Red Bull energy drinks 5 hour

:{Currently, New York attorney general Eric T. Schneiderman is investigating whether the companies have violated federal law by promoting these drinks as dietary supplements rather than as foods, given that supplements are much more loosely regulated.

Health advocates have expressed concern largely about the effect of the caffeine on those (typically college students) who drink these beverages along with alcohol. One concern is that caffeine can mask the effects of alcohol. Another concern is that regular consumption of these beverages may produce caffeine-induced cardiovascular complications. The caffeine content in these beverages ranges from 80 to 500 milligrams. Given that a 12-ounce soda has about 50 mg, and a 5-ounce coffee has about 100 mg, those who regularly down these energy drinks should probably be aware of the relative amounts of caffeine they contain, ACSH’s Dr. Ruth Kava notes.

But whether the labeling is a legal violation is dubious, saysACSH advisor Dr. Henry Manne.“Outright deception in advertising can usually be dealt with quickly and almost surgically by state law enforcement officials,” notes Dr. Manne, who is an emeritus dean at the George Mason University School of Law. “But if the campaign comes out of the blue without prior widespread complaints from the public and it has the earmarks of hype and publicity hounding, there probably is a hidden agenda.” In such instances, he says, “the general rule is ‘look for the competitors.’ Those are the ones most likely to complain about the new product’s danger for the community’s safety, welfare, or morality.”

http://time.com/3759288/manoj-bhargava-campaign-finance/}:}:

...tiny bottles of 5-hour Energy that made Manoj Bhargava a billionaire are just about everywhere. But the Princeton dropout and former Hindu monk is nearly invisible.

Bhargava’s investment firm ETC Capital gave $2.5 million to the Republican Governors Association last year, joining conservative billionaires Sheldon Adelson and David Koch on the list of top five donors to the group that works to elect Republican governors.

Yet RGA Chairman and Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam said, “I don’t know him.”

The 62-year-old Bhargava and several of his Michigan-based companies have given at least $5.3 million to candidates for state office and political groups around the country since 2009, according to state and federal campaign filings. But Bhargava remains a mystery man, even to many of the people who are benefiting from his largesse, including Bobby Schostak, who received a $25,000 donation from ETC Capital in 2010 during his first campaign for Michigan Republican Party chairman.

Schostak, who recently left the job, said, “I would have trouble knowing it was him if he walked in the door, honestly.”

Few people have given as much to politics at the state level as Bhargava and his companies in the past five years, and donors of such generosity are typically well known and aggressively courted by politicians who need their favor and funding to pay for campaigns. Yet Bhargava avoids the spotlight, both in politics and life: he said in a 2012 television interview that fame puts “a bull’s-eye on your forehead.” And he’s gone to great lengths to obscure his political activity, even as his signature product draws more scrutiny from some of the same politicians he’s supporting.

Only a fraction of the donations were made in Bhargava’s name or by the companies that oversee the production and marketing of 5-hour Energy. But an investigation by the Center for Public Integrity found that he makes donations through several of his more than 70 limited liability companies. As such, the motives for his political giving are as muddy as the circuitous way in which the donations are made.

He gives most heavily to Republicans but has donated to Democrats, too. Many of the donations appear to have ties back to Michigan, where his businesses are based. Nearly a quarter of the donations affiliated with Bhargava went to candidates for state attorney general, who have the power to investigate his business, and the organizations that support their election efforts.

Attorneys general in five states are suing Bhargava’s energy shot business, accusing it of deceptive marketing practices. A federal court in California is considering nine consolidated class-action lawsuits brought against 5-hour Energy in seven states, though the cases have been partially dismissed. And the Food and Drug Administration is investigating the safety of the shot, having received reports of more than 20 deaths potentially linked to its consumption. The political giving tied to Bhargava has only increased as investigations have multiplied.

Bhargava did not return multiple calls and emails sent over the past month seeking comment about his political giving, and a reporter who recently visited the two-story brick-and-glass headquarters of his companies was told Bhargava was not available. Several people who have worked with or live near him declined to comment, citing a fear of legal reprisals, or legal agreements barring them from speaking about Bhargava and 5-hour Energy.

Political operatives in Michigan say the relative anonymity seems to be how Bhargava prefers to do business.

“People are very conscious of the fact that he’s very secretive,” said Mark Brewer, the former chairman of Michigan’s Democratic Party.

The price of privacy

Bhargava grew up in Lucknow, India, a city of roughly 5 million in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. He moved with his family at 14 to Philadelphia so that his father could pursue a Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. He won a scholarship to The Hill School, a prestigious boarding school in suburban Philadelphia and, later, admission to Princeton University.

But Bhargava only spent a year at the Ivy League school, dropping out in 1973, according to The Daily Princetonian. He then spent more than a decade traveling between Hindu monasteries in India as a monk and working odd jobs back in the U.S. He returned to the U.S. permanently in the early 1990s and took over the family’s plastics company, Prime PVC, in 1996, growing it into a multimillion-dollar business that he sold to a private equity firm in 2007, according to multiple news reports.

By then, he had moved to Michigan and was on the hunt for a new business. He abandoned his first venture, the anti-hangover pill Chaser, but he won big with 5-hour Energy — a flavored energy drink that contains caffeine, vitamins and amino acids. As he has told it, Bhargava replicated an energy drink he stumbled upon at a trade show in 2003 after its developers refused to sell him the recipe. Sales of the 1.93-ounce bottles propelled Bhargava onto Forbes’ list of billionaires in 2012.

Bhargava credits much of 5-hour Energy’s success to the decision to place the small yellow and red bottles at checkout counters, rather than in coolers with the other energy drinks. The business has also engaged in an aggressive pattern of litigation, having sued more than a dozen competitors for producing or distributing similar products. Bhargava’s office is said to contain a mock graveyard, made up of the bottles of failed competitors.

In 2012, Bhargava publicly took the giving pledge championed by Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett, which encourages billionaires to donate the majority of their wealth to charity. Three years earlier, he transferred a stake appraised at $623.6 million in Innovation Ventures, a parent company of 5-hour Energy, to his Rural India Supporting Trust, which he has described as “the largest charity in India that nobody knows.” The organization has spent more than $60 million since 2008 supporting development projects in India, according to tax forms it has filed with the Internal Revenue Service.

In public speeches, Bhargava has prided himself on his modest lifestyle. He lives today in Farmington Hills, the same well-off Detroit suburb where 5-hour Energy is headquartered. While his five-bedroom, six-bath home is worth about $1.7 million, he has forgone the flashier Bloomfield Hills or other tony Detroit suburbs where someone of his wealth might be expected to live.

In many respects that home — and the fight to build it — highlight both the pugnaciousness of Bhargava and his quest for privacy while staying in the middle of everything.

Instead of a single home, the low-profile multimillionaire planned a 17-house development sandwiched between two existing tracts of homes, with a gated entrance, private road and a second, eight-foot fence surrounding his home in a city with only a handful of other gated neighborhoods.

By the time other homes in the development hit the market last year, listed at more than $600,000, Bhargava’s team had already sued both its initial developer and a neighbor who distributed fliers opposing the development. Both suits were settled, confidentially.

A complex web

When the trim, slightly balding Bhargava speaks publicly about his energy shot company, he emphasizes its common-sense approach. No one in the company uses business-school jargon, he told a 2012 meeting of the Asian Pacific American Chamber of Commerce, and he jokes that he doesn’t even know how to spell the words “strategic initiatives.” He says that his job is to make complex ideas simple.

But Bhargava’s various business ventures are anything but easy to follow. More than 70 limited liability companies, some of which are no longer active, have been registered at the address of 5-hour Energy’s headquarters. Such businesses, which as their name implies limit the personal liability of their owners, also offer tax benefits and, in Michigan and elsewhere, aren’t subject to the same restrictions on political activity as other corporations. Those LLCs include a host of other ventures, such as investment funds and Bhargava’s backing of several upcoming Hollywood films. The business of running 5-hour Energy itself is composed of three separate LLCs: Innovation Ventures, Living Essentials and MicroDose Sales.

For political purposes, Bhargava’s most active company has been ETC Capital, which bills itself on its website as “founded on the basis of opportunistic investing” and invests in companies that don’t qualify for traditional loans or private equity.

Since 2009, ETC Capital has given nearly $4.9 million to state candidates and political groups across the country, which helped it become one of the top 50 donors to state races in 2014. It’s unclear why the giving has come in ETC Capital’s name or who in the company decides which political groups merit donations.

In at least one case, a donation given by ETC Capital to Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson was later publicly represented as sponsorship of a fundraiser by 5-hour Energy, according to The New York Times.

Seven donations totaling $319,500 were made during 2009 and 2010 in the name of Ted Mills, a former managing director at ETC Capital. Mills, however, told the Center for Public Integrity he didn’t make the donations, which were spread across five political action committees. Three of those were connected to Mike Bishop, a former Michigan Senate majority leader who ran for state attorney general in 2010. Mills declined further comment.

Matt Miner, treasurer of the three committees connected to Bishop, said the committees’ policies for handling donations from limited liability corporations, like ETC Capital, was to attribute them to someone affiliated with the corporation, such as Mills.

Giving to state investigators

Since 2009, companies tied to Bhargava have donated more than $1.2 million to candidates for attorney general and political committees that support them, according to data from the IRS and the National Institute on Money in State Politics.

The bulk of that giving, more than $850,000, has benefited two Republican groups: the Republican Attorneys General Association and the Republican State Leadership Committee. Bhargava’s companies also donated more than $310,000 to the Democratic Attorneys General Association, and more than $40,000 went directly to state attorney general candidates from both parties in at least seven states.

Those donations haven’t insulated Bhargava and 5-hour Energy. Since 2013, 33 state attorneys general have investigated the marketing or safety of 5-hour Energy. Five of those states — Indiana, Hawaii, Oregon, Vermont and Washington — have sued the company since last July, accusing it of making deceptive claims in its marketing. Ohio settled with the company in July without filing suit, after investigating the company for deceptive marketing, with the energy drink company agreeing to pay $1 million for research or public education on childhood disease. Ohio and Indiana are the only states among the six with Republican attorneys general.

Two of the five attorneys general to sue Bhargava’s company in the past year received campaign donations from him as candidates. Washington’s Ferguson, a Democrat, returned a $1,000 donation from ETC Capital in July 2014, one day after his state filed the suit against 5-hour Energy. When asked recently about the donations, his office referred to prior public statements in which Ferguson has acknowledged personally soliciting a donation from Bhargava’s company.

Indiana’s Greg Zoeller, a Republican, also sued Bhargava’s company after receiving a total of $7,500 in donations from the Bhargava-connected Oakland Law Group in 2011 and 2012, which placed the law firm among Zoeller’s top 10 donors in that two-year period.

Andrew Buroker, the treasurer of Zoeller’s campaign, said in an email that while Zoeller doesn’t solicit contributions from organizations under investigation, these donations wouldn’t be returned because they were made before the state’s investigation into 5-hour Energy began.

After The New York Times last year highlighted efforts by 5-hour Energy to influence states not to file suit, Bhargava and his company accused attorneys general of soliciting political contributions from the company while it was being investigated by them.

“Ninety percent of my money is pledged to charity,” Bhargava said in a statement to the newspaper. “I am certainly not going to take it from the poor and give it to the attorney general.”

Not showing up in Michigan

Donations to Michigan political groups given in the name of ETC Capital, Mills and Bhargava totaled more than $450,000 in 2009 and 2010, according to IRS and state filings. Since then, none of them has donated directly to Michigan groups or candidates. But national groups that have received the biggest checks from Bhargava’s companies have been very active in Michigan politics. The timing of the donations and the spending by such groups in the state raises questions about whether the money was earmarked for Michigan.

For example, eight weeks after ETC Capital gave $275,000 to the Republican Governors Association in October 2013, the group gave $276,000 to the Michigan Republican Party. In 2014, Bhargava’s company gave $2.5 million to the governors’ association, which paid $3.2 million on the same day to the media company it used to place ads backing the re-election of Republican Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder.

Bhargava’s company also gave heavily to Republican groups active in Michigan’s 2014 attorney general race. In 2013, ETC Capital gave $125,000 to theRepublican State Leadership Committee,which donated $34,000 to Republican incumbent Bill Schuette’s campaign on the same day.

Yet numerous Michigan politicians, ranging from his local mayor to statewide political bosses, say they barely know Bhargava, even the ones who have benefited from the political donations of his various companies.

A spokeswoman for Schuette said he has never met with Bhargava and doesn’t know him. Snyder, who won re-election in 2014 thanks, in part, to an estimated $7.4 million in ad spending by the RGA, has met with Bhargava only once — during Snyder’s first year in office in 2011, according to a spokeswoman.

Several Michigan political insiders also said they don’t know of particular pieces of legislation or policy issues that Bhargava has tried to influence.

“What was strange is he never asked for anything back,” said Ron Weiser, a former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party and an ex-national finance chairman for the Republican National Committee. “Usually people want something.”

Bhargava’s low-key approach stands in stark contrast to other wealthy political donors in the state, such as the scions of Richard DeVos, who made a fortune after co-founding Amway Corp., the world’s largest direct seller.

“In Michigan everyone knows the DeVos family,” said Susan Demas, publisher of the political newsletter Inside Michigan Politics. “They’ve made no secret of the fact that they’re willing to be big donors and fundraisers.”

Bhargava’s name, meanwhile, appears sparingly in campaign finance filings. He appears to have made only two political donations in his own name: $1,000 to President George W. Bush’s campaign in 1999 and $500 a decade later to the campaign of Jim Townsend, a Democratic state representative in nearby Royal Oak.

Despite the donation to Bush, the bulk of political giving by Bhargava’s companies has so far been focused on state-level races. Michigan isn’t scheduled to elect a new governor until 2018, but presidential contenders are already visiting the state to shore up support for 2016. Last month, Republican presidential contender Jeb Bush was in town talking to a packed room at Detroit’s convention center.

“Everybody who’s a player and who wants to be a player was there,” said Dennis Darnoi, a political consultant in Bhargava’s home base of Oakland County. “But he wasn’t.”

Associated Press reporter David Eggert contributed to this story.

This piece comes from the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan, nonprofit investigative news organization

The 'gray money' churn and a pardon

Substantial amounts of spending on Michigan's 2014 political campaigns were not reported to the Michigan Bureau of Elections, but they were reported elsewhere - at least as part of large national committees that were active in state campaigns across many states. Consider that to be 'gray money,' rather than dark money. As an example of this phenomenon, consider contributions that were reported by a limited liability corporation established by Manoj Bhargava of Farmington Hills, the founder of Living Essentials, the maker of 5-hour ENERGY. In 2013-2014, ETC Capital, an investment vehicle founded by Bhargava, was the top Michigan donor to both the Republican Governors Association (RGA), at $2.8 million, and the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA), at $180,000.

Top Michigan Donors to:(style="background-color:#fcfcfcff"):}::{ Republican Governors Association,:(style="background-color:#ffff66ff"):}::{ 2013-2014

Top Michigan Donors to Republican Attorneys General Association, 2013-2014

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/29/us/lobbyists-bearing-gifts-pursue-attorneys-general.html

...Ms. Kalani’s firm, Dickstein Shapiro, had courted the attorney general at dinners and conferences and with thousands of dollars in campaign contributions. Mr. Koster told Ms. Kalani that he was unaware of the investigation, and he reached for his phone and called his office. By the end of the weekend, he had ordered his staff to pull out of the inquiry, a clear victory for 5-Hour Energy....

The lower court money bomb

While turning, and keeping, the Wisconsin court conservative was a high priority for JCN and others on the right, the group didn’t spend much cash there directly. But the opposite was true in neighboring Michigan, where JCN laid out more than $2 million on two 2012 court races. About half the money went to an effort to keep law professor Bridget McCormack from sitting on the state Supreme Court, including a accusing McCormack of volunteering to represent terrorists, featuring the mother of a soldier killed in Afghanistan. (McCormack did volunteer one of her law school clinics to represent a Guantanamo detainee, though he was released before the students communicated with him.)

The other $1 million, though, was spent attempting to kick an Oakland County Circuit Court judge off the bench — and JCN’s spending in that race was matched by Americans for Job Security, which had earlier benefited from Wellspring largesse.

Such staggering spending on a lower court contest may be unprecedented, and it was far from clear why the groups were interested. One possible explanation: a funder with an ax to grind.

Who that was may never be known. But “pretty much everyone believed” it to be Manoj Bhargava or a person or entity linked to him, said a Michigan lawyer who had a ringside seat at the time; other attorneys and journalists in the state told The Daily Beast the same thing.

The Indian-born Bhargava, who invented the now-ubiquitous 5-Hour Energy shot, might be seen by some as a walking contradiction. On the one had, he lived as a monk in India for years and has taken a pledge to give more than half his wealth to charity. But he’s also a fierce competitor who, according to a profile in Forbes, displays in his office cardboard tombstones bearing the names of rivals his company has beaten in court.

A 2012 case before Circuit Judge Phyllis McMillen may shed light on the origins of the campaign against her. Bhargava, through 5-Hour’s parent company Innovation Ventures, was suing a key 5-Hour contractor for allegedly stealing trade secrets. At first McMillen issued a temporary restraining order against the contractor. As facts emerged, though, she lifted the TRO. To allow Innovation Ventures to “crush competitors” unfairly, she said in court February 10, “is certainly not something that’s supported by public policy.”

McMillen was running for her first full term in 2012. That spring, soon after she lifted the TRO, she and her colleagues who were also on the ballot learned they had opposition: a couple of lawyers from Republican Attorney General Bill Schuette’s office. Three non-Michiganders had provided the seed money for their candidacies: Andrew McKenna of Virginia, a fundraising consultant with ties to Bhargava, according to a well-placed source; John Templeton, one of Ann Corkery’s funding sources; and John Bryan of Oregon, a retired oil and chemicals executive who spoke at one of the Koch confabs.

TV ads sponsored by JCN and its dark money ally showed up closer to the election, with some attacking McMillen (one made her appear to have been lenient with a habitual offender) and others praising the challengers. “They were on every half-hour,” McMillen told The Daily Beast. “It was relentless.” There was radio, too, and a torrent of direct mail.

McMillen says she doesn’t know who went after her. “I have no idea,” she said. “There are people who don’t like the way I’ve decided; we handle big litigation.”

Bhargava did not respond to numerous requests for comment.

In any case, JCN’s Wolverine State crusades didn’t work out too well. McCormack is now a Supreme Court justice and McMillen won her contest, too. In early 2013, she ruled against Bhargava.

But in 2014 he clearly emerged as a national mega donor to boost GOP governors at a time when his energy drink company was facing probes by as many as 33 state AGs into allegations of deceptive advertising. In the last election cycle Bhargava’s ETC Capitalinvestment firm gave nearly $2.8 million to the Republican Governors Association, putting him at the top of RGA’s donor heap right after David Koch and his company and casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson.

Attorneys general become focus

mar 2015 open secrets

was a cold winter night in Washington, D.C., not long after President George W. Bush won a second term, and the mood at the upscale Italian restaurant was downright celebratory.

The most prominent guest was Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, but his table also boasted a mix of high-powered conservatives, including some deep-pocketed donors. Among the elite were Federalist Society executive Leonard Leo, fundraiser and lawyer Ann Corkery, and California real estate magnate Robin Arkley II. “The big prize was to sit next to Scalia,” quipped one attendee at the soiree, adding that Arkley was one such lucky winner.

As it happened, the bash coincided with the birth of a new judicial advocacy outfit that Corkery was instrumental in launching, and Arkley in funding, according to conservative sources familiar with the events. The Judicial Confirmation Network (JCN), set up as a 501(c)(4) “social welfare” group that doesn’t disclose its donors, would prove to be a crucial player in drumming up support for Bush Supreme Court nominees John Roberts Jr. and Samuel Alito Jr. — eventual allies for Scalia on the Court’s right flank.

In the years since, JCN’s modus operandi and battlegrounds have shifted — particularly since Barack Obama won the White House, which prompted the group to sound the alarm and change its name to the Judicial Crisis Network. In the ensuing years, not only has it fought to block Obama’s nominees to the high court, but it has spent millions to sway state judicial elections and attorneys general races, helping to uphold state laws backed by conservatives, nurture like-minded talent in the states, and advance pro-business, limited-government legal agendas aligned with its donors’ leanings.

To expand its influence in state elections, JCN has emerged as a pipeline for secret money to other, better-known dark money groups like the Wisconsin Club for Growth and the American Future Fund which, in turn, have spent big bucks in state Supreme Court and AG races.

JCN heightened its focus on AG races last year when it pumped $1 million in secret money into the Republican Attorneys General Association, making it the third-biggest contributor to RAGA and helping the GOP pick up three new slots so that it now controls the majority of state AG posts.

JCN’s pivotal part in the surge of spending on court elections has received scant attention. But in 2012, it dished out more than $2 million in court races in Michigan alone — half of that in a single down-ticket state circuit contest, according to the Michigan Campaign Finance Network. And over the last two years, the organization contributed a minimum of about $2 million to groups that were involved in 2014 state judicial elections and efforts to influence how judges are chosen. Recipients of JCN checks included the many-tentacled Republican State Leadership Committee, which for the first time invested in court races around the country, spending more on them than any other outside group.

More broadly, in the 2014 election cycle TV ad spending in state Supreme Court elections jumped to at least $13.8 million, according to a preliminary tally by the nonprofit Justice at Stake Campaign. Outside groups, both conservative and liberal, accounted for an estimated $4.9 million of that, or more than 35 percent — a greater share than ever before.

The sharp rise in judicial election spending by JCN and other groups on both sides of the political aisle troubles some judicial candidates who have been targeted. “To the extent that judicial campaigns start looking like other campaigns, there’s a risk that judges will be perceived as having a political agenda,” Sam Ervin IV, a North Carolina Supreme Court justice, told The Daily Beast. Ervin, who was elected in 2014 and is the grandson of the celebrated senator who led Congress’s investigation of the Watergate scandal, lost an earlier race in 2012 after a spending blitz by several outside groups totaling almost $2.6 million, much of it dark money including $75,000 from JCN. “The public is better served, in an environment where judges are elected, if they know the source of the funding for those campaigns,” Ervin, a Democrat, added.

To fill its own coffers, JCN has increasingly relied on funding — to the tune of nearly $4 million, according to IRS documents — from another non-disclosing group, the Wellspring Committee, that’s run by Corkery and was founded seven years ago with the help of conservative donors in the network led by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch. Corkery’s entree to that rarefied network came via JCN supporter Arkley, an early attendee of their famed retreats. And Ann Corkery and her husband, Neil — who is JCN’s treasurer — are central figures in a cluster of other nonprofits, IRS filings show.

A fast rise

JCN’s early niche entailed working in tandem with a well-organized conservative coalition — in which Leo, the Federalist Society’s executive vice president, was a key player — to ensure that Roberts and Alito won Senate confirmation. To that end, JCN spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in 2005 and January 2006 on radio and online ads, as well as on grassroots efforts, to shape public opinion. One example: The group ran a radio ad blitz in late 2005 in Arkansas, where the two Democratic senators’ votes were considered in play, using Christmas themes and an appeal from a black minister.

Well-connected consultants helped JCN get things up and running. One was Gary Marx, a rising social conservative star who Corkery recruited to became the group’s executive director, according to a well-placed source.

Another was New York lawyer Wendy Long, a former clerk for Clarence Thomas. She left the law firm Kirkland & Ellis and signed on as counsel to JCN, becoming the organization’s face on cable news and buttressing its legal bona fides.

But mostly, JCN’s early rise was attributable to Corkery’s ability to rope in a few big donors. “Ann is very good at cultivating relationships and capitalizing on them,” a conservative source observed.

Robin Arkley, the president and CEO of Security National Corp. who had tapped Corkery to be his political liaison and senior advisor, became a key underwriter of JCN’s operations, to the tune of the high six or low seven figures, sources say. The pair went to some of the early fundraising and policy retreats held by the Kochs — events that now draw a glittering cast of wealthy allies and conservative stars to raise millions for the brothers’ network of politically active groups. Arkley was also a financial backer of the Federalist Society. “Arkley helped put Ann in play” as a liaison to funding for advocacy groups on the right, said one conservative.

Corkery had a breakthrough year in 2008. Koch operatives gave her the reins to their fledgling Wellspring Committee, a dark money conduit that began pumping funds to other dark money Koch-backed groups like Americans for Prosperity. At the same time, Corkery served as a finance vice chair for Mitt Romney’s 2008 presidential campaign.

Though Corkery’s most direct Koch ties frayed after the ’08 elections and Arkley’s wallet took a hit in the financial crisis, according to sources and reports, Corkery mined other big donors she’d been courting for Wellspring, such as John Templeton Jr., a Pennsylvania philanthropist, and New York hedge fund mogul Paul Singer, conservative sources said.

Conservative and business groups had been pouring money into state court elections through the early 2000s in order to produce a friendlier legal climate — one that curbed tort liability for corporations, for example. Smart marketing and intellectual heft provided by Leo’s Federalist Society helped them notch significant gains. From 2000 to 2009, business and conservative groups spent more than twice as much on state court elections as plaintiffs’ lawyers, unions, and liberal groups — $26.3 million to $11.9 million, according to Justice at Stake.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court, where judicial elections have drawn big money. (Flickr.com/Photo Phiend)

Wellspring, followed quickly by JCN, became big players directly and indirectly funding state Supreme Court races. In 2008, for example, Wellspring funneled $200,000 to a group that produced the negative attack ads that helped a conservative eke out a victory over a sitting Supreme Court justice in Wisconsin, tipping control of the bench to the right. In 2009, Wellspring grants went to groups trying to change judicial selection methods in Missouri and Tennessee.

In 2010, Wellspring began sending money directly to JCN, giving it and a related organization, the Judicial Education Project, $400,000; an additional $306,000 came in 2011, then $1.5 million in 2012 and $1.4 million the next year. Big grants also went to other organizations playing in judicial politics — including $400,000 in 2011 for Wisconsin Club for Growth, a major actor in that state’s shift to a conservative Supreme Court majority.

Do not fill this out if you are a person

Wisconsin Club for Growth was also aided by JCN to the tune of more than half-a-million dollars from mid-2012 to mid-2013 as JCN began to function as a dark money conduit like Wellspring. The Wisconsin group spent close to $400,000 to help win a second 10-year term for Justice Patience Roggensack.

Conservative control of the Wisconsin court enabled in no small part by the big pots of dark money dumped into the state, has proved vital to the rejection of challenges to two signature conservative policies championed by GOP Gov. Scott Walker: his initiatives to curb public sector unions and to require voter IDs. (The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday turned away a challenge to the voter ID law, so it will stand.)

And an investigation into whether Walker illegally coordinated efforts with several groups — including Wisconsin Club for Growth — in the run-up to his 2012 recall vote now depends on a ruling by the state’s justices. The special prosecutor leading the probe has asked at least one — perhaps all four — of the court’s conservatives to recuse themselves because of support they have gotten from the groups. (Given recent history and the state’s weak judicial conduct rules, court observers say that seems unlikely.)

The lower court money bomb

Such staggering spending on a lower court contest may be unprecedented, and it was far from clear why the groups were interested. One possible explanation: a funder with an ax to grind.

The Indian-born Bhargava, who invented the now-ubiquitous 5-Hour Energy shot, might be seen by some as a walking contradiction. On the one hand, he lived as a monk in India for years and has taken a pledge to give more than half his wealth to charity. But he’s also a fierce competitor who, according to a profile in Forbes, displays in his office cardboard tombstones bearing the names of rivals his company has beaten in court.

A 2012 case before Circuit Judge Phyllis McMillen may shed light on the origins of the campaign against her. Bhargava, through 5-Hour’s parent company Innovation Ventures, was suing a key 5-Hour contractor for allegedly stealing trade secrets. At first, McMillen issued a temporary restraining order against the contractor. As facts emerged, though, she lifted the TRO. To allow Innovation Ventures to “crush competitors” unfairly, she said in court on February 10, “is certainly not something that’s supported by public policy.”

McMillen says she doesn’t know who went after her. “I have no idea,” she said. “There are people who don’t like the way I’ve decided; we handle big litigation.”

Bhargava did not respond to numerous requests for comment.

In any case, JCN’s Wolverine State crusades didn’t work out too well. McCormack is now a Supreme Court justice and McMillen won her contest, too. In early 2013, she ruled against Bhargava.

But in 2014 he clearly emerged as a national mega-donor to boost GOP governors at a time when his energy drink company was facing probes by as many as 33 state AGs into allegations of deceptive advertising. In the 2014 election cycle, Bhargava’s ETC Capital investment firm gave nearly $2.8 million to the Republican Governors Association, putting him at the top of RGA’s donor heap right after David Koch and his company and casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson.

Attorneys general become focus

JCN’s surging dark money dollars found a new outlet last year when the network ponied up $1 million to the Republican Attorneys General Association for its 2014 drive to help the GOP capture AG seats in Nevada, Colorado, and elsewhere. That made JCN RAGA’s third-largest donor in a year when RAGA was instrumental in helping Republicans capture enough AG posts that they now hold the majority. RAGA and similar 527 organizations must disclose their donors, but the sources of JCN’s contributions remain in the dark.

On top of that, JCN sent $750,000 to the Iowa-based American Future Fund, which started its own AG project between July 1, 2012, and June 30, 2013, tax filings show — JCN’s largest grant of that fiscal year. In turn, AFF chipped in $680,000 to RAGA last year.

State attorneys general had been moving higher on JCN’s political radar. Policy director and chief counsel Carrie Severino, who succeeded Wendy Long as JCN’s counsel in 2010 and, like her, once clerked for Justice Thomas, wrote in National Review right before the 2012 elections that conservative AGs are “emerging as key leaders in the battle for limited constitutional government.” Many of them, she noted, had joined the challenge to Obamacare, and a number were also fighting the Dodd-Frank financial services overhaul and EPA regulations.

Dark money ties that bind

The JCN spending through RAGA to boost the GOP’s share of AG slots is just one example of the synergies that the network has forged as a dark money vehicle. Other ties binding JCN to various groups it has funded — and received money from — are evident in the comings and goings of personnel, consultants, and board members. For instance, when Gary Marx stepped down as JCN’s executive director in mid-2011, he took a similar post with Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition (a group that Wellspring helped in 2010 with a $250,000 check). Likewise, last year Chris Jankowski became a consultant to JCN after spending several years running the Republican State Leadership Committee until he departed suddenly in early 2014, according to multiple sources. Both JCN and Wellspring had funneled hundreds of thousands to the RSLC, which has helped the GOP chart major gains in legislatures and other state offices. (RAGA had been part of that group but was spun off early last year.)

But JCN’s tightest ties with any group or individual revolve around Ann and Neil Corkery, which meant that Wellspring’s links to JCN were personal as well as political. Serendipitously Ann Corkery’s husband Neil was JCN’s treasurer, a paid part-time gig. The group’s small board also includes Dan Casey, a veteran GOP operative and “the political and PR brains” of that shop, says one source. Wellspring’s board was made up of Ann Corkery and two people the Corkerys knew from their work with Catholic groups.

But in 2011, the ties between these two dark money machines grew even closer when Ann Corkery sacked her two fellow board members at Wellspring and replaced them with her daughter and the son of JCN board member Casey, according to IRS filings and former board members. One of those ousted, treasurer Steven Wagner, said, “I never saw any financial records. I was treasurer in name only.”

In fact, Wellspring and JCN are the tip of a nonprofit iceberg when it comes to the Corkery family. In 2012, tax records show that Neil Corkery was not only treasurer of JCN, president of its allied Judicial Education Project, and executive director of a charity called the Sudan Relief Fund, all of which paid him salaries; but he also drew paychecks from at least four other organizations: the anti-gay union National Organization for Marriage, ActRight Action, the Catholic Association Foundation, and Catholic Voices. His total earnings were almost $450,000, and his weekly workload was 105 hours in the first half of the year, the groups’ IRS filings show, before dropping back to a mere 80.

Some who are familiar with the groups are dubious about that workaholic schedule — especially at the Sudan charity, where Corkery was paid $235,000 for a supposed 40-hour workweek. Neither Ann nor Neil Corkery responded to phone messages or written requests for comment on this story.

Moving ahead

Critics notwithstanding, the board changes at Wellspring a few years ago seemed to spell good news for JCN, coinciding with the two recent years in which JCN received close to $3 million from Wellspring and allowing the network to ramp up its efforts in the states.

And JCN has been otherwise busy, too — churning out, for example, amicus briefs for major legal challenges to Obama administration policies, including the high-profile case that now threatens to undermine key sections of Obamacare which was argued before the Supreme Court in early March.

The group doesn’t always toe the mainstream GOP line: It has at times weighed in against Republicans in what looks like internal party spats fueled by donor preferences.

Ultimately JCN looks poised to continue its role as a dark money juggernaut in 2016 in state and federal elections — both directly and via allied dark money and 527 conduits. If JCN’s recent history proves a guide, that means voters going to the polls in 2016 will remain largely uninformed about who’s writing the network’s big checks for ad and grassroots drives to help elect the highest judicial and legal officers in the states, and senators who may well have to approve nominees to fill future Supreme Court vacancies.

Robert Maguire of the Center for Responsive Politics contributed to this piece

Peter Stone, who covered lobbying and the influence of money in politics at National Journal for 18 years, has been writing for Mother Jones, The Huffington Post, The Daily Beast and others.