Chris Perez
The “nonprofit” think tank founded by Sen. Bernie Sanders’ wife and son is closing up shop after drawing criticism over the donations it’s been receiving.
The Vermont-based Sanders Institute is looking to suspend all operations by May — “so there could not even be an appearance of impropriety” — now that the Independent state lawmaker is running for president, his wife explained Thursday.
The decision was reportedly made in late February after Sanders launched his campaign.
“I think that was the most important thing to do — to not accept donations,” said Jane Sanders in an interview with the Associated Press. “Nobody should think that they’re giving money to an organization and that gains them access or favor to anybody else and anybody running for office.”
Jane and her son, David Driscoll, founded the Sanders Institute in 2017 under the claim that it would research and promote liberal policies. Instead, people have accused them of using the institute as a way to sell their loyalty to the rich and powerful.
Many have pointed out how Bernie Sanders used to blast Hillary Clinton for doing this during the 2016 election.
“It is obscene that Secretary Clinton keeps going to big-money people to fund her campaign,” he told CNN in March of that year.
The senator’s son was reportedly paid about $100,000 last year for his work at the Sanders Institute. The entire organization raised about $730,000 — and another $459,000 in 2017, according to the Sanders family.
They told the AP that the money was made up of “small donations from about 10,000 donors.”
“We haven’t disclosed names and contribution amounts because we’ve relied mainly on small donor contributions from thousands of people,” Driscoll said, noting how “the bulk” of the donations come from donors that “contribute less than $100.”
“Some of our biggest contributors were organizations that came on to partner with us for the Sanders Institute Gathering, such as National Nurses United, Healthy Housing Foundation and Our Revolution.”
Jane Sanders told the New York Times that they “didn’t think about the Clinton or Trump foundation” when deciding whether it was right to stop taking donations.
“We just thought, I’m going to be very active [on the campaign trail],” said Jane, 69. “It’s just too mushy — it could become too mushy. We wanted to safeguard it.”
The Brooklyn native maintained that the move was a “suspension, not a shutdown.”
“The work will definitely come back,” she said.
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