WHO'S FUNDING HALEY'S NONPROFIT: POLITICO's Alex Isenstadt got his hands on the unredacted tax return for former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley 's nonprofit advocacy group, Stand for America, offering "the clearest picture yet of how a prospective 2024 presidential candidate is cultivating a secret network of high-dollar contributors as she builds a political apparatus." — Among the group's benefactors in 2019 are New York hedge fund manager Paul Singer, investor Stanley Druckenmiller, and Miriam Adelson and her late husband Sheldon Adelson, Suzanne Youngkin, the wife of fellow potential presidential hopeful Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and former Pennsylvania Senate candidate David McCormick. — "The biggest givers were New Jersey health executive Vivek Garipalli and his mother, Lakshmi Garipalli, who contributed $500,000 apiece. Vivek Garipalli has been a regular Democratic donor, giving to the likes of President Joe Biden and Senate Democrats — but he has a 'longstanding personal friendship' with Haley and her husband," per Alex. — "And the names of her donors demonstrate the deep connections Haley has formed at the top levels of the Republican Party, with some of the GOP's biggest super PAC donors among those who gave money to fund the launch of her organization after she left the Trump administration." ON THE AIR: "The American Action Network, a conservative advocacy organization with ties to House GOP leadership, is going up with a national ad campaign for the next 10 days arguing President Biden's student debt forgiveness plan is unfair to working-class Americans," Axios' Josh Kraushaar reports, as some Democrats in tough races distance themselves from the White House's move. — " The ad , which will be airing during upcoming college football and Major League Baseball games, features a waitress, mechanic and landscaper talking about working extra shifts to help theater majors and business majors get out of debt." AAN is putting $350,000 behind the campaign, which will also "microtarget blue-collar voters on digital platforms." MORE ANTITRUST TROUBLE FOR SILICON VALLEY?: "Justice Department lawyers are in the early stages of drafting a potential antitrust complaint against Apple, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter — a sign that a long-running investigation may be nearing a decision point and a suit could be coming soon," per POLITICO's Josh Sisco. — "Various groups of prosecutors inside DOJ are assembling the pieces for a potential lawsuit, the individual said, adding that the department's antitrust division hopes to file suit by the end of the year." — "Still, the Justice Department has made no decisions whether or when to sue Apple, the world's most valuable public company, cautioned that person and one other familiar with the probe — and it's still possible no case will be filed." — "The Apple case is particularly significant because it would open a second, massive battle with the tech industry at DOJ. The Justice Department is already litigating a case against Google over its search business and is preparing a second lawsuit over its advertising operations. While DOJ could still decide not to sue, the deliberations about how to frame a complaint make a case more likely." KNOWING WASHINGTON'S UFO LOBBYIST: Washingtonian's Luke Mullins has a profile out of Stephen Bassett, D.C.'s first registered UFO lobbyist who's "spent more than a quarter century pleading for lawmakers and the administration to stop snickering at the issue," culminating, for now, in Congress' first public congressional hearing on the issue in half a century earlier this year. — "'In Washington, no one takes your issue seriously unless you have a lobbyist, a PAC, and press clippings,' he once told a reporter. 'My job is to make sure we have all those things.' So, in the fall of 1996, Bassett submitted his official lobbying registration forms with Congress … With his DC credentials in hand, Bassett did what any other influence peddler would do: He began working to line up meetings with congressional offices." — "But Bassett, of course, wasn't just another lobbyist. The overwhelming majority of congressional offices had no interest in discussing aliens with him, and the few meetings he did secure were with junior staffers or interns. Not even Steven Schiff, the New Mexico representative who once called for a federal inquiry into the government's response to the Roswell incident, would make time for him." — "It soon dawned on Bassett that this 'ridicule curtain' would make it impossible for him to engage in the sort of grip-and-grin lobbying that traditional K Street operators practiced. So he decided to shift tactics. Instead of directly lobbying officials on Capitol Hill, he began working to reach them through the media. 'You want to get an issue into Congress?' he says. 'Get it into The Washington Post.'"
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