Report: Biden Cancer Initiative Charity Spent Zero on Cancer Grants, Majority of Funds to 'Staff Salaries'

Nick Kangadis | November 16, 2020
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A charity that former vice president and current Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden started has been reported to not have spent a dime on cancer, with the majority going to “staff salaries,” according to the New York Post.

The Post reported:

The Biden Cancer Initiative was founded in 2017 by the former vice president and his wife, Jill Biden, to “develop and drive implementation of solutions to accelerate progress in cancer prevention, detection, diagnosis, research and care and to reduce disparities in cancer outcomes,” according to its IRS mission statement. But it gave out no grants in its first two years, and spent millions on the salaries of former Washington, DC, aides it hired.

The charity took in $4,809,619 in contributions in fiscal years 2017 and 2018, and spent $3,070,301 on payroll in those two years. The group’s president, Gregory Simon, raked in $429,850 in fiscal 2018 (July 1, 2018, to June 30, 2019), according to the charity’s most recent federal tax filings.

Biden and his campaign have been highly critical of President Donald Trump’s response to the Chinese coronavirus pandemic, often claiming that the president should have done more to help Americans financially and acted in a more timely manner.

That kind of criticism is difficult to explain when your own charity didn’t allocate a single grant to any cancer research or cancer care facilities.

Also according to The Post:

The charity spent $56,738 on conferences and $59,356 on travel that year. The following year, the travel expenditure swelled to $97,149, and the nonprofit spent $742,953 on conferences, tax filings show.

But under grants distributed, it listed zero.

In 2016, it was the Clinton Foundation that saw controversy following the close of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), which some alleged was being used as a “pay-to-play” ploy to garner foreign donations - among others - in exchange for favors had failed Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton actually won her bid for president.

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