Last Updated on July 21, 2021
Evan Hafer, CEO and co-founder of Black Rifle Coffee, never donated to President Trump, with his 2020 election donations all coming after the presidential election, giving thousands to the doomed Georgia Senate campaigns of Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue.
Black Rifle Coffee, the supposedly pro-America, pro-military coffee company, has come under fire in recent days for attacking their customer base. Evan Hafer and Mat Best, the CEO and Executive VP respectively, were interviewed for a ~10,000 word piece for the New York Times last week, and railed in the interview about customers who claimed they were “racist,” including the multi-racial Proud Boys organization, swearing repeatedly, and describing America First supporters as being “repugnant.”
Following the interview, National File revealed that a number of their high-ranking employees, including those with editorial control over their magazine and social media, had repeatedly donated to the Democrats. Donna Ng, the “Copy Chief” at Black Rifle Coffee’s magazine, gave $500 directly to Joe Biden, while their social media manager, Ayse Altunisik, their VP of IT, Chris Omer, and a senior financial analyst, David Rhee, all donated to ActBlue,a Democrat group that helps Democrat candidates and leftist organizations raise money online.
National File further decided to look into the FEC records of Hafer himself. While Hafer did not give money to Biden or to Democrats via ActBlue or similar organizations, they will likely still make disappointing reading for many of Black Rifle Coffee’s customers. Despite building the branding of Black Rifle Coffee on Trump’s Make America Great Again agenda, Hafer never gave money to him during either of his presidential campaigns. This may not have surprised some, given during his New York Times interview, he described himself as “a man without a party,” with the article noting that he was “reluctant to say much positive” about President Trump.
In fact, the only presidential candidate that Hafer ever donated to was Tulsi Gabbard, giving $500 to the anti-establishment Democrat challenger in November 2019. Hafer did not donate at all to Republicans during the 2020 election cycle, and instead only kicked off his spending three days after the presidential election had actually taken place, giving $120 to WinRed, the Republican version of ActBlue.
Hafer also wrote the company name for these donations as “BRCC,” rather than “Black Rifle Coffee,” something no other employee of the comapny had done previously. Searching purely for “Black Rifle Coffee” or any variants thereof into the FEC records would not display these donations. Hafer’s last donations on record amounted to a total of $8400 on December 3rd, spread across WinRed, the Senate Georgia Battleground Fund, and the election campaigns for Loeffler and Perdue directly. It is unclear exactly why Hafer pumped so much money into what many on the right saw as a clearly losing battle.
