Former President Donald Trump says Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s more than $400 million in funding for local election offices was “illegal” after a new analysis said the funding boosted Democratic turnout in key areas.
Trump, who lost to President Biden by narrow margins in a handful of swing states, told political news host Bill O’Reilly that he believes Zuckerberg may not “get away” with it.
“What he did, in my opinion, was illegal,” Trump told O’Reilly in an interview that will air at 8 p.m. Monday on The First TV.
“He’s going to get away with it,” O’Reilly said.
Trump shot back: “Well, you don’t know if he’s going to get away with it. OK.”
Trump previously accused Facebook of bias for indefinitely suspending his account after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and for censoring reports about documents from Hunter Biden’s laptop that appear to link the elder Biden to his son’s business ventures in China and Ukraine.
Trump in the same interview tells O’Reilly he would not mandate COVID-19 vaccines if he were still in office because he’d “sell it” to people to take voluntarily.
Zuckerberg donated roughly $419.5 million to election offices through a pair of nonprofits — the Center for Technology and Civic Life and the Center for Election Innovation and Research — as officials managed a surge in mail-in voting during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan, told The Post that their contributions were legal.
“When our nation’s election infrastructure faced unprecedented challenges last year due to the pandemic and the federal government failed to provide adequate funds, Mark and Priscilla provided funding to two non-partisan organizations that helped cities and states ensure that residents could vote regardless of their party or preference,” he said.
“The grants to CTCL and CEIR were made in full compliance with the law. CTCL and CEIR issued an open call to state and local jurisdictions across the country and provided funding for all jurisdictions that applied. Nearly 2,500 election jurisdictions from 49 states applied for and received funds, including urban, suburban, rural, and exurban counties (publicly listed here) – and more Republican than Democratic jurisdictions applied for and received the funds.”
The funds were donated to “promote safe and reliable voting” so that “every eligible voter can participate in a safe and timely way and that their vote is counted,” according to a September 2020 press release announcing the plan.
LaBolt previously pushed back on claims of bias. He said “more of the jurisdictions that received funding historically voted Republican than Democratic, so the facts belie the claim.”
But data modeling by former University of Dallas economics professor William Doyle — published last week by The Federalist — found that the money may have boosted Biden in Texas, which Trump won, by 200,000 votes. Doyle didn’t provide modeling for other states.
Trump weighed in after former Republican Federal Election Commission member Hans von Spakovsky said he believes private funding of local election offices should be banned.
“My reaction is that this was a carefully orchestrated attempt to convert official government election offices into get-out-the-vote operations for one political party and to insert political operatives into election offices in order to influence and manipulate the outcome of the election,” he said.
Legislation to prohibit outside funding of elections has been introduced in 17 states this year, according to Ballotpedia.
Arizona Republican Gov. Doug Ducey signed one measure in April, saying, “With public confidence in our elections in peril, it’s clear our elections must be pristine and above reproach — and the sole purview of government.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, also a Republican, said last week that a recent election reform law he signed had “banned Zuckerbucks” in the Sunshine State.
Whether Zuckerberg’s money had a partisan impact remains a matter of debate.
Earlier analysis by American Public Media found that Zuckerberg’s money wasn’t responsible for narrow Biden wins in Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania. That report said voter turnout wasn’t higher in counties that got more of the money.
But Doyle pointed out that of the 26 grant recipients that received $1 million or more, 25 were jurisdictions that Biden won. In Georgia, Doyle found, counties that received funds were 2.3 points more Democratic in 2020 than 2016 and non-funded counties hardly changed.
Critics also point to the apparently disproportionate funding for some Biden-leaning urban areas. The best-funded area in Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, reportedly received $6.32 per capita compared to $1.12 per capita for Berks County, the top-funded Trump county. Trump won Pennsylvania in 2016 before losing there in 2020.