Should you ask someone “who is the most powerful conservative politician”, most would probably say Donald Trump.  After the backtracking all conservatives did post-January 6th and their all out defense on simply investigating Trump’s possession and misuse of classified documents, it would be hard to argue otherwise.  But those people would still be wrong.  Because the most powerful man in conservative politics is also the master of dark money arts.  His name is Leonard Leo.

You’ve probably never heard of him.  Or if you have, it was probably only after the New York Times published an article about the $1.65 billion donation Leo’s nonprofit group recently received.  

Yes, that’s “billion” with a “b”.

The donation is the largest single political contribution in U.S. history.  It was made by an even more mysterious man, Barre Seid.

This article will delve into those two Republican political operatives, exploring how they gained their power, and how Leonard Leo in particular will use his unprecedented war chest to further conservative, and increasingly authoritarian, aims.

The donor and the dark money master 

The Republican Party’s shift to a more authoritarian brand of governance was not executed by the likes of Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell alone.  In the background was Barre Seid and Leonard Leo.  Seid played the super rich donor while Leo deployed the donations to conservative causes, whether that was campaigning for Supreme Court justices, restricting abortion, or preventing “voter fraud.”

Barre Seid is a 90-year-old electronics manufacturing baron from Chicago.  He has historically made major donations to conservative causes anonymously.  From 1996 to 2018, he has given at least $775 million in charitable donations.  During that same time he reportedly made $1.7 billion in income.  Yet he keeps an incredibly low profile.  His name is rarely on a donation and the likes of Forbes have never even featured him.   

Leonard Leo is also relatively unknown to mainstream audiences.  But the power he wields in conservative circles is maybe even stronger than Trump’s.  He was the long time vice president of the Federalist Society, and is now co-chairman.  For the uninitiated, the Federalist Society is the most important organization to the conservative legal and political movement in the last forty years. 

For the past few decades, Leo has had his hand in almost every major conservative breakthrough.  Whether it was giving the Supreme Court its conservative supermajority, eliminating Constitutional protections for abortion rights, and most importantly for his current career as dark money master, paving the way for the Citizens United decision.  The infamous Citizens United holding opened the big money floodgates for elections, equating campaign financing to speech, effectively untethering any limits corporations and wealthy donors had when contributing to political campaigns.  

Leo is a very conservative Catholic.  His faith is relevant because it informs his politics and how he views the Constitution, including the judges he promotes to all levels of the state and federal judiciaries.  Through his work at the Federalist Society, Leo has stacked America’s courts with conservative-minded judges and justices who think like him.  They generally have strong originalist views on the Constitution, viewing issues through a lens of how the founders would have interpreted them.  Never mind that the founders were all white, property-owning men who enslaved Africans and didn’t think women needed to vote.  

Recently, Leonard Leo became involved with a new group, the Marble Freedom Trust.  This is the organization that received Barre Seid’s $1.6 billion donation.  Marble Freedom Trust is specifically designed to keep donors anonymous and provide the trustee with wide latitude on how to spend any funds.  

Leonard Leo is the sole trustee of Marble Freedom Trust.  

How Leonard Leo received Barre Seid’s dark money

While it is unclear exactly how Leo and Seid became political compatriots, it’s clear that Seid has great trust in Leo.  Seid is a billionaire in the twilight of life, with no children, and a desire to leave a lasting legacy with his money.  He’s basically entrusted the majority of it to Leonard Leo.

Barre Seid ran the Tripp Lite electronics manufacturing company for years before recently selling it.  Before selling it, however, he transferred all of his shares to Marble Freedom Trust, a nonprofit that is exempt from income tax.  Tax experts have said that this maneuver avoided some $400 million in state and federal income tax.  Which in turn gave Leo more money to play with for conservative pursuits. 

By organizing Marble Freedom as a trust instead of a corporation, Leo created a dark money group that does not have to publicly disclose its donors or register its name in public databases for business, tax, or securities records.  The trust structure also gives Leo almost unilateral power to deploy funds on elections, in addition to conservative pursuits such as universities, religious institutions, think tanks, etc.  

All of this spending through Marble Freedom Trust can basically go undetected.  In contrast, political action committees (Super PACs) and election campaigns have to adhere to public disclosure requirements. Trusts organized under 501(c)(4) must limit their political advocacy to 50% of their spending, but so long as the rest of that money is intended for other forms of “social welfare” (like the conservative causes mentioned earlier), trustees like Leonard Leo can spend as they please.  In the dark.  

How Leonard Leo will use his dark money war chest   

One only has to look at what Leonard Leo has supported in the past to understand his future plans.  It is a continuation of the dark authoritarian and theocratic road the Republican Party has headed down, with Trump at its lead.  Leo will deploy his war chest to make sure America comes along for the ride.  

First and foremost, prepare for more election integrity and “voter fraud” spending.  Quotes surround voter fraud here because it is a popular boogeyman for conservatives following Trump’s big lie.  Most Republicans at this point believe in that lie, even if many had to force themselves to do so.

Leonard Leo has promoted the “Honest Elections Project”, which is basically Orwellian code for voter suppression.  This is not even gerrymandering, which is a very bipartisan problem.  The Honest Elections Project is much more sinister.  It has deployed funding for filing legal briefs in favor of voting restrictions, pressure campaigns against election officials (who are supposed to be nonpartisan), and the propagation of warnings and literature on voter fraud, almost all of which collapses under close scrutiny.  

Apart from funding the destruction of American democracy through dark money, also expect Leo to continue to strengthen the conserative legal pipeline.  As someone who went to law school and encountered the Federalist Society (and had a Con Law professor who helped run it), I can personally attest to how well-organized and compelling its propaganda is on impressionable law students.  The conservative legal movement corrals them while they’re young.  Then the Federalist Society serves as a career and networking service, supporting lawyers through their legal journey and helping to place many of them in the judiciary (and on the Supreme Court). 

Leo has had a personal hand in getting every single current conservative justice on the Supreme Court.  Through the organization – the Judicial Crisis Network – he’s helped deploy tens of millions in Supreme Court advertising during confirmation fights.  Leo was instrumental in navigating Brett Kavanaugh through his infamous confirmation battle. 

Expect more of the same from Leo’s now massive dark money war chest.

The destruction of American democracy through dark money

When Justice Clarence Thomas publicly jokes that you’re one of the most powerful people in the world, you know you’ve reached a divine echelon in conservative politics.  Justice Thomas had joked that he was honored to share a stage with Leonard Leo, “the No. 3 most powerful person in the world.”  That’s because Leonard Leo is considered a conservative kingmaker.  There is a reason why Barre Seid left him – and not some other political operative – with so much money to deploy.

What this really illustrates is the destruction of American democracy through dark money.  Citizens United paved the way for this moment.  Of course, Democrats take advantage of dark money too, but none of them to date have used it towards blatantly anti-democratic efforts.

By funding initiatives called the “Honest Elections Project” when there is not even a scintilla of systemic evidence that rampant fraud is occurring in American elections, Leo and his cronies are not simply acting in bad faith.  Their behavior is borderline treasonous. 

People like Leonard Leo use dark money to fund advertising, think tanks, and other conservative initiatives to push an agenda to keep conservatives in power.  At all costs. Their efforts rile up the base and get impressionable voters and law students amped up into believing that nonexistent problems exist when they don’t.  Simply look at all of the court cases Donald Trump lost in his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Trump did not win one election fraud case that was materially impactful.  He did not win one that took his claims of fraud seriously.

Yet Leonard Leo and his war chest will help convince millions that voter fraud and election integrity are still major issues.  He will convince millions to listen to the Honest Elections Project instead of democratic institutions like courts of law.

The longer this is allowed to persist – the propagation of the big lie through dark money – the more likely it is that the destruction of American democracy will be successful.  Unfortunately, none of it is reversible overnight.  Citizens Unitedis the current law of the land, and until the Supreme Court changes its majority, there’s no end in sight.  

There’s also no end in sight to the endless possibilities of what Leonard Leo might do with his billions.  All we can continue to do is hope that reason, respectful debate, and democratic institutions can win the day in 2022 and again in 2024.  And we can also hope that one day we can remove dark money (and therefore Leonard Leo) from politics altogether.   

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