For all his talk about representing the common man, Donald Trump”s bid to return to the White House was bankrolled by a phalanx of American billionaires. The A List included Elon Musk, Woody Johnson, an heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune, Miriam Adelson, the widow of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson,  and Timothy Mellon.

Now another less widely known billionaire Trump backer has emerged, Thomas Klingenstein.

On January 4, 2024, President-elect Donald Trump held a “World Premier Screening” at Mar-a-Lago of a 104-minute film, The Eastman Dilemma: Lawfare or Justice, about attorney John Eastman. Eastman had worked with Trump to devise a plan for then-Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the 2020 election, despite Pence’s lawyer and other lawyers on the White House staff dismissing Eastman’s proposals as illegal and unconstitutional.

The New York Times reported on the showing, but noted, “It is unclear who produced the movie”. A few other media outlets also cited the showing, but none of the stories said who was behind the movie.

Some digging revealed that a lot of people in the constellation of conservative influencers played a role. The website for the film highlights the Madison Media Fund^[1]  which “supports freedom focused filmmakers.”

“The Eastman Dilemma: Lawfare or Justice” addresses a critical pain point: the growing reality that attorneys who represent conservative clients are being unfairly targeted and “canceled” by a legal system as it grows increasingly politically biased,” the Media Fund website asserts. 

In addition to highlighting The Eastman Dilemma, The Media Fund website includes a “Producer Circle Film Library: Film collections curated by free speech advocate thought leaders.”

Many of the featured films have conservative or patriotic themes, including films by Dinesh D’Souza, a right-wing conspiracy theorist. D’souza released 2000 Mules, a widely debunked film that falsely claimed paid “mules” illegally collected and deposited ballots into drop boxes that favored Joe Biden in swing states in the 2020 presidential election. 

The Madison Media Fund is registered as a non-profit. In its most recent filing with the Internal Revenue Service, the Irvine, CA-based fund reported no revenue or expenses in 2023. The Executive Director was listed as Garry Depew, but the money behind The Eastman Dilemma likely came from its Executive Producer, Thomas Klingenstein.

Klingenstein is chair of the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank based in Upland, CA. “Scholars at Claremont have long subscribed to the belief that the American republic has been dismantled, the Constitution corrupted by left-wing ideas,”  The New York Times said in a lengthy 2023 piece on the Institute.

The Institute was awarded the National Humanities Medal from President Trump in 2019.  Noteworthily, John Eastman is a long-time senior fellow at the Institute and is the founder and director of Claremont’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence.

Klingenstein is a principal in the investment firm Cohen Klingenstein, LLC which, according to Influence Watch, administers a portfolio worth more than $2.3 billion.

He is also founder of the Thomas D. Klingenstein Fund. The Klingenstein Fund donated $100,000 to Public Media Lab for production of Created Equal: Clarence Thomas In His Own Words, a documentary on the life of Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, released theatrically in January 2020 and broadcast on PBS in May 2020.

“We find ourselves in a cold civil war.,” Klingenstein said in a video released by a Super Pac, American Firebrand. “This is a war not over the size of government or taxes but over the American way of life.” “This war is between those who want to preserve the American way of life, and those who want to destroy it.”

“War is not a time for too much civility, compromise, or for imputing good motives to the enemy,” Klingenstein said in another video. In an apocalyptic tone, he added, “You must understand your enemy: education, corporate media, entertainment, big business, big tech. These institutions, together with the government, function as a totalitarian regime.” 

According to the Federal Election Commission, Klingenstein has contributed millions to conservative candidates, organizations and Republican-aligned political committees. A search of Federal Election Commission records reveals a list of 164 individual contributions by Klingenstein to conservative election campaigns during 2023-2024. Major recipients of Klingenstein’s largesse included:

• Club For Growth Action, a Super PAC focused on defeating big-government Democrats and replacing them with pro-growth conservatives
• Win It Back PAC,  a conservative Republican Super PAC
• Make America Great Again Inc., a  Super PAC in support of Donald Trump
• The Sentinel Action Fund, a conservative Super PAC with a year-round ground game committed to turning out absentee, early vote, and “day of” voters.
• Turning Point PAC Inc., a Republican conservative Super PAC

According to a Jan. 13, 2024 story in The New Yorker Daily, Klingenstein has also contributed to the American Leadership PAC that planned to spend one million dollars to pressure Republican senators to support Pete Hegseth as Donald Trump’s Defense Secretary. Breitbart News has reported that the targets are senators in Alaska, North Carolina, Louisiana, South Dakota, and Utah.  In the 2022 and 2024 political cycles, most of the PAC’s funding came from Klingenstein and three other wealthy men.

“Pete Hegseth is a warrior against wokeness in our military and will make an excellent Defense Secretary,” a spokesman for the group told Breitbart News. “It’s vital that Senate Republicans stand with President Trump and vote to confirm Pete. We will do everything in our power to help him get across the finish line.”

There are many more substantial Trump donors from the moneyed class that have largely escaped media attention, but you can be sure they are actively playing the influence game. In mid-2024, Forbes identified 26 billionaires who had each given more than $1 million to Trump. You can be sure they all want something.

“These are smart, accomplished people,” New Yorker writer Susan Glasser said on NPR’s Fresh Air program on October 22, 2024. “I think they have a pretty clear read of who Trump is, which is why for many of them, it strikes me as a fairly cynical transaction that they’re making. And that’s what I was told explicitly from some sources that I have among very senior Republicans who have observed up close this donor class. They believe that it was very transactional. And they think that, in fact, they’re purchasing a level of access and seats at the table in a second Trump administration that they simply wouldn’t have had in a continued Biden or Harris administration.”

Watch closely.

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^[1] The Madison Media Fund is not the same as NY-based Madison Media Group (MMG)