West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin has been carving up the Democrats’ Build Back Better legislation for months.
Then on Sunday, he announced on Fox News that he’s a firm “no” on the bill, derailing his own party’s top priority and a bill supported by nearly 70 percent of his own state’s voters.
Manchin is also reported to have privately told fellow legislators that parents would spend the bill’s child tax credit money on drugs — a shocking display of contempt for his own constituents.
From the moment that Manchin emerged as the pivotal deciding vote on most legislation in the 50-50 Senate, The Intercept has been investigating his conflicts of interest, relationships with lobbyists, and campaign fundraising.
We’ve pulled back the curtain on his wealthy coal empire and its shameful labor and environmental practices. We’ve exposed his daughter’s financial relationship with Big Pharma. And our bombshell scoops on the dark-money group No Labels have shown Manchin working closely with the Wall Street-funded PAC.
If you’ve saved your payment information with ActBlue Express, your donation will go through immediately:
Most of the news coverage around Manchin focuses on his West Virginia constituents, his concern about debt, and his dedication to bipartisanship for its own sake.
But The Intercept’s investigative reporting shows that billionaire Wall Street donors have Manchin’s ear — and that the senator has his own massive financial stakes in the outcome of the bill.
We unearthed a bombshell recording of Manchin strategizing about the Build Back Better bill not with constituents but with No Labels, the Wall Street-funded group that wants to eliminate the legislation’s tax hikes on the wealthy.
An exposé by The Intercept and our partners at Type Investigations showed that Manchin and his family are heavily invested in the fossil fuel industry, including in several coal companies Manchin himself founded, and the Manchin family’s profits could be affected if the climate provisions in Build Back Better were to become law.
And we uncovered evidence that Manchin’s daughter, former CEO of the drug company Mylan, worked directly with the CEO of Pfizer to jack up the prices of lifesaving EpiPens.
This kind of original reporting requires time, expertise, and deep research into public records to connect the dots between money and votes and uncover uncomfortable facts that powerful people on both sides of the aisle would rather keep hidden.
