President-elect Joe Biden’s cancer charity had spent the majority of its money on staff payroll than they did on cancer research.
The news that was first reported by The New York Post revealed that The Biden Cancer Initiative accumulated $4,809,619 in donations and contributions yet spent $3,070,301 on salaries of its staff, $742,953 for conferences, and $97,149 on travel.
This amount had become questionable, considering that the initiative of the charity is to “help find a cure and solutions to accelerate progress in cancer prevention.” However, based on the reports, it appeared that there were no grants that were given out during the first two years of it in operation.
$3.7 million pocketed. 0 was spent on research. They aligned their pockets with a $400k salary and a nice tax write off. This is always why I say look into the charities you donate to.https://t.co/Cl5ainSAaj
— Kayotickat (@kayotickat) November 15, 2020
In addition to these questionable numbers, Gregory Simon, the President of The Biden Cancer Initiative, reportedly received $429,850 in the first fiscal year of 2018. This amount received by Simon was nearly double his 2017 earning when he spearheaded the Obama administration’s cancer taskforce.
Danielle Carnival, the former chief of staff of the Obama’s Cancer Moonshot Task Force, also received a controversial salary amounting to $258,207 in 2018.
Other staff that had six-figure salaries as well were the Director of Science Policy, the Director of Communications, and the Director of Engagement.
In addition to this, the tax filings in 2017 also reflected how The Biden Cancer Initiative spent $56,738 on conferences and $59,356 on travel expenses.
In the following year, these amounts rose to a staggering amount of $742,953 for conferences and $97,149 on travel.
To make things more suspicious was that in the tax filings, the amounts for grant distributions remained blank, which suggested that there was no money put forth on this area by The Biden Cancer Initiative charity.
The Biden Cancer Initiative was founded after Joe Biden’s eldest son, Beau Biden, who died in 2015 from brain cancer.
Joe Biden, who was then serving as the Vice President, led Obama’s cancer taskforce. After leaving office in 2017, he continued running the Biden Cancer Initiative and its supposed quest to find cancer treatments.
In a press release from the year 2017, The Biden Cancer Initiative stated that it would “develop and drive implementation of solutions to accelerate progress in cancer prevention, detection, diagnosis, research and care, and to reduce disparities in cancer outcomes.”
In addition to the named individuals Erin Andrews, NFL Sideline reporter, and Jimmy ‘Taboo’ Gomez, a cancer survivor and a member of Black Eyed Peas, were also included as members of the Board of Directors.
Then in July 2019, the Biden Cancer Initiative suspended their operations as Joe Biden became more entrenched in the 2020 election battle. Simon then told that Associated Press, “Today, we are suspending activities given our unique circumstances. We remain personally committed to the cause, but at this time will have to pause efforts.”
Simon further added that they tried to power through; however, it became more difficult for them to get the traction they needed to achieve their mission.
Based on reports, the Biden Cancer Initiative took several million dollars in direct funding for its operations. However, the bulk of the fund supporting the partnerships that the charity promotes comes in the form of indirect pledges. That amount did not go directly to the nonprofit aspect but instead was managed by the participating organizations and companies to finance their research work.
Biden group and Biden’s appearances had used its platform to promote the partnerships.
