charles Koch are Behind Voter Roll Purges
Far-right groups backed by Leonard Leo’s and Charles Koch’s dark money networks are challenging the legitimacy of voter registration databases nationwide. Ziklag is also a shadow player funding the efforts. The racketeering scheme includes door-knocking campaigns, data collection software to challenge voter eligibility, and a scorched-earth legal campaign overseen by the Republican National Committee. Republican secretaries of state nationwide are conducting mass purges of state voter rolls with Ohio scheduled to do so later this month. They are also appropriating both pop culture and minority Get Out the Vote campaigns to disenfranchise mostly minority voters.
In Michigan, Republicans have dubbed their effort “Soles to the Rolls,” which is taken directly from the “Souls to the Polls” GOTV by Black churches. In Nevada, far-right activist Chuck Muth created the Pigpen Project (named after the Charlie Brown character) in 2023 to purge voter rolls in Democratically leaning counties. The voter disenfranchisement nonprofit is affiliated with both Leonard Leo and Charles Koch dark money networks, which fund the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) and Cleta Mitchell’s True the Vote, Voter Reference Foundation (VoteRef), and Election Integrity Network. Mitchell is also a chairwoman of PILF and was deeply involved in Trump’s fake elector scheme.
In connecting the nefarious dots, an internal Ziklag newsletter reveals that the Christian Nationalist network began funding Mitchell’s election denialism efforts in 2022. Ziklag donated $600K to the Conservative Partnership Institute, which Mitchell funnels to EIN and used to deploy operations in Florida, North Carolina, and Wisconsin.
Together, the Ziklag, Leo, and Koch-backed PILF, TTV, VoteRef, and EIN forge a legal and surveillance “Election Integrity” operation that works with local and regional conservative nonprofits like the PigPen Project to interfere with state election administration. These groups are filing public records requests to gain access to state voter rolls nationwide, monitoring voter registration databases, and suing states over voter eligibility. They also plan to create their own public database for election vigilantism.
Another familiar face is MyPillow guy Mike Lindell who is supporting EIN’s efforts to create this new public voter database, which uses EagleAI Network, a data-matching software. Volunteer groups rely on public records such as change-of-address forms, criminal justice records, and property tax data—all unreliable sources—to identify ineligible voters. To help the effort, PILF sued the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), a voluntary system founded by Republicans for inter-state voter data sharing, to gain access to the private (for election offices only) data.
But a public database isn’t all EagleAI is being used for. The group is also using it to file lawsuits en masse to challenge the eligibility of voters in competitive states. And an internal video shows that Ziklag plans to invest $800K to fund the effort.
Judges Slap Down Efforts by Far-Right to Block Abortion Ballot Initiatives
On Tuesday, a Montana judge ruled that the Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen’s Office erred in changing the rules governing petition requirements for signatures and that it unlawfully omitted signatures of inactive voters for 3 constitutional initiatives. District Judge Mike Menahan gave county election offices one week to tally signatures of inactive voters that had been rejected. A hearing on a permanent injunction against the GOP Secretary of State’s office is scheduled for July 26. Jacobsen’s attorney, Thane Johnson, admitted that petitioners of the 3 ballot measures submitted more than enough signatures to qualify, even without signatures from inactive voters.
On Monday, a South Dakota judge ruled in favor of an abortion initiative for placement on the November ballot. Judge John Pekas dismissed a lawsuit filed by an anti-abortion group, Life Defense Fund, that sought to block the initiative after being certified by the Secretary of State and rebuked them for bringing the challenge against the petitioners instead of state election officials, stating, “in this particular instance, this is a collateral attack.” In addition to requesting Amendment G be removed, the group asked the court to bar Dakotans for Health, the grassroots organization that led the petition, from being involved in petition or ballot measure campaigns for 4 years.
If passed, Amendment G would prohibit the state from regulating abortions in the first trimester. It does allow some restrictions in the second trimester, but “only in ways that are reasonably related to the physical health of the pregnant woman.” Abortions in the third trimester would remain prohibited with one exception: when the pregnant woman’s OBGYN deems it medically necessary to preserve her life or health.
The challenge was brought by Republican state Rep. Jon Hansen, who represents South Dakota’s 25th district and serves as the group’s co-chair and legal counsel, and Leslee Unruh, a rabid forced birth lobbyist who is behind several religious pregnancy centers and abstinence-only organizations and serves as the group’s co-chair. Hansen and Unruh created the group in 2022 with the express intent of challenging women’s reproductive healthcare initiatives. They plan to appeal the decision.
Trump assassination attempt update
The 2016 Trump Campaign built a secret database that profiled gun owners in battleground states as part of its microtargeting messaging strategy. In particular, the campaign aimed to target voters who would be susceptible to 2nd Amendment talking points—a bedrock issue for Trump’s platform. Channel 4 News obtained the database in 2020, which found the campaign scored 50M voters in 10 states, and reported on Monday that the attempted assassin’s father was on it. In fact, out of 19K Bethel Park residents profiled, he was one of the top 20 highest scoring voters on the list. What’s most interesting about this isn’t the fact that the shooter’s father scored high, but that the Trump Campaign has been secretly gathering data on voters for the express purpose of propaganda.
Speaking of propaganda, corporate-owned news outlets are still quoting Trump spokespeople as trustworthy sources about Trump’s injury. CBS News and The New York Times spoke with the GOP nominee’s son, Eric Trump, personal drug dealer, Ronny Jackson, and Arizona delegate, Joe Neglia without pressing them about whether an independent medical professional assessed the cause and scope of the injury. Instead, they repeated their talking points, including portraying Neglia’s ear bandage PR stunt as a cutesy show of solidarity. They even quoted him claiming, “This is the newest fashion trend…Everybody in the world's going to be wearing these pretty soon. It's the latest thing” without pushback.
On Tuesday, local Pittsburgh news station WPXI confirmed that local police had eyes on the attempted assassin long before Trump took the stage and notified authorities up the chain of command prior to the mass shooting. Accounts by local law enforcement contradict the narrative by the U.S. Secret Service, which has been attempting to pin the blame on Pittsburgh police. Officers spoke with WPXI and stated that 2 sniper teams were stationed near the building where the shooter set up, but no local police officer was assigned to the building where shots were fired from.
On Monday, the station’s correspondent Nicole Ford reported that, roughly 30 minutes before the shooting, a police officer on duty took a photo of and called in a suspicious man roaming the ground. Minutes later, a sniper spotted the same suspicious man scoping out a roof near the rally and also took a photo of and called in the suspect. Minutes before the shooting, a Butler Township police officer confronted the shooter who pointed his gun at the officer. On Tuesday, Ford obtained photos of the shooter’s cell phone and a transmitter device that law enforcement found next to his body. We do not know what he used the transmitter device for, but it is possible that he tried to use it to monitor law enforcement radio chatter.
Europe charges social media platform X for violating disinformation law
On Friday, the European Commission filed charges against X (formerly Twitter) for violating the EU’s new social media law, the Digital Services Act. These are the first charges to be filed under the law and follow the EU’s investigation into the platform that opened in December 2023. Preliminary findings from the investigation show that X’s new pay-to-play blue checks policy misled account holders into trusting sometimes duplicitous content and that the feature was being abused by bad actors to impersonate public figures. The investigation also determined that the platform failed to comply with the law, which requires companies to provide a searchable and reliable advertisement repository. Instead, X limited access to public data to external researchers.
This resulted in the formal charges brought against X, which allege that the platform allows disinformation and illegal hate speech to spread unfettered while lacking transparency. The Commission said the investigation is ongoing. Under the law, X could be fined up to 6 percent of the company’s global revenue.
Texas Governor Takes No Accountability for MIA Status during Hurricane Berryl
The Texas government has failed once again to properly respond to another natural disaster and is refusing to take accountability. Instead, Texas Governor Greg Abbott is blaming everyone else and also making threats that won’t fix the problem. As of Monday, one week after Hurricane Beryl hit Southeast Texas, 288K residents in southeastern Texas still had no power, leaving an inexcusable number of people without access to air conditioning in the midst of an ongoing heat wave. The majority without power live in the Lone Star state’s most populous county, Harris County—the Democratic county that the GOP-controlled legislature is attempting to usurp power over.
As Hurricane Beryl made its way toward Texas, Gov. Abbott made a political pilgrimage to Southeast Asia and did not make plans to immediately return to govern in the aftermath. He stayed for his full trip, returning 5 days after Beryl struck, and was unresponsive to calls from the White House as President Biden attempted to reach the MIA Governor about federal assistance. Biden also tried reaching Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, but he did not return his calls until the day after Beryl landed.
Both Abbott and Patrick made excuses for why they ignored the White House, neither of which pass the smell test. Abbott claimed that Biden didn’t reach him on the normal cell phone number he has used in the past. He even stated that he recognized the phone number. This “called me on my other line that he doesn’t normally use” excuse is indefensible, especially knowing that a hurricane is wreaking havoc on the people you govern. Meanwhile, Patrick claimed the state needed to determine federal aid needs before making a request. But that is not true—FEMA confirmed that there are no on-the-ground assessment requirements for issuing disaster declarations—and Texas’ past actions requesting federal assistance before Hurricanes landed, such as Harvey in 2017, undermine Patrick’s lie.
Upon his return on July 13, Abbott immediately went into strongman mode, calling for an investigation into CenterPoint Energy’s, the Houston-based utility company that provides gas and electricity to the state, response to the storm and demanded the company share its preparation plans for the remaining hurricane season by July 31. Abbott threatened that failure to do so would result in an executive order “geared to keep the power on” but that’s just not how utilities work.
On Tuesday, the Texas Public Utility Commission (PUC) opened an investigation into CenterPoint Energy. The chairman said recommendations would be shared with the state Legislature by December. CenterPoint said that it has responded quickly to restore power to 90% of customers, but customers are understandably frustrated. Many say the company's tracker is still down and that the new map the company released following Beryl is inaccurate.