Fake charities are not just for the Clintons, it seems, as a report from the New York Post reveals that a cancer charity started by former Vice President Joe Biden spent most of the millions it raised on salaries, but gave out no grants in its first two years.
The mission of the Biden Cancer Initiative, which was founded in 2017, was to “develop and drive implementation of solutions to accelerate progress in cancer prevention, detection, diagnosis, research and care and to reduce disparities in cancer outcomes.” The charity took in nearly $5 million in contributions in 2017 and 2018, according to IRS filings, but spent most of it, just over $3 million, on the salaries of former Washington, D.C., aides who were hired by the charity.
The charity took in $4,809,619 in contributions in fiscal years 2017 and 2018, and spent $3,070,301 on payroll in those two years. The group’s president, Gregory Simon, raked in $429,850 in fiscal 2018 (July 1, 2018 to June 30, 2019), according to the charity’s most recent federal tax filings.
Simon, a former Pfizer executive and longtime health care lobbyist who headed up the White House’s cancer task force in the Obama administration, saw his salary nearly double from the $224,539 he made in fiscal 2017, tax filings show.
Danielle Carnival, former chief of staff for Obama’s cancer initiative, the Cancer Moonshot Task Force, who took home $258,207 in 2018.
The rest of the charity’s income was spent on expenses like travel and conferences.
Gregory Simon claims that the purpose of the charity is not to give out grants, but to “accelerate” treatment for all, whatever that means.
Joe Biden’s son Beau Biden died of brain cancer in 2015.
The charity effectively stopped running once Joe Biden started his presidential campaign. According to Simon, that’s when the “charity” floundered.
“We tried to power through but it became increasingly difficult to get the traction we needed to complete our mission,” Simon said in July 2019.
The Biden Cancer Initiative remains unrated by Charity Navigator, an organization that analyzes charities to determine which effectively use their donations for their stated causes.
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Matt Margolis is the author of the new book Airborne: How The Liberal Media Weaponized The Coronavirus Against Donald Trump, and the bestselling book The Worst President in History: The Legacy of Barack Obama. You can follow Matt on Twitter @MattMargolis
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