Don't You Dare Investigate Leonard Leo's Nonprofits!

Whatever happened to *privacy*?

Leonard Leo is a man of principles: Life begins at conception, a Republican president should have the power of a dictator, and worthless peasants dare not investigate Leonard Leo and the workings of his conservative honeypot.

He may have spent his life dedicated to taking everyone else’s rights and privacy away, but he is untouchable, and in case you forget it, he’s launched a multi-pronged campaign to get investigators off his tail. The deeply Catholic co-chair of the Federalist Society for decades also controls at least six other nonprofits, which have been largely unknown until recently. The charity work they do is getting tax-free billions from billionaires, paying his private consulting firm millions, and then somehow, like magic, you get a conservative government in the end. When Leo found out the DC attorney general and Congress were investigating this possible funny money and potential tax avoidery, he called in his friends to get that shit cut out like pronto. And the campaign is working, too!

Leo is clearly especially pissed at DC Attorney General Brian Schwalb, who Politico reports has been getting a raft of crap since he started investigating Leo’s various charities last August. The Center for Accountability brought to Schwalb’s attention that Leo’s nonprofits were raking in billions which were paying Leo’s consulting firm millions for “work,” and the work, such as taking the Thomases on vacation, seemed kind of more like lobbying.

Reps. James Comer and Jim Jordan were so offended at the very idea that AG Schwalb would dare to investigate that they launched their own investigation of Schwalb’s investigation, so you know their tighty whities are in a real twist. Coincidentally, literally a day later, one of Leo’s nonprofits, the Concord Fund, made a $250,000 donation to a GOP House Leadership fundraising group, and through his lawyer Leo stomped and pouted that he would not be cooperating with any stinkin’ investigations, because according to them, Schwalb has “no legal authority to conduct any investigatory steps or take any enforcement measures.”

Conservative media also began a coordinated social media campaign blasting Schwalb and personally blaming him for DC’s crime problem. And the Republican Attorneys General Association drafted a breathless letter, ironically warning that Schwalb investigating what it was his job to investigate was leading to “a Hobbesian war of all against all.” So dramatic! And surely nothing to do with the fact that the Concord Fund happens to be the Republican Attorneys General Association’s biggest funder? Surely not! 

And, never one to pass up an opportunity to let the world know authoritarianism is really great and we all would just love it if we only tried, the Wall Street Journal editorial page also published a piece highlighting RAGA’s letter and ominously warning that Leo being investigated is a how dare you society will crumble and this will be the end of the world and progressives are the real criminals, wah wah! Why doesn’t anybody investigate Arabella Advisors, Bill Clinton’s nonprofit that does the same thing? (They did, and AA was like, “sure, here’s my books, we’ve got nothing to hide,” which is the biggest crime of all.)

The pressure campaign is working. Last November, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to send subpoenas to Leo and his Nazi-memorabilia-collector pal Harlan Crow, ISO more details about their “gifts” to Supreme Court justices. But four months later it still hasn’t happened yet, for reasons unknown. (“Still working on it” was all Rep. Dick Durbin could manage to mutter about it to ProPublica last month when they inquired.) All very weird! 

But let’s not let all of those shady, shady gifts be forgotten. As WBUR put it, 

Leo’s efforts to keep Thomas happy meant 38 destination vacations, a voyage on a yacht around the Bahamas, 26 private jet flights (plus eight by helicopter), a dozen VIP passes to professional and college sporting events (typically sitting in a box), two stays at luxury resorts in Florida and Jamaica, and a standing invitation to an exclusive golf club overlooking the Atlantic coast. Most of these were arranged by Leo and paid for by conservative billionaires.

And then there’s the time Leo paid tens of thousands of dollars to Clarence’s wife Ginni Thomas for undefined “consulting work,” and told Kellyanne Conway to bill his nonprofit the Judicial Education Project and leave Ginni’s name off of the billing records. Reported WaPo, “Leo told Conway that he wanted her to ‘give’ Ginni Thomas ‘another $25K,’ the documents show. He emphasized that the paperwork should have ‘No mention of Ginni, of course.’”

When stone-cold-busted by the Post, Leo huffed, “Knowing how disrespectful, malicious and gossipy people can be, I have always tried to protect the privacy of Justice Thomas and Ginni.” How dare you disrespect the woman who said Biden should face a military tribunal at GITMO!

Won’t someone think of the privacy of Leo! He’s been at the Federalist Society since 1991, and used it and his network of nonprofits to weave billionaire dollars into a court-packin’, conservative-electin’, judge-massagin’ machine. He’s hand-selected right-wing Supreme Court judges for every Republican president since Bush, and having achieved what he calls “controlling interests” there, has moved on to promoting Project 2025, a collection of horrifying “policy proposals” for a Trump administration (shudder) that would be a nakedly authoritarian overhaul: total takeover of the executive branch, replacing civil workers with loyalists, fuck climate change, fertilized egg=baby.

But none of your business asking where he gets all that money, where it goes, and if he pays taxes on it. You don’t have the right to know!

[Politico]

“Give” us “another 25k”!