Tag: Leonard Leo

A decade of failing to persuade the New York Times to pay attention to Leonard Leo

 

JUST READ IT

A decade of failing to persuade the New York Times to pay attention to Leonard Leo

By Tom Carter

https://medium.com/@thcarter123/the-old-gray-lady-aint-what-she-used-to-be-a-decade-of-failing-to-persuade-the-new-york-times-to-8c3ab0dcea5e

EXCERPT

Well known today as Trump’s “court whisper” and for placing five extreme right Catholics on the Supreme Court, Leo was unknown in 2009 DC. After firing the Muslim employee, Leo endured a wave of negative stories in the Washington Post and other outlets, in short for being an anti-Muslim bigot.

Over the next year, Leo’s name started appearing in other stories. First in Talking Points Memo for being a founding director in Ginni Thomas’ new Tea Party org, Liberty Central. Then Mother Jones accused Leo, USCIRF and Liberty Central of playing a leading role in the anti Muslim Ground Zero Mosque protests.

I had a good Rolodex and began pitching investigative reporters to “look” at Leo. I stressed these ten points:

1 — Leo is more than “just another” DC lobbyist

2 — In addition to the Federalist Society, Leo has a private network of front groups and extreme right Catholic militants running anti Obama disinformation and stacking the courts

3 — Judicial Crisis Network — Carrie Severino

4 — Heritage Foundation — John Malcolm, Roger Severino

5 — CRC pr — Creative Response Concepts — Greg Mueller

6 — Ginni Thomas’ Liberty Central

7 — Becket Fund for Religious Liberty

8 — Former Bush point man on Supreme Court, responsible for picking and placing Roberts and Alito and later, under Trump, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett.

9 — Close personal friends w Justices Scalia, Justice Thomas and their families.

10 — Nothing obviously illegal, but a vast and insanely powerful underground DC network that no reporter had ever detailed.

Silly me, I thought it was a good story. Starting in 2010, I pitched more than 40 prominent, award-winning mainstream journalists, including seven from the New York Times.

Every pitch was an updated version of the same thing.

Evil Twins Barre Seid and Leonard Leo destroy America

Evil Dicks
Barre Seid and

Leonard Leo
destroy America

These 2 despicable dicks  Barre Seid and Leonard Leo changed American Law overturning reproductive rights for women.

How a Secretive Billionaire Handed His Fortune to the Architect of the Right-Wing Takeover of the Courts
In the largest known political advocacy donation in U.S. history, industrialist Barre Seid funded a new group run by Federalist Society co-chair Leonard Leo, who guided Trump’s Supreme Court picks and helped end federal abortion rights. A 90-year-old manufacturing magnate, gave the massive sum to a nonprofit run by Leonard Leo, who co-chairs the conservative legal group the Federalist Society.
In practical terms, there are few limitations on how Leo’s new group, the Marble Freedom Trust, can spend the enormous donation. The structure of the donation allowed Seid to avoid as much as $400 million in taxes. Thus, he maximized the amount of money at Leo’s disposal.

2012 Sources have suggested Barre Seid may be the “Anonymous Donor” that supported many of Heartland Institute’s climate change denial. Heartland was developing a denialist K-12 curriculum intended in part to “dissuade teachers from teaching science”
 Barre Seid right-wing industrialist & donor to advocacy groups & thinktanks attacking climate science & promoting Islamaphobia. He is closely allied w/#KochNetwork & funnels dark money thru the groups used by Kochs, incl Donors Trust & Donors Capital Fund. https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Barre_Seid

The Right’s Historic Billion-Dollar Dark Money Transfer

Industrialist Barre Seid funded a new dark money group run by Trump judicial adviser Leonard Leo, who helped eliminate federal abortion rights.
An elderly, ultra-secretive Chicago businessman has given the largest known donation to a political advocacy group in U.S. history — worth $1.6 billion — and the recipient is one of the prime architects of conservatives’ efforts to reshape the American judicial system, including the Supreme Court.
NEWS: A secretive right-wing billionaire just made the largest political donation in American history, while dodging as much as $400 million in taxes. The $1.6 BILLION is going to the GOP operative masterminding the takeover of the Supreme Court.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/22/politics/dark-money-donation-conservative-group-invs/index.html

(CNN) — A new group led by a prominent conservative lawyer has received $1.6 billion from one donor — the largest single contribution to a politically focused nonprofit that’s ever been made public, and a fortune that could be used to fuel right-wing interests.

The nonprofit, Marble Freedom Trust, received the contribution in the form of stock and then funneled more than $200 million to other conservative organizations last year, a tax form CNN obtained from the IRS shows.

Marble Freedom is led by Leonard Leo, the co-chairman of the conservative Federalist Society, who advised former President Donald Trump on his Supreme Court picks and runs a sprawling network of other right-wing nonprofits that don’t disclose their donors, which are often referred to as dark money groups.

Leo, Marble Freedom’s chairman and trustee, is one of the most influential figures in the world of conservative dark money. A longtime executive at the Federalist Society, a national network of right-leaning lawyers, Leo has led or served on the board of more than a dozen different nonprofits. Several of his groups have been associated with political campaigns promoting conservative Supreme Court nominees, operating in complex networks of spending.

The new $1.6 billion donation “solidifies Leo as just an absolute gravitational force within the conservative political and legal world,” Maguire said. “He was already the man behind the scenes raising money for reshaping the American judiciary, and this amount of money just takes it to a stratospheric level.”

At the end of April 2021, Marble Freedom had more than $1.4 billion in assets — positioning it to play a major role in conservative causes potentially for years to come. 

“This group is emblematic of the corrosion and the breakdown of our campaign finance system,” Maguire said — and how it gives “wealthy donors, whether they be corporations or individuals, access and influence over the system far greater than any regular American can ever imagine.”