Betsy DeVos testified to the Senate committee at her confirmation hearing that she was not a director of her mother’s foundation, although tax returns for 13 years list her as vice-president the board. Her mother was a founder and generous funder of Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council, both of which are anti-LGBT groups. But Betsy knew nothing about it, had nothing to do with it. It was a “clerical error.”

 

During the time DeVos was listed as an officer, the Prince Foundation gave $5.1 million to Focus on the Family, an advocate of “conversion therapy” — counseling designed to make gay, lesbian, bisexual or queer people become straight. The same group has railed against anti-bullying programs that even mention homosexuality as a covert way to introduce sexual orientation to children.

 

The organization also poured $6.1 million into Family Research Council, a conservative think tank labeled as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center for saying such things as homosexual men are more likely to engage in child sexual abuse than heterosexual men.

 

When the family manages so many billions of dollars and so many foundations, it is easy to confuse where the money went, I suppose, or which family foundation one belongs to. As Esquire magazine blogger Charles Pierce said on Twitter today, it is easy to misplace $100 million. Everyone has these problems.