(C) Common Dreams
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Leonard Leo Pushed the Courts Right. Now He’s Aiming at American Society. [1]
['Kenneth P. Vogel', 'More About Kenneth P. Vogel']
Date: 2022-10-12
His expanded effort focuses on a variety of causes, including restricting abortion rights in the states; ending affirmative action; defending religious groups accused of discriminating against L.G.B.T.Q. people; opposing what he sees as liberal policies being espoused by corporations and schools; electing Republicans; and fighting Democratic efforts to slow climate change, increase the transparency of money in politics and expand voting access.
“The idea behind the network and the enterprise we built is to roll back liberal dominance in many important sectors of American life,” Mr. Leo said in an interview last month. “I had a couple of decades or more of experience rolling back liberal dominance in the legal culture, and I thought it was time to take the lessons learned from that and see whether there was a way to roll back liberal dominance in other areas of American cultural, policy and political life.”
Since 2016, the grant-making hubs in his network and the recipients of their money have paid more than $30 million to the firms owned at least partly by Mr. Leo, CRC Advisors and BH Group, according to the Times analysis. It shows that he also has been paid more than $2.7 million in personal salary and consulting fees during roughly that time period by nonprofit groups in the network and their grantees, including more than $2.2 million from the Federalist Society, where he remains co-chairman.
For those upset by the increasing flow of dark money into politics and rightward drift of the Supreme Court — critics include both his neighbors in an idyllic seaside Maine town and the president of the United States — Mr. Leo has become a boogeyman.
In calling for Senate passage of legislation to increase disclosure of dark money spending, Mr. Biden singled out Mr. Leo last month as the personification of “a serious problem facing our democracy” wherein money “flows in the shadows to influence our elections.”
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[1] Url:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/12/us/politics/leonard-leo-courts-dark-money.html
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