American Spectator Foundation

In the 1990s, it began to investigate then-President Bill Clinton and then-First Lady Hillary Clinton under the controversial “Arkansas Project” to which foundations associated with Republican donor Richard Melon Scaife gave roughly $2 million.  ²

In 2020, The American Spectator Foundation sued the company that publishes The Spectator USA alleging branding confusion. ³

Background

The American Spectator Foundation is a nonprofit media organization primarily involved with publishing the American Spectator, which was until 2014 a monthly print magazine and now a daily website at Spectator.org. The conservative publication describes itself as an “intellectual review of culture.” ⁴

The foundation was founded in 1969 with the stated goal of bringing quality journalism to the forefront of the national political conversation. ¹

The foundation says it seeks to educate the public on new ideas and policies that favor traditional American values, such as economic freedom, individual liberty, self-sufficiency, and limited government. ¹

According to Greenpeace, a left-wing environmental group, the nonprofit organizations affiliated with the family of Charles Koch gave $164,161 to the American Spectator Foundation from 1997 to 2017. ⁵

Writers for the publication have included economist Thomas Sowell, novelist Tom Wolfe, satirist P.J. O’Rourke, newspaper columnist George F. Will, social-conservative activist Patrick J. Buchanan, mainstream-media journalist Malcolm Gladwell, English writer Malcolm Muggeridge, and its founder, R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. ¹

The American Spectator has carried regular columns by economist and celebrity Ben Stein, as well as former Reagan administration aide Jeffrey Lord, conservative health care consultant David Catron, and editorial director Wladyslaw Pleszczynski. ⁶

Programs

The American Spectator Foundation provides scholarships and training to journalism students and entry-level working journalists. ⁴

The foundation’s Young Writers Program is hosted each year to bring young professionals from across the United States to intern at the American Spectator Foundation. The interns provide editorial, development, and technical work for the publication. Alumni of the Young Writers Program include Andrew Ferguson, Greg Gutfeld, Kyle Peterson, William McGurn, and Matt Labash. ¹

The foundation’s Saturday Evening Club is an event that provides opportunities for business and civic leaders to meet with conservative journalists and major public figures. The foundation seeks to promote connections within the conservative movement.  ¹

Arkansas Project

In the 1990s, the American Spectator magazine became famous for investigative reporting on then-President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton under what became known as its “Arkansas Project” that was largely funded by businessman Richard Mellon Scaife as well as the Bradley Foundation. ⁶

During the investigations of the Clintons, the circulation for the monthly magazine grew to about 300,000, a tenfold increase from its standard subscription base. ⁷ However, the circulation plummeted in later years. ⁸

The “Arkansas Project” reportedly caused turmoil at the magazine, led to the ouster of publisher Ron Burr, and prompted critics to raise questions about whether the foundation followed nonprofit laws. ⁹

Scaife’s foundations could not sponsor their own investigations of President Clinton under federal tax law but could sponsor other foundations to pay for investigations so long as it isn’t tied to an election. ⁹ Scaife’s organization paid $2.4 million to the American Spectator Foundation. Of that, $1.8 million was used to fund the “Arkansas Project,” according to the New York Times. ²

According to the Washington Post, Tyrell and Scaife had a falling out and Scaife stopped funding the project in part because he was angry that American Spectator magazine was skeptical of claims that Clinton White House aide Vince Foster’s death was a murder rather than suicide. ⁹

Litigation Against Spectator USA

In September 2020, the American Spectator Foundation filed a lawsuit in federal court against Press Holdings Media Group, the for-profit company that owns the British conservative magazine The Spectator. The lawsuit says when the company launched the Spectator USA website and published the U.S. version of The Spectator magazine, it used American Spectator’s trademark name and imagery. ¹⁰

The U.K.’s Spectator replied that it had sold its British version in the United States for more than a century before launching its U.S. version in 2019. The American Spectator Foundation is asking for damages caused by branding confusion. The complaint says the UK magazine decided to “enter the U.S. market with a competing magazine and website under the confusingly similar marks Spectator USA, the Spectator U.S. Edition, and the Spectator.” ³