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John, you may have heard of the Supreme Court’s disastrous Citizens United case – the case that allowed an onslaught of often anonymous, unlimited money into politics.

What you may not know though, is that in the month leading up to the Citizens United ruling, Federalist Society leader Leonard Leo and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife Ginni Thomas were creating an organization to take advantage of the new political landscape.

Leonard Leo and Ginni Thomas were perfectly poised to funnel millions of dollars into politics through this new dark money group to secretly push their conservative agenda.

Where did they get the money for the group? Harlan Crow, the billionaire who funded luxury vacations and tuition payments for Ginni and Clarence Thomas.

The group that Leo, Thomas and Crow helped create, Liberty Central, was just one of the first groups creating a new playbook for political influence post Citizens United. Ginni Thomas left the group in 2010 and it went out of business two years later, but not before paying her a hefty salary.

Since Liberty Central shuttered, Leo, Thomas, and Crow have only honed their tactics:

• Leonard Leo’s network of dark money groups have since spent *billions* of dollars to push the Supreme Court to the right, help elect state attorneys general willing to do their bidding and launch PR campaigns for conservative judicial nominees.
• Ginni Thomas tried to overturn the 2020 election, was secretly paid for other work related to Leonard Leo’s dark money groups, and was appointed to a Library of Congress board during the Trump administration.
• Harlan Crow bankrolled secret travel for Clarence Thomas for years and donated to super PACs and another dark money group, Americans for Job Security, that ramped up its political activity after Citizens United. (CREW actually uncovered this as part of a lawsuit to drag dark money donors into the light.)

Leo, Thomas and Crow’s work epitomizes the corrupting influence of dark money. CREW is fighting to end dark money in politics, remove Ginni Thomas from her government post and force the Supreme Court to adopt ethics reforms.

Thank you,

CREW