Robert Mercer, the right-wing billionaire who has been a major funder for conservative political causes and one of President Donald Trump's biggest boosters in the 2016 presidential election, seems to be pulling back on his personal political donations.
The Daily Beast reports that neither Mercer nor his daughter, Rebekah Mercer, personally contributed a single dollar to their family foundation in 2017, which suggests that they are retreating from directly funding right-wing causes.
"The Mercer Family Foundation’s latest annual tax filing, which covers calendar year 2017, lends credence to reporting that Robert Mercer has decided to step back from his status as a leading political financier," writes reporter Lachlan Markay. "The foundation did bring in more than $9 million in 2017, the tax form indicates, but nearly all of that income came from selling off shares in the Medallion Fund, a famous hedge fund run by Renaissance Technologies, the firm that Mercer led until late 2017, and a newer RenTec fund called the Renaissance Institutional Diversified Alpha (RIDA) fund."
The foundation itself nonetheless spent millions of dollars in 2017 funding right-wing institutions such as the Media Research Center, the Heartland Institute and the Federalist Society.
