GOP presidential candidate Larry Elder's financial disclosure shows he made between $1 million-$5 million from far-right newspaper, The Epoch Times

Business Insider/August 23, 2023

By Madison Hall

GOP presidential candidate Larry Elder filed his financial disclosure on Monday, three months late.

He reported earning between $1 million and $5 million from the far-right newspaper, The Epoch Times.

The paper has close ties with the Chinese Falun Gong religious sect and spent millions in pro-Trump Facebook ads in 2020.

The financial disclosure filed by GOP presidential candidate Larry Elder shows he's made millions from far-right newspaper, The Epoch Times.

Elder filed the disclosure on Monday, three months after he was formally required to do so. Raw Story first reported on the disclosure.

In the disclosure, Elder said he made between $1 million and $5 million from The Epoch Times. He also reported income of between $100,001 and $1 million from the anti-inflammatory supplement Relief Factor.

As Politico's Kimberly Leonard noted on Twitter, Elder's disclosure violates guidance from the Office of Government Ethics which requires candidates to provide their exact income, not in ranges as he did.

Founded in 2000, The Epoch Times is a nonprofit publication with close ties to the Chinese religious sect, Falun Gong.

The Epoch Times was the second-biggest spender on pro-Trump Facebook ads in the 2020 presidential election, behind only the Trump campaign itself. Facebook later banned The Epoch Times from distributing paid advertisements for violating ad policies.

The newspaper has also made headlines for spreading conspiracies about the COVID-19 pandemic around the world, claiming that Chinese Communists were behind the viral outbreak.

Joan Donovan, a nationally-recognized misinformation and disinformation expert, said in an interview with NBC News that The Epoch Times was "a known disinformation operation."

Per his author profile page on The Epoch Times' website, Elder produced content for the publication for several years including "The Larry Elder Show," which he at one point hosted three times a week.

The Republican National Convention announced on Monday that Elder did not qualify for the first Republican presidential debate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. On Tuesday, Elder said that he plans to sue the RNC to "halt" the debate as he claims he's unjustly being excluded despite meeting the committee's standards.

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