Research current through October 3, 2026.

Senate money: the payer you can’t see

This page is about the third act of the episode; every factual sentence on it has a source link, each link has a grade (A, B or C; see how we grade), and for a “nothing located” statement the link is the place we looked, so you can look too.

What the episode said

The episode said that when Mitch McConnell stepped down as Republican leader, John Thune took over his fundraising machine, which has two parts (NPR^B; Semafor^C). It said the first part, the Senate Leadership Fund (SLF), is a super PAC that has to disclose its donors, and the second, One Nation, is a nonprofit that does not have to publicly name its donors (FactCheck.org^C; FactCheck.org^C). It said that, according to FactCheck.org, One Nation had sent SLF $70.7 million this cycle as of June 30, 2026 (FactCheck.org^C). It said that One Nation’s public tax filings show “RESTRICTED” in the contributor fields, that this is the public copy, that a public records request will not get the names because federal law keeps them confidential, and that since 2020 groups like this do not even have to send the names to the IRS, only keep them on file for an IRS request (One Nation’s public Schedule B, TY2023^A; IRC 6104^A; Treasury Decision 9898^A). It said a reporter’s scoop gave a first peek, that exhibits at Sam Bankman-Fried’s fraud trial then showed he and Ryan Salame gave One Nation $15.5 million, that Bankman-Fried was convicted and Salame pleaded guilty to campaign-finance charges, and that the FTX bankruptcy estate sued to recover the money and then dropped the suit in 2025 without having alleged that One Nation knew the money’s source (CREW^B; CNBC via NBC Connecticut^B; DOJ on Bankman-Fried^A; DOJ on Salame^A; FTX docket^A). The sign-off joke about a dark-money group refers to One Nation, which FactCheck.org’s explainers describe in those terms (FactCheck.org^C).

What we found

The two organizations

McConnell made two separate announcements, 51 weeks apart: stepping down as Republican leader on Feb. 28, 2024, effective November 2024, and not seeking re-election on Feb. 20, 2025 (NPR^B; NBC News^B). Semafor reported on Aug. 1, 2025 that Thune had “assumed control of a vast constellation of Republican political machinery,” with “no dropoff” in fundraising so far (Semafor^C).

The machine has two arms: SLF, a super PAC, reports its donors to the FEC (FactCheck.org^C). One Nation is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit that files annual tax returns with the IRS and not donor reports with the FEC, so its current-cycle fundraising total is not public the way SLF’s is (FactCheck.org^C).

One Nation’s IRS exemption was first granted in 2010 under a different name, Alliance for America’s Future (ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer^A). According to a 2016 ThinkProgress report, in 2015 Steven Law and other Crossroads GPS and American Crossroads staff took over that approved entity and renamed it One Nation (ThinkProgress archive^C). Both dates are accurate to what each measures: 2010 for the entity’s IRS paperwork and 2015 for the One Nation name (ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer^A).

SLF reports a Washington, D.C. address, 6218 Georgia Ave NW, and One Nation’s address is 15405 John Marshall Hwy, Haymarket, Va. (SLF filing 1533238^A). SLF’s filings also show a steady stream of disbursements to One Nation memoed “RENT AND SALARIES,” roughly monthly, from about $104,000 to $171,000 per payment in the seven 2021 to 2022 filings we parsed (SLF filing 1564925^A; SLF filing 1685608^A). Two 2021 payments, of $1,199,903.51 and $1,559,750.58, were memoed “RENT, SALARIES, AND CONSULTANT FEES” (SLF filing 1533238^A). The August 2022 payment was memoed “RENT, SALARIES, AND TRAVEL” (SLF filing 1642098^A).

One Nation’s gifts to SLF

The episode’s figure comes from FactCheck.org, which reports that One Nation has given SLF at least $70.7 million for the 2026 midterms as of June 30, according to SLF’s FEC filings (FactCheck.org^C). We confirmed it in SLF’s own filings: One Nation gave $70,740,000 between July 1, 2025 and June 30, 2026, made up of $35,270,000 in the year-end 2025 report, $11,180,000 in the first-quarter 2026 report and $24,290,000 in the second-quarter 2026 report (SLF year-end 2025^A; SLF April quarterly 2026^A; SLF July quarterly 2026^A). The mid-year 2025 report has no One Nation line (SLF mid-year 2025^A).

SLF reports this money on Schedule A line 17, “Other Federal Receipts (Dividends, Interest, etc.),” as a contribution and not as a committee-to-committee transfer, because One Nation is a nonprofit and not a registered political committee (SLF July quarterly 2026^A). An earlier, undated “$46 million” figure for the same FEC line is, in our reading, a superseded snapshot and not a contradiction; that is our inference (FactCheck.org on SLF^C).

For comparison, One Nation’s gifts to SLF in the 2021 to 2022 cycle total $74,975,000, which is $14,400,000 in 2021 and $60,575,000 in 2022, in SLF’s own filings (SLF filing 1564925^A; SLF filing 1685608^A).

SLF’s reports show about $253.7 million in receipts for 2025 to 2026 through June 30, 2026, of which $70.74 million came from One Nation, and $238,609,688.14 in cash on hand at the close of the second quarter (SLF mid-year 2025^A; SLF year-end 2025^A; SLF April quarterly 2026^A; SLF July quarterly 2026^A). SLF itself names its donors: its largest itemized individual donors through June 30, 2026, summed per donor across the four reports before refunds, were Miriam Adelson at $30,000,000, Stephen Schwarzman at $17,000,000, Paul Singer at $14,500,000, Elon Musk at $10,000,000, Kenneth Griffin at $10,000,000, the Reyes family (three donors combined) at $10,000,000 and Stephen Wynn at $5,000,000 (SLF year-end 2025^A; SLF April quarterly 2026^A; SLF July quarterly 2026^A). Those are amounts only, from public filings, with no characterization (SLF July quarterly 2026^A).

Why the donor list can’t be obtained

By law, a group like One Nation can leave its donors’ names off the public copy of its tax return: the statute says the disclosure requirement “shall not require the disclosure of the name or address of any contributor” for groups that are not private foundations or 527 political organizations (IRC 6104(d)(3)(A)^A).

The public copy. One Nation is a 501(c)(4), and the IRS e-file copy of its Schedule B reads “RESTRICTED” in the donor table for every year we checked, 2019 through 2024, six returns (TY2019^A; TY2020^A; TY2021^A; TY2022^A; TY2023^A; TY2024^A). “RESTRICTED” is the IRS’s public-copy marker and not a word One Nation wrote (TY2019^A).
A records request to the IRS cannot reach the names. Returns are confidential under IRC 6103(a), disclosure by an IRS employee is a felony under IRC 7213(a)(1), and the Freedom of Information Act exempts material “specifically exempted from disclosure by statute” (IRC 6103^A; IRC 7213^A; 5 U.S.C. 552^A). That section 6103 qualifies as such a statute is the standard reading, and we did not pull a case to confirm it (5 U.S.C. 552^A).
Since 2020 the IRS may not hold the names. Treasury Decision 9898 (85 FR 31959, May 28, 2020) ended the requirement for most non-(c)(3) exempt groups to report donor names and addresses on Schedule B, still requires the amounts, and has groups keep the names in their own books and records, and it applies to returns filed after May 28, 2020 (Federal Register, TD 9898^A).
Who can legally get it. The tax-writing committees of Congress can ask, but only for what the IRS holds, which is names from older returns (IRC 6103(f)^A).
Other routes (our reading). A court could in principle order discovery from One Nation itself, and One Nation or a donor can always disclose voluntarily.
The practice is legal. The law as written lets a 501(c)(4) keep donor names off the public return, and we found no source that alleges otherwise (IRC 6104^A).
Is there a public records request or a case for the list? None public. We searched MuckRock’s public request logs with 10 queries, federal court dockets, news reporting and FEC enforcement records, and no request, lawsuit or complaint aimed at One Nation’s donors turned up (MuckRock^A; FEC legal search^A). We say “none public,” not “none exists,” because private, non-litigated requests are not searchable (MuckRock^A).
The CREW v. FEC rulings do not name One Nation. They concern Crossroads GPS, a different 501(c)(4) with a different tax ID, so they are not a basis for any claim about One Nation’s donors (D.C. Circuit opinion, 971 F.3d 340^A; docket^A).

How the first names surfaced

CREW credits Puck’s Theodore Schleifer with first reporting the $10 million contribution, on Sept. 26, 2023, in a paywalled article (CREW^B; archived Puck article^C). Exhibits at Bankman-Fried’s fraud trial in October 2023 then showed the money: Bankman-Fried wired $10,000,000 to One Nation through an Alameda Research account in mid-August 2022, and Ryan Salame separately gave $5,500,000 through an FTX-linked entity (CNBC via NBC Connecticut, Oct. 20, 2023^B; CREW^B).

The complaint itemizes it. The FTX estate’s complaint against One Nation (Adv. Pro. No. 24-50200, Bankr. D. Del., filed Nov. 8, 2024) itemizes $15.5 million traced to Bankman-Fried and Salame in 2022: $10.0 million from Bankman-Fried on Aug. 16, 2022, $3.0 million from Salame on June 16, 2022 and $2.5 million from Salame on Aug. 16, 2022 (complaint^A). The amounts are a plaintiff’s allegations plus facts the complaint cites from guilty pleas and trial testimony (complaint^A).
The legal outcomes. Salame pleaded guilty on Sept. 7, 2023 to campaign-finance and money-transmitting charges (DOJ on Salame^A). A jury convicted Bankman-Fried on Nov. 2, 2023 on seven counts (DOJ on Bankman-Fried^A).
The size of the gift. CREW says the combined $15.5 million is the second-largest gift One Nation received in 2022 and the $10 million alone is the third-largest (CREW^B).
The suit was a clawback, not a disclosure suit. The estate sued under fraudulent-transfer law, the complaint does not allege that One Nation knew where the money came from, and the suit produced no donor list (complaint^A). The docket shows no answer, motion or discovery before the estate voluntarily dismissed the case on July 22, 2025 (Doc. 41), the day the case closed (FTX docket^A). We say “dropped”; we cannot say why, and we cannot say whether the dismissal bars refiling (FTX docket^A).
No one accuses One Nation. We found no source that accuses One Nation of wrongdoing or of knowing the money was misappropriated, and CNBC reports that a One Nation representative did not respond to requests for comment (CNBC via NBC Connecticut^B; complaint^A).
The sibling suits. The estate’s related suits against SLF (24-50202), American Action Network (24-50189), Prosperity Alliance (24-50201) and Salame (24-50186) are also terminated, and none forced a donor list (SLF docket^A; AAN docket^A; Prosperity Alliance docket^A; Salame docket^A).

Who we can name, from their own paperwork

One Nation does not have to say who funds it, but some of its funders say so in their own reports (ProPublica filing-text search^A). We matched grants to One Nation’s tax ID on other organizations’ own Schedule I filings: 22 organizations and 39 grant rows, all grade A (ProPublica filing-text search^A). One of the 22 is a private family foundation that we do not name, so the table lists 21, with tax years as printed on each filer’s return header (ProPublica filing-text search^A).

Funder, as it appears on the return	Grants to One Nation, each linked to its return
The Concord Fund (formerly Judicial Crisis Network)^A	$600,000, TY2018^A; $9,000,000, TY2020, year ended June 2021^A; $3,000,000, TY2021, year ended June 2022^A; $2,500,000, TY2023, year ended June 2024^A; $1,500,000, TY2024, year ended June 2025^A
American Petroleum Institute^A	$50,000, TY2018^A; $150,000 plus $850,000 (“research grant”), TY2019^A
Biotechnology Innovation Organization^A	$250,000, TY2019^A; $250,000 plus $250,000, TY2020^A
American Hospital Association^A	$250,000, TY2020^A; $250,000, TY2021^A; $500,000, TY2024^A
Federation of American Hospitals^A	$50,000, TY2019^A; $125,000, TY2020^A
American Health Care Association^A	$200,000, TY2016^A; $300,000, TY2017^A; $300,000, TY2018^A
American Property Casualty Insurance Association^A	$50,000, TY2021^A; $100,000, TY2022^A; $100,000, TY2023^A; $100,000, TY2024^A
Real Estate Roundtable^A	$50,000, TY2017^A; $50,000, TY2019^A
International Franchise Association^A	$75,000, TY2018^A
Alliance for Automotive Innovation (filed as Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers)^A	$100,000, TY2018^A
Edison Electric Institute^A	$25,000, TY2020^A
Blue Cross Blue Shield Association^A	$100,000, TY2023^A
Clearpath Action for Conservative Clean Energy^A	$250,000, TY2025^A
American Policy Coalition^A	$300,000, TY2019^A
American Voice^A	$300,000, TY2024^A
Safe Streets Safe Communities^A	$300,000, TY2023^A
American Advancement^A	$250,000, TY2021^A
American Jobs and Growth Fund^A	$250,000, TY2024^A
Defend US Inc^A	$150,000, TY2022^A
Senate Working Group Inc^A	$50,000, TY2022^A
Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies (a sister 501(c)(4))^A	$900,000, TY2021^A

Read these rows carefully, because the table lists what each filer reported and says nothing about the intent of their members or about their own donors, and several are trade groups that list grants to Democratic-aligned 501(c)(4)s on the same schedule: the American Hospital Association’s 2024 return lists $500,000 to One Nation and $1,000,000 to Majority Forward, and CVS reported $1.75 million to both in 2020 (AHA TY2024 return^A; The Intercept^B). The Concord Fund itself does not disclose its donors, and we do not infer them (Concord Fund return, TY2020^A). We do not add the rows into one number, because the tax years do not line up (ProPublica filing-text search^A).

Four companies’ own documents are summarized below, each corroborated by CREW or The Intercept, and each bullet has its own link:

CVS Health reported $1,750,000 for calendar 2020 in its trade-association and coalition report (CVS report^A; The Intercept^B).
Southern Company reported $1,000,000 in 2020 in its political-engagement report (Southern Company report^A; CREW^B).
ConocoPhillips reported $1,000,000 for July through December 2020, and its footnote says the money was paid on the condition that it not count as a campaign-finance contribution or expenditure (ConocoPhillips report^A; CREW^B).
Aflac reported $150,000 in 2020, and its 2018, 2019, 2021 and 2022 through 2026 reports show no One Nation line (Aflac report^A; CREW^B).

Some items rest on CREW alone, so they are grade C and carry the words “according to CREW.”

Andeavor, formerly Tesoro, gave $1,000,000 in each of 2016 and 2017, according to CREW’s Nov. 16, 2018 report, and the company’s web page is offline (CREW on Andeavor^C). Nationwide Mutual gave $25,000 on Dec. 10, 2020, according to CREW’s Feb. 10, 2021 report citing a lobbying filing (CREW on Nationwide^C). Crossroads GPS gave One Nation about $11.8 million in 2016, which CREW puts at $11.75 million and HuffPost at $11.9 million (CREW on Andeavor^C; HuffPost^C).

The only individual donors named in any public record we found are Bankman-Fried and Salame, named by a court record and not by voluntary disclosure (complaint^A).

One Nation reported $172.1 million in total revenue for 2020 and $125.0 million for 2022, according to IRS data via ProPublica (ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer^A). The four company-reported 2020 gifts above add up to $3.9 million, and the 22 organizations’ grants are spread over tax years 2016 through 2025, so the named funders are a small slice and the bulk of One Nation’s money is unidentified (ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer^A; CVS report^A).

We do not connect any named funder to any SLF ad, vote or policy position, and no source we found does either (ProPublica filing-text search^A).

What the episode compressed

“Names on the receipt.” SLF’s filings name its donors, and the largest are listed above; the episode’s joke does not mean every dollar is traceable (SLF July quarterly 2026^A).
“70.7 million dollars this cycle.” The figure is $70,740,000 from July 1, 2025 to June 30, 2026, in three reports, booked on FEC line 17 as a contribution, and it is a dated snapshot and not a live counter (SLF year-end 2025^A; SLF April quarterly 2026^A; SLF July quarterly 2026^A).
“RESTRICTED.” It is the IRS’s marker on the public copy for 2019 through 2024, not One Nation’s word, and the law lets a 501(c)(4) keep donor names off that copy (TY2023 return^A; IRC 6104^A).
“Don’t even have to send the names to the IRS.” The rule is Treasury Decision 9898 of 2020, which covers most non-(c)(3) exempt groups, still requires the amounts, and has groups keep the names for an IRS request (Federal Register, TD 9898^A).
“A reporter’s scoop gave us a peek.” The first report was Puck’s of Sept. 26, 2023, followed by trial exhibits and then the FTX estate’s complaint (CREW^B; complaint^A).
“It hadn’t alleged One Nation knew the money’s source.” The suit was a private clawback suit under fraudulent-transfer law, and the estate voluntarily dismissed it on July 22, 2025 (complaint^A; FTX docket^A).
“Even the paperwork has a VIP room” and “a coffee shop just writes the name on a cup” are jokes.

What we couldn’t prove (and where we looked)

Who funds the bulk of One Nation. The named money is a small slice of its revenue, and the donor tables on its public returns read “RESTRICTED” (TY2023 return^A; ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer^A).
Any records request, lawsuit or complaint aimed at One Nation’s donors. None public, as of Oct. 3, 2026; MuckRock, CourtListener and news searches found none (MuckRock^A).
FEC enforcement matters naming One Nation. An FEC legal-API search for “One Nation” returned 19 matters under review and none with One Nation as a respondent, and matters 7890 and 7843 name SLF and not One Nation (MUR 7890^A; MUR 7843^A). The API then blocked further queries (HTTP 429), so searches for Crossroads- and SLF-named matters were blocked, and a registered FEC key would be needed to finish them (FEC legal search^A). The FEC website’s own full-text search is fuzzy and returns thousands of unrelated matters for those two words, so it cannot settle the question (FEC legal search^A).
State filings. Washington and New York open-data queries on Oct. 3, 2026 found no state filing by One Nation, and other states’ portals were not reachable without a browser (Washington PDC data^A; New York BOE data^A).
Grants we may have missed. Our reverse lookup covers e-filed returns from fiscal 2014 on that carry One Nation’s tax ID, and returns before that, and grants keyed to a wrong ID, are not covered (ProPublica filing-text search^A). One filer, American Property Owners Alliance, swaps One Nation’s and House Majority Forward’s names and tax IDs between rows in tax years 2021 to 2024, so we excluded it (filer’s TY2021 return^A).
Two oddities in the grant rows. Some rows for the American Hospital Association and the American Health Care Association carry an unexplained “Coral Gables, FL” grantee address, and the direction of Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies’ other transfers with One Nation on its related-organization schedule is unverified (AHA TY2020 return^A; Crossroads Grassroots return^A).
Donors known only through CREW. Andeavor, Nationwide and the 2016 Crossroads GPS amount rest on CREW and HuffPost and not on the underlying documents (CREW on Andeavor^C; CREW on Nationwide^C). CREW also reads One Nation’s 2020 return as showing $33 million and $13.5 million from two anonymous donors, but the public Schedule B reads “RESTRICTED,” so we cannot see the basis for the exact figures and do not use them (CREW, 2020 revenue report^C).
The reason for the FTX estate’s dismissal, and whether it bars refiling. One Nation’s dismissal notice is not in the public archive, and no reason appears in anything we read (FTX docket^A).
Any internal power struggle beyond Semafor’s account. Semafor’s article does not report an internal fight for control, and we found no reporting of one (Semafor^C).

Sources

Grades: A is a primary record, B is two independent outlets, C is a single source or an interested party, attributed.

SLF FEC filings 1924078^A, 1950739^A, 1986757^A and 1996156^A support the 2025 to 2026 One Nation gifts, receipts, cash on hand and top donors. We read the raw filings ourselves.
SLF FEC filings 1533238^A, 1564925^A, 1642098^A and 1685608^A support the 2021 to 2022 gifts and the rent-and-salaries stream.
FactCheck.org on One Nation^C and FactCheck.org on SLF^C support the structure and the episode’s attributed figure. Single outlet.
NPR^B and NBC News^B support McConnell’s two announcements.
Semafor, Aug. 1, 2025^C supports Thune’s takeover. Single outlet.
ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, One Nation^A supports the 2010 ruling date and the revenue history. ThinkProgress archive^C supports the 2015 rename. Single outlet.
IRC 6104^A, IRC 6103^A, IRC 7213^A, 5 U.S.C. 552^A and Federal Register, TD 9898^A support the legal answer.
One Nation’s public Schedule B copies: TY2019^A, TY2020^A, TY2021^A, TY2022^A, TY2023^A and TY2024^A.
MuckRock^A, FEC legal search^A, MUR 7890^A, MUR 7843^A, Washington PDC data^A and New York BOE data^A are the places we looked for requests, enforcement matters and state filings.
D.C. Circuit opinion^A and docket^A support the point that the CREW v. FEC rulings concern Crossroads GPS.
FTX complaint against One Nation^A, FTX docket^A and the sibling dockets for SLF^A, AAN^A, Prosperity Alliance^A and Salame^A support the suit.
CREW on the FTX money^B, CNBC via NBC Connecticut^B (Brian Schwartz) and the archived Puck article^C support the trial-exhibit reporting and the first report. DOJ on Salame^A and DOJ on Bankman-Fried^A support the criminal outcomes.
ProPublica filing-text search^A supports the 22-organization lookup, with each return linked in the table above and AHA TY2024^A, AHA TY2020^A, Concord Fund TY2020^A, filer TY2021^A and Crossroads Grassroots TY2021^A linked here.
Schedule I returns used in the table above, one link each: - The Concord Fund, TY2018^A - The Concord Fund, TY2020^A - The Concord Fund, TY2021^A - The Concord Fund, TY2023^A - The Concord Fund, TY2024^A - American Petroleum Institute, TY2018^A - American Petroleum Institute, TY2019^A - Biotechnology Innovation Organization, TY2019^A - Biotechnology Innovation Organization, TY2020^A - American Hospital Association, TY2020^A - American Hospital Association, TY2021^A - American Hospital Association, TY2024^A - Federation of American Hospitals, TY2019^A - Federation of American Hospitals, TY2020^A - American Health Care Association, TY2016^A - American Health Care Association, TY2017^A - American Health Care Association, TY2018^A - American Property Casualty Insurance Association, TY2021^A - American Property Casualty Insurance Association, TY2022^A - American Property Casualty Insurance Association, TY2023^A - American Property Casualty Insurance Association, TY2024^A - Real Estate Roundtable, TY2017^A - Real Estate Roundtable, TY2019^A - International Franchise Association, TY2018^A - Alliance for Automotive Innovation, TY2018^A - Edison Electric Institute, TY2020^A - Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, TY2023^A - Clearpath Action for Conservative Clean Energy, TY2025^A - American Policy Coalition, TY2019^A - American Voice, TY2024^A - Safe Streets Safe Communities, TY2023^A - American Advancement, TY2021^A - American Jobs and Growth Fund, TY2024^A - Defend US Inc, TY2022^A - Senate Working Group Inc, TY2022^A - Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, TY2021^A
Company reports: CVS^A, Southern Company^A, ConocoPhillips^A and Aflac^A. Corroboration: The Intercept^B and CREW on Southern^B.
Grade C items: CREW on Andeavor^C, CREW on Nationwide^C, CREW’s 2020 revenue report^C and HuffPost on Crossroads GPS^C.