Welcome to Pay Dirt—exclusive reporting and research from The Daily Beast’s Lachlan Markay on corruption, campaign finance, and influence-peddling in the nation’s capital. For Beast Inside members only.

The prominent pro-Trump Mercer family doled out millions of dollars to leading conservative groups in 2017, but neither patriarch Robert Mercer nor his daughter Rebekah contributed a single dollar to the family foundation.

The Mercer Family Foundation’s latest annual tax filing, which covers calendar year 2017, lends credence to reporting that Robert Mercer has decided to step back from his status as a leading political financier. That role earned him plenty of public attention—as well as some scorn—over his prominent backing for Donald Trump and some of the entities, such as controversial data firm Cambridge Analytica, that he used to back the president and other prominent Republicans.