The $64 million mystery: How a wave of anonymous donations is fueling the 2024 presidential campaign
Yet in the summer of 2020, when a blandly named entity called the Impetus Fund received a $64 million donation from a single anonymous source, it touched off a guessing game with broad political implications.
That single anonymous donation, routed through a series of accounts, eventually would be used to help Joe Biden defeat Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election . Critics say it has come to illustrate an increasingly opaque system of funding elections that in 2024 could reach a scale that dwarfs all previous election cycles.
The source of that donation remains unknown — and not for lack of effort. Fox News first reported on the curious donation in 2023, but was unable to ferret out the donor's identity. A cottage industry of public interest groups and investigative reporters who dig relentlessly to unmask big-dollar donors, also came up empty.
Most speculate the money originated with a single, super-wealthy Biden supporter. But it could also have come from a privately held company or a shell corporation, an increasingly common tactic used by well-heeled donors seeking to add layers of anonymity to their political largesse. It remains a $64 million mystery — and while legal, it's one that critics say underscores what's wrong with today's campaign finance system.
