The left-wing ProPublica runs a dark money-funded multimillion-dollar “journalistic” operation that boasts about launching smear campaigns against Democrats’ political opponents, and its latest piece attacking one of America’s foremost election integrity advocates is simply further confirmation of that propaganda role.
The self-described “independent” nonprofit published a hit piece on Wednesday against Election Integrity Network founder Cleta Mitchell, who has spent years fighting to secure clean, transparent, and honest elections. Riddled with “election denier” and other Democrat buzzwords, the article attempts to undermine Mitchell and the work she and her allies are doing to bring integrity to America’s electoral system.
[READ: Election Integrity Warrior Cleta Mitchell Drives The Left Crazy]
Far from being an anomaly, the attack article is emblematic of ProPublica’s role as an advocacy arm of the Democrat Party. For years, the leftist-funded outlet has used donated funds to construct lengthy pieces targeting conservative figures, while simultaneously providing Democrats and their media allies with political ammo to advance their agenda.
Founders and Funding
Unraveling the story of ProPublica requires delving back into its history. The organization was founded in 2007 and quickly assembled a team comprised of figures from across America’s corporate media landscape.
ProPublica’s founding editor-in-chief, CEO, and president (2008-2012) was Paul Steiger, who had previously served as The Wall Street Journal’s managing editor for 16 years. Steiger additionally served as part-time executive chair of the outlet from 2013-2020.
ProPublica’s early leadership team also included Stephen Engleberg, who served as founding managing editor and now serves as editor-in-chief. Similar to Steiger, Engleberg boasts a history working in legacy media, having “previously founded the investigative reporting unit at the New York Times and is [now] on the Pulitzer Prize Board,” according to the Capital Research Center (CRC).
ProPublica is now led by President Robin Sparkman, who also worked at MSNBC (now MS NOW) and Newsweek. Sparkman is also the founding CEO of StoryCorps, a nonprofit media organization whose “areas of focus align with left-of-center perspectives especially on identity-related issues.”
The more interesting details about ProPublica’s makeup, however, can be found when assessing the organization’s funding sources.
A November 2023 Restoration News analysis identified several left-wing organizations responsible for bankrolling the nonprofit, which boasted a revenue of nearly $75 million in 2025.
This list of backers includes the Sandler Foundation, which, as of the report’s release, had given ProPublica nearly $50 million since 2010. Another notable funder is investor Donald Sussman, “who donated $25 million to support Democrats in the 2018 election cycle” and gave the outlet $480,100, per CRC. Additional ProPublica backers flagged by Restoration News include leftist billionaire George Soros’ Foundation to Promote Open Society, the Marisla Foundation, and Pew Charitable Trusts.
ProPublica has come under fire from critics who say the organization has not been fully transparent on its funding sources. The New York Post reported in 2023 that “there is a layer of opacity and fine print that ultimately obscures some of [ProPublica’s] contributions,” with the organization refusing to disclose the identity of donors who gave it $6.3 million in 2020 and 2021.
“According to their 2022 audited financial statement, more than $9.9 million in funding to ProPublica from two donors made up a quarter of the site’s revenues — but the names of those donors were not disclosed,” the Post report reads.
The Worst Hit Pieces Money Can Buy
ProPublica didn’t just leave all that money from its leftist megadonors sitting in the bank, however. The nonprofit used the funds to have its predominantly Democrat staff run targeted ops against conservatives to Democrats’ benefit.
In the years after Joe Biden became president, ProPublica was at the forefront of a campaign to discredit the Supreme Court by portraying Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, the court’s two most consistent conservatives, as guilty of ethics violations. Not only did the outlet expend vast resources to dig up any dirt its employees could find on the justices and their finances, but it also quoted from left-wing organizations like Demand Justice, Campaign Legal Center, and American Constitution Society — all of which have attacked the conservative-led Supreme Court in recent years. Those same groups also happen to receive funding from one of ProPublica’s biggest donors, the Sandler Foundation, as Federalist Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway reported in her bestselling book Alito.
But attacks on Thomas and Alito — for which ProPublica won a Pulitzer Prize — are just the tip of the iceberg.
In summer 2021, ProPublica obtained and published the leaked personal tax information of thousands of wealthy Americans like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. The data — which included Donald Trump’s tax returns — was leaked by former IRS consultant Charles Littlejohn, who effectively received a slap on the wrist from the Justice Department for giving the information to The New York Times and ProPublica.
ProPublica won another Pulitzer last year for its “reporting” insinuating that pregnant women died after doctors delayed administering care in states with pro-life laws. The Federalist’s Jordan Boyd reported, however, that while ProPublica “blam[ed] confusion about Georgia’s lifesaving abortion limits” for the death of Amber Thurman, “[a] closer look at the circumstances that led to [her] passing … indicates that she died on the table during a surgery only needed because she suffered severe complications from ingesting abortion pills associated with sometimes fatal complications.”
“Thanks to the Biden administration’s radically relaxed abortion pill expansions, Thurman was able to induce abortion hours away at home unsupervised,” Boyd wrote.
[Report: Leftist-Funded ProPublica Attacks Conservatives 23 Times More Often Than Democrats]
ProPublica has also devoted significant resources to targeting the Trump administration.
The Democrat-aligned firm ran a “Trump Town” database during Trump 1.0 that tracked the president’s appointees across the federal government. The outlet notably declined to make a similar database for the Biden administration.
ProPublica’s efforts to target Trump-aligned figures have carried over into the president’s second term. The nonprofit published a February 2025 report identifying members of Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), who were tasked with identifying waste, fraud, and abuse throughout the federal bureaucracy.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth became the target of a ProPublica hatchet job before he was even confirmed to a position in Trump’s cabinet. The left-wing outlet was preparing to publish a story based on false claims from West Point officials that Hegseth was never accepted to the military school. It was only after Hegseth published a signed letter confirming his acceptance to the school that ProPublica ultimately decided its fishing expedition was no longer worthy of publication.
The left-wing firm hasn’t spared more “moderate” Republicans either. ProPublica most recently ran a hit piece against Maine Sen. Susan Collins ahead of her 2026 reelection bid, as Democrats hope to take control of the closely divided Senate. As The Federalist’s Brianna Lyman reported, the outlet’s allegations that Collins “was involved in a pay-to-play scheme and that the Trump administration helped shut down the investigation” relied heavily on the testimony of a “discredited” former FBI official “who sought to use lawfare to take down Elon Musk” and a man “in jail for making illegal campaign contributions.”
Springboard for Democrat Ops
ProPublica’s attacks on conservatives aren’t happening in a vacuum. Rather, their smear campaigns act as springboards that give Democrats and their media allies the talking points they need to advance their agenda. And that’s a fact ProPublica openly celebrates.
When outlining its “three largest program services, as measured by expenses” in its 2023 Form 990, the first item ProPublica listed was its campaign to discredit Thomas and Alito. That year the nonprofit raked in nearly $56 million in contributions. The outlet went on to describe how its foremost “accomplishments” —the anti-Thomas and Alito hit jobs — prompted congressional Democrats to launch a litany of hearings and investigations into the high court’s conservative justices. The organization also boasted about how “[d]ozens of members of Congress have pressed for ethics reform” and “introduc[ed] multiple bills” on the subject because of its heavily-funded effort to smear the high court.
Democrats cited this “ethics reform” when introducing legislation that same year seeking to increase the number of justices from nine to 13, which would conveniently flip ideological control of the court. The phrase has also become a talking point among 2026 Democrat Senate candidates, many of whom have either backed court-packing or signaled their openness to it.
“I think first and foremost we have to have real ethics reform that’s accountable that you can hold people to,” Maine Democrat candidate Troy Jackson said during a recent debate. “I think that we should have term limits, and I’m not against putting more people on the [Supreme Court] because this court obviously is not working. It’s working at the behest of Donald Trump and the billionaire class. I mean, that’s who’s actually funding people like Thomas and Alito. … We have to do something meaningful to get people’s confidence back.”
Another prime example showing how Democrats use ProPublica ops to further their agenda can be seen with the outlet’s attacks on state pro-life laws. Then-Vice President Kamala Harris parroted ProPublica’s deceitful framing of the Georgia incident to advocate for abortion during her failed 2024 presidential campaign. Harris’ running mate Tim Walz similarly spouted numerous falsehoods about the matter during his debate with J.D. Vance.
In a similar fashion ProPublica’s efforts to track Trump 1.0 appointees and DOGE members align with (and enable) the goals of Democrats like Sen. Elissa Slotkin, who recently threatened to punish members of the Trump administration to intimidate young conservatives who might consider working for a Republican president.
ProPublica’s latest broadside against Mitchell follows this same pattern. While aimed at smearing the EIN founder, the hatchet job fulfills Democrats’ broader objective of vilifying the election integrity movement and its supporters. And much like ProPublica’s other works, Democrats and their media accomplices will undoubtedly use it to push that narrative forward.
