A group of Republican donors and operatives has been the hidden hand behind some of this campaign’s most controversial advertisements attacking Kamala Harris and bolstering Donald J. Trump.
Over $100 million was raised and spent over the past four years by a political nonprofit called Building America’s Future, according to four people briefed on the group’s work. And in the presidential race, the group is expected to have spent more than $35 million to peel off liberal support for Ms. Harris from vital demographic groups, such as younger men and Muslim Americans, and to get third-party candidates on ballots.
Building America’s Future will be publicly revealed in federal campaign finance filings on Tuesday as the sole funder of two super PACs that have disclosed little about their backers. The first, Duty to America PAC, has targeted young male voters and Black voters whom they are hoping to persuade to vote for Mr. Trump.
The second, Future Coalition PAC, has gone after Ms. Harris in Michigan by highlighting her positions that are pro-Israel, along with the Jewish faith of her husband, Doug Emhoff.
The ads have been criticized by Democrats as featuring antisemitic dog whistles. They appear to be intended to depress turnout for Ms. Harris in a state with a significant Muslim and Arab American population, using the conflict in the Middle East as a wedge.
The sweep of Building America’s Future is a reflection of efforts to develop a broader network on the right involving strategists and donors outside the two entities best known for financing conservative projects: Americans for Prosperity and Marble Freedom Trust, a nonprofit led by the conservative legal activist Leonard A. Leo.
The group is so far much smaller in scale than those efforts. But its work underscores how little public disclosure is required from certain tax-exempt groups that operate on the edges of politics.
A focus of Building America’s Future this campaign cycle has been digital ads, one of the areas where the Trump team has lagged behind Democrats, across the seven battleground states.
Duty for America PAC will be shown to have received around $16 million, according to a person briefed on the matter.
Future Coalition PAC will be shown to have received $3 million.
Other efforts from Building America’s Future included a separate entity trying to reach Black men and still another, the Fair Election Fund, to help keep Jill Stein and Cornel West on the ballots in battleground states as Democrats tried to boot them. Both are seen as likely to pull voters away from Ms. Harris.
This past weekend, Mr. Trump attended a Hispanic-focused round-table event hosted by Building America’s Future in Nevada, and he will attend another staged by the group this week in Michigan.
Building America’s Future, organized under section 501(c)4 of the tax code, has a dozen individual and corporate backers. One has been Elon Musk, according to a Wall Street Journal report that was confirmed by two people briefed on the matter.
Mr. Musk has also publicly highlighted the work of the Fair Election Fund, which Building America’s Future has funded heavily. The group has set aside $5 million for awards to people who submit evidence of “illegal voting practices, fraud or broader abuses of our election system,” a priority of Mr. Musk.
The group has been led by Generra Peck and Phil Cox, two influential Republican consultants who have developed a connection to Mr. Musk, along with two other operatives, Ethan Eilon and Andrew Romeo. All four were involved in the failed presidential campaign of Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.
They are now heavily involved in directing a new pro-Trump super PAC called America PAC, which Mr. Musk has funded. Building America’s Future and America PAC are unrelated entities, according to two of the people briefed on the matter.
Building America’s Future’s current iteration was organized under the advice of Charlie Spies, a Republican lawyer who recommended combining some previous entities associated with Mr. Cox and Ms. Peck.
Before the 2022 midterm elections, some of Mr. Musk’s donations to the group were routed to a group created by Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump’s longtime adviser. In the past, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, Mr. Miller was in contact with Building America’s Future while the group was working on a project focused on voter rolls in specific states, an effort Mr. Musk was also said to be interested in.
Building America’s Future took in $11 million in 2021 and $53 million in 2022, according to tax records. The people briefed on the matter say the group has taken in tens of millions of dollars in 2023 and 2024. They declined to be more specific, and the precise amount raised by the nonprofit will not be known until after the election, when its tax filings will be made public. The group is not required to reveal the names of its donors.
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