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FIRST ON FOX: Americans for Public Trust, a conservative watchdog organization, filed a complaint with the Missouri Attorney General asking the state to investigate whether the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation and Stop the Ban violated Missouri’s foreign-influence ballot-measure law, Fox News Digital has learned.
The Switzerland-based Oak Foundation gave the ACLU Foundation a $2 million unrestricted grant to be spent over the course of two years beginning in 2025, according to a financial disclosure. Then, in early 2026, campaign finance records show that the ACLU Foundation donated $500,000 to Stop the Ban, a political committee working to oppose a ballot measure in Missouri that would ban most abortions in the state.
Missouri is part of a slate of GOP-led states that, in 2025, passed laws aimed at preventing foreign funds from making their way into the political process. The legislative effort was inspired by reporting that money linked to Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss had made its way to a major Democratic-aligned nonprofit that was spending large amounts of money to sway state ballot referendums.
FOREIGN BILLIONAIRES FUNNEL $2.6B TO US ADVOCACY GROUPS TO INFLUENCE POLICY, WATCHDOG REPORT CLAIMS
Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe waves to the crowd after being sworn in as the state’s 58th governor in Jefferson City. (Emily Curiel/Kansas City Star/Tribune News Service)
“The ACLU is aware of and compliant with this Missouri campaign finance law,” a spokesman for the organization told Fox News Digital.
A federal court wrote in 2025 that a Kansas campaign finance law, which is similar to the foreign influence law in Missouri, prevents organizations funded by foreign nationals from donating to domestic nonprofits that themselves donate to political committees, even though the paper trail between foreign nationals and domestic nonprofits is “one step removed.”
The Oak Foundation is primarily funded by the wealth of…
