How a Trump adviser manipulates free speech to advance his causes and ‘hurt his adversaries’
"D.C. Attorney General is probing Leonard Leo’s network"
Leonard Leo, architect of the rightwing takeover of the US judiciary, champions the first amendment for political gain but does an ‘about-face’ when it’s used against him, critics say
Ed Pilkington @edpilkington Wed 9 Aug 2023 21.00 AEST Last modified on Fri 11 Aug 2023 02.30 AEST
Leonard Leo, co-chair of the conservative legal group Federalist Society, speaks at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington DC in 2019. Photograph: The Washington Post/Getty Images
Leo, 58, is the low-profile, deceptively nondescript co-chair of the conservative legal group Federalist Society. That he turned his hand to this topic was in itself no surprise – he has long presented himself as a champion of the first amendment, with its guarantees of freedom of religion, speech, press and peaceable assembly.
“Free speech is essential for a free society,” he wrote. “As such, it is something that I have defended and will continue to defend, and I have always accepted that there will be objections and opposition to the work I do.”
But a couple of eye-catching, and seemingly incongruous, events have led to speculation that his commitment to free speech might be more complicated than he professes, and more self serving. If all American citizens are equal in front of this vital element of the US constitution, could it be that some people – notably Leo himself – are more equal than others?
Eli Durand-McDonnell, a landscaper, was part of a group of progressive activists who staged a series of peaceful protests outside Leo’s home. They were angry about his role in securing a rightwing supermajority on the US supreme court .. https://www.theguardian.com/law/us-supreme-court .. , and the evisceration of fundamental rights that flowed from that.
Leo isn’t named as a defendant in the civil lawsuit .. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23895844-leonard-leo-complaint , which accuses two local police officers of making an illegal and retaliatory arrest of Durand-McDonnell during one of the protests on 31 July 2022, a month after the devastating abortion ruling. But it does claim that the arrest was made “at the direct behest of Leo, a powerful and wealthy conservative political activist who has used millions of dollars as political speech to influence American politics and courts”.
The complaint discloses that the head of Leo’s private security detail contacted the Bar Harbor police while one of the protests was occurring outside his home, singling out Durand-McDonnell for supposedly harassing the Federalist Society chief and his family. Leo told a police officer who turned up at the scene: “I think it’s time for us to press some charges,” adding, “I really feel like this is a guy who’s got to be in jail someday, and sooner rather than later.”
In his Bangor Daily News op-ed, Leo said that before the protest Durand-McDonnell had yelled at his wife and daughter that they should burn in hell. “I don’t take reporting someone to the police lightly. But, as a husband and a father, neither can I take harassment of my wife and children lightly,” he wrote.
Durand-McDonnell saw the event differently. He denies harassing anyone, insisting that all his actions were political protest that is protected by the first amendment.
“I think this case sums it up perfectly,” he told the New Yorker. “The rules don’t apply to Leonard Leo … If he doesn’t agree with what someone else says, it’s no longer free speech.”
The second event burst into public view five days after Mayer’s New Yorker article. On 25 July, Leo wrote a letter .. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23886791-leonard-leo-letter .. through his lawyer to two leading Democratic US senators on the judiciary committee, Dick Durbin and Sheldon Whitehouse.
The senators wanted Leo to answer a series of questions about his ties to the supreme court justices as part of an ethics investigation they were conducting. Leo has long been a figure of interest for Congress, given his outsized influence on US politics .. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/us-politics .. and the courts.
“Leo has been the central driving figure of the conservative movement’s decades-long effort to reshape the supreme court’s composition and outcomes,” said Alex Aronson, a judicial accountability advocate and Whitehouse’s former chief counsel in the US senate. “He has his fingerprints on every one of the six Republican-appointed justices who are now on the court.”
-------- [Insert: See again from previous: [INSERT: Leonard Leo used Federalist Society contact to obtain $1.6B donation The society’s close ties to Leo’s network raise questions about its nonpartisan, non-political status. Leo image caption - The arrangement in which Leonard Leo met his top donor through the Federalist Society suggests closer ties between the society and Leo’s activist network than previously known. | Carolyn Kaster/AP Photo By Heidi Przybyla 05/02/2023 04:30 AM EDT Leonard Leo, who helped to choose judicial nominees for former President Donald Trump, obtained a historic $1.6 billion gift for his conservative legal network via an introduction through the Federalist Society, whose tax status forbids political activism. P - Leo first met Barre Seid, the now 91-year-old manufacturing magnate turned donor, through an introduction arranged by Eugene Meyer, the longtime director of the Federalist Society. At the time, Leo was the society’s executive vice president, and he is currently its co-chair. Meyer envisioned Seid as a contributor to the society, according to a person familiar with the introduction. Instead, Leo cultivated Seid as a funder of his own dark money network. The result was a $1.6 billion gift announced last year — which is believed to be the largest political donation ever. https://www.politico.com/news/2023/05/02/leonard-leo-federalist-society-00094761 The fact the Federalist Society is able to have non-political activism tax status is as laughable as Trump being able to insult judges and intimidate witness and still stay out of jail .. There's an Easy Solution to The Justice System's Donald Trump Problem https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=172656870] ---------- ]
He now controls a pot of money that represents possibly the largest single donation to a political non-profit in US history.
Leo’s name has repeatedly popped up in the wave of ethics scandals that has washed over the supreme court this year. In April, when ProPublica published its blockbuster expose .. https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-scotus-undisclosed-luxury-travel-gifts-crow .. of Justice Clarence Thomas’s chummy relations with the Texas real estate magnate Harlan Crow, there was Leo depicted in a painting that hangs at Crow’s luxury lakeside resort in upstate New York sitting alongside Crow and Thomas in amicable conversation.
A month after that, ProPublica unleashed another blockbuster .. https://www.propublica.org/article/samuel-alito-luxury-fishing-trip-paul-singer-scotus-supreme-court .. that disclosed the luxury fishing trip in Alaska that Justice Samuel Alito went on in 2008 bankrolled by the hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer. There was Leo again, pictured with Singer and Alito holding king salmon they had caught.
Leo, who assisted Alito in his 2006 confirmation to the supreme court, had a hand in arranging the trip. That included asking Singer for seats on his private jet which the justice failed to disclose as he was legally required to do.
In the wake of these ethically dubious bombshells, Durbin and Whitehouse decided to conduct their own inquiry as part of congressional oversight. They wanted to know from Leo further details of the Alaska fishing trip and what transportation, lodging and gifts he had provided to any of the justices.
In his response, Leo turned once more to the first amendment. This time, though, he made the opposite argument: unlike the Maine protester who he said had no free speech right to harass him, Leo said he had an absolute first amendment right that protected his dealings and communications with Alito and the other justices.
“Mr Leo is entitled by the First Amendment to engage in public advocacy, associate with others who share his views, and express opinions on important matters of public concern,” his lawyer wrote. Leo declined to cooperate with Congress.
One of the striking aspects of Leo’s use of the first amendment in these two events is that in both instances he sets himself up as the victim of harassment.In Maine, he was “harassed” by Durand-McDonnell who in Leo’s view went beyond civil speech and therefore forfeited his first amendment protections.
In the letter to Congress, Leo presents himself as being “harassed” by the senators for exercising his first amendment rights to interact with the supreme court justices in any way they liked.
This glaring duality – the same harassment claim played both ways with the first amendment – has caught the attention of Leo’s critics. “He’s a free speech champion when it means forcing his radical agenda on everyday Americans and refusing to cooperate with Congress,” said Kyle Herrig, senior adviser to the government corruption watchdog Accountable.US. “But he does an about-face as soon as the free speech is directed at him.”
The Guardian reached out to Leo to invite his reaction to this criticism, but he did not respond.
Aronson called the arguments laid out in Leo’s letter refusing to cooperate with Congress “comically absurd”. “What Leo argued here is that Congress lacks authority to investigate the supreme court. That position has no basis in the constitution or in any precedent.”
Aronson said that this was nothing new: Leo and the network of dark money groups he coordinates, along with the conservative justices of the supreme court he helped into power, have long massaged the first amendment for political gain. “The first amendment has been a particular target of political manipulation by Leo and the conservative legal movement across a range of subjects,” he said.
In the judicial term that ended in June, the six conservative justices again turned to the first amendment – this time to unleash open discrimination against .. https://www.theguardian.com/law/2023/jun/30/us-supreme-court-ruling-lgbtq-rights-colorado .. LGBTQ+ communities in the name of protected speech. In a dissent, Sonia Sotomayor warned that business services could now be denied any vulnerable group, such as interracial couples or parents with disabled children, all in the name of “free speech”.
Stand back from all this, and Aronson believes we are witnessing the unfolding of Leo’s judicial revolution.“Highly influential political actors are developing incomparable sway over the judiciary after decades of coordinated investment,” he said.
“The law is becoming manipulable to advance their ends. And hurt their adversaries.”
Well, that sure gives a little insight into why hewhoshitsinpants is so brave with the public attacks and how he stays out of prison for the time being or since forever.
‘He’s an insider’: Ramaswamy’s deep ties to rightwing kingpins revealed
--- "D.C. Attorney General is probing Leonard Leo’s network [...]The scope of the investigation is unclear. But it comes after POLITICO reported .. https://www.politico.com/news/2023/03/01/dark-money-leonard-leo-judicial-activism-00084864 .. 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. [...]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. ---------- [INSERT: Leonard Leo used Federalist Society contact to obtain $1.6B donation The society’s close ties to Leo’s network raise questions about its nonpartisan, non-political status." ---
Republican candidate brands himself as an ‘outsider’ but has close links to prominent figures Leonard Leo and Peter Thiel
Martin Pengelly in Washington @MartinPengelly Fri 25 Aug 2023 20.00 AEST Last modified on Sat 26 Aug 2023 04.07 AEST
Vivek Ramaswamy flourished in the absence of Donald Trump in the Wisconsin debate. Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
Vivek Ramaswamy has described himself as an “outsider”, accusing rivals for the Republican presidential nomination of being “bought and paid for” by donors and special interests.
But the 38-year-old Ohio-based venture capitalist, whose sharp-elbowed and angry display stood out in the first Republican debate this week, has his own close ties to influential figures from both sides of the political aisle.
Prominent among such connections are Peter Thiel, the co-founder of tech giants PayPal and Palantir and a rightwing mega-donor, and Leonard Leo, the activist who has marshaled unprecedented sums in his push to stock federal courts with conservative judges.
Ramaswamy is a Yale Law School friend of JD Vance, the author of the bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy who enjoyed success in finance before entering politics. At Yale, Vance and Ramaswamy attended what the New Yorker called .. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/12/19/the-ceo-of-anti-woke-inc .. an “intimate lunch seminar for select students” that was hosted by Thiel. Last year, backed by Thiel and espousing hard-right Trumpist views, Vance won a US Senate seat in Ohio.
Thiel has since said he has stepped back from political donations. But he has backed Ramaswamy’s business career, supporting what the New Yorker called .. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/12/19/the-ceo-of-anti-woke-inc .. “a venture helping senior citizens access Medicare” and, last year, backing Strive Asset Management, a fund launched by Ramaswamy to attack environmental, social and governance (ESG) policies among corporate investors. Vance was also a backer.
Ramaswamy’s primary vehicle to success has been Roivant, an investment company focused on the pharmaceuticals industry founded in 2014.
The Roivant advisory board includes .. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/27/us/politics/vivek-ramaswamy-wealth.html .. figures from both the Republican and Democratic establishments: Kathleen Sebelius, US health secretary under Barack Obama; Tom Daschle of South Dakota, formerly Democratic leader in the US Senate; and Olympia Snowe, formerly a Republican senator from Maine.
Ramaswamy’s links to Leo – recently the recipient of a $1.6bn donation from the industrialist Barre Seid, believed to be the biggest ever such gift, but now reportedly ..
[In April, the Campaign for Accountability, a progressive watchdog, filed a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service, alleging Leo “caused” recently formed non-profits “to pay him (directly or indirectly) more than $73m over a six-year period from 2016 through 2021”. P - Groups offering consulting, research or public relations services, the complaint said, “may either not have provided those services at all or may have provided services at a level not commensurate with the payments received”.] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/24/leonard-leo-investigation-washington-dc ..
the subject an investigation by the attorney general of Washington DC – are many.
As reported by ProPublica and Documented, Ramaswamy has spoken at retreats staged by Teneo, a group Leo chairs and which aims to connect high-powered conservatives, to “crush liberal dominance” in American life.
Other Teneo speakers have reportedly included Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor polling ahead of Ramaswamy in the Republican primary, and the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, who trails Ramaswamy and clashed with him on stage in Milwaukee.
VIDEO - 'No foreign policy experience': Nikki Haley chastises Vivek Ramaswamy on Ukraine aid stance – video
ProPublica also linked Thiel to the genesis of the Teneo group. According to a document seen by the Guardian, Ramaswamy became a Teneo member in 2021.
Elsewhere, Ramaswamy is a board member of the Philanthropy Roundtable, a group with ties .. https://www.philanthropyroundtable.org/magazine/q-a-with-leonard-leo/ .. to Leo, and a member of the Federalist Society, the Leo-driven group which works to stock the courts with conservatives.
Ramaswamy has also spoken to and received an award from the State Financial Officers Foundation (SFOF), a group of Republican state treasurers.
Similar pushes were mounted in Missouri and Indiana, the paper said. Curtis Loftis, the South Carolina state treasurer, told the Post and Courier there was “nothing improper” about such approaches.
Asked about Ramaswamy’s claims to be an outsider in light of his links to rightwing donors, activists and establishment figures, a campaign spokesperson told the Guardian: “Vivek has lived the American dream and has had tremendous success in business.
“There’s a colossal difference between someone who has friendships and business relationships with wealthy individuals and politicians who change their policies and positions to please their Super Pac donors,” they added.
In the Wisconsin debate, Ramaswamy flourished in the absence of Donald Trump, the former US president who faces 91 criminal charges but nonetheless leads Republican polling by huge margins.
Amid speculation that Ramaswamy might end up Trump’s running mate, Reed Galen, a Republican operative turned co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, called Ramaswamy “a classic 2020s America tech bro bullshit artist … Trump for the 21st century”.
Ramaswamy’s claim to be an outsider, Galen said, was part of his “fundamental understanding … that Maga [the pro-Trump Republican base] wants him to show that the rest of these people [in the primary] are politicians. He’s willing to be the showman … the outsider. Anti-establishment. ‘If anything is there, I dislike it because it’s there.’ You know, ‘I’m going to have fun with this. I’m not going to take it seriously because you’re a bunch of hacks and goons.’”
But in another sense, regarding Ramaswamy’s ties to the likes of Leo and Thiel, Galen said: “I think that he’s an insider.
“He walks into a room with Leonard Leo and says, ‘What do you need me to do?’ … And they’re like, ‘Here’s what we want you to do. Here’s what we need you to do.’ Right?
“Do I think [Ramaswamy] cares about [issues like restricting] abortion? No, not particularly. I don’t think he has a firmly held belief on it. But if he thinks that it will help him, and in exchange for that Leonard Leo will throw a little chicken feed of the $1.6bn that old man gave him, to help him? Sure, what the hell?
“He didn’t ever think he’d get this far. So now he’s just gonna push it as far as he can.”
Ramaswamy, Galen said, was closely tied to a world of donors and non-profits in which Leo is “certainly at the center. And this movement only moves in one direction, and it’s toward the darkness. It’s towards authoritarianism. And it’s because it finds people like Ramaswamy. And the more that all these other candidates will now attack him, they will drive him further and further into the arms of those people.”
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