LEO, leonard

many nodes, rebrand thuslnrd tag 4 22

capt 11/18 bak

inaugural slush fund (find foreign money? russians?)

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GGL 626

AI Overview

Leonard Leo, a 1989 graduate of Cornell Law School, founded the school’s Federalist Society student chapter in the fall of 1986. While at Cornell, he laid the foundational roots for his later career as the co-chairman of the Federalist Society and a central figure in reshaping the conservative federal judiciary. [1, 2,, 4]

Throughout the conservative legal movement, organizations and initiatives closely linked to Leo have drawn financial support and institutional backing from foundations and advocacy networks associated with Charles Koch, such as the Charles Koch Foundation. [1,]

The Cornell Connection

• Chapter Founding: Leonard Leo started the ⁠Cornell University Federalist Society as a law student in the 1980s. He then went on to join the national organization in 1991, playing a major role in its explosive growth and its prominent position as a pipeline for conservative judicial nominations. [1, 2, 3, 4]

• Historical Origins: The national Federalist Society was originally founded in 1982 by law students at Yale and the University of Chicago as a forum to promote limited government and constitutional originalism. [1]

The Koch Connection

• Judiciary Funding: Networks and institutes associated with Charles Koch have heavily funded conservative legal groups and academic centers. These efforts have been instrumental in the rise of conservative legal networks and judicial pipeline programs. [1,, 3]

• Broader Influence: The Charles Koch Foundation is a prominent backer of free-market legal advocacy groups and has poured tens of millions of dollars into various university law programs to promote constitutional principles and reduce federal regulation. [1,]

For a deeper dive into how this network has reshaped the American legal system, you can explore the insights detailed by ⁠ProPublica and the ⁠Yale Daily News. [1, 2]

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voter felon suppression 2020, pal of ginni and jok?

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Cash matters, but O’Keefe’s personal connectionsare 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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alec bigtime

American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) held an “exclusive call” for members on mail-in voting with Honest Elections Project and a “former FEC official” on June 9, 2020. Honest Elections Project is a a dark money voter suppression group formed in February 2020 that is a project of Leonard Leo’s 85 Fund. The invitation was obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy.

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accord to AN going down flailing, but with $?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/major-donors-to-pro-life-federalist-society-are-plowing-money-into-susan-collins-senate-campaign-report/

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, may have risked her political career on a pivotal vote to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. While recent polls show the move has cost Collins critical support, especially among women voters, the vote has benefited her in another regard.

Since Collins cast her vote in 2018, she has raised about $200,000 from major donors to the Federalist Society, many of whom had never given to Collins before, according to The Daily Beast.

Collins, who for years appealed to women voters by stylizing herself as that rarest of all political birds — a pro-choice Republican — received the contributions to her campaign and two affiliated political action committees from 39 donors connected to the vehemently pro-life Federalist Society, including its former executive vice president Leonard Leo.

Leo, along with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, is one of the main drivers behind the GOP’s historic streak of stacking federal courts over the course of Trump’s term with conservative judges who oppose women’s reproductive rights.

though Leo had never given money directly to Collins before, he and his wife, Sally each made a maximum $5,600 contribution to Collins’ campaign last year.

Leo’s value to the Federalist Society lies in his ability to connect and woo individuals. In an interview with Vox, Amanda Hollis-Brusky, a political scientist at Pomona College who wrote a book about the Federalist Society, said that Leo runs two massive annual events for the Society: the National Lawyers Convention, “which is like a ball for the who’s who in the conservative legal movement,” as well as an annual law student convention, which connects students with academics and, yes, judges.

“Where the funding has made the most difference is in the kinds of events that you see in the law schools,” she said. “Students tell me and faculty tell me, no matter what side of the political spectrum they come from, they’ll always attend the Federal Society events, because they have the best food and the best alcohol.”

Collins attended a fundraiser Leo threw for her last August at his $4 million summer mansion in her home state of Maine. Leo purchased the home the same month in which Kavanuagh was confirmed.

That event seems to have connected the pro-choice Republican to a number of new Federalist Society backers, a notion Collins scoffed at to Bloomberg reporter Steven Dennis.

“So I went to a 20-person fundraiser,” Collins said. “It’s just ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous.”

The senator suggested that such criticism was hypocritical, because her opponents were using her vote to confirm Kavanaugh to raise money for her general election opponent, a line which she has tossed out before when denouncing the crowdfunding campaign.

Other Society-connected first-time donors included Daniel Casey — president of the Judicial Crisis Network, which threw millions behind nominations of Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch — and Philip Anschutz,the Colorado billionaire philanthropist who owns conservative publications The Weekly Standard and the Washington Examiner and whose foundation has supported the Federalist Society. Both gave Collins $5600, the maximum for the election cycle, according to The Beast.

Following Collins’ 2018 vote, Casey’s Judicial Crisis Network reportedly announced a six-figure TV and digital ad campaign in Maine thanking her for supporting Kavanaugh.

“Thank you Susan Collins for thoughtfully reviewing Judge Kavanaugh’s judicial record and weighing the evidence, and for being a reasonable voice during this incredibly divisive time,” Carrie Severino, the group’s chief counsel and policy director, wrote. “You put Maine and our country first – thank you.”

Many Society donors who had previously given to Collins reportedly ramped up their spending.

Bernard Marcus, co-founder of Home Depot, and wife Billi Wilma reportedly gave a combined total of $20,800 to Collins’ campaign and an affiliated PAC. Marcus is a Platinum member of the Federalist Society’s Madison Club, an echelon reserved for members who give $100,000 or more. The conservative power couple donated $3,000 total to Collins’ two previous campaigns.

C. Boyden Gray,Society board member and former counsel to President George H.W. Bush, ran incendiary ads pressuring Collins and other Senators to confirm conservative nominee William Pryor, Jr. Collins was one of two Republican senators to vote Pryor down — among her earliest pro-choice bona fides. Gray reportedly gave Collins $3,600 in 2014, but contributed nearly $8,000 to since her Kavanaugh vote.

But it was also Collins’ pivotal vote Kavanaugh — combined with her votes on Obamacare and impeachment — which appears to have spurred progressive activists to raise more than $4 million to unseat her. This took place before her chief Democratic opponent, Maine Speaker of the House Sara Gideon, declared her candidacy.

Though Collins has raised $10.3 million over the same period of time, Gideon has significantly outpaced her, hauling in $14.8 million.

“Bribery doesn’t work on Senator Collins,” Kevin Kelley, a Collins campaign spokesperson, claimed to The Beast. “She made up her mind based on the merits of [Kavanaugh’s] nomination. It’s laughable that the same people who tried to buy Senator Collins’ vote for more than $4 million now appear to be suggesting that she sold her vote for far less.”

https://lawandcrime.com/judiciary/senate-dems-investigating-former-federalist-society-leaders-influence-over-trump-admins-judicial-nominees/

Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats are seeking information on the role former Federalist Society leader Leonard Leo played in in choosing the jurists President Donald Trump has nominated to lifetime appointments as federal judges. In letters sent to Attorney General William Barr and White House counsel Pat Cipollone on Wednesday, the senators said they were specifically looking into the potential conflicts of interest presented by Leo’s advising the president on judicial selections while leading a group that is anonymously funded, “likely from entities that have interests before the federal courts.”

“Mr. Leo’s prominent role in the Trump Administration’s judicial selection and nominations process while maintaining a financial interest in advocacy efforts related to this process has raised questions regarding his potential status as a federal employee and compliance with accompanying laws and regulations,” the letter to Barr stated.

The senators emphasized that by advising the Trump administration on its selection of federal judges, Leo’s conduct raised significant questions as to whether he was performing the duties of a federal government employee without proper authority, thereby violating federal ethics law.

“By outward appearances, Mr. Leo may have engaged in the performance of a federal function that must be conducted by government employees authorized to act on behalf of the United States by leading the Administration’s efforts to identify and select judicial nominees, and press for their confirmation,” they wrote. “As a federal employee, Mr. Leo would have been responsible for complying with federal records retention and financial disclosure requirements, as well as the criminal financial conflict of interest statute.”

Led by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), the Democratic senators who signed the letters were attempting to shed light on the process that has allowed the Trump White House and GOP-led Senate to confirm an unprecedented number of judges (nearly 200) in just over three years.

The senators assert that knowing the specifics of Leo’s involvement in the selection process is vital to ensuring the process remains untainted.

“Mr. Leo’s personal financial interest in advocacy efforts related to the judicial selection and nominations process raises serious concerns regarding potential conflicts of interest and the independence of the federal judiciary, given Mr. Leo’s leadership role in the Trump Administration’s work on the issue,” they wrote, before listing a number of questions relating to Leo’s role in the selection process.

As previously reported by Law&Crime, Leo stepped away from the Federalist Society earlier this year to helm a massive effort aimed at securing Trump’s re-election by highlighting the 45th president’s record on appointing conservative judges.

See below for the full letter sent to AG Barr:

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/trump-judicial-adviser-tied-to-secretive-network-of-dark-money-dedicated-to-putting-far-right-justices-on-the-supreme-court/

no lnx

Trump judicial adviser tied to ‘secretive network’ of ‘dark money’ dedicated to putting far-right justices on the Supreme Court

Written by Alex Henderson January 2, 2020

One of the main reasons for President Donald Trump’s unwavering popularity with the Christian right is judicial appointments: in addition to bringing a long list of socially conservative judges to the lower federal courts, Trump has so far appointed two U.S. Supreme Court justices (Neil Gorsuch in 2017, Brett Kavanaugh in 2018). The Center for Responsive Politics’ Anna Massoglia, in a January 2 article for the Center’s Open Secrets website, examines the “secretive network” and “dark money” associated with Trump’s High Court picks.

At the “crux” of the “secretive network,” according to Massoglia, is the Federalist Society’s Leonard Leo, who has been serving as a legal adviser for Trump. Leo, Massoglia notes, “helped shepherd Trump’s Supreme Court picks through the confirmation process” and “holds leadership positions with multiple groups in the network.”

An important part of the network, Massoglia observes, is the “dark money” group the Judicial Crisis Network, which she says “operates as the preeminent vehicle for deep-pocketed donors to funnel millions of dollars to support or oppose judicial nominees in Supreme Court confirmation fights” and “has served as the public face of the network while a web of secretive groups operate behind the scenes.” In 2017, according to Massoglia, the Judicial Crisis Network “spent $10 million to boost Neil Gorsuch’s Supreme Court confirmation, mostly on TV ads.”

“The bulk of Judicial Crisis Network’s funding over the past decade came from the Wellspring Committee, a secretly-funded group that served as a long-time linchpin of the opaque network before shutting down at the end of 2018,” Massoglia explains. “Wellspring took in $2.3 million during its final year, distributing most of that through grants before shutting down completely at the end of 2018.”

Before shutting down, Massoglia notes, Wellspring “distributed its remaining $34,777 to Judicial Crisis Network.”

Another part of the network is the Judicial Education Project, which is the Judicial Crisis Network’s charitable nonprofit.

“In addition to shuffling money among interlocking groups tied to Leo,” Massoglia notes, “nonprofits in the network also shelled out millions of dollars to consultants and other dark money groups — many of which supported Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court.” For example, the Leo-associated group America Engaged “funneled another $3 million to the Koch Network’s Freedom Partners,” according to Massoglia.

ref

https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2020/01/supreme-court-wellspring-committee-stry-2020/

A secretive network spending millions of dollars to confirm President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court picks terminated multiple 501(c)(4) nonprofit nodes last year while funneling money to an even more opaque limited-liability company, further obscuring the network’s funding sources.

At the crux of that network is Leonard Leo, Trump’s top outside judicial adviser and a longtime executive at the Federalist Society who helped shepherd Trump’s Supreme Court picks through the confirmation process. Leo holds leadership positions with multiple groups in the network.

Judicial Crisis Network, a “dark money” group that operates as the preeminent vehicle for deep-pocketed donors to funnel millions of dollars to support or oppose judicial nominees in Supreme Court confirmation fights, has served as the public face of the network while a web of secretive groups operate behind the scenes.

The bulk of Judicial Crisis Network’s funding over the past decade came from the Wellspring Committee, a secretly-funded group that served as a longtime linchpin of the opaque network before shutting down at the end of 2018.

Wellspring took in $2.3 million during its final year, distributing most of that through grants before shutting down completely at the end of 2018.

Terminating on Dec. 31, 2018, Wellspring distributed its remaining $34,777 to Judicial Crisis Network, a significant drop from a roughly $15 million grant in 2017. That year, Judicial Crisis Network spent $10 million to boost Neil Gorsuch’s Supreme Court confirmation, mostly on TV ads.

On top of Judicial Crisis Network’s millions of dollars in ad spending, Kavanaugh’s nomination also got a boost from its sister tax-exempt charitable nonprofit, Judicial Education Project, which reported “significant education and media efforts regarding the Supreme Court vacancy and Justice Kavanaugh’s confirmation process” in its newly-released tax returns covering 2018.

Like Judicial Crisis Network, the Judicial Education Fund keeps its donors anonymous. But OpenSecrets traced more than 99 percent of its 2018 revenue to a single anonymous donation of  $7.8 million through Donors Trust. That group is a pass-through vessel known as the Koch network’s “dark money ATM”  for funneling money to conservative and libertarian groups from wealthy donors while keeping the donors’ identities hidden.

Judicial Education Project’s tax returns reveal a $675,000 payment to BH Group, a limited-liability company that made a mysterious $1 million donation to the Trump inaugural committee after his election in 2016 and has raked in more than $2.37 million from secret donors through the web of interlocking groups.

While nonprofit groups are required to disclose at least some financial information to the public in annual tax returns, LLCs are subject to even less disclosure requirements, leaving many questions about BH Fund unanswered.

BH Fund, a nonprofit closely tied to the LLC and Leo, took in just $500,000 in 2018 but ended the year with more than $18.5 million in assets at its disposal. BH Fund also reported a $2 million grant to another Leo-tied group called America Engaged. All of America Engaged’s funding for 2018 came from that grant and a single $5 million anonymous donor.

In addition to shuffling money among interlocking groups tied to Leo, nonprofits in the network also shelled out millions of dollars to consultants and other dark money groups, many of which supported Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court.

America Engaged funneled another $3 million to the Koch Network’s Freedom Partners, up from $700,000 the prior year.

Formed in 2016, the Freedom & Opportunity Fund reported millions of dollars in grants before terminating in 2018. One $1.8 million secret donor made up most of the fund’s revenue during its final year. Meanwhile, Freedom & Opportunity gave $660,000 to Main Street Growth and Opportunity, $530,000 to the Center for Individual Freedom, $200,000 to Free Our Internet and $100,000 to FreedomWorks.

Conservative groups aimed at women who boosted Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation drew funding from the network, too. Judicial Education Project gave $300,000 to the nonprofit Independent Women’s Forum while Wellspring gave another $250,000 to Susan B. Anthony List and $250,000 to Winning for Women, which was launched in 2017 as a conservative counterweight to EMILY’s List.

Wellspring’s biggest grant in the year before its termination was $500,000 to People United for Privacy, a member of the Koch network’s State Policy Network that launched ad campaigns pushing against donor disclosure rules that might expose the identities of big donors secretly bankrolling Wellspring’s network.

Outside of a $250,000 from the Judicial Crisis Network during its the 2017-18 fiscal year, none of the groups in the network’s inner circle reported 2018 grants to the National Rifle Association after funneling millions of dollars to the gun-rights group during the prior two years as it started running ads boosting Trump and his Supreme Court picks. Judicial Crisis Network has given the NRA $1.25 million since 2016 while America Engaged gave $950,000 to the NRA in 2017. The Judicial Education Project reported giving another $750,000 to the NRA Freedom Action Foundation in 2017, making up the bulk of its funding that year.

Multiple nodes of the network continued to report paying millions of dollars to Creative Response Concepts, a public relations firm that gained notoriety for helping create Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the group that attacked 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry’s Vietnam war record.

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/trump-allies-want-conservative-legal-activists-to-fight-impeachment-as-payment-for-stacking-the-courts-with-right-wingers

...Trump’s allies want conservative legal activists to show their gratitude by defending him against impeachment.

The White House has been playing up the president’s policy work — including his stacking of the judiciary with conservative judges — to counter Trump’s apparent consumption with impeachment, but his allies want some more help, reported Politico.

In particular, Trump allies want Federal Society executive director Leonard Leo — who was deeply involved in efforts to nominate and confirm Supreme Court justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh — to take on more responsibility for defending the president.

“Leonard Leo has gotten everything he wanted from the Trump administration, and he has not lifted a finger to help when it matters most,” said one Republican close to the administration.

A spokesman for Leo disputed that criticism, saying the conservative activist has been working behind the scenes to defend

...

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blowback for her?

https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/susan-collins-slammed-by-pro-choice-groups-for-attending-federalist-society-fundraiser-in-home-of-anti-abortion-zealot/

fedsoc fundraiser?! ~ abortion AN

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conservative “dark money” organization that spearheaded controversial Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s contentious confirmation received $22 million in anonymous donations in the year before the 2018 court fight, newly released tax records show.

The Judicial Crisis Network (JCN), a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit, pledged to spend as much as $10 million to ensure Kavanaugh’s confirmation — the same amount that it spent to help confirm Justice Neil Gorsuch in 2017. JCN has close ties to Trump’s judicial adviser Leonard Leo, a longtime executive at the Federalist Society, the influential conservative and libertarian lawyers network based in Washington, D.C.

More than three-quarters of the funds JCN raised between July 2017 and June 2018 came in the form of a $17 million contribution from a single anonymous donor, according to its latest tax return, which was obtained by MapLight and OpenSecrets. Former Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement in June 2018, paving the way for Kavanaugh’s nomination.

JCN’s filing lists nine other anonymous contributions, none smaller than six figures.

The bulk of JCN’s funding has typically come from the Wellspring Committee, another secretive nonprofit run by operatives who wear multiple hats in a larger network of opaque groups. Neil Corkery, Wellspring’s current president, previously served as JCN’s treasurer; his wife, Ann, was leading Wellspring at the time.

Wellspring has continued to send massive annual endowments to JCN since the group launched in 2005. JCN, in turn, has continued to pour tens of millions of dollars into every subsequent Supreme Court nomination fight and working to reshape the judiciary. Wellspring reported donating almost $15 million to JCN in 2017, on top of $23.5 million in 2016. Neither organization discloses the sources of its funds.

The 2017-18 tax return also reveals JCN paid $241,000 to BH Group — a Virginia limited-liability company tied to Leo, the Trump judicial adviser — after paying the company $947,000 the previous year. BH Group was responsible for a mysterious $1 million donation to Trump’s inaugural committee in 2017. BH Group received at least $919,000 from Wellspring and $1.4 million from the Judicial Education Project, a nonprofit affiliated with JCN, through the end of 2017.

JCN contributed $250,000 to the National Rifle Association (NRA), after giving the gun rights group $1 million from 2016-17. America Engaged, another nonprofit tied to Leo, also gave $950,000 to the NRA in 2017. The NRA ran ads boosting both Gorsuch and Kavanaugh.

JCN gave almost $3.6 million to the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA) and $450,000 to the Rule of Law Defense Fund. RAGA launched the dark money policy fund while then-Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt was on the association’s board of directors. Pruitt later chaired the fund before Trump hired him to lead the Environmental Protection Agency.

One of the many controversies Pruitt dealt with during his 17-month EPA tenure involved the revelation his wife had secured a position with JCN as a temporary contractor. JCN reportedly received her resume from Leo, who has helped raise much of the Wellspring Committee’s cash, according to McClatchy.

From 2017-18, JCN continued quietly bankrolling a small but expanding circle of conservative groups aimed at attracting women, with $75,000 to the Susan B. Anthony List; $35,000 to the American Women’s Alliance; and $250,000 to Winning for Women, which was launched in 2017 as a conservative counterweight to EMILY’s List.

The Susan B. Anthony List boosted Kavanaugh’s nomination and continued to support him after he was accused of sexual assault by Christine Blasey Ford, a Stanford University professor who knew the justice when he was in prep school. Winning for Women also threw their support behind Kavanaugh, spending on hundreds of videos and Facebook ad buys targeting women.

JCN also donated $500,000 to A New Missouri, a dark money organization established to support the state’s former Republican governor, Eric Greitens. He resigned last year amid an investigation into the organization.

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https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2012/06/rich-rewards-one-mans-shadow-money-network/

howard rich 2012

 is the eighth story in anexclusive series about the funding behind politically active tax-exempt organizations that don’t disclose their donors. You can read the other stories in the series here.

Long ago, Earth Day rooted itself in the minds of many Americans as a regular annual event — not bad for what started 42 years ago as a “teach-in” about the dangers of an industrial economy running amok.

But there have always been opponents to the environmentalist agenda, and on Earth Day 2012, they found that they had their own, modern-day “teach-in” — a four-and-a-half minute video posted on YouTube. The slick production, titled ,” is a laundry list of libertarian grievances against big government billed as a response to the “economic suicide pact” of environmentalism.

“If I wanted America to fail, I would create countless new regulations and seldom cancel old ones,” says the narrator, black background and foreboding music adding to an apocalyptic tone. “They would be so complicated that only bureaucrats, lawyers and lobbyists could understand them. That way, small businesses with big ideas wouldn’t stand a chance.”

He goes on to mock alternative energy, the public education system and other standards of the left. “If I wanted America to fail, I would prey on the goodness and decency of ordinary Americans,” he concludes. “I would only need to convince them that all of this is for the greater good. If I wanted America to fail, I…I suppose I wouldn’t change a thing.”

Heavily promoted by Michelle Malkin, Rush Limbaugh and other right-wing commentators, the video went viral, racking up 2.3 million views since it debuted.

But few, if any, of those millions of viewers understand the complicated web of secretive, densely interwoven political groups from which the video emerged.

While the network is built around nonprofits with vague names and grassroots slogans that imply the participation of many ordinary Americans, it’s primarily the handiwork of one man: Howard Rich.

Rich, 72, made his fortune in Manhattan real estate, but since at least the early 1970s, his passion has been libertarian politics. He decamped from the Libertarian Party in the 1980s to establish his own network of like-minded think-tanks and publishing companies.

Rich is also prominently attached to leading national libertarian groups — he sits on the boards of directors of the Club for Growth and the Cato Institute.Yet he remains a mysterious figure, rarely interviewed and almost always several steps removed from any direct action.

Still, an examination of the publicity-shy mogul’s efforts makes several things clear. He is deeply committed to his ideological values — willing to spend massive amounts of money to push projects even in places where he has little apparent personal or business connection. He is single-minded in his approach, willing to lash out at conservatives as quickly and as viciously as he will go after liberals. And all indications are that he believes the ends justify the means, sometimes using money as a blunt force object to get his way.

His involvement in electoral politics usually consists of transferring money — though it’s often difficult to say exactly whose money — into nonprofit groups that don’t disclose their donors. When he funds causes — or candidates — directly, Rich frequently camouflages his donations under any of dozens of nearly anonymous shell corporations. In that way, he’s the antithesis of a Sheldon Adelson, an ultra-rich Republicans who has openly given tens of millions to GOP presidential super PACs. On those occasions when Rich is revealed as the source of contributions, though, he’s been unapologetic about his role.

According to Internal Revenue Service records analyzed by the Center for Responsive Politics, from the early 2000s at least through 2010 Rich was the linchpin holding together a confusing, swirling array of political organizations — all of them nondisclosing nonprofit groups — that spent heavily to influence state and federal politics around the country. The constellation of organizations that operate out of a handful of Rich-related addresses is constantly changing, but some of them are well-known: Rich, in his role as chairman of U.S. Term Limits, a 501(c)(4)group under tax rules, has for years been the driving force of the movement to curtail how long  elected officials can stay in office. He’s also the chairman of a 501(c)(4) group called Americans for Limited Government, which spent $1.02 million in 2010 targeting Democrats running for Congress and distributed millions more to other groups.

“If I Wanted America to Fail” is a textbook example of Rich’s tangled web. It was produced by a group calledFree Market America,which, according to its website, is a joint project of Rich’s Americans for Limited Government and another group, Citizens for Limited Taxes and a Stronger Economy, Inc. Florida state records show that Citizens for Limited Taxes is registered at a Tampa address that also is home to at least 30 political action committees; the group’s only listed officers are two political operatives and the head of the Florida Chamber of Commerce. State campaign finance records show that in 2010, the group collected and spent more than $12 million helping defeat a proposition that would have slowed development in Florida. Its relationship with Rich? Like so much about his empire, that’s not entirely clear.

OpenSecrets.org made multiple attempts to interview Rich and other individuals involved with his groups, including several board members. But Ray Wotring, Americans for Limited Government’s treasurer, said the group would not allow any representative to comment.

“You can keep pushing, but we’re not going to talk to you,” Wotring said,complaining that OpenSecrets.org published a “hatchet job on Howie in 2006.” For the record, OpenSecrets.org did not publish any articles about Rich in 2006, and has never written specifically about him.

Eric O’Keefe, who co-founded U.S. Term Limits with Rich and is currently the CEO of the Sam Adams Alliance, a tea party group, and board member of the Wisconsin Club for Growth, was the only individual close to Rich who would comment for this story. O’Keefe, who is no longer part of Rich’s organizations but said he follows them and counts Rich as a friend, said it is Rich’s deep commitment to libertarian ideals, not an expectation of payback, that drives his donations to political groups and candidates.

“Howie has given millions of dollars to these causes,” O’Keefe said. “All of us benefit from a functioning democracy and a functioning market economy, but he has never expected to have a tangible return on his investments.”

O’Keefe said Rich is careful to obey laws as they are written, but opposes limits on campaign contributions.

“I can’t speak for him, but I know he pays a lot of money to attorneys to follow the rules,” O’Keefe said. “I know he doesn’t favor the system for limits on contributions” because he believes it favors incumbents.

Occasionally, Rich grants an interview or offers his opinion more directly — posting columns on his own website, for instance. In 2010, he penned one about the Rod Blagojevich scandal in Chicago, in which the former governor of Illinois was accused of selling political favors for campaign contributions. Rich, dripping with cynicism, portrayed the world of politics as a grimy, corrupt place.

“First of all, if you think this sort of pay-to-play scamming doesn’t go on every single day in Washington D.C. and state capitals all across America, I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you,” Rich wrote, continuing:

It may not always be so mindlessly overt (and the tape recorder may not always be on), but in the post-Jack Abramoff world we live in – a world of “free home renovations” for U.S. Senators and cash hidden away in Representatives’ freezers – let’s not delude ourselves.

The network

One way to begin tracing Rich’s network is to follow the numbers — for example, 9900. At least six of the groups affiliated with Rich are based out of an office at 9900 Main Street in Fairfax, VA.

Suite 303 of that four-story office building is home to Americans for Limited Government Inc., Americans for Limited Government Foundation, U.S. Term Limits, Inc., U.S.Term Limits Foundation, Legislative Education Action Drive and Parents In Charge Foundation. Some are 501(c)(3) charities under the tax code, and some are 501(c)(4)s.

Rich is the chairman or president of all of them, with a tight circle of trusted lieutenants in key positions. Bill Wilson, a libertarian political operative who has worked with Rich since the 1990s, is a paid employee of all of the groups. And their various boards of directors are strikingly similar — and dominated by other prominent libertarians, like Ed Crane, the president of the Cato Institute, who in 2010 was a board member of four of Rich’s groups. Frayda Levy, who sits on the board of Club for Growth, is listed as a director of two of Rich’s groups.

Together, these six groups listed $11.6 million in revenues in 2010, the most recent year for which a report is available, and $12.8 million spent on things like political consultants, mass mailings and grants to other politically-oriented nonprofits. There tax status prevents them from having to publicly disclose their funders, so almost none of the $11.6 million these groups reported in revenue can be traced to a specific source.

One exception: A recent OpenSecrets.org investigation into a previously unreported group called the Center to Protect Patient Rights found that the group gave tens of millions to major conservative 501(c)(4) organizations — including $5.6 million to Americans For Limited Government, Inc., in 2010. But that trail dead-ends at a post office box in Arizona, with no indication of who is providing the Center’s funds. And there’s very little indication where the rest of Rich’s network gets its money — although Rich’s own pocket is a possibility.

O’Keefe declined to say whether Rich’s own money drives his organizations.

But O’Keefe said that he and Rich share the belief that donors have a constitutionally protected right to contribute to political causes (though not candidates) without having to reveal their names.

“Our position was always that we were always happy to have people brag about their money, but it’s not our business to brag about their donations,” O’Keefe said.

Repeating an argument often made by those who oppose disclosure, O’Keefe said that when donors’ names are made public, they become targets for solicitations from other people seeking money, and it opens them up to retribution from powerful interests.

“That’s a real and ongoing concern,” he said. “We viewed it as our role to protect [donors] from that.”

The churn

Trying to trace the cashflow between Rich’s groups is a little like watching a Rube Goldberg contraption: there are a lot of moving parts. For instance, in 2010, Americans for Limited Government Foundation gave theParents In Charge Foundation a grant of $225,000,and the U.S. Term Limits Foundation a grant of $234,000. But it also owed $1 million to its 501(c)(4) sibling, Americans for Limited Government, Inc.

Americans for Limited Government, Inc., in turn, gave a grant of $125,000 to U.S. Term Limits Inc. — and then lent it $346,000 more.

Yet the same year, U.S. Term Limits Foundation lent $85,000 back to Americans for Limited Government, Inc.

Confused yet? This may well be the point, or, according to tax attorney and former top IRS official Marcus Owens, it may be a clever system to skirt restrictions on how the organizations can operate. Because of the similarities between the various groups — their staffs, board members, missions and organizations they fund — the churn of cash back and forth raises questions, Owens said.

“It’s the same group, at the same address, with occasionally some new faces and they all seem to act on the same set of principles — limited government and term limits — so it seems kind of implausible that there is some sort of benefit from these internal financial relationships other than to disguise and modify the character of the money,” he said.

For example, grants from a 501(c)(3) organization, such as U.S. Term Limits Foundation, couldn’t be used by a 501(c)(4), such as Americans for Limited Government, Inc., for political activity. Loans from the same group, structured as ordinary business transactions, would have no such restrictions, Owens noted.

Also, tax law requires 501(c)(4)s like Americans for Limited Government, Inc., to spend the majority of their resources on “social welfare” activities. Spending too much on politics can lead to a challenge of their tax-exempt status.

***

“If you have a 501(c)(4) that’s heavily engaged in political activity, it needs to somehow establish that 51 percent of what it does, isn’t political — how do you do that quickly? Make a grant,” Owens said. “You could have a sort of circular cycling of dollars that attempts to support the tax status of all the (c)(4)s in the network.”

And moving money between groups may help Rich’s organizations appear to be funded by multiple sources. Receiving all its donations from a single source can be problematic for an organization trying to maintain its favorable tax status, according to Owens, as it suggests the group’s purpose is to benefit that single donor.

The fact that Rich lends money to the groups in his network is unusual, Owens noted.

In 2010 Rich lent $772,000 to U.S. Term Limits, Inc., through Rich Lending Corporation. In previous years he lent money to Americans for Limited Government, Inc., and sometimes the group lent money back to Rich Lending Corporation, as well.

According to Owens, this may be a way to gain a tax benefit for funding a politically active nonprofit. Simply donating money to the group money might not be tax deductible as a business expense — particularly if the group engages in lobbying or political activity, which Americans for Limited Government does. But if the money is loaned by a for-profit company it can be used for any purpose by the recipient and the source of the funds would avoid limitations on business deductions.

“If they loan money, then it’s not an expenditure, it’s a business transaction and any related expenses would likely be deductible,” Owens said.

The spread

Rich’s network, though, isn’t entirely a closed system. The groups also spend money on political campaigns directly. OpenSecrets.org data shows Americans for Limited Government spent $1.02 million on mailers attacking Democrats in 2010 — the biggest target being Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) Another $6 million was spent hiring political consultants and direct-mailing firms in Utah, California and Arizona, according to the group’s tax form.

And Rich’s groups also distribute to an array of other nondisclosing nonprofits in the form of grants.

In 2010, Americans for Limited Government sent $250,000 to Americans for Job Security,a nonprofit closely linked to several of George W. Bush’s top political advisers. Americans for Job Security spent almost $9 million in 2010, targeting mostly Democratic congressional candidates. It also stepped into an Alaskan state ballot initiative fight, spending $1.6 million supporting a local 501(c)(4) in an effort to try to defeat a referendum limiting mining. In response to complaints filed about the local group and its claims to be a grassroots organization, the Alaska Public Offices Commission opened an investigation to determine the group’s funding sources.

“Americans for Job Security has no purpose other than to cover various money trails all over the country,” the commission’s report concluded.

AJS, whose executive director shared office space with the Karl Rove-linked organization American Crossroads, was also accused in the report of being an improper conduit for money from the mine’s owner. Though AJS never admitted wrongdoing, it paid a $20,000 settlement.

Most of the grants Americans for Limited Government gave in 2010 seemed to follow a similar playbook: at least $1.1 million went to other 501(c)(4)s in three states — Colorado, South Carolina and Alaska. Those groups, in turn, passed much of the money on to other groups, which then intervened directly in local and state elections. Rich’s other groups made similar donations to many of the same local groups.

In Alaska, Americans for Limited Government sent $66,000 to a 501(c)(4) called Alaskans for Open Government — which in turn sent most of the money to another group called Clean Team Alaska. That group spent heavily to promote a ballot measure that would have banned virtually anyone who received public money — government contractors, municipalities, public employee unions (a regular hobgoblin in Rich’s writings) — from lobbying the government or contributing money to political campaigns. The effort was abruptly abandoned just before the Alaskan Public Offices Commission required the Alaskan groups to disclose their funders.

Rich is fond of ballot initiatives for a very simple reason, U.S. Term Limits co-founder O’Keefe says.

“They don’t change their mind after the election,” he said. “They don’t renege on campaign promises. It’s a policy, not a candidate. You don’t actually know what you’re getting back from a candidate.”

[dyn graph] cf

Rich’s Network: This interactive graphic displays some of the groups that are either part of Rich’s network of non-disclosing 501(c) organizations, or have received money from them, based on 990 forms filed with the Internal Revenue Service. You can zoom in or out, reduce the number of organizations to see only the larger ones, or reshape the network. To see the data behind this visualization — including the value and type of transaction between each group — click here to download an Excel (.xlsx) spreadsheet. 

Palmetto State Politics

Rich may have made his biggest mark in South Carolina— a state where he appears to have no personal connections or obvious business interests. But since 2006, Rich has spent large sums in the state, largely to pursue one of his favored causes: School vouchersto allow parents to send their children to educational institutions other than their local neighborhood schools.

In 2010 alone, Rich’s organizations gave more than $1.7 million to a handful of South Carolina non-profits — groups like South Carolinians for Responsible Government and Conservatives In Action. South Carolinians for Responsible Government is actually two separate nonprofits, one a 501(c)(3) and another a 501(c)(4). Both groups are based at the same address and have the same president and identical boards of directors. Combined, they listed having more than $1.6 million in revenue in 2010.

“South Carolinians for Responsible Government is a statewide grassroots non-profit organization,” the group claims on its website. “Unlike our opponents, who use tax dollars to fund their operations, we depend entirely on the generosity of citizens like you.”

But that’s true only if “citizens like you” includes four of Rich’s groups, which, according to their tax filings, made five grants to the two South Carolina organizations totaling $1.5 million — about 90 percent of the recipient groups’ revenues. It’s a classic Rich maneuver, indirect and complicated.

As is Rich’s sidestepping of South Carolina’s campaign finance laws: A recent investigation by The State newspaper found that since 2008, Rich had contributed at least $188,000 to 38 members of the South Carolina House of Representatives. An OpenSecrets Blog review of South Carolina’s campaign finance disclosures indicate that since that article was published, Rich has given at least another $19,000 to three state Senate candidates facing primary fights.

But since South Carolina caps individual donations at $2,000, Rich had to be creative. Instead he made his gifts through shell companies with names like Stillrich LLC, Coolcal LLC, 188 Claremont LLC, 123 LaSalle, Inc., and 51 First Avenue, LLC. The companies, many of which appear to linger from Rich’s time in real estate – a realm in which it’s common for each property to exist as its own LLC — all list 1420 Walnut Street, Suite 1011, Philadelphia, PA, as their address.

That’s the address of the Center for Independent Thought, the libertarian think tank run by Rich’s wife, Andrea Millen Rich.

Dick Harpootlian, the chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party, is blunt in his assessment of Rich.

“He owns the whole f***ing state,” Harpootlian said recently in an interview with OpenSecrets Blog.

Phil Noble, a Democratic party activist who in 2010 traveled the state confronting candidates for taking Rich’s campaign contributions, is almost as blunt.

“He’s basically bought the Republican Party and virtually all the state House candidates is what it boils down to,” Noble told OpenSecrets Blog. “God knows how many millions he has spent here.” According to Noble, Rich first came to the state to back former governor Mark Sanford, who was a prominent school voucher proponent.

Noble said that Rich has targeted candidates, often moderate Republicans, in primary contests, usually shortly before an election. One left-wing South Carolina blog found that in 2008, LLCs and individuals affiliated with Rich contributed $40,000 to a conservative state Senate candidate, Lee Bright, in the final two weeks before he faced off against an incumbent Republican. The contributions, which were not made public until after the vote, accounted for 20 percent of Bright’s funds in that election.

Simultaneously, the South Carolina Club For Growth — a group affiliated with the national Club For Growth, where Rich is a board member — dropped, blasting him for taking money from trial lawyers.

Bright narrowly won the race.

Noble blames Rich for corrupting South Carolina’s political culture by encouraging the development and use of secretive non-profits to attack political enemies.

“He was sort of the impetus for the the creation of a whole (c)(4) support network for Sanford and his agenda,” Noble said. “He brought that whole culture with him.”

Furthermore, said Noble, Rich and his network “don’t care at all” about bad publicity. “They just spend what they have to, and they keep spending big.”

Continuing to Spend

There are indications that increasingly Rich is aiming his operation at federal politics. For the past two years, OpenSecrets.org data shows, Americans For Limited Government, Inc., has employed a federal lobbyist. So far this year, the group has lobbied in support of two anti- union bills, including one sponsored by Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.), to whose campaign Rich personally gave $2,500. NetRightDaily.com, an online publication sponsored by Americans for Limited Government, has trumpeted the role the group played helping Duncan develop the legislation.

In March, Rich gave $50,000 to the Club For Growth Action Fund, a super PAC affiliated with the libertarian Club For Growth where Rich is on the board. Characteristically, Rich shrouded the donation under cover of a shell corporation, Ashborough Investors LLC, which lists his wife as the manager.

He has given another $48,500 directly to candidates like Richard Mourdock, the Indiana Tea Party challenger who successfully upset long-time incumbent Republican Sen. Dick Lugar, as well as to PACs — including Club for Growth and the Term Limits America PAC.

If Rich is gearing up his operation for a big effort at the federal level, there will likely be a liberal pushback — his name is often mentioned on liberal blogs in the same breath as the Koch brothers (although CRP found no direct connection between Rich and the Kochs).

But if Rich is pushed on his campaign finance activities, expect him to push back.

In 2008, when a liberal group took it upon itself to notify conservative donors with ties to non-disclosing outside spending groups that they were being watched for possible election and tax law violations, Howard Rich — despite his own extensive involvement with political groups that hide their funding sources — sent a similar letter to liberal donors.

“As a donor to one or more of these organizations and efforts, you have been able to engage in these activities without notice, operating in relative obscurity. I am writing to inform you that this will no longer be the case,” Rich wrote in his letter. “Your name has been put in our database. We are monitoring all reports of a wide variety of leftist organizations. As your name appears in subsequent reports, it is our intent to publicize your involvement in your local community.”

Center for Responsive Politics researcher Robert Maguire contributed to this story.

==

https://truthout.org/articles/one-six-figure-donor-funds-whitaker-nonprofit-with-dark-money/

Asingle six-figure donor accounted for 100 percent of funding raised by a nonprofit run by acting Attorney General Matthew Whitakerbefore he became Jeff Sessions’ chief of staff last year, new tax documents obtained by the Center for Responsive Politics reveal.

President Trump tapped Whitaker to become acting Attorney General earlier in November after Jeff Sessions was asked to resign.

The Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT) is a self-proclaimed 501(c)(3) “watchdog” nonprofit.

This is not the first year a single big donor has accounted for the entirety of FACT’s funding, according to an exclusive new analysis by CRP. Nearly 100 percent of FACT’s funding — all but a few dollars in interest accrued on money left-over from prior years — came from a single anonymous donor again in 2015, 2016 and again last year.

CRP discovered FACT’s first tax return back in 2016, revealing its funding — $600,000 for 2014, its first year of operation — came entirely from a donor-advised fund called DonorsTrust, which acts as a pass-through vessel managing the money flow from wealthy individuals and foundations to nonprofit organizations while allowing the donors to remain anonymous. Beneficiaries of DonorsTrust include a breadth of conservative and libertarian initiatives. Due to DonorsTrust’s design, although CRP is able to reveal the direct funder of FACT by piecing together grants from different tax returns, the ultimate donor remains hidden.

New tax returns obtained by CRP show that wasn’t the only time DonorsTrust was FACT’s main funder. In fact, DonorsTrust accounted for 100 percent of FACT’s income from donations again in 2015, in 2016 and its most recent tax return — meaning Whitaker’s organization that claimed to be “dedicated to promoting accountability, ethics, and transparency” has gotten all of its funds from a group that exists mainly as a vehicle for donors to elude transparency every year since its inception.

deep Ties to Dark Money Networks

In their application for tax-exempt status, FACT — then called the Free Market America Educational Foundation — told the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that its purpose was to “conduct research and provide informational studies on free market concepts in relation to environmental regulations and policy.” The IRS approved the group’s application for tax-exempt charity status on July 21, 2014, according to its determination letter.

Tax-exempt status in hand, the nonprofit changed its address to a UPS store and its name just weeks later, according to Virginia incorporation records. The nonprofit changed its name again that October, first to the Working for Rights to Express & Communication before finally landing on its current name — ultimately changing its name three times in the months following IRS approval for tax-exempt status, twice in just one day. That month, Whitaker, took control of the organization after losing his bid for a U.S. Senate seat in Iowa. :{

}:

As the Free Market America Educational Foundation, the group was started by Ray Wotring, an operative who had long ago been tied to another shadowy network of politically active nonprofits. Wotring also served on another conservative nonprofit, Americans for Limited Government, which has close financial ties to the network and shared the same UPS story mailing address as FACT’s first iteration as the Free Market America Educational Foundation as well as Free Market America’s 501(c)(4) nonprofit arm.

Free Market America’s nonprofit arm has remained active and began to spend on lobbying in 2018, reporting six-figure spending.

FACT’s dark money ties don’t end there.

The treasurer and a member of the board of directors at FACT is Neil Corkery. Corkery, along with his wife Ann, sit at the helm of a network of conservative “dark money” groups organized to influence public policy and has become a key player promoting Trump’s agenda.

The network has become well-known for the Judicial Crisis Network(JCN), a nondisclosing group that emerged as the predominant dark money spender in Supreme Court confirmation fights since its launch in 2005, allowing deep-pocketed donors to funnel millions of dollars opposing or supporting judicial nominees, including a pledge to spent $10 million on the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. JCN’s primary benefactor over the years has been the Wellspring Committee, an even more opaque nonprofit run by the Corkerys that accounted for over 80 percent of its total revenue in 2016.

Many of the groups tied to the network list the same address as their office, with different “suite” numbers. In reality, the address is also a UPS store and the suite numbers are PO boxes.

Links to Trump’s Mysterious Inaugural Donor

In addition to its ostensible political spending fueled by secret donors, disclosures by groups in the Corkery’s network have also raised question about other vehicles of influence behind the scenes, most notably in ties to a $1 million gift to President Donald Trump’s inaugural committee from a mysterious Northern Virginia company called BH Group, LLC.

Little is known about the LLC other than the seven-figure check on Dec. 22, 2016, almost a month before President Trump was sworn in, and a trail of clues pieced together from tax documents and other disclosures.

These clues have also led to Leonard Leo, the executive vice president at the Federalist Society, who listed “BH Group” as his employer in a filingwith the Federal Election Commission.

Tax documents previously obtained by CRP show that the Wellspring Committee made a $750,000 payment to BH Group for “public relations” and that JCN made an additional cash infusion of $947,000to the BH Group around when the LLC made its inaugural donation.

New tax documents first obtained by Maplight and reviewed by CRP reveal that Judicial Education Project, JCN’s sister 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, paid an additional $1.3 million to BH Group LLC last year.

As a 501(c)(3) organization, Judicial Education Fund is not required to reveal its donors and chooses to keep them secret. However, CRP has been able to trace the source of the bulk of the group’s 2017 funding. Like FACT, Judicial Education Fund received millions of dollars coming from DonorsTrust accounting for more than 99 percent of the group’s funding.

That newly revealed payment from Judicial Education Fund brings the total known income for the BH Group to more than $3 million, according to CRP’s analysis — over three times the $1 million it gave to President Trump’s inaugural committee and raising more questions about its other activities that have yet to be reported.

Whitaker’s Watchdog

FACT’s own activities since 2014 have largely revolved around legal and ethics complaints, mostly targeting Democrats and with a particularly aggressive focus on Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential election.

FACT has paid more than half-a-million dollars to Republican opposition research firm America Rising LLC,according to its most recent three tax returns.

FACT raised just over $3.4 million since it was conceived in 2014, according to tax filings obtained by CRP. Whitaker’s salary accounts for more than a third of FACT’s entire revenue since its exception, making him its single largest expense.

Whitaker received more than $1.2 million from FACT over the three years he led the organization, according to CRP’s analysis of the group’s tax returns, with the salary he drew from FACT rising precipitously — in some cases increasing by more than six-figures with each passing year.

Whitaker made $502,000 in 2017 — around half of FACT’s spending — despite having left the organization to take a position at the Justice Department as then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ chief of staff in September of that year.

[graph]

FACT provided the vast majority of Whitaker’s income for the entire span of time covered by his financial disclosures on file with the Office of Government Ethics and released by the Justice Department the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, following weeks of scrutiny and multiple requests.

Whitaker’s selection as acting Attorney General has been contested on multiple fronts, and the release of his financial disclosures has only fueled the dumpster fire.

Disclosures revealed that Whitaker’s unsuccessful 2014 campaign received four donations totaling $8,800 this year — years after he lost the election and just months after he joined the Justice Department. The donations were the only money the campaign has received in over two years, raising questions about the potential implications of the donations under the Hatch Act, a federal law that generally prohibits federal officials from knowingly soliciting or accepting campaign donations and a separate Justice Department memo further restricting political activity by its personnel in the hopes of keeping the agency as apolitical as possible.

A provision of the Hatch Act allows officials to raise money to retire campaign debt, but the campaign’s only reported spending was 2018 were $228 to reimburse “data services” and $500 to Whitaker’s old law firm for renting office space, according to the New York Times.

Whitaker’s law partner of eight years, William Gustoff,who was treasurer for Whitaker’s unsuccessful 2014 Senate campaign and also serves on the board of FACT, signed off on the FEC filings.

“The checks came in. I, as the treasurer, deposited the checks, and I retired the debt that I knew I could without talking to Matt,” Gustoff told the New York Times, “I don’t talk to Matt about the campaign.”

Gustoff did say that FACT had been “well received” by Republican donors.

2017 Form 990 tax returns for DonorsTrust and Judicial Education Project were first obtained by Maplight’s Andrew Perez and reviewed by the Center for Responsive Politics.

==

wsj

...

Federal ethics regulations governing the Justice Department are more generally focused on financial or legal conflicts of interest, rather than past commentary. Justice Department ethics lawyers offer advice, but not strict orders, about whether an official should recuse, though other officials have typically followed their guidance.

Mr. Whitaker has sometimes had a difficult relationship with other department officials, people familiar with the department’s leadership said. He was tapped to replace Jody Hunt, Mr. Sessions’ former chief of staff, who was a longtime Justice Department employee with a more relaxed management style than Mr. Whitaker’s more aggressive approach, people who know both men said.

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He had no relationship with Mr. Sessions or the rest of the department brass before arriving. He was installed at the suggestion of Leonard Leo, head of the influential Federalist Society, upon whom Mr. Trump relies when it comes to picking judges, who admired his style and connections to the conservative legal world, people familiar with the matter said. He has allies in the White House. When Mr. Rosenstein’s departure seemed imminent last month, White House and Justice Department officials crafted a plan to have Mr. Whitaker replace him, people familiar with it said.

Outward signs of the leadership shift were already evident Thursday. Mr. Whitaker attended a formal investiture for new Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in Mr. Sessions’ stead, reciting the lines from the lectern before the sitting justices. When a court clerk read aloud Justice Kavanaugh’s commission, the text concluded with the name of the signatory, Mr. Sessions.

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https://www.thenation.com/article/the-anti-catholic-playbook/ no lnx

CAMPAIGNS AND ELECTIONS

CORRUPTIONPODCASTS OPP-ART: DISPATCHES FROM THE RESISTANCE

The Nation

SUPREME COURT  The ‘Anti-Catholic’ Playbook

SUPREME COURTRELIGIONBRETT KAVANAUGH

The ‘Anti-Catholic’ Playbook

Does Brett Kavanaugh think abortion should be illegal? A secret network of right-wing activists has spent millions attacking such questions as anti-religious bigotry.

By Sarah PosnerTwitter SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

Confirmation hearings for President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court pick, Brett Kavanaugh, began yesterday with a sustained uproar from Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, who protested Republican efforts to barrel through the process. From the opening moments, Democrats prevailed on committee chair Charles Grassley to postpone the hearings—or entertain their motion to adjourn—because so many of Kavanaugh’s records as associate White House counsel, and all of his records as staff secretary to President George W. Bush, have yet to be released.

This article was reported in partnership with The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute, where Sarah Posner is a reporting fellow. Additional research by Eli Clifton, Richard Salame and Maia Hibbett.

Committee Republicans, undaunted by this breach of transparency, turned to laying the groundwork for the questioning of Kavanaugh, set to begin this morning, by sowing fear in the Republican base about what Democrats would do if he were not confirmed and they gained more control of the confirmation process after the midterms. Senator Ted Cruz reminded the public of litigation brought by religious groups, including Catholic nuns, against the Obama administration, claiming that employer-provided contraception coverage under the Affordable Care Act violated their religious freedom. Democrats, Cruz charged, “want justices who will further that assault on religious liberty.”

The hearings were fast-tracked by Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, who is pressing the Senate to confirm Kavanaugh by October 1. The rushed timeline is just the latest maneuver in an aggressive Republican campaign to make sweeping, long-lasting changes to the federal judiciary by packing it with judges hostile to civil rights, reproductive freedom, LGBTQ equality, and church-state separation—while at the same time taking extreme measures to block Democratic nominees. If he is confirmed, the 53-year-old Kavanaugh could tip the balance of the high court for decades, potentially overturning the right to an abortion and dramatically expanding religious exemptions to civil-rights laws and reproductive-health services. He could play a pivotal role in matters that could decide the future of the Trump presidency, from the scope of executive power, which Kavanaugh has argued is vast, to whether or not a sitting president may be subpoenaed or charged with a crime. On a wide range of issues with a profound impact on the daily lives of Americans, a Justice Kavanaugh could prove the decisive vote that cements conservative gains, while wiping out past civil-rights advances.

In the coming days, the 21 senators on the judiciary committee will have an opportunity to ask Kavanaugh tough questions about his legal philosophy on abortion, LGBTQ rights, executive power, and, as the point person on government faith-based initiatives while in the White House counsel’s office of George W. Bush, the proper role of government in the face of faith-based discrimination. Civil-rights advocates say these are precisely the questions that must be posed, given the stakes in choosing a successor to Anthony Kennedy, long the Court’s crucial swing vote on many of these issues. But if a tight-knit network of conservative activists has its way, these senators will instead pull their punches, fearing ferocious, well-funded attacks that deliberately misrepresent such scrutiny as signs of anti-religious bias.

Conservatives, including Kavanaugh himself, have long awaited and carefully prepared for this moment. In the wake of the crushing defeat of conservative legal hero Robert Bork, nominated to the Supreme Court in 1987, and deep disappointment that subsequent, more-moderate Republican appointees Kennedy and David Souter failed to adjudicate as conservative ideologues, right-wing political operatives began building a new strategy for the courts. The Federalist Society continued to build a pipeline of conservative nominees, but strategists bruised from the Bork fight knew they also would need a hard-hitting public-relations campaign to press for their confirmation. They would have to successfully portray rigid ideologues as mainstream, while intimidating lawmakers from grilling them on their more extreme views.

A key tactic would be to shut down questioning on how the nominee would approach cases on abortion or LGBTQ rights by accusing Democratic senators probing these issues of being anti-religious—even anti-Catholic—bigots.

That campaign, honed over more than a decade, has been fueled by tens of millions of dollars in dark-money donations, designed by conservative political consultants and PR firms, disseminated byadvocacy groups such as the Catholic League and the Judicial Crisis Network, and validated by GOP senators such as Orrin Hatch,who in past confirmation battles has accused “the left” of “trying to enforce an anti-religious litmus test.” The network also includes Federalist Society executive Leonard Leo, who famously delivered a list of judicial nominees to then-candidate Trump, and has continued to closely advise him on his picks as president.

In his East Room speech accepting Trump’s nomination in July, Kavanaugh spoke often about his faith. He recalled his Jesuit education at Georgetown Preparatory School, in the suburbs of Washington, DC, which taught him the motto “men for others,” a creed Kavanaugh said had inspired a lifelong dedication to public service. He highlighted his standing in “the vibrant Catholic community” in Washington, noting that “the members of that community disagree about many things, but we are united by a commitment to serve.” He hit the same notes yesterday in his opening remarks, referencing his Jesuit education and his volunteer work with Catholic Charities.

In emphasizing his Catholic faith, Kavanaugh had perfectly teed up conservative activists to launch a preemptive attack on anyone who might question his views on abortion, LGBTQ issues, and religious liberty.Within hours of his nomination, one conservative Catholic advocacy organization, Catholic Vote, which claims nearly half a million lay Catholics as members, declared Catholic voters to be “thrilled” with the pick, but warned that they would be vigilant for “any whiff of anti-Catholic bigotry” in the confirmation process. “The experience of past judicial confirmation battles suggest attacks on a nominee’s personal religious views are inevitable,” the group’s president, Brian Burch, said. Op-eds warned of “another explosion of public anti-Catholicism” and predicted the “ugly insinuation” of “the same ‘dual loyalties’ chestnut that bigots have smeared Catholic candidates for public office for going on 200 years in this country.”

Kavanaugh’s nomination was not even a day old, yet Burch was already issuing a warning: “CatholicVote.org is prepared to defend Judge Kavanaugh from any such personal smear campaign by anti-Catholic zealots. We intend to hold every Senator, of both parties, accountable. Any whiff of anti-Catholic bigotry must be met with universal condemnation by every senator. This is especially true for those senators seeking re-election in states won by President Trump.” These senators include North Dakota’s Heidi Heitkamp, Indiana’s Joe Donnelly, and West Virginia’s Joe Manchin—all Democrats in close races. All three are Catholic, and all three have been targeted with ads over the Kavanaugh nomination by Catholic Vote and the Judicial Crisis Network.

It’s unlikely that anyone on the Senate Judiciary Committee missed Burch’s meaning. The network had bludgeoned Dianne Feinstein of California, the committee’s ranking Democrat, for a year over a single sentence she uttered during confirmation hearings last September for Amy Coney Barrett,a Notre Dame Law School professor and conservative Catholic whom Trump had nominated to serve on the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. After Barrett insisted that as a judge she would follow Supreme Court precedent, Feinstein asked how Barrett would resolve conflicts between her religious beliefs and the law as a judge. “Dogma and law are two different things,” Feinstein told Barrett. “I think whatever a religion is, it has its own dogma. The law is totally different. And I think in your case, professor, when you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you. And that’s of concern when you come to big issues that large numbers of people have fought for for years in this country.”

The clip caused an immediate uproar among conservatives. Catholic Vote published a piece on its website, “Dear Anti-Catholic Left: Bigotry Lives Loudly Within You.” The Judicial Crisis Network, the dark-money group at the center of the conservative march to stack the courts, leapt to Barrett’s defense with an inflammatory, six-figure ad campaign, titled “Catholics Need Not Apply.” It accused Feinstein and fellow Judiciary Committee Democrat Dick Durbin of Illinois, himself a Catholic, of having “mocked” Barrett’s faith. “Their hypocrisy knows no limits,” the ad charged. “They attack a woman for her Catholic faith, make it a religious test, while they are afraid to call radical Islam, radical Islam.”

The Senate confirmed Barrett, who became an instant celebrity to Trump’s Christian-right base, a standing that soon landed her on Trump’s short list for the Supreme Court. Meanwhile a variation on Feinstein’s phrase—“the dogma lives loudly within me”—became a right-wing meme, appearing on T-shirts and coffee mugs sold on conservative websites, and her quote continues to provide fodder for right-wing pundits.

But while conservative Catholic activists have succeeded in claiming loudly that they have been oppressed, many liberal Catholic leaders argue that their views don’t represent all Catholics. “The religious right, including ultraconservative Catholic special-interest groups, are the squeaky wheel in American politics,” said Jon O’Brien, President of Catholics for Choice. “They get heard and privileged above the majority of Americans of faith or no faith. We are incredibly concerned that Kavanaugh and the special interests he is backed by will radically redefine religious freedom in America to mean religious privilege for a few at the expense of everyone else, including women and LGBT individuals.”

Indeed, yesterday, as Kavanaugh’s hearings got underway, 1,550 Catholic nuns, priests, deacons, and other leaders wrote to the Senate raising concerns about Kavanaugh’s views on health care, immigration, workers’ rights, voting rights, and the death penalty. “As Catholics,” they wrote, “we believe that any government official—including a Supreme Court Justice—must be concerned with the needs of people who are marginalized, not just the rich and powerful or a member of one’s own political party.”

Kavanaugh, it turns out, is deeply familiar with this playbook built around allegations of bias, as it dates back to his days as a top adviser in the George W. Bush White House during the religion wars over Bush’s judicial nominees, some of whom had out-of-the-mainstream views on abortion, gender, and LGBTQ rights.

From 2001 through the middle of 2003, Kavanaugh served as associate White House counsel, helping Bush shepherd his judicial nominations through the Senate. In mid-2003, Bush named Kavanaugh his special adviser and staff secretary; shortly afterward, he nominated Kavanaugh to be a judge on the powerful US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Throughout this period, Bush’s judicial nominees—many of whom, like Trump’s nominees, had been cultivated and vetted by the Federalist Society—provoked pitched confrontations in a narrowly divided Senate.

In 2003, while Kavanaugh was still in the White House counsel’s office, conservatives accused Democrats of anti-Catholic bias during confirmation hearings for James Leon Holmes, whom Bush had nominated to be a federal trial judge in Arkansas. Holmes had a history of misogynist writing in which he had argued, with his wife, that “the woman is to place herself under the authority of the man” and insisted that an abortion ban would not violate the rights of women who had been sexually assaulted. “Concern for rape victims is a red herring,” he wrote in a letter to a local newspaper, “because conceptions from rape occur with approximately the same frequency as snowfall in Miami.”

The “controversy around Leon Holmes,” according to an account by conservative Catholic political operative Deal Hudson, provided a “perfect opening” for Republicans to accuse Democrats of being anti-Catholic. According to documents related to Kavanaugh’s White House tenure released by the George W. Bush Presidential Library, Manuel Miranda, at the time counsel to Senate majority leader Bill Frist, circulated an e-mail blast to White House staff, including Kavanaugh, from the arch-conservative Catholic League. “catholicism on trial: religious test applied to judicial nominee,” it read, going on to describe Holmes as “a man of deep religious conviction” and accuse Democrats of having “unfairly tagged him a misogynist, misunderstanding what the pope, the U.S. bishops and Holmes have said regarding this matter.”

“It does not get better than this,” Miranda enthused in his cover note. Miranda later left his post over a scandal in which he was implicated in secretly accessing and leaking Democratic computer files about judicial nominations. Holmes was confirmed.

The religion wars only intensified when Bush nominated William Pryor to serve on the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.Because he was up for an appellate seat, Pryor generated more adamant Democratic opposition than had Holmes. Senators probed his hard-line beliefs on abortion, church-state separation, and LGBTQ rights, including questioning him about his rescheduling of a family vacation to Disney World because it coincided with “Gay Day,”and an amicus brief he authored as Alabama attorney general in the landmark Supreme Court case Lawrence v. Texas, in which he argued that gay sex should remain criminalized because the Court had “never recognized a fundamental right to engage in sexual activity outside of monogamous heterosexual marriage, let alone to engage in homosexual sodomy.” Pryor supporters, again, portrayed legitimate questions about a nominee’s position on abortion—a constitutional right that enjoys majority support among not only Americans as a whole but also among Catholics—as a de facto litmus test against Catholics.

“Their intention is smearing senators as anti-religious for asking questions,” said Peter Montgomery, senior fellow at People for the American Way, which has been in the thick of judicial nominations for decades. “In doing that they’re hoping to intimidate the senator somehow. They raise these questions when senators are asking the nominees about important issues like Roe v. Wade.”

Throughout this entire period, Kavanaugh was specifically enlisted by the Bush White House to engage the Catholic community, including about judges. He was asked, along with Karl Rove, to address supporters of the Catholic magazine Crisis. He also spoke about judicial nominations to a Pro-Life Pilgrimage from Legatus, a conservative Catholic network created by Domino’s Pizza founder Thomas Monaghan, for Catholic business leaders who have “committed themselves to study, live and spread the Catholic faith in their business and personal lives.” And he volunteered to be the office’s specialist on faith-based initiatives, “given my general interest and my previous religious liberty work in my pre-WH days.” Kavanaugh had served on the Religious Liberty Practice Group at the Federalist Society; in private practice he authored an amicus brief in a school-prayer case, arguing that student-delivered prayers at football games were constitutional (the Supreme Court held that they were not).

It was during the Pryor nomination fight that conservative advocacy groups first aggressively advanced the claim that Catholics were being excluded from the bench by the left. The Committee for Justice, led by former George H.W. Bush White House Counsel C. Boyden Gray, and the Ave Maria List, a political-action committee funded by Monaghan, ran newspaper ads in support of Pryor that targeted moderate and swing-state Democratic senators. The ads featured a picture of a closed courtroom door with a sign over it reading, “Catholics Need Not Apply”—the first of the phrase’s many appearances in confirmation campaigns.

Senate Republicans helped press the charge that Democrats were anti-religion. Hatch, then the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told reporters, “It appears that nominees who openly adhere to Catholic and Baptist doctrines, as a matter of personal faith, are unqualified for the federal bench in the eyes of the liberal Washington interest groups. Period.”

But the Committee for Justice ads drew condemnation from other quarters, including from the Anti-Defamation League, which protested that they were “misleading and inflammatory.” A Washington Post editorial described them as “beyond the pale.” Senate Democrats mounted a filibuster, consigning Pryor to a recess appointment, but he was eventually confirmed in 2005 in a bipartisan deal.

The political battle, however, turned out to be far more damaging to the senators who had opposed Pryor’s confirmation.As the 2004 election season got underway, it became clear that an attack machine sounding the alarm about anti-Catholic bias was perfectly comfortable with harsh assaults on Catholic Democrats. Then–Senate minority leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota and Patrick Leahy of Vermont, both Catholics themselves, had denounced the Committee for Justice ads on the Senate floor. Daschle, declaring himself “proud of my Catholic faith,” said, “I know about the bias against immigrants and against Catholics. That was real discrimination. What is being spread this week is a falsehood uttered for partisan political purposes.”

Despite his public declaration of pride in his Catholic faith, Daschle would become a target of conservatives—including conservative Catholics—who sought to oust him from the Senate in order to pave a clear path for confirmation of Bush’s judicial picks. The 2004 elections, with John Kerry, another liberal Catholic at the top of the presidential ticket, featured brutal attacks on both men’s faith.

The Republican National Committee attacked Kerry’s Catholicism, launching a website, KerryWrongforCatholics.com, critical of his positions on abortion, same-sex marriage, and judicial nominations, noting that as senator he had pledged to “filibuster any Supreme Court nominee who would turn back the clock on the right to choose, on civil rights and individual liberties, on the laws protecting workers and the environment.” Kerry was also being Swift Boated, a campaign conceived in part by a PR firm, Creative Response Concepts, that would go on to become a player in the Catholic judicial-nominations network. The Committee for Justice launched a website and ad campaign called “Kerry’s Scary” to attack his views on abortion, same-sex marriage and the pope, as well as his judicial philosophy, calling the latter issue urgent because “Court watchers believe as many as four Justices might retire in the next four years.”

Conservatives also raised questions about Daschle’s Catholicism during his 2004 reelection bid, attacking him in ads over his stance on the judiciary, abortion, and LGBTQ rights. The stakes were high for those who dreamed of a conservative takeover of the courts: If Democrats reversed Republicans’ razor-thin margin in the Senate, they would control the chamber, giving them the ability to block Bush’s nominees, including for anticipated Supreme Court vacancies, or push through those nominated by a potential president Kerry.

Even before the campaign got underway, conservative magazines spread stories that Daschle’s bishop was denying him communion because he was divorced. Then the ads started. The Ave Maria List PAC spent $100,000 running ads accusing Daschle of misinforming South Dakota voters that he was against abortion. One ad said Daschle had once called abortion “an abhorrent practice,” but had later supported pro-choice groups as senator. “Tom Daschle tries to claim he’s pro-life even though his voting record and actions in Washington prove he’s not,” the ad charged. “Tom Daschle has changed and it’s time for South Dakota voters to make a change of their own.”

Another anti-Daschle ad campaign, titled “You’re Fired”—modeled on Trump’s reality-television show The Apprentice—was produced by the You’re Fired PAC and funded by Robin P.Arkley II, a California real-estate magnate. Arkley donated over half a million dollars to the effort.

“The people of South Dakota want to protect traditional marriage,” an affiliated website declared. “You’re Fired Inc. believes the Federal Marriage Amendment is the only way to prevent liberal, activist judges from imposing same sex marriage as they have in Massachusetts—on the rest of American society.” The site depicted a boardroom meeting, during which an executive concluded, “We have one too many Democrats around here and that’s not a good thing,” punctuating his statement with the trademark “You’re fired.” Another Arkley ad charged that Daschle “refused to protect marriage” and “would let liberal, activist judges redefine it.”

Daschle lost his reelection bid, the Republicans retained control of the Senate, and Bush beat Kerry, winning reelection to a second term during which he put John Roberts and Samuel Alito on the Supreme Court.

With the White House and Senate in Republican hands, and with the GOP riding high on passing same-sex marriage bans at the ballot box in 11 states, conservative activists set to work on getting Bush’s conservative judicial nominees confirmed. After the 2004 election, one of Arkley’s top aides, Ann Corkery, who had directed philanthropy at his loan-servicing firm, founded the Judicial Confirmation Network. The group blandly described itself as “an organization of citizens joined together to support the confirmation of highly qualified individuals to the Supreme Court of the United States.” Yet Corkery and her husband Neil would soon become pivotal figures in a broadening coalition of conservatives as they prepared for the confirmation battles ahead.

That coalition, according to a 2006 account in Crisis magazine, was directed by a “war room” of activists “acquainted with each other through Catholic and conservative public causes.” Among them were major players from the Bush reelection campaign, including Gary Marx, who had led the campaign’s outreach to social conservatives, and Greg Mueller, described by Crisis as “the group’s public-relations maestro,” whose public relations firm, Creative Response Concepts, had advised Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Today, CRC represents the Judicial Crisis Network as well as the Catholic Association, another advocacy group the Corkerys helped launch in 2007, to influence policy-makers on issues concerning “the family, Catholic institutions, religious liberty, and cultural values.” CRC did not respond to repeated requests to interview representatives of JCN and the Catholic Association.

According to Crisis, “Mueller, Leo, and their colleagues would provide the main talking points, media training, rapid response to any attacks on the nominees, assistance with ad buys, and ongoing legal analysis.”

“Our most important goals were to support the idea of judicial restraint, to define the character of the nominee within the first 24 hours, and to continue to provide support as the process wended its way,” Leo told Crisis, reflecting on the war room’s role in the successful confirmation of both Roberts and Alito. “To accomplish this, we engaged in a variety of approaches—an aggressive paid media effort, rapid response activity, and positive messages.”

Mueller described the war room in far more political terms. “We tried to take the approach of corporate crisis management, along with the daily political communications that go on in a political campaign.” It fell to Marx, fresh off the Bush-Cheney campaign and newly appointed as JCN’s first executive director, as Crisis wrote, to develop “a state-based strategy that would target the political pressure points—an organization that would make Democratic senators in Republican states feel the political heat.”

During Bush’s second term—as Kavanaugh’s nomination to the DC Circuit was held up over a period of years, with Democrats arguing that his role in drafting the Starr Report and in the investigation of the suicide of Clinton aide Vince Foster had marked him as too partisan to warrant his confirmation as a judge—the war room kicked in. JCN openly threatened Democratic senators with the Daschle treatment. If lawmakers filibuster Kavanaugh, JCN warned in 2006, a midterm-election year, “Americans in key states will react just as they did when former Senate Democrat leader Tom Daschle did the same thing. Americans care about judges and the role of the courts in our society.” The Senate confirmed Kavanaugh two weeks later, by a vote of 57-36.

Today, thepresident of JCN is not a public figure like Marx but a player so behind-the-scenes as to barely leave a public trace. But Daniel Casey, a public-relations, political, and “crisis” consultant, is a veteran of the Bork confirmation battle—a fight that conservatives painfully lost, triggering the scorched-earth organizing JCN spearheads today.

Then the executive director of the American Conservative Union, Casey was “a crucial player” in the Bork fight, said Patrick McGuigan, who worked then for the Free Congress Foundation, a political advocacy group founded by religious-right architect Paul Weyrich that helped push the GOP to the right. The dust jacket of Ninth Justice, a book McGuigan wrote with Weyrich’s daughter Dawn, detailing each move and countermove in the Bork fight, describes McGuigan and Casey as “intensely Republican, devout Catholics, ardent admirers of the nominee—who understood from the first moment of the battle that they were involved in the most significant political confrontation of their lives.”

McGuigan, who now works as a journalist in Oklahoma, described his relationship with Casey as “co-captains” in the Bork battle, in which conservatives were heavily outspent and outmaneuvered by the liberal opposition. He said that at the time, there was “insufficient organization of ideas and messaging on the conservative side of things compared to the left side.” Casey’s forte, said McGuigan, was “neighborhood by neighborhood, precinct by precinct, household by household organization patterned after the labor unions, but on the conservative end of the spectrum instead. I think that’s what Dan was good at.” (Casey declined to be interviewed for this article, referring interview requests to Peter Robbio at CRC, who did not respond.) In the years after the failure of the Bork nomination, conservatives saw the appointment of Kennedy, and then of Bill Clinton’s nominees Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer. Although Kennedy was nominated by a Republican, he proved a bitter disappointment to conservatives, particularly for his majority opinion in Lawrence in 2003, ruling anti-sodomy laws unconstitutional—a ruling that led, 12 years later, to the legalization of same-sex marriage nationwide.

During the Bork hearings, Casey argued that “the American people should be outraged that the liberals are spending millions of dollars to try to buy a Supreme Court seat.” Three decades later, Casey is the president of the moneyed advocacy organizations JCN and the related Judicial Education Project, as well as of Catholic Voices. He is also treasurer and director of the Catholic Association Foundation and the Catholic Association. Together, they are part of a multimillion-dollar dark-money campaign backing a relentless drive by Trump and his Republican allies in the Senate to reshape the federal judiciary for generations, from federal trial courts all the way to the Supreme Court, and to shape public opinion about Catholicism and religious liberty.

JCN does not disclose the identity of its donors. But the group has said it anticipates spending at least $10 million advocating for Kavanaugh’s nomination. While many of the early ads focused on promoting Kavanaugh as a mainstream, impartial jurist admired by former clerks of all political stripes, the most recent ads touted him a “grand slam for conservatives” and warned Democrats against succumbing to “pressure from East Coast liberals.”

After 2008, the Judicial Confirmation Network changed tacks, from battering the opponents of Bush’s court nominees to blocking President Barack Obama’s. JCN, now renamed theJudicial Crisis Network, was the first conservative organization to blast Obama’s selection of Sonia Sotomayor—a Catholic—as “a liberal judicial activist of the first order who thinks her own personal political agenda is more important that the law as written.” Although JCN had repeatedly claimed that liberal Democrats had unfairly attacked conservative Catholics, it again did not hesitate to attack a liberal Catholic.

John Gehring, Catholic program director at Faith in Public Life, a liberal group that advocates for progressive expressions of faith in politics, said that for conservative Catholics, Obama’s presidency “was very formative to the idea that Catholic identity was under siege by an administration that had elitist contempt for what the church believes.” The University of Notre Dame’s invitation to the pro-choice Obama to deliver a commencement speech in 2009, said Gehring, triggered “a huge divide” and “an earthquake in Catholic political conversation.” The Obama administration’s policies, particularly the contraception benefit written into the Affordable Care Act, which became the core target of conservatives’ legal strategy on religious freedom, further inflamed the world of conservative Catholicism.

But Gehring argues that this “well-funded, deep network” has “had disproportionate influence on what Catholic identity is in the public square and in politics.” He said the network has helped to create the distorted impression that Catholic priorities are limited to opposing abortion and LGBTQ rights, when traditional Catholic social-justice teaching includes a range of issues such as immigration, poverty, and the environment. Gehring pointed out, as an example, that conservative Catholics ignore the 1891 papal encyclical, “Rights and Duties of Capital and Labor,” written in support of workers rights, including the right to unionize.

What’s more, the conservative network’s position on abortion doesn’t represent the majority of Catholics. According to the Pew Research Center, 53 percent of Catholics say abortion should be legal in all or most cases. O’Brien, of Catholics for Choice, also points out that “Catholic women have abortions at the same rate as women of other faiths or no faith.” Kavanaugh’s decisions as an appellate judge on reproductive rights and the role of religion in politics, O’Brien added, “underscore just how out of touch he is with the majority of Catholics who are pro-choice and who support a healthy separation between church and state.”

During the Obama era, the dark money ramped up. The Wellspring Committee, a nonprofit formed in 2008 where both Corkerys have served as president, became the chief funder of JCN, bankrolling its campaigns to block Merrick Garland’s confirmation, and, under Trump, to support the nomination of Neil Gorsuch and other nominees to federal courts. According to an investigation last year by the Center for Responsive Politics, “most of Wellspring’s funds, in turn, came from a single mysterious donor who gave the organization almost $28.5 million—nearly 90 percent of its $32.2 million in revenues” in 2016. According to this report, Wellspring gave more than $23 million to JCN in 2016, quadrupling its 2015 donation to the group of $5.8 million.

Wellspringalso donated money to the Catholic Association, another nonprofit the Corkerys helped found, this one to advocate on behalf of “religious liberty,” and to the Federalist Society. In yet another sign of the intimacy of this network, the association paid Leo, known as Trump’s Supreme Court whisperer, $120,000 for “management consulting.” (Leo also earned $435,000 from the Federalist Society that year, according to its tax return.) Neither Leo nor the Corkerys responded to requests for comment.

Another mysterious Corkery-linked company, BH Group LLC, created in 2016, donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee. Not much is known about what BH Group does, or who its principals are, but in 2016, the Corkerys’ Wellspring Committee paid BH Group $750,000 for “public relations,” according to its tax return, and JCN paid the firm $947,000 for “consulting services.” And Leo later identified BH Group as his employer in an FEC filing.

In early May 2017, about a month after Gorsuch was confirmed to the Supreme Court, Leo was awarded the prestigious Canterbury Medal from the Becket Fundfor Religious Liberty, billed by the organization as “religious liberty’s highest honor.” A major Christian-right legal firm, the Becket Fund is best known for its victory in 2014’s landmark Hobby Lobby case, in which the Supreme Court ruled that the Affordable Care Act’s requirement of contraceptive coverage violated the company’s religious freedom. In his acceptance speech at a gala held at The Pierre, a New York luxury hotel overlooking Central Park, Leo, in white tie, could barely conceal his elation that Trump had beaten the odds to win the White House. Looking back on the campaign, Leo recalled the “fear that permeated every day in that countdown to November 8” and rejoiced at the “amazing turn of events, thanks to our 45th president.”

With Trump as president, Leo is, for all practical purposes, on the inside, as a handsomely compensated guide to judicial nominees who will satisfy religious conservatives. JCN runs the outside game,spending its mounds of dark money to promote the president’s—or rather, Leo’s—judicial nominees.

But even as the Trump administration was already well on its way to stacking the judiciary, including the Supreme Court, with judges inclined to expand the reach of Hobby Lobby, Leo had not quite let go of the urgency of the Obama years—or what he’d seen as the threat of a potential Hillary Clinton presidency suppressing religious freedom. “As government policy becomes more grudging toward religious freedom, that attitude spreads in the broader culture. A hostile stance in Washington creates space for groups with kindred ideological designs,” Leo said, going on to warn of even more dire consequences. “A government that suffocates something so elemental as freedom of religion is not likely to be respectful of any other right.”

At one point, he released the tension with a joke at Clinton’s expense. “Of course everyone thought they knew how the election was going to go,” Leo said. “The Democratic nominee looked so confident, so relaxed, so content. With just days remaining, what could possibly go wrong?” And then, “Well, not everyone had access to Rebekah Mercer’s crystal ball.”

At the time Leo spoke, Mercer’s family’s data-analytics firm, Cambridge Analytica, was not yet under federal investigation for harvesting private Facebook data and potentially violating US election laws. But even so, it was striking that he referenced the Mercer family—whose political giving is led by Rebekah and her father Robert, the reclusive, Trump-supporting, Republican financier—at a celebration of religious freedom, given that one of the family’s pet projects, Breitbart News, has long been a hotbed of Islamophobia and anti-Semitism. It turns out that Mercer had also long been a generous funder of an array of organizations in Leo’s orbit—the conservative legal and Christian organizations that claim to represent ordinary citizens fed up with Democrat-appointed “judicial activists” and Democratic “gridlock” in holding up Republican nominees.

Charity filings show that between 2013 and 2016, the Mercer Family Foundation gave a million dollars to the Becket Fund, on whose board Leo has served since 2014. Between 2013 and 2015, the foundation donated nearly $6 million to the Federalist Society. In fact, Rebekah Mercer’s ties with Leo go even deeper.

In 2014, Leo joined the board of a new group called Reclaim New York, led by Mercer and Steve Bannon, then ensconced at Breitbart. The group claims to provide citizen trainings to “empower citizens to engage their state and local government,” but critics call it an astroturf organization dedicated instead to sowing distrust in state and local government and laying the groundwork for far-right Republican candidates to win elections. In 2015, Reclaim New York shared office space with Cambridge Analytica in midtown Manhattan and paid the firm for data-analytic services. (Reclaim New York did not respond to a request for comment about Leo’s role.) In 2016, Leo, along with Mercer and Kellyanne Conway, now a top adviser to President Trump, incorporated a related lobbying organization, the Reclaim New York Initiative.

A core element of Leo’s strategy, throughout the Bush and Obama years, was to portray religious freedom, a treasured American virtue, as under siege by supposed government overreach and disdainful, elite liberal culture. In another May 2017 speech, this one before the ActonInstitute, a conservative think tank, Leo placed the blame on the left for making confirmation battles “so intense.” Liberals, he said, want to invest the Supreme Court with “something close to absolute power,” including the“creation of rights found nowhere in the text or structure of the Constitution,” citing Griswold v. Connecticut, from 1965, which struck down laws criminalizing the sale of contraception; Roe v. Wade, from 1973, which legalized abortion; and Obergefell v. Hodges, from 2015, which legalized same-sex marriage.

But now, he said, thanks to Trump, liberals were finally losing control of the courts. “For constitutionalists,” Leo told the Acton Institute, “our improbable 45th president has turned out to be, to borrow a phrase from his predecessor, the change we’ve been waiting for.”

Sarah PosnerTWITTERSarah Posner is a Reporting Fellow with the Investigative Fund and expert on the intersection of religion and politics.

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https://maplight.org/story/trump-judicial-adviser-linked-to-1-million-anonymous-inaugural-donation/

:{:{This story was produced by MapLight in partnership with Fast Company.

}:

A conservative lawyer who advises President Donald Trump on judicial nominations appears to be linked to an anonymous limited liability company that donated $1 million to the Trump inaugural committee, according to campaign finance records.}:

In December 2016, the Trump committee received a seven-figure check from BH Group, LLC. Journalists have tried for the past year to locate anyone who works for the company. The limited liability company only lists a paralegal at Holtzman Vogel, a conservative law firm, as its organizer in Virginia incorporation records.

A recent New Jersey congressional campaign filing may have helped unravel the mystery. The report lists Leonard Leo, an executive vice president at the Federalist Society, the conservative lawyers network, as an attorney for BH Group. Leo has served as an adviser to Trump on judicial nominations, and he helped leadSupreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch through his Senate confirmation process last year.

Leo and the White House did not respond to questions from MapLight about his role with BH Group. Holtzman Vogel did not respond to MapLight’s request for comment.

The campaign report, filed by Jay Webber’s congressional campaign, was first highlighted by journalist Wendy Siegelman.Leo has beenidentified as the president of the BH Fund, a nonprofit that was given influence over hiring and admissions at George Mason University's law school as part of an anonymous $20 million donation.

The only previous public reference to BH Group was in a tax return filed last year by the Wellspring Committee, a secretive conservative nonprofit. The dark money organization reported paying $750,000 to BH Group in 2016 for public relations.

Wellspring served as the primary financier of the Judicial Crisis Network (JCN), another dark money organization. The network spent $7 million on advertisements to persuade Republicans to block President Barack Obama’s 2016 Supreme Court pick, Merrick Garland. JCN then spent $10 million to support Gorsuch’s confirmation last year. The network is currently pushing the Senate to confirm dozens of other Trump judicial nominees.

According to the Daily Beast, Leo was instrumental in starting both JCN and Wellspring. The organizations provided almost 80 percent of the money raised by theRule of Law Project, a conservative nonprofit that Leo helped lead.

The Federalist Society, where Leo has worked since 1991, has members throughout the senior levels of the Trump administration. Its annual convention last year in Washington, D.C., featured speeches from Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta, and White House Counsel Don McGahn. 

The Federalist Society’s top donors have included billionaire libertarian brothers Charles and David Koch; Koch Industries, their energy and chemical conglomerate; the Mercer Family Foundation, funded by hedge fund magnate Robert Mercer; and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the powerful business lobby.

Leo appears to be especially close with Pruitt, who previously served as Oklahoma’s attorney general. Records from Pruitt’s Oklahoma office show he frequently spoke at the Federalist Society events, and the organization paid for Pruitt to fly from Tulsa to Washington, D.C., for only a few hours to meet with Leo in 2016.

An unnamed EPA official recently told the New York Times that when Leo called his office “and asked for something, we did it, it doesn’t matter what it was." Agency records show Leo helped arrange Pruitt’s agenda during his trip to Rome last year. The Washington Post found that Leo originally paid for one of the administrator’s dinners before Pruitt reimbursed him.    

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FOLLOWING THE DARK MONEY

Because of RLDF’s status as a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, it’s impossible to document all of the group’s donors. But tax records show hundreds of thousands in donations can be traced to theJudicial Crisis Network (JCN), a conservative legal group.

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The network has financed nonprofits boosting Republicans in state judicial and attorneys general races, and advocates for the appointment of conservative judges. The group recently spent more than $10 million on television ads to ensure Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch’s confirmation. The network reported donating $435,000 to RLDF between July 2014 and June 2015.

The Rule of Law Project (RLP), another dark money organization, gave $145,000 to RLDF in 2014, according to tax records. JCN also has given RLP at least $350,000–or 70% of the funding the organization reported receiving between 2014 and 2015.

Leonard Leo, a top official at the conservative lawyers’ organization known as the Federalist Society, is listed in RLP’s filings as a director. Pruitt has been a frequent participant in Federalist Society events, and was a featured speaker at a Washington, D.C., luncheon in March. Leo was reportedly “instrumental” in starting both JCN and the Wellspring Committee, a dark money group that funneled $13.9 million to JCN between 2013 and 2015.

There is only one publicly disclosed donor to Wellspring, which is closely tied to JCN–Wellspring’s president is married to JCN’s treasurer.Tax records show Wellspring gave RLP $40,000 in 2014 and 2015, and also donated $310,000 to the Federalist Society.

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https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/17/the-conservative-pipeline-to-the-supreme-court

Annals of Law

April 17, 2017 Issue

The Conservative Pipeline to the Supreme Court

With the Federalist Society, Leonard Leo has reared a generation of originalist élites. The selection of Neil Gorsuch is just his latest achievement.

By Jeffrey Toobin

chinks gone?

Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Neil Gorsuch, which were held last month, in Washington, D.C., quickly fell into a pattern. Democratic senators unsuccessfully sought to pin down Gorsuch’s views on issues such as campaign finance, while Republicans made gentle inquiries that seemed designed to run out the clock. In this vein, toward the end of Gorsuch’s testimony, Ben Sasse, a Republican from Nebraska, asked Gorsuch his opinion about the Declaration of Independence. Gorsuch took the opportunity to deliver a patriotic lecture about the heroism of the Founders. “No one remembers who John Hancock was,” Gorsuch said. “But they know that that’s a signature because he wrote his name so bigly . . .” Gorsuch’s invocation of one of Donald Trump’s trademark utterances, apparently accidental, prompted an explosion of laughter from the audience.

Seated toward the back of the hearing room, Leonard Leo smiled. “There’s one sound bite,” he whispered to me, then added, “You know, the hearings matter so much less than they once did. We have the tools now to do all the research. We know everything they’ve written. We know what they’ve said. There are no surprises.” Gorsuch had committed no real gaffes, caused no blowups, and barely made any news—which was just how Leo had hoped the hearings would unfold.

Leo has for many years been the executive vice-president of the Federalist Society, a nationwide organization of conservative lawyers, based in Washington. Leo served, in effect, as Trump’s subcontractor on the selection of Gorsuch, who was confirmed by a vote of 54–45, last week, after Republicans changed the Senate rules to forbid the use of filibusters. Leo’s role in the nomination capped a period of extraordinary influence for him and for the Federalist Society. During the Administration of George W. Bush, Leo also played a crucial part in the nominations of John Roberts and Samuel Alito. Now that Gorsuch has been confirmed, Leo is responsible, to a considerable extent, for a third of the Supreme Court.

Leo, who is fifty-one, has neither held government office nor taught in a law school. He has written little and has given few speeches. He is not, technically speaking, even a lobbyist. Leo is, rather, a convener and a networker, and he has met and cultivated almost every important Republican lawyer in more than a generation. At the Gorsuch hearings, which took place in the Hart Senate Office Building, Leo acted as the unofficial mayor of the room. Sometimes he sat in the back, so that he could kibbitz with reporters, and sometimes he sat up front, behind Trump Administration officials. (Leo has been on leave from the Federalist Society to work full time on Gorsuch’s confirmation.) “When Leonard walks in that room, everyone knows who he is,” Carrie Severino, the chief counsel of the Judicial Crisis Network, another conservative organization that worked on Gorsuch’s behalf, said. “If you care about the conservative legal movement, you always take note of Leonard.”

Leo is at ease in the role of impresario. His grandfather was a vice-president of Brooks Brothers, and he instilled in young Leonard a taste for the bella figura. Leo wears tailored suits, often with contrasting waistcoats, and a double-length gold fob attached to a 1935 train conductor’s pocket watch. (“The most accurate watch in the United States until the fifties,” he said.) In lieu of office meetings, Leo prefers to chat over breakfast (just bacon, no eggs) at the Hay-Adams Hotel, across from the White House. As his friend Boyden Gray, the White House counsel under George H. W. Bush, puts it, “He knows the best restaurants in every major city in the world, and the best wines. He has a wide-ranging, inquiring mind, and he can and will talk about any subject under the sun.”

Leo’s role in the judicial nominations has drawn fierce criticism from liberals. Nan Aron, who is the longtime president of the Alliance for Justice, which advocates for a progressive judiciary, told me, “The Federalist Society has for years been singularly focussed on building a farm team of judicial nominees who subscribe to a philosophy that is hostile to the advancement of social and economic progress in the country. Behind the scenes, during Republican Administrations, they are very engaged in identifying and recruiting for judges candidates who are ultra-conservatives—who are opposed to our rights and liberties across the board, whether it’s women, the environment, consumer protections, worker protections.” Gorsuch is likely to be only the first of Leo’s Trump Administration appointees: he is preparing for yet more vacancies on the Supreme Court, and also finding candidates for some of the hundred-plus vacancies on the lower courts, deepening his imprint on the judiciary.

Leo’s life has been shaped as much by Catholicism as by conservatism. He was born on Long Island, and his father died, of cancer, when he was a preschooler. When Leo was five, his mother got remarried, to an engineer, and the family moved to central New Jersey, where Leo spent most of his childhood. His grandfather emigrated to the United States from Italy when he was fourteen and became a tailor before working his way up at Brooks Brothers. “He understood America as being a land of opportunity, understood the value of capitalism, the value of hard work, personal responsibility,” Leo told me. “My grandparents were deeply religious people, they were daily Mass attendees. So I got all of that.”

Leo went to college atCornell, where he studied with a group of conservative professors in the government department. That led to internships in Washington during Ronald Reagan’s Presidency—notably for Senator Orrin Hatch, who was then, as now, a member of the Judiciary Committee. Leo went on to law school, also at Cornell, after which he returned to Washington and clerked for a federal appellate judge, A. Raymond Randolph, on the D.C. Circuit.

In the meantime, he had married his high-school sweetheart, Sally Schroeder. In 1992, they had their first child, Margaret, who was born with spina bifida, which confined her to a wheelchair and led to other medical complications. “She was a real miracle, despite having a really serious handicap, and many other issues, too,” Leo said. “She was extraordinarily vivacious, talented, simple. She had a great way with people.” Clarence Thomas, Leo said, still keeps her drawings under glass on his desk.

Margaret’s example deepened Leo’s Catholic faith. She encouraged him to go to daily Mass, though he found keeping up attendance difficult. During a family vacation in 2007, when Margaret was fourteen, Leonard promised her that he would resume the practice. On the morning after they returned, Leo got up early to go to Mass. He looked in on Margaret. Then, as he was walking down the hall, she started gasping for breath. She died shortly afterward. “I will always think that she did her job,” Leo told me. “She did her job.”

The Leos have six other children, including an eight-year-old son who also has spina bifida. A friend of Leo’s said, “Leonard comes to his pro-life views out of a place of incredible sincerity. They always treated Margaret throughout her life like any other child.” According to Leo, the vast majority of abortions are a consequence of voluntary, consensual sexual encounters, an opinion that influences his view of the procedure.“We can have a debate about abortion,” he told me. “It’s a very simple one for me. It’s an act of force. It’s a threat to human life. It’s just that simple.”

In the light of Leo’s perspective, the possibility that he would put forward a Supreme Court nominee who would turn out to support abortion rights seems nonexistent. Roberts and Alito have voted against reproductive rights; so, in all likelihood, will Gorsuch. As Edward Whelan, a prominent conservative legal activist and blogger, wrote recently, “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.”

Leo was a close friend of Antonin Scalia,who instilled in him an affinity for the judicial philosophies known as originalism and textualism. In rough terms, these approaches hold that judges should interpret the Constitution according to its original meaning. If the Framers did not think they were establishing, say, a right to abortion, then contemporary judges should not recognize one, either. “What’s the best way to preserve the dignity and worth of the human person?” Leo asked me one day over breakfast. He answered, “You assure all that freedom by establishing limitations on the power of the state.”

Freedoms are best protected, Leo believes, not by the assertion of rights but by the structure of separation of powers. “I was drawn to the Federalist Society because it, in my view, understood that ‘it’s the structure, stupid,’ ” Leo told me. “Scalia used to say this all the time. Scalia said tyrannies had long lists of rights. What they didn’t have was structural restraints on the power of government. I was smitten by that.” Of course, Leo wants to see the power of government restrained in some ways but not in others. As he put it, “If you look at the areas where a true conservative is willing to tolerate restrictions on the individual, by dint of government power, it’s generally fraud, force, and threats to human life and security.”

Translated from the language of abstraction, Leo has an even broader conservative agenda than simply limiting rights unknown to the Framers, such as gay rights. “What people in the Federalist Society mean when they talk about ‘structure’ is limiting the regulatory power of the state,” Samuel Issacharoff, a professor at New York University School of Law, said. “They believe that the text of the Constitution strictly limits what Congress and judges can do. So they embrace a whole series of doctrines that say Congress can’t do anything unless it’s specifically authorized in the Constitution. And then administrative agencies can’t do anything unless Congress has specifically authorized it by law. For decades, judges thought it was permissible to fill in the gaps left by the ambiguities in the Constitution and laws. But the current conservatives have an activist agenda to peel back the power of government.”

On November 15, 2007, nearly two thousand people filled the great hall of Washington’s cavernous Union Station for a black-tie celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Federalist Society. President George W. Bush attended, Chief Justice John Roberts sent a video salute, and three other sitting Justices—Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito—appeared in person to pay tribute. Scalia and Thomas spoke about the group’s origins, a story that is critical to its mythology.

The Federalist Society was founded in 1982 by three law students, at the University of Chicago and at Yale. Scalia was the group’s first faculty adviser at Chicago, where he was then a professor; the adviser at Yale was Robert Bork, who was later nominated to the Supreme Court by Ronald Reagan. As the Federalists see it, the society’s founders were scrappy outsiders who were waging a lonely struggle against the pervasive liberalism of America’s law schools. Scalia said at the anniversary party, “We thought we were just planting a wildflower among the weeds of academic liberalism, and it turned out to be an oak.” Elaborating on this point, Thomas said, “I look at this huge audience . . . and I can only imagine the courage of a few young people who came up with yet one more idea: let’s start something. Let’s start an organization where we can actually talk about ideas, where we can actually talk about the Constitution and its structure, and how that structure is to protect our liberty. . . . Can you imagine the courage that these young people had?”[went on to show it?]

The students did start the Federalist Society from scratch, but it is less clear that tremendous courage was required. Within just a few years, the group was embraced and funded by a number of powerful, wealthy conservative organizations, which eventually included foundations associated with John Olin, Lynde and Harry Bradley, Richard Scaife, and the Koch brothers. “The funders all got the idea right away—that you can win elections, you can have mass mobilizations, but unless you can change élites and the institutions that are by and large controlled by the élites, like the courts, there are limits to what you can do,” Amanda Hollis-Brusky, a professor of politics at Pomona College and the author of “Ideas with Consequences,” a study of the Federalist Society, said. “The idea was to train, credential, and socialize a generation of alternative élites.”

In the late eighties, the Federalist Society was known primarily as an organization for law students, with few opportunities for members to stay involved after they left school. Leo founded the Federalist chapter at Cornell Law School before he graduated, in 1989, but then decamped for D.C. “When I was in the midst of my clerkship, the society came to me and said, ‘Hey, we’re not sure the lawyers’ division of the Federalist Society is working,’ ” Leo told me. “ ‘And so would you be interested in coming to work for us?’ ” Leo started at the society in 1991.

From the beginning, there were limits on how the society could attempt to change the legal and political environment. As a nonprofit organization, it had to raise its own money and could not endorse candidates. Nevertheless, Leo set himself a clear goal. “The key was to figure out how to develop what I call a ‘pipeline’—basically, where you recruit students in law school, you get them through law school, they come out of law school, and then you find ways of continuing to involve them in legal policy,” he said. “So you have these chapters, you have practice groups, you have a pro-bono network, you have a media program—you find ways of engaging these lawyers so that they can still be involved.”

“It’s a network, not a hierarchy, with Leonard Leo at the center,” Steven Teles, a professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University and the author of “The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement,” said. “The formal activities of the society are important—the chapter meetings at law schools, the national conferences in Washington—but the most important thing they do is give conservatives a chance to meet one another and check one another out. All that activity lets people bubble up. It creates a chance for people to develop reputations. And the one thing all the lawyers have in common is that they all know Leonard, and he knows all of them.” Non-members also attend and speak at Federalist Society events, so the group’s web of influence (and the scope of Leo’s contacts) extends well beyond the members and affiliates, who currently number about seventy thousand.

The annual convention of the Federalist Society, held every November at the Mayflower Hotel, in Washington, has become an important event on the political calendar. “The primary reason people go to the convention is not for the panels. The main action at the convention is always in the grand hallway of the Mayflower,” Josh Blackman, a professor at South Texas College of Law, in Houston, and a well-known blogger, said. “Everyone is talking and meeting in that big hallway.”

In 2008, after the election of Barack Obama, the convention was a downbeat affair, not least because Michael Mukasey, the outgoing Attorney General, passed out while he was giving a speech. (He recovered.) The following November, as Obama was going through a difficult patch as President, there was more optimism in the air. That year, Blackman was chatting with his friend Todd Gaziano, who worked at the Heritage Foundation, when they were approached by Randy Barnett, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center and a leading libertarian theorist. A version of the Affordable Care Act had passed in the House a few days earlier. “Todd asked me what I thought about the constitutionality of the individual mandate,” Barnett told me, referring to the part of the law that required individuals to buy health insurance. “I said that I wasn’t really sure, that I hadn’t really looked into it yet. He said, ‘Do you want to do something about it?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘Whatever we do, we have to do it quickly.’ ” Blackman later wrote, with only some hyperbole, that “this conversation, though it started out innocently enough, would change the fate of the constitutional challenge to Obamacare.” Gaziano and Barnett collaborated with another colleague on one of the first articles challenging the constitutionality of Obamacare, and remained at the center of the fight over the law for the next three years. Blackman would refer to their fateful meeting as the “Mayflower compact.”

The compact illustrates the strength and the potential of the society’s network: the society can exercise enormous influence without playing a direct role. The nature of the legal claims against the health-care law also reflected precisely the kind of “structural” arguments that Leo puts at the heart of his legal philosophy. In the first case, National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, the plaintiffs asserted that the law was unconstitutional because the Commerce Clause of the Constitution does not authorize Congress to impose the individual mandate. In the second case, King v. Burwell, the plaintiffs argued that the text of the act did not permit the operation of insurance marketplaces. Ultimately, the Obama Administration won both cases. But it seems more than likely that Gorsuch, or any other Justice supported by Leo, would have voted for the losing side.

It can take a while even for Republicans to understand the breadth of the Federalist Society’s influence in Washington. Alberto Gonzales, George W. Bush’s first White House counsel, told me, “When I came to Washington, being an outsider from Texas, I knew that I would have to have some weapons in my arsenal to reassure conservative groups that I wasn’t some crazy guy from Texas. I was familiar with the Federalist Society, but I’d never been active with it.” Gonzales’s lack of connection with the group drew suspicion from the conservative legal community in Washington. “Truth be told, maybe some of the more influential members, I think they were concerned about me going on to the Supreme Court,” Gonzales said.

Tim Flanigan, who was Gonzales’s deputy in the White House, told me, “The talk started to irritate Al, who was very proud of being a conservative. He comes to Washington, and suddenly he feels like this group that he’s never heard of is attacking him, and he’s told that this group is very important to his judicial nominations. We used to have a staff meeting of about a dozen lawyers, and at one of the early meetings Al started to vent a little bit about the Federalist Society, saying, ‘Who is this Federalist Society?’ And, finally, he’s getting frustrated, and he says, ‘How many of you here are members of the Federalist Society?’ And every hand in the room went up, except for Al’s and mine.”

Gonzales was never nominated to the Supreme Court; in 2005, Bush chose Harriet Miers, Gonzales’s successor as White House counsel, and another Texan, to replace Sandra Day O’Connor. Like Gonzales, Miers had a nonexistent profile in Federalist Society circles. “By the time of the Miers nomination, the Federalist Society had created a signalling mechanism within the conservative movement,” Hollis-Brusky said. “The message Leonard and others had sent was: If you want to rise through the ranks, we need to know you. And that’s what they were all saying about Miers—‘We don’t know her. She is not one of us.’ ”

It’s long been difficult to separate Leo’s conservative political activism from his role in the putatively nonpartisan Federalist Society, and the Miers nomination put those positions into conflict.Leo had taken a leave from the society to help the White House fill the Court vacancy, so he was obligated, at least initially, to support the Miers choice. “I made it clear to people in the White House that I thought her nomination was going to be a heavy lift,” Leo said. “My feeling was that the conservative community was not going to probably weigh in in favor of her until after the hearings, because they wouldn’t have enough information about her, so that there would be a wait-and-see approach. And I was somewhat mistaken about that—they ended up coming after her a lot sooner. As opposed to simply being skeptical or agnostic, they became very hostile to the idea soon after the nomination.” The criticism from conservatives of Miers’s lack of a clear ideological stance grew so intense so quickly that she withdrew less than a month after Bush nominated her. Samuel Alito, one of Leo’s judicial darlings, was nominated and confirmed instead. “I had always been a big Alito fan,” Leo told me.

One day last spring, Leo received an invitation to join Donald Trumpfor lunch at a law firm’s offices in Washington. Trump was getting closer to clinching the Republican nomination, but his political history still provoked wariness among Party ideologists. Trump, it turned out, wanted Leo to compile a list, which the campaign would make public, of Trump’s likely nominees to the Supreme Court, in the event that he won the election. As Leo recounted their conversation, Trump said, “People don’t know who I am on these issues, and I want to give people a sense of that.” No campaign in history had put out such a list. Leo recalled, “I said, ‘That’s a great idea—you’re creating a brand.’ ”

The question, then, became on what basis Leo should select the candidates. What was Trump looking for in his nominees? Throughout the campaign, Trump had said that he would appoint pro-life Justices to the Supreme Court. But Leo told me that his conversations with Trump focussed elsewhere. “The President was very clear about what he wanted,” Leo said. “What he said in very explicit terms was he wanted people who were exceptionally well qualified, quote, ‘respected by all, not weak’—those are his words, ‘not weak’—and somebody who was going to, quote, ‘interpret the Constitution the way the Framers meant it to be.’ ” The statement was, in effect, a call for an originalist.

The distinction between Trump’s blunt campaign promise on abortion and his cagier instructions to Leo (if Leo’s account is complete) illustrates one of the political calculations of modern Supreme Court selection. Candidates can be frank about their litmus tests, but Presidents, and their judicial nominees, are supposed to be more circumspect—though everyone knows the likely result is the same. Leo told me that abortion, for example, “never came up in conversations with me, and that’s maybe because of the way I ask questions and the way I provide answers.”

Leo, in other words, knew how to play the game—how to find a nominee who met Trump’s ideological requirements as well as his own, while observing the proprieties expected for judicial nominees. And finding potential candidates, Leo told me, “is easy, in the sense that when you’ve been working in this vineyard for twenty-five years you know everybody.” On May 18th, Trump released Leo’s list of eleven judges as his possible nominees. In September, Trump put out another ten names, in a group that included Gorsuch.

The winnowing process began the week after Trump’s unexpected victory. “The questions in our interviews were very different from the questions from the senators at the confirmation hearing,” Leo said. “They’re always trying to get at the results a judge is going to reach, and I pay more attention to their methodology, approach, and understanding of a well-defined judicial role.”

Gorsuch has long had close ties to the Federalist network.He acknowledged as much in his Senate questionnaire, writing, “I have attended and spoken at some of the organization’s gatherings. I have also sometimes spoken to individual Federalist Society chapters at various law schools.” This understates the depth of the connection. Theodore B. Olson, the prominent Washington lawyer and former Solicitor General in the George W. Bush Administration, supports an annual lecture at the Federalist Society, to honor his late wife, Barbara, who died in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Gorsuch gave the Olson lecture in 2013, delivering a politically anodyne plea for civility in the legal profession. “No doubt we have to look hard in the mirror when our profession’s reflected image in popular culture is no longer Atticus Finch but Saul Goodman,” he said, referring to a character on the TV show “Breaking Bad.” But, as is frequently the case with the Federalist Society, the social dimension of the Olson lecture is as important as the official program. “The lecture is always at the Mayflower, but we often have a dinner afterward, always at a good restaurant, and usually a couple of the Justices come, and it’s a good time,” Olson told me. “Leonard is always responsible for selecting the wines.”

Democrats finally noticed the rise of the Federalist Society after the Supreme Court’s decision handing the Presidency to George W. Bush. “Bush v. Gore was the ‘Aha!’ moment,” Caroline Fredrickson, a liberal attorney, said. “We had let conservative forces come to dominance on the Court. They had had success in seeding the federal courts with people who shared their ideological views, as well as in propagating an approach to understanding the Constitution that conveniently always led to conservative outcomes.” A group of liberal-leaning lawyers and funders soon created the American Constitution Society as an explicit counterpart, and counterweight, to the Federalist Society. Fredrickson is the group’s current president.

Like the Federalists, A.C.S. has chapters in law schools and holds a big annual meeting in Washington at which favored judges speak. (Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor have spoken at A.C.S. conventions.) Just as the Federalists often invite a liberal to fill out their panel discussions, A.C.S. events sometimes feature conservatives. But the budget of the Federalist Society is about twenty million dollars; A.C.S.’s is about six million. That difference doesn’t just reflect the greater abundance of deep pockets on the right. “Liberals have siloed policy interests—the environment, civil rights, gay rights—and there are pretty distinct networks and groups for each one,” Teles said. “And conservatives have more networks that cut across these policy domains. Most conservatives are more identified by their particular ideological stripe—like social conservatives—rather than any specific issue.”

More to the point, conservatives, as a group, have cared more about judicial selection than liberals have. As Fredrickson puts it, “We still struggle to get people to recognize that the courts are one of the most important battlegrounds for public policy. Democrats make hundreds of thousands of calls about Jeff Sessions and far fewer about Judge Gorsuch, but the stakes are so much higher. Judge Gorsuch will leave his fingerprints on the Constitution a lot longer than Jeff Sessions will.”

Gorsuch’s confirmation once again gives the Supreme Court a majority of Republican appointees, as it had before Scalia’s death, last February. But Ginsburg (who was appointed by Bill Clinton) is eighty-four; Anthony Kennedy (the Court’s swing vote, appointed by Reagan) is eighty; and Stephen Breyer (a Clinton appointee) is seventy-eight. If Trump has the opportunity to replace any of these three, much less all of them, the ideological balance of the Court will be transformed for at least a generation.

Other recent Presidents, when given a chance for a second nomination, have returned to the remaining names on their original list. If Trump follows this pattern, the next nominee will come from Leo’s pipeline, too, giving him a fourth Justice on the Court. Some of these prospective nominees—who include the federal appeals-court judges Thomas Hardiman and William H. Pryor, Jr., as well as the federal district-court judge Amul Thapar, a favorite of Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader—are even closer to the Federalist Society than Gorsuch is. Pryor, who serves on the Eleventh Circuit, has spoken at least eighteen times at Federalist Society events. And, when Leo returns to the Federalist Society, he will find it thriving. He says that he isn’t even worried about recruiting new members. “We don’t really care about those membership numbers,” Leo said. “We’re not a club. We’re a movement.”

This article appears in other versions of the April 17, 2017, issue, with the headline “Full-Court Press.”

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gorsuch

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/18/us/politics/neil-gorsuch-supreme-court-conservatives.html

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March 7, 2005, Leonard Leo tapped out an email on his BlackBerry to Mary Beth Buchanan, then the director of the Executive Office of United States Attorneys, suggesting a candidate to replace Carol Lam, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California. "You guys need a good candidate?" Leo, the executive vice president of the Federalist Society, wrote to Buchanan, herself a member of the influential conservative lawyers' group. "I'd strongly recommend the current GC [general counsel] of the Air Force, Mary Walker."

At the time, White House and Justice Department officials were in preliminary talks about replacing an unspecified number of "underperforming" federal prosecutors, a plan that would culminate almost two years later in the forced resignations of nine U.S. Attorneys, including Lam, and ignite a scandal that has claimed the jobs of at least four high-ranking Justice Department officials. Leo's email, written so early in the process, speaks to the close relationship that has developed between the Federalist Society—an organization whose aims include "reordering priorities" within the judicial system to fit its conservative agenda—and key Justice Department decision makers, many of whom are members of the group.

While perhaps not a prerequisite for employment at the highest echelons of Justice, membership in the society has become a standard by which political appointees at the agency identify candidates who share their agenda. Some officials at the agency view it as such an indicator of conservative virtue that membership in the society was included as a category—along with Hill and campaign experience—on a spreadsheet that was used to rank the qualifications of the 93 sitting U.S. Attorneys, a document included in the reams of Justice Department memoranda released by the House Judiciary Committee this spring.

Beyond highlighting the organization's role as the administration's de facto headhunter for conservative lawyers and judges, Leo's correspondence raises the question of what, if any, role the Federalist Society played in the prosecutor firings. Leo did not respond to messages left at his office and on his cell phone, but he told the New York Times last night that, when he emailed Buchanan, he was unaware that a plan was in the works to replace multiple U.S. Attorneys. But, he acknowledged, his recommendation was not unsolicited. "The only way I could have possibly made that recommendation is if somebody said to me, 'Gee, do you know anyone who would be good?'" he said.

Leo's email, released yesterday as part of an ongoing congressional investigation into the prosecutor firings, marks the second time in as many days that his name has been raised in connection with the probe. Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, Bradley Schlozman—the controversial Justice Department official who replaced Todd Graves as the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri—acknowledged seeking Leo's advice on candidates to fill career positions at the agency.Unlike his former colleague, Monica Goodling, who testified that she "crossed the line" in vetting the political bonafides of job applicants, Schlozman denied subjecting potential hires to a political litmus test.

His record would suggest otherwise. Schlozman is a member of the Federalist Society, and in May the Boston Globe reported that half of the career lawyers hired during his tenure were members of the society or the conservative Republican National Lawyers Association; among the eight hires during the previous two years, none had been. According to Joseph Rich, a 37-year veteran of the Justice Department who served as the head of the agency's voting rights section until 2005, Schlozman was among a cadre of appointees who have presided over an unprecedented wave of politicization at the agency. Within the Civil Rights division, where Schlozman served until March 2006, "there appeared to be a conscious effort to remake the Division's career staff," Rich told Congress in March. He described "major" changes in hiring procedures "which virtually eliminated any career staff input into the hiring of career attorneys." As a result, he went on, the attorneys hired for the division had "little if any experience in, or commitment to, the enforcement of civil rights laws."

The politicization of Justice went well beyond hiring practices, according to Rich, extending to efforts to "influence elections." Schlozman, he says, was part of a group of political appointees that greenlighted Tom DeLay's controversial redistricting plan, which resulted in Texas Republicans winning a record number of U.S. House seats in the 2004 election.Later, while serving as the interim U.S. Attorney in Missouri, Schlozman indicted four voter registration recruiters for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) on charges of voter fraud days before the mid-term elections. (During his Senate appearance this week, Schlozman maintained that he was unaware of ACORN's political leanings.)

The Federalist Society's advice has been sought not only on Justice Department hires: Leonard Leo is one of the Bush administration's go-to experts on the federal judiciary. When the time arrived for the president to fill two open Supreme Court slots, Leo took a temporary leave from the Society in order to advise the administration. The administration did end up selecting two Federalist Society members for the high court, bringing to four the number of Supreme Court justices (Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, and Samuel Alito) who claim membership in the organization.

Leo was less successful in selling Justice on his pick to replace Carol Lam. This owed, perhaps, to Mary Walker's controversial past. In addition to being accused of whitewashing an investigation of rampant sexual assault at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, Walker also headed the group of Pentagon lawyers that produced a report arguing that the president was not bound by the Geneva Conventions. When Lam stepped down in February, she was replaced by one of her deputies, Karen Hewitt—also a member of the Society.

Daniel Schulman is Mother Jones' deputy Washington, DC, bureau chief. Reach him at dschulman (at) motherjones.com. Dan is the New York Times best-selling author of Sons of Wichita

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**Trump: Scalia Will Be 'The Ultimate Example' Of My Supreme Court Picks**

9/9/16 @ 5:15

**Trump: All My Judges Will Be 'Picked By The Federalist Society'**

6/13/16 @ 5:15

If Republicans Get Their Wish On The Supreme Court, What Would Trump Or Cruz Do?

4/6/16 @ 6:20

Federalist Society VP Says Senate Could Ignore SCOTUS Nominees Indefinitely

3/7/16 @ 2:22

**'School Choice' Just Part of DeVos Family's Far Right Agenda**

3/2/16 @ 12:25

Meet A Law Professor Conservatives Turn To On Marriage, Immigration And The SCOTUS Blockade

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Right Wing Leftovers

SUBMITTED BY: Kyle Mantyla, Wednesday 07/01/2009, 5:58pm

In retrospect, this 2002 Mark Sanford ad seems a tad hypocritical.Operation Rescue is now going to start targeting Leroy Carhart.The Federalist Society's Leonard Leo has been elected chairman of the United States Commission for International Religious Freedom.Ken Hutcherson lashes out at President Obama over the LGBT event at the White House.Three of Rep. Michelle Bachmann's fellow Republicans are apparently getting fed-up with her Census nonsense.In news that should send shivers down your spine, Steve Dillard's name is among those the state judicial nominating commission has submitted to the... MORE >

Right Calls to "Take Off the Gloves" Against Non-Existent SCOTUS Nominee

SUBMITTED BY: Kyle Mantyla, Thursday 05/14/2009, 12:35pm

Ben Smith reports that right-wing groups met with several Republican Senators yesterday to plot strategy on how to defeat President Obama's Supreme Court nominee:Leaders of some of the social and judicial conservative groups planning an all-out fight over the Supreme Court nominee met with Republican Senators yesterday, a source says, passing on a couple of the items that came up in the meetings.Centrally, it remains unclear how broadly the Republican leadership will commit to a fight, particularly on this first nominee, and so that's the question currently being arbitrated.One of the... MORE >

Federalist Society Downplays Its Power

SUBMITTED BY: Kyle Mantyla, Friday 11/21/2008, 1:33pm

It seems like it was just a few days ago that I was pointing out that the Federalist Society's claims that it was just some non-political debating society was entirely bogus. Now comes an article in the Washington Post saying that, after eight years of driving the Bush Administration's "efforts to change the federal judiciary," the Federalist Society must now be prepared to find itself out in the wilderness, which Federalist Society head Leonard Leo laughed off, saying that nothing would really change because the organization was really just a debating society all along:... MORE >

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It seems like it wasjust a few days ago that I was pointing out that the Federalist Society's claims that it was just some non-political debating society was entirely bogus.

Now comes an article in the Washington Post saying that, after eight years of driving the Bush Administration's "efforts to change the federal judiciary," the Federalist Society must now be prepared to find itself out in the wilderness, which Federalist Society head Leonard Leo laughed off, saying that nothing would really change because the organization was really just a debating society all along:

Federalist Society executive vice president Leonard A. Leo laughed when asked about the wilderness remark, saying, "I know the media likes to talk about us in terms of power and influence." But he said the group's primary goal has always been discussion of legal interpretation and limited constitutional government, and that that "remains as important as it was on November 3rd."

Leo can laugh all he wants, but his days of working hand-in-glove with the Bush Administration to get its nominees confirmed are over and while he can try and pretend that they never really had that much influence, anyone who has paid any attention to the judicial confirmation battles over the last several years knows the truth about just how deeply he and his organization were involved and fully expects them to be just as involved, albeit in trying to prevent confirmations, during the Obama administration.

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Terrorism and Abortion and Judges, Oh My!

SUBMITTED BY: Kyle Mantyla, Wednesday 09/06/2006, 4:50pm

On today’s edition of “The 700 Club,” Pat Robertson lamented that the Republicans are facing very real difficulties in getting their right-wing base motivated for the upcoming elections, because unlike previous elections, the Right can’t just focus on “judges, judges, judges, judges” this time around and is therefore growing “dispirited” by things like the war in Iraq and growing deficits. [View the video highlight: Broadband or Dial-Up.]  Given that “judges, judges, judges, judges” has been the primary mobilization... MORE >

Leonard Leo is an American lawyer who currently serves as executive vice president of the Federalist Society.^[2]

Contents

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• :{1:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{Career:(style="display:table-cell"):}:
• :{2:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{Bibliography:(style="display:table-cell"):}:
• :{3:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{References:(style="display:table-cell"):}:
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Career

Leo was appointed by President George W. Bush and the United States Senate to three terms on the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom.^[3] He has been a U.S. Delegate to the UN Council and UN Commission on Human Rights as well as the Organization of Security and Cooperation and World Health Assembly. Leo has served as an observer at the World Intellectual Property Organization and as a member of the U.S. National Commission to UNESCO.

Leo previously served as National Co-Chairman of Catholic Outreach for the Republican National Committee, and as the 2004 Bush presidential campaign's Catholic Strategist. With James Taranto, he edited the book Presidential Leadership. Leo is a graduate of Cornell University and Cornell Law School.

Leo organized efforts in support of the John Roberts and Samuel Alito U.S. Supreme Court confirmations.^[4][5] He received the 2009 Bradley Prize.^[6]

Leo has been published in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Huffington Post.^[7][8][9] He is a board member of the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast and a member of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.

In 2016, after the death of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Leo helped arrange funding to rename George Mason University's Law School the Antonin Scalia Law School.^[10]

Bibliography

• Presidential Leadership: Rating the Best and the Worst in the White House (Simon & Schuster, 2004), co-editor

References

1. :{Jump up:(style="-webkit-user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Carney, Timothy (October 11, 2006). "Of Catholics, the Court and Nov. 7". National Catholic Register. Retrieved 1 September 2015.
2. :{Jump up:(style="-webkit-user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ "Leonard A. Leo". Federalist Society. Retrieved 21 May 2014.
3. :{Jump up:(style="-webkit-user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Prodromou, Elizabeth; Leo, Leonard (July 1, 2011). "Protecting Religious Freedom Abroad". Harvard International Review. Retrieved 21 May 2014.
4. :{Jump up:(style="-webkit-user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Kirkpatrick, David (July 22, 2005). "A Year of Work to Sell Roberts to Conservatives". New York Times. Retrieved 21 May 2014.
5. :{Jump up:(style="-webkit-user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Cook, Robin (Fall 2006). "Confirmation of High Court Justices Akin to Political Campaign, Leo Says". UVA Lawyer. Retrieved 21 May 2014.
6. :{Jump up:(style="-webkit-user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ "Bradley Prize recipient Leonard Leo begins chairmanship of religious-freedom commission". Bradley Foundation. July 2009. Retrieved 21 May 2014.
7. :{Jump up:(style="-webkit-user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Leo, Leonard (January 9, 2006). "Thirty Questions for Alito: Finality and Fallibility". New York Times. Retrieved 21 May 2014.
8. :{Jump up:(style="-webkit-user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Leo, Leonard; Argue, Donald (April 12, 2010). "Nigeria's Descent Into Religious Strife". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 21 May 2014.
9. :{Jump up:(style="-webkit-user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Leo, Leonard (January 19, 2011). "Confronting China's Failure on Religious Freedom". Huffington Post. Retrieved 21 May 2014.
10. :{Jump up:(style="-webkit-user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Sloan, Karen (March 31, 2016). "George Mason Law School To Become Antonin Scalia School of Law". The National Law Journal. Retrieved 6 June 2016.

External links

• Federalist Society biography

This American law-related biographical article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

Categories: 

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• American lawyers
• American legal writers
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• Cornell University alumni
• American jurist stubs

==

off bs

eonard Leo serves as Executive Vice President of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, an organization of 46,000 individuals that is premised on advancing limited, constitutional government. In that capacity, he has helped to build a nationwide infrastructure of lawyers, judges, and business leaders who seek to foster the application of our nation's Founding principles through the projects of the Society as well as other independent projects of mutual interest and concern in the legal and policy worlds on which they band together.

In addition to his work with the Society, Mr. Leo has played an active role in both public diplomacy and politics. He has been appointed byPresident George W. Bush as well as the United States Senate to three terms to the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, where he is presently serving in his second term as chairman. He has been a US Delegate to the UN Council and UN Commission on Human Rights as well as the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe and World Health Assembly of the WHO. He also has served as an observer at the World Intellectual Property Organization and as a member of the US National Commission to UNESCO.

While on leave from the Federalist Society, Mr. Leo organized the outside coalition efforts in support of the Roberts and Alito U.S. Supreme Court confirmations in 2005-2006, and, in 2004, was the Bush-Cheney Presidential Campaign's Catholic Strategist. He also served as National Co-Chairman of Catholic Outreach for the Republican National Committee. He is active in a number of Catholic organizations, serving as a founding board member of the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast and a member of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.

Mr. Leo was the recipient of the 2009 Bradley Prize, along with the other founders and directors of the Federalist Society, for his work and efforts in advancing freedom and the rule of law through the organization. He is the co-editor of Presidential Leadership: Rating the Best and the Worst in the White House (Simon & Schuster, 2004), as well as the author of opinion editorials in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post, among other publications.

Mr. Leo holds degrees from Cornell University and Cornell Law School. He presently resides in northern Virginia, where he and his wife Sally have raised their seven children.

The Federalist Society takes no position on particular legal or public policy issues. The people listed as Experts have spoken or otherwise participated in Federalist Society events, publications, or multimedia presentations. A person's appearance on this list does not imply any other endorsement or relationship between the person and the Federalist Society. All expressions of opinion by an expert are those of the expert.

Publications and Multimedia

Local Control or Abdication of Individual Rights? - Event Audio/Video 

Second Annual Texas Chapters Conference 

September 22, 2016

Address by Senator Orrin Hatch - Event Audio/Video 

2015 National Lawyers Convention 

November 18, 2015

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Senator Mike Lee's Opening Remarks at the 2015 National Lawyers Convention - Event Audio/Video 

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November 16, 2015

Address by Orrin Hatch - Event Video 

2014 National Lawyers Convention 

November 17, 2014

2014 National Lawyers Convention Opening with Justice Scalia - Event Video 

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November 13, 2014

Keynote Address by Ted Cruz - Event Audio/Video 

Second Annual Executive Branch Review Conference 

May 14, 2014

Has the United States Supreme Court Killed California’s Initiative Process or Helped Check Its Abuses? - Event Audio 

2014 Annual Western Chapters Conference 

February 03, 2014

Address by Ted Cruz - Event Audio/Video 

2013 National Lawyers Convention 

November 20, 2013

Welcome & Opening Address by Mike Lee - Event Audio/Video 

2013 National Lawyers Convention 

November 20, 2013

Are Vouchers and Charter Schools Viable Alternatives to Public Schools? - Event Audio 

2013 Annual Western Conference 

February 13, 2013

Address by Senator-Elect Ted Cruz - Event Audio/Video 

2012 National Lawyers Convention 

November 20, 2012

Address by Senator Mike Lee - Event Audio/Video 

2012 National Lawyers Convention 

November 20, 2012

Federalism and Federal Power - Event Audio/Video 

2012 National Lawyers Convention 

November 19, 2012

:{California in Crisis: Are People and Jobs Leaving for Better Pastures? :(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:- Event Audio 

Sixth Annual Western Conference 

January 28, 2012

Address by Senator Mike Lee - Event Audio/Video 

2011 National Lawyers Convention 

November 11, 2011

Political Philosophy and Classical Liberalism Roundtable - Event Audio/Video 

2011 National Lawyers Convention 

November 11, 2011

Address by Senator Marco Rubio - Event Audio/Video 

2011 National Lawyers Convention 

November 10, 2011

Opening Address by Senator Jeff Sessions - Event Audio/Video 

2011 National Lawyers Convention 

November 10, 2011

Address by Senator-Elect Michael S. Lee - Event Audio/Video 

2010 National Lawyers Convention 

November 19, 2010

Opening Address by Senator Mitch McConnell - Event Audio/Video 

2010 National Lawyers Convention 

November 18, 2010

Address by Mark Levin - Event Audio/Video 

2009 National Lawyers Convention 

November 14, 2009

Opening Address by Senator Jeff Sessions - Event Audio/Video 

2009 National Lawyers Convention 

November 12, 2009

Address by Justice Antonin Scalia - Audio/Video 

2008 National Lawyers Convention 

November 22, 2008

Opening Address by Senator Mitch McConnell - Audio/Video 

2008 National Lawyers Convention 

November 20, 2008

Dictating Norms: Who Decides What's Right for the World? - Event Audio 

The Inauguration ofGlobal Governance Watch 

April 14, 2008

The Merits of Electing Our Judges - Event Audio/Video 

2008 Annual Student Symposium 

March 07, 2008

Senator Mitch McConnell Address - Event Audio/Video 

2007 National Lawyers Convention 

November 16, 2007

25th Anniversary Gala - Event Audio/Video 

2007 National Lawyers Convention 

November 15, 2007

25th Anniversary Tribute Video 

2007 National Lawyers Convention 

November 15, 2007

C. Boyden Gray Address at the 2007 National Lawyers Convention - Event Audio/Video 

2007 National Lawyers Convention 

November 15, 2007

Welcome & Opening Address - Paul D. Clement 

May 03, 2007

The U.S. Attorney Controversy - Event Audio 

Federalism & Separation of Powers Practice Group 

March 27, 2007

2006 National Lawyers Convention Annual Dinner - Event Video 

2006 National Lawyers Convention 

November 16, 2006

:{Paul Clement:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}: Address - Event Audio 

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November 16, 2006

Are Judicial Elections a Threat to Judicial Independence? - Event Audio 

Co-Sponsored by the Southeastern Legal Foundation and Georgia Public Policy Foundation 

November 02, 2006

Intellectual Property as a Tool of Empowerment for the Developing World: An Empowerment Agenda 

White Paper 

October 18, 2006

John Ashcroft Address Before The Federalist Society at the 2003 National Lawyers Convention 

Transcript 

November 15, 2003

Customary International Law: The Next Font of Judicial Activism? - Transcript 

2003 National Lawyers Convention - "International Law and American Sovereignty" 

November 13, 2003

Judges Wars - Transcript 

September 09, 2003

Rating the Presidents of the United States, 1789-2000: A Survey of Scholars in History, Political Science, and Law 

November 16, 2000

==

Leonard A. Leo : Experts : The Federalist Society

www.fed-soc.org/experts/detail/leonard-a-leo

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Federalist Society:{:(style="border-width:4px 4px 0px;border-style:solid;width:0px;height:0px;top:8.5px;position:absolute;margin-left:6px;margin-top:-3px;border-color:#aaaaaa;"):}:

:{:{Leonard Leo:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: serves as Executive Vice President of :{the Federalist Society:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: for :{Law:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: and ... and concern in the :{legal:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: and policy worlds on which they :{band:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: together.:(style="word-wrap:break-word"):}:

Leonard Leo - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/**Leonard**_**Leo**

:{:(style="border-color:#006621;;border-style:solid;border-width:5px 4px 0px !important;width:0px;height:0px;margin-left:3px;top:7.5px;margin-top:-4px;position:absolute;left:0px"):}:

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Wikipedia:{:(style="border-width:4px 4px 0px;border-style:solid;width:0px;height:0px;top:8.5px;position:absolute;margin-left:6px;margin-top:-3px;border-color:#aaaaaa;"):}:

:{:{Leonard Leo:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: is an American :{lawyer:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: who currently serves as executive vice president of :{the Federalist Society:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:. ... "A Year of Work to Sell Roberts to :{Conservatives:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:". New York Times. Retrieved 21 May 2014. Jump up ^ Cook, Robin (Fall 2006).:(style="word-wrap:break-word"):}:

Federalist Society - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/**Federalist**_**Society**

:{:(style="border-color:#006621;;border-style:solid;border-width:5px 4px 0px !important;width:0px;height:0px;margin-left:3px;top:7.5px;margin-top:-4px;position:absolute;left:0px"):}:

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Wikipedia:{:(style="border-width:4px 4px 0px;border-style:solid;width:0px;height:0px;top:8.5px;position:absolute;margin-left:6px;margin-top:-3px;border-color:#aaaaaa;"):}:

:{:{Leonard Leo:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:. Budget. Revenue: $17,823,780. Expenses: $13,935,875 (FYE September 2014). Website, www.:{fed-soc:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:.org. :{The Federalist Society:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: for :{Law:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: and Public Policy Studies, most frequently called simply :{the Federalist Society:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:, is an organization of :{conservatives:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: and .... Avery and McLaughlin write that :{the Federalist Society:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: is primarily a “:{group:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: ...:(style="word-wrap:break-word"):}:

Leonard Leo | Young Conservatives Coalition

www.theycc.org/programs/fellowship/leonard-leo/

:{:(style="border-color:#006621;;border-style:solid;border-width:5px 4px 0px !important;width:0px;height:0px;margin-left:3px;top:7.5px;margin-top:-4px;position:absolute;left:0px"):}:

2.

:{:{Leonard Leo:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: serves as Executive Vice President and a member of the board of the ... interest and concern in the :{legal:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: and policy worlds on which they :{band:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: together. ... While on leave from :{the Federalist Society:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:, Mr. :{Leo:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: organized the outside ...:(style="word-wrap:break-word"):}:

Leonard Leo | Right Wing Watch

www.rightwingwatch.org/category/people/leonard-leo

:{:(style="border-color:#006621;;border-style:solid;border-width:5px 4px 0px !important;width:0px;height:0px;margin-left:3px;top:7.5px;margin-top:-4px;position:absolute;left:0px"):}:

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:{:{The Federalist Society's Leonard Leo:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: has been elected chairman of the ... and judicial :{conservative groups:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: planning an all-out fight over the Supreme Court ...:(style="word-wrap:break-word"):}:

Federalist Society VP Says Senate Could Ignore SCOTUS Nominees ...

www.rightwingwatch.org/.../federalist-society-vp-says-senate-could-ignore-scotus-no...

:{:(style="border-color:#006621;;border-style:solid;border-width:5px 4px 0px !important;width:0px;height:0px;margin-left:3px;top:7.5px;margin-top:-4px;position:absolute;left:0px"):}:

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:{Mar 7, 2016 - During the administration of George W. Bush, :{the Federalist Society:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: ... fill the federal courts with judges who embrace a right-wing :{legal:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: ideology. ... by :{the Federalist Society's Leonard Leo:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:, has returned the favor as a ... :{Conservative Groups:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: Urge Maximum Obstruction Of Hillary Clinton's Judicial Nominees.:(style="word-wrap:break-word"):}:

Bush's Shadow Justice Department: Did the Federalist Society Have a ...

www.motherjones.com/.../bushs-shadow-justice-department-did-federali...

:{:(style="border-color:#006621;;border-style:solid;border-width:5px 4px 0px !important;width:0px;height:0px;margin-left:3px;top:7.5px;margin-top:-4px;position:absolute;left:0px"):}:

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Mother Jones:{:(style="border-width:4px 4px 0px;border-style:solid;width:0px;height:0px;top:8.5px;position:absolute;margin-left:6px;margin-top:-3px;border-color:#aaaaaa;"):}:

:{Jun 7, 2007 - Before midnight on March 7, 2005, :{Leonard Leo:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: tapped out an email on his BlackBerry ... :{Leo:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:, the executive vice president of :{the Federalist Society:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:, wrote to Buchanan, herself a member of the influential :{conservative:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: lawyers' :{group:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:. .... Trump Files: When Donald Ran Afoul of Ancient Scottish Heraldry :{Law:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:.:(style="word-wrap:break-word"):}:

Conservative Federalist Society Can Expect Its Status to Shrink

www.washingtonpost.com › Politics › The Fed Page

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The Washington Post:{:(style="border-width:4px 4px 0px;border-style:solid;width:0px;height:0px;top:8.5px;position:absolute;margin-left:6px;margin-top:-3px;border-color:#aaaaaa;"):}:

:{Nov 21, 2008 - :{Federalist Society:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: executive vice president :{Leonard:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: A. :{Leo:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: laughed ... But he said the :{group's:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: primary goal has always been discussion of :{legal:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: ...:(style="word-wrap:break-word"):}:

Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Control of ...

https://books.google.com/books?isbn=1594201013

Jan Crawford Greenburg - 2007 - ‎Political Science

... and Miers met with the Federalist Society's Leonard Leo in Miers's office in the West Wing. Leo, the executive vice president of the conservative legal group, ...

[PDF]the federalist society and movement conservatism - Carolina Digital ...

https://cdr.lib.unc.edu/indexablecontent/uuid:a046e8b1-4e0b-4af8-8a08-cea9e5cb58a7

:{:(style="border-color:#006621;;border-style:solid;border-width:5px 4px 0px !important;width:0px;height:0px;margin-left:3px;top:7.5px;margin-top:-4px;position:absolute;left:0px"):}:

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:{explore how Federalists have promoted :{conservative legal:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: theories of interpretation, .... libertarian lawyers of :{the Federalist Society:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:—founded as a student :{group:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: with ... Among the people put in a real bind by the situation was :{Leonard Leo:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:, the.:(style="word-wrap:break-word"):}:

:{ :(style="word-wrap:break-word"):}:

===