Mom Jones illustration; Tom Williams/CQ Roll Name/AP; DeAgostini/Getty
On July 10, 2020, Terry Tamminen wrote a letter to the board chair of Waterkeeper Alliance, the clean-water group based and led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to say that he needed out.
Tamminen, a veteran, highly-regarded environmentalist and co-founder and longtime board member of the group, had grow to be involved concerning the outfit’s funds—so nervous that he was tendering his resignation. At situation was a minimum of $67 million that Kennedy’s group had acquired and handed alongside over the earlier six years—an eye-popping quantity for a non-profit that previous to this inflow of cash had annual revenues of about $4 million, in response to its tax filings. Tamminen famous in his letter that he had repeatedly requested Kennedy and different prime WKA officers for an evidence relating to these funds—the supply of the cash and its final use—and had acquired no satisfying response. He wrote that both there was “no correct documentation” overlaying this massive move of funds or such documentation was being “withheld” by Kennedy and the employees.
Tamminen had come throughout a state of affairs that had raised questions amongst employees at WKA and folks inside the group’s orbit concerning the group and Kennedy’s dealing with of tens of tens of millions of {dollars}. His letter was prompted by a authorized complaint that claimed WKA had “funneled tens of millions of {dollars} to the Bahamas” to help Louis Bacon, a hedge-fund billionaire, in his purported effort to “destroy and harm” Peter Nygård, a Canadian vogue mogul, who owned an property subsequent to Bacon’s on the island nation. The criticism, filed in a lawsuit introduced by Nygård towards Bacon, alleged that WKA had engaged in “unlawful and/or improper actions” to profit Bacon, a significant monetary backer of WKA. It additionally claimed Kennedy had “carried out unlawful and improper actions to additional [Bacon’s] scheme to wreck [Nygård’s] enterprise and property on the route of, beneath the supervision of, on the request of or on behalf of [Bacon].”
“The place did that cash go? The entire thing stunk. It was apparent they had been hiding one thing. They’ve by no means offered good solutions.”
Tamminen’s letter recommended that he was involved about doable misconduct at Waterkeeper Alliance, a community of a whole lot of organizations throughout the globe that defend our bodies of water, and that he nervous that Kennedy was not being easy concerning the matter. The Nygård criticism was in the end dismissed. However with Kennedy, an anti-vaxxer and conspiracy theorist, tapped by President-elect Donald Trump to run the huge Division of Well being and Human Providers, this episode—involving tens of millions of {dollars}—might make clear his managerial expertise and competence.
A Mom Jones investigation has discovered that charities related to Bacon, the co-founder and CEO of Moore Capital Administration, did contribute a minimum of $63 million to WKA and that these funds had been subsequently despatched by WKA to Save the Bays, a small environmental group that Bacon, Kennedy, and others had started within the Bahamas and that filed a number of environmental fits towards Nygård.
This cash move occurred on the similar time Bacon was concerned in a bitter feud with Nygård. The 2 owned adjoining estates in Lyford Cay, a complicated neighborhood for the super-rich within the Bahamas, and a property dispute—they shared a driveway—had developed into wild fight costing every tens of millions of {dollars}. And Save the Bays and its lawyer had grow to be concerned in Bacon’s battle with Nygård.
Some WKA employees and associates thought of these massive transfers of funds to Save the Bays uncommon and questioned how this modest outfit was absorbing and spending tens of tens of millions of {dollars}. For them, it was an indication of Kennedy’s autocratic administration of WKA. “You couldn’t actually ask questions on this,” a former staffer says. “There was a cult of Bobby.”
By way of 2023, the amount of cash routed by way of Kennedy’s group to finance what was described in its tax data as a program within the Caribbean totaled $79 million. A WKA trustee replying on behalf of the group to queries from Mom Jones maintains this cash financed environmental-related litigation mounted by Save the Bays within the Bahamas. Former WKA employees say this can be a tremendously excessive determine for such circumstances and assert there was no ample public documentation that this funding was appropriately dealt with. “The place did that cash go?” asks Bob Shavelson, a former founding WKA board member. “The entire thing stunk. It was apparent they had been hiding one thing. They’ve by no means offered good solutions.”
Tamminen’s queries about WKA’s funds in 2020 had been triggered by a news report concerning the years-long feud between Bacon and Nygård. Their titanic battle had come to contain a number of lawsuits in various jurisdictions, non-public investigators, gang members, phony web sites, an allegation of a homicide plot concentrating on Bacon, costs of harassment, political intrigue, secret recordings, and accusations of sexual assault towards Nygård.
Ultimately, Nygård ended up being convicted in Canada final 12 months of sexual assault and sentenced to 11 years in jail, whereas nonetheless going through trials for intercourse crimes and different costs in Montreal, Winnipeg, and New York. And Bacon received a defamation case towards Nygård and a $203 million judgment, however in November that award was tossed out.
Tamminen had noticed a story concerning the complaint Nygård had filed on April 30, 2020, in a New York federal courtroom alleging that Bacon and others had engaged in a sample of unlawful conduct for years to defame him and destroy his vogue model. Nygård listed a bunch of individuals and organizations supposedly concerned or knowledgable of this alleged scheme, together with Waterkeeper Alliance, Kennedy, and Fred Smith, a Bahamian lawyer and co-founder and board member of Save the Bays, the group that Kennedy and Bacon had helped to start out. (Smith was additionally a member of Waterkeeper Alliance.) Launched in 2013, Save the Bays had sued Nygård for dredging and different exercise that, the group contended, had despoiled Clifton Bay, which Nygård’s gaudy and palatial property missed.
There may be “no method you may spend $79 million on one of these litigation. You should purchase a complete ecosystem for that amount of cash… With out particulars, there’s no method you may clarify these numbers.”
Nygård’s criticism acknowledged that Save the Bays had relied “closely on funding and assist from Waterkeeper Alliance.” The submitting additionally cited a 2010 Denver Put up story wherein Kennedy had praised Bacon, noting he was the “single largest supporter” of the Waterkeeper Alliance. A lawyer who has labored with WKA describes Bacon as “one in all Bobby’s rich-guy associates.”
After studying about this criticism, Tamminen questioned about WKA and Kennedy’s connection to the Nygård-Bacon face-off. In line with his resignation letter, on July 2, 2020, Tamminen emailed Mary Beth Postman, the deputy director of WKA, and requested, “Did we run any litigation funding for this case by way of WKA? Some rumors flying round, however I don’t recall something like that on our 990s.” He was referring to the annual tax return that nonprofits should file. WKA’s public 990s indicated that tens of tens of millions of {dollars} had been despatched to the Caribbean with out detailing what they financed. A onetime WKA affiliate says, “This regarded completely smelly.”
In line with Tamminen’s resignation letter, he quickly spoke with Kennedy and requested for data associated to this funding, and Kennedy, was “unable to supply the paperwork (or a verbal clarification).”
Afterward Postman knowledgeable Tamminen that the WKA had a “fiscal sponsorship settlement” to assist work within the Bahamas. This meant WKA was receiving, as a pass-through, cash for the Bahamian group. Appearing as a pass-through is a typical observe for nonprofits, however they’ll solely do that to assist charitable exercise, normally a undertaking in sync with their very own missions. They will cost a share of the funds for this service, typically within the 7-to-14-percent vary, and, in response to the WKA trustee who replied to queries from Mom Jones, the group did obtain a reduce. The trustee wouldn’t say how a lot.
Tamminen pressed Marc Yaggi, the CEO of WKA, for documentation and particulars on the supply of the tens of millions despatched to the Bahamas, the recipients of these funds, and the way this cash was spent. “We are able to’t be funneling tens of millions of {dollars} (3X our personal finances as proven on 990s) to [nongovernmental organizations] with out full transparency about how the cash is being spent and an unambiguous contract with these recipients about what’s allowable and, particularly, what is just not,” he wrote in his resignation letter.
Lastly, in response to the letter, Tamminen was despatched a spreadsheet from WKA trustee William Wachtel indicating that almost all of the greater than $67 million in query went to the Coalition to Shield Clifton Bay, an earlier title for Save the Bays, and “an bill for reimbursement by WKA from attorneys concerned within the [Nygård-Bacon] litigation…within the quantity of $1,752,193” for a three-month interval in 2020.
Tamminen deemed this reply inadequate. At this level, he threw up his fingers and determined to give up, noting in his letter, “I’ve a fiduciary accountability to know the group’s funds” and stating that as a result of Kennedy and his employees had not offered enough documentation he couldn’t carry out this primary process.
Tamminen declined to remark.
In response to a protracted listing of questions despatched to Kennedy by Mom Jones about WKA forwarding cash to the Bahamas, RFK Jr. texted, “The protection on me from mom John’s [sic] has been constantly hostile and inaccurate. MJ was as soon as a counter tradition journal that spoke fact to energy It now appears to be one more propaganda bullhorn for the DS Regime.” (May “DS Regime” consult with a Deep State Regime?) Requested if this textual content was his full response to the listing of queries, Kennedy didn’t reply.
Tamminen’s letters, Shavelson says, was a “damning piece of proof.” His resignation drew consideration inside WKA and its massive community of native Waterkeeper teams to a curious query: Why had Kennedy’s group handed alongside a lot cash to the Bahamas? “We didn’t actually know who was giving us this cash,” a former staffer says.
The WKA’s 990s present that by way of 2023, the whole quantity that handed by way of what the group known as its Central America/Caribbean program was $79 million. On the 990s accessible to the general public, the title of the recipient of these funds had been redacted. (That is uncommon; grantees are typically recognized.) A former WKA staffer says that the recipient listed on the 990s was the legislation agency of Fred Smith, the Bahamian lawyer who, with Kennedy and Bacon, helped manage Save the Bays and who was related to Bacon’s wide-ranging struggle towards Nygård. That battle included a lawsuit charging Nygård with intercourse crimes.
WKA employees and associates of the Waterkeeper Alliance had been suspicious of this funding association. The amount of cash going to Save the Bays was “off-kilter,” a former WKA staffer says. “It was disproportionate to the scale of this system. That they had an workplace that was possibly 400-square-feet with one full-time staffer and a few part-timers. We didn’t know the supply of the cash happening there.”
Save the Bays has run a radio present and a youth schooling program. Its web site is now not operational, and the telephone quantity listed on its Facebook page is out of service. “I’ve by no means heard of that amount of cash being spent on that kind of litigation,” Shavelson says.
“This cash was orders of magnitude larger than something in my expertise in my 30 years of observe as an environmental lawyer,” says Daniel Cooper, the founding associate of Sycamore Legislation, a firm that focuses on submitting environmental enforcement circumstances for grassroots nonprofits. (He was not concerned within the Save the Bays litigation.)
The previous WKA staffer provides that “there was a really closed loop on that cash, with Bobby concerned.” Some staffers on the time questioned whether or not a number of the funds going to the Bahamas had been getting used for the continued battle between Bacon and Nygård past the environmental lawsuits Save the Bays had filed relating to Nygård.
A key situation was the supply of the funding. A evaluate performed by Mom Jones of charitable organizations related to Bacon—Moore Charitable Basis, Belvedere Charitable Basis, and Bessemer Belief—exhibits that these entities donated a hefty quantity, almost $63 million, to the Waterkeeper Alliance from 2014 by way of 2023. (In contrast to the Moore and Belvedere foundations, the Bessemer Belief, a multifamily workplace that oversees greater than $200 billion for endowments, households, and foundations, is just not managed by Bacon. However Bacon’s contributions to its Bessemer Giving Fund intently matched the contributions it despatched to WKA.)
The WKA trustee confirms that the Bacon donations to WKA had been the supply of the funds that Kennedy’s outfit handed to Save the Bays. In that case, meaning Bacon was sending cash to WKA—a bunch for whom he was a significant supporter—that Kennedy’s group, after taking a reduce, was forwarding to a bunch that Bacon, Kennedy, Smith and others had shaped, which subsequently filed lawsuits towards Bacon’s archnemesis.
For years previous to Tamminen enquiring about WKA’s exercise within the Bahamas, Save the Bays had been a controversial group on the island nation and had prompted questions on its funding and relationship to Bacon. Throughout a 2016 television interview, Fred Smith refused to acknowledge that Bacon was a significant monetary supporter of Save the Bays. “It’s typically used as some measure of criticism towards us,” he stated. When the host recommended that Bacon had used Save the Bays “to get at Peter Nygård…to discredit Peter Nygård,” Smith replied, “Louis Bacon doesn’t want Save the Bays to do what you’re suggesting.” On this interview, Smith said, “I’ve by no means been paid by Save the Bays… I’m a director of Save the Bays.” (About that point, Minister of Training Jerome Fitzgerald claimed Save the Bays, by way of its environmental lawsuits, was attempting to destabilize and “overthrow” the Progressive Liberal Get together authorities—a cost Smith denied on this interview. Nygård, a PLP supporter, as soon as bragged he had donated $5 million to get together.)
After Tamminen’s resignation brought about a fuss for WKA, the legislation agency run by WKA trustee William Wachtel performed a evaluate of the cash despatched to the Bahamas and produced a personal report. Wachtel was a part of this evaluate, in response to the trustee who spoke to Mom Jones. In a one-page assertion, the WKA board of administrators known as this inquiry an “unbiased evaluation.” It stated that the evaluate discovered “no crimson flags” and concluded there was “no clear proof of misuse of funds” and “no clear proof of donors improperly gaining advantages from donations”—presumably a reference to Bacon. The assertion didn’t point out Bacon, Save the Bays, or the Bahamas.
Former WKA associates level out that this was not an unbiased investigation, on condition that it was performed by a trustee. “This was a bogus audit,” Shavelson says. A onetime WKA affiliate says, “To have a trustee conduct an investigation that then says ‘nothing to see right here’ doesn’t go the scent check.”
The inquiry’s remaining report was shared with an audit committee of the WKA board, not the total board.
The WKA trustee says this inquiry confirmed that the $79 million was principally spent on litigation performed by Smith and his legislation agency for Save the Bays and that the inquiry reviewed billing paperwork and invoices from Smith and decided they had been correct and coated legit bills. “We noticed nothing spent for something apart from the litigation that went on,” the trustee says. A former board member, who has not seen the evaluate, says that they discovered the litigation billing included bills for lavish resort suites, limousines, and safety providers.
Save the Bays and Smith did certainly interact in environmental-related litigation. In 2015, the group launched a legal action relating to air pollution attributed to an influence plant. It efficiently sued Nygård for illegally dredging Clifton Bay to increase his property, and that case led to the Supreme Court docket of the Bahamas seizing his property in 2018. It additionally filed a legal action claiming Nygård had engaged in unauthorized development. In 2021, Save the Bays and Waterkeeper Bahamas filed a case to compel judicial evaluate of overseas oil improvement within the Bahamas.
However former WKA associates say the almost $79 million price ticket for Save the Bays litigation appears exceedingly excessive. “The price of an unlawful dredging case is within the tens of 1000’s of {dollars},” a former WKA staffer says. Shavelson asks, “The place’s all this litigation? There must be a mountain of stuff for these billables. I’ve by no means heard of that amount of cash being spent on that kind of litigation.” One other former WKA affiliate says that the everyday circumstances that Waterkeeper Alliance members deliver vary for $10,000 to a whole lot of 1000’s of {dollars} and that there’s “no method you may spend $79 million on one of these litigation. You should purchase a complete ecosystem for that amount of cash.” This supply provides, “With out particulars, there’s no method you may clarify these numbers.”
Whereas Smith was submitting environmental circumstances for Save the Bays, he was a key ally of Bacon within the billionaire’s fierce struggle with Nygård. In line with a prolonged New York Occasions account of the Bacon-Nygård conflict, Smith labored with non-public investigators and located 15 Bahamian girls to take part in a intercourse crimes lawsuit towards Nygård. He additionally inspired girls who claimed to be Nygård victims to go to the Bahamian police. The newspaper famous that Smith created a nonprofit known as Sanctuary, which he and Bacon funded, and that it paid Bahamian attorneys and investigators concerned in placing collectively the intercourse crimes lawsuit towards Nygård. Smith and the non-public investigators, in response to the newspaper, compensated a minimum of two witnesses who situated alleged victims.
Nygård reportedly spent $15 million on a smear marketing campaign towards Bacon, which included tv and radio adverts, doctored movies, and outlandish accusations, and Bacon stated in courtroom that he expended $53 million for investigators and attorneys in his authorized struggle with Nygård.
Mom Jones despatched prolonged lists of inquiries to Marc Yaggi and Mary Beth Postman of WKA, Fred Smith, Save the Bays, Louis Bacon (by way of his Moore Charitable Basis), and the Trump transition workforce. It requested WKA if it will launch unredacted variations of its 990s. It requested if WKA might present an accounting of the litigation the tens of tens of millions of {dollars} supposedly financed. It requested whether or not Tamminen’s account—together with his declare that Kennedy wouldn’t present him data to verify the cash despatched to the Bahamas was dealt with appropriately—was correct. None of them, besides Katie Miller, a Trump transition staffer, replied. Miller emailed, “As a matter of coverage, I don’t reply to left wind [sic] activists masquerading as journalists.” The Bessemer Belief didn’t reply to a request to remark.
A number of months after Tamminen prompted a stir concerning the Bahamas cash, Kennedy resigned as WKA president. The WKA trustee says the Bahamas undertaking was not a consider Kennedy’s resignation. By that time, Kennedy had grow to be a leading promoter of Covid disinformation, and this had brought about concern inside WKA and among the many group’s funders and supporters.
When WKA in November 2020 introduced Kennedy’s resignation as president, he said, “Waterkeeper is my life’s work and can at all times be my proudest achievement…. I’m immensely happy with what we created.” He added, “My desires overflow with the 1000’s of miles of magnificent waterways that I’ve been privileged to paddle or journey with a lot of you over 40 years; the mangroves, the muskies, the Spanish moss, the education salmon, the shrimp, crayfish, blue crab, and yellow perch, the calving glaciers and all that flowing water from the Himalayas to the Tetons, from the Andes to the Arctic, from Bimini to Homer, from Bhutan to the Jordan, and from Lake Ontario to the Futaleufú.” He didn’t point out the Bahamas. Upon his departure, the board named him president emeritus.
