Bernie Sanders wired campaign money to family nonprofit

Sen. Bernie Sanders‘ (I-Vt.) campaign committee wired $200,000 earlier this year to a nonprofit established by his wife and stepson, filings show.

The Friends of Bernie Sanders made the payments to the Sanders Institute in two installments of $100,000 in January and March, according to disclosures with the Federal Election Commission.

Those outlays are the largest from the pro-Sanders committee this year.

Fox News first reported on the contribution.

The senator’s wife, Jane O’Meara Sanders, and stepson, David Driscoll, co-established the think tank and unveiled it publicly in 2017 after Sanders’ insurgent 2016 presidential campaign catapulted him to stardom among progressives.

Not much is known about the think tank’s output, though it appears to be paltry.

The group’s website primarily consists of links to articles on other outlets by “fellows” like former Labor Secretary Robert Reich. The website also includes a vertical marking a conference of progressives in Burlington, Vt. called “The Gathering.” That event took place in the fall of 2018.

In 2019, the group briefly halted its operations while the Vermont senator vied for the presidency in 2020, though they appear to have resumed since then.

The Sanders Institute’s stated mission is to “revitalize democracy by actively engaging individuals, organizations and the media in the pursuit of progressive solutions to economic, environmental, racial and social justice issues.”

More than one-third of the nonprofit’s income appears to have been spent on salaries, according to its 2021 tax forms.

Driscoll, the executive director, was compensated $152,653 in salary and other benefits, per those documents.

One of the Institute’s biggest expenditures was the “Timeline Project,” which it described as a “resource based on Bernie Sanders work over four decades that will be one of the key pilars [sic] of the website.”

The group spent $159,885 on that endeavor in 2021, the tax filings said.

Prior to the launch of the Sanders Institute, the Independent senator was harshly critical of then-rival Hillary Clinton over the Clinton Foundation.

“If you ask me about the Clinton Foundation, do I have a problem when a sitting secretary of state and a foundation run by her husband collects many millions of dollars from foreign governments, governments which are dictatorships?” Bernie Sanders told CNN at the time.

“You don’t have a lot of civil liberties or democratic rights in Saudi Arabia, you don’t have a lot of respect there for opposition points of view, for gay rights, for women’s rights. Do I have a problem with that? Yeah, I do.”

It is not fully apparent who has donated to the Sanders Institute based on its tax records.

The Post contacted a Sanders representative and the Sanders Institute for comment.

Bernie Sanders was last elected to the Senate in 2018 and is up for reelection in 2024.

Senate Democrats must defend 23 seats this cycle, including all three held by their aligned Independents. Republicans only have to safeguard 11 Senate seats