The groups in the network spent nearly $504 million on policy and political fights, including grants to about 150 allied groups, between mid-2015 and last year.
-
Send any friend a story
As a subscriber, you have “>10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share.
Give this articleGive this articleGive this article
Leonard A. Leo’s network is made up of overlapping and evolving nonprofit and for-profit groups that make it difficult to define and analyze.
The network of increasingly influential conservative groups that Leonard A. Leo has helped to create and shape is not easily defined or quantified.
It is funded mostly by so-called dark money that is difficult to trace. The roster of nonprofit groups has evolved, with some ceasing operations and others being added. Mr. Leo has formal leadership roles in some groups, while he is an informal adviser to others. Most of the nonprofit groups have paid him or his for-profit firms, CRC Advisors and BH Group.
The groups included in The New York Times’s analysis include:
-
The 85 Fund and the Concord Fund: Formerly known as the Judicial Education Project and Judicial Crisis Network, respectively, these groups are run by Mr. Leo’s allies. But they have paid his for-profit groups, including more than $7.4 million to BH Group, which is owned at least partly by Mr. Leo, since the beginning of 2016; and more than $18.3 million to CRC Advisors since Mr. Leo joined that firm in 2020. The 85 Fund and the Concord Fund act as funding hubs to a broader coalition, disseminating tens of millions of dollars in grants to allied nonprofits, and serving as incubators for in-house projects, including one highlighting critical race theory in schools and another fighting Democratic efforts to expand voter access.
-
America Engaged, BH Fund, and Freedom and Opportunity Fund: These three groups, which are controlled partly by Mr. Leo, were formed in 2016 as he started experimenting with how to build a political financing network. They paid CRC nearly $2.8 million, albeit before Mr. Leo joined the firm. Freedom and Opportunity Fund, which was intended to act as a pass-through for donors to steer money to an array of politically oriented and other groups, closed at the end of 2018, after Mr. Leo started a different group.
-
Marble Freedom Trust: This group, which is controlled by Mr. Leo, was formed in May 2020. Over the next year, it paid him $350,000 and received a donation of $1.6 billion worth of company shares from a major donor.
-
Federalist Society: The group where Mr. Leo made his name paid him more than $500,000 in the last year during which he helped lead it on a daily basis, from 2019 into 2020. He remains co-chairman of the group, which paid CRC more than $1.5 million after he joined the firm.
-
Rule of Law Trust: Formed in 2018 as a sort of hub for disseminating funds to other groups, this group listed Mr. Leo as its sole trustee and has paid more than $1.5 million to a Federalist Society official who became a partner at CRC Advisors.
-
Wellspring Committee: Initially functioning as part of the Koch brothers’ network in the run-up to the 2008 election, this group was used by Mr. Leo’s allies to funnel money to the outfit that became the Concord Fund. Wellspring paid Mr. Leo’s BH Group nearly $1.7 million in 2016 and 2017, before closing down at the end of 2018.
Mr. Leo described this network as an effort to match a big-money operation aligned with Democrats that helped the left surge past the right in dark money spending in 2020, the most recent year for which comprehensive nonprofit filings are available.
How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.
Learn more about our process.
Mr. Leo also sits on the boards of other groups that have received funds from the network for socially conservative causes, including fighting policies they say are infringements against religious rights.
One, the Becket Fund, won a landmark 2014 case allowing Christian-owned companies to decline to pay for insurance coverage for contraception, and is defending Yeshiva University’s refusal to recognize an L.G.B.T.Q. student group.
Another, the Ethics and Public Policy Center, is opposing a Biden administration proposal prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity by hospitals and other health care providers that receive federal funding. The center, Becket and other groups on whose boards Mr. Leo has sat, are not central to the network’s finances, so their spending was not included in the Times analysis.
Source: nytimes.com
