85 fund leo

720

see other leo's

see LEO 3 crc adv

busted/launder so change names?

see CRC advisors etc

MERRI OK

WHY CLIMATE DENIAL? PASS THRU? //ARABELLA?

~ CLIMATE LAWSUIT W ALEC 4 26

SEE VOTER SUPPRESS HONEST ELECTIONS

SPEECH FIRST?

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AN PP 4 26

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

= POWELL MEMO BS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Neither Watkins nor Thompson responded to requests for comment.

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

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

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

Gunsalus did not reply to a detailed list of questions.

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

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

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

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

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an 8 23

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

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

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

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

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

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

POLITICO reports:

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

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

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

The news outlet notes:

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

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

Politico's full report is available at this link.

HEIDI PRZYBYLA

08/22/2023

Washington

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

:{:{}:

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

The Leo-aligned nonprofit The 85 Fund— which is registered as a tax-exempt charity — paid tens of millions of dollars to a public relations firm in Virginia which he co-chairs in the two years since he joined the firm, known as CRC Advisors.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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https://www.alternet.org/activist-arranged-thomas-wife-payouts/

an 5 23

no lnx

clarence Thomas' wife, "Ginni" Thomas, reportedly received tens of thousands of dollars for consulting work, and her name was intentionally left off of the paperwork.

:{:{}:

Ginni Thomas received the funds from conservative activist Leonard Leo—who has also helped former President Donald Trump select judicial nominees—according to the Washington Post's investigation. The news comes at a time when Clarence Thomas himself is under fire for reportedly receiving undisclosed gifts.

:{:{}:

Leo made the arrangements through former Trump Administration official Kellyanne Conway, according to the Washington Post's report.

:{:{}:

"In January 2012, Leo instructed the GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway to bill a nonprofit group he advises and use that money to pay Virginia 'Ginni' Thomas, the documents show," according to the report. "The same year, the nonprofit, the Judicial Education Project, filed a brief to the Supreme Court in a landmark voting rights case."[shelby]

The investigation further uncovered the circumstances surrounding how the payments were made secret.

"Leo, a key figure in a network of nonprofits that has worked to support the nominations of conservative judges, told Conway that he wanted her to 'give' Ginni Thomas 'another $25K,' the documents show. He emphasized that the paperwork should have 'No mention of Ginni, of course,'" according to the Washington Post.

:{:{}:

The Polling Company, Conway's firm, reportedly sent the Judicial Education Project a $25,000 bill, and listed the reason only as "Supplement for Constitution Polling and Opinion Consulting."

"In all, according to the documents, the Polling Company paid Thomas's firm,Liberty Consulting, $80,000 between June 2011 and June2012, and it expected to pay $20,000 more before the end of 2012," according to the Washington Post's investigation. "The documents reviewed by The Post do not indicate the precise nature of any work Thomas did for the Judicial Education Project or the Polling Company.

In a statement, Leo reportedly told The Post that, "Knowing how disrespectful, malicious and gossipy people can be, I have always tried to protect the privacy of Justice Thomas and Ginni."

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

'Ethics be damned': Legal experts aghast over bombshell report on Clarence Thomas’ luxury lifestyle ›

Why Clarence and Ginni Thomas have done more than anyone to 'damage the High Court’s reputation': journalist ›

Ex-GOP rep. slams 'slimy and unethical' Clarence and Ginni Thomas business enterprise ›

‘Very problematic’

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

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

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

:{:{}:

Separate careers

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

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

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

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

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

Liberty Central

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

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

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

Supporting Trump

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Business boom

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

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

===

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/what-is-ginni-thomas-saying-now-the-evolution-of-an-unusually-outspoken-supreme-court-spouse/2018/12/26

ref 2018 style section?

What is Ginni Thomas saying now? The evolution of an unusually outspoken Supreme Court spouse

Image without a caption

By Dan Zak

December 27, 2018 at 9:00 a.m. EST

Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, has been unusually outspoken and partisan, especially on social media, where she shares conspiratorial memes touting farfetched notions. (Susan Walsh/AP)

What is going on with Ginni Thomas?

She looks and sounds like the Washington wife of yore, with the pearl earrings, the Reagan-red cocktail attire, the sunglasses tiara’d atop her blond bob. At the holidays, she lays wreaths at Arlington and sings carols around the piano with her be-sweatered husband, Clarence, who happens to be the longest-serving justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. Memorial Day means a backyard barbecue with star-spangled tablecloths and a sheet cake that reads “God Bless America!”

---

https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trumps-dark-money-machine-america-first-policies-gets-a-makeoverand-new-owners

no lnx

Trump’s Dark-Money Machine Gets a Makeover—and New Owners

BILL OF GOODS

The dark-money machine that has funded Donald Trump’s political operation for years has almost completely turned over and was “sold.” Experts say that doesn’t really make sense.

Roger Sollenberger

Political Reporter

Updated Dec. 13, 2021 6:00AM ET / Published Dec. 12, 2021

EXCLUSIVE

Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty

While ex-President Donald Trump spent the last year licking his election wounds and consolidating power in the Republican Party, his allies were busy reconfiguring a constellation of outside spending groups that have helped bankroll his political movement for years.

Trump’s influential “dark money” machine appears to have almost entirely turned over, capping the overhaul off with the apparent sale of a pro-Trump nonprofit earlier this year, The Daily Beast has learned.

The changing of the guard at the nonprofit, formerly known as America First Policies, illustrates how difficult it is to get a clear picture of the outside money fueling Trump’s movement. It reflects a turbulent year within the circle of Trump’s top advisers and fundraising chiefs, but also casts another layer of opacity over millions of dollars in already obscured donations the group made to controversial far-right causes in 2020, as Trump fought to cling to the White House.

“Whatever your views of so-called ‘dark money’ may be, these groups are further obscuring money flows.”

— Lloyd Mayer, University of Notre Dame

Lloyd Mayer, an expert in nonprofit law at the University of Notre Dame, cast these anti-transparency developments as “troubling,” saying they strike at the heart of federal sunshine laws.

“Whatever your views of so-called ‘dark money’ may be, these groups are further obscuring money flows,” he said.

How the money flows was already in little danger of becoming too clear.

America First Policies, a nonprofit which does not have to disclose its donors, was the core of a pro-Trump dark money network, with an organizational scheme that seems confusing by design.

If you were looking for an illustration of how difficult it is to track how these groups operate, America First Policies offers a prime example.

According to IRS records first obtained by the Center for Public Integrity, America First Policies filed to change its name to America First Works in October. But on Friday, a spokesperson for America First Works told The Daily Beast it wasn’t a name change—America First Policies had been “sold” to America First Works “in a private deal” earlier this year, he said.

“This is a different organization, under completely new ownership,” the spokesperson said. He declined to reveal the selling price.

Asked about the sale, Mayer said he did not understand exactly what the spokesperson was trying to say.

“Nonprofits generally do not have owners as a matter of state law, so I am not sure what they mean by ‘sold,’” Mayer said. “Nonprofits can sell their assets, including their name, as long as they do so for fair market value,” he explained, but pointed out that in this instance, “the nonprofit itself would have received the proceeds.”

“Control of a nonprofit can change, but the persons originally in control generally cannot sell control, as they do not own an equity interest,” he continued, noting that the rules would also depend on where the nonprofit was incorporated and what its governing documents provide.

The sale also shows that the byzantine pro-Trump dark money machine is reconfiguring itself ahead of the 2022 midterms, as well as Trump’s possible candidacy in 2024.

[The GOP Dark Money Group Giving Big to White Supremacists

UNWORTHY CAUSES

Roger Sollenberger]

According to tax records, Ashley Hayek is president of America First Works. Hayek’s LinkedIn page says she is also the “chief engagement officer” for the America First Policy Institute—another Trump-aligned group that sprung up earlier this year, and boasts a number of former administration and campaign officials on its roster.

It appears that the walls between the groups are thin. Last month, CNBC reported that America First Works has joined forces with AFPI, which is backing Trump’s lawsuit against social media companies.

Over the course of the year, these groups appear to have fully replaced the old infrastructure.

America First Policies was co-founded in 2017 by some of Trump’s top administration and campaign officials. It soon gave rise to a sister super PAC called America First Action, and the two entities were so close that they shared office space and even employees.

But in August, The Daily Beast reported that America First Action was also winding down, throwing its resources to the new Make America Great Again Action super PAC—a move which appears to have reflected the changing allegiances among Trump’s inner circle at the time.

All the confusion has one immediate upshot: It makes it even more difficult to understand who exactly is responsible for millions of dollars in shady grants that America First Policies doled out last year.

Those grants appeared in the tax report covering America First Policies’ activity last year, which was filed by America First Works and first obtained by the Center for Public Integrity. Some of the listed recipients have been tied to voter-suppression activity, and one of them is a hotbed for bigoted anti-LGTBQ rhetoric.

But paper trails vanish almost immediately, with some entities appearing to have evaded scrutiny after failing to file tax reports for several years—a pattern which raised concerns among experts in nonprofit law.

Robert Maguire, who tracks outside spending groups at government watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said the filing illustrates how political machines like the Trump network can shield controversial affiliations from public view.

“The nature of what they’re doing is legal, but they’re also absorbing the expenses and establishing distance from the actions of groups that could be seen as controversial. It gives the party and the campaign plausible deniability,” Maguire told The Daily Beast.

[Dark-Money Group Paid Former Trump AG to Ask for Pardons

BEG YOUR PARDON

Roger Sollenberger]

Take one recipient—Vision America Mobilized, a nonprofit which got half a million dollars from America First Policies last year, according to its tax filing.

Despite that donation, no group called “Vision Mobilized America” appears in the IRS database. That’s because the entity changed its name several years ago, to Million Voices Inc, a faith-based organization headquartered in Texas which does not appear to have filed with the IRS since 2016, according to the agency’s public database.

Mayer explained that groups sometimes change names to slough off negative publicity, allowing them “to distance themselves from bad press.” He noted that white supremacist groups—such as Identity Evropa—have tried this strategy.

And it turns out that Vision America Mobilized does indeed carry a dark past. But by listing the wrong name, America First Works blew the group’s cover—and possibly its own.

Vision America’s founder, Texas-based pastor Rick Scarborough, has a history of bigoted anti-LGBTQ statements. In 2013, he floated the idea of a class-action lawsuit against the gay community for “subjecting people to becoming AIDS sufferers.” Two years later, Scarborough—who once threatened to light himself on fire if the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage (spoiler: he did not)—called AIDS “God’s judgment on a sinful generation,” according to video posted by Right Wing Watch.

Scarborough is listed as a board member on the disclosure that Million Voices filed in 2016. He’s also a director for another nonprofit at the same address, called Vision America Action, whose last available tax return is from 2018.

However, Million Voices hasn’t filed a tax return since 2016. The IRS automatically revokes a group’s tax status if they fail to file returns for three years. Still, the disclaimer on its donations portal claims the group is registered with the IRS as a 501(c)3 tax-exempt organization.

“I don’t know why this organization hasn’t had their status revoked,” Mayer said, upon reviewing the filings. “The IRS has over the years revoked hundreds of thousands of groups based on the three-year statute. The only speculation is that the IRS is so overwhelmed and under-resourced that, together with the demands of getting money out the door for COVID relief last year, it has fallen behind on this task.”

The America First Works spokesperson declined to comment on the grants, and, upon divulging the recent sale, referred questions back to America First Policies.

The Daily Beast reached out to Brian Walsh, former head of America First Policies, who declined comment. Million Voices did not respond to a request for comment.

“The IRS is terrible at keeping track of entities supposed to be filing tax returns,” Maguire said. “You can have these shell groups where, if the IRS did conduct some analysis, they might find they’re in violation. But when they do go after them, the IRS often gets accused of some sort of political witch hunt, so it shies away from that activity.”

The group’s largest gift, about $4.8 million, went to a conservative dark-money clearinghouse called Donors Trust. It appears to have been earmarked for something called the “Honest Elections Project,” a dark-money group which has been tied to voter suppression efforts. (Its website domain was at one point apparently quite open about this goal: hardtovote.honestelections.org.)

Last year, the Honest Elections Project also filed an amicus curiae brief with the Supreme Court laying out a scheme in which state legislatures could unilaterally overturn election results.

[How Right-Wing Dark Money Is Trying to Kneecap the Biden DOJ

TIME TO FIGHT

Sheldon Whitehouse]

However, the Donors Trust filing does not show contributions adding up to anything like America First’s $4.8 million—the Honest Elections Project only got $170,000, per the filing.

Asked about this discrepancy, the America First Works spokesperson replied, “Huh.”

But this trail twists again. Donors Trust reported that all its grants to the Honest Election Project had actually gone through another group first, The 85 Fund. But even that relationship is misleading—documents obtained by the Center for Responsive Politics show that The 85 Fund actually is the Honest Elections Project.

That relationship is a cakewalk compared to another voter-suppression group America First Policies supported last year—a flat $2 million contribution to an “election integrity” group calledBe Counted, with almost no public footprint whatsoever.

Outside of a CREW report from 2016, which details a voter-shaming campaign which individuals and local officials described at the time as “creepy” and “a form of intimidation,” Be Counted appears in hardly any press. The group appears tied to the Republican Governors Association, according to its most recent IRS filing, from 2019, which lists a slate of directors affiliated with the RGA.

But it turns out that, like Million Voices, Be Counted also appears to have changed its name. In 2019, it became Be Registered LLC, but with no 2020 tax filing on the books for either group, it’s unclear whether America First Policies contributed yet again to a group under an incorrect name.

Yet another beneficiary, Ohio-basedMoms for America, has also not filed a return since 2018. Moms for America held Trump rallies ahead of the election, and helped organize the “Save the Republic” rally by the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 5. It got $100,000 from America First last year.

Of course, the Trump money machine has never been easy to follow. But the connections appear even blurrier now that Trump is out of office. And thanks to IRS filing deadlines, voters may not know what these groups are currently up to until next November, after the midterms.

“Timing matters,” Mayer said. “The longer it takes for the information to come out, the less it’s on the public’s mind. And by delaying flings and obscuring who these groups are, that information only gets older and colder and staler. Even if it all comes out accurately and on time in 2022, it still may not make the news.”

---

The Dirty Dozen Funders of Climate Misinformation

A dozen of the largest nonprofits donated $47.8 million to the leading climate denial organizations, accounting for 88% of the funds CMD was able to track down using FY 2014-20 federal tax returns.

Half of the traceable funding came from DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund, two donor-advised fund sponsors that pass along their clients’ donations to other charities approved by their boards of directors. While the two funds give exclusively to conservative causes, no restrictions are apparent within that ideology. For instance, CMD was first to report that DonorsTrust is by far the biggest known funder of American white nationalist hate groups.

Among the “Dirty Dozen” climate denial financiers are foundations established by the right-wing Bradley, Koch, Mercer, Searle, and Scaife families. The Kochs, Mercers, and other Republican megadonors pour additional money into political groups and electoral campaigns focused on electing right-wing candidates who oppose meaningful action on climate change and often support expanding and deregulating the fossil fuel industry.

The funders named in this report have also financed a broader right-wing political strategy to misinform the public about a number of issues and increase GOP voter turnout.

“Bad actors are using a tried and tested playbook to weaken public mandates and create confusion [about] viable solutions going forward,” notes Jennie King, head of civic action and education at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, an independent nonprofit dedicated to protecting human rights and reversing polarization, extremism, and disinformation around the world. “This includes weaponizing climate response within a broader ‘culture wars’ frame and conflating it with any supposed controversy, from Covid-19 lockdowns and vaccine mandates to critical race theory, trans rights, or geopolitics.”

Leading non-ideological donor-advised fund sponsors connected to the Vanguard and Fidelity financial firms are also among the Dirty Dozen climate misinformation funders.

“We cannot solve the climate crisis until we solve the climate misinformation crisis,” U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) told CMD. “It is disappointing that mainstream organizations are still keeping ties with groups that have attacked climate science and legislative solutions. We need to be calling this behavior out publicly, so Americans know which organizations are linked to climate denial efforts.”

All nonprofits identified by CMD that gave $10,000 or more to the top climate misinformation groups from 2014–20 are listed in the table below.

:{:{}:

tABLE 2

Top Nonprofit Climate Denial Funders, 2014-20

Numerous charities, private foundations, and trade associations have bankrolled the climate misinformation movement.

Page 1 of 4

Table with 9 columns and 53 rows. Currently displaying rows 1 to 15.

Donor 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 TOTAL

1 DonorsTrust/Donors Capital Fund $3,293,850 $3,816,850 $3,676,750 $2,422,000 $3,830,200 $2,101,732 $1,416,500 20,557,882

2 Searle Freedom Trust $839,500 $589,500 $1,140,000 $940,000 $1,096,000 $754,000 $985,000 6,344,000

3 Sarah Scaife Foundation $350,000 $610,000 $842,000 $875,000 $960,000 $715,000 $1,245,000 5,597,000

4 Mercer Family Foundation $885,000 $100,000 $1,075,000 $970,000 3,030,000

5 Dunn Foundation $1,200,000 $250,000 $325,000 $200,000 $350,000 $350,000 $350,000 3,025,000

6 Bradley Foundations $344,376 $318,876 $458,500 $519,000 $280,000 $475,000 $110,000 2,505,752

7 American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers $365,000 $275,000 $470,000 $400,000 1,510,000

8 Koch Foundations $100,128 $431,891 $333,028 $413,016 $84,000 $99,049 $18,749 1,479,861

9 Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program $38,500 $228,500 $265,000 $230,000 $235,000 997,000

10 Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund $35,525 $21,350 $27,867 $241,355 $212,310 $231,055 $201,952 971,414

11 National Philanthropic Trust $150,000 $175,000 $175,500 $176,000 $200,000 876,500

12 Bartley J. Madden Foundation $45,000 $270,000 $270,000 $250,000 $30,000 865,000

13 Thomas W. Smith Foundation $150,000 $175,000 $200,000 $200,000 725,000

14 The 85 Fund $700,000 700,000

15 Ed Uihlein Family Foundation $10,500 $129,000 $35,000 $115,000 $115,000 $140,000...

----

===

raw story

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

big bad code so no lnx

an 2 22

As President Joe Biden weighs his options for a U.S. Supreme Court nominee to replace the retiring Justice Stephen Breyer, far-right MAGA Republicans are running ads claiming that Biden is up to something sinister.Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, in an op-ed published by the Washington Post on February 17, finds those fearmongering ads to be an example of projection — as GOP dark money has helped Republicans obtain the 6-3 hard-right majority they presently enjoy on the High Court.

“When Supreme Court vacancies occur, a Republican dark-money operation swings into action,” the Democratic senator explains. “Now, an anonymously funded right-wing group is airing an ad aimed at the yet-to-be-picked nominee to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer. The group alleges that liberal dark-money interests will guide President Biden’s choice. The music is ominous, the central claim false, and the hypocrisy thick.”

The group that Whitehouse is referring to calls itself the Judicial Crisis Network. And its anti-Biden ad, Whitehouse writes, is total hypocrisy in light of all the Republican dark money that has been spent on the U.S. Supreme Court.

“The ad, launched by the same right-wing donor interests that captured our Supreme Court under President Donald Trump, is an effort to distract from their own dark-money operation,” Whitehouse notes. “Their accusations of dark-money corruption are a bizarre reimagining of the very strategy that they, themselves, hatched and executed.”

The Judicial Crisis Network and other “dark money groups,” according to Whitehouse, are “linked to Leonard Leo, Federalist Society co-chairman and former executive vice president.”

“Leo has been a force behind dark-money court-capture dating back to the George W. Bush Administration,” Whitehouse notes. “When Trump was elected, this operation ramped up: The network selected reliable right-wing judicial nominees, its trusted advisers shepherded nominees through the Senate, and millions in dark-money PR campaigns and ads propelled nominees’ toward confirmation. Thus, today The Court That Dark Money Built reliably hands down decisions favorable to the donors.”

The Judicial Crisis Network, according to Whitehouse, is accusing Democrats of the very thing that it is doing: spending dark money to influence the federal judiciary.

“It’s an old propaganda technique: Accuse your adversary of the exact wrong you are committing,” Whitehouse writes. “Russian President Vladimir Putin uses it regularly.”

speech 1st // parents def fdm CRT BS

Funding

In May of 2018, Neily refused to disclose donor information to Politico and refused to say if the Kochs were involved to The Nation. The organization collects $5 dues from its members. Neily said in May that Speech First had around 1,000 members.^[3] Such makes up a “negligible part” of Speech First's Funding "which mainly comes from undisclosed backers."^[2]

Speech First is not required to disclose its funders. Its major funders, however, can be found through a search of IRS filings.

Bader Family Foundation: $175,000 (2018-2019)
Conru Foundation: $5,000 (2019)
Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund: $500,250 (2018)
Judicial Education Project: $1,000,000 (2017-2018)
Melvin S Cohen Foundation: $10,000 (2020)
National Philanthropic Trust: $1,050,000 (2018-2019)
The 85 Fund: $1,000,000 (2019-2020)

---

https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2021/11/16/alec-academy-featured-a-whos-who-of-voter-suppression-leaders/

an “Academy” for state lawmakers on voter suppression strategies run by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in July featured a veritable who’s who of the right-wing leaders behind this year’s disinformation campaign about voter fraud and assaults on voting rights across the country, documents obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) show.

While the July 26-28 session was ostensibly led by the dark money group Honest Elections Project, it was organized, hosted, and bankrolled by ALEC, despite repeated claims by its CEO, Lisa Nelson, that the group does not work on voting issues.

Nelson provided the formal welcome at the conference’s opening session, ALEC staff organized turnout, and ALEC provided two nights of accommodations at the five-star Grand America Hotel, five meals, and a $450 travel reimbursement for attendees. ALEC’s annual meeting was held at the same hotel immediately after the Academy.

An invite published by CMD in July stated that “13 legislators from across the country” would be in attendance, but the materials acquired by CMD do not include an attendance list.

Rather than email materials to ALEC lawmakers that may be subject to open records laws, ALEC distributed hard copies of the agenda at registration along with a “zip drive containing a resources document and a one-pager on your state’s election policies,” according to an email from Sarah Wall, ALEC’s manager of legislative outreach and coalitions, obtained by CMD. Wall’s email also lists Michael Bowman, president of ALEC Action, as a key contact for the event.

Nelson tipped her hand about ALEC’s voter suppression subterfuge in May at a meeting of the far-right Council for National Policy. Video of the event obtained by CMD shows Nelson speaking frankly about ALEC’s work on voting and revealing its plans to outsource model policy on the controversial topic to avert the spotlight. “We don’t have model policy. We will be developing that at the Honest Elections Project [Academy], through them,” Nelson said.

Honest Elections Project, the group ALEC chose to carry the ball on its voting agenda, is a dark money operation formedin February 2020 to push for voting restrictions and spread baseless and dangerous claims about election fraud, laying the groundwork for Trump’s attempt to overturn the election. It is a project of The 85 Fund, the new legal name for the Judicial Education Project, a group linked to Leonard Leo that played a central role in Trump’s effort to pack the federal judiciary with right-wing judges.

Speakers at the Academy featured many of the key strategists and leaders on the Right spreading misinformation around voter fraud, promoting Trump’s lies around the 2020 election, and pushing sweeping new voting restrictions.

Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita gave the keynote address. A proponent of Trump’s Big Lie that the election was stolen, Rokita recently testified in front of the U.S. Senate against strengthening the federal Voting Rights Act.

Rokita was one of only four state attorneys general to not sign a National Association of Attorneys General letter condemning the Jan. 6 violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and is a member of the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA). RAGA was a member of the “March to Save America” coalition that organized the Jan. 6 rally, and its policy arm, Rule of Law Defense Fund, sent out robocalls urging supporters to “march to the Capitol building and call on Congress to stop the steal.”

Agenda Focused on Election Legislation

Most of the Academy sessions focused on legislation, giving legislators a chance to discuss bills to restrict voting that have already been introduced and passed in their states this year and hear from Republican-aligned leaders about what more they think needs to be done.

By the time ALEC held its voter suppression Academy in July, 18 states had already passed 30 laws this year making it harder to vote, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

The Honest Elections Project’s Executive Director Jason Snead, who worked with ALEC to organize the event, laid out “priorities for election integrity across the states” and polling results in a breakfast session and appeared on another panel on how to “shore up” legislative control over election processes with Jason Torchinsky and Lee Goodman.

The Honest Elections Project has aggressively promoted a radical legal theory called the “independent state legislatures doctrine,” which holds that state courts don’t have the authority to review state election laws and would empower heavily gerrymandered state legislatures to determine election outcomes.

Republican legislators have already introduced and passed bills in 2021 “interfering with nonpartisan local election administration and consolidating power to administer and determine elections results themselves,” the Voting Rights Lab reported.

Snead is a former senior policy analyst with the Heritage Foundation where he developed its Election Fraud Database, which the Brennan Center for Justice says “grossly exaggerated” the extent of voter fraud.

Torchinsky is general counsel for the National Republican Redistricting Trustand has been defending ALEC against CMD’s state complaints alleging that ALEC illegally gave sophisticated voter management campaign software linked to the Republican National Committee to its legislative members.

Goodman is an elections attorney and a former Republican chairman and commissioner of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) between 2013 and 2018.

Jessica Anderson, the executive director of Heritage Action, and Ken Blackwell, executive director of the MAGA voter suppression center at America First Policy Institute led another legislative session on “securing absentee ballots.”

Anderson bragged to Heritage donors in April that policies, “severely restricting mail ballot drop boxes” and “preventing election officials from sending absentee ballot request forms to voters” were among recommendations Heritage gave Georgia for its massive voter suppression bill.

Blackwell’s Center for Election Integrity recently published a “Top 25 Common-Sense State Election Integrity Reforms” fact sheet that includes these Heritage recommendations alongside other extreme voter suppression wish-list items, such as eliminating no-excuse absentee ballots and requiring an affidavit for absentee applications.

Blackwell also moderated a panel at the Academy with state legislators “discussing election challenges they’ve faced in their own states.”

Another panel over breakfast covered “things to consider with implementation of laws” related to election day voter registration, “election observer protections,” and organizing seniors to work the polls. Chairman of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission Donald Palmer, a Trump appointee, and Cleta Mitchell, chair of the Conservative Partnership Institute’s Election Integrity Network, led the session.

Mitchell is a Big Lie fueler and Trump legal advisor who lost her job at Foley & Lardner following news that she participated in a January call in which Trump asked Georgia election officials to “find” enough votes to make him the winner of the state’s electoral votes.

“On Dec. 30, Cleta Mitchell wrote to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and offered to send some 1,800 pages of documents purporting to support claims of election fraud,” The Washington Post Magazine reported. Meadows is now a colleague of Mitchell’s at the Conservative Partnership Institute.

Three Republican secretaries of state, Tennessee’s Tre Hargett, Kentucky’s Michael Adams, and West Virginia’s Mac Warner, spoke on a panel about “what policies the states need to employ to make it easier to vote and harder to cheat.”

“Easier to vote and harder to cheat” has been a favored talking point of Republicans in recent years.

All three are active in the Republican Secretaries of State Committee (RSSC), with Hargett serving as chair and Adams as vice chair. Republican secretaries of state produced a report on “Best Practices for Making It Easier to Vote and Harder to Cheat” for the Republican State Leadership Committee, obtained by CMD.

The RSSC holds monthly calls that Commissioner Palmer often attends. Secretary Warner and Palmer also participated in an “off-the-record” Election University session on June 21 as part of the U.S. House GOP’s “Faith in Elections Project,” as first reported by CMD.

ALEC Lawmakers Consider Litigation

ALEC’s Academy featured two panels on litigation. The first dealt with “anticipating challenges to the Voting Rights Act in Arizona,” legal challenges mounted by Democratic voting rights attorney Marc Elias, and redistricting fights, and was led by with Republican lawyers Torchinsky, Michael Thielen, and Brian Barnes.

Thielen is the executive director of the Republican National Lawyers Association and served on the national board of Lawyers for Trump in 2020. Barnes was involved in legal challenges to changes in voting procedures in North Carolina and Pennsylvania last fall.

Goodman and Utah’s former Solicitor General Tyler Green led the second panel on “operationalizing litigation challenges.” Noted in the description of the panel are “ways to challenge the scope of litigation attacks on new election integrity legislation (defense) as well as advance the ball on election integrity (offense).”

As of Oct. 3, “at least 43 voting cases have been filed in 12 states, and Georgia and Texas lead the way with ten new lawsuits each in 2021,” the Brennan Center reports.

Training Sessions on “the Left”

Two trainings focused on “the Left” filled out the remaining agenda at the ALEC Academy. Hans von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow and manager of the Heritage Foundation’s “Election Reform Initiative,” and Ken Cuccinelli, former Trump staffer and chairman of the Election Transparency Initiative, led a session focused on “the Left’s attack on our election system” through “state-level attacks on election integrity legislation” and HR 1, the sweeping voting rights and campaign reform bill pending in Congress....Spakovsky, who was appointed by Trump to his voter fraud myth from the Right for well over a decade.president of the Scott Walter gave the keynote for a “Mapping the Left Lunch.” Walter and CRC received funding from the Bradley Foundation... ;inspired by CMD’s SourceWatch, called “Influence Watch.” The site was “constructed in partnership with Berman and Company,” run by PR spin doctor Richard Berman, and in collaboration with ALEC.

---

after 1/6 am radio // universe o'keefe cited BS]

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/13/dark-money-gop-fund-funneled-millions-groups-that-pushed-voter-fraud-claims.html

dark-money group used by Republican donors funneled millions of dollars to high-profile conservative organizations that pushed or investigated claims of election fraud before and after Joe Biden defeated President Trump.

That group, the Donors Trust, is officially labeled as a nonprofit. The designation allows financiers to give to the organization anonymously. That money is then channeled to other dark-money groups.
Among the pro-Trump groups that have received money from the Donors Fund are pro-Trump students organization Turning Point USA and an anti-immigration organization that has been called a hate group.
a dark-money group used by Republican donors funneled millions of dollars toward high-profile conservative organizations that pushed and in some cases investigated claims of election fraud either before or after Joe Biden defeated President Donald Trump in November.

Many of these stances matched points that Trump and his team made as they attempted to undermine the election.

:{:{}:

Almost all of the groups mentioned in this story denied to CNBC they were attempting to undermine the election with their own claims of fraud and voting irregularities. State and federal officials, including the former attorney general, have said there was no widespread election fraud during the 2020 presidential election.

That funding group, the Donors Trust, is officially labeled as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. The designation allows financiers to give to the organization anonymously. That money is then channeled to other dark-money groups.

Among the recent pro-Trump groups that have received money from the Donors Trust are:

pro-Trump students organization Turning Point USA
an anti-immigration organization that has been labeled a hate group
Project Veritas, a conservative outfit that specializes in “sting” videos
a group founded by a man who pushed false conspiracy theories about former President Barack Obama

“A donor-advised fund account allows you to have charitable dollars ready to put into action on your own schedule. It works like a charitable savings account,” the Donors Trust website says. Such associations are labeled as “dark money” because they do not publicly disclose their donors.

In 2019, the Donors Trust gave over $20 million to at least a dozen organizations that would go on to question the integrity of the election process, according to the group’s 990 tax return. They have supported many of these organizations in prior years, as well. The 2020 filings won’t be made available until later this year, so it is not yet clear whether Donors Trust gave money to these groups last year.

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Donors Trust finished 2019 raising over $300 million, just under double the amount they raised the prior year. It gave a total of over $160 million in grants in 2019. The group’s top anonymous donor gave over $150 million. Nonprofits often release their financial information a full year after their coverage dates.

In a lengthy statement to CNBC, Donors Trust CEO Lawson Bader said these organizations represent only a fraction of those seeing their donor funds and he condemns last week’s violence in Washington.

“The grants described were made in 2019 for general operations. These listed organizations are but a few of the many hundreds of different public charities that Donors Trust account holders supported that same year,” Bader said Tuesday. “Contributions made through a DonorsTrust DAF (Donor-Advised Funds) are made only to IRS recognized charitable and educational organizations. Donors Trust, like all donor-advised fund providers, does not make grants to 501(c)(4) organizations. Further, Donors Trust condemns violence of any kind. Espousing violence violates the ideas of personal responsibility and free exchange which we support wholly,” he added.

“I was appalled by the actions taken by protestors last week to violate the Capitol building and physically threaten lawmakers. Whether against public or private property, such actions are not only offensive, dangerous and illegal, but damage an already fragile civic discourse and embarrass the reputation of the United States as a place where political transitions happen within the context of the Constitution.”

Aligned with Trump

At least five people, including a Capitol police officer, died in connection to the riot, which happened after Trump and some of his closest allies led a rally urging supporters to fight to prevent Congress’ declaration of Biden’s victory.

Several pro-Trump groups were involved with planning the rally, which was held near the White House. Trump encouraged people who attended the rally to march on the U.S. Capitol. Critics, including several Republicans, accused him of inciting the violence. On Tuesday, Trump said the comments were “totally appropriate.”

Groups with the same 501(c)(3) status as Donors Trust are prohibited under tax regulations from supporting specific candidates. However, they can skirt those rules by supporting and promoting policies that align with a particular politician. In the case of Trump-fueled unrest, several groups historically backed by Donors Trust money aligned themselves with Trump’s false claims about widespread election fraud.

Turning Point USA, a nonprofit founded by staunch Trump ally Charlie Kirk, received over $850,000 from the Donors Trust. Kirk has continued to parrot the president’s attacks on the election, falsely claiming Biden’s victory was fraudulent.

“I will say it very bluntly. This election was stolen from President Trump. And the changes to the election, to the ballot questions, to the voter registration, to the access problems in these states” Kirk said in December.

Kirk’s affiliated 501(c)(4) Turning Point Action was listed as a participant in last week’s “March to Save America” rally, which preceded the attack on Capitol Hill. Prior to the rally, in a tweet he later deleted, Kirk said the group would be involved with sending over 80 buses to the rally. CNBC captured a screenshot of tweet before it was deleted.

Kirk recently said on his podcast that those from Turning Point got back on their buses and left following the conclusion of the rally.

A Turning Point Action spokesperson said the group did not include a march to the Capitol on its itinerary.

“Turning Point Action (TPA) did bus some students to the January 6th rally, which included a speech from the President of the United States. Following the president’s remarks, TPA then bused those students immediately out of the area,” the spokesperson said. “The march to the Capitol Building was never part of TPA’s itinerary,nor did TPA encourage participation in the march. TPA’s leadership condemns political violence and immediately did so as soon as news broke of the incident at the Capitol Building. ”

The New York Times reported that the group ended up sending only seven buses to the rally from New Jersey, North Carolina and other locations. twt]

other connections

The 85 Fund, a group with ties to longtime Trump judicial advisor Leonard Leo, received over $10 million from the Donors Trust in 2019. According to a report by The Guardian and the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, it was once known as The Judicial Education Project. It was run by Carrie Severino, who also is in charge of the Leo-affiliated Judicial Crisis Network. Severino’s Judicial Crisis Network actively campaigned in support of Trump’s nominees to the Supreme Court.

The Donors Trust lists an address for the 85 Fund in Washington that matches the address on The Judicial Education Project’s 2018 990 form. Leo also told Axios that the 85 Fund would be one of the groups used to funnel millions of dollars into conservative battles around the country.

The Judicial Education Project, though, has another alias, according to the report: the Honest Elections Project. The organization claims to be nonpartisan and says that “through public engagement, advocacy, and public-interest litigation, the Honest Elections Project will defend the fair, reasonable, common sense measures that voters want in place toprotect the integrity of the voting process.”

A review of advertisements and litigation reveals that, in some cases, the group is aligned with claims about election fraud that are similar to Trump’s. The group lists two Michigan-related lawsuits linked to Republicans that took place before the November election.

In September, The Detroit News reported on one of those lawsuits, which featured two former Republican secretaries of state. The former officials challenged Michigan’s plan to count absentee ballots that are postmarked before Election Day but arrive up to 14 days afterward. Biden went on to win Michigan, even though an appeals court did rescind the 14-day extension of mail in ballots.

Fox News reported in June on another suit featuring theHonest Elections Project.In that case, a Republican named Tony Daunt claimed that Michigan voter registration rates in some counties are too high because their voting records have not been updated to remove ineligible voters, such as those who have died or convicted of crimes. ~ below

A leader of the Honest Elections Project told CNBC that the group concluded after the election that no widespread voter fraud occurred and they did not get involved with any post-election legal challenges. It also condemned the violence on Capitol Hill.

“HEP was created to make it easy to vote and hard to cheat. Before the election, HEP fought to preserve the rule of law as left-wing groups, including the Democratic Party, filed over 200 lawsuits to challenge existing election laws,” Honest Elections Project executive director Jason Snead said in a statement. “After the election, HEP concluded that there was no widespread fraud and did not challenge or support any challenge to the results of the 2020 election. The violent insurrection at the Capitol was a heinous attack against democracy, the rule of law, and the election system HEP was created to defend.”

Former U.S. Attorney General William Barr said in December that the Department of Justice has found no evidence of voter fraud.

the anti-immigration VDARE Foundation, which the Southern Poverty Law Center labeled a hate group, received just under $2 million from the Donors Trust in 2019. The foundation is run by Peter Brimelow, somebody the Southern Poverty Law Center says is a “leading anti-immigration activist.”

Brimelow did not return a request for comment.

Since the riot last week, VDARE has become a platform for several writers standing with Trump and people who attended the rally.

“I believe Trump won the election and I believe that this matters,” says an article on the foundation’s site. The writer also says he believes the anti-fascist protesters and frequent Trump targets known as antifa were “amongst the crowd.” Ken Kohl, a senior official in the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office, recently said that investigators saw no indication of antifa being part of the riot.

Another writer on VDARE’s site admitted to cheering on the Capitol invasion. “I’m going to open with a confession here: watching those protestors rampaging through the halls of Congress on Wednesday afternoon, there was a part of me that was cheering them on,” the article says.

Project Veritas, an activist group founded by investigator James O’Keefe, received over $4 million in 2019 from the Donors Trust. In August, The New Republic reported that Project Veritas was secretly moving ahead with sting operations that would “undermine the integrity of absentee and mail-in ballot counts.”

Jered Ede, chief legal officer for Project Veritas, told CNBC that the group condemns the violence at the Capitol and pushed back on the idea their investigations are attempts to undermine the election. He also said Project Veritas has proved at least two instances of fraud and irregularities, including in New Hampshire and Texas.

“Project Veritas has been exposing voter fraud and election integrity stories for nearly a decade. We did so prior to 2020, we did so prior to 2019, we did so prior to Mr. Trump announcing his candidacy, and we will continue to do so for as long as we are around,” Ede said in part of his lengthy responses to CNBC. “Neither our donors nor any politician control or direct what stories we cover. We have and will continue to cover these stories because voters deserve to know the truth and have faith in their electoral system.”

Project Veritas pushed a Pennsylvania postal worker’s claim about mail-in ballots that the Trump campaign would cite in a lawsuit that eventually went nowhere, according to The Washington Post.

The Center for Security Policy received over $800,000 from Donors Trust in 2019.It was founded by Frank Gaffney, who pushed conspiracy theories about President Barack Obama’s administration and the Muslim Brotherhood. In the buildup to the riot, Gaffney questioned the results of the election.

Fred Fleitz, president of the Center for Security Policy, told CNBC late Tuesday that the group acknowledges that Biden is going to be the new president. He said Gaffney was no longer running the organization. The website lists Gaffney as executive chairman.

“Center for Security Policy accepts Joe Biden as the legal President of the United States,” Fleitz said. “It’s time to move on. We are an organization that is going to focus on holding Biden accountable when it comes to national security. Gaffney does not run the organization. He’s not the president of the organization, I am,” Fleitz added.

In a post on the group’s website, Gaffney himself claimed in December the media is pushing a “false narrative” that “there’s no evidence of electoral larceny in the 2020 presidential race — or at least none that would have made a difference,” he said. Gaffney also wrote that “the online resource EveryLegalVote.com makes clear that election integrity was systematically compromised.”

In January, a Center for Security Policy article claimed there are 10 truths about election fraud, including that election fraud has become “more sinister and sophisticated.”

An article on Jan. 5, a day before the riot, is headlined “Exercising your First Amendment rights? How to avoid Antifa violence at the upcoming January 6th protests.” Then article then goes on to give protesters tips on how to avoid fights with antifa.

Gaffney’s own condemnation of the violence after the protest included him calling for a hearing that would show “evidence of electoral grand larceny.”

The Gaffney posts disappeared off the group’s website shortly after CNBC reached out for comment. CNBC has screenshots of the posts.

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an 1020

...LISA GRAVES:It is the case that the Republicans have really politicized the courts in that way, while they claim that the Democrats have.The court that they complained so much about, the one historically complained about, was the Warren court.That was led by Chief Justice Earl Warren. And that court in my view, really did a tremendously valuable job for the country, because what it actually did was to read the Constitution to apply its terms to ordinary people. So equal protection of the law—

BILL MOYERS: What do you mean?

LISA GRAVES: Using that phrase in our 14th Amendment that people will not be denied equal protection to ensure that Americans could not be segregated in our schools through racial segregation. That was attacked vociferously on the right as an inappropriate and outrageous decision. It was following the plain language of the Constitution. The Warren Court ruled that when the Constitution says you have a right to counsel in the case of Gideon v. Wainwright, that you actually have a right to counsel. And so, there were a number of decisions in the '50s and '60s that the right wing, they called themselves conservatives or libertarians, opposed.

And in the aftermath of those decisions the Republicans really began running on a claim with Richard Nixon of supposed law and order. Part of that law and order campaign was about the courts and trying to pack the courts with people who he thought would reverse those rulings that gave meaning to people's rights that were listed and written in the Constitution.

And then Ronald Reagan went a measure further. He decided to say that he, through his attorney general Edwin Meese, at the time, was going to have a litmus test about abortion, that he would only appoint someone to the Supreme Court who would overturn Roe v. Wade. With Reagan, there was a specific determination, to appoint people basically pretty far to the right at the time. They did manage to get Justice Scalia on the court, and they did manage to put William Rehnquist [as Chief Justice] on the court, who'd been an advisor to President Nixon.

And then it was 12 years of real court packing by Ronald Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush. And when Clinton came into office in the early 1990s the path he chose was one to say that litmus test was wrong and that we needed fair judges. And so, the effort was articulated as trying to put people of moderation on the court. I personally think it's important to talk to the American people about the courts and what's at stake. And talk about how people are being put on the courts by the right, by the Republicans, in order to overturn precedent. In order to overturn our rights. I think that that case needs to be made not just to not fight about the courts but to basically tell the American people quite plainly how important the courts are. And this movement that's underway to overturn those rights. I would say to you one of the things that came out in an investigation by THE WASHINGTON POST last May by Robert O'Harrow and Shawn Boburg was that Leonard Leo, who's been working on helping to pack the courts for, almost two decades or more now—

BILL MOYERS: Leonard Leo, tell me who he is.

LISA GRAVES: Leonard Leo, for many years served as the vice president of the Federalist Society. And he is still an advisor to the Federalist Society. He has been the architect for the last few decades of this long-term effort to put far right judges on the Supreme Court and the federal courts and other courts in order to change the law by changing what decisions are being issued by those very judges. And he has created basically a big dark money operation that THE WASHINGTON POST tallied at more than $250 million to influence who gets installed on the Supreme Court. And those people are being chosen from his own lists. And they are having an utterly disproportionate influence on who gets confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court.Leonard Leo gave a speech last year to a group called the Council for National Policy, which is made up of fundraisers on the far right.

People who are funding this effort to capture our courts, as Sheldon Whitehouse has described it. And in that speech, he said that we, America, and the people in that room, were standing on the precipice of what he called the revival of what he described as the quote, "Structural Constitution," that would roll back 100 years of precedents in America. And that the appointments that Trump was making were in design to do just that, to remove the rights of people to organize in labor unions. The rights of people to petition their government for social security and programs that help protect us from the extremes of our economy. To protect our lives. Efforts to protect our environment and protect us from pollution from corporations that aren't restrained or regulated. That was really a shocking speech about the level of judicial activism that the right wing is pushing. And this new nomination by President Trump of Amy Coney Barrett is in that mold to try to use the courts to reverse Americans' rights.

BILL MOYERS: We learned after Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation that some very rich people had put up millions of dollars to quote, "Sell" his nomination to the public. Will those people do the same thing for the Barrett nomination?

LISA GRAVES: It's already under way. One of the main groups that Leonard Leo has helped to orchestrate is called theJudicial Crisis Network, JCN. And it's already running ads in swing states, states where senators are facing close election to try to promote this judge. And Leonard Leo is the one who's helping to orchestrate for the campaign to use dark money to put these judges in position to rule on our rights and to remove our rights. I know there are groups on the right and left who spend money on nominations. But this circumstance is really extraordinary, because you have unknown billionaires or multi-millionaires who are secretly giving to a group that gives to a group. During Kavanaugh, it was the Wellspring Committeegiving to Judicial Crisis Network.

BILL MOYERS: Who's in this Judicial Network you're talking about? Can you name some names? Organizations? Individuals? And where's the money coming from?

"If this court rules that our federal government cannot pass measures to regulate carbon, it's an existential consequence of who's being put on the court. And we know that people like Charles Koch have been spending big money to try to capture the courts because he wants to have people on the court who will limit our ability to regulate corporations."

LISA GRAVES: Yes. So, the Judicial Crisis Network is formally led by Carrie Severino, along with the assistance of Gary Marx, a longtime political ally, of Leonard Leo. Leonard Leo is the former vice president of the Federalist Society. And he now leads a dark money network, along with a guy named Greg Mueller. He and Leo have a group called CRC Advisors that is devoted to capturing both the U.S. Supreme Court and federal courts, as well as state Supreme Courts. Carrie Severino's a former clerk of Justice Thomas. And Gary Marx is someone who has been working on judicial nominations with Leo really for the last two decades through all the fights to try to pack the courts.

Their funders are unknown. We do know that there was one huge donation to the Wellspring Committee. That huge donation was almost entirely given to Judicial Crisis Network. Judicial Crisis Network spent some of that money and then gave some money to other groups in the network, like the so-called Independent Women's Forum that was created back around the Clarence Thomas nomination. That's where they got their start was in judicial nominations. But who is that original donor? We don't know. There's no disclosure of who that one donor was who spent these millions and millions of dollars to capture the court. Who was that? Who was that donor? Who were those people? And they were boasting about how successful their efforts were in trying to rally their base, the base of Republicans, to try to come out in the 2018 election. That fight over Brett Kavanaugh actually had the effect of bringing a lot of people out who were progressives and moderates who thought we shouldn't have someone like Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court.

But to JCN and the Independent Women's Forum and their network, they believe judicial nominations help motivate the base because even though they will tell the press and the public that this person is a rule of law judge or a law and order judge or a judge who's going to follow precedent– now they're calling Amy Coney Barrett a so-called Constitutionalist, or original interpretivist in the mold of Justice Scalia. These are all just catchphrases that they try to use. They're not appointing her because they think she'll be fair. She's been chosen because they are convinced she will be unfair. They are convinced that she will decide in their favor to overturn people's rights on a host of issues. That's why they're investing.

They're not investing to get a fair judge. If you are trying to appoint a fair judiciary you may not put a lot of political capital in that because it's not seen as a political appointment. Instead, if one party is trying the pack the courts and seize the courts as pawns in their political war. And so, they're willing to invest enormous funds in order to get those people in place so that they can change the law to advance the agenda of those people who are funding it. On the left or in the middle what you have is a subset of people who believe courts should be fair and they shouldn't be political partisans. And so, you're not going to spend political capital to talk about that very much or to make your case. Because they're not seen as partisan. And then you have some progressives who have said, "No." You've got to stand up to what's happening.

This is a total capture and takeover and it's going to undermine our ability to do almost anything a modern society would do. For example, undermine our ability to have rules that try to mitigate climate change. If this court rules that our federal government cannot pass measures to regulate carbon, it's an existential consequence of who's being put on the court. And we know that people like Charles Koch have been spending big money to try to capture the courts because he wants to have people on the court who will limit our ability to regulate corporations. And we know that Leonard Leo and Carrie Severino and their team are trying to put people on the court for that reason, as well as to limit women's reproductive rights, and more. And so, you have this confluence on the right where they are choosing people and trying to put them in place because they don't think they'll be fair. Because they're convinced that they will rule in their favor, which is the opposite of what you expect from a judge, to be fair and impartial.

"They're not appointing her because they think she'll be fair. She's been chosen because they are convinced she will be unfair. They are convinced that she will decide in their favor to overturn people's rights on a host of issues."

BILL MOYERS: Let me read you what Josh Marshall wrote about this. He's founder and editor in chief of TalkingPointsMemo.com and a terrific journalistic watchdog when it comes to the judiciary. He says, and I'm quoting, "I don't know a lot about Amy Coney Barrett. But I know she's accepting the nomination from a president actively trying to subvert a national election and threatening to hold onto power by force, an attack on the Constitution unparalleled in American history. Do I need to know more?"

LISA GRAVES: I think he's exactly right. It would be an honor to be nominated to be a Supreme Court justice, but under these circumstances, I think it reveals a lack of devotion to the Constitution to be a willing party to what's unfolding. Where you have a president who has said expressly that he wants you on the court in order to rule in his favor in this election to keep him in power, a president who has said expressly that if they can stop the ballots, there we be will be no transition. It will just be a continuation of his power. When you have a president that has made lie after lie about some sort of massive voter fraud in America, when in fact, the statistics and evidence show that that's not the case. So, you have someone who's willing to take that nomination, take that baton from this president, I think that is damning in its own way.

BILL MOYERS: Is it possible, Lisa, that she doesn't know that the fix is in and that she's the fix?

LISA GRAVES: Anything is possible. I don't think it's probable. And the reason I don't think it's probable is because if you look at her decisions as a judge in the very brief time that she's been a judge, as well as her actions before then, you can see someone who has a very agenda-driven view of the law. One in which she has expressly articulated that she doesn't feel bound by precedent.

She doesn't believe the Constitution requires judges to follow precedent.In fact, she thinks it does not require judges to follow precedent, which is the definition of being an activist, that you're someone who wants to impose your own views of the law, regardless of the precedent that people are relying on in this country. I don't think that she is unwitting. In this circumstance, you have this election that is happening as we speak, and litigation around that election that is happening as we speak, and a president who has said quite clearly, he's going to use the courts to try to win a victory in this election no matter what the ballots say, and to try to stop them from being counted.

And you have an attorney general in Bill Barr, who has shown time and again that he's more the president's lawyer than acting in the office of the attorney general, though he's using the office of the attorney general of the United States, advancing the partisan interests of this president and the lies of this president around voting. And has indicated that he's going to aid in those claims by this president. And now you have a judicial nominee who has willingly stepped into this role of potentially being a deciding vote on the Supreme Court in cases that will affect the outcome of this election. And I certainly hope, if she has a hearing, which is slated this month, that she will commit unequivocally to recuse from any such litigation. I don't believe she will, though. I don't believe she'll commit to recuse to anything.

BILL MOYERS: Are you suggesting that she is fully aware that she is also a political operative and a political force in this scenario you just outlined?

LISA GRAVES: I believe that she is. There's no doubt that she's smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. They're not all fair. There're a lot of people who are more advocates than judges. I think when you look at Amy Coney Barrett's record, what you see is someone who has been groomed for this position. She clerked for one of the very sort of activist right-wing judges on the D.C. circuit. She then clerked for Justice Scalia, who often wrote his opinions more like he was writing an op-ed column than writing an opinion of the United States Supreme Court. He was determined to move the law, to change the law, to advance his original point of view, although he cloaked it in originalism but it really managed to be miraculously aligned, for the most part, with his personal views.

And she's also been someone who's been an activist in attacking the Affordable Care Act. She has written and spoken about a lot of these issues in ways that show that she has a very specific point of view. And I don't think she's been on the bench long enough to know that she can actually set aside her personal views. In fact, I think it seems pretty clear from her decisions, in the brief time she's been a judge, that she has tried to impose her personal point of view on the law. I don't think she's unwitting in this effort. I think she is embraced by the Judicial Crisis Network, by the Leonard Leo operation, by the president as someone who they think is a sure thing. A sure vote for them and for their right-wing agenda.

BILL MOYERS: There's been a lotta talk about her hardline ideology in the last few days, that she will be opposed to women's reproductive freedom, to affirmative action, to voting rights for minorities, to environmental regulations. Even worker safety rules. What I've seen of her record suggests also a very strong bias on behalf of corporate power. The last decision or rule she issued was that workers, gig workers, can't file for a class-action lawsuit against their employer.That's going to be a real blow to workers in what is an expanding gig economy.

LISA GRAVES: I think that decision is very troubling. Jeffrey Toobin pointed out in his piece about the impact of the Federalist Society on our courts and on our law, thatshe is straight from that mold set forth by Lewis Powell before he became a Justice of the Supreme Court. Lewis Powell had been a tobacco lawyer. Before he really was known widely as a tobacco lawyer, he was the main person involved in the Richmond schools, as it was fighting the efforts of Brown v. Board of Education to get those schools integrated. So, you have this tobacco lawyer who represents a segregated school district, who is asked by the United States Chamber of Commerce to write a memo about where the law could go. And he wrote a memo which is known now as the Powell Memo. And that memo basically said that in his view, no one in America had less influence on policy than business people. And they needed to dramatically change that through changing the courts and changing the way businesses fund think tanks at the federal and state level. As well as the way businesses support universities. And so that Powell blueprint from the early 1970s to really push for courts that were going to be pro-corporation and I think she very clearly represents that perspective. Her decisions show that she does, but regardless of her background, I think this would be an illegitimate nomination, and illegitimate to proceed. It's fundamentally unjust for anyone, no matter their background, to be put on the court under these circumstances with this election pending. I think it's really a disaster for our country, for this nomination to be proceeding.

BILL MOYERS: Do you really think, Lisa, that a Democrat as president would pass up this opportunity to name a Supreme Court justice if he were in the place or she were in the place that Trump is right now?

LISA GRAVES: Well, I don't know that a president would not nominate someone under these circumstances. Although typically, you know, there's usually, like, 30-40 days between a vacancy and a nomination to do an F.B.I. background investigation, to do a thorough vetting of a candidate before someone is even named. In this case, it's super accelerated. As you said, there's no Constitutional restriction by time from doing so. But I do think that the president's prerogative in naming someone is not the same as that person that getting confirmed, as we've seen. The Senate's role is to thoroughly examine a nominee's record. And to allow for there to be time for the American people to understand the record of a person who's being chosen for a lifetime job on the court. Is this the best person? Is this the right person? Is this someone who we trust, who we would entrust with our lives, who we believe absolutely without reservation will be fair? This process, where the president's named someone this weekend, the nomination will have arrived in the Senate at the very end of September. The Senate is racing to have a hearing in two weeks. That hasn't happened in the modern era, someone has received a hearing that quickly. And that Mitch McConnell has vowed to use the rules of the Senate to try to get a vote before the end of October. It's extraordinary. And it's a real railroading of not just this nomination but of the American people.

BILL MOYERS: Trump obviously believes that she will be a wedge to help him win a second term. And that's the issue.

LISA GRAVES: I have never seen a president in my lifetime that has disavowed the results of the election before they've even happened. That has basically vowed to try to stop people from voting. Who's vowed to unleash tens of thousands of people to go to polling places to try to, in my view, intimidate them. Is now doing fundraising to enlist a quote army to defend his results in this election. We've never been in a circumstance where we have had a president so unmoored from the law, so reckless in his disregard of the Constitution. And to have that person choosing his own jury in a case that he's determined to bring to this court is outlandish and outrageous.

BILL MOYERS: Tell me what's right and what's wrong about this scenario. Trump keeps repeating that vote by mail is rife with fraud. So Republican lawyers will try to get a large number of mailed ballots thrown out after the election as Trump declares himself the winner on the basis of the ballots that had been cast and counted before and on Election Day. He has refused to commit to leaving office if he loses. And he will challenge those ballots that have not been counted to try to get them thrown out. It's there and on other procedural points that he will need the Supreme Court majority to take his side, including the justice he is putting on the court. So, isn't he sending a message to the world that he expects the court and its new nominee to rule for him and nail down a second term? Is that the strategy?

LISA GRAVES: I believe that's precisely the strategy. This president is trying to secure for himself an illegitimate victory in this election. He has said he is going to win on in-person voting. And that any ballots that come in or that are counted afterward are somehow illegitimate, that they have to be thrown out. And he has said, quite clearly, he's going to take this to the Supreme Court. The court is actually problematic in a number of ways. First of all, you have someone likeJustice Thomas who has expressed personal antipathy toward Joe Biden from his time as the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee presiding over Thomas' nomination. Justice Thomas' wife has been very active in electoral politics and was active during Bush v. Gore and was on the transition team for George W. Bush. As that case was coming through the court, she then became part of the transition team for the victor. You have a Justice of the Supreme Court in John Roberts who advised on the Bush v. Gore case. You have another recently confirmed justice in Justice Kavanaugh who was an attorney on one of the original cases that resulted in the decision in Bush v. Gore. And now you have a nominee who also worked on the Bush v. Gore case in Amy Coney Barrett.

BILL MOYERS: So if she's confirmed three members of the nine-member court will have worked to get the Supreme Court to deliver the presidency to George W. Bush.

LISA GRAVES: That's correct. One third. And you would have a court that has also demonstrably been trying to limit people's voting rights. Justice Roberts was part of the decision to really restrict the power of the Voting Rights Act. So, you already have a court that a reasonable person would question whether that court could or would fairly rule in this election, or whether it would again put its thumb on the scale of justice in favor of the party of the president that nominated them, put them on the bench. And this president saying that he's choosing someone specifically to help him win that ninth vote on that Supreme Court, and someone who also participated in the litigation that resulted in that extraordinary decision that installed George W. Bush as president by stopping the counting of ballots. And once the ballots were counted, the actual count showed that Al Gore would have won the electoral college. And would have been president but for that intervention by the U.S. Supreme Court.

BILL MOYERS:We've had two of the last four presidents elected by minority vote. They got the electoral college, but they lost the popular vote. And they turn around and appoint Supreme Court justices who perpetuate the pattern.

LISA GRAVES: Yes, it's very troubling. John Roberts and Justice Alito arguably might not have been confirmed had Bush not been the incumbent, by virtue of this decision in Bush v. Gore. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor disavowed and regretted enormously that she had participated in that five/four decision in which the only justices who ruled in favor of Bush were justices appointed by presidents of his political party.

Then you had President Obama who had three vacancies, including one in February of 2016 that could've been filled anytime during that entire year. And there would've been plenty of time for people to weigh in and express any reservations they had about Merrick Garland. Almost none were expressed because he'd been a judge for a long time and had a reputation for being a fair judge. And that third nomination of President Obama was blocked. That meant that the Supreme Court was able to have a five/four majority of Republican appointees, rather than a five/four majority of Democratic appointees.

President Trump, who has appointed two justices. And that's why, right now, you have a court that is five Republican appointees and three Democratic appointees. And they're trying to make it six Republican appointees and three Democratic appointees. The Republicans have certainly gamed the system and they're going to come out with a bunch of ads saying how nice Amy Coney Barrett is or how good of a neighbor she is or how nice she is as a colleague or as a teacher. There are a lot of nice people. That doesn't mean they're fair people. That doesn't mean they're people that you would trust to decide impartially in a case involving your rights. And in fact, everything we know about this process, from President Trump, from Leonard Leo, from the Federalist Society, from the Judicial Crisis Network that's backing them, is that she's been chosen with the very hope and belief that she won't be fair, that she will rule in their favor.

BILL MOYERS: Her very nomination under these circumstances is going to cast another long shadow on the court's integrity and on Amy Coney Barrett's, quite frankly. You wonder why someone who's on the record for being a person of faith and a moral person wouldn't say thank you, Mr. President, but let's wait a week or two or three and then we'll both come out better in the judgment of history.

LISA GRAVES: If you are a person who believes in the integrity of the judiciary, in the independence of the judiciary, if you're someone who believes that the court's core power stems from the public esteem and regard for it as an independent and fair institution, I really can't see how you could be a willing participant in this sort of railroading of a nomination through the court on the eve of an election. I think a person who had such high value of the court and the importance of the courts as an independent tribunal in our country would call herself for this nomination to be delayed until after the people have a chance to say.

BILL MOYERS: Let me– let me interrupt there if I can. I'm not sure that waiting for the people to speak, so to speak, in an election is an appropriate way to measure the worthiness of a Supreme Court nominee.

LISA GRAVES: Well, it's a complicated issue. I don't think that we should be in this position in the first place because I think with an election so close that a nomination should probably not have been put forward, because of the very way in which it is being politicized and will be politicized.

BILL MOYERS: I agree with that.

LISA GRAVES: –and could affect the outcome of the election, one way or the other.

BILL MOYERS: Let's take an example. The court is scheduled to hear a big health care case a week after the election. And conservatives are openly counting on Barrett to help throw out the entire Affordable Care Act, once and for all. Pandemic or no pandemic, they want to get rid of the Affordable Care Act. Should the senators interrogating her at the hearings come right out and ask her stance on that vote?

LISA GRAVES: I don't think she'll give an answer. But the issue of the Affordable Care Act is one in which this president has campaigned on trying to destroy it, has attempted to stop it legislatively and through a number of machinations, through executive orders, to make it harder for the health care exchanges to work.And while some are now trying to claim that that decision from the 5th Circuit that's coming up to the Supreme Court, people shouldn't worry about it, I would say that's what the right-wing is trying to say to try to minimize that case. The reality is that it's been teed up for this moment, for the ACA to be overruled, and with it, the provisions that protect people with preexisting conditions. And now, we have millions more Americans who have preexisting conditions due to this pandemic. And you also have some serious deceptiveness by this president on this point in particular, where after Justice Ginsberg died and he made the decision to move forward with a nomination immediately knowing that the Affordable Care Act was going to be an issue, he suddenly issued an executive order claiming that it's the policy of the federal government to protect people with preexisting conditions.

That executive order does not replace the actual statute if it's overturned. It's a talking point, that he and his advisors have cooked up to try to use in this Supreme Court battle and in this election to claim that even though he's determined to overturn the Affordable Care Act, that suddenly he now cares about this. They're going to be using that talking point to try to defend this nominee about her determination to overrule the Affordable Care Act. And she, both as a judge and before she was a judge, has attacked the Affordable Care Act. And so, I think that, as they say, when people tell you who they are, you should believe them, we should believe very much that she's someone who's hostile to the Affordable Care Act, and that this president's hostile to the Affordable Care Act, and that could affect the lives and health of millions and millions of Americans. And it will.

BILL MOYERS: What will you be watching for during the confirmation hearings?

LISA GRAVES: That's a great question.

BILL MOYERS: I mean, I, myself, am sick and tired of these hearings that really are charades. The senator asks a question and, on the pretext of not revealing a position or prejudging—

LISA GRAVES: Yeah.

BILL MOYERS: –the nominee says bull. Pleasantly, elegantly, sometimes, but it's bull.

LISA GRAVES: Yeah.

BILL MOYERS: And the public moves on.

LISA GRAVES: It can be very frustrating watching those hearings because these nominees of this president have been so prepared to try to avoid answering any meaningful questions for the American people under this guise that they can't answer or they would be prejudging when, in fact, they've been chosen on some of these issues because they have, in fact, prejudged them. What's been happening with this president's nominees on these questions is so deeply troubling because they have refused to commit to the importance of longstanding precedents, including Brown v. Board of Education, a precedent that's been on the books for nearly 70 years in this country, they will not agree that that's good precedent.

They will only agree that that is, quote, "Precedent," which is meaningless when you have a nominee like Amy Coney Barrett who said that precedent, in her view, violates due process. I'm sure we're going to see what some people call Kabuki theatre or theatrics at that hearing in which she declaims about her fairness and her impartiality and, therefore, she won't discuss any substantive issue about how she might rule, when the reality is that her record about how she favors corporations over individuals, how she favors corporations, including in cases involving discrimination– racial discrimination, LGBTQ discrimination and more how her record shows that she has an agenda and that she is desirous of using that agenda, propelling it forward with the force of law. So, I think that, when you have someone who wants to impose their personal views as law, in essence by judicial fiat (not through the legislative process), but imposed their views and disavows the value of precedent, refuses to say that core, bedrock cases like Brown are good precedent that must be followed, I think you have someone who will be behaving disingenuously in a theatrical way to try to deceive the American people.

BILL MOYERS: Would you concede that she might see this in the context of what she said to the commencement at Notre Dame when she said that there was a larger purpose to being a lawyer than being a lawyer, and I'm paraphrasing, that it was a way to help build the kingdom of God and implying, therefore, that there are times when you do justify the means by the ends, and that she actually thinks as a sincere, faithful Christian that she is helping to build with this man who is anything but virtuous– the kingdom of God by going on that court under these questionable circumstances so that she can accomplish what some of what it takes to build the kingdom of God here on earth?

LISA GRAVES: Yeah. You know, it is the case that we've seen, from the Falwell world and other worlds, a real willingness to turn a blind eye to the many ways in which this president has transgressed the basic moral code on a daily basis. You know, I'm not even going to get into THE NEW YORK TIMES report about the failing to pay taxes or potential tax fraud and what that means in terms of theft from the public treasury. You have a president who has been more aggressive in violating those moral norms than I think any president, probably since Nixon; maybe much worse than Nixon. And you have him embraced by the religious right. Not all people of faith. There are progressive and moderate evangelicals and people from the Catholic faiths who do not embrace this president as a moral leader. But you do have people in this country like Leonard Leo and William Barr and the Judicial Crisis Network that are willing to advance this president's agenda because it helps them win changes in Supreme Court doctrine, including in particular on Roe v. Wade, but also on gay rights, on the rights of LGBTQ Americans and more.

In terms of Amy Coney Barrett, all people are entitled to their faith and to make decisions about their conscience and what their faith means to them and how it enriches their lives. I think the challenge is that the United States Constitution expressly forbids a religious test for office. But the corollary of that is that the United States is not a theocracy. People are not given positions of trust in our government in order to impose their religious views on millions and millions of Americans without their consent. But the fact is we see already in communications by the right-wing about this nomination that they believe that she will rule in their favor on these religious issues. They probably are not wrong, given what we've seen of her statements in the record. But I think the broader issue is I think if you're going to be put on our highest court, you ought to be someone who's not just young and smart and a right-wing advocate but someone who has a lengthy record of a willingness to set aside personal views in order to follow the law, and to administer the law fairly for all people.

BILL MOYERS: But if you're sitting there with the President of the United States and if you're informed and knowledgeable and aware, you know that this is the man who told the nation that COVID-19 was a hoax, even as he was telling Robert Woodward it was deadly stuff. And if he's giving you the bull about why you should be on the court– I don't want to be unfair to her, but because she has spoken openly and honestly, I think, about her faith she has presented us with questions like this. What's happening in the country is not all Donald Trump. He's being enabled. Look at the people who have surrounded him at the moment to enable her nomination. She's enabling him by accepting it under these circumstances. And so, it raises questions as to how do we stop such things if so many participate in them and benefit from them.

LISA GRAVES: I don't know if I would call it the conundrum but it's one of the very uncomfortable circumstances of both this administration's approach to the law and the news cycle and public policy where it's so transactional that these two things can coexist.

BILL MOYERS: By transactional, you mean–

LISA GRAVES: Transactional in the sense that they have a meeting at the Rose Garden that's all love about this nomination and its greatness that exists separate from the president's statements in which he said that he wants this nomination in order to basically take the election by legal force, by judicial fiat, which exists in the context of a president who I think it was only two weeks ago that the story broke that he knew exactly how contagious this disease was, how deadly it was, months and months ago, and that he deliberately downplayed it to the American people and deceived them. And so, all these things are happening as if they're separate things. Like, that Rose Garden ceremony of introducing her happens as if there's this normalcy. We're in a normal presidency. This is a normal America. And this is all just business as usual to have this ceremonial embrace of this nominee and this nomination as being something that's about the rule of law in America and is exalting the law. When outside of that Rose Garden, you have a scenario in which you have a president that has thumbed his nose at the law, who has violated the law in a number of ways that have been documented, and who has attacked the integrity of our very democracy, and has impugned the integrity of the Supreme Court by how he has described the judges who've been put on it as "his judges," and has described why he wants this judge confirmed to it, to rule in his favor.

And so, the people who are joining with him in these different endeavors, it's as if they're able to put on blinders and ignore the reality, the full record of what's transpiring before our very eyes, which is an assault on the rule of law, an assault on our actual Constitution, an assault on our very institutions both in the executive branch at the Justice Department and other agencies, the way they've been so distorted (and grotesquely distorted) by partisan, right-wing people who Trump has put in power, who have distorted health policy that has resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands of Americans and the infection of millions of Americans, due to the fundamentally immoral actions by this president and by the people he has put in place to distort public opinion, to distort the record about a deadly disease.

It's extraordinary to have the Senate in Mitch McConnell and these Judicial Crisis Network people supporting her, the ones that are running ads in support of her at that White House ceremony announcing her, to be acting as if this is just a normal transition of the Supreme Court when, in fact, it's a capture of the Supreme Court and a further deployment of the Supreme Court as a weapon for the far-right to use to impose its narrow views on the rest of America, and to destroy core regulation of businesses in this country, including businesses that have harmed our climate. It is extraordinary to me that these things all seem to happen in these silos from the standpoint of coverage when, in fact, they're inseparable. And the assault on the Supreme Court, this effort to capture it and move it as far to the right as possible for ten, 20, 30, possibly 40 years. And to do it in defiance of the American people's desire to have a fair say is also grotesque. It's another manifestation of the dysfunction of our democracy. And it's not just the president, it's that he has a number of enablers in the administration, and outside the administration, that are willing to turn a blind eye to almost everything he does in order to advance a very narrow and regressive agenda.

BILL MOYERS: It's clear that Chief Justice John Roberts wants people to think that the Supreme Court is a nonpolitical institution, that it's not beholden to the Republican party. But with this new nomination and likely confirmation, it's going to become just the opposite. Beholden to the Trump presidency and to the Republican party.

LISA GRAVES: I think that's right. If Coney Barrett is confirmed to the Supreme Court, it will cast a cloud over every decision that she makes, every decision that this court makes; that this court has been manipulated, has been captured, is designed to be unfair, is designed to put the thumb of the far-right and the corporate right-wing on decisions of this court. And that fundamentally undermines the idea of an independent court, what is happening to it right now....

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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.

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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https://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/release/senate-dems-request-docs-related-to-leonard-leos-work-leading-trump-admin-judicial-selections-say-leo-hand-picked-trump-judges-while-raking-in-undisclosed-sums-from-related-advocacy-groupsa-potential-conflict-of-interest-and-violation-of-federal-ethics-law

SENATE DEMS. REQUEST DOCS. RELATED TO LEONARD LEO’S WORK LEADING TRUMP ADMIN. JUDICIAL SELECTIONS, SAY LEO HAND-PICKED TRUMP JUDGES WHILE RAKING IN UNDISCLOSED SUMS FROM RELATED ADVOCACY GROUPS—A POTENTIAL CONFLICT OF INTEREST AND VIOLATION OF FEDERAL ETHICS LAW

In New Letters To Leo, White House, Justice Department, Office of Personnel Management And Federalist Society, Senate Dems. Seek Info On Leo’s Official Role While He Maintained Financial Ties to Advocacy Efforts That Raised More Than $250 Million in Anonymous Donations; Senate Dems. Ask For Records To Determine His Potential Status as a Government Employee and Compliance with Accompanying Laws and Regulations; Senate Dems: Leo May Have Broken Financial Disclosure, Recordkeeping Rules That Requir

Washington, DC –Senate Democrats Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), and Mazie Hirono (D-HI) today sent a series of letters to Leonard Leo, U.S. Attorney General William Barr,Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Director Dale Cabaniss, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, and Federalist Society President and CEO Eugene Meyer raising concerns with potential conflicts of interest related to Mr. Leo’s work leading and advising the Trump administration on judicial selections and nominations, while simultaneously maintaining a personal financial interest in advocacy efforts related to that work.

In the series of letters, the senators note that Leo has helped drive the unprecedented rise in anonymous funding that now pervades the selection and nomination processes for federal judicial picks. Importantly, Leo’s advocacy work appears to have coincided with his service advising the Trump administration’s judicial selection and nominations process. Between 2014 and 2017 alone, Mr. Leo’s network collected more than $250 million in donations, the sources of which remain unknown and which likely have interests before the federal courts. Although Leo regularly received upwards of $400,000 in annual compensation from the Federalist Society, he has not disclosed his total compensation received through the entities in his network, including from the BH Group, which contributed $1 million to President Trump’s inaugural committee. The identities of Mr. Leo’s funders are also unknown.

The Senators emphasize that Leo’s leading role in the Trump administration’s judicial selection and nominations process raises questions about whether he performed a federal function that must have been conducted by a government employee authorized to act on behalf of the United States. The Senators request records to help determine Leo’s potential status as a federal employee and compliance with accompanying laws and regulations, including records retention and financial disclosure requirements, as well as the criminal financial conflict of interest statute.

Text of the senators’ letter to the Attorney General Barr is below. PDF copies of the letters can be found here:

Attorney General William Barr

U.S. Department of Justice

950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Washington, DC 20530

Dear Attorney General Barr,

As members of the United States Senate, we have witnessed an unprecedented rise in anonymous funding which now pervades the process for selecting federal judicial nominees, confirming them, and advancing cases and legal theories that serve special interests to the detriment of the American people. We believe this anonymous funding, likely from entities that have interests before the federal courts, is undermining the rule of law and the bedrock American principle of equal justice under law.

Investigative reporting has brought attention to Leonard Leo’s leading role in these efforts, including his service with the Trump Administration advising its judicial selection and nominations process.[[1]](https://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/release/senate-dems-request-docs-related-to-leonard-leos-work-leading-trump-admin-judicial-selections-say-leo-hand-picked-trump-judges-while-raking-in-undisclosed-sums-from-related-advocacy-groupsa-potential-conflict-of-interest-and-violation-of-federal-ethics-law#_ftn1) In March 2016, Mr. Leo, who was then Executive Vice President of the Federalist Society, met with Don McGahn and then-candidate Donald Trump to provide a list of possible Supreme Court nominees. After President Trump’s election, Mr. Leo reportedly also served on his transition team, took leave from the Federalist Society to advise the Trump Administration on Supreme Court nominations, and continues to serve as an advisor on nominations to federal district and appeals courts. To date, over 85 percent of President Trump’s appellate court nominees, including both of his nominees to the Supreme Court, are current or former members of the Federalist Society.

This reporting also places Mr. Leo at the center of a complex network of nonprofit groups and shell entities funded largely by anonymous donors. Between 2014 and 2017 alone, Mr. Leo’s network collected more than $250 million in donations, the sources of which remain unknown. While much of this money has been directed toward advocacy spending in support of judicial nominees through advertising and other means, it appears that Mr. Leo also has a financial interest in these anonymous donations. Although he has regularly received upwards of $400,000 in annual compensation from the Federalist Society, Mr. Leo has declined to disclose his total compensation received through other entities in his network, including from the BH Group, which contributed $1 million to President Trump’s inaugural committee. In addition, he has recently indicated that he is forming a new venture which plans, among other things, to raise and spend millions on issue advocacy campaigns focusing on judges in the 2020 election cycle.

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. By outward appearances, Mr. Leo appears to 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 nominee, and press for their confirmation.

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, 18 U.S.C. § 208. If he was not deemed a federal employee, Mr. Leo’s role in the Trump Administration may have violated legal limitations on the federal government’s acceptance of voluntary services or restrictions on access to non-public records.

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 his leadership role in the Trump Administration’s work on this issue. As Congress conducts oversight and considers legislation related to conflicts of interest, we request that you provide the information requested in the attached Appendix. Because of the Department’s role in the judicial selection or nomination process for federal judicial nominees, Mr. Leo’s potential interactions with the Department as part of that process are relevant to our inquiry.

Please provide the documents specified in the attached Appendix by no later than April 10. Please also consider this letter formal notification of your obligation to identify, collect, and preserve any records that are responsive to requests in that Appendix.

Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.

Appendix

From the period beginning January 20, 2017, to the present, please provide all records in the custody of the United States Department of Justice (including emails, email attachments, notes, hard copy correspondence sent through any medium including courier service, telephone call logs, calendar invitations/entries, meeting notices, meeting agendas, talking points, any handwritten or electronic notes taken during any responsive communications, and summaries of any responsive communications) related to Mr. Leo’s involvement in any potential, actual, or suggested judicial selection or nomination.

For the purposes of this request, the Department may limit its search to custodians within the Office of the Attorney General, the Office of the Deputy Attorney General, the Office of the Associate Attorney General, the Office of Legal Policy, and the Office of Legislative Affairs.

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[[1]](https://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/release/senate-dems-request-docs-related-to-leonard-leos-work-leading-trump-admin-judicial-selections-say-leo-hand-picked-trump-judges-while-raking-in-undisclosed-sums-from-related-advocacy-groupsa-potential-conflict-of-interest-and-violation-of-federal-ethics-law#_ftnref1) Robert O’Harrow & Shawn Boburg, A Conservative Activist’s Behind-the-Scenes Campaign to Remake the Nation’s Courts, The Washington Post (May 21, 2019

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SENATE DEMS. REQUEST DOCS. RELATED TO LEONARD LEO’S WORK LEADING TRUMP ADMIN. JUDICIAL SELECTIONS, SAY LEO HAND-PICKED TRUMP JUDGES WHILE RAKING IN UNDISCLOSED SUMS FROM RELATED ADVOCACY GROUPS—A POTENTIAL CONFLICT OF INTEREST AND VIOLATION OF FEDERAL ETHICS LAW

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