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John,

Over the past few months – maybe even years – you may have heard the name Leonard Leo in a whirlwind of conversations regarding Clarence Thomas, dark money and judicial confirmations.

Most recently, he was in the headlines for bankrolling a $1.8 million PR campaign to boost Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s reputation, which was reported by the Washington Post.

So, who is Leonard Leo anyway?

Leonard Leo is one of the most powerful people in America’s judicial system — who’s never been confirmed or elected.

In 1991, Leonard Leo was about to join the Federalist Society, an organization promoting conservative and libertarian jurists, as one of its first paid employees. But he delayed his start date to gather research in support of Clarence Thomas’s nomination to the Supreme Court, after meeting Thomas in 1990.

That was only the beginning of Leo’s impact on the Supreme Court.

Over the last 30 years, Leo helped push the Supreme Court nominations of all of the conservative justices now on the court — Thomas, Roberts, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett — and built up a massive dark money war chest along the way.

Between 2014 and 2017, Leo helped conservative nonprofits raise $250 million from undisclosed, dark money donors. And since then, he’s raised even more — we’re talking about billions of dollars.

Leo’s efforts to shape the Supreme Court have clearly had an impact, visible in high profile decisions made in the last few weeks. John, that’s the power dark money can have in our country.

CREW is fighting for transparency and an end to big money in politics. But we can only take on this dark money network if we all stand together. Can you join the fight and make a grassroots donation to CREW today?

Leonard Leo has operated in the shadows for decades.

• He raised the single biggest known dark money contribution ever ($1.6 billion) for his network of nonprofits.
• He arranged for Ginni Thomas, wife of Clarence Thomas, to be paid tens of thousands of dollars for consulting work over a decade ago, specifying that her name be left off billing paperwork.
• He spent nearly two decades working with the Judicial Crisis Network to reshape the court and overturn Roe v. Wade.
• He helped facilitate the sale of former White House senior adviser Kellyanne Conway’s polling company — as she advocated for his handpicked list of Supreme Court candidates.
• He gave away $182.7 million to prop up conservative groups through a nonprofit group called Marble Freedom Trust.