Nebraska Attorney General Hilgers targets foreign funding in state ballot initiatives

Nebraska Attorney General Mike Hilgers this week warned of efforts by foreign actors to influence statewide ballot initiatives in Republican states to reshape the political landscape of the United States.

Hilgers pointed to efforts by foreign billionaires to funnel money into statewide ballot initiatives illegally, which he has challenged in court.

“Until 2021, we thought that the law actually prohibited foreign funding of state elections," Hilgers said on the “Just the News, No Noise” television show. 

"In about 2021, the FEC [Federal Elections Commission] issued a ruling that said, 'Actually no. Federal law doesn't prohibit it the way that you think that it does in about 10 or 12 states. Nebraska is one of them.” 

Hilgers said state lawmakers, including himself, as speaker of the Nebraska Legislature at the time, in response, closed that loophole in Arizona law.

"We passed the law that said no foreign funding, either directly or indirectly, of state ballot initiatives,” he also said. “Well, it turns out that we have had a deluge of funding in Nebraska over the last several election cycles. Last year was $10 million, which in Nebraska is a lot of money … . It funds a lot of ballot petitions and all tied to a specific billionaire funder out of Switzerland, a guy by the name of Hansjorg Wyss. And we think it violates Nebraska state law, so we filed a lawsuit to put a stop to it.”

Hilgers went on to vow that his office would pursue discovery to uncover the details of the intermediary groups through which Wyss allegedly funneled the money.

“We're going to ask for all sorts of discovery, and we're going to find out even more,” he insisted. “But what we found so far is that there's a tremendous amount of money, upwards of a half a billion dollars, that has flowed into the United States to influence all sorts of elections.”

Wiese is a relatively little known figure, in contrast to George and Alex Soros, who have funded left-wing causes for years. Hilgers, for his part, highlighted some of Wiese’s public remarks in characterizing him as a similar, albeit quieter, actor.

“What he's saying publicly is he's far left, progressive. He certainly wants to influence the trajectory of the United States, I think, primarily through funding the state-wide ballots,” Hilgers said. “He has said publicly also that he's kind of proud of the fact that his name is not on any of these donations, which they're not, and so you can't directly tie the money to him without some spade work, which we've done.”

“So we know it's a lot of money. We know it's from a foreign source. We know they're going through intermediaries, and we know they're really trying to turn states like Nebraska blue, and that's why we filed the lawsuit,” he concluded.

Ben Whedon is the Chief Political Correspondent at Just the News. Follow him on X.