Lexington Fund leo 5

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NOTUS

Leonard Leo speaks to media at Trump Tower in New York City on Nov. 16, 2016.

April 13, 2026

Conservative legal activist Leonard Leo’s “dark money” operation is getting a makeover.

The Concord Fund quietly filed articles of termination on Jan. 6 of this year, according to previously unreported Virginia business records. Leo’s Concord Fund, which was previously known as the Judicial Crisis Network, has for years been a key node in a network of nonprofits used to steer tens of millions of dollars each year to conservative political committees and causes.

A branch of The Concord Fund remains active in Missouri, where it’s spent millions trying to influence state elections in recent years. It’s unclear why The Concord Fund otherwise terminated its operations. Gary Marx, The Concord Fund’s president, did not respond to emails requesting comment on the organization’s status, and a phone number listed on the group’s latest annual report to the IRS was disconnected.

Leo, a lawyer and businessman, is co-chair of the board of directors for the Federalist Society, which has — until recently — had close ties to President Donald Trump and many prominent Republicans.

Other dark money groups with ties to Leo are taking up activities previously undertaken by The Concord Fund. The ultimate source of the money, funneled through nonprofits or donor-advised funds that do not have to disclose their donors, remains obscured.

“Because the names change, I think most Americans have no idea what’s going on or how many of these differently named groups are the same through line with Leonard Leo at the sort of center of the spider web,” Lisa Graves, founder and executive director of the left-leaning watchdog group True North Research, told NOTUS.

The Concord Fund’s demise — and apparent reimagining — appears to have begun late last year.

In December 2025, a few days before The Concord Fund dissolved, another Leo-linked nonprofit called The Lexington Fund registered several alternative names including Judicial Crisis Network and Honest Election Project Action, according to Texas business records.

Also in December, a new nonprofit popped up in Tennessee: The Yorktown Fund. The nonprofit added the alternative name “Honest Election Project Action” on Dec. 29, the same day The Lexington Fund registered the same pseudonym, according to state business records.

Another Leo-linked nonprofit, The 85 Fund, lists the Honest Elections Project among its alternative names. Rolling Stone first reported the addition of the Lexington Fund and the Publius Fund to Leo’s nonprofit network in 2024.

Trump’s nominee to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit, Justin Smith, disclosed sitting on the board of the Yorktown Fund and the Publius Fund, Patrick McNeil reported for the Substack newsletter Nomination Notes. (Smith’s nomination hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee is slated for April 15.)

Neither Smith nor Oramel Skinner, director of The Lexington Fund, responded to requests for comment.

At the end of 2024, The Lexington Fund reported just $305,000 in grants and contributions, according to its latest report to the IRS. The Concord Fund has a prior connection to The Lexington Fund, having reported giving it $105,000 from July 2023 to June 2024.

But by the end of 2025, The Lexington Fund had steered millions into political committees that spent big money in state attorneys general races in 2025.

Now, it’s poised to shape 2026 midterm campaigns, particularly those involving state attorneys general.

The Lexington Fund gave $1 million to the Republican Attorneys General Association in July 2025, according to the organization’s year-end report filed March 30, 2026. First Principles Action, which shares an address with The Yorktown Fund, also gave $200,000 to the Republican Attorneys General Association in December.

The Concord Fund had been the top donor to the Republican Attorneys General Association, but the nonprofit suddenly stopped contributing to the organization in 2025. The Lexington Fund appears to be stepping in to help seed the state attorneys general organization — and other conservative committees.

The Lexington Fund also contributed nearly $3.3 million to the First Principles PAC in 2025, according to Federal Election Commission data.

First Principles PAC and First Principles Foundation were incorporated in Tennessee on Nov. 20, 2024, along with First Principles Action. First Principles is reportedly run by Peter Bisbee, who previously worked for the Republican Attorney General Association and the Federalist Society, and all three First Principles entities share an address with Yorktown Fund.

First Principles PAC steered seven-figures worth of money to state election committees in 2025, including $1 million to the Republican State Leadership Committee, $325,000 to Republican James Uthmeier’s successful bid for attorney general of Florida and $252,000 to Defend Kansas PAC.

THOMAS DATWYLER # BOGIS? 13K FUNDRAISE; TAILAGTE KOBACH

Bisbee did not respond to requests for comment.

The Lexington Fund also gave $1 million in June 2025 to Pine Tree Results PAC, a super PAC supporting Republican Sen. Susan Collins, who faces a tough reelection campaign this cycle. And Sentinel Action Fund, a super PAC focused on expanding the Republican majority in Congress, received $500,000 from The Lexington Fund in May 2025.

Leo, who played a key role in helping Trump select three Supreme Court justices in the president’s first term, has long been a boogeyman among liberals.

He’s also controversial on the right: When Trump publicly lambasted Leo as “sleazebag” who “probably hates America” last May, Leo appeared unceremoniously shunned from the inner political circle he had once inhabited. The break came as Trump-appointed judges that the Federalist Society helped select — including three sitting Supreme Court justices — have ruled against some of Trump’s second-term policies, such as his sweeping tariffs.

But the nonprofits and political committees within Leo’s dark-money apparatus continue spending aggressively to the benefit of Republicans as the 2026 midterms approach.

The Concord Fund has for years steered millions of dollars of dark money into politics not only through the Republican Attorneys General Association, but also through the Club for Growth, One Nation and other groups active in elections.

Groups at the forefront of advancing conservative policy and priorities also got grants from The Concord Fund. For example, since the Supreme Court in 2022 struck down the federal right to an abortion, The Concord Fund has poured millions into anti-abortion groups involved in state abortion-ban efforts and the decades-long fight at the federal level to restrict access to mifepristone, a drug used to induce abortions.

Dark money is hardly limited to conservatives. Democrats and Republicans both rely on dark money to fund their operations, including super PACs aligned with their respective leadership in the House and Senate.

“It matters when these groups shape shift because it makes it harder for people to track them, you know, and to tell that story of continuity: how much this one person, over the past decade, has had such an extraordinary influence,” Graves told NOTUS.

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GOP Puppetmaster Expands His Dark-Money Operation

The move could help shield Leonard Leo’s dark-money network from further legal fallout, watchdogs tell Rolling Stone

By Andrew Perez

February 20, 2024

:{WASHINGTON, DC - NOVEMBER 9: Right-wing activist Leonard Leo, C, attends the 2023 Antonin Scalia Memorial Dinner that is part of the Federalist Society's 2023 National Lawyers Convention at the Washington Hilton Hotel on November 9, 2023, in Washington, D.C.

Conservative activist and judicial puppetmaster Leonard Leo is building out his dark-money network.

A counsel at one of Leo’s primary nonprofits recently registered two new dark-money organizations with subsidiaries whose names just so happen to be very similar to groups through which Leo has run some of his most effective activism campaigns.

“The network’s infrastructure is expanding to keep up with new projects, and there will be more to come,” a person close to the network tells Rolling Stone.

The move comes amid increased scrutiny on Leo and his dark-money network in the wake of his crowning achievement: the Supreme Court decision eliminating the federal right to an abortion. With Leo’s network facing a reported attorney general probe and subpoena threats from Congress, he and his allies may be trying to shield their right-wing advocacy operation from legal fallout, watchdog groups say.

“As Leonard Leo faces increasing scrutiny for his shady nonprofit network, it’s no surprise he’s desperately trying to rebrand,” says Caroline Ciccone, president at the watchdog group Accountable.US. “But no matter how many sketchy new groups he comes up with, he can’t rebrand the extreme agenda he’s still attempting to force on everyday Americans.”

Leo, who co-chairs the Federalist Society, the influential conservative lawyers network in Washington, is known as the architect of the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority. Leo served as former President Donald Trump’s judicial adviser — helping him select three justices while simultaneously directing the dark-money campaigns to boost their confirmations. His network has spread money around to help bring cases before the Supreme Court, determine which cases the justices consider, and influence the court’s decisions.

With success has come public attention. Leo’s summer home in Maine has become the site of regular protests. He’s also attracted legal scrutiny. Last summer, Politico reported that the Washington, D.C., attorney general launched an investigation into whether Leo has misused nonprofit laws for personal enrichment, following a watchdog complaint pointing out that nonprofits under Leo’s control have paid tens of millions to his for-profit firms.

In November, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to authorize a subpoena after Leo refused to provide lawmakers with a full accounting of all gifts and payments that he has directed to Supreme Court justices and their spouses. The vote followed reports that Leo steered secret consulting payments to Justice Clarence Thomas’ wife, and arranged Justice Samuel Alito’s seat on a private jet — paid for by a billionaire hedge-fund chief — as part of an undisclosed luxury fishing trip in Alaska in 2008.

Leo has publicly refused to cooperate with the reported D.C. probe, with his lawyer arguing that the district’s attorney general, Brian Schwalb, has “no legal authority to conduct any investigatory steps or take any enforcement measures.” Leo has also refused to comply with the promised Senate subpoena, saying in a statement: “I will not cooperate with this unlawful campaign of political retribution.” (The subpoena has not yet been issued.)

A devout Catholic, Leo is one of the most powerful political operatives in the United States. In 2021, he was gifted an unprecedented $1.6 billion dark money fund, with the purpose of shifting American society further to the right.

In a recent report on the strained relationship between Leo and Trump, The Washington Post wrote that Leo “has told others he no longer talks to Trump’s advisers and is largely focused on spending billions to reshape the country in a more conservative direction with a focus on non-election issues.”

Still, he is best known for his efforts to remake the Supreme Court, particularly under Trump.

Leo’s Supreme Court advocacy campaigns, which date back to 2005, were long run through the Judicial Crisis Network. Its sister charitable arm was known as the Judicial Education Project. In 2020, Leo and his allies rebranded those organizations as the Concord Fund and 85 Fund, respectively, and designed the groups to act as fiscal sponsors, or hubs for new advocacy and educational groups. The structure makes it easy to launch new organizations or campaigns; forming a new group is as simple as registering a trade name. (The rebranded organizations registered the Judicial Crisis Network and Judicial Education Project as trade names.)

The 85 Fund and the Concord Fund were both named in the watchdog complaint to the Washington, D.C., attorney general, Schwalb. Not long after the complaint, the 85 Fund moved its corporate registration to Texas, withdrew its charter from Virginia, and withdrew its D.C. registration, business filings show.

More recently, Leo’s team created two new nonprofit hubs.

“This might be an effort to muck up the D.C. attorney general’s investigations and potential Senate subpoenas,” says Brendan Fischer, deputy executive director at the watchdog group Documented. “Creating new legal entities won’t entirely stop those probes, but it could help insulate Leo’s network from the consequences.”

Hypothetically, Fischer says, an order enjoining one of the existing Leo groups from conducting certain activities in D.C. “wouldn’t have much bite” if the group’s activities have been absorbed by a new entity.

O.H. Skinner, a counsel at the 85 Fund, formed the two new nonprofits in Virginia on Dec. 21, business records show. The groups are called the Publius Fund and the Lexington Fund.

Skinner subsequently registered some familiar new trade names within those groups. The Judicial Education Project Fund is part of the Publius Fund, while the Judicial Crisis Network Fund is in the Lexington Fund.

The new organizations also have trade names affiliated with the Honest Elections Project, a Leo network entity that’s worked to restrict voting access, as well as the Alliance for Consumers, the Leo group that Skinner leads.

The list of new trade names suggests a merger of sorts between Leo’s network and a nonprofit called Save Our States, which has led the fight in the states to defend the Electoral College — the anti-democratic system that decides the United States president — and to block states from joining the “National Popular Vote interstate compact.”

Save Our States’ executive director, Trent England, was recently listed as a counsel at the 85 Fund.

The trade names also include two variants of the name “American Parents Coalition” — suggesting Leo’s network may be expanding its efforts to push the education system to the right. His existing network already includes an “anti-critical race theory” group called Free to Learn, which has been involved in local school board elections.

“It looks like there is a PR effort underway to distance Leo from Trump … but the reality is that Leo is fanning the flames that could help fuel Trump’s run, incubating groups targeting parents and consumers to push the country to the far right,” says Lisa Graves, executive director at True North Research, which researches Leo’s network. “His targeting of suburban school boards looks like Moms for Liberty’s repressive agenda without the baggage, to fuel GOTV [efforts] that would help Trump and the MAGA Republicans.”

In this article: Donald Trump, Leonard Leo, Supreme Court

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