The Right-Wing Legal Network Is Now Openly Pushing Conspiracy Theories

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The Right-Wing Legal Network Is Now Openly Pushing Conspiracy Theories

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/...ter-fraud.html

The right-wing legal network spawned by the Federalist Society has finally gone full Trumpian. It has morphed from a group of apparently principled conservatives debating high-minded theories of legal interpretation into a secretly funded cabal spouting conspiracy theories such as the myth of widespread voter fraud. We’ve certainly seen hints that this was the case and also signals that it was coming. But we have now approached peak hackery, and that hackery is now being directed at manipulating elections. That part really is new, and it is a dangerous development that threatens the rule of law.

While the Federalist Society continues to claim officially that it plays no role whatsoever in politics, policy, or judicial nominations, and the group itself scrupulously avoids taking stances on issues like voter fraud, Leonard Leo—who until recently ran operations at the Federalist Society—has developed a network of political groups, none of which disclose their donors, funded at about a quarter of a billion dollars. So far, that effort has been mostly directed at seating deeply conservative judges on the federal bench for decades to come. But there is a new initiative afoot: an effort to engage in political dirty tricks to manipulate democracy itself.

As the Federalist Society has retained its formal role as an elite debating and networking club, however, things have taken a darker turn on the network’s periphery. As an eye-opening new report released Wednesday by Sens. Chuck Schumer, Debbie Stabenow, and Sheldon Whitehouse contends, Leo, who is still co-chairman of the Federalist Society, is now spearheading an all-out effort to capture the federal judiciary and to seat judges who are likely to rule in favor of those secret monied interests. That is more of an investment plan than a means of preserving an independent judiciary.

The Senate Democrats’ report details how an interlocked group of anonymous donors has been directing the judicial nominations process through media and lobbying campaigns. Many of these campaigns, including the Judicial Crisis Network, have ties to Leo, who has twice taken a formal “leave” from the Federalist Society to advise President Donald Trump on his Supreme Court nominations, then hopped back into his old post, while boasting that his organization was in firm control of the nominations process.

The senators’ report also notes that the Judicial Crisis Network “spent $7 million opposing President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland. It then spent $10 million more to support the confirmation of President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch (targeting ‘vulnerable Democrat Senators’), and pledged another $10 million in advertising campaigns to support Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination.” Nobody knows where the money came from. We know only that some people, or maybe even just someone, spent millions to buy some Supreme Court seats. And as Politico reported on Wednesday, the Treasury Department and IRS have just finalized regulations that will excuse some of these politically active tax-exempt groups from having to disclose their high-dollar donors to the IRS, let alone the public.