CLM conserv legal movement
9 26 VERY BELATED OR REDUMBDENT?
TRIGGERED BY
POST-CU // CLM? LEO
SINGER HARLAN CROW SIMMONS GILLESPIE ORIGIN DALLAS PETROL CLUB MTG
2x
Commentary & Analysis
June 15, 2023
Harlan Crow’s deep dark money connections
By Adam Rappaport and Meghan Faulkner
Harlan Crow is more than Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s secret patron—he’s also deeply intertwined with the shadowy world of Republican dark money. In fact, Crow personally took part in the creation of the post-Citizens United dark money system and secretly helped bankroll some of the new groups.
Crow’s political spending started long before Citizens United opened the floodgates for anonymous money in American elections in 2010. Between 1977 and 2009, Crow and his companies gave more than $2.4 million to federal candidates, parties, PACs, and other political entities. Since Citizens United, he’s spent $13.8 million on federal politics, bringing his lifetime total of spending reported to the FEC to more than $16 million. But that’s not all he did. While it is impossible to track Crow’s undisclosed political giving, public information demonstrates his longstanding ties to the biggest figures and groups in Republican dark money.
One of Crow’s first forays into large donations was by providing some of the initial financing of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, an organization that spent millions running attack ads in 2004 against Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry and was later fined nearly $300,000 by the Federal Election Commission for failing to register as a political committee. Later, in 2009, Crow and his company spent more than $5 million on a failed ballot initiative in Dallas trying to block the city from building a city-owned convention center hotel which would have competed with Crow’s hotel.
Immediately after Citizens United, Crow took part in one of the first key events leading to the creation of the dark money system. As recounted by Kenneth Vogel in his book Big Money and separately by the Wall Street Journal, just weeks after the Supreme Court’s decision in January 2010, four leading Republican political figures set out to obtain the “seed funding” they needed to launch several post-Citizens United groups.
The four Republicans: consultant and former Bush White House aide Karl Rove, former RNC Chairman Ed Gillsepie, fundraiser Fred Malek, and former senator Norm Coleman, “laid out their blueprint for a sort of shadow party” to about “20 Republican plutocrats” at the Dallas Petroleum Club in early February 2010. They wanted funding for a network of what became some of the biggest players in outside political spending, including super PAC American Crossroads, which Rove explained would work to defeat then-President Obama and win Republican control of Congress, and dark money group the American Action Network.
Crow was one of the deep-pocketed billionaires who attended the fundraiser. Whether he gave that day or how much is not known. But after hearing Rove’s pitch, another Texas megadonor, Harold Simmons, proclaimed “I like this. I’m in for five [million].” Others followed suit.
Even as the Supreme Court was deliberating Citizens United, Crow reportedly provided the major funding for Liberty Central, another dark money group, this one with links to Justice Thomas. Liberty Central was a 501(c)(4) organization founded by Ginni Thomas in late 2009 that counted Federalist Society co-chair Leonard Leo as a board member. Ms. Thomas served as president through November 2010 and was paid a salary of more than $120,000. According to Politico, of the $550,000 in anonymous start-up funds the group received in 2009, $500,000 came from Crow, who also held an event for the group at his Dallas home a few months after it launched.
Liberty Central engaged in partisan politics during Ginni Thomas’s time in charge. The group acknowledged on its 2010 tax return that it spent a small amount of money on political activity, but as described in a 2012 IRS complaint filed by Common Cause, Liberty Central appeared to do far more than that, endorsing and supporting dozens of House and Senate candidates, conducting polling, and issuing scorecards of congressional candidates.
Asked later about his support of the group, Crow refused to even confirm his contribution, saying: “I disclose what I’m required by law to disclose, and I don’t disclose what I’m not required to disclose.”
“Crow has taken full advantage of the diminishing transparency laws around our politics.”
In 2011, Crow also made a contribution to another notorious dark money group called Americans for Job Security (AJS), which was uncovered by a CREW lawsuit and has not been previously reported. AJS spent more than $25 million in federal independent expenditures and electioneering communications in the 2010 and 2012 elections, making it one of the largest dark money groups at the time.
CREW filed an FEC complaint against the group in 2012, alleging that it should have registered as a political committee and disclosed its donors. After years of litigation, AJS settled the case, resulting in the first and largest release of dark money donors in the post-Citizens United era. The disclosure showed that Crow, through his company Crow Holdings, gave AJS $50,000 in May 2011.
How much more Crow has given to dark money groups over the years is unknown. He has, however, also donated huge amounts to super PACs closely associated with dark money groups, including several Rove and others pitched to him just after Citizens United. Between 2011 and 2018, Crow personally and through his companies gave $2.5 million to super PAC American Crossroads, which is closely related to dark money groups Crossroads GPS and One Nation. Crow also gave almost $1.5 million between 2016 and 2022 to the Congressional Leadership Fund, the super PAC sister of the American Action Network.
Crow’s secret political contributions and undisclosed gifts to Justice Thomas can be seen as two sides of the same coin, offering opportunities to exercise influence, while keeping the public in the dark about who is pulling the strings.
We do know that Crow has given extensively to politicians and political committees, thanks to reporting requirements, and that he has given significant gifts to Thomas, thanks to investigative reporting. But that spending is just what Crow and Thomas have been forced to disclose, and what came out against their will. In helping bankroll the Republican network of dark money groups following Citizens United, Crow has taken full advantage of the diminishing transparency laws around our politics—which Justice Thomas has been instrumental in dismantling. As a result, we will likely never know the true impact of Crow’s political spending on our government and our elections.
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CONTEXT
3x but key $#? 550k$ crow
ref politico ginni
https://www.politico.com/story/2011/02/justice-thomass-wife-now-lobbyist-048812
By Kenneth P. Vogel, John Bresnahan and Marin Cogan
02/04/2011
She started as a congressional aide in the 1980s, became a midlevel Republican operative, then briefly left politics, reemergingin 2009 as founder of a tea party group before steppingdown amid continued questions about whether her actions were appropriate for the spouse of a Supreme Court justice.
Now, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, has recast herself yet again, this time as the head of a firm, Liberty Consulting, which boasts on its websiteusing her “experience and connections” to help clients “with “governmental affairs efforts” and political donation strategies.
Thomas already has met with nearly half of the 99 GOP freshmen in the House and Senate, according to an e-mail she sent last week to congressional chiefs of staff, in which she branded herself “a self-appointed, ambassador to the freshmen class and an ambassador to the tea party movement.”
But her latest career incarnation is sparking controversy again.
Thomas’s role as a de facto tea party lobbyist and — until recently — as head of a tea party group that worked to defeat Democrats last November “show a new level of arrogance of just not caring that the court is being politicized and how that undermines the historic image of the Supreme Court as being above the political fray,” said Arn Pearson, a lawyer for Common Cause, the left-leaning government watchdog group.
“It raises additional questions about whether Justice Thomas can be unbiased and appear to be unbiased in cases dealing with the repeal of the health care reform law or corporate political spending when his wife is working to elect members of the tea party and also advocating for their policies.”
Even among congressional Republicans, with whom Thomas boasts she has close ties, the reaction to the entreaties from her new firm, Liberty Consulting ranged from puzzlement to annoyance, with a senior House Republican aide who provided Thomas’s e-mail to POLITICO, blasting her for trying to “cash in” on her ties to the tea party movement.
Freshman Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.) — who courted tea party activists and who was endorsed by Liberty Central, the tea party nonprofit group she headed until December — was unaware of Thomas’s new effort.
“This is the spouse of Justice Thomas?” he said, when asked by POLITICO on Tuesday about her outreach. “No, I’ve never met her. It’s not something I’ve heard about. And I hang out with a lot of freshman,” he said.
While Thomas was well-known in conservative circles as an aide to former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, as a midlevel staffer at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and at The Heritage Foundation and as the spouse of one of the court’s most conservative justices, she did not draw much attention until 2009, when she started speaking at tea party rallies.
Late that year, she establishedLiberty Central, a group she envisioned as forming a bridge between the conservative establishment and the anti-establishment tea party movement. It was a new role and a new measure of prominence for Thomas, and it marked the beginning of a string of headaches for her and her husband.
Legal ethicists assertedthat Thomas’s role could compromise her husband’s impartiality, especially since the group is not required to report its donors and could have benefitted from the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling last year in which Justice Thomas sided with the majority in a decision that allowed corporations to fund campaign ads, often without disclosing their contributions.
To be sure, other federal judges have politically active spouses, including federal appeals court Judge Marjorie Rendell, whose husband is former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, and 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Stephen Reinhardt, whose wife, Ramona Ripston, will step down this month after decades running the Southern California branch of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Rendell’s political committees were required to reveal all donations. But the ACLU is registered under sections of the tax code that do not require public disclosure of donors, as is Liberty Central — and Common Cause, for that matter.
But the Thomases came under particular scrutiny after POLITICO revealed that, while the Supreme Court was deliberating over the Citizens United case, Liberty Central had received a $550,000 anonymous contribution.
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https://www.politico.com/static/PPM156_liberty_central.html
Common Cause, in a letter to the Justice Department, suggestedthat Thomas should have recused himself from the case and charged that “the complete lack of transparency of Liberty Central’s finances makes it difficult to assess the full scope of the ethics issues raised by Ms. Thomas’s role in founding and leading the group.”
In addition, in a letterto the Judicial Conference, Common Cause pointed out that Justice Thomas had failed to report on his disclosure filings his wife’s income over the past decade, prompting the judge to amend13 years of reports to indicate sources — though not amounts — of his wife’s income.
At first, it didn’t seem that the attention affected Thomas’s efforts to build Liberty Central. She assembled an impressive staff and board, while circulating among major conservative establishment donors with whom she and her husband had long, close relationships.
POLITICO has learned, for instance, that the initial $500,000 contribution came from Dallas real estate investor Harlan Crow, a major GOP donor who held an event for Liberty Central at his home a few months after the group launched. He also once gave Justice Thomas a $19,000 “Frederick Douglass Bible” as a gift and donated $150,000 to build a new wing named for Thomas on a Savannah, Ga., library that Clarence Thomas visited frequently in his youth.
But Thomas and Liberty Central ran into problems after it was revealed in October that she had left a voice mail, requestingan apology from Anita Hill, the woman who accused her husband of sexual harassment during his confirmation hearings for the high court in 1991. That prompted another surge of attention and — according to a conservative who knows Ginni Thomas and is familiar with her work at Liberty Central — it “spooked” at least one donor.
About a month later, Thomas stepped down from her leadership post at Liberty Central, and it was announced that the group was mergingwith another conservative nonprofit group calledthe Patrick Henry Center for Individual Liberty. Sources told POLITICO that Thomas essentially put Liberty Central on the block because it was struggling to raise enough money to support its big staff and high overhead.
Liberty Consulting filedincorporation papers in Virginia only a day after news broke of the changes at Liberty Central.
Reached by phone on Wednesday, Thomas said she was having trouble with the signal, telling a POLITICO reporter: “I would be happy to talk with you, but I really can’t understand clearly what you’re asking, so maybe this is not a good time to talk.”
She did not respond to subsequent voice mail or e-mail messages.
In a December interviewwith the conservative Daily Caller, though, Thomas said she planned to spend the bulk of her time working as a consultant for Liberty Central and the Patrick Henry Center, and would “help them in any way I can think of, whether it’s lobbying on the Hill or connecting with the grass roots, or helping speak or write or fundraise.”
But lobbying records show no registrations for Thomas, Liberty Consulting, Liberty Central or the Patrick Henry Center.
When asked whether Thomas was being paid through Liberty Consulting as a consultant, Liberty Central general counsel Sarah Field did not answer directly. “She was and continues to be the founder of Liberty Central, and we look forward to working with her and with other passionate conservative activists, and that’s all there is to it,” Field said.
Thomas and her friends reject the suggestion that the call to Anita Hill precipitated Ginni Thomas’s stepping down from Liberty Central — Thomas told The Daily Caller that the story line was “laughable.” She did, however, concede that the call was “probably a mistake on my part,” adding that, if her move to an outside consulting role “has the extra benefit of helping reduce distractions, that’s fine with me.”
And Leonard Leo, an executive at the conservative Federalist Society who is a longtime friend of the Thomases and sits on Liberty Central’s board, told POLITICO in November that the call had no impact on Liberty Central’s fundraising or on Thomas.
“The people that were supportive of Liberty Central were supportive of her,” he said, adding, “I don’t think that they were going to pull back from her at a time when she needed support more than anything else.”
He called the controversy over the Hill call “a nothing burger” for Thomas. “This is a woman who has been through it all. There are few women in Washington who have had to put up with what she has.”
But the source who knows Thomas and is familiar with her work at Liberty Central said her continuing reinvention of herself — especially so soon after raising big money and assembling a staff for a new nonprofit — has hurt her standing in conservative circles.
“Ginni’s reputation around town is now even more of a fake entitled woman who is only here because of her husband,” the source said. “Now she has opened her own lobbying shop ... not sure how (the) conservative circle will feel when they find that out, or if they’ll care or not.”
So far, they don’t.
Roughly half a dozen aides for new members told POLITICO that their offices received handwritten meeting requests from Thomas the day after they were sworn in, as well as follow-up e-mails requesting a meeting with her — but only one of them had met with her. The rest had no plans to do so.
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“What Ginni Thomas and Leonard Leo wrought: How a justice’s wife and a key activist started a movement”
September 10, 2023, 2:42 pmcampaign finance, chicanery, Supreme Court
Very deep dive by Politico’s Heidi Pryzybyla:
At the time, the Citizens United ruling was widely expected, as the court had already signaled its intentions. When it came, it upended nearly 100 years of campaign spending restrictions.
The conservative legal movement seized the moment with greater success than any other group, and the consequences have shaped American jurisprudence and politics in dramatic ways.
From those early discussions among Leo, Thomas and Crow would spring a billion-dollar force that has helped remake the judiciary and overturn longstanding legal precedents on abortion, affirmative action and many other issues. It funded legal scholars to devise theories to challenge liberal precedents, helped to elect state attorneys general willing to apply those theories and launched lavish campaigns for conservative judicial nominees who would cite those theories in their rulings from the bench.
The movement’s triumphs are now visible but its engine remains hidden: A billion-dollar network of groups, most of which are registered as tax-exempt charities or social welfare organizations. Taking advantage of gaps in disclosure laws, they shield the identities of most of their donors and some of the recipients of the funds. Among those who’ve been paid by the groups are leading thinkers and individuals with close personal ties to Leo — including a whopping $7 million to a group run by a close friend and his wife. They also include a for-profit business for which Leo himself is chairman and which received tens of millions of dollars from his nonprofit network.
Leo’s role as the central figure in this movement has long been known, culminating in his acquisition last year of what many believe to be the largest political donation in history. Few are aware of the extent to which the movement’s baby steps were taken in concert with Ginni Thomas.
Two months before the Citizens United decision, but after the justices had signaled their intentions by requesting new arguments, attorney Cleta Mitchell — later to play a role in Donald Trump’s false claims about the 2020 elections — filed papers for Ginni Thomas to create a nonprofit group of a type that ultimately benefited from the decision. Leo was one of two directors listed on a separate application to conduct business in the state of Virginia. Thomas was president. She signed it on New Year’s Eve of 2009, and Crow provided much of the initial cash. A key Leo aide, Sarah Field, would come aboard to help Thomas manage the group, which they called Liberty Central.
After Liberty Central went public, it provoked an outcry over a Supreme Court justice’s wife promoting causes like overturning Obamacare that were before her husband’s court. Leo and Thomas changed gears. His network reactivated a dormant group, the Judicial Education Project, which would go on to become a major supplier of amicus briefs before the nation’s highest court. She created a for-profit consulting business using a similar name — Liberty Consulting — that enabled her to perform consulting work for conservative activist groups.
The Judicial Education Project supplied some of her business: Documents indicate Leo ordered at least one recipient of his groups’ funds, Kellyanne Conway, to make payments to Ginni Thomas for unspecified work, according to a Washington Post story earlier this year.
Now, Liberty Consulting is a focus of interest from congressional committees probing the Supreme Court’s ethics disclosures. Senate Democrats have demanded that Leo and Crow provide a list of “gifts, payments, or other items of value” they’ve given Thomas and her husband.…
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