Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt has launched an investigation into the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) seeking information and documents pertaining to a $350 million donation from Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook) co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg — so-called “Zucker Bucks.”

CTCL is a non-profit 501(c)3 organization established in 2015.

CTCL was founded in 2015 by Tiana Epps-Johnson, a former election administration director for the New Organizing Institute (NOI), Whitney May, a former board of elections official in Durham County, North Carolina, and contributor to the voting information project at NOI, and Donny Bridges, a former election administration research director at NOI.^[1] As of May 2022, all three founders held leadership positions at CTCL.

The money from Zuckerberg was distributed  by CTCL to thousands of county and city election officials ostensibly to fund staffing and equipment to make elections safer during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Missouri Attorney General’s office confirms that, on Friday, they issued a Civil Investigative Demand (CID) (essentially, a subpoena) to CTCL requesting information and documentation which will assist in determining why it appears that a majority of this money went to Democratic strongholds and swing states and counties in particular. Was this an effort to drive turnout and influence the 2020 elections under the guise of “safety”?

Questions have understandably been raised by various election officials but it is believed that this is the first CID issued to CTCL in an effort to get to the bottom of this donation — why it was made, how it was used, and what effect it may have had on these elections.

Attorney General Schmitt’s Press Secretary Chris Nuelle provided the following statement to RedState:

“Attorney General Eric Schmitt has been committed to ensuring the integrity of our elections from the beginning. That’s why we sent this subpoena today, and we aren’t backing down – we’re going to continue to fight and get to the bottom of this.”