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You might remember that eight months ago, Stanford University political science professor Adam Bonica spent that time collaborating with The New York Times to run a massive, data-driven expose on the how Democratic spam PACs targeted and bilked elderly donors of their cash. And in the end, The New York Times killed the story after the Elias Law Firm (DCCC/DSCC lawyers) contacted The Times.

Using Federal Election Commission (FEC) data on contributions to Democratic PACs and voter registration lists with age information covering over 300 million contributions to candidates and PACs, Bonica found that the vast majority of donors to Democratic spam PACs are elderly. In fact, a surprisingly concentrated group of elderly donors are responsible for the lion’s share of money raised by these groups.

1% of Democratic donors – approximately 138,000 donors with an average age of 75 – are responsible for more than 49% of $1.4 billion raised by “spam PACs” since 2017.

These are actual cases of senior citizens being taken advantage of by Democratic spam PACs, all while consultants rake in millions. For example, an 85-year-old retired man from Oxford, Ohio sent out 7,800 donations to Democratic groups totaling $648,000 in value. That is more than double the value of his home. An elderly woman from an assisted living center in Indianapolis made 25,000 donations totaling $250,000 in value. The money she was spending on these donations was for her own care. A 93-year-old man was charged 4,208 times over the course of four months for Democratic groups, an average of 31 times per day. That came out to $32,742.

Between 70 and 85 percent of the largest spam PACs’ Facebook/Facebook fundraising ad impressions were served to users 65 and older – a demographic that comprises just 14% of the total adult user base on the platform.

In other words, the biggest spam PAC of them all, the Progressive Turnout Project, raised $390 million from donors since 2015. It spent only 36 cents of every dollar on something other than fundraising to itself: $249 million, or 64 cents of every dollar, went to its own fundraising efforts, as opposed to donations to actual candidates and causes.

In the end, after Bonica completed his work and The Times Opinion editors signed off on it, the Elias Law Group (DCCC/DSCC lawyers) called The New York Times and they killed the story. Bonica then sent the whole thing to The Bulwark and after considerable resistance there (with many conclusions having to be rewritten by the paper’s attorneys), it ultimately appeared in full on his Substack.

”It’s really become a protection racket precisely for those who are against Donald Trump,” investigative journalist Peter Schweizer told his podcast audience after learning of the The New York Times piece that was killed. “If this was about the Republican Party, I think they would have run this piece, and they should have run this piece.”

The story that The New York Times refused to publish about how Democratic consultants are draining the elderly of their cash has now been published. The amount of money that is being drained from the pockets of elderly donors to fund the consultants has increased dramatically since ActBlue announced that it would no longer allow its platform to be used to deceive donors. In the four months after ActBlue’s announcement, donations to spam PACs were up by 33% from the same period in 2023, Bonica wrote. In 2025, for example, Democratic-aligned spam PACs raised more from individual donors than all Democratic Senate candidates combined.

This level of bullying even caught the left at The Nation by surprise.

The NYT story on how to drain the bank accounts of the elderly using Democratic consultants has been published anyway. This is what the press is supposed to do — hold power to account — instead of giving a free pass to one party.

CDM has reported extensively on the smurfing situation nationwide, where billions of illegal campaign finance contributions have been made from fake accounts. Without reviewing the above data, we cannont confirm if smurfing was also involved.

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