Because the US supreme court docket justice Clarence Thomas ready to take questions from members of the rightwing authorized advocacy group the Federalist Society, a number of years again, he turned to the moderator.
Thomas joked that the nondescript man within the blue go well with and white shirt was the “No 3 strongest particular person on the planet”, after which fell about laughing. The goal of the choose’s mirth, Leonard Leo, grinned and remarked: “God assist us.”
But each males understood at that second in 2018 simply how influential Leo was, in ways in which few People knew. Most had by no means even heard of Leo, although he was at the moment instrumental in maneuvering Donald Trump to reshape the court docket on which Thomas sits, and so ship one in every of its most politically delicate rulings of current instances by overturning the correct to abortion.
Leo, a 56 year-old whose opposition to abortion is rooted in his Catholic religion, stays an obscure determine to a lot of the US public, even after revelations that he heads a political group that has acquired an astonishing $1.6bn donation to push conservative causes, together with election manipulation forward of this 12 months’s midterm votes.
Earlier this month the New York Occasions revealed that the cash, stated to be one of many largest single contributions to a political strain group, arrived in a circuitous route from a determine who's equally obscure to most People: Barre Seid.
Seid, who has spent tens of hundreds of thousands of dollars funding conservative and libertarian organisations, donated a complete firm final 12 months to a newly based political advocacy group run by Leo, the Marble Freedom Belief. Marble offered the agency, the Chicago electronics producer Tripp Lite, this 12 months for $1.6bn, based on tax information.
The roundabout course of has prompted hypothesis Seid was sidestepping tax on the sale to maximise the funding for Leo.
The Marble Freedom Belief has already distributed practically 1 / 4 of a billion dollars, together with $153m to the Rule of Regulation Belief to push the appointment of conservative judges. That also leaves greater than $1bn to fund political causes near Leo’s coronary heart, together with his curiosity in serving to Republican officers manipulate elections forward of the midterm vote and the subsequent presidential poll.
Leo defended the injection of an enormous quantity of “darkish cash” into the political course of by claiming it merely ranges the enjoying area towards Democrats funded by liberal billionaires.
“It’s excessive time for the conservative motion to be among the many ranks of George Soros, Hansjörg Wyss, Arabella Advisors and different leftwing philanthropists, going toe-to-toe within the combat to defend our structure and its beliefs,” he stated in an announcement.
Leo’s shut relationship with Thomas goes again to 1991 when he labored to assemble proof to help the choose throughout his affirmation listening to for the supreme court docket.
Leo went on to work for the Federalist Society, based in 1982 to counter what conservatives claimed was liberal dominance of US courts and legislation colleges. He rose to develop into the society’s co-chair and oversaw the rise in its affect on the expense of the extra liberal American Bar Affiliation, partially by means of the effectiveness of his fundraising to again conservative judicial nominees.
Because the conservative lawyer Ed Whelan wrote six years in the past within the Nationwide Evaluation: “Nobody has been extra devoted to the enterprise of constructing a supreme court docket that may overturn Roe v Wade than the Federalist Society’s Leonard Leo.”
In 2005, George W Bush nominated Harriet Miers, his deputy chief of employees, for a vacant seat on the supreme court docket. She was extensively considered a weak candidate in any case, however when conservatives turned on her, and Miers withdrew, Leo noticed to it that she was changed by a determine way more acceptable to the correct and opponents of abortion, Samuel Alito.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, one of the vital outspoken critics of darkish cash’s affect on politics, instructed the Guardian earlier this 12 months that was a turning level.
“It was at that time that the grip of this little donor elite and Leo, its Federalist Society operative, actually took maintain. Justice Samuel Alito was the product of that and he has confirmed himself on the court docket as being a trustworthy workhorse for that darkish cash company rightwing crew,” he stated.
New alternatives offered themselves with Trump’s election in 2016.
Leo drew up an inventory of 11 potential supreme court docket nominees to assist Trump, a person who had beforehand claimed to be pro-choice, woo conservative and evangelical voters by committing to appoint justices who had been hostile to abortion rights.
After Trump’s victory, Leo took time away from the Federalist Society to work as an advisor to the president. All three of these finally seated on the US’s highest court docket throughout Trump’s tenure and who voted to overturn Roe v Wade – Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett – had been named on the checklist Leo drew up in the course of the marketing campaign.
Now Leo has turned his consideration to pushing conservative strikes to control elections in favour of Republicans by means of the Trustworthy Elections Venture, a current addition to an internet of interlinked teams funded with darkish cash, together with from the libertarian Koch brothers.
Amongst different issues, Leo is pushing a contentious authorized idea that the US structure offers state legislatures the ability to resolve learn how to run elections with out intervention from the courts. The Trustworthy Elections Venture has made a number of authorized submissions on the difficulty with the intention of eradicating the ability of state courts to dam gerrymandering and voter suppression measures to control elections.
Earlier this 12 months, Leo instructed the Washington Publish that in utilizing darkish cash for political ends he isn't doing something that has not been finished earlier than.
“Let’s do not forget that on this nation, the abolitionist motion, the ladies’s suffrage motion, the American Revolution, the early labor motion, the civil rights motion of the Nineteen Fifties and Nineteen Sixties had been all very a lot fueled by very rich individuals and oftentimes rich individuals who selected to be nameless. I feel that’s not a nasty factor. I feel that’s an excellent factor,” he stated.
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