Daniel Klaidman for CBS News:
Washington hates a secret.
Yet in the summer of 2020, when a blandly named entity called the Impetus Fund received a $64 million donation from a single anonymous source, it touched off a guessing game with broad political implications.
That single anonymous donation, routed through a series of accounts, eventually would be used to help Joe Biden defeat Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Critics say it has come to illustrate an increasingly opaque system of funding elections that in 2024 could reach a scale that dwarfs all previous election cycles.
The source of that donation remains unknown — and not for lack of effort. Fox News first reported on the curious donation in 2023, but was unable to ferret out the donor’s identity. A cottage industry of public interest groups and investigative reporters who dig relentlessly to unmask big-dollar donors, also came up empty.
Most speculate the money originated with a single, super-wealthy Biden supporter. But it could also have come from a privately held company or a shell corporation, an increasingly common tactic used by well-heeled donors seeking to add layers of anonymity to their political largesse. It remains a $64 million mystery — and while legal, it’s one that critics say underscores what’s wrong with today’s campaign finance system.