Beware Elise Stefanik’s Moneyman

Did “America First” conservatives really “win” the battle over the GOP’s congressional leadership last week? Old-guard Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney may be out of power as the House Republican Conference chair. But her replacement, New York GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik, is a swampy shape-shifter whose campaign coffers are filled with open borders, radical social liberal, Wall Street cash.

The multibillion-dollar moneyman behind Stefanik’s rise to power is Big Business oligarch Paul Singer. He founded the hedge fund Elliott Management and propped up the political bids of several Republican women who rode the gender card to victory: Stefanik in New York’s 21st congressional district; anti-Trump establishment Republican Barbara Comstock in Virginia’s 10th congressional district; and John McCain loyalist and Trump flip-flopper Martha McSally, who held Arizona’s second congressional district before losing her 2020 special election to retain the Senate seat she was appointed to when former Sen. Jon Kyl stepped down as the late McCain’s replacement.

Singer funded the Washington Free Beacon, ostensibly a “conservative” “news” website run by Trump-hater Bill Kristol’s son-in-law, Matthew Continetti, which in turn hired the Fusion GPS opposition research outfit to compile the infamous Trump dossier — which was passed on to the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee after Trump won the GOP primary.

Singer helped raise $1 million for Trump-bashing Mitt Romney’s failed 2012 presidential bid, $1 million for Karl Rove’s Super PAC in 2014, and $1 million for the failed 2016 presidential bid of pro-illegal amnesty shill Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. He pushed gay marriage and the alphabet soup agenda on the GOP. He underwrote fellow failed GOP presidential candidate and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s Common Core advocacy. He backed the open borders amnesty Republicans behind the “Gang of Eight” push for cheap foreign workers.

As I documented previously in this column and in my book, “Sold Out,” Singer helped fund the National Immigration Forum along with fellow hedge fund billionaire George Soros. NIF propped up a faux “grassroots” initiative of religious conservatives, dubbed the Evangelical Immigration Table, to lobby for the Gang of Eight. NIF was founded by far-left attorney Rick Swartz, who opposes tracking/deporting visa overstayers and opposes employer sanctions against companies that violated immigration laws. Swartz also served as an adviser to Microsoft. On Capitol Hill, Swartz worked closely with immigration expansionist Sen. Spencer Abraham’s legislative director Cesar Conda and Sen. Sam Brownback’s legislative director (and open borders, anti-Trump former GOP House speaker) Paul Ryan. Conda previously worked for the pro-amnesty U.S. Chamber of Commerce and mentored Ryan from the age of 19. Conda guided newbie Rubio as his Senate chief of staff from 2011-2014 and remains his powerful immigration Svengali behind closed doors.

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While she may have earned Trump’s endorsement for the GOP No. 2 leadership position, Stefanik’s pedigree and financial allegiances lie with Ryan and his “America Last” sugar daddies. Citing OpenSecrets campaign finance data, Breitbart.com reported that Singer consistently gave Ryan the maximum personal donation during his swamp tenure. In addition, through his Elliot Management firm, Singer was one of the top donors to Ryan’s associated super PACs. One left-leaning website reported that over three election cycles (2014, 2016, 2018), Stefanik was “the second highest recipient of hedge fund contributions in the House, receiving $311,582,” behind House Speaker Paul Ryan’s nearly $600,000 take.

Stefanik served as Ryan’s top campaign adviser in 2012 after serving in the Singer-supported George W. Bush administration. She praised her Beltway barnacle colleague as a “true friend and mentor” after he stepped down as House speaker in 2018 — a move that had nothing to do with wanting to “spend more time with his children,” as he claimed at the time, but everything to do with creating what he later called an “escape hatch” from his nemesis, Donald Trump (and, of course, cashing in on the massive Super PAC war chest he built up duping rank-and-file Republican MAGA donors).

Swamp-marinated birds of a feather flock together. The headlines may label Stefanik a “Trump loyalist” for now, but in the Beltway, the almighty dollar trumps party, principle or personality. Follow the money; find the truth.