LEO 3 crc advisors

===

6 22 LEO 3 NOW MAIN

see leo 4 marble teneo

MERRI OK

see clarence 3 paoletta severino GINI

SEE SFOF STATE FINANCIAL OFFICERS FDN

see amicus

SEE ALEC CLIMATE LAWSUITS 4 26 PP

SEE VOTER SUPPRESS HONEST ELECTIONS PJT? GUNSALAS?

he is not a litigator (even a lawyer?) so not hands on in trump coup?

but busy on voter suppression see honest elections pjt (// CNP LEC integrity fuckery?

---

AN PP 4 26

Across the country, Republican-led state legislatures are passing a slate of laws that effectively shield oil and gas companies from legal claims that they are responsible for the destruction and mounting toll caused by climate change. Fifteen laws have either been passed or are currently being debated in 11 states. Together, they threaten to remove long-standing tools for the public to hold corporations accountable.

A ProPublica investigation has found that most of these bills are part of a coordinated effort, orchestrated by a constellation of groups that share staff or have funding ties to the prominent conservative activist Leonard Leo, who is credited with placing conservative justices on the U.S. Supreme Court. These groups have drafted state legislation, planned its dissemination and engaged a well-connected lobbying firm to get them signed into law.

The effort is unfolding as courts are weighing more than 30 significant lawsuits by states, counties and municipalities accusing fossil fuel companies of misrepresenting the risks their products posed to consumers and seeking to recoup the costs of disasters and other climate impacts like wildfire losses or coastal flooding that their products helped cause. A goal of the legislation is to block these cases from going forward and prevent new ones from being filed.

The strategy to establish state laws that will make it all but impossible to sue oil and gas companies was laid out in detail by a group of lobbyists and political operatives in December, during a panel presentation at the annual States and Nation Policy Summit of the American Legislative Exchange Council — the influential organization that brings together state lawmakers, corporate leaders and conservative activists to draft and promote legislation.

During the session, one of the panelists, Will Hild, the executive director of a nonprofit called Consumers’ Research, described the climate cases as a liberal effort to use the judicial system to exact a new tax on energy companies in the form of civil judgments. Another panelist, Oramel H. Skinner, the former solicitor general for Arizona and the executive director of the nonprofit Alliance for Consumers, warned that those judgments will trickle down to make citizens’ lives less affordable and ultimately make many of their choices — whether to own pickup trucks or purchase a side of beef — illegal.

ProPublica reviewed an audio recording of the event obtained by the nonpartisan watchdog group Documented.

Hild and Skinner had come to the session with a ready-made fix: a set of pre-written bills and plenty of funding.

Consumers’ Research and the Alliance for Consumers are both funded by organizations connected to Leo. ProPublica examined lobbying records across 25 states, federal tax disclosures for more than a dozen organizations and notes from other closed-door strategy sessions among ALEC members and found that several Leo-supported groups are part of a national strategy to give legal immunity to companies for their climate emissions.

Since 2021, Leo has been deploying a $1.6 billion gift through a series of nonprofits and other organizations that obscure the source and the recipients of donations — so-called dark money groups. Much of that money has been routed through a nonprofit judicial advocacy group Leo founded — now called The 85 Fund — which both receives and disseminates Leo’s funding. Many of these nonprofits are increasingly focused on issues related to climate change.

The panel session’s moderator, Michael Thompson, is a senior vice president at CRC Advisors, Leo’s for-profit Virginia-based political and corporate consulting firm. He also sits on ALEC’s Private Enterprise Advisory Council. Hild’s organization, Consumers’ Research, received more than 65% of its funding in 2024 through a dark money group called Donors Trust. The 85 Fund contributed more than $67 million to Donors Trust in 2024. Consumers’ Research also works closely with — and contracted more than $670,000 of work in 2024 to — CRC Advisors. Another panelist, Paul N. Watkins, was a legal fellow at Consumers’ Research. According to tax filings, his law firm received more than $2.2 million in 2024 from the group. As recently as 2024, Skinner was also counsel for Leo’s 85 Fund, according to the nonprofit’s tax filings.

= POWELL MEMO BS

“For decades, the left has leveraged immense resources to capture the institutions that shape our society — the legal system, universities, medical and scientific bodies, the entertainment industry, and our biggest corporations,” Leo wrote to ProPublica in a text message. “That takeover resulted in a radically woke culture that does not reflect the will of the American people, or the pillars of limited constitutional government that made our country great. That is why our enterprise supports organizations that are committed to crushing liberal dominance and restoring balance in the institutions that shape society.”

At the ALEC session, Skinner presented a model bill that would effectively bar cities and towns from bringing public nuisance lawsuits against corporations and others when the issue is a broad public harm like climate change. In several cases, plaintiffs have argued that the impacts of climate change — the buckling of a road from extreme swings in temperature, for example — are a “nuisance” caused by fossil fuel companies.

Nuisance claims are common in the American legal system, giving individuals, companies or communities a way to sue when someone else’s actions damage their property, degrade the health or safety of the environment around them or interfere with their rights. Under these laws, parties can ask for financial compensation or seek court orders to remedy problems, such as pollution. Skinner, however, argues that nuisance laws should only be used to address local, easily fixable problems, like excessive noise from a bar. His bill would curtail the use of public nuisance suits in climate cases by limiting liability for manufacturers and other businesses and giving state attorneys general the sole authority to bring them.

“Think really hard about every lever you have in your states to shut off the ability for this woke lawfare machine to churn,” Skinner told the audience. “The left’s goal is to reshape society around you using the courtroom.”

The second draft law, called the Energy Freedom Act, was produced by the policy nonprofit associated with Hild’s organization. It would, among many provisions, shield businesses from liability related to emissions of greenhouse gases if those releases did not violate the federal Clean Air Act.

Critics of the bills say they subvert the rights of local communities. They send the message that “you can pollute with impunity,” said Carly Phillips, a senior scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists. “It’s really a thumb in the eye of places that are affected by climate change.”

The push to block climate suits across the states comes as several of the cases against the oil industry approach, or have already entered, the perilous legal phases of discovery, when plaintiffs will have the opportunity to seek confidential industry documents and depose oil executives. The stakes for oil companies are enormous. By some estimates more than $10 trillion in damages can be attributed to U.S. emissions.

:{:{There’s a reason why state and local governments have increasingly brought these suits. The frequency and cost of climate-influenced disasters, including severe storms, drought and flooding, continues to mount — between $350 billion and $450 billion in each of the last three years — stretching government budgets.}:

Significantly, the science that makes it possible to attribute how much any one disaster was influenced by climate change has steadily advanced. To cite one example, the March heat waves across the U.S. would have been virtually impossible without the emissions that have caused climate change, according to the European science group World Weather Attribution, and were about four times as likely to happen as they were a decade ago.}:

Boulder, Colorado, is among the places facing increasing droughts, more extreme precipitation and larger wildfires — all of which are significantly propelled by climate change linked to the emissions from the use of fossil fuels. The state has estimated the costs of these perils will run into the many hundreds of millions of dollars. In 2018, Boulder County sued Exxon Mobil and the Canadian oil company Suncor Energy, accusing the companies of “intentional, reckless and negligent conduct.”

Among its claims, the county alleged the oil companies engaged in a conspiracy to mislead the public and violated consumer protection rules by mischaracterizing the dangers of their products. They accused the oil companies of creating a public nuisance by altering the environment and leaving the county to pay to abate growing hazards such as the flooding that tests roads and bridges. Exxon Mobil and Suncor Energy have never filed a response in Colorado but asked for the case to be dismissed.

Ever since, the lawsuit has been mired in a dispute over whether Colorado courts were the correct venue, with the state Supreme Court ultimately ruling last May that they were. Suncor filed to the U.S. Supreme Court to reconsider, and this fall it will weigh the company’s petition asking whether federal environmental law preempts the state law.

:{:{The high-profile national court case is just one facet in an increasingly tense fight over liability for the fossil fuel industry. In January, the American Petroleum Institute, the largest fossil fuel industry group in the United States, said fighting the climate liability lawsuits was one of its top priorities in 2026. Lobbying records for the group from last year show that it advocated for legislation to protect oil producers from climate lawsuits at the state level. }:

The Trump administration; other industry groups, including the Chamber of Commerce; and several of the nonprofit advocacy groups associated with Leo have argued that state courts are the wrong venue for claims that ultimately concern emissions that drift widely across borders, and they wish to see other cases moved or dismissed. They say that because the federal government already has the authority to regulate those emissions, the federal courts, not the states, should hear the claims.}:

In an interview, Hild told ProPublica that he sees the suits as an illegitimate effort to enact policy through the courts and to “regulate the entire U.S. economy from a single state.”

In an email, Skinner wrote: “Our effort is not one focused on climate change. But it is true that left-wing activists and their dark money donors have put vast sums of money and years of groundwork into pushing a coast-to-coast campaign of climate-focused public nuisance lawsuits.”

Neither Watkins nor Thompson responded to requests for comment.

When Skinner and Hild finished their presentation at ALEC they made a QR code available to download the language of the model bills and directed the audience to a woman named Catherine Gunsalus, who was in the back of the room. She would be able to answer any questions, they said.

Gunsalus until recently worked for the Heritage Action Fund, the political and lobbying arm of the Heritage Foundation, the Trump-aligned think tank that is most recently known for promoting the Project 2025 agenda. Records show that Gunsalus has also lobbied in collaboration with another Leo-affiliated group, Americans for Public Trust.

In April 2025, she formed a lobbying firm called Varidon Strategies and began registering in states almost immediately afterward, according to records. By mid-summer, Varidon was representing Alliance for Consumers Action Fund; Consumers’ Research; The Honest Election Project, an affiliate of The 85 Fund; as well as other Leo entities in 25 states. In the majority of those filings, Varidon used an email address at the domain of Holtzman Vogel, a Virginia-based law firm that is often retained by Leo’s organizations.

Gunsalus did not reply to a detailed list of questions.

In the four months since the ALEC summit, there has been substantial activity in the states where Varidon has registered. On Jan. 5, representatives in Missouri introduced the loosely related Eliminate Criminal Profiteering Act, which could stop revenues flowing to law firms from settlements in the sort of nuisance suits often used in climate cases. Two days later, legislators took up the Public Nuisance Reform Act, which proposes narrowing the definition of what could be considered a nuisance.

That same month, similar bills were introduced in Indiana, Oklahoma and Tennessee. In February, eight more followed in Oklahoma, Iowa, South Carolina, Utah, Louisiana and Kansas. Skinner, who is registered to lobby in Kansas, was invited to testify in a hearing about that state’s bill and launched a new “End the Lawfare” website targeting the “left-wing” agenda. As of April 2, versions of the model legislation offered at the ALEC meeting have been introduced across 11 states altogether. In Utah, the governor has signed two related bills into law, and in Tennessee and Indiana, bills are awaiting their governors’ signature.

The more states there are with some sort of waiver in place, the narrower the pathway for cities and states to seek redress as environmental conditions worsen, and the costs continue to rise. Hild and Skinner and the Leo network’s bills also serve another purpose: teeing up a conflict that pits states against one another, a conflict that only the Supreme Court or Congress can finally resolve.

As Hild put it at the ALEC gathering, “This is economic civil war.”

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Part 1: Leonard Leo Throws a Party | On the Media | WNYC Studios

on the media pro pub; singer ~ OLA lost boost SG sol gen'l

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an 8 23

:{:{ former United States Department of Justice trial attorney under ex-President Bill Clinton is probing Republican billionaire and ex-President Donald Trump donor Leonard Leo along with "his network of nonprofit groups," POLITICO exclusively reports.}:

Washington, D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb's investigation comes after the GOP billionaire and Federalist Society leader's trust fund, Marble Freedom Trust's latest Internal Revenue Service (IRS) filing revealed in June Leo's mission to control right-wing politics, according to a Truthout report.

Truthout notes the IRS filing obtained by progressive watchdog Accountable.US "shows the Federalist Society leader 'has dumped at least $411 million into fueling right-wing infrastructure in the U.S. since mid-2020.'"

POLL: Should Trump be allowed to hold office again?"

According to POLITICO, the probe also "comes after POLITICO reported in March that one of Leo's nonprofits — registered as a charity — paid his for-profit company tens of millions of dollars in the two years since he joined the company.'

The news outlet notes that "a few weeks later, a progressive watchdog group filed a complaint with the D.C. attorney general and the IRS requesting a probe into what services were provided and whether Leo was in violation of laws against using charities for personal enrichment."

POLITICO reports:

Best known as Donald Trump's White House 'court whisperer,' Leo played a behind-the-scenes role in the nominations of all three of the former president's Supreme Court justices and promoted them through his multi-billion-dollar network of nonprofits. Trump chose his three Supreme Court picks, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, from a list drawn up by Leo. More recently, Leo was the beneficiary of a $1.6 billion contribution, believed to be the biggest political donation in U.S. history.

"There are questions as to whether Leo-affiliated nonprofits have diverted substantial portions of their income and assets, directly or indirectly, to the personal benefit of Leonard Leo," the Campaign for Accountability's complaint said. "Such payments were generally listed as made in exchange for alleged consulting, research, public relations, or similar services. However CFA has reasonable questions about whether those alleged services were actually rendered at all or, if services were rendered, whether the payments made were substantially in excess of fair market value."

Per the report, "The news of the investigation comes as the nonprofit that was a subject of the complaint quietly relocated in recent weeks from the capital area to Texas, according to paperwork filed in Virginia and Texas," after "for nearly 20 years the nonprofit, now known as The 85 Fund, had been incorporated in Virginia."

The news outlet notes:

The Leo-aligned nonprofit The 85 Fund — which is registered as a tax-exempt charity — paid tens of millions of dollars to a public relations firm in Virginia which he co-chairs in the two years since he joined the firm, known as CRC Advisors. The watchdog complaintalleges the total amount of money that flowed from Leo-aligned nonprofits to his for-profit firms was $73 million over six years beginning in 2016.

According to POLITICO, attorney David B. Rivkin Jr., who represents the parties in the probe, "said in a statement that the complaint 'is sloppy, deceptive and legally flawed and we are addressing this fully with the DC Attorney General's office.'"

Politico's full report is available at this link.

HEIDI PRZYBYLA

08/22/2023

Washington

D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb is investigating judicial activist Leonard Leo and his network of nonprofit groups, according to a person with direct knowledge of the probe.

The scope of the investigation is unclear. But it comes after POLITICO reported in March that one of Leo’s nonprofits — registered as a charity — paid his for-profit company tens of millions of dollars in the two years since he joined the company. A few weeks later, a progressive watchdog group filed a complaint with the D.C. attorney general and the IRS requesting a probe into what services were provided and whether Leo was in violation of laws against using charities for personal enrichment.

David B. Rivkin Jr., an attorney for the parties in the investigation, said in a statement that the complaint “is sloppy, deceptive and legally flawed and we are addressing this fully with the DC Attorney General’s office.”

The news of the investigation comes as the nonprofit that was a subject of the complaint quietly relocated in recent weeks from the capital area to Texas, according to paperwork filed in Virginia and Texas. For nearly 20 years the nonprofit, now known as The 85 Fund, had been incorporated in Virginia.

Gabe Shoglow-Rubenstein, Schwalb’s communications director, declined to confirm or deny the existence of the probe, including whether the attorney general took any action in response to the complaint.

Schwalb, who took office in January, has a background in tax law and served as a trial attorney in the tax division of the Department of Justice under President Bill Clinton.

Best known as Donald Trump’s White House “court whisperer,” Leo played a behind-the-scenes role in the nominations of all three of the former president’s Supreme Court justices and promoted them through his multi-billion-dollar network of nonprofits. Trump chose his three Supreme Court picks, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, from a list drawn up by Leo. More recently, Leo was the beneficiary of a $1.6 billion contribution, believed to be the biggest political donation in U.S. history.

He is also the co-chair of the Federalist Society, the academic arm of the conservative legal movement, for which he worked in various capacities for decades while building his donor base.

While Leo grants few interviews, in mid-July he was featured in a two-part podcast with the Maine Wire, a conservative news organization. Asked why he’s become a “lightening rod for criticism,” Leo cited his commitment to “defend the Constitution” and spoke about the “long history” of dark money in U.S. politics.

“It’s not to hide in the shadows,” he said. “It’s because we want ideas judged by their own moral and intellectual force.”

He did not address any allegations of potential misuse of nonprofit tax law.

Real estate and other public records illustrate that the lifestyle of Leo and a handful of his allies took a lavish turn in the course of the making of the current ultraconservative court, beginning in 2016, the year he was tapped as an unpaid adviser to Trump. Citing the report, a progressive watchdog group called on the IRSand D.C. Attorney General a few weeks later to investigate whether the groups may be violating their tax-exempt status by “siphoning” assets or income for personal use.

:{:{}:

Anthony Burke, a public affairs specialist with the IRS, declined to comment. “Under the federal tax law, federal employees cannot disclose tax return information,” he said.

The watchdog complaintalleges the total amount of money that flowed from Leo-aligned nonprofits to his for-profit firms was $73 million over six years beginning in 2016.

“There are questions as to whether Leo-affiliated nonprofits have diverted substantial portions of their income and assets, directly or indirectly, to the personal benefit of Leonard Leo,” read theCampaign for Accountability’s complaint.

“Such payments were generally listed as made in exchange for alleged consulting, research, public relations, or similar services. However CFA has reasonable questions about whether those alleged services were actually rendered at all or, if services were rendered, whether the payments made were substantially in excess of fair market value,” said the complaint, which covers the period between 2016 and 2020.

POLITICO reported that a total of $43 million flowed to Leo’s company over two years and that the bulk of it came from The 85 Fund, a nonprofit run by his allies which has spent tens of millions of dollars over the past decade to promote Trump’s Supreme Court picks, file briefs before the court and, more recently, used an alias to push for voting restrictions and of cheating in the 2020 election.

It is now run by Carrie Severino, an attorney and former clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas listed as director in the group’s most recent IRS paperwork and is collecting massive amounts of anonymous funds: $117 million in 2021.

In discontinuing the group in the state of Virginia, the new address Severino listed is a virtual office suite in Fort Worth, Texas, shared by a “Two Men and a Truck”franchise. The office building advertises virtual and coworking spaces.

Further complicating the picture: in Texas, a new registration for “The 85 Fund” was filed on June 27 under yet a different address in a different city than the one listed on the Virginia paperwork. It is also registered in Texas as a for-profit entity.

This location is a UPS store in a strip mall next door to a restaurant called the “Snooty Pig Cafe.” As POLITICO previously reported, The 85 Fund had been using a UPS drop box in DC’s Georgetown neighborhood as its principal office address.

Beginning in 2016, Leo formed or helped reorganize two for-profit businesses — CRC Advisors and BH Group — to perform millions of dollars in services for his aligned nonprofits.

In those five years, BH Group brought in $15 million from the nonprofits. Yet unlike CRC, BH Group doesn’t appear to have advertised itself as a consulting or public relations firm, or even have had a website. During some of that time, Leo was employed full-time as a vice president at the nonprofit Federalist Society, raising questions about how he could have reasonably generated millions of dollars in consulting fees at the same time, the complaint says.

The 85 Fund’s switch to the Fort Worth office building came days after POLITICO inquired, on June 30, about certain Leo allies who may have personally benefited from millions in anonymous donations that moved through the 85 Fund over the past decade.

A number of the groups that receive contributions from Leo’s “dark money” network, in turn, hold sizable contracts with his firm, CRC Advisors. This includes the Federalist Society, the nation’s preeminent conservative debating society where Leo was executive vice president and still serves as co-chairman. Among payments the complaint flagged to the IRS and DC attorney general is $3.1 million which the Federalist Society paid to CRC between 2020 and 2021 for “media training.”

On July 7, a Leo spokesperson offered an initial response to inquiries POLITICO had made about The 85 Fund, previously known as the Judicial Education Project. That was the day paperwork with Severino’s signature was filed “surrendering” The 85 Fund’s charter in Virginia.

In the paperwork, Severino stated the plan to move to Texas was adopted by a majority of the board of directors on Dec. 8, 2022. It has three board members. In addition to Severino, they include treasurer Gary Marx and chair Todd Graves, according to the latest IRS paperwork available.

It’s not the only major conservative nonprofit to have moved to Texas in recent years. The National Rifle Association, contesting multiple lawsuits from attorneys general in New York state and Washington, D.C., alleging violations of nonprofit law, announced in early 2021 that it would relocate to Texas.

Yael Fuchs, who was a senior lawyer on the New York case against the NRA, said Texas has limited regulation over charities, making it a more attractive legal environment for nonprofits.

“This gambit isn’t going to deprive the regulator [DC] of jurisdiction over past wrongdoing but it could create some hurdles,” she said. They include complications in gaining injunctive relief or obtaining evidence, “but there are ways of getting over those,” said Fuchs, former head of charities enforcement in the New York attorney general’s office.

It’s also not the first time a Leo-aligned group has shifted operations after media scrutiny.

A separate Leo-aligned group that appears to have been involved in the 2017 sale of GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway’s company was dissolved last fall,three days after POLITICO inquired about whether it helped to facilitate the multi-million-dollar deal while she was advising Trump on judicial candidates.

In his statement, Rivkin, the lawyer for the groups targeted in the CFA complaint, said CFA was connected to Arabella Advisors, a firm that was founded by former Bill Clinton appointee Eric Kessler. Leo has long compared his business practices to those of Arabella.

Both Michelle Kuppersmith, CFA executive director, and Steve Sampson, Arabella spokesperson, said their groups have no financial relationship. However, CFA was originally part of the Hopewell Fund, a nonprofit for which Arabella provides administrative support. CFA spun off from Hopewell in 2017, both groups confirmed.

Arabella is a for-profit company that provides administrative, HR and accounting services to largely philanthropic nonprofits which are largely independently run.

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https://www.alternet.org/playing-fast-loose-megadonor-watchdog/

an no lnx

How a Republican megadonor is 'playing fast and loose' to push 'dangerous, extreme agenda': watchdog

Maya Boddie June 18, 2023

Republican billionaire Leonardo Leo's trust fund, Marble Freedom Trust's latest Internal Revenue Service (IRS) filing, revealing the former President Donald Trump donor's mission to control right-wing politics, Truthout reports.

Progressive watchdog Accountable.US obtained the recent IRS filing, which according to Truthout, shows the Federalist Society leader "has dumped at least $411 million into fueling right-wing infrastructure in the U.S. since mid-2020."

Furthermore, according to Truthout, the filing reveals "Leo has spent at least $182 million during the Biden administration to fund right-wing groups from May 1, 2020, through April 30, 2022," noting, "This surge has come as Leo has become more publicly outspoken in attacking reproductive rights as well as efforts to protect our environment and crucial measures that advance Americans' equality."

READ MORE: Conservative activist arranged for Clarence Thomas’ wife to get secret payouts

Additionally, it "adds to the growing public knowledge of how Leo's for-profit business works in tandem with nonprofit groups he funds to change the rules in our democracy, and also provides a glimpse of how lucrative this effort is."

The news outlet reports prior to Accountable's findings, "the Campaign for Accountability filed an IRS complaint against Leo based on other filings showing that seven of his affiliated nonprofits had sent $73 million to his for-profit CRC Advisors."

Truthout also notes:

As Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) has noted, before the public learned of the existence of Marble Freedom Trust, Leo rose to prominence as a volunteer advising Trump by creating the list of Supreme Court candidates that Trump chose from, as well as by helping to secure the confirmation of three controversial high court nominees — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett (and helped get numerous other lower court judges appointed). As True North documented, Leo's network played a central role in this right-wing court packing, raising over $600 million from 2014 through the 2020 election. This dark money network has received more than $2 billion when accounting for Marble.

Accountable President Kyle Herrig told Truthout he believes "Leonard Leo is playing fast and loose with his $1.6 billion slush fund, enriching himself and doling out paychecks and favors for his cronies," adding, "This kind of corruption is par for the course for Leo. It clearly pays to do his bidding."

READ MORE: Charities often move 'dark' money that shapes public policy: report

Herring said, "This is just the latest development in Leonard Leo's decades-long scheme to push his dangerous, extreme agenda and get rich while doing it. From personal enrichment for himself and his inner circle to his machine of nonprofits advancing the MAGA agenda, we’ve only scratched the surface of Leo’s devastating impact on our democracy."

READ MORE: 'Largest political donation ever': Trump ally received $1.6 billion through Federalist Society contact

Truthout's full report is available at this link.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

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ref badash 11/22

https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2022/11/they-had-an-insider-on-scotus-legal-experts-stunned-by-bombshell-clarence-thomas-was-seen-as-key-by-trump-lawyers/

Washington Post bombshell revealing Trump attorneys saw Justice Clarence Thomas as the key to getting the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the 2020 election is leaving several legal experts stunned.

The Post reports eight emails “ordered released by U.S. District Judge David O. Carter of California, include correspondence between Trump lawyers Kenneth Chesebro, John Eastman and others discussing various legal strategies to convince Republican members of Congress to object to the official certification of electoral votes in a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021.”

In one email “from Chesebro to Eastman and several others sent on Dec. 31, 2020, Chesebro argued that [U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence] Thomas would ‘end up being key’ to asking the high court to overturn then-President-elect Joe Biden’s win in contested states.”

The Post states the email also says, “they should ‘frame things so that Thomas could be the one to issue some sort of stay or other circuit justice opinion saying Georgia is in legitimate doubt.'”

Politico’s Kyle Cheney sums up the scheme.

“Chesebro made the plan explicit: Get any remotely favorable ruling from a federal judge — not to win outright but to embolden GOP state legislatures, Congress or Pence to reverse the results.”

Politico‘s reporting includes copies of the redacted emails, and adds: “Chesebro contended that Thomas would be ‘our only chance to get a favorable judicial opinion by Jan. 6, which might hold up the Georgia count in Congress.'”

“I think I agree with this,” Eastman replied.

“Eastman,” Politico notes, “an architect of Trump’s last-ditch bid to subvert the 2020 election, once clerked for Thomas and had corresponded with his wife, Virginia, in the weeks before Jan. 6.”

“[I]f we can just get this case pending before the Supreme Court by Jan. 5,” Chesebro wrote in one email, “ideally with something positive written by a judge or justice, hopefully Thomas, I think it’s our best shot at holding up the count of a state in Congress.”

Richard Signorelli, a former Asst. U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) blasted both the Supreme Court Justice and his far right wing activist wife, Ginni Thomas.

“They had a damn insider on SCOTUS who they thought would help them overthrow our democracy,” Signorelli tweeted. “He’s married to a deranged MAGA cult member. He won’t even recuse himself.”

Former Harvard Constitutional Law professor Laurence Tribe blasted Chesebro.

“We now learn that Ken Chesebro saw Justice Thomas as Trump’s ‘only chance’ to stop the 2020 election from being duly certified. Such abhorrent abuse of an attorney’s license to practice law should be strictly disciplined and perhaps criminally prosecuted,” he tweeted.

Attorney and writer Rachel Solar, pointing to the Politico article asks: “When is it enough???? His wife is an insurrectionist He refuses to recuse He’s the Trump election-denial go-to? Come on.”

Journalist Helen Kennedy goes one step further.

“Hey look! It wasn’t just critics of the Supreme Court who thought Clarence Thomas was corrupted – Trump’s lawyers said so too in secret emails just revealed.”

===}}:

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https://www.thedailybeast.com/donors-to-tucker-carlsons-daily-caller-news-foundation-revealed?ref=home

ref roger s 12 22

this reporting is one of several scoops featured in this week’s edition of [Confider, the newsletter pulling back the curtain on the media. Subscribe here and send your questions, tips, and complaints here.

The non-profit that feeds the conservative Daily Caller website co-founded by Fox News host Tucker Carlson has accepted tens of thousands of dollars from entities and individuals who have received favorable coverage, including some who authored opinion pieces, a new filing shows.

The document—the Daily Caller News Foundation’s fiscal year 2021 tax statement—includes for thefirst time a list of donors to the 501(c)(3) organization, a group that is not required by law to disclose donor information. The filing also reveals that Carlson, who in 2020 announced he was leaving the Daily Caller and selling his stake in the website, is still the foundation chairman, and has not cut back on his hours.

When Carlson announced his split with the Daily Caller in 2020, he cited work constraints. “I’m just too absorbed in what I’m doing,” the host told The Wall Street Journal at the time, explaining, “I wasn’t helping in any way, because I’ve got an hour to do every night” on his Fox News program. The tax filing, which covers the following year, shows he continued to hold the chairman position and put in the same hours as in all previous foundation filings—five hours a week.

Many of the foundation’s donors are tied to industries and issues that the Caller covers frequently. Most notable is the Ariel Corporation,which manufactures natural gas compressors and gave $135,000 to support the news organization—which has for years been criticized for its pro-carbon energy reporting and financial ties to the Koch brothers, the right-wing industrialists.

Other donors have an even closer relationship with the site, including some who have published pieces in their own names, without a disclosure of their financial ties. That, according to top journalism ethics expert Kelly McBride raises ethics questions.

“With any news organization that solicits donations, you really have to have an editorial policy that articulates how you separate out your loyalty to your audience and to your journalistic mission from your ties to your donors,” McBride, who is senior vice president and chair of the Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership at the Poynter Institute, told The Daily Beast.

such a policy, she said, would ideally include an advisement to donors that they can’t influence editorial work, and a promise of transparency whenever there’s a conflict of interest.

“You’re looking for, first of all, separation between fundraising and the editorial product, and you’re also looking for clarity around what donors can expect in exchange for their donation, as well as transparency so the audience understands,” McBride said, adding that “a tagline on an op-ed would be an obvious transparency mechanism.”

The Daily Beast reached out to the Daily Caller and Carlson for comment, but did not immediately receive a reply.

The journalistic and ethical standards published on the Daily Caller website don’t mention the foundation or any policy regarding donor influence over editorial content. But some donors have contributed content themselves.

For instance, RightForge, an internet infrastructure provider that caters to conservatives, in 2021 gave the foundation $7,500. In May of that year, the Daily Caller ran an op-ed from RightForge CEO Martin Avila, criticizing what Avila called the social media “witch trial” of former President Donald Trump. Months later, RightForge announced it would host Trump’s new social media network, Truth Social.

Real estate investor Adam Milstein gave the foundation $25,000 in 2021 and published an opinion piece that same year. The piece—titled, “Strategic Active Philanthropy Can Strengthen Our American Values”—includes a brief bio for Milstein, which describes him only as “an active philanthropist, an investor, and community leader.”

While the Daily Caller has been blasted for its affinity for the fossil fuel industry, the tax filing shows the Daily Caller News Foundation received financial backing from conservative green-energy group ClearPath Action, which gave $10,000 in 2021.

ClearPath has received favorable coverage from the Daily Caller, which earlier this year cited CEO Rich Powell in an article about his group, without a disclaimer. When Powell landed a Daily Caller op-ed earlier this month, the outlet added a note to the piece and his contributor page that read, “The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.” But those notes did not mention the financial relationship.

Then there’s Daniel Oliver, a Daily Caller regular contributor who also serves as trustee of the George E. Coleman Jr. Foundation, which gave the foundation $7,500 in 2021. The Daily Caller highlights some of Oliver’s rich experience in his bio—chair of the Education and Research Institute, director of Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy, and former chairmanships of the Federal Trade Commission under President Ronald Reagan and the National Review”—but doesn’t mention his role with the Coleman Foundation, or the donor relationship. (Buzzfeed News reported in 2019 that the foundation was a FDRLST Media investor, citing Oliver’s role.)

An even more influential GOP figure also appears in the filing, in the form of a $10,000 gift from CRC Advisors, a group headed up by arch-conservative megadonor and judicial activistLeonard Leo. The Daily Caller published a piece on Friday based on the results of a CRC poll, without disclosing the relationship. The two groups also show overlap

https://www.linkedin.com/in/emma-heussner-9912599a/

campus reform

John Paul Hasson previously was a contributor for the Daily Caller and a Texas Camus Correspondent with Campus Reform. Currently, he is an Account Executive with CRC Advisors. John graduated from University of Dallas.]

in their employees, including current CRC vice president Kevin Daley, whose LinkedIn page says he left the Daily Caller in 2020 after four years as a reporter.

Power the Future, a nonprofit that advocates for the fossil fuel industry, donated $10,000 in 2021 and appears frequently enough in the Daily Caller that articles about the group have their own tag on the site. Since the donation, Power the Future Executive Director Daniel Turner has been cited in multiple Daily Caller pieces as an expert voice, without no mention of his status as a foundation donor.

Justin Olson , an elected Arizona utility regulatorand former Arizona GOP Senate candidate, gave the foundation $10,000 in 2021, listing his role at the time as an officer with right-wing youth activist group Turning Point USA.

The Daily Caller has given TPUSA favorable coverage, including after the donation. It also published an exclusive report in November 2021, the month after Olson announced his bid, revealing that a Scottsdale school board official had access to a so-called Google Drive “dossier” of personal information of vocal conservatives. (Police cleared the official of wrongdoing.) Olson tweeted the article when it came out, and expressed repeated outrage at the story on the platform, while a Twitter search shows he had not tweeted about schools previously.

The filing reveals the names of 2021 donors, but does not indicate whether they had donated before. Some of the contributors who present apparent conflicts of interest have had contributor roles in the publication previously, such as Leo and Adam Milstein, who published op-eds in 2018 and 2019. In 2018, when Power the Future announced its debut, the Daily Caller had the exclusive story.

There are, of course, numerous examples of media companies drawing funding from non-profit backers. But the Daily Caller and the DCNF have a unique relationship.

The foundation was created in 2011, a few years after Carlson founded the Daily Caller with then-partner Neil Patel, who still helms the operation. Thanks to the organization’s non-profit status, the foundation can subsidize not only publication costs, but the production of the actual content—with a built-in tax break.

Part of the foundation’s stated mission is to train young reporters, but its staff also generates content, which the Daily Caller then gets to post to its site for free. And while this content is nominally available to any publication,The Washington Postreported that it’s rarely used by anyone beyond the Daily Caller. A 2017 Center for Media and Democracy report found that the Daily Caller published “virtually everything” the nonprofit churned out.

However, other groups have taken advantage of the arrangement. The fact-checking site Snopes reported in 2019 that conservative political activists appropriated foundation content to populate a number of small-time websites styling themselves as local news outlets to smuggle political content to unsuspecting audiences.

The Daily Caller has also been called out for its financial and political ties to Trump’s campaign, which shelled out about $150,000 for access to the Daily Caller email list in the 2016 election, the Center for Media and Democracy reported.

One of the most familiar examples of a donor-funded news organization would be National Public Radio. While NPR gets some government grants, most of its money comes from private contributors—including from industries it reports on. But McBride noted that NPR puts disclaimers on stories that may present an apparent conflict.

“When you listen to public media, you hear that certain people give money for certain lines of reporting, like for climate change, et cetera. So you can fund a line of reporting, but you get no influence over how that news is presented, and public media also lets the audience know when that funding may intersects with the reporting,” McBride said.

It’s unclear whether any Daily Caller News Foundation donors tabbed their contributions for specific issues or series. But some well-known issues-driven names populate the list, including top GOP megadonor and election-denial enthusiast Dick Uihlein ($25,000), anti-climate change groups the Bradley Foundation ($50,000) and Sarah Scaife Foundation ($350,000), and conservative free-market underwriters Searle Freedom Trust ($230,000).

The source of the biggest donation, however, is still unknown. That would be the $400,000 the group received through DonorsTrust, a nonprofit known as a conservative dark money “ATM,” which allows funders to channel money anonymously to various recipients. The foundation also got a $300,000 injection from someone identified as “anonymous.”

The Daily Caller operation—which has been exposed forties to white nationalists—has been widely criticized on the left for its financial ties to energy interests, most specificallyCharles Koch, who has provided millions in funding over the years, and at one point reportedly accounted for more than 83 percent of the foundation’s annual revenue.

That bankroll swelled between 2020 and 2021. The foundation’s fiscal year 2020 filing shows $1.57 million in contributions, a number thatnearly doubled to $2.8 million the next year, according to the 2021 document. The foundation spent $1.4 million—$254,000 of it on fundraising—which, combined with previous assets, left it with a year-end balance of about $2.1 million.

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The Religious Right movement, which gained considerable momentum during President Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign, has had a complex relationship with Catholicism over the years. The Religious Right is dominated by far-right white evangelical Protestant fundamentalists, who are vehemently critical of Catholic practices (the confessional, physical images of Jesus). Yet Republican evangelicals will work with the Catholic right when it comes to fighting abortion or same-sex marriage.

The Catholic right is by no means universally loved by American Catholics. President Joe Biden and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California), for example, are both known for being devout Catholics, but they are also major critics of the Religious Right and its influence on the U.S. Supreme Court — which the Catholic right now dominates. Justice Clarence Thomas, Justice Samuel Alito, Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Justice Amy Coney Barrett are all hard-right Catholics and GOP appointees who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling of 2022.

In contrast, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a Democratic Barack Obama appointee, is a Catholic who was a dissenter in Dobbs and has been a scathing critic of the High Court's current direction. She even used the word "stench" to express her disdain. Sotomayor is to the left of the Vatican, while Thomas, Alito and Barrett are to the right of the Vatican.

One of the Catholic right's most influential figures is judicial activist Leonard Leo, former executive vice president of the Federalist Society. Leo has spent decades lobbying to push the federal courts to the far right. And according to Politico's Heidi Przybyla, he has made a fortune in the process.

In an article published by Politico on March 1, Przybyla reports, "A network of political nonprofits formed by judicial activist Leonard Leo moved at least $43 million to a new firm he is leading, raising questions about how his conservative legal movement is funded. Leo's own personal wealth appeared to have ballooned as his fundraising prowess accelerated since his efforts to cement the Supreme Court's conservative majority helped to bring about its decision to overturn abortion rights. Most recently, Leo reaped a $1.6 billion windfall from a single donor in what is likely the biggest single political gift in U.S. history."

According to Przybyla, Politico's analysis of "dozens of financial, property and public records dating from 2000 to 2021" shows that Leo's "lifestyle took a lavish turn beginning in 2016." And his fortunes grew considerably during the Trump years, Przybyla reports.

The Politico journalist explains, "The spending by Leo-aligned nonprofits on his for-profit businesses coincided with changes in his personal lifestyle and finances. IRS and other public records between 2016 and 2020 show a major expansion of Leo's personal wealth that coincided with the start of his work for Trump and the creation of his own for-profit entity called BH Group. Both happened in 2016."

The former Federalist Society VP forcefully lobbied for many of the severe social conservatives who are now on the U.S. Supreme Court, including Barrett. In 2016, he encouraged then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) to do everything he could to derail then-President Barack Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia (a far-right Catholic social conservative). It worked; that seat stayed open until 2017, when then-President Donald Trump appointed Justice Neil Gorsuch — another justice who voted to overturn Roe in 2022. Gorsuch was raised Catholic but has more recently attended an Episcopal church.

Trump was very specific about the type of justices he wanted: hardcore social conservatives. Former Justice Anthony Kennedy was a right-wing fiscally conservative 1987 Reagan appointee, but he was much more of a libertarian than Scalia, Alito or Thomas and often voted with Democratic justices when it came to abortion or gay rights. And that wasn't the type of justice that Trump and Leo wanted.

Przybyla notes, "The Court’s 2022 decision overturning half a century of the federal right to abortion was widely seen as a victory for the conservative legal movement led by Leo. Trump picked his Court nominees from a list drawn up by Leo, who then served as his unofficial adviser in the White House. A constellation of outside groups affiliated with Leo poured tens of millions of dollars in anonymous donor funds into promoting those nominees — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — thereby cementing a new conservative majority for the next generation."

Read Politico's full report at this link.

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Leonard Leo, the right-wing leader of the judicial activist network the Federalist Society, is coming under scrutiny for his "lavish" use of the organization's funds to live the high life, POLITICO reported on Wednesday.

"A network of political non-profits formed by judicial activist Leonard Leo moved at least $43 million to a new firm he is leading, raising questions about how his conservative legal movement is funded," reported Heidi Przybyla. "Leo’s own personal wealth appeared to have ballooned as his fundraising prowess accelerated since his efforts to cement the Supreme Court’s conservative majority helped to bring about its decision to overturn abortion rights. Most recently, Leo reaped a $1.6 billion windfall from a single donor in what is likely the biggest single political gift in U.S. history."

Leo has been a massively influential figure, often called Trump's "judge whisperer" for the outsized role he played in getting right-wing jurists seated who have been involved in everything from dismantling abortion rights, to rolling back voting and redistricting protections, to undermining the regulatory process.

According to POLITICO, which has obtained records of Leo's finances over the last two decades, Leo's personal wealth skyrocketed under President Donald Trump, with whom he worked closely to appoint a steady stream of right-wing judges to the federal bench including three at the Supreme Court — "the same period during which he erected a for-profit ecosystem around his longtime nonprofit empire that is shielded from taxes."

CRC Advisers, the consulting firm he created in 2020, did not respond to questions about what the $43 million is being used for. However, Leo, who led a "middle class lifestyle" prior for most of his time at the Federalist Society, began making extravagant purchases after the former president's election in 2016, including "two new mansions in Maine, four new cars, private school tuition for his children, hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations to Catholic causes and a wine buyer and locker at Morton’s Steakhouse."

Stetson University law professor Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, an expert on campaign finance, told POLITICO, “If millions of dollars in dark money are sloshing around, it makes it really easy for people on the inside to take a cut ... That behavior is, unfortunately, now showing in the judicial nominating process."

This is not the first time questions have been raised about Leo's financial activities. In 2019, The Washington Post flagged that Leo has helped right-wing nonprofits raise $250 million to promote his approved judges, with no transparency in the donors' identity. And another dark-money group, BH Ventures, which contributed $24 million to CRC Advisors and up to $5 million to former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway's polling firm, shut down shortly after reporters began investigating it.

Alarmed Democrats have responded in force to the Federalist Society's efforts to remake federal courts. Since taking office, President Joe Biden has been confirming judges at an even faster pace than Trump did, with 97 seated in his first two years alone — often from a diverse array of racial and professional backgrounds.

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On December 20, 2022, Politico’s Heidi Przybyla reported that right-wing judicial activist and Federalist Society Vice President Leonard Leo appeared to “have helped facilitate” the sale of GOP strategist Kellyanne Conway’s business, The Polling Company, to the firm Creative Response Concepts (CRC) in 2017. Now, a month later, Przybyla is reporting that a “dark money group tied to” Leo was “dissolved” only “three days after Politico inquired about whether it helped to facilitate” that sale.

When Americans complain about the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the radical-right direction of the U.S. Supreme Court, Leo is one of the people they have to thank. Leo, the Federalist Society’s former vice president, played an important role in the appointment of far-right socially conservative justices like Amy Coney Barrett. Leo was a strong Barrett supporter when former President Donald Trump nominated her in 2020, and four years earlier, in 2016, he encouraged Sen. Mitch McConnell to do everything he could to derail then-President Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland (who is now U.S. attorney general under President Joe Biden).

One-third of the U.S. Supreme Court is now comprised of Donald Trump appointees, all of whom voted to overturn Roe v. Wadein the caseDobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. And Leo did everything he could to help Trump move the High Court to far right. That is in addition to all of the far-right judges Leo helped bring to the lower federal courts.

Przybyla, in an article published by Politico on January 20, explains, “The BH Fund, which was formed in 2016 with an anonymous $24 million donation, has been a nerve center for distributing millions of dollars around Leo’s network of dark-money groups bolstering former President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court picks. On the day of the 2017 sale of Conway’s polling business to the firm Creative Response Concepts Inc., a lawyer filed similar liens with Virginia regulators for both CRC and BH Fund, which financial experts say suggested the dark money group played a role in financing the transaction, Politico reported in late December.”

The 2017 sale, according to Przybyla, was “valued at between $1 million and $5 million” in Conway’s “federal filings” — and it “raised potential ethical concerns because Conway” was “simultaneously advocating with Trump for some of Leo’s favored judicial candidates.”

“But just three days after Politico’s inquiries,” Przybyla reports, “the BH Fund closed down, according to documents filed with the Virginia State Corporation Commission. Adam Kennedy, a spokesperson for the firm now known as CRC Advisors — which had performed extensive consulting work for Leo in 2017 and is now led by him— said the BH Fund has been dormant since the end of 2021. He confirmed it was dissolved in October ‘as other organizations made it obsolete.’”

Przybyla adds, “Indeed, Leo now controls more than $1.6 billion in conservative donor funds, and he is erecting a new architecture of dark-money groups to administer it. Critics have long maintained that understanding how Leo has distributed his trove of anonymous funds is critical to understanding how the conservative legal movement claimed a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court…. Under the current tax code, nonprofits like BH Fund can spend unlimited amounts of money on political activities without disclosing their donors — as long as they are deemed ‘social welfare’ activities that do not primarily promote a political candidate.”

One outspoken critic of dark money in politics is Saurav Ghosh, who serves as director of federal campaign finance reform for the Campaign Legal Center.

Ghost, discussing Leo’s role in the sale of Conway’s company, told Politico, “Nothing screams ‘efforts to conceal’ quite like folding up an organization just as you start getting questions about it…. (The) influence of dark money is doubly problematic once someone is in office because they’re (potentially) able to influence outcomes.”

After Politico published Przybyla’s December 20, 2022 article, Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin described her reporting on Conway and Leo as “further evidence of the troubling role that Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society played in driving Donald Trump’s judicial selection process.”

“Leo’s network of outside groups built successful advocacy campaigns around the nominations of Chief Justice John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett and blocked President Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland,” Przybyla notes. “BH Fund operated alongside two other Leo-linked entities to promote Trump’s nominees.”

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https://yyy.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/13/heritage-foundation-voter-suppression-lobbying-election-action-plan

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tax filings reveal advocacy arm of Heritage Foundation spent $5m on lobbying in 2021 to block voting rights in battleground states

Brendan Fischer and Ed Pilkington

Fri 13 Jan 2023

The advocacy arm of the Heritage Foundation, the powerful conservative thinktank based in Washington, spent more than $5m on lobbying in 2021 as it worked to block federal voting rights legislation and advance an ambitious plan to spread its far-right agenda calling for aggressive voter suppression measures in battleground states.

Previously unreported 2021 tax filings from Heritage Action for America, which operates as the foundation’s activist wing, shows that it spent $5.1m on contracting outside lobbying services. The outlay comes on top of $560,000 the group invested in its own in-house federal lobbying efforts that year, as well as registered lobbying by Heritage Action staffers in at least 24 states.

The 990 tax filing was obtained by the watchdog group Documented and shared with the Guardian. It points to the pivotal role that Heritage Action is increasingly playing in shaping the rules that govern US democracy.

The efforts help explain the unprecedented tidal wave of restrictive voting laws that spread across Republican-controlled states in the wake of the 2020 presidential election. The Brennan Center reported that more voter suppression laws were passed in 2021 than in any year since it began monitoring voting legislation more than a decade ago.

The expenditures also signal a dramatic increase in Heritage Action’s advocacy activities. In 2020, Heritage Action had reported no spending at all on outside lobbying.

[An attendee at the Poor People's Campaign march on Washington on 18 June 2022.

Republicans filed record number of anti-voting lawsuits in 2022 – report

Read more[

Heritage Action, whose board includes the Republican mega-donor Rebekah Mercer, is set up as a 501(c)4 under the US tax code which exempts it from paying federal taxes. It operates as a “dark money” group, avoiding disclosing the sources of its total annual revenue of over $18m.

In the past two years the organization through its public messaging has echoed Donald Trump’s lie that US elections are marked by rampant fraud. A private plan prepared by Heritage Action last year set out a two-year, $24m “election integrity” strategy.

The plan, obtained by Documented, proposed a two-pronged approach that would work to block moves by Democrats in Congress to bolster voting rights while at the same time pressing Republican-controlled states to impose restrictions on access to the ballot box. It said: “Where Democrats hold power, we must defend against bad policy. Where conservatives and our allies are in power, we must advance changes that protect the lawful votes of Americans.”

The Heritage Action plan, which was first reported by the New York Times, is being published by the Guardian for the first time [docs]

Part of Heritage Action’s two-year strategy is to promote what it calls “model election laws”, focusing initially on eight battleground states: Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, Texas and Wisconsin. In a private meeting with donors in Tucson, Arizona, in 2021, the group’s executive director, Jessica Anderson, boasted about the role Heritage Action had played in pressing Republican-controlled legislatures to impose strict restrictions on voting, including limits on mail-in voting and early voting days.

In a video of that meeting obtained by Documented, Anderson told the donors that the group acted “quickly and quietly”, bragging that “honestly nobody noticed” their behind-the-scenes influence. Heritage Action staff have registered to lobby in at least two dozen states.

[Voting rights in 2023: what are the key issues for US democracy?

Read more]

The laser-like focus on key swing states like Georgia appears to have had an impact. The New York Times found that one-third of the 68 voting bills filed in Georgia in 2021 contained policy measures and language that aligned closely with proposals from Heritage Action.

The group has publicly claimed that it had a hand in advancing 11 voting bills in at least eight states in 2021, though in some cases legislation was passed in only one chamber or went on to be vetoed by the state’s governor.

Heritage Foundation, under the auspices of its elections supremo Hans von Spakovsky, curates an “election fraud database”. It claims to expose the errors, omissions and mistakes made by election officials, but it presents incomplete and misleading information and underscores how exceptionally rare fraud is within the US system.

Its records stretch back 40 years, a period in which billions of votes have been cast. Yet the database records only 1,402 “proven instances of voter fraud” – a “molecular fraction” of votes cast nationwide, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

The newly disclosed tax filings also show that Heritage Action ramped up its spending on advertising as it sought to influence lawmakers and the public around its controversial voting agenda. In 2021, the organization reported paying $6.1m to outside contractors for “marketing and advertising” – a sharp rise from $1.8m the previous year.

Among the top contractors employed by Heritage Action was CRC Advisors, the consulting firm tied to Leonard Leo,a chairman of the Federalist Society who is best known for his decades-long campaign to pack federal courts with rightwing judges. CRC Advisors was paid over $797,000 for “marketing and advertising” in 2021.

Some of that ad spending was targeted in Georgia. After that state’s 2021 restrictive voting law caused a backlash from businesses and led Major League Baseball to move the All-Star Game from Georgia to Colorado, Heritage Action spent nearly $1m on TV ads defending the law aired on CNBC and local TV stations.

[Conservative donors pour ‘dark money’ into case that could upend US voting law

Read more

The group also spent nearly $500,000 on Georgia TV and digital ads during the MLB All-Star Game, and spent at least $700,000 more on ads supporting the Georgia bill’s passage.

On the federal level, Heritage Action also ran ads in West Virginia, Arizona, Montana and New Hampshire urging the Democratic senators in those states to oppose reforming the filibuster to pass democracy reform legislation with a simple majority. “It’s an all-hands-on-deck moment,” Anderson said of potential filibuster changes at the April 2021 donor summit.

Heritage Action was formed in 2010 out of the rightwing policy empire embodied in the Heritage Foundation, which dates back to 1973. The foundation was created by Paul Weyrich, a richly networked conservative who wanted to inculcate small government, anti-regulation ideology at both federal and state level.

From the start, restricting access to voting was a core part of Weyrich’s mission. In 1980 he infamously articulated his thinking by saying: “I don’t want everybody to vote … Our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”

This article was produced in partnership with Documented, an investigative watchdog and journalism project. Brendan Fischer is a campaign finance specialist with Documented

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https://www.politico.com/news/2022/12/20/trump-conway-leonard-leo-00074690

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longtime judicial activist Leonard Leo appears to have helped facilitate the sale of former White House senior adviser Kellyanne Conway’s polling company in 2017 — as she was playing a key role in advocating for Leo’s handpicked list of Supreme Court candidates, according to previously unreported financial documents reviewed by government ethics and finance experts.

The transaction came at a critical moment for Conway — shortly after her ownership of The Polling Company had come under scrutiny from a congressional oversight committee for potential “conflicts of interest,” likely creating pressure to unload it even though its value was unclear because she was its biggest asset and committed to her White House job.

It appears Leo, via one of his dark money groups, helped finance the transaction between the firm, Creative Response Concepts Inc., and Conway — worth between $1 million and $5 million, according to experts citing the timing of the transactions filed through the same attorney and bank. At the time, CRC was also bringing in millions of dollars from dark money groups to promote Leo’s picks.

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it’s the latest example of how Leo has used his network to secure and protect allies at the highest levels of government to successfully advance his decadeslong agenda of shifting the Supreme Court rightward for the next generation. Conway was among a small circle of advisers with outsized influence over a newly elected president whose commitment to overturning major precedents like the right to abortion was in doubt by some social conservatives. While former President Donald Trump — a onetime supporter of abortion rights and former registered Democrat — was considered unpredictable by some social conservatives, Conway proved from the earliest days of Trump’s presidency to be an outspoken advocate for Leo’s list of handpicked candidates.

If Leo helped facilitate the transaction, it could violate ethics laws designed to prevent executive branch employees from obtaining benefits from people with whom they interact in their official capacities, said Bruce Freed, president of the nonpartisan Center for Political Accountability, which tracks corporate spending in politics. Federal ethics laws prohibit executive branch employees from using their positions for private personal gain and from accepting gifts.

“It really shows Kellyanne as a vehicle for Leo, the leading role Leo has played and how Trump became his instrument,” said Freed, after reviewing the documents.

On the same day of the sale, on Sept. 21, 2017, a lawyer filed liens with Virginia regulators listing collateral for two loans: one for the buyer and the other for a dark money group controlled by Leo, BH Fund. The liens were filed within five minutes of each other.

Government ethics and finance experts say the timing and the similarity of the two transactions suggest that BH Fund, too, may have been involved in the purchase of Conway’s firm.

Leo, through spokesman Adam Kennedy with CRC, declined repeated requests over the span of several weeks beginning in late October to comment on whether Leo played a role in facilitating the purchase. Conway did not respond to repeated emails and text messages requesting comment, although she acknowledged having received an email. CRC Vice President Keith Appell also declined to comment.

“Unfortunately, I don’t think we will be responding to questions around the purchase of the polling company,” Kennedy wrote in an Oct. 31 email.

The Conways and Leo have longstanding ties. At the time of the sale of Conway’s company, Leo was executive vice president of the Federalist Society, the conservative legal group for which many of Trump’s judicial appointees were members. Conway’s husband, George, was a longtime friend of Leo’s and one of the Federalist Society’s earliest members. George Conway also did not respond to a request for comment.

The ties between BH Fund and CRC are substantial. Leo is now a partner and chairman at CRC. The other BH Fund director listed in their corporate filings, Jonathan Bunch, also joined CRC around the same time as president. At the time of the sale in 2017, groups tied to Leo were merely major customers: In total, CRC took in more than $52 million from groups in Leo’s network from 2016 to 2020 — as it was conducting a media campaign to install justices considered reliable votes to overturn precedents including the federal right to abortion, according to a review for POLITICO conducted by nonpartisan organization OpenSecrets.

The financial deal between Conway and CRC adds to an emerging picture of the extent to which groups associated with Leo — who now controls more than $1.6 billion in conservative donor funds — interacted with key players in the conservative movement’s efforts to reshape the judiciary. The New York Times first reported the windfall donation to a Leo-controlled group, among the largest single contributions ever to a political nonprofit.

Leo served on the board of a group led by Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, and he and the Thomases have maintained a longstanding friendship. Leo’s network has been among the most prolific forces behind the new conservative majority, successfully advocating to confirm Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett as well as to block former President Barack Obama’s nominee Merrick Garland.

Ed Whelan, a conservative constitutional law expert and former clerk to the late Justice Antonin Scalia, downplayed the influence Conway may have had over the then-new president at a time when social conservatives were concerned whether Trump — a former supporter of abortion rights whom they considered unpredictable — would keep his promise to appoint Leo’s handpicked candidates.

Trump had already made a “clear and high-profile commitment” to the list months before he assumed office, said Whelan. “It seems bizarre to think that any possible lobbying by Kellyanne Conway would have added to the force of that commitment or to the influence that Mitch McConnell and Don McGahn had already wielded,” he said, referring to the Republican leader in the Senate and Trump’s former White House counsel.

Yet she lobbied inside the White House for the specific conservative justices Leo preferred as part of his decadeslong agenda of shifting the balance of the court sharply rightward, according to news reports, her recent memoir and other public records.

They included Gorsuch and Barrett. Conway joined with legislative director Marc Short and press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders in a push for Barrett ahead of Kavanaugh, whom Leo initially had reservations about, according to the book “Supreme Ambition: Brett Kavanaugh and the Conservative Takeover,” by Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus. Leo was “never a big Brett fan,” Marcus wrote.

During the same time frame Conway was a senior adviser to Trump, she was under pressure to sell The Polling Company. In a May 9 statement, then-House Oversight Committee Chair Elijah Cummings, a Democrat from Maryland, said the White House had not produced evidence of a certificate of divestiture. The sale to CRC a few months later reduced political pressure on her.

Ethics specialists pointed to the possible involvement of BH Fund as a key question looming over the sale.

The financing documents filed by the same lawyer and bank within minutes of each other registered, separately, debts of CRC and BH Fund, including a requirement that BH Fund keep $2.5 million in an account as collateral. BH Fund is a group Leo has used to direct millions of dollars to organizations boosting the nominations of Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett. As a nonprofit, it is not required by the IRS to disclose its donors but Leo was listed as president in 2017.

Notably, a search of Virginia’s filing system yielded no other BH Fund liens other than the one posted on the date Conway’s company was sold.

After reviewing the 2017 Virginia statements, Timothy Hughes, managing shareholder of Bean, Kinney & Korman, the law firm listed on them, said in an email that he was “not in a position” to comment. He did not respond to subsequent email questions about whether the filings were part of a single transaction.

Brett Kappel, a lobbying and government ethics counsel at the Harmon Curran law firm in Washington who also reviewed the documents at POLITICO’s request, said the transactions appear to be connected.

“Based on the available documentation and the timing of the filings, it certainly appears as though these transactions are related,” said Kappel, who has represented candidates and political committees on both sides of the aisle. Still, Kappel cautioned it may depend on whether Conway was advising the president on court nominations at the same moment she sold to constitute a clear violation of ethics rules.

Kyle Herrig, president of Accountable.US, a non-partisan progressive group that investigates corporate influence in politics and alerted POLITICO to the financial records and timestamps, said it was concerned about whether the Leo-affiliated groups rewarded Conway for her advocacy by purchasing her business at a time when its value was unclear.

It also raises “serious concerns” about how Leo will use his new, “no-strings-attached” $1.6 billion windfall, arranged through a series of transactions that appear to have avoided tax liabilities, to influence the White House, Congress and the Supreme Court, said Herrig.

This would be particularly problematic if the firm wouldn’t have otherwise been purchased or wasn’t purchased at fair market value, said Melanie Sloan, a former House Judiciary Committee counsel for Democrats who is now senior adviser to American Oversight, a government ethics watchdog that filed a series of lawsuits against the former Trump administration.

“We don’t know if she received fair market value for the company, and that’s an important question. It also seems she was having trouble selling it, and that alone is a gift if you’re buying something nobody else wants to buy,” said Sloan, after having reviewed the documents. “If you’re just absorbing the employees, you could just hire them. So, what were they buying?” she said.

Conway was largely its name brand. The Polling Company’s then-chief executive, Brett Loyd, continued to consult for the Trump administration but was let go in 2019 and now runs The Bullfinch Group. Contacted by POLITICO, he declined to comment in accordance with a non-disclosure agreement he signed.

Leo left his post as Federalist Society executive vice president in 2020 to become chairman of a newly rebranded CRC Advisors, but he remains co-chairman of the Federalist Society board. He has subsequently devoted himself to cultivating his donor network. The New York Times recently reported that since 2016, “grant-making hubs in Leo’s network and the recipients of their money have paid more than $30 million to the firms owned at least partly by Mr. Leo, CRC and BH Group.”

In further evidence suggesting BH Fund was involved in CRC’s purchase of Conway’s business, two days prior to the sale, the Virginia regulating authority issued certificates of good standing for both entities within three minutes of each other.

It’s not the first time Leo’s BH Fund, seeded by an anonymous $24 million donation, has been the focus of attention for helping to further the interests of the conservative legal movement through wealthy donors. It first gained attention for “being responsible for enforcing a donation agreement between a secret $20 million donor and the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University, whose president came under scrutiny for allegedly allowing donors to dictate academic and hiring conditions in return for financial gifts,” the nonprofit Center for Responsible Politics and MapLight reported.

Leo’s outsized role in promoting conservative candidates for judgeships has come under scrutiny as polls show public confidence in the integrity of the court plummeting. The new conservative majority upended 50 years of precedent on abortion rights and is slated to hear similarly consequential decisions on voting rights, guns and the environment in the coming months.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Leo crafted a list of potential Supreme Court nominees for Trump to help quell concerns among social conservatives about the candidate, who had repeatedly changed party affiliation and, as recently as 2004, said “in many cases, I probably identify more as Democrat.” Indeed, in the book “The Hill to Die On,” by former POLITICO reporters Jake Sherman and Anna Palmer, it was reported that Trump even privately raised the prospect at several points of appointing Garland, Obama’s ill-fated Supreme Court nominee, to the seat now held by Gorsuch.

In her own memoir, Conway recounts being in a small Oval Office meeting with Senate leadership just two days into the new administration to discuss the seat Republicans had kept open by blocking Garland.

In the meeting, Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, suggested that Trump renominate Garland to “heal the nation.” Trump “skeptically” asked Conway what she thought.

“I don’t think much of it, sir,” she recalled saying.

Days after Trump was elected, Leo was among the first people given a personal meeting with the new president-elect. Conway welcomed Leo to Trump Tower in Manhattan with a kiss on the cheek and then escorted him to lobby media cameras after what she described as a “fabulous” meeting, according to a POLITICO review of C-SPAN footage.

She introduced Leo to the media after the Nov. 16 meeting by putting to rest speculation Trump might select a candidate to fill a Supreme Court vacancy other than one from Leo’s handpicked list of 21 names.

To be sure, Conway was a frequent presence at Trump Tower in the days after the election and appeared in the lobby to escort other important guests such as Rep. Raúl Labrador, who was being considered for a post within the Justice Department, according to a review of C-SPAN livestream footage.

Yet filling the Supreme Court vacancy Republicans had held open by blocking Obama’s nomination of Garland was one of the most consequential decisions facing the newly elected president.

Private payouts to top White House officials have drawn ethical reprimands in the past. In 2016, ProPublica reported that Obama’s chief economic adviser Gene Sperling had borrowed hundreds of thousands of dollars from a top Washington lawyer at below-market rates. It appeared to violate federal rules meant to prevent conflicts of interest, ethics experts said.

Among the questions CRC did not address from POLITICO about The Polling Company is whether it continues to serve major clients. CRC does not list “polling” among its services on its homepage. According to a review of Federal Elections Commission filings by OpenSecrets, no federal political committee has paid CRC for polling services since Conway sold the company, with the exception of a $27,000 disbursement on Feb. 4 of this year. It also found at least $60,000 in 2020 in payments from the Republican Attorneys General Association.

A statement at the time of the purchase from CRC president Greg Mueller regarding the sale said The Polling Company would maintain a D.C. hub. Its current website now lists the same address as CRC in Alexandria, Va.

The main number on The Polling Company’s web page goes to voicemail. A message left there was not returned. Its page also lists 2017 on the footer of its main page. There is no indication Conway returned to her company after leaving the White House in August of 2020.

===

https://redgreenandblue.org/2022/11/17/rightwing-disinformation-machine-goes-war-esg/

no grf lnx

over the weekend, a special edition of COP, Look, Listen featured network analysis from Graphika, which showed that the anti-environmental, social, and governance (ESG) campaign has become a meeting ground for general rightwing twitter posters, and the climate disinfo-specific actors.

Graphika’s map of 13,000 accounts who tweeted about ESG in October.

By Climate Denier Roundup

While their advanced network mapping of followers and content consumption used to showed that the climate disinformation group was a distinct sub-set of conservative accounts, now “computationally speaking, climate denialists in our analysis are no longer defined as distinct from right-wing culture wars influencers.”

Graphika found that “influencers in this group do the work of framing and amplifying climate topics as a culture wars issue, making it more palatable for a broader right-wing audience, beyond the usual climate denial community.”

The top-performing ESG post, out of 13,000 tweets in October mentioning the acronym, was from Consumers Research, a group funded by conservative activist Leonard A. Leo as part of his billion-dollar “anti-woke” campaign.

Perhaps unsurprisingly given the financial resources at their disposal, right-leaning actors got more engagement, by far, than the International Environmental Community network.

Despite the fact that environmentalists tweeted way more content about ESG investing, Graphika found that “engagement from ideologically driven accounts far outweighs more consistent, reliable messaging on sustainable investing. It’s not the topic, but rather the divisive framing that wins attention and engagement.”

Which means “the climate community needs to double down on support for campaigns to keep greenwashing out of ESG, as companies look for opportunities to backslide on commitments to appease critics. Because social media algorithms amplify salacious content over quality, those spreading outlandish disinformation are rewarded while those posting the (sometimes dry or technical) truth are shouted over.”

With their billion-dollar backing and an assist from Big Tech, the Infowars Investors are dominating the digital discussion of ESG issues, and in the course of doing so, have managed to fully merge climate disinfo-specific and general rightwing audiences.

It’s the epic crossover event absolutely no one wanted.

(Originally appeared at DailyKos)

===

KINGMAKER

https://www.alternet.org/2022/08/this-electronics-mogul-likely-made-the-biggest-gop-donation-ever-report/

an 8 22

The Republican Party has had its share of ultra-wealthy donors. But according to New York Times reporters Kenneth P. Vogel and Shane Goldmacher, the most generous GOP donation of 2021 came from “electronics manufacturing mogul” Barre Seid.

In 2021, Vogel and Goldmacher report, Seid donated a whopping $1.6 billion dollars to a group led by Republican activist and Federalist Society Co-Chairman Leonard A. Leo.

“This windfall will help cement Mr. Leo’s status as a kingmaker in conservative big money politics,” Vogel and Goldmacher report in a Times article published on August 22. “It could also give conservatives an advantage in a type of difficult-to-trace spending that shapes elections and political fights. The cash infusion was arranged through an unusual series of transactions that appear to have avoided tax liabilities. It originated with Mr. Seid, a long-time conservative donor who made a fortune as the chairman and chief executive of an electrical device manufacturing company in Chicago now known as Tripp Lite.”

The reporters add, “The nonprofit, called the Marble Freedom Trust, then received all of the proceeds from the sale, in a transaction that appears to have been structured to allow the nonprofit group and Mr. Seid to avoid paying taxes on the proceeds.”

In a tweet posted on August 22, Vogel emphasized just how big Seid’s donation was. Vogel wrote, “When I describe this as ‘likely the biggest single political donation,’ I mean biggest EVER. Like in the history of US politics.”

Vogel and Goldmacher explain, “For perspective, the $1.6 billion that the Marble trust reaped from the sale is slightly more than the total of $1.5 billion spent in 2020 by 15 of the most politically active nonprofit organizations that generally align with Democrats, according to an analysis by The Times. That spending, which Democrats embraced to aid the campaigns of Joseph R. Biden, Jr. and his allies in Congress, dwarfed the roughly $900 million spent by a comparable sample of 15 of the most politically active groups aligned with the Republican Party.”

According to Vogel and Goldmacher, the Marble Freedom Trust “could help conservatives level the playing field — if not surpass the left — in such nonprofit spending, which is commonly referred to as dark money because the groups involved can raise and spend unlimited sums on politics while revealing little about where they got the money or how they spent it.”

“The Marble Freedom Trust’s formation in May 2020, the donation of Tripp Lite shares by Mr. Seid, and Mr. Leo’s role have not been previously reported,” Vogel and Goldmacher note. “The funds are difficult to trace through public records. Tripp Lite is a private company that is not subject to corporate disclosure rules for public companies. On its tax filing, Marble indicated that the $1.6 billion came from the ‘sale of gifted company and subsidiaries,’ but indicated that it withheld identifying information ‘to protect donor confidentiality.’ And Eaton, the publicly traded Irish company that bought Tripp Lite, does not refer to Marble in statements related to the sale.”

Campaign finance reform suffered a major blow in the United States in 2010, when the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its widely criticized 5-4 decision in Citizens United v. FEC. Defining political contributions as a form of “speech,” the Citizens United ruling gutted restrictions on the size of campaign donations and, critics say, paved the way for a flood of “dark money” into political races.

===

omg

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/05/climate/republican-treasurers-climate-change.html

no lnx

How Republicans Are ‘Weaponizing’ Public Office Against Climate Action

A Times investigation revealed a coordinated effort by state treasurers to use government muscle and public funds to punish companies trying to reduce greenhouse gases.

Riley Moore stands in an office wearing a dark suit jacket unbuttoned with a white collared shirt without a tie. On the walls hang portraits of presidents and other officials.

Riley Moore, the West Virginia treasurer, announced last week that several major banks would be barred from government contracts with his state.Credit...Kristian Thacker for The New York Times

By David Gelles

Gelles reviewed more than 10,000 pages of documents and emails while reporting for this article.

Aug. 5, 2022

Nearly two dozen Republican state treasurers around the country are working to thwart climate action on state and federal levels, fighting regulations that would make clear the economic risks posed by a warming world, lobbying against climate-minded nominees to key federal posts and using the tax dollars they control to punish companies that want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Over the past year, treasurers in nearly half the United States have been coordinating tactics and talking points, meeting in private and cheering each other in public as part of a well-funded campaign to protect the fossil fuel companies that bolster their local economies.

Last week, Riley Moore, the treasurer of West Virginia, announced that several major banks — including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Wells Fargo — would be barred from government contracts with his state because they are reducing their investments in coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel.

Mr. Moore and the treasurers of Louisiana and Arkansas have pulled more than $700 million out of BlackRock, the world’s largest investment manager, over objections that the firm is too focused on environmental issues. At the same time, the treasurers of Utah and Idaho are pressuring the private sector to drop climate action and other causes they label as “woke.”

And treasurers from Pennsylvania, Arizona and Oklahoma joined a larger campaign to thwart the nominations of federal regulators who wanted to require that banks, funds and companies disclose the financial risks posed by a warming planet.

:{:{}:

At the nexus of these efforts is the State Financial Officers Foundation, a little-known nonprofit organization based in Shawnee, Kan., that once focused on cybersecurity, borrowing costs and managing debt loads, among other routine issues.

Then President Biden took office, promising to speed the country’s transition away from oil, gas and coal, the burning of which is dangerously heating the planet.

The foundation began pushing Republican state treasurers, who are mostly elected officials and who are responsible for managing their state’s finances, to use their power to promote oil and gas interests and to stymie Mr. Biden’s climate agenda, records show.

The New York Times reviewed thousands of pages of internal emails and documents obtained through public records requests by Documented, a watchdog group, that shed light on the treasurers’ efforts since January 2021.

At conferences, on weekly calls, and with a steady stream of emails, the foundation hosted representatives from the oil industry and funneled research and talking points from conservative groups to the state treasurers, who have channeled the private groups’ goals into public policy.

The Heritage Foundation, the Heartland Institute and the American Petroleum Institute are among the conservative groups with ties to the fossil fuel industry that have been working with the State Financial Officers Foundation and the treasurers to shape their national strategy.

Many Democratic state treasurers support efforts to combat climate change and want banks and investment firms to be clear about risks posed to returns for retirees and others. Democratic lawmakers in California and New Jersey are working on legislation that would require their state pension systems to divest from fossil fuels. But Democrats have not mounted anything like the national campaign being orchestrated by the State Financial Officers Foundation.

The Republican treasurers skirt the fact that global warming is an economic menace that is damaging industries like agriculture and causing extreme weather that devastates communities and costs taxpayers billions in recovery and rebuilding. Instead, they frame efforts to reduce emissions as a threat to employment and revenue, and have turned climate science into another front in the culture wars.

“This is a departure from their traditional roles,” said Robert Butkin, the former Oklahoma treasurer and a professor at the University of Tulsa. “There used to be a strong nonpartisan and bipartisan ethic among treasurers, but you’ve seen a lot of that erode over the past several years.”

‘Politically motivated’

In November, as major banks and corporations at a global summit in Glasgow were promising to take climate action, the Republican state treasurers were huddling at a State Financial Officers Foundation conference in Orlando, Fla., talking about ways to stop them.

:{:{}:

At the meeting, the group’s chief executive, Derek Kreifels, made a presentation about a new law that had been signed by Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, a Republican. It prohibited state agencies from investing in businesses that have cut ties with fossil fuel companies.

The Biden Administration’s Environmental Agenda

President Biden is pushing stronger regulations, but faces a narrow path to achieving his goals in the fight against global warming.

[Long-Sought Climate Action: After decades of failed attempts, Congress is on the cusp of passing the nation’s first major climate law. The bill avoided the political pitfalls of past legislative attempts by offering only incentives to cut climate pollution, not taxes.

Extreme Heat: President Biden said that he would expand existing federal programs to help Americans cope with the extreme heat wrought by climate change, stopping short of declaring a national emergency.

Supreme Court Ruling: By limiting the Environmental Protection agency’s ability to regulate carbon emissions, the court made it much harder for the president to achieve his climate goals.]

Within weeks, Mr. Moore was working with legislators in West Virginia to write a similar bill, which became law in March. While Texas officials have been slow to enforce their law, Mr. Moore was quick to put it into action.

Last week, he notified five major financial institutions — Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley — that they are barred from doing business with West Virginia because they have intentionally wound down their dealings with coal companies.

“If a bank, for instance, decides to say they have a no-lending policy as relates to thermal coal, well, then we’ll find a bank that doesn’t have that policy,” Mr. Moore said in an interview.

Mr. Moore went on to offer a classic denial of the overwhelming scientific consensus that the continued burning of oil, gas and coal will lead to planetary catastrophe.

“The climate has been changing in the world since Earth was created,” Mr. Moore said. “Whether these greenhouse gas emissions are contributing to the warming of the globe, I’m not sure I necessarily agree with that.”

The banks targeted by Mr. Moore say they are not boycotting the fossil fuel industry. All of them still do substantial business with oil and gas companies, but in the long run, they say, moving away from fossil fuels makes economic sense. West Virginia, for example, is the second-largest coal-producing state in the country, but production has declined significantly during the past two decades.

“He’s trying to counter pressure that’s coming from progressives on the left,” said Loren Allen, general counsel of the West Virginia Bankers Association, which lobbied against the new law celebrated by Mr. Moore. “Our banks are tied up in the center of a battle that no one can really win.”

Mr. Kreifels declined an interview but said in a statement that concerns over issues like climate change were “putting politics over profits, and likely reducing shareholder value.”

Kentucky, Tennessee and Oklahoma have passed similar laws this year. “Kentucky joins our growing coalition of states that have taken concrete steps to push back against the woke capitalists who are trying to destroy our energy industries,” Mr. Moore said in a news release praising the moves by the states.

Republican lawmakers in more than a dozen other states, including New York, Oregon and Virginia, are trying to advance similar legislation.

The laws could cost taxpayers. A recent study found that Texas cities, where some financial institutions have voluntarily left the market because of laws targeting companies that embrace environmental, social and governance priorities, collectively known as E.S.G., are likely to incur up to $532 million in higher interest costs in less than a year because of the legislation.

“These officials are using the public finance market to make political statements,” said Daniel Garrett, a finance professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the authors of the study. “They can use these laws as a carrot or stick as they desire, but the costs can be potentially quite large.”

The treasurers are increasingly going after individual financial institutions.

In addition to the banks targeted by Mr. Moore, the treasurers of Utah and Idaho are criticizing plans by S&P Global, the ratings agency, to integrate climate risk into its credit ratings of states. And BlackRock, which manages some $8.5 trillion, has been the target of withering attacks for its stance on environmental issues.

Larry Fink, the BlackRock chief executive, has been outspoken in his desire to steer away from fossil fuels and toward what he considers a more sustainable, greener economy.

:{:{}:

“Every government, company, and shareholder must confront climate change,” Mr. Fink wrote in a public letter in 2020 in which he described the integration of climate risk into investment decisions as “a fundamental reshaping of finance.”

:{:{}:

In response, Mr. Moore’s office stopped using BlackRock to help manage West Virginia’s operating funds, withdrawing about $20 million.

:{:{}:

“Larry Fink has stated it very clearly that he thinks capitalism has the power to shape society,” Mr. Moore said. “But my state doesn’t want the same shape of society that Larry Fink does.”

:{:{}:

Other treasurers followed suit. In March, the Arkansas treasurer, Dennis Milligan, pulled $125 million from BlackRock. And in April, the treasurer of Louisiana, John Schroder, emailed Mr. Moore and Marlo Oaks, the Utah treasurer, and boasted about withdrawing more than $600 million from BlackRock accounts. Mr. Schroder said he had also blocked Citibank, Bank of America and JPMorgan from almost $1 billion in bond financing.

:{:{}:

“That’s excellent, John!!!” Mr. Moore replied, according to emails reviewed by The Times. “Great work!!!”

BlackRock declined to comment.

Mr. Milligan, the Arkansas treasurer, emailed a statement in which he said, “I feel a strong sense of responsibility to do my part in not allowing the liberal ‘woke’ agenda to disadvantage the very people I was elected to serve.” Mr. Schroder and Mr. Oaks declined requests for interviews.

Withdrawals by a few states represent a tiny slice of BlackRock’s business. But inside banks and investment firms, there is mounting concern that the state bans could spread to pension funds, which account for nearly $4 trillion in investments across the country.

“We already have a lot of divisions in this country,” said Noah Friend, the former general counsel for the Kentucky treasurer. “I don’t like the idea that if you’re a Republican you have to bank with this company and if you’re a Democrat you have to bank with that company. Everything becomes this politicized decision about who you do business with.”

‘A coordinated attack’

Julie Ellsworth, the Idaho treasurer, asked the State Financial Officers Foundation to distribute a memo that misrepresented the position of banks on environmental, social and governance issues.]

Behind the treasurers and the State Financial Officers Foundation is a complex web of conservative groups linked to the fossil fuel industry, as well as some of the biggest names on Wall Street.

In March, Julie Ellsworth, the Idaho treasurer, asked Mr. Kreifels to distribute a memo about the fossil fuel boycott bills to other state treasurers, according to the emails.

The memo had been prepared using research from the Heartland Institute, a think tank with a history of denying climate science, and it misrepresented how banks and other financial institutions were implementing their E.S.G. strategies.

“If you’re a small-business owner with a gasoline powered car, you’re eventually going to be phased out of banks’ portfolios, unless you switch to electric vehicles, of course,” the memo said in a section about how banks would use E.S.G. to force businesses to change. “Similarly, if you want to buy a house in the future that runs on natural gas, you, too, won’t be able to get a mortgage until you put solar panels on the roof.”

No banks have proposed such measures. Ms. Ellsworth declined to comment.

The Heartland Institute has also worked to amplify the treasurers’ message and connect them with influential conservative media personalities including Glenn Beck, records show.

Other groups supporting the treasurers’ efforts include the Heritage Foundation, a think tank that has long opposed action to combat climate change and that has received substantial funding from the oil billionaires Charles G. Koch and David H. Koch.

The State Financial Officers Foundation this year hired CRC Advisors, a conservative strategy firm that was founded by Leonard Leo, who has led a multiyear effort to stack federal courts with judges who oppose climate action. In recent months, CRC Advisors has helped coordinate media responses for treasurers, including Mr. Oaks of Utah, according to emails reviewed by The Times.

And the State Financial Officers Foundation shares many ties with the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, a conservative group with longstanding ties to the Koch brothers.

The American Legislative Exchange Council chief executive, Lisa Nelson, is on the State Financial Officers Foundation board, and ALEC’s chief economist, Jonathan Williams, is a senior policy adviser to the foundation.

Last July, the State Financial Officers Foundation hosted a conference in conjunction with ALEC, and the two groups have even shared blocks of discounted hotel rooms for their event. Mr. Moore and Mr. Kreifels were among the treasurers attending ALEC’s annual meeting in Atlanta last week.

“The State Financial Officers Foundation is a key node in a network of political groups waging a coordinated attack on climate policy,” said Jesse Coleman, a senior researcher at Documented, the watchdog organization that obtained the emails. The group is working “to weaponize state treasurers’ offices against federal appointees, regulations, and corporate policies that address climate change,” he said.

As a nonprofit organization, the State Financial Officers Foundation is not legally required to disclose its funders. A partial list of the organization’s financial supporters on its website shows that it gets funding from not only conservative groups but also from some of the biggest companies in the world, many of which say they are committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. They include JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, Visa, Mastercard, Fidelity, Federated Hermes and SAP — all of which have publicly embraced E.S.G. principles.

Most of the sponsors declined to comment, and many of their contributions were relatively small. In a statement, Beth Richek, a Wells Fargo spokeswoman, acknowledged the bank’s support for the group. “While we may not agree with every position they take, our mutual engagement is important for our company, employees, and customers,” she said.

Blocking federal appointees

Saule Omarova, President Biden’s first nominee to lead the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, withdrew after treasurers portrayed her as a “radical extremist.”Credit...Sarahbeth Maney/The New York Times]

Mr. Biden came to office with a vision: the entire federal government would be focused on reducing the country’s emissions, with new rules implemented across federal agencies staffed by political appointees who embraced the effort.

Among the obstacles Mr. Biden didn’t anticipate were the state treasurers.

:{:{}:

An early sign of turbulence came in May 2021, when 15 treasurers sent a letter to John Kerry, Mr. Biden’s climate envoy, raising concerns about what they said was the administration’s hostility toward the oil and gas industry.

:{:{}:

“Reckless attacks on the fossil fuel industry ultimately cut off paychecks for workers and take food off the table for hard-working middle-class families,” the letter read.

By the end of the year, the treasurers were publicly lobbying against a bevy of proposed rules and nominees.

:{:{}:

Among their first targets was Saule Omarova, Mr. Biden’s nominee for comptroller of the currency. Ms. Omarova was heavily criticized by Republican senators, some moderate Democrats and the banking industry for her desire to limit speculative trading by banks and to open the Federal Reserve to retail banking.

:{:{}:

But she drew the ire of the treasurers for saying that if fossil fuel companies went bankrupt it would help fight climate change. The State Financial Officers Foundation issued a letter signed by more than 20 financial officers calling her a “radical extremist.”

When Ms. Omarova withdrew her nomination in December, Mr. Kreifels sent an email to the treasurers congratulating them. “It’s an honor to work along side you all,” he said in an email titled “VICTORY!”

:{:{}:

Two months later, the treasurers focused on another nominee: Sarah Bloom Raskin, whom Mr. Biden had nominated to be the Federal Reserve’s head of bank oversight. Ms. Raskin, a former Federal Reserve and Treasury official, has argued that financial regulators should police climate risks more diligently.

Mr. Kreifels urged the treasurers to speak out against Ms. Raskin, describing her as an “anti-energy climate change alarmist.”

In emails to state treasurers, the foundation provided draft tweets and other messaging strategies. “We must make as much noise about this as possible,” Mr. Kreifels wrote. “Make this THE ‘kitchen table’ issue in your state for the week.”

Like Ms. Omarova, Ms. Raskin withdrew her nomination. “Sarah was subject to baseless attacks from industry and conservative interest groups,” Mr. Biden said in a statement.

The treasurers have also set their sights on new federal rules and regulations intended to strengthen the government’s ability to act on climate change.

Late last year, the State Financial Officers Foundation worked with the Heritage Foundation to respond to proposals from the Financial Stability Oversight Council, a government panel assigned to minimize risk in the financial sector, on ways to reduce the threats posed by climate change, records show.

And soon after that, Mr. Oaks, the Utah treasurer, drafted a letter opposing a potential Department of Labor rule that would allow retirement plans to consider risks from global warming in their investment strategy. Mr. Kreifels distributed the draft to the foundation’s members, and more than a dozen treasurers signed the final letter. The Department of Labor has not decided whether to implement the rule.

This year, the treasurers targeted the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. After the agency proposed a rule to require banks to consider climate-related financial risk, executives from the Heritage Foundation sent Mr. Kreifels and Mr. Oaks a memo outlining their opposition. Within weeks, dozens of state treasurers and attorneys general from Republican-led states submitted comments objecting to the proposed rule.

“This special concern for and attention to climate-related risks is irrational,” one comment read.

And in May, Mr. Kreifels organized a call with the treasurers to discuss regulations proposed by the Securities and Exchange Commission that would require companies to publicly disclose climate risks to investors. The featured guest was a representative from the American Petroleum Institute, the lobbying arm of the fossil fuel industry.

:{:{}:

The next month, the State Financial Officers Foundation sent a 20-page letter signed by more than a dozen treasurers, calling the S.E.C.’s proposed rule, which has not yet been enacted, “irrational climate exceptionalism, elevating climate issues to a place of prominence in disclosures that they do not deserve.”

===

SEE AMICUS

kickass yale law

:{:{...}:

:{:{}:

B. Donors Funding Amici and Litigants in the Same Case

:{:{}:

:{:{Thanks to the work of investigative reporters, in recent years we have been}:

able to observe the rise in high-profile, politically charged cases that are financed

directly by ideological foundations.113 Often the same foundations that fund the

litigation also exploit the courts’ lenient amicus-funding-disclosure rules to

anonymously fund flotillas of amicus briefs that support their preferred out-

comes.}:

:{:{}:

:{:{For example, in the orchestrated challenge to union agency-shop fees first}:

initiated in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association,:{:{114}::{ }::{one organization bank-}:

rolled not only the nonprofit law firm bringing the case, but also eleven different

organizations that filed amicus briefs supporting the plaintiffs.115 That organi-

zation was the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation—a conservative organiza-}:

tion that has long sought to weaken labor rights, including by financing impact

litigation.116 If the disclosure rule were operating to its intended effect, the Court

and parties would have been made aware of that funding. Yet none of those ami-

cus filers disclosed the Bradley Foundation as a source of its funding for the brief

under Rule 37.6, and none of those briefs were rejected by the Court for lack of

disclosure.}:

:{:{:{}:

}:}:

:{:{The Bradley Foundation’s coordinated and undisclosed funding of the liti-}:

gants and amici in Friedrichs was not a one-off. In Janus v. AFSCME, the follow-

up to Friedrichs, investigative reporters found that the Bradley Foundation again}:

...

:{:{}:

163

:{:{funded both of the two groups representing the plaintiffs, as well as a dozen}:

groups that filed amicus briefs.117 Similarly, the two groups representing the Ja-

nus plaintiffs, plus thirteen amicus filers, all received funding from Donors Trust,

mentioned above.118

}:}:

:{:{}:

None of this common funding was disclosed to the Court.

:{:{}:

:{:{:{Finally, in}::{ }::{Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau}::{, eleven amici}:

aligned with the petitioner Seila Law received financial support from the same

entities, which also fund the Federalist Society.119 The Center for Media and De-

mocracy subsequently found that “16 right-wing foundations,” including the

Bradley Foundation and DonorsTrust, “have donated a total of nearly $69 mil-

lion to 11 groups that filed amicus briefs in favor of scrapping the CFPB.”120 None

of this information was disclosed to the Court under its current reading of the

Rule.}:}:

:{:{}:

C. Donors Anonymously Orchestrating Amicus “Projects”

:{:{}:

:{:{Recently released documents reveal how donors like the Bradley Foundation}:

use tax-exempt money to coordinate amicus “projects,” in which they influence

court results by funding an array of groups in the same legal network as the Fed-

:{eralist Society, as presumably occurred in Seila Law.121 :{}:

}:}:

:{:{}:

:{:{:{In 2015, a representative}:

:{of the:{ Bradley Foundation emailed Leonard Leo, then Executive Vice President}::{}:

of the Federalist Society, to ask if there was “a 501(c)(3) nonprofit to which Brad-

ley could direct any support of the two Supreme Court amicus projects other

}:than Donors Trust.”122 Leo replied, “Yes, Judicial Education Project could take

and allocate.”123 In turn, Judicial Education Project (JEP), a 501(c)(3) tax-ex-

empt organization that does not disclose its donors, submitted a grant proposal

to Bradley seeking $200,000 to coordinate and develop amicus briefs in two po-

litically charged (but otherwise completely unrelated) cases: the aforementioned}:}:

...

:{:{}:

164

Friedrichs and King v. Burwell,124 a challenge to the Affordable Care Act. The

Bradley Foundation estimated that “each of the two amicus-brief efforts costs

approximately $250,000, for a total of $500,000,” and the Bradley staff recom-

mended a $150,000 grant be given to JEP to support this work.125 The Bradley

staffer explained the strategy behind this investment as follows:}:

:{:{}:

:{:{At this highest of legal levels, it is often very important to orchestrate}:

high-caliber amicus efforts that showcase respected high-profile parties

who are represented by the very best lawyers with strong ties to the

Court. Such is the case here, with King and Friedrichs, even given Bradley’s

previous philanthropic investments in the actual, underlying legal actions.126

In King and Friedrichs, none of the amici supporting the Bradley-funded litigants

disclosed their Bradley Foundation funding under Rule 37.6—or any of their

funding sources for that matter. This nondisclosure resulted from interpreting

the Rule narrowly to require disclosure only of funds intended to cover the costs

of formatting, printing, and delivering the briefs.127}:

:{:{....}:

===

https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/clarence-thomas/

U.S, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has a business relationship with Leonard Leo, a co-chairman of the board of the right-wing Federalist Society, which was responsible for “vetting” and effectively installing then-President Donald Trump’s judicial nominees.

“Right-wing judicial activist Leonard Leo has been exerting influence over the Supreme Court for three decades,” reports The Daily Beast‘s Roger Sollenberger. “So why is Clarence Thomas hiring Leo’s firm to do public relations?”

Justice Thomas is promoting a new release of his 2007 memoir and has hired Leonard Leo’s PR firm, CRC Advisors, to promote the book. The Daily Beast adds Leo “was also tasked with promoting a Thomas documentary, and the firm was the registered agent for four Thomas-centric web domains.”

Sollenberger reports that the “revelations of Leo and Thomas’ business relationship offers new evidence of ties between a sitting justice and a man widely considered the most powerful conservative judicial activist in the country. And while it might not be an instantly damning smoking gun, experts say the connection—where Thomas stands to gain financially—raises further questions about the arch-conservative justice’s deep and shady ties to a sprawling network of dark money organizations and right-wing activist groups, many of which have business before him.”

Leonard Leo has also “raised hundreds of millions of dollars over the three decades on behalf of right-wing dark money groups to influence the federal judiciary and Supreme Court. He advised and persuaded Republican presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump in their appointments of Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, and Chief Justice John Roberts—and prepped Justice Thomas for his nomination hearings.”

The Federalist Society, which Leo ran for years, was founded in 1982. Antonin Scalia, Robert Bork, and Ted Olson were there at the beginning. It has reshaped America’s courts and laws, especially under Donald Trump.

U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) in a 2019 speech on the floor of the Senate noted that “nearly 90% of Trump’s appellate judges, and both his Supreme Court justices, are members of the so-called Federalist Society. On the Supreme Court, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, Alito, Thomas—all are members. Now that’s a little weird. What’s really weird is that through this Federalist Society vehicle, big special interests are picking federal judges.”

Read the full Daily Beast article here, read Sen. Whitehouse’s full speech here, and watch him again go after the Federalist Society in a 2020 Senate hearing here.

---

ref1

https://www.thedailybeast.com/supreme-court-justice-clarence-thomas-strange-pick-to-promote-his-book-says-it-all?ref=home

best no lnx Trumpland

Clarence Thomas’ Strange Pick to Promote His Book Says It All

Amicus Curiae

Right-wing judicial activist Leonard Leo has been exerting influence over the Supreme Court for three decades. So why is Clarence Thomas hiring Leo’s firm to do public relations?

Roger Sollenberger

Political Reporter

Published Mar. 08, 2022

When Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was promoting a new release of his 2007 memoir last October, he made an interesting choice for his public relations firm, a company run by one of the most influential figures in conservative legal circles: Leonard Leo.

Leo, the former head of the Federalist Society and a top fundraiser for right-wing judiciary activist groups, wasn’t just in charge of Thomas’ memoir; Leo’s PR firm, CRC Advisors, was also tasked with promoting a Thomas documentary, and the firm was the registered agent for four Thomas-centric web domains.

The interesting part of this choice is not that Leo’s firm was incapable of handling the work—far from it. What makes Thomas’ decision notable is that Leo happens to have a vested interest in the Supreme Court, and his dark money network actively tries to influence rulings.

The revelations of Leo and Thomas’ business relationship offers new evidence of ties between a sitting justice and a man widely considered the most powerful conservative judicial activist in the country. And while it might not be an instantly damning smoking gun, experts say the connection—where Thomas stands to gain financially—raises further questions about the arch-conservative justice’s deep and shady ties to a sprawling network of dark money organizations and right-wing activist groups, many of which have business before him.

The news also comes at a time of dwindling public faith in the Supreme Court’s impartiality. That faith hit an all-time low last September, the month before the audiobook’s press release.

Paul Collins, professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and author of several books about the high court, called Thomas’ specific choice of Leo’s firm, of all available options, “strange” and “unnecessary.”

“It signals that this world of the Federalist Society is even smaller than we thought,” Collins told The Daily Beast.

That world was already thought to be miniscule, with Leo’s hand seemingly never far from the court’s affairs.

The foremost of a tight cadre of hyperconservative legal activists, Leo has raised hundreds of millions of dollars over the three decades on behalf of right-wing dark money groups to influence the federal judiciary and Supreme Court. He advised and persuaded Republican presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump in their appointments of Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, and Chief Justice John Roberts—and prepped Justice Thomas for his nomination hearings.

Leo is also the hub of a network of dark money groups which routinely, and anonymously, fund and join arguments before the Supreme Court—bankrolling what researchers have called an “amicus flotilla.”

His network has most recently taken the shape of a sprawling legal effort focused on influencing election administration, including misleading allegations of impropriety. The Federalist Society, the legal activist group synonymous with Leo, has been called “the single most influential advocacy organization in Washington.”

But Leo’s affiliations with the court are especially heightened when it comes to Justice Thomas.

Leo made Thomas the godfather of one of his children, and, according to The New York Times, has hosted the justice on vacation at his New England getaway. Thomas’ wife, Ginni Thomas, was also the subject of a recent profile by the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer, titled, “Is Ginni Thomas a Threat to The Supreme Court?” It detailed the staggering extent and depth of connections between the justice’s wife and conservative groups.

Some of those organizations are tied with Leo, and, as Mayer reported, many have matters before the court. At least one of them has tapped CRC to handle its public relations.

Leo, whom Ginni Thomas considers a mentor, joined CRC Advisors in 2020, after stepping down from his position as vice president of the Federalist Society. (He still co-chairs the board.) Leo told Axios at the time that CRC planned to pump a “minimum of $10 million” into judicial advocacy issues ahead of the 2020 election.

“Leo and his CRC Advisors form the head of a many-legged dark-money operation designed to deliver on the priorities of right-wing donor interests.”

— Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)

Neither CRC Advisors nor the Supreme Court replied to a request for comment.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), a progressive who has long called for clarity about dark money influence on the judiciary, said Leo’s group, in running public relations for Thomas, appears to be trying to clean up after its own damage.

“Leo and his CRC Advisors form the head of a many-legged dark-money operation designed to deliver on the priorities of right-wing donor interests,” Whitehouse told The Daily Beast. “That operation spent hundreds of millions of dollars—if not more—to capture the Supreme Court. Now, it’s trying to prop up its right-wing justices’ credibility in the face of growing public frustration with what Justice Sotomayor calls the ‘stench’ of partisanship emanating from the Court.”

CRC’s press announcement for the Thomas memoir—My Grandfather’s Son—promotes a new release in audiobook and Kindle formats. It also quotes two conservative activists, and informs media that they can contact a CRC Advisors official if they want to land an interview with either of them.

One of the officials, Mark Paoletta, worked on Justice Thomas’ nomination; the other, Carrie Severino, clerked for him and currently runs the Judicial Crisis Network, a conservative group linked to Leo which has poured millions into influencing judicial nominations.

CRC Advisors was also chosen to promote the critically panned Thomas documentary, Created Equal, which Variety called “a two-hour infomercial for the decency, the competence, and the conservative role-model aspirationalism of Clarence Thomas.”

(CNBC reported that the documentary’s producer—a Trump appointee—had tapped donations to his nonprofit to help fund his private production company.)

CRC has also registered several web domains related to Justice Thomas, including “clarencethomas.org,” “clarencethomas.us,” “justicethomas.us,” and “theanitahillcase.com,” a reference to the credible sexual harassment allegations that marked Thomas’ bitter nomination hearings in 1991.

The relationship carries the further context of Leo’s activism, fundraising, and connection to cases before the court. This extends not just to the Federalist Society, but to CRC itself, which within months of promoting the memoir published multiple press releases about attempts to influence Supreme Court cases, including a petition to knock down the vaccine mandate.

Collins, the UMASS professor, noted that, after the fraught nominations of Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, the public has been particularly sensitive to ethical concerns.

“Many people, including the Chief Justice, are worried about the legitimacy of the Supreme Court in the eyes of the American public,” Collins said, referencing Chief Justice John Roberts’s annual report last year, where Roberts took the unusual step of admonishing federal judges for ethical breaches, writing that, “We expect judges to adhere to the highest standards.”

“The continued exposure of real or potential conflicts of interest could be problematic for the court, especially when we see ties like this between a justice and the Federalist Society, which plays such a large role in the legal world,” Collins said.

Stephen Gillers, an expert on legal ethics at New York University School of Law, said that while the connection between Leo, CRC, and Thomas bears reporting, it doesn’t hit an official ethical bar—partly, he said, because the bar is so much higher for Supreme Court justices than for any other federal judge.

“The ethics rules governing justices are much narrower than the rules governing other federal judges. So on the question of disqualification, in this case it’s too attenuated, as this case doesn’t suggest that those rules have been violated,” Gillers explained, noting that “Ginni Thomas is a class by itself; nothing comes close to the harm that does to our courts.”

On the issue of CRC, Gillers said, “There’s a difference between whether something is newsworthy, and whether it crosses a legal line. This instance is newsworthy, but it doesn’t cross a line.”

“Thomas of course has a right to hire a PR firm to sell his book and get attention to it. Now, it may appear to many people as unseemly, but that’s not a legal question,” Gillers said. “In my view, justices should not act in a way that casts suspicion on the court just because they can.”

Artemus Ward, a professor of political science at Northern Illinois University who has written extensively on the politics of the Supreme Court, said that the matter could raise political problems for Thomas.

Ward pointed to a 1960s conservative campaign to force the resignation of Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas, a liberal justice “got hounded out by conservatives because of some alleged ethical breaches regarding his finances, such as receiving speakers fees.”

“It was never fully clear just what the money was or whether he had crossed ethical lines, but conservatives held hearings to drum him out of office because they saw him as a liberal crony,” he said. “The question with Thomas is whether the endgame for Democrats is to hound him out of office before he’s ready to go.”

2022 The Daily Beast Company LLC

===

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/supreme-court-dobbs/

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my recap of Thursday’s January 6 hearing, headlined “The Fascist Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight,” went up minutes before the Supreme Court’s six-member Christianist majority struck down the constitutional right to abortion on Friday morning. I winced a little when I saw it on our site, because it suddenly seemed so wrong: When it comes to using the high court to impose minority rule, this fascist gang has been able to shoot very straight—and it will be very deadly.

The ludicrous and corrupt Donald Trump secured the Republican presidential nomination in May 2016, when he produced the names of conservative lawyers and judges he said were on his list of potential Supreme Court nominees. The group was “representative of the kind of constitutional principles I value and, as president, I plan to use this list as a guide to nominate our next United States Supreme Court justices.” The names seemed to come straight from the notebook of right-wing Federalist Society leader Leonard Leo. Trump’s campaign released the list, The New York Times reported the same day, “as part of an effort to quell concerns that he would not select conservative jurists.”

Those concerns were obviously misguided. Thanks to Trump’s three appointees, states can outlaw abortion, but are severely restricted in what limits they can place on gun owners. The January 6 coup attempt failed? Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell will be bragging about his judicial coup in hell.

Legal scholars are parsing the awful impact of Friday’s decision. At least 26 states seem poised to severely restrict, if not ban, abortion. (Read whatever my colleague Elie Mystal writes about this.) Right now, I am interested in the way women are internalizing this terrible news. We knew it was coming in early May: Why are we devastated today? A friend compared it to when a loved one has a terminal illness—you think you’re prepared, but you can’t prepare for it.

Personally, I marvel at my impulse to immediately feel stupid about my January 6 hearing reporting. Hey, it was a good piece, and I wish more people had the time to read it before getting their rights stripped away! I also confess: I feel deeply stupid that part of me had been thinking: Maybe Chief Justice John Roberts was taking the weeks since the draft Roe opinion was leaked to Politico to pull another justice over to his side in the case, maybe to uphold Mississippi’s 15-week abortion law but not totally upend a 50-year precedent? Maybe even beer-loving, women’s-rights hating Brett Kavanaugh? Boy was I wrong. Roberts, of course, concurred.

But I’m not as stupid as Senators Susan Collins or Joe Manchin, both of whom released statements widely mocked on Twitter, expressing their dismay that Kavanaugh and the other Trump appointees, Neil Gorsuch (sorry, Merrick Garland) and Amy Coney Barrett, essentially lied during confirmation hearings about whether they intended to join a majority—a gang, so to speak—to overturn Roe.

“We have seen special-interest groups whip their followers into a frenzy by spreading misrepresentations and outright falsehoods about Judge Kavanaugh’s judicial record,” Collins told reporters at the time. As Laura Bassett reports (I can’t believe I don’t remember this), Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse literally called us “hysterical.”

I also didn’t completely remember—I guess it wasn’t “indelible in the hippocampus”—Kavanaugh’s incoherent reply to questions about overturning Roe. He called it

important precedent of the Supreme Court that has been reaffirmed many times. But then—and this is the point that I want to make that I think is important—Planned Parenthood v. Casey reaffirmed Roe and did so by considering the stare decisis factors. So Casey now becomes a precedent on precedent. It is not as if it is just a run-of-the-mill case that was decided and never been reconsidered, but Casey specifically reconsidered it, applied the stare decisis factors, and decided to reaffirm it. That makes Casey a precedent on precedent.

Precedent on precedent. That’s impressive. Or not.

I already wrote about what a gut punch it was when Justice Samuel Alito’s draft ruling was leaked. I only wish I were in Washington, D.C., to join the many people protesting the court’s decision today. And I wish I felt more optimistic that this will propel the country’s silenced majority to vote in November. I’ll be on the lookout for signs of that, but I can’t promise it right now. I don’t want to be wrong again.

Joan WalshTWITTERJoan Walsh, a national affairs correspondent for The Nation, is the author of What’s the Matter With White People? Finding Our Way in the Next America.

===

https://www.npr.org/2022/06/30/1108351562/roe-abortion-supreme-court-scotus-law

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one man's outsized role in shaping the Supreme Court and overturning Roe

June 30, 2022

Jonaki Mehta

Courtney Dorning

COURTNEY DORNING

The Federalist Society's Leonard Leo speaks to media at Trump Tower in 2016.]

Last Friday morning, life in America changed dramatically when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned half a century of the federal right to an abortion.

Most Americans support abortion rights, but a dedicated minority of conservative activists has been working for decades to dismantle Roe v. Wade, and one man in particular has played an outsized role in that effort: Leonard Leo.

Leo leads the conservative legal organization the Federalist Society, through which he has spent the majority of his adult life getting conservatives appointed to the most powerful courts in this country, including the Supreme Court.

"No one has been more dedicated to the enterprise of building a Supreme Court that will overturn Roe v. Wade than the Federalist Society's Leonard Leo," conservative writer and lawyer Ed Whelan wrote in the National Review.

To truly understand how we got to this moment and how Leo grew to have so much personal influence over who now sits on the nation's highest court, you must first know about "the list."

The list

Former President Donald Trump was quick to take credit for the demise of Roe v. Wade on Friday.

In a statement released hours after the Supreme Court decision, he said it was only possible because he "delivered everything as promised, including nominating and getting three highly respected and strong constitutionalists confirmed to the United States Supreme Court."

Those three justices were Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — all of whom voted to overturn Roe. And all of whom were, at some point, on a much publicized list of potential SCOTUS nominees that Trump publicly shared.

A list that was personally curated by Leo.

PROFILE

Who is Leonard Leo?

What began with 11 names continued to grow and change throughout Trump's 2016 campaign and eventual presidency. The list helped Trump sway skeptical conservative voters who were unsure if he would represent their beliefs in office — especially anti-abortion beliefs, said Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus, who has written about the Federalist Society and Leo in her book, Supreme Ambition: Brett Kavanaugh and the Conservative Takeover.

"It was a way of saying to conservative and evangelical voters, 'See, I'm one of you,'" she said.

It was also part of Leo and the Federalist Society's ongoing plan to change the makeup of the court.

"The Federalist Society is a one-stop shopping network for identifying, helping promote, credentialing, and supporting conservative lawyers. And in the end, turning them into conservative judicial nominees, and then conservative judges," Marcus said.

Leonard Leo welcomes Supreme Court Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch for a speech at the Federalist Society's 2017 National Lawyers Convention in 2017.]

The Federalist Society's core beliefs lie in the ideas of textualism and originalism.

In a 2018 interview, Leo told NPR: "A judge should interpret the laws as it's written; should apply the original meaning of the Constitution."

According to Marcus, Leo's judicial conservatism is deeply rooted in his Catholic faith.

:{:{}:

"It seems entirely clear that his personal religious convictions against abortion, believing that it's the taking of a human life, are entirely consistent with, and aligned with, and mutually supported by, his vision of constitutional interpretation," Marcus said.

Wielding power

The overturning of Roe v. Wade is the result of a long game that has made Leo one of the most important gatekeepers to the federal bench for ambitious conservative lawyers.

Marcus said conservatives seeking powerful judicial appointments have long known that Leo was "the man to see."

"When Brett Kavanaugh's clerks were trying to make sure he got on Donald Trump's list to be on the Supreme Court, they made a pilgrimage to the Federalist Society to see Leonard Leo ... to kiss the ring," she said.

That kind of influence and power in Washington rarely comes without a whole lot of money, which Leo has had a central role in raising for judicial nominees.

Leonard Leo (left) watches as then-President George W. Bush speaks at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in 2007.

In recent years, confirmation proceedings have begun to resemble expensive political campaigns, often funded by a complex network of anonymous donors. And Leo is particularly skilled at drawing those kinds of donors to his cause. Marcus said Leo had "a singular knack for coaxing huge checks, some as large as eight figures, out of billionaire donors."

In an interview with The Washington Post, Leo said: "Let's remember that in this country, the abolitionist movement, the women's suffrage movement, the American Revolution, the early labor movement, the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s were all very much fueled by very wealthy people, and oftentimes wealthy people who chose to be anonymous. I think that's not a bad thing. I think that's a good thing."

A Washington Post analysis found Leo and his allies raised $250 million between 2014 and 2017 from undisclosed donors. And a chunk of that money has gone directly to campaigns to drum up support for judicial confirmations — campaigns that include commercials like this one.

JCN via YouTube

Democrats like Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, strongly believe that anonymous donors should not have a role in shaping the federal judiciary.

"It has created a captured court that makes decisions based on who they want to win," Whitehouse said, likening the conservative strategy to shape the federal courts to "the mischief associated with 19th century railroad commissions and other administrative bodies that get taken over by special interests and suffer regulatory capture."

Others disagree.

Ron Bonjean, who was a communications strategist during Neil Gorsuch's Supreme Court confirmation process, calls Whitehouse's view "a partisan criticism of the fact that Republicans are able to confirm Supreme Court justices."

"The Democrats have their own political levers and political organizations that they stand up and that they fund billions of dollars to to try to define nominees just as well as we try to," Bonjean said.

Since the Supreme Court decision came down last Friday, the clashing of emotions in this country has been palpable. We asked Leo for an interview in the weeks leading up to the decision, but he never agreed to one.

Marcus said this moment was the culmination of decades of effort.

Leonard Leo speaks at the 2017 National Lawyers Convention in Washington, D.C.

"This is a moment that Leonard Leo has been working towards hard and diligently and fervently because he's a true believer," she said. "The right to abortion, I know he believes, is not in the Constitution. The practice of abortion, I know he sincerely believes, is the taking of a human life. And if this is what you've dedicated yourself to for the last 30 or 40 years, imagine what this moment feels like to you — it's a moment that feels like victory."

Leo has never said his work to mold the federal judiciary was about overturning Roe v. Wade — he has maintained that it was about his commitment to upholding the U.S. Constitution. But it is clear that his dogged efforts to transform a recently liberal-leaning Supreme Court into a conservative-majority apparatus has resulted in just that.

===

https://news.yahoo.com/attorneys-remade-supreme-court-now-110017179.html

no lnx many

lawyers for Trump: These lawyers remade the Supreme Court. Now they're fighting to limit voting.

Lisa Riordan Seville and Sally Bronston

November 1, 2020·

Way back in February, before the pandemic, the lockdowns and the epic lines at polling places, election officials in the battleground state of Michigan got a letter. It said voter registration in 19 counties was "abnormally" high, indicating that they weren't maintaining their rolls.

"Michigan's failure to provide accurate voter rolls violates federal law [and] jeopardizes the integrity of the upcoming 2020 federal election," the letter warned. If officials didn't clean up rolls "bloated with ineligible voters," they'd be taken to court.

:{:{The group spearheading the letters, called the Honest Elections Project, describes its mission as a nonpartisan effort to fight fraud, protect every American's right to vote and instill faith in the electoral process.}:

"Elections should be above the political fray," Executive Director Jason Snead told NBC News. "We're talking about elections from a point of principles, not politics."}:

Behind Snead's group, however, is a network that includes some of Washington's most powerful conservative figures, with close ties to the Republican Party and the Trump administration. Hundreds of pages of financial records and other documents, some not previously reported, lead back to Leonard Leo, an adviser to President Donald Trump and former executive vice president of the influential conservative legal group known as the Federalist Society.

Although he doesn't hold public office, Leo has spent three decades helping to shift the American judiciary, including the Supreme Court, to the right. Now his network, backed by millions of dollars in untraceable "dark money," is working to reshape the American vote.

Alongside lawyers who also work for the Republican National Committee, Leo and his team during this election cycle have teed up lawsuits about voter rolls, run ads and filed court briefs to support litigation against mail-in voting. Leo is also on the advisory board of Lawyers for Trump, which is recruiting a battalion of lawyers ready to go to court in the wake of the election.

Whatever the outcome of the race, some see Leo's efforts as part of a longer-term strategy by conservatives to hold onto power in the face of demographic shifts that aren't going their way.

"It's a small circle of Republican advisers and donors who are all wrapped up in the same project," said David Daley, the author of "Ratf**ked," a book about gerrymandering, and a senior fellow at FairVote, which advocates for electoral reform. "The project is using redistricting, voting rights and the courts to ensure long-term Republican power."

:{:{Since 1988, Republicans have won the popular vote in a presidential election just once, in 2004. In March, Trump said on Fox & Friends that if the $3.6 billion congressional Democrats had requested to support elections during the pandemic had been approved, "you'd never have a Republican elected in this country again."}:

"The president always says the quiet part out loud," said Sarah Longwell, a veteran Republican political strategist who broke with the party to co-found Republican Voters Against Trump.}:

Longwell pushes back against the idea touted by some liberals that the GOP has been engaged in a long-term effort to disenfranchise voters.

She spent years in Republican circles, she said, and "never heard anybody talk about suppressing the vote." But in this cycle, she said, "the lengths a lot of the Republicans are going to affect voting, those to me do look suppressive. Nakedly suppressive."

'Bloated' voter rolls

In June, the Honest Elections Project made good on its threat over voter rolls, joining a local conservative activist to file suit in Michigan. Trump won the state by just 12,000 votes in 2016, the thinnest margin in the country.

Michigan's Democratic secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, who is fighting the lawsuit, rejects the characterization of state rolls as "abnormally" high. A spokesperson for her office said the project's methodology, which compares current voter registrations to slightly older population estimates, "misleads the public and misunderstands our nation's laws."

"The goal is 100 percent voter registration, and any suggestion otherwise is antithetical to democracy," the spokesperson said. "Michigan's registration rates are strong because we have had one of the best motor-voter systems in the country."

Snead rejected claims that the suit seeks to suppress the vote, pointing out that Michigan now allows same-day voter registration.

"I would strongly object to the notion that we're trying to stop people from voting when we're talking about cleaning up voter rolls," Snead said. "What we're talking about should be no more controversial than throwing out a spoiled container of yogurt."

Michigan is among at least six swing states that have faced litigation this year over their voter rolls from conservative groups who said keeping voter rolls "clean" protects against election fraud. Voting rights advocates describe them as "purges" that disenfranchise low-income, minority and young voters, who tend both to move more and to vote Democratic.

In a statement, the Trump campaign's deputy national press secretary, Thea McDonald, said: "President Trump has clearly and consistently advocated for stable, understandable rules that will give every American faith in the election's results.

"Democrats have duped the mainstream media into advocating for states to ignore the fact that their voter rolls are inaccurate and outdated," McDonald said, "so that there are tens of thousands unclaimed ballots out there for harvesters to snatch and illegally cast, diluting the will of every eligible voter."

The rolls should be kept up to date, experts said, but officials need to weigh the risk of fraud against that of disenfranchisement.

"There's very, very little evidence of voter fraud based upon voter rolls," said Paul Rosenzweig, a security expert and senior fellow at the R Street Institute, a right-leaning think tank. "There's a lot of evidence that purging voter rolls ends up purging legitimate voters."

Claims of widespread voter fraud have been largely debunked by experts, including Trump's own commission. The organization perhaps best known for asserting them is the Heritage Foundation, whose voter fraud database Snead managed before he moved to the Honest Elections Project. Last year, he was also in Heritage's private election fraud briefing with Republican secretaries of state and active members of the Justice Department, as ProPublica first reported.

While Snead insists that his organization doesn't fight for either party, the lawyers working with him are also leading the Republicans' legal battle over rules for the 2020 contest.

:{:{}:

William S. Consovoy, a former clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, is the head of a boutique Washington, D.C., law firm whose clients include the Republican National Committee and the Trump campaign. His firm has been paid $2 million this year for legal work on behalf of the Republican National Committee and the campaign, according to election filings, which included litigation against mail-in voting in Wisconsin. He is also one of Trump's private attorneys.}:

Before helping Trump with his fight to keep his financial records secret, Consovoy was on the winning side of the Supreme Court case that gutted a key section of the Voting Rights Act, which had prevented areas with histories of racial discrimination from changing their voting rules without federal approval.

Jason Torchinsky, listed as a plaintiff's counsel on the Michigan lawsuit with Consovoy, is a well-known lawyer for conservative dark money groups, including several linked to Leo. He has also represented the Republican National Committee in the past, and he is general counsel for the National Republican Redistricting Trust, the GOP group gearing up to do battle over redrawing state legislative and House district maps in 2021. In September, he represented Pennsylvania's GOP state senators in their unsuccessful Supreme Court petition to block the state's counting of late mail-in ballots.

Further behind the scenes is Leo. A dapper Washington figure who wears distinctive round glasses, he has played a role in placing every one of the six conservative justices on the Supreme Court. In 1991, two years out of law school, he helped prep Thomas for his confirmation hearings.

This year, Leo's network helped to push the confirmation of the court's newest member, Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died Sept. 18, creating a vacancy. Leo's network immediately pledged to spend millions to advocate for Trump's right to fill the vacancy before the election.

The White House said in a statement that Barrett and Leo didn't speak "after the vacancy arose."

"As President Trump has said, he has no more solemn obligation and no greater honor than to appoint Supreme Court Justices and, as such, it was his decision alone to nominate this well-qualified jurist," White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere said.

Should the election go to the high court, as many think it will, the justices Leo helped to seat will decide it.

Soft power

Leo's influence came from his position at the top of the Federalist Society, which he was instrumental in building. Thirty years ago, the organization was a scrappy island for conservatives in what they viewed as a sea of left-leaning legal institutions. Today, its 70,000 members range from law school students and leading legal scholars to Supreme Court justices and Trump's personal attorneys.

The Federalist Society doesn't litigate or take policy positions. It doesn't have to, because its members have come to occupy positions of power across the legal landscape, said Steven Teles, a political science professor at Johns Hopkins University who wrote a book about the conservative legal movement.

"That's where a lot of the power comes from," he said. "It can coordinate, even in an informal way, across boundaries that government often tends to stovepipe."

Leo moved smoothly across those borders. When a seat on the Supreme Court opened up under a Republican president, he'd take leave from the Federalist Society to organize "the outside coalition efforts," as he did with the confirmations of Justice Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts.

Until recently, he worked largely "behind the scenes," said Amanda Hollis-Brusky, an associate professor of politics at Pomona College in Claremont, California, and the author of a book about the Federalist Society. "Leo's influence really hasn't been fully felt until the Trump administration."

It began during the 2016 campaign, after the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia that February.

Don McGahn, a longtime Federalist Society member who served as the Trump campaign's counsel and would become the White House counsel, realized early that the judiciary could help rally a fractured Republican Party behind a controversial candidate. He pulled together a tight team to talk with Trump about who should fill Scalia's seat.

In March 2016, Leo had a quiet meeting with Trump at McGahn's D.C. law firm, Jones Day. Soon after, the Trump campaign did something unheard of: It released a list of potential Supreme Court nominees, a signal to conservatives that he would do right by them with the judiciary.

"It ended up being the single biggest issue that brought Republicans home to someone they were largely troubled by," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told The New York Times.

Leo has always insisted that his mission is intellectual.

"I'm engaged in the battle of ideas, and I care very deeply about our Constitution and the role of courts in our society," Leo told The Washington Post in the paper's investigation into his work. "And I don't waste my time on stories that involve money and politics."

But money and politics have been crucial to his success.

The network

Not long after Trump's victory, Leo stood in the gilded lobby of Trump Tower after a meeting with the president-elect.

Beside him was Kellyanne Conway, Trump's campaign manager and counselor. Leo and Conway knew each other well. Her husband, George, was a longtime Federalist Society member; he has since become one of the right's most ardent "Never Trumpers." And according to ethics filings, in the year before she joined the administration, she did consulting work for at least seven companies and nonprofits with close ties to Leo.

In addition to Leo's role at the Federalist Society, where tax filings show he made about $400,000 a year, he was involved in a constellation of nonprofits and companies supporting conservative causes, fueled by tens of millions of dollars of largely untraceable cash.

For years, Leo's presence in this tangled web "was visible, but it wasn't official," said Anna Massoglia, a researcher at the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, who first wrote about Leo's connection to the Honest Elections Project. "He's been effectively leaving breadcrumbs all over. It's just a matter of finding them and putting it together."

One of the most prominent of the interconnected groups was the Judicial Crisis Network, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit that has been the public relations machine supporting the nomination of conservative, originalist judges to the country's courts. The group has an office in the same building as the Federalist Society.

:{:{After Scalia died, the Judicial Crisis Network kicked into gear. Its $7 million campaign helped block President Barack Obama's nominee, keeping Scalia's seat open for the next president to fill.}:

In January 2017, the group announced that it would spend $10 million to back Trump's pick, who was soon revealed as Neil Gorsuch. Working with the Judicial Crisis Network were several figures who are now official partners in Leo's consolidated dark money network.}:

There was Greg Mueller, the head of powerful CRC Public Relations, who ran point, according to a news release. He serves with Leo on the board of the anti-abortion rights group Students for Life of America. Leo would later join Mueller at the firm.

There was also Gary Marx, a political strategist and Judicial Crisis Network senior adviser, who worked to build support in key states. Marx now leads the two main tax-exempt groups in Leo's new network, corporation filings show.

In 2018, the network rallied around the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh, which survived the most contentious set of hearings since Thomas faced Anita Hill in 1991. McGahn, the White House counsel at the time, coached Kavanaugh, who disputed accusations that he had assaulted Christine Blasey Ford as a teenager.

Leo's network threw millions at the cause, including buying ads to pressure Democratic senators in red states to vote for confirmation.

CRC reached out to reporters offering quotations from former Kavanaugh clerks. The PR firm was, according to Politico, also behind an ultimately embarrassing effort to exonerate Kavanaugh by claiming that someone else might have assaulted Ford.

After Kavanaugh was confirmed, supporters gathered in the Senate's Mansfield Room for a private reception, Politico reported. Leo, Marx and Jonathan Bunch, Leo's right-hand man at the Federalist Society, were there.

Their quest undoubtedly was driven by a shared vision of the law and limited government. But it was also lucrative.

:{:{}:

All told, at least $330 million flowed through nonprofits linked to Leo from 2015 to 2018, according to an analysis by NBC News that built on a Washington Post tally done last year.}:

Millions flowed back to the men behind it. A company Leo owns in part received nearly $9 million, according to the tax filings of various nonprofits from 2016 through 2018. CRC, Mueller's company, brought in $9.3 million in that period.

During Trump's first term, Leo's network helped him confirm more federal judges than any other administration had done since Jimmy Carter's. In addition to three Supreme Court justices, Trump appointed 220 federal judges, including 1 of every 4 circuit court judges.

No compromises

Leo's network is prepared for whatever follows Election Day.

He began consolidating the existing strands this year. In January, he announced that he was leaving the Federalist Society to officially head up a push to spread "big money and expertise across the conservative movement," as Axios put it.

Leo implied that his effort was an answer to dark money groups on the left, which in 2018 outspent the conservative groups for the first time.

He surrounded himself with a familiar list of names, essentially making his role official in a network he'd helped create.

Leo became chairman of the newly branded CRC Advisors, Mueller's public relations firm. Bunch joined him.

:{:{To move the "big money," they revamped two tax-exempt organizations already in their network, with Marx at the helm.}:

One became The 85 Fund, the fiscal sponsor of the Honest Elections Project.}:

"The conservative movement is finally adopting some of the left's tactics, but the left is still spending far more," Marx said in a statement, pointing to the Arabella Advisors network, one of the largest left-leaning dark money networks. Like the Honest Elections Project, Arabella has said it is nonpartisan.

The Judicial Crisis Network became an entity underneath The Concord Fund.It has given more than $2 million to the Republican Attorney Generals Association, financial disclosures show. Some of that money has gone to pay consulting and research fees to CRC.

The Republican Attorney Generals Association backed Barrett's nomination to the Supreme Court. Several Republican attorneys general are also part of Lawyers for Trump, the group marshaling legal power for the election, which also includes Leo and Consovoy, the attorney for the Honest Elections Project suit in Michigan.

Leo didn't respond to an interview request or a detailed list of questions. Neither did Consovoy or Torchinsky, the other attorney on the Michigan suit. The Republican National Committee, for which both Consovoy and Torchinsky have worked, didn't respond to a query.

The Federalist Society, where Leo remains co-chairman of the board, reiterated that it doesn't "take a position on legislation, litigation, candidates for office or judicial nominees." The spokesman who sent that response is a senior vice president at CRC Advisors.

The support for conservative attorneys general could also be a sign of what's to come.

Attorneys general have mounted aggressive political challenges to Washington over the past decade. Republicans in Oklahoma and Texas challenged Obama's environmental regulations and the Affordable Care Act. Their Democratic counterparts banded to block Trump policy changes on immigration and cuts to food stamps.

"If Biden wins, Republican AGs in general are going to be a real thorn in the side of a Democratic administration, much like Democratic AGs have been for the Trump administration," said Paul Nolette, an associate professor of political science at Marquette University who runs a database that tracks litigation by attorneys general.

If they rally together to file multistate litigation, as state attorneys general increasingly do, they will have an advantage — the ability to "forum shop" for like-minded judges, choosing which states and which federal courts in which to file their cases. The Trump administration's appointments have broadened their options.

In a politically polarized landscape in which Congress is often gridlocked, policy fights are likely to land at the judiciary's feet. Some may like it that way.

"For partisans, it's an appealing avenue," Nolette said. "It doesn't force the two sides to come to a compromise."

Like an election, he said, a lawsuit is "largely win or lose."

===

:{:{}:

---

2x? apr 2022

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/05/inside-the-consulting-firm-run-by-ginni-thomas-wife-of-supreme-court-justice-clarence-thomas.html

virginia “Ginni” Thomas runs a little-known consulting company that some campaign watchdog groups say could create yet another conflict of interest for her husband, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Ginni Thomas shot to national notoriety after text messages surfaced last month showing that she prodded former President Donald Trump’s then chief of staff, Mark Meadows, in late 2020 to try to overturn the presidential election results. The messages prompted calls from top Democrats for Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from cases reviewing the Jan. 6, 2021, riot on Capitol Hill. It’s also led to calls by lawmakers on Capitol hill to create a formal Supreme Court code of ethics. The House select committee investigating what took place on Jan. 6 is reportedly seeking an interview with Ginni Thomas.

[vid]

a spokeswoman for the Supreme Court did not return requests for comment. Attempts to reach Ginni Thomas through an email listed on her website were not returned. The website appears to have been wiped since the recent reports on her texts with Meadows.

Very little is known about her company, Liberty Consulting, which is listed as an asset on her husband’s Supreme Court disclosures. CNBC was able to find some of her conservative-leaning clients by cross-checking Virginia business records, tax forms, Federal Election Commission filings, personal financial disclosure documents and through interviews with people familiar with her work. Even so, watchdogs say such documents may not entirely reveal who she’s represented and whether those groups have ties to any cases before the court, raising increasing calls for more transparency.

‘Very problematic’

“It’s very problematic,” Richard Painter, chief White House ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush administration, said in a recent phone interview of Ginni Thomas’ work. The Supreme Court rules don’t require spouses to publicly disclose how much they earn or if they are working with anyone that could have a stake in a Supreme Court case — which could create a conflict for her husband and force him to recuse himself from certain cases, Painter said.

Kedric Payne, general counsel of the watchdog Campaign Legal Center, similarly said any financial interest tied to a justice’s spouse that could make it’s way to the court might lead to the recusal by the judge.

“The law is clear that a justice with questionable impartiality shall recuse from a case. Cases tied to the financial or other significant interests of a justice’s spouse always raise red flags that may trigger the recusal requirement,” Payne told CNBC. Clarence Thomas has recused himself 54 times since the 1990s, including 17 times to avoid a potential perception of a conflict of interest created by his son, according to the Huffington Post.

:{:{}:

Separate careers

Ginni Thomas, in a recent interview with the Washington Free Beacon, pushed back on any potential conflicts of interest from her work. “We have our own separate careers, and our own ideas and opinions too. Clarence doesn’t discuss his work with me, and I don’t involve him in my work,” she recently told the publication. She noted her work for Liberty Consulting in that interview but didn’t divulge her clients.

Still, Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, have said they want to move forward with creating an ethics code for Supreme Court justices that could include more specific disclosure requirements.

In the case of Ginni Thomas, the court’s financial disclosure forms only show that she gets a salary and benefits from her firm, without disclosing the specifics, and it notes the book value of the business.

Located in a nondescript strip mall in suburban Virginia, Liberty Consulting’s few known clients range from the Center for Security Policy, a nonprofit founded by a conservative activist accused of anti-Muslim rhetoric, to a political action committee titled FedUp PAC, according to a review of public filings by CNBC and researchers at watchdog Documented. The political action committee backed failed Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, according to Center for Responsive Politics’ data. Moore was accused of sexual misconduct and has denied wrongdoing.

The Center for Security Policy was founded by Frank Gaffney Jr., a former Reagan administration Defense official who has since been flagged by the Anti-Defamation League for pushing “a number of anti-Muslim conspiracy theories.” Both Gaffney and the Center for Security Policy were among a group of advocates who filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court backing Trump’s travel ban. The center paid Liberty Consulting more than $200,000 over the course of two years, from 2017 and through 2018, according to 990 tax disclosure reports from those years. The work by the firm for the Center for Security Policy was first reported by The New Yorker.

Liberty Central

Thomas is also said to have done past work for companies tied to conservative judicial advisorLeonard Leo, according to a person familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named to speak freely on the matter. Ginni Thomas counts Leo as a mentor, according to The Washington Post. Leo previously served as a director for a Ginni Thomas-led a conservative nonprofit namedLiberty Central during former President Barack Obama’s administration, according to 990 tax disclosures. Ginni Thomas once boasted that she wanted the organization to be “bigger than the tea party,” and was taking aim at Obama’s agenda, including the Affordable Care Act, the Post reported.

In 2010, Ginni Thomas made more than $120,000 as president and CEO of Liberty Central that year, according to a 990 tax filing. The nonprofit has since been closed. Clarence Thomas was among the group of Supreme Court justices who dissented in 2012 from the majority opinion, which upheld Obama’s signature health insurance law, the Affordable Care Act, as constitutional. He later sided with the majority to uphold the law against a Republican challenge in 2021.

Leo has been involved with helping shape the Supreme Court to what it is today, including Trump on who best to select for the high court.Trump’s court picks of Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett saw support from groups backed by Leo and his allies when they were in the midst of Senate battles over their nominations. The Daily Beast reported that CRC Advisors, Leo’s firm, has been tasked at promoting a documentary on Clarence Thomas.

Supporting Trump

Outside groups run by Leo’s allies advocated in support of Trump’s nominees and have since taken aim at President Joe Biden’s court picks, including Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. Like their opposing progressive groups, the Leo-tied organizations are known as “dark money” nonprofits who don’t reveal their donors to the public. Leo’s recently [created](https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/18/trump-ally-leonard-leo-85-fund-received-20-million-in-2020.html?__source=sharebar|twitter&par=sharebar) 85 Fund is part of his extensive network of organizations that seek to influence policy, judicial nominations and the larger conservative movement.

The FedUp PAC, which is chaired by conservative political ad veteran Richard Viguerie, paid Liberty Consulting $5,000 during the 2018 election cycle for what it describes on the PAC’s filing as video production. The name Liberty Consulting and the address listed on the Federal Election Commission disclosure matches that of the firm run by Ginni Thomas. The PAC later backed Trump during the 2020 election cycle, spending more than $100,000 supporting the then commander in chief. Liberty Consulting was not paid for any work by the PAC that cycle, federal campaign disclosure data shows.

Bob Mills, who is listed as director for the super PAC on its website, did not recall what specific work Liberty Consulting conducted for the organization when initially reached by CNBC and didn’t respond to follow up emails requesting further details.

Ginni Thomas’ LinkedIn profile says she’s worked since 2010 as the founder and president of Liberty Consulting with “citizen activists, leaders and nonprofits to succeed and have impact in defending the principles that have made America an exceptional nation. — offer strategic advice, build coalitions, connect people and projects (this is my passion and joy!).” Thomas notes on her page that she’s not a lobbyist, even though a Virginia state record shows that the firm was once called Liberty Lobby.

Beth Rotman, national director of money in politics and ethics at watchdog Common Cause, told CNBC that new ethics laws governing Supreme Court justices should require them to disclose more details of their spouses’ consulting contracts.

“Disclosure must be robust for it to be truly meaningful in this context so financial disclosures should include consulting contracts. As you have seen already, when justices complete their annual reports, they list information that does not give a complete view of their spouse’s financial ties,” Rotman said in an email. “It is key to meaningful disclosure that the rules be updated to include the source and amount of any spouse’s consulting contracts over a reasonable minimum threshold.”

Leo and representatives for most of the group’s mentioned in this story also did not return requests for comment. A spokesman for the Jan. 6 House Select Committee declined to comment.

Business boom

Though it’s unclear how much Ginni Thomas has made from the consulting firm, Liberty Consulting appeared to see a boom in business in the run-up to Trump’s 2016 win.

Clarence Thomas’ financial disclosure reports show that in 2014, the firm’s cash market value was listed as being worth up to $15,000.

===

:{:{}:

===

raw story

https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/clarence-thomas/

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' right leaning political views have been obvious for decades in his writings for the Court. A new report in the Daily Beast, however, spotlights just how intertwined his financial connections are to an ultra-conservative judicial activist.

When Thomas was looking to promote the release of his memoir last October he chose to hire a public relations firm, CRC Advisors, run by the former chief of the Federalist Society, Leonard Leo. Leo is a top fundraiser for right-wing judicial activist groups. The Daily Beast reports that "Leo has raised hundreds of millions of dollars over the three decades on behalf of right-wing dark money groups to influence the federal judiciary and Supreme Court. He advised and persuaded Republican presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump in their appointments of Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, and Chief Justice John Roberts—and prepped Justice Thomas for his nomination hearings."

The report also says that Leo is the "hub" of dark money groups that stealthily fund and link up with parties who argue cases before the Supreme Court, something that Supreme watchers have dubbed an "amicus flotilla."

Leo’s affiliations with the court - and especially Thomas - are especially pronounced. He made the justice the godfather of one of his children and has hosted him on vacation at his New England retreat.

Paul Collins is a professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and author of several books about the high court. He says Thomas’ choice of Leo’s firm is “strange” and “unnecessary.”

“It signals that this world of the Federalist Society is even smaller than we thought,” Collins told The Daily Beast.

---

guk

https://yyy.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/09/big-oil-delay-tactics-new-climate-science-denial

Big oil’s ‘wokewashing’ is the new climate science denialism

‘Discourses of delay’ by the fossil fuel companies.

Academic researchers say the fossil fuel industry has a new tool to delay efforts to curb emissions – a social justice strategy

Amy Westervelt

@amywestervelt

Thu 9 Sep 2021

ExxonMobil has been touting its commitment to “reducing carbon emissions with innovative energy solutions”. Chevron would like to remind you it is keeping the lights on during this dark time. BP is going #NetZero, but is also very proud of the “digital innovations” on its new, enormous oil drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico. Meanwhile Shell insists it really supports women in traditionally male-dominated jobs.

A casual social media user might get the impression the fossil fuel industry views itself as a social justice warrior, fighting on behalf of the poor, the marginalized, and women – at least based on its marketing material in recent years.

These campaigns fall into what a handful of sociologists and economists call “discourses of delay”. While oil and gas companies have a long track record of denying climate change, even after their own scientists repeatedly warned of the harm caused by burning fossil fuels, now the industry’s messaging is far more subtle and in many ways more effective than outright climate science denial.

By downplaying the urgency of the climate crisis, the industry has new tools to delay efforts to curb fossil fuel emissions. And worse yet: even industry critics haven’t fully caught up to this new approach.

“If you just focus on climate denial, then all of this other stuff is missed,” explains Robert Brulle, an environmental sociologist and visiting professor at Brown University.

Brulle, who published a peer-reviewed study in 2019 that analyzed major oil corporations’ advertising spending over a 30-year period, says the “lion’s share” of ad dollars were directed not toward denial, or even toward the industry’s products, but toward pro-fossil fuel propaganda – campaigns that remind people over and over again about all the great things oil companies do, how dependent we are on fossil fuels, and how integral the industry is to society. //API ROWE]

“They’re spending probably five or 10 times more on all this corporate promotion advertising,” he says. “And yet the climate movement seems to only focus on the science denial part.”

ExxonMobil has used Twitter campaigns to emphasize progress on addressing climate change while also downplaying the urgency of the crisis. Source: Twitter

Oil companies stopped pushing overt climate denial more than a decade ago. And while conspiracy theories claiming climate change is a hoax may surface occasionally, they are no longer an effective strategy.

Instead, the fossil fuel industry, utilities and the various trade groups, politicians and think tanks that carry water for both, have pivoted to messages that acknowledge the problem, but downplay its severity and the urgency for solutions. Instead companies are overstating the industry’s progress toward addressing climate change.

In a paper published in the journal Global Sustainability last July, economist William Lamb and nearly a dozen co-authors catalogued the most common messaging from those who would prefer to see inaction on climate for as long as possible. According to Lamb’s team, the industry’s “discourses of delay” fall into four buckets: redirect responsibility (consumers are also to blame for fossil fuel emissions), push non-transformative solutions (disruptive change is not necessary), emphasize the downside of action (change will be disruptive), and surrender (it’s not possible to mitigate climate change).

“This was a paper that was born on Twitter, funnily enough,” Lamb says. Lamb and collaborators Giulio Mattoli and Julia Steinberger began compiling the fossil fuel messaging they saw repeatedly on social media. Then they asked other academics from various fields to add what they were seeing too, and patterns soon emerged.

Lamb says they explicitly left denial out of the equation. “What we tried to do was really examine delay as something distinct,” he says. “From our view, delay had not received the kind of attention it deserves.”

Of all the messaging geared toward delaying action on climate, or assurances that the fossil fuel industry has a grip on possible solutions, Lamb and other authors agreed that one theme was far more prevalent than the rest: “the social justice argument.”

This strategy generally takes one of two forms: either warnings that a transition away from fossil fuels will adversely impact poor and marginalized communities, or claims that oil and gas companies are aligned with those communities. Researchers call this practice “wokewashing”.

Twitter ads, like this video by ExxonMobil, reflect popular messaging around social justice, implying that the company is aligned with diverse communities. Researchers call this practice ‘wokewashing’.]Composite: Twitter]

An email Chevron’s PR firm CRC Advisorssent to journalists last year is a perfect example. It urged journalists to look at how green groups were “claiming solidarity” with Black Lives Matter while “backing policies which would hurt minority communities”. Chevron later denied that it had anything to do with this email, although it regularly hires CRC and the bottom of the email in question read: “If you would rather not receive future communications from Chevron, let us know by clicking here.”

Another common industry talking point argues a transition away from fossil fuels will be unavoidably bad for impoverished communities. The argument is based on the assumption that these communities value fossil fuel energy more than concerns about all of its attendant problems (air and water pollution, in addition to climate change), and that there is no way to provide poor communities or countries with affordable renewable energy.

Chevron also claimed solidarity with Black Lives Matter last year, although it is also responsible for polluting the Black-majority city it’s headquartered in: Richmond, California, where Chevron also pays for a larger-than-average police force. Meanwhile the American Petroleum Institute, Big Oil’s largest trade group and lobbyist, funds diversity in stem programs, but it also declines to acknowledge the disproportionate impacts on communities of color.

Discourses of delay don’t just show up in advertising and marketing campaigns, but in policy conversations too.

“We’ve gone through thousands of pieces of testimony on climate and clean energy bills at the state level, and all of the industry arguments against this sort of legislation included these messages,” says J Timmons Roberts, professor of environment and sociology at Brown University, and a co-author on the “discourses of delay” paper.

People need a sort of field guide to these arguments so they’re not just duped.

In a recently published study focused on delay tactics in Massachusetts, for example, Roberts and his co-authors catalogued how fossil fuel interest groups and utility companies in particular used discourses of delay to try to defeat clean energy legislation. Another recent study found similar campaigns against clean energy and climate bills in Connecticut. “The social justice argument is the one we’re seeing used the most,” he says.

Lamb sees the same thing happening in Europe. “Often you do see those arguments come from right of center politicians, which suggests hypocrisy in a way because they’re not so interested in the social dimension on parallel issues of social justice like education policy or financial policy.”

While the social justice argument stands out as a favorite at the moment, Lamb says the others are in regular rotation too, from focusing on what individual consumers should be doing to reduce their own carbon footprints to promoting the ideas that technology will save us and that fossil fuels are a necessary part of the solution.

“These things are effective, they work,” Roberts says. “So what we need is inoculation – people need a sort of field guide to these arguments so they’re not just duped.”

This story is published as part of Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of news outlets strengthening coverage of the climate story.

---

lnx

email Chevron’s PR firm CRC Advisors sent to journalists last year is a perfect example. It urged journalists to look at how green groups were “claiming solidarity” with Black Lives Matter while “backing policies which would hurt minority communities”. Chevron later denied that it had anything to do with this email, although it regularly hires CRC and the bottom of the email in question read: “If you would rather not receive future communications from Chevron, let us know by clicking here.”

----

ref 1

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https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20520036-singer-memo-re-overall-communications-strategy-3

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CRC Advisors p. 4

Original Document (PDF) »

Contributed by Amy Westervelt

Plain Text

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url=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Fcorbinhiar%2Fstatus%2F1273694252925624321&tbnid=kCDRQe-Bmp41fM&vet=12ahUKEwjAs7abvtfyAhUSrZ4KHZJ1BscQMygAegQIARAR..i&

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https://twitter.com/corbinhiar/status/1273694252925624321

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voter felon suppression 2020, pal of ginni and jok?

Cash matters, but O’Keefe’s personal connections**are where the depth and seamlessness of this coordination with the Republican Party become truly apparent. They also offer a glimpse into the vast network that has formed to suppress the vote this fall—a network years in the making, of which Project Veritas is but a humble node.

Take litigator William Consovoy, the legal point man on many of the conservative-funded election integrity cases pursued during the Trump era. He is, like O’Keefe, a New Jersey native with a long history in local Republican politics. A former law clerk for Clarence Thomas, Consovoy is also reportedly a friend of Federalist Society Executive Vice President Leonard Leo, whose nephew David Maxham has been a friend of O’Keefe’s since their undergraduate years at Rutgers. (Maxham, naturally, was also invited to O’Keefe’s wedding.)

This year, Leonard Leo has stepped aside from day-to-day management of the Federalist Society to run a new conservative donor group, CRC Advisors, that is pouring money into Consovoy’s legal challenges in key battleground states across the country. CRC has been steering money into something called the “Honest Elections Project,” a fictitious name filed in Virginia for Leo’s old group the Judicial Education Project,now officially called the 85 Fund. As The Guardian reported, 99 percent of the Judicial Education Project’s funding in 2018 was a single $7.8 million donation funneled through Donors Trust.guk?

With generous assistance from the Honest Elections Project and the RNC, Consovoy’s firm Consovoy McCarthy PLLC has recently brought cases against the re-enfranchising of felons in Florida and sued to block California’s plans to deliver absentee ballots to all of the state’s registered voters.Consovoy has contributed to related motions filed in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada, Michigan, and Texas, where Ken Paxton’s victory against mail-in voting in May earned praise from President Trump on Twitter.

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