County-level campaign finance disclosures and FEC records reveal that tech billionaires spent hundreds of millions on the 2024 election cycle — with a significant portion directed at local prosecutor races designed to protect progressive criminal justice policies. An OSINT investigation into the money, the donors, and the races they targeted.
The DA Strategy
In the 2024 election cycle, outside spending shattered all previous records, fueled by what OpenSecrets documented as a billion-dollar dark money infusion. Over $1 billion flowed from shell companies and nonprofits that do not disclose their donors into super PACs and independent expenditure campaigns. While much of this spending targeted federal races, a strategically significant portion was directed at local prosecutor elections — the races that determine how criminal law is actually enforced in American communities.
The logic is straightforward. District attorneys decide which crimes to prosecute, which charges to bring, which plea deals to offer, and which sentencing enhancements to seek. A sympathetic DA can effectively nullify criminal statutes by declining to enforce them. For wealthy donors seeking to reshape criminal justice policy, electing the right prosecutor is more efficient than changing the law.
The Donor Network
Tech billionaire Reid Hoffman has been among the most active political donors in recent cycles. The Badger Project documented that Hoffman directed $15.355 million to Wisconsin Democrats between 2019 and 2025, including nearly $9 million to the Wisconsin Democratic Party since 2020. His giving pattern — concentrated in swing states where criminal justice is a salient political issue — reflects a strategy focused on jurisdictional control rather than simple partisan support.
The Guardian’s analysis found that tech industry leaders poured $394.1 million into the 2024 U.S. election overall. A New York Times analysis of FEC records found that billionaires made 19% of all reported federal campaign contributions during the 2024 cycle — a concentration of political influence that extends well beyond the tech sector but is disproportionately driven by Silicon Valley wealth.
The Dark Money Layer
The most potent political spending in prosecutor races often comes through channels designed to obscure the source. The Senate Democrats’ Majority Forward organization alone accounted for over $113.2 million from anonymous donors — more than any prior election cycle. On the Republican side, super PACs allied with Senate Republican leadership spent over $211 million.
At the local level, the dark money dynamic is even less transparent. State campaign finance laws vary widely in their disclosure requirements, and many DA races operate below the media radar that provides informal accountability for higher-profile contests. A $500,000 independent expenditure in a county DA race — sourced through a nonprofit that doesn’t disclose donors — can determine the outcome of an election that affects millions of residents.
The Justice Consequences
The impact of these investments is measurable. Cities that elected progressive prosecutors backed by out-of-state donors experienced policy shifts that included declining to prosecute certain property crimes, eliminating cash bail requests, reducing sentencing recommendations, and deprioritizing drug enforcement. Whether these policies represent progress or peril depends on your perspective — but the fact that they were purchased by billionaires who don’t live in the affected communities is indisputable.
The recall movements that unseated progressive DAs in San Francisco and Los Angeles in recent years were, in part, reactions to the perceived consequences of these policies. But the donors who funded the original campaigns simply redirected their money to other races in other jurisdictions — a political game of whack-a-mole that local voters can’t win against unlimited out-of-state wealth.
The Democratic Deficit
Local prosecutor elections are supposed to reflect community values about public safety and justice. When those elections are funded by Silicon Valley billionaires pursuing a national policy agenda, the democratic link between prosecutors and the communities they serve is severed. The DA answers not to the voters who experience the consequences of their decisions, but to the donors who financed their campaigns.
Campaign finance reform at the local level has proven politically impossible — in part because the donors who benefit from the current system also fund the campaigns of legislators who could change it. Until that changes, the billionaire DA strategy will continue: one prosecutor race at a time, one city at a time, reshaping American criminal justice from the bottom up.
Eduardo Bacci is an investigative journalist at The Investigative Journal. Data sources include OpenSecrets campaign finance data, FEC filings, county campaign finance disclosures, and Guardian/NYT donor analyses.