This came from a quick thread I put together. It is meant to be expanded on. This is not the end of the research on Pierre Omidyar. I had been researching him for quite some time.
You can see that I have been looking into Pierre Omidyar’s investments in the below Puppet Masters: Who [Really] Controls The News? series.
Part 1: Weaponizing Philanthropy... Also Known As Impact Investing
Part 2: NewsTrust Communications Partners List
Part 3: Omidyar Network's Partners List and Grants
Part 4: Luminate Group's Partners List and Grants
Anyways… This really is just a quick article in the hopes that others will start digging into this vast web. It really is too much research for one person. I hope that this will be a good starting place for whoever reads this.
Putin mentioned the Maidan Color Revolution of 2014, also known as the Revolution of Dignity or the Maidan Protests, during his interview with Tucker Carlson.
What you probably didn't know is that this was funded by the American government through USAID. It was also funded by a gentleman by the name of Pierre Omidyar.
Now you probably have never heard of Pierre Omidyar. But he is the founder of eBay and former owner of PayPal. (There is a whole rivalry thing going on with Elon Musk over that. Especially since Omidyar funds the ADL. That is the same ADL that has been going after Elon. He also has been trying to ruin Elon's business by taking away advertisement money. There are some other things involved. But... that is for another article.)
For a brief background on who Pierre Omidyar is, here is a video.
Omidyar, along with the U.S. government, had bankrolled groups active in opposing the recently toppled government of Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych.
Omidyar is also funding First Look Media, a budding media colossus, to the tune of $250 million. His marquee hire is Glenn Greenwald, a crusading left-of-center journalist who has been the leader in coverage of the revelations of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
What all this adds up to is a journalistic conflict-of-interest of the worst kind: Omidyar working hand-in-glove with U.S. foreign policy agencies to interfere in foreign governments, co-financing regime change with well-known arms of the American empire — while at the same time hiring a growing team of dissonant 'independent journalists' which vows to investigate the behavior of the US government at home and overseas, and boasts of its uniquely 'adversarial' relationship toward these government institutions.
By the time that the Maidan Protests happened, billionaire Pierre Omidyar had visited visited the Obama White House at least half a dozen times since 2009. During the same period, his wife, Pamela Omidyar, who heads Omidyar Network, has visited 1600 Pennsylvania Ave at least four times, while Omidyar Network’s managing partner, Matthew Bannick, has visited a further three.
To give you an idea of how unusual this is, Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg only visited the White House during this time twice each.
On 16th April 2010, Pamela Omidyar visited the White House for four hours to meet with Gayle Smith, Senior Director of the National Security Council in charge of “global development” and “democracy.”
And his connections to the White House has continued with Biden's Administration.
Joelle Gamble, a former principal at Omidyar Network, became Biden's Deputy Director of the National Economic Council.
Joelle Gamble currently serves as Chief Economist of the U.S. Department of Labor. Prior to this role, she was Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy for the National Economic Council and served as an economic policy advisor role on the Presidential Transition. Before joining the Administration, she served as a principal at Omidyar Network. She was Senior Advisor to the President and CEO of the Roosevelt Institute and National Director of the Roosevelt Institute’s network for emerging leaders in public policy. Gamble is a graduate of UCLA and Princeton University.
He is also involved in American elections.
For example, Pierre Omidyar donated $100,000 to the NeverTrump PAC.
Billlionaire eBay founder Pierre Omidyar is donating $100,000 to NeverTrump PAC, a fledgling super PAC that registered with the Federal Election Commission on March 4.
While Omidyar has made donations to various Democratic candidates and party organizations over the years, this is believed to be his first contribution to a super PAC. Such organizations were made possible by the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.
Omidyar confirmed the donation via Twitter: “I think Trumpism is dangerous,” he wrote. “So I’m personally supporting @NeverTrumpPAC, a rare political contribution during extreme times.”
Omidyar’s dislike for Trump is no secret. He has made his antipathy toward the candidate clear on Twitter.
“I can’t be contrarian about Donald Trump anymore,” he tweeted on March 13, quoting a Vox story, as Trump blamed Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders for violence at Trump rallies. “He’s terrifying.”
“Trump is a dangerous authoritarian demagogue,” Omidyar wrote in one tweet a few days later.
“Endorsing Donald Trump immediately disqualifies you from any position of public trust,” he wrote in another.
He has also called Trump a “bigot” and a “thin-skinned,” “scaredy-cat” with “no spine.”
The Center For Public Integrity: Pierre Omidyar gives $100,000 to new anti-Trump super PAC
When you read the below, I hope you realize that it wasn't just Mark Zuckerburg who was helping Americans find "new ways to vote during a deadly pandemic." He wasn't the only one fueling the funding behind the drop boxes. He was just the fall guy.
Tech billionaire Pierre Omidyar and his wife, Pam, disclosed earlier this year that they were responsible for the $45 million gift, which went to Civic Action Fund, a fiscally sponsored project of the Sixteen Thirty Fund.
The group, the Sixteen Thirty Fund, financed attack ads against Trump and vulnerable Republican senators and funded massive get-out-the-vote and issue advocacy campaigns amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The Sixteen Thirty Fund’s multi-million dollar grants singlehandedly powered some other organizations on the left, and it also incubated other groups, as a “fiscal sponsor,” that fought against Trump’s Supreme Court nominees, backed liberal ballot measures and policy proposals in different states and organized opposition to Republican tax and health care policies.
Sixteen Thirty Fund’s single biggest outlay in 2020 — $129 million — went to America Votes, the liberal umbrella group that works on voter registration and turnout and collaborates with other political groups across the left.
The massive windfall from Sixteen Thirty Fund in 2020 was, by itself, more than twice as much as America Votes raised the previous year. Like Sixteen Thirty Fund, and with its help, America Votes expanded dramatically in the last few years, raising approximately $13 million in its fiscal years ending in June 2017 and 2018 before bringing in $64 million the next year, according to its most recent tax documents.
Kurtz wrote in her Medium post that the grants to America Votes “helped progressives across the country pivot to provide new and safe opportunities for voting during a deadly pandemic” by supporting the group’s “national efforts to expand access to vote by mail and increase voter turnout in communities of color and among traditionally disenfranchised people.”
Politico: Liberal ‘dark-money’ behemoth funneled more than $400M in 2020
Pierre Omidyar is also launching a global information war. He funds most (if not all) of the fact checkers and finances a bunch of media organizations. He is a key backer to the TOR Project, the International Consortium of International Journalists (ICIJ), ProPublica, First Look Media (didn't Matt Talibbi come from there?), The Intercept, and handled the publication of Snowden's leaked documents.
I am going to point out that Edward Snowden's leaks aren't the only leaks Pierre Omidyar has financial control over. In fact, when you start looking at the organizations leaked to and the financial support the whistleblowers get, you find Pierre Omidyar has some stake... in just about all of it. He also has financial ties to WikiLeaks.
While backing media outlets around the world that produce news and commentary, Omidyar supports a global cartel of self-styled fact-checking groups that determine which outlets are legitimate and which are “fake.” He has also thrown his money behind murky initiatives like the non-profit backing New Knowledge, the data firm that waged one of the most devious disinformation campaigns in any recent American election campaign; and he is a key backer of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalism (ICIJ), the outfit that holds the Panama Papers and oversees the strategic dissemination of that leaked trove of financial files to hand-picked journalists.
At the base of this vast media empire is a nepotistic culture that has seen the beneficiaries of Omidyar’s funding come in for gushing praise from the same fact-checking organizations he supports, while the journalists nurtured by his donations reap high-profile awards from the Omidyar-sponsored Committee to Protect Journalists. Last November, Omidyar backed the release of a documentary hyping up the journalists that helped expose the Panama Papers, and he is also involved in a feature film starring Meryl Streep about the leaked documents and the heroic reporters covering them. The conflicts of interests created under the billionaire’s watch are many but, as with his own political activities, they have been scrutinized by only a handful of journalists.
Behind the image he has cultivated of himself as a “progressive philanthropreneur,” Omidyar has wielded his media empire to advance the Washington consensus in strategic hotspots around the globe. His fortune helped found an outlet to propel a destabilizing coup in Ukraine; he’s helped establish a network of oppositional youth activists and bloggers in Zimbabwe; and in the Philippines he has invested in an oppositional news site that is honing corporate surveillance techniques like a “mood meter…to capture non-rational reactions.” Meanwhile, he has partnered closely with the leading arms of U.S. soft power, from the U.S. Agency for International Aid and Development (USAID) to the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) — acting as a conduit for information warfare-style projects in countries around the world.
Omidyar’s political agenda came into sharper focus last May when he began funding the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a pet project of neoconservative operative Bill Kristol that has stoked public fear of Russian infiltration of social media. This December, it appears that Omidyar’s donations helped Kristol launch a new online magazine called The Bulwark — rebranding the defunct Weekly Standard, which had served as the banner publication of the neocon movement and a central organ for promoting America’s wars. As usual, the billionaire’s activities were ignored in progressive media, leaving the critical coverage to a few right-wing outlets frustrated with Kristol’s anti-Trump crusading.
Omidyar’s support for the same neocon guru who oversaw the publication of an article branding NSA spying whistleblower Edward Snowden as a “traitor” should place the ebay founder’s acquisition of the Snowden files in a disturbing light. By establishing The Intercept and recruiting the journalists who possessed Snowden’s leaks, the billionaire effectively privatized the files. Not only did this delay their release, it denied the public access to the information in order to supply his stable of hired reporters with exclusive scoops that continue to appear years after they were leaked. To this day, only a minuscule percentage of the Snowden files have been made public and, for whatever reason, none of those that have been released relate to ebay or its assorted business interests.
While hoarding this valuable trove, Omidyar has forged relationships with the very same private military contractor that Snowden fought to expose. Two years after founding The Intercept, Omidyar welcomed a man named Robert Lietzke to the Omidyar Fellows program. Lietzke is no small character — he happened to have been Snowden’s former boss, reportedly one of “three principals [running] day to day operations” at the Hawaii branch of the Booz Allen Hamilton defense firm where Snowden toiled as an NSA contractor.
Covert Geopolitics: eBay Founder Pierre Omidyar is Funding a Global Information War
By the way, he also has been trying to infiltrate and ruin Julian Assange's WikiLeaks.
Do you remember that Omidyar owned PayPal? Didn't PayPal cut funding to WikiLeaks? Well, yes, they did.
The Daily Beast ran an exclusive report detailing how the Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) was set to break ties with WikiLeaks amidst concerns among the foundation’s board, which includes such well-known figures as Daniel Ellsberg, Edward Snowden, Laura Poitras, John Cusack and Glenn Greenwald, among others. The news was confirmed less than a month later when the nonprofit’s board officially voted to stop accepting U.S. donations for WikiLeaks, which had been blacklisted for years by Visa, MasterCard and PayPal after publishing leaked U.S. government documents provided by Chelsea Manning.
Even though the FPF had been founded to allow WikiLeaks to circumvent the banking blockade — which, according to WikiLeaks, sapped nearly 95% of the transparency organization’s funds — the board’s decision to end its founding mission was unanimous.
Last Monday, the FPF made it official, severing its ties with WikiLeaks, leaving it to rely on cryptocurrencies and other esoteric means of funding in order to get around the banking blockade.
Once the news became public, WikiLeaks and its associated accounts linked the FPF’s decision to the fact that many of its members now work for organizations financed by eBay billionaire and PayPal owner Pierre Omidyar. In addition, the FPF itself has received large sums of money from Omidyar and his various businesses and foundations.
WikiLeaks, in recent tweets, has suggested that Omidyar’s influence was responsible not only for the FPF’s decision but also for the unusual attacks that some FPF members have launched against Micah-Lee-1485659935WikiLeaks, particularly Assange, in recent months. The most outspoken of these members has been FPF director Micah Lee (pictured), who is employed by the Omidyar-owned publication, The Intercept.
Europe Reloaded: FBI Whistleblower on Pierre Omidyar & His Campaign to Neuter Wikileaks
It doesn't just stop at the organizations that people leak to. This is Pierre Omidyar's view on the people who become whistleblowers.
Omidyar has also, in the past, been rather candid about his views on leakers. He asserted in 2009 that organizations that publish stolen — or leaked — information “should help catch the thief” and shouldn’t publish such information in the first place. Omidyar even defended this view after The Intercept’s founding and refused to speak in “absolutes” about whether or not a source should be turned in — a troubling perspective to have in light of The Intercept’s debacle in the Reality Winner case.
Europe Reloaded: FBI Whistleblower on Pierre Omidyar & His Campaign to Neuter Wikileaks
Now, if you want a startling revelation about what exactly Pierre Omidyar means by this, go look at the people who have leaked to The Intercept, the news outlet Pierre Omidyar owns, and see what happens to them. Every single one of them have had their identities revealed. Every single one of them have either died or been sent to prison.
Whitney Webb has written extensively on The Intercept's track record with whistleblowers.
Mint Press News: Bad Track Record Gets Worse as New Whistleblower Outed by The Intercept
In fact, if you go to Mint Press News and do a search on the words "whistleblower intercept", you will start to get a pretty good picture of what is going on. It is a pretty interesting reading as well.
His war on information doesn't stop there. He is at war with Elon Musk too.
The left-wing billionaire and media donor Pierre Omidyar is behind the dark-money group that has kept its donors secret for nearly a year and is leading a corporate boycott campaign against Twitter owner Elon Musk.
Omidyar, the eBay founder and financial backer of the Intercept and ProPublica, donated $509,500 to Accountable Tech in 2021 and 2022, according to a recently updated list of grants disclosed by Omidyar's foundation. Omidyar also gave $2 million to at least six other organizations that targeted Musk, criticizing him in letters and op-eds as "uniquely ill-suited for the job of running a social media platform" and warning that he would turn Twitter into a "free-for-all of hate and harassment."
The news reveals one of the primary forces behind the anti-Musk campaign. Accountable Tech has been dodging questions about its donors for months. Over the past year, Accountable Tech and other groups bankrolled by Omidyar organized campaigns to pressure corporations to boycott Twitter and issued statements and op-eds denouncing Musk and calling for government investigations into the billionaire. "I wonder who funds them," wrote Musk in May, in response to a Washington Free Beacon report about the organization's secretiveness.
But there is so much more to this guy. There is a war to suppress information and stop whistleblowers.
You’ve given us a great start to research this guy. Thank you!! Just what we need as we await George Soros’ demise; a wannabe Soros to join Alex.😡 I noticed this quote came from year 1 of the Renegade administration. “He asserted in 2009 that organizations that publish stolen — or leaked — information “should help catch the thief” and shouldn’t publish such information in the first place.”
Great article!!! This guy is no doubt a key player in the effort to takedown the conservative voice America. He is deeply involved i see.