As the past few months’ continuous stream of new revelations has uncovered a litany of financial favors and close relationships between Supreme Court justices and wealthy conservatives, Senate Democrats are shining the spotlight on one of the most influential figures behind the whole scheme: conservative judicial kingmaker and master of dark money Leonard Leo.
On Wednesday, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island), chair of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Federal Courts, and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois), chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, opened an inquiry into three people central to recent allegations.
The lawmakers sent letters to Leo and two conservative billionaires, Paul Singer and Robin Arkley II, the latter of whom were revealed to have given gifts to Justice Samuel Alito in a bombshell ProPublica report last month. The letters demanded that Leo and the billionaires provide a full accounting of their gifts and favors to Alito and the Supreme Court.
“To date, Chief Justice Roberts has barely acknowledged, much less investigated or sought to fix, the ethics crises swirling around our highest Court. So if the Court won’t investigate or act, Congress must,” Whitehouse and Durbin said in a joint statement. “Answers to these questions will help the Committee’s work to create reliable ethics guardrails at the Court, under Congress’s clearly established oversight and legislative authority.”
Both Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas have taken large gifts that they never disclosed, as recent reports have revealed. According to ProPublica, in 2008 Singer gave Alito a free trip on his private jet to an Alaska fishing lodge — a gift worth more than $100,000 one way. Once the conservative justice got there, Arkley allowed Alito to stay at histhe lodge for free. Arkley, hadand has previously also given free travel and lodging to the late Justice Antonin Scalia. None of these gifts were disclosed, despite experts saying that Supreme Court disclosure requirements mandated as such.
The lawmakers detailed these concerns in their letters to Arkley and Singer, the latter of whom’s hedge fund was once paid $2.4 billion after the Supreme Court ruled in their favor.
The letter to Leo comes at a time when his outsized influence over the U.S. judicial system and conservative politics at large is becoming more and more well-known. Whitehouse has long been critical of Leo, and is now publicly probing Leo for his wide-ranging influence over the Supreme Court.
Leo, co-chair of the Federalist Society, is one of the most influential people in politics today, especially in the judicial system; on top of having a hand in getting every sitting conservative Supreme Court justice on the bench nominated, he also appears to be a matchmaker between those justices and billionaire conservatives.
Leo or his dark money network are present in nearly every recent exposé on Supreme Court corruption, with his role apparently being to pair right-wing justices with wealthy people who will give them access to extraordinary wealth. In turn, the wealthy then have access to and influence over the Supreme Court that only the richest of the rich could buy. Recent right-wing decisions on abortion, LGBTQ rights, student loans, climate and environment, and more, have all been decades in the making by Leo and his influence peddlers.
Government watchdogs said that it is long past time that Congress scrutinized Leo over his role in the corruption within the Supreme Court.
“With the Supreme Court corruption crisis at a fever pitch, it’s no surprise that Leonard Leo is right in the middle. He’s the corrupting influence responsible for the rot, and it’s far past time he be forced to answer for his decades-long court manipulation scheme,” Accountable.US senior adviser Kyle Herrig said. “Chief Justice Roberts has refused to clean up his Court, forcing Congress to step in. Whether by Roberts or Congress, we need accountability and reform now.”
Senate Democrats, including Judiciary Committee Democrats and Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), previously asked billionaire Harlan Crow to provide a full accounting of his gifts to Thomas after another ProPublica report found that Thomas had accepted lavish gifts from Crow for decades and had not disclosed them. Crow declined the requests, leading Wyden to threaten to subpoena Crow for answers.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.