Where’d That $100 Million Go, Exactly? California Rep. Kevin Kiley Demands DOJ Probe Into FireAid Fund Distribution

Representative Kevin Kiley (R-CA) has formally requested that the Department of Justice (DOJ) investigate the distribution of the approximately $100 million raised by the FireAid benefit concert for victims of the LA Wildfires earlier this year. Impacted homeowners are saying they haven’t seen a dime.

The benefit concert was advertised as a way to raise ‘direct relief’ for victims of the Los Angeles wildfires, but it’s unclear where those ‘benefits’ ended up. Now, calls for an investigation into potentially missing funds are getting louder.

The FireAid benefit concert came together in less than two weeks thanks to Irving Azoff and his wife, Shelli Azoff. They partnered with Live Nation, AEG Presents, and the Los Angeles Clippers to put on the show at the Intuit Dome and The Kia Forum. Collected funds were to be managed by the Annenberg Foundation, which specified these donations would go toward ‘direct relief’ and would not be used for administrative costs.

In the months since the concert, a growing number of journalists and community advocates are questioning how that $100 million gathered was actually distributed. Reports so far indicate that of the $100 million figure, around $75 million has been distributed across multiple rounds of grants. But the recipients of those funds seem to be non-profit organizations rather than directly to individuals in need, as the concert was advertised.

Some of the recipient non-profits appear only tangentially related to fire recovery efforts in the immediate Los Angeles area. One grantee, After the Fire, is based in Sonoma—hundreds of miles away—and focuses on “coaching, convening, and collaborating” instead of immediate relief. Others such as the California Native Vote Project state their mission as “multigenerational power building” rather than emergency assistance. The recipients of the funds have prompted locals to ask questions about whether the donor intent was honored.

“As a newly formed 501(c)(3), FireAid does not have the capacity to make direct payments to individuals and that was never the plan,” Chris Wallace, Communications Officer for FireAid said in a statement about the criticism. “We partnered directly with trusted local non-profits. Each dollar was intended for the community, and a stipulation of the funds was that not a single dollar was spent on admin costs.”

None of this seems to stacking up, unfortunately. Now, Rep. Kevin Kiley is urging the US Department of Justice, led by Attorney General Pam Bondi, to investigate these allocations. He asserts in his letter that American generosity should not be the second victim of the fires and emphasizes the need to make sure donor intent is respected. The full letter Rep. Kiley sent to AG Pam Bondi is below.

Ms. Pamela Bondi

Attorney General

U.S. Department of Justice

950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Washington, D.C. 20530

Dear Attorney General Bondi,

Americans watched the devastation wrought by the January fires in Los Angeles with shock and sadness. Driven by faith, compassion, and a desire to do good, tens of thousands opened their hearts and their wallets to donate time and money to help the victims.

There is no question the need was great; over 18,000 homes and structures were destroyed, rendering many more thousands homeless and tragically killing over 30 people.

To aid the recovery, the Annenberg Foundation organized FireAid, a major benefit concert featuring some of the biggest names in entertainment who generously donated their talent for the event. The outpouring of support was tremendous, with public reports noting that over $100 million was raised. The Annenberg Foundation promised in its solicitations that the funds would be used for “direct relief” and that those funds would “not be used for administrative purposes [FireAid].”

But recently, independent reporting by Fox11 in Los Angeles and Circling the News have uncovered that those donations were instead diverted to a number of nonprofits, many of which have a tenuous connection (at best) to fire relief and recovery. Some of the nonprofits don’t even operate in the LA area. For example, “After the Fire,” which is in Sonoma – well north of LA — describes its mission as “coaching, convening and collaborating,” another grantee described its mission vaguely as “multigenerational power building” and “civic engagement.”

Whatever we might think of those mission statements, it diverges from the stated purpose of the solicitation and is likely inconsistent with donor intent.

Americans’ generosity should not be the second victim of this tragedy. I’m asking that the Department of Justice take urgent action to maintain and restore confidence that donor intent is respected and that the intended recipients of these funds are made whole. An investigation is needed to discover where these donations went and who benefited.

Moreover, Congress and the administration will likely soon consider additional disaster aid for California – relief my constituents and I support. No doubt, many of these same nonprofits will line up for even more funding. Taxpayers and donors alike expect that we will learn from our experience here and hopefully make better decisions going forward.

I look forward to working with your team and to hearing more from your department.

Sincerely,

Kevin Kiley

Member of Congress