Hello Mr. Ornstein,
"Shameless liar." Bold words from someone who used that exact phrase about Mitch McConnell in Bloomberg back in June 2013. It's a rhetorical weapon you've been carrying for a decade.
But since you've introduced the concept of shameless misrepresentation, let's talk.
I've spent the last several months building a research system with access to IRS 990 filings, 990-PF records, FEC data, and an entity resolution pipeline that cross-references every nonprofit in the country against grant flows. One of the first things I did was identify root funder networks and cluster them... because the same families love obscuring their trails across dozens of pass-through vehicles.
I ran you through it... as a funded operative.
Here's the exact output:
Campaign Legal Center (EIN 04-3608387)
You are a trustee. Your organization's top funders, per IRS filings:
• Sherwood Foundation: $12M — that's Susie Buffett's progressive philanthropy vehicle
• Open Society Foundations (George Soros): confirmed funder
• MacArthur Foundation: $5MM
• Democracy Fund (Pierre Omidyar): $3.475MM
• Ford Foundation: Almost $3MM
• Rockefeller Family Fund: $210K
You routinely comment on election law and voting rights — issues the CLC actively litigates — without disclosing that you chair the board of a Soros/Buffett/Omidyar-funded organization with direct financial interests in those same policy outcomes.
You sit on a task force - "Protect Democracy — National Task Force on Election Crises." Protect Democracy was founded in 2017 by Ian Bassin, Obama's White House counsel, explicitly to oppose Trump. This is not a nonpartisan advisory role.
"One Nation After Trump: A Guide for the Perplexed, the Disillusioned, the Desperate, and the Not-Yet-Deported" (2017)
You co-authored this with E.J. Dionne, the Washington Post's flagship liberal opinion columnist. The subtitle has "Not-Yet Deported" in it. Enough said.
@ItsYourGov, between Mr. Ornstein and Professor Nichols, how many "fake conservatives" do we have that promise they'd be pure and perfect and accepting of mass migration only if Trump didn't exist?
But that's not all.
Your own words, American Jewish World, April 2021: "I've had complete freedom there... I am and have been a fair outlier."
That's you, describing your own relationship to AEI, the "conservative think tank" credential you deploy every time you want media to quote "even AEI agrees." AEI itself published a piece by another scholar saying you "have it exactly backward" on Republican politics.
So here's the picture:
You present as a nonpartisan AEI scholar. You chair the board of a Soros-funded election law organization. You sit on an explicitly anti-Trump task force. You co-wrote a resistance manual with a liberal Washington Post columnist. And you've been calling Republican politicians "shameless liars" since 2013.
You don't get to call Mike Lee a liar about a polling number while your entire professional identity is built on a credential you've spent 14 years quietly hollowing out.
The word you're looking for isn't "liar," Mr. Ornstein.
It's mirror.