Top Democratic committees are receiving far more cash from anonymous sources at this point in the 2024 elections than in previous cycles, filings reviewed by Fox News Digital show. 

The Sen. Chuck Schumer-affiliated Senate Majority PAC and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries-aligned House Majority PAC have raked in millions in mysterious cash this year from their related nonprofits that conceal their donors’ identities. The money ultimately trickles to Democrats in both chambers of Congress, including lawmakers who rail against the impact of secret political donors.

Federal Election Commission records show that during the first six months of the year, Majority Forward, an advocacy group linked to the Senate Majority PAC, directed $8.75 million into the Schumer-tied PAC. Meanwhile, House Majority Forward, a nonprofit with ties to the House Majority PAC, has pushed $5.5 million into the Jeffries-aligned PAC.

The more than $14 million in dark funds between the nonprofits and committees is far more than at an identical point in the 2022 and 2020 elections. In 2022, Majority Forward wired $4.3 million to the Senate Majority PAC during the same time frame, while House Majority Forward did not make any transfers to the House Majority PAC. In 2020, neither nonprofit moved donations to the PACs this early into the election, but did send money for salaries, records show.

The moves occurred as Schumer regularly criticized dark money, which he says ‘corrupted our politics.’ He has also pushed conservative judicial groups to disclose their funders, as he and other Democrats have benefited from several dark money judicial groups of their own. 

According to Majority Forward’s most recent tax forms obtained by Fox News Digital, the group received $75 million between mid-2021 and 2022. House Majority Forward’s tax forms show that the group collected $12 million in 2021, which likely will ramp up as the election draws closer.

Senate and House Democrats are not the only ones positioned to benefit from unknown donors. President Biden appears set to benefit from immense sums in undisclosed contributions from the primary outside super PAC backing his 2024 candidacy despite his claims that dark money ‘erodes public trust.’

Biden’s team elevated the Future Forward PAC as the leading outside group to collect cash in support of his candidacy. Future Forward told the New York Times in July that it had raised $50 million this year.

The money, however, is likely parked in its related dark money nonprofit, Future Forward USA Action. The PAC reported just $67,000 in contributions during the first six months of the year, which came from a vendor refund and in-kind donations from the nonprofit for staff time and overhead. 

Future Forward’s nonprofit has moved tens of millions to the PAC for electoral activity in recent years, signaling Biden will also obtain a significant boost from anonymous patrons throughout the 2024 elections.

The Senate Majority PAC and House Majority PAC did not respond to requests for comment.

The third top ranking House Republican is reportedly planning to flood $100 million of campaign dollars into strategic districts in her home state of New York to hold off the Democratic there offensive next year.

Rep. Elise Stefanik, who’s made her northern New York district – which runs through the Adirondacks not far from the Canadian border – a lock for the GOP, revealed her plans in a recent interview with Politico. 

Stefanik said she recently brought House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to the Hamptons for a previously unreported fundraiser with wealthy Long Island donors and shared a vast digital database of contributors with the state GOP. Her strategy is to flood key New York swing districts with $100 million in campaign funding, as the Republican control of the House and her own political future depend on the Empire State holding ground. 

Last year, the GOP flipped three battleground U.S. House seats in the Hudson Valley and Long Island. After previously supporting Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., in 2022, she is not allowing Long Island Republicans decide his congressional fate as he battles federal indictment. 

‘It’s a guerilla warfare mentality,’ an unnamed Stefanik advisor told Politico of the congresswoman’s pledge to ensure her Republican New York colleagues have the resources to win. 

‘I’ve been underestimated from the beginning,’ Stefanik reportedly told Politico from a dairy farm in her district. ‘That’s been a trend my entire time in Congress.’

More than a year out from 2024 election day, Republican campaign offices are popping up in the Hudson Valley, central New York and Long Island seeding with GOP staffers. Stefanik, who has been a staunch supporter of former President Donald Trump, will lead the Republican charge in New York at the same time Democratic House Leader Hakeem Jeffries plans an offensive to regain lost seats from last cycle. 

New York GOP chairman Ed Cox told Politico that Stefanik’s involvement ‘is a tremendous asset to our party not just nationally, but here in New York state.’ 

The $100 million to be raised through a coordinated effort with the Republican National Committee will help bolster first-year Republican Reps. Mike Lawler and Marc Molinaro in the Hudson Valley; Long Island’s Anthony D’Esposito and Brandon Williams in Central New York. Stefanik vowed to raise at least $150,000 for each vulnerable new lawmaker, and Republicans also have their sights on taking on first-term Democratic Rep. Pat Ryan in the Hudson Valley, who won a special election a year ago. 

One of former President Donald Trump’s lawyers called for Special Counsel Jack Smith to be investigated on Sunday, adding that all the charges against Trump are ‘theatrics.’

Attorney Alina Habba, who has been serving as a legal spokewoman for Trump amid his recent indictments, made the statements during an appearance on ‘Fox News Sunday’ with host Shannon Bream. She argues that the various charges filed against Trump are only an attempt to ‘tie him up’ ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

‘We’re not concerned because we know the facts of the cases, which I can’t get into, obviously, for privileged reasons, but I can tell you that it’s to tie him up,’ Habba told Bream. ‘It’s definitely political. The motivation [of Fulton County DA Fani Willis] is now under investigation by Jim Jordan for, and I believe Jack Smith should be investigated as well.’

Habba went on to say that Trump plans to push back the dates for his trials, which are currently scheduled to begin in early 2024. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has requested that Trump’s trial for her case begin as early as this fall.

‘These trial dates also are going to move. It’s unrealistic. It’s theatrics, and no judge is going to say that you can be on two trials at once in two different states, because a lot of these overlap,’ Habba said. ‘They look at the start date of the trial, but these are four- to six-week trials at the least. So there’s no way they’re not going to overlap. I mean, they’re gonna have to go into October, November of next year, again, by design.’

Habba’s appearance comes just days after the former president surrendered to authorities in Georgia and submitted to a mugshot. Since the Thursday mugshot, Trump’s campaign has raised a staggering $7.1 million.

The indictment out of Georgia was Trump’s fourth. He is the first former president in United States history to face criminal charges.

Trump was first charged in March out of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s years-long investigation related to hush-money payments made during the 2016 presidential campaign. Trump pleaded not guilty to all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the first degree.

Smith also indicted Trump on charges relating to the mishandling of classified documents. Trump pleaded not guilty to all 37 felony charges out of that probe.

Smith also indicted Trump on charges relating to the pro-Trump storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges in that case as well.

Fox News’ Brooke Singman contributed to this report.

Joe Lieberman, the founding chair of No Labels, on Sunday tried to ease doubts that the third-party group was going to act as a spoiler in the 2024 presidential race, saying it will only launch a bipartisan, third-party presidential ticket if there is a realistic chance of winning.

Lieberman, a former U.S. senator from Connecticut, appeared on ‘Fox News Sunday’ to discuss how the centrist group is challenging the political status quo of the two-party system and offering Americans an alternative to the likely rematch between President Biden and former President Donald Trump.

‘The American people are telling us on polling we’re doing and discussions we’re having that they’ve lost confidence in the two major parties, and by large numbers they don’t want to have to choose again between President Trump and President Biden,’ said Lieberman.

The American people want a ‘third choice,’ according to Lieberman, because the two parties, along with Biden and Trump, ‘are not giving them hope’ that the government will do something about important issues such as crime, the economy, Ukraine and China.

But Lieberman, who has turned Independent since he was the Democratic Party’s nominee for vice president in the 2000 presidential election, said the group will only launch a third-party bipartisan ballot ‘if we think it has a realistic chance to win.’

‘We’re not going to be a spoiler,’ Lieberman said.

Democratic groups, however, have voiced fear that a potential third-party campaign will take Independent voters away from Biden and spoil the election in favor of Trump.

‘If we run it’s going to be a bipartisan ticket, so not only will we have concluded that it really can win, but because it’s bipartisan we’re confident it’s going to take equally from both parties so the idea that we’re going to spoil it and re-elect President Trump just isn’t realistic,’ Lieberman said.

The former senator said No Labels already has a bipartisan nominating convention scheduled for April 2024 in Dallas, Texas.

–>

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul is in the midst of a showdown with New York City Mayor Eric Adams over the legality of foie gras, a luxurious, but controversial form of duck liver.

Adams’ administration has sought to enforce a ban on the delicacy over animal rights complaints, as producing the fatty liver requires force-feeding ducks at specialty farms elsewhere in the state.

Former NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio had first signed the ban in 2019, and it was scheduled to take effect in November 2022. Hochul’s state Department of Agriculture and Markets stepped in and ordered the city not to enforce the ban.

Proponents of the state government’s move say NYC authorities were overreaching by essentially trying to close farms roughly 100 miles away from the city. Advocates of the ban, however, argue that NYC should be free to regulate itself, according to Politico.

City officials won their first victory earlier this month, when a county judge struck down the state’s order preventing the enforcement of the ban. Their opposition has filed to appeal the decision.

Voters for Animal Rights, a lobbying group that was instrumental in getting the city to pass its initial ban, says state officials are intentionally dragging out the process, as existing farms are permitted to continue providing foie gras so long as litigation continues.

‘They just want to drag this out as long as possible to keep profiting for as long as possible,’ Bryan Pease, the lawyer representing VAR, told Politico. ‘They’re not going to be able to maintain this completely frivolous position that they have that they can strike down laws wherever they want, just because it might have some indirect upstream effect on a farm somewhere in Upstate New York. If that was the case, then you couldn’t ban anything.’

Hochul’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.

Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley repeated her support for sending armed forces across the U.S.-Mexico border to target drug cartels. 

‘When it comes to the cartels, we should treat them like the terrorists that they are,’ Haley told Fox News Digital in a recent interview. ‘I would send special operations in there and eliminate them just like we eliminated ISIS and make sure that they know there’s no place for them.’

‘If Mexico won’t deal with it, I’ll make sure I deal with it,’ she added.

The former South Carolina governor, who is running for the Republican nomination for president, also stressed that to crack down on the fentanyl crisis in the U.S., the president has to ‘go to the true source.’

‘China knows exactly what they’re doing when they’re sending that fentanyl across the border. And we need to tell them we will stop all normal trade relations with you until you stop killing Americans,’ Haley said. 

She continued, ‘We lost 75,000 Americans last year, and we can’t continue to allow that to happen.’

NIKKI HALEY HITS MEDIA FOR NOT PRESSING BIDEN, HARRIS ON LATE-TERM ABORTIONS: THEY KNOW ‘IT’D BE REAL TELLING’ 

During the first Republican presidential debate, several candidates were asked whether they would authorize lethal force against armed members of the drug cartel who were recently spotted crossing the U.S. border. 

‘There would be lethal force used by the Border Patrol law enforcement as needed to protect the border,’ former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson said while stressing economic pressure on Mexico would be implemented by his administration.

When asked if he would allow special operations to take out fentanyl labs and the drug cartel, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis quickly replied, ‘Yes, and I will do it on day one.’

‘The president of the United States has got to use all available powers as commander in chief to protect our country and to protect the people. So when they’re coming across, yes, we are gonna use lethal force. Yes, we reserve the right to operate. How many more tens of thousands are we gonna let to die?’ DeSantis said.

‘So as president, wouls I use force? Would I treat them as foreign terrorist organizations? You are darn right I would,’ he added. 

Former Vice President Mike Pence touted the Trump administration’s record when it came to border crossings and echoed Hutchinson’s call for economic pressure but vowed ‘we will partner with the Mexican military and we will hunt down and destroy the cartels that are claiming lives in the United States of America.’

Former Vice President Mike Pence’s campaign slammed Vivek Ramaswamy for supposedly flip-flopping on the issue of Jan. 6 on Sunday, highlighting the candidate’s past comment condemning the incident.

Pence’s campaign produced multiple instances where Ramaswamy appeared to contradict his own past statements regarding the pro-Trump storming of the U.S. Capitol.

‘On August 4, 2023, [Ramaswamy] refused to say he would have certified the results of the 2020 election on January 6, 2021,’ the Pence campaign wrote. ‘Yet at Wednesday’s GOP debate, he raised his hand in support of what Mike Pence did in following the Constitution.’

The campaign cited a Jan. 11, 2021, op-ed Ramaswamy wrote for The Wall Street Journal, in which he referred to the ‘disgraceful Capitol riot’ as a ‘stain on American history.’

The following day on Jan. 12, 2021, Ramawamy referred to his op-ed in a statement: ‘What Trump did last week was wrong. Downright abhorrent. Plain and simple. I’ve said it before and did so in my piece.’

A litany of other examples followed. The Pence campaign referred to Ramaswamy’s own book, ‘Nation of Victims,’ which was published in 2022.

‘It was a dark day for democracy. The loser of the last election refused to concede the race, claimed the election was stolen, raised hundreds of millions of dollars from loyal supporters, and is considering running for executive office again.’ Ramaswamy wrote. ‘I’m referring, of course, to Donald Trump.’

‘I was especially disappointed when I saw President Trump take a page from the Stacey Abrams playbook,’ Ramaswamy wrote. ‘His claims were just as weak as Abrams’.’

 Ramaswamy’s tune on the Capitol riot seemed to change in June and July, as he appeared to take a far more sympathetic view of the incident.

‘I will pardon *all* Americans who were targets of politicized federal prosecutions & those who were denied due process. This includes all peaceful Jan 6 protesters. It’s important that every candidate is clear about where we stand on the hard issues, not just the standard GOP talking points,’ he wrote June 8 on X, formerly known as Twitter.

The candidate emphasized that view again in mid-July, stating that ‘pervasive censorship’ caused Jan. 6.

‘You tell people in this country they cannot speak. That is when they scream. You tell people they cannot scream. That is when they tear things down,’ he said at the time.

Ramaswamy was asked about the issue again Sunday morning during an appearance on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press.’ He now says he would have championed ‘reforms’ to the voting process and made the certification of the election result contingent on passing those reforms.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, 81, defended President Biden, 80, against voter critiques that he lacks the energy and vigor to continue leading the United States.

‘I met with the president … five or six weeks ago, we had a great discussion. He seemed fine to me,’ Sanders, an independent, told NBC News’ Chuck Todd on ‘Meet The Press’ Sunday morning.

Todd had asked the self-described democratic socialist if he had advice for the president on ‘how he should assuage those concerns [to] the public about his age.’

‘One way that you make it clear that age isn’t a factor with you is you’re pretty energetic. We see you travel the country, you show up and do interviews. … It is clearly an issue for many voters when it comes to President Biden,’ Todd said Sunday.

Sanders responded that voters have to evaluate Biden on ‘a whole lot of factors.’

‘A candidate, whether it’s Joe Biden or Trump or Bernie Sanders, anybody else, you know, they have to evaluate a whole lot of factors,’ Sanders said.

‘I think, at the end of the day, what we have got to ask ourselves is what do people stand for? Do you believe that women have a right to control their own bodies? Well, the president has been strong on that. Do you think that climate change is real or do you agree with the Republicans that it’s a nonissue?’ he added.

Sanders ran for president in 2020 but has since thrown his support behind Biden, including for the 2024 election.

‘So, age is an issue, Chuck, but there are a lot of broader issues than just that,’ he said.

–>

Former Vice President Mike Pence, competing for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, sidestepped Sunday on whether he would support Donald Trump if the former president is convicted in any criminal case, arguing that President Biden too ‘has trampled on the Constitution of the United States.’ 

‘I signed a pledge to be on that stage to say I would support the Republican nominee. I remain confident, more confident after Wednesday night, that the Republican nominee will not be the former president, and we’re going to give the American people a standard-bearer for the GOP that’s going to be able to lead us to victory against Joe Biden and the radical left – I raised my hand to say I’ll support the Republican nominee,’ Pence said during an appearance on CBS’s ‘Face The Nation.’ 

‘I could never support Joe Biden,’ Pence continued. ‘I mean Joe Biden’s policies have been disastrous, he and his family are under an ethical cloud themselves, and frankly Joe Biden has trampled on the Constitution of the United States, he’s failed to faithfully execute our laws – the southern border of the United States created the worst crisis in American history, and that student loan giveaway where he was going to ask truck drivers to pay their taxes to pay off the student loans of graduate students, was essentially an unconstitutional power grab that I rejected. So I’ll support the Republican nominee, and I’m going to continue to work my heart out that it’s me.’

Pence said it was ‘heartening’ to hear from fellow GOP contenders, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C. and former North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, that they agreed he ‘did his duty’ or ‘did the right thing’ in certifying Biden’s election victory amid the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. 

During last week’s first GOP debate hosted by Fox News in Milwaukee, Pence argued he believed Trump asked him to put him before the Constitution. 

‘I’ve made it clear I had hoped that the issues surrounding the 2020 election and the controversies around Jan. 6 had not come to this, had not come to criminal proceedings. I would rather they had been resolved by the American people and the American people alone,’ Pence said on the debate stage Wednesday. ‘But no one’s above the law. And President Trump is entitled to the presumption of innocence that every American is entitled to. And we will make sure and extend that to him. But the American people deserve to know that the president asked me in his request that I reject or return votes unilaterally, power that no vice president in American history had ever exercised or taken. He asked me to put him over the Constitution, and I chose the Constitution, and I always will.’ 

Also during the ‘Face The Nation’ segment Sunday, Pence condemned the recent mass shooting in Jacksonville, Florida, as ‘evil,’ vowing that if elected president he would expedite the death penalty for mass shooters. He also went after Biden for his record on inflation, record-high mortgage rates and the Afghanistan withdrawal, among other issues.