By Joe Hoft
Published October 20, 2020

The clearly-corrupt and rigged Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) is a private and secretive charitable nonprofit (NFP) corporation which has had a monopoly upon the presentation of Presidential debates to the American public for 32 years, since the 1988 debates. A February 19, 1987 New York Times article, citing Paul G. Kirk Jr., the Democratic national chairman, and Frank J. Fahrenkopf Jr., the Republican national chairman, tells the history of the founding of this Commission

The two major political parties today announced the creation of a bipartisan commission to sponsor Presidential debates in the 1988 general election campaign … Turning over the sponsorship of Presidential debates to the two major parties was the main recommendation of the National Commission on Elections, a bipartisan group that studied the election process in 1985.”

The CPD, as a 501(c)(3) charitable nonprofit corporation, is REQUIRED by law and IRS regulations to be nonpartisan. The CPD’s form of nonpartisanship has required an absolute and equal balance between these two political parties in ALL of its corporate operations. Anything other than that would skew this nonprofit into immediate partisan territory, threaten its nonprofit, tax-exempt status, and serve to interfere in, influence, and even corrupt the election process for the U.S. president. To lend an air of decorum and credibility, this Commission even lists former U.S. presidents as Honorary Co-Chairs: Presidents Carter, Bush and Obama, still with us; Presidents Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan, no longer with us. Curiously, Presidents Bush and Obama were only added to this list on September 10, 2019.

In reality, the CPD in 2019 and 2020 has become a well-camouflaged Democrat/progressive and RINO/Never-Trumper wolf in sheep’s clothing. This nonprofit has been secretly co-opted and it is absolutely operating as a partisan, politicized nonprofit, in direct conflict with the IRS mandates required of it as a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt charity. Its board and management work hard to maintain the pretense of non-partisanship, while keeping its true, partisan activities hidden from the public. The camouflage of a nonpartisan, fair and impartial organization with a historic, stately, noble purpose serves to hide the vicious, partisan politics actually running the show.
97 years old Sen. Dole summed it up

The Commission on Presidential Debates has all the telltale signs of nonprofit corruption, as it wrestles down in the dirt to cement political power for Presidential Candidate Joe Biden and to remove it from Presidential Candidate Donald Trump:
• The CPD quietly altered its historic, balanced leadership structure from two Co-Chairs – one a Democrat and one a Republican – to three Co-Chairs, an alarming and shocking fact. On October 1, 2019, the Commission’s board of directors changed its leadership structure, with no explanations offered, and added a THIRD Co-Chair:

“Frank J. Fahrenkopf, Jr. and Dorothy Ridings, Co-Chairs of the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), today announced that Kenneth Wollack, former President of the National Democratic Institute (NDI), has been elected as a third Co-Chair of the Commission.”

• Its board of directors made this fundamental change to its corporate structure indicating planning and forethought, in anticipation of its partisan manipulation of the Presidential debates in 2020.

This nonprofit has clear evidence of HUGE sums of “dark money” flowing into it – to the tune of an estimated $12.3 million since the last election in 2016! – large, coordinated pots of partisan money from unknown donors, which are secretly being funneled into U.S. nonprofits like the CPD, to influence policy and elections
• The CPD itself is DELIVERING political interference in our elections, RIGHT NOW, through its phony and partisan Commission debates. It is violating its nonprofit charter. It IS political. It IS partisan. It IS secretive. It IS acting against the GOP candidate, Donald Trump. It IS favoring the Democratic candidate, Joe Biden. This is fraudulent and corrupt nonprofit activity. This is illegal nonprofit activity