John,
You may not have heard of Leonard Leo, an informal advisor to President Trump on judicial nominations, but he has been closely involved in picking all three of Trump’s Supreme Court justices.
He also helps oversee a constellation of anonymously-funded dark money groups that have spent millions in recent years to promote Trump’s judicial picks.
That arrangement already raised ethics questions, but a recent CREW discovery has raised even more alarming red flags. Leo is the sole trustee of a shadowy group that raised $80 million in 2018. That increases the amount of secret money known to be tied to Leo—by a lot. For more on this discovery, read CREW’s new investigation.
So what happened to this massive pot of money? Where did it come from? Did the group spend its millions boosting the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett? The fact that we don’t know illustrates the problem with powerful, anonymously funded interest groups in our political system. And it exposes just how unjust it is that a few wealthy individuals or major corporations can pour millions into reshaping the highest court in the land—and get their way.
Of course, dark money is probably not the only reason that the Supreme Court is on your mind this week. Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation to the Court—a rushed process tainted by her failure to promise to recuse from election-related cases and her unwillingness to speak about basic legal principles that might contradict the president—was a serious blow to our democratic system.
That’s undeniable, but the fight for justice is not over. Justice Barrett must still recuse from cases related to the election, and we must and will continue to bring pressure on that front. It’s not too late, and every one of us should act. We can urge our Congressional representatives to call for her recusal from election-related cases, we can spread the word about the urgency of her recusal, and we’ll continue working to uncover more about whose spending helped put her on the court.
Together, we can ensure that our democracy is not further tarnished.
Thank you,
Noah Bookbinder
Executive Director, CREW
