The fiery debate over whether we should trust Google, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media outlets continues to rage and here’s more kindling. A new campaign finance complaint filed by former Senate Policy Director Charles Heatherly alleges that ProgressNow and Colorado Rising took $170,000 from the Sergey Brin Foundation to fight to pass Proposition 112, which, if passed, would have destroyed the oil and gas industry here in Colorado.
From the complaint as published on Complete Colorado:
“This case is about secret political spending. The Sergey Brin Family Foundation contributed $170,000 to ProgressNow Colorado, which used the funds to support Proposition 112. Rather than file as an issue committee, however, ProgressNow Colorado – or its affiliated organization ProgressNow Colorado Education Fund – treated its issue advocacy as a “contribution” to Colorado Rising, a reporting issue committee.”
Essentially, this complaint is about quasi-legal money laundering and whether ProgressNow and Colorado Rising skirted campaign finance disclosure requirements in order to protect its donor, Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, the world’s largest search engine. This revelation comes on the heels of leaked video that showed Google executives melting down over President Trump’s election, causing some right-leaning folks to question whether Google can credibly be the arbiter of search engine results when its leadership is so blatantly partisan.
Scott Gessler, lawyer for the case, called the case a test of newly-elected (and super partisan) Secretary of State Jena Griswold’s ability to remain impartial, saying: “this will test whether the new Secretary truly intends to serve as an impartial watchdog or whether she is just posturing.”
Indeed.