What Did Ruth Bader Ginsburg Do With the $1 Million?

From the Washington Free Beacon by Andrew Kerr:

When the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg accepted a $1 million prize from a liberal billionaire’s foundation, she pledged to pass the money to a list of designated charities. Four years later, it is unclear where Ginsburg sent that money—an ambiguity that experts say raises conflict of interest concerns.

 

The Berggruen Institute, a private foundation founded by billionaire investor Nicolas Berggruen, awarded Ginsburg its annual $1 million Philosophy & Culture award during a swanky star-studded event in December 2019. At the time, ethics experts raised red flags over Ginsburg’s acceptance of the prize, noting that the bounty far exceeded the $2,000 limit placed on honoraria by Judicial Conference regulations. But Ginsburg temporarily assuaged those concerns when she pledged to donate the prize money to more than 60 charities that reflected her personal causes, including the American Bar Foundation, the American Cancer Society, and the Metropolitan Opera.

 

What Ginsburg failed to mention was that she also directed the Berggruen Institute to conceal the full list of her designated charities from the public, a spokeswoman for the institute told the Washington Free Beacon. The Berggruen Institute even engaged in some creative accounting in its Form 990 tax return to ensure the recipients remain shrouded in secrecy.

Also from the story:

Paul Kamenar, an attorney with the National Legal and Policy Center watchdog group, also said the Berggruen Institute should have disclosed the identity of the charities designated by Ginsburg in its financial disclosure.