Dictator wannabe Donald Trump can still win this election. Not fair and square by winning the popular vote, obviously, but through a combination of voter suppression and voter intimidation tactics that might give him another Electoral College misfire.
And if that also fails, the Republican enemies of democracy have other tricks up their sleeves. Winning the Electoral College is still Trump’s preferred path, because the other tricks rely on too many people deliberately choosing to do the wrong thing.
Tom Fitton isn’t the mastermind behind the most recent swing state voter suppression, however much he wants to take credit, and however much actual damage he has already done. The mastermind is Leonard Leo, whose name you might not have heard of as much as Tom Fitton’s.
Katya Schwenk reporting for The Lever:
Behind a new slate of GOP lawsuits aimed at suppressing voters in electoral battleground states is a cadre of lawyers tied to Leonard Leo — the judicial activist widely credited with engineering the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority.
On Aug. 8, the Republican National Committee filed a last-ditch legal challenge in Arizona, asking the United States Supreme Court to remove 40,000 people from the state’s voter rolls by Thursday, the deadline for some counties to print ballots. The case could tip the election results in a critical swing state that President Joe Biden won in 2020 by less than 11,000 votes.
The lawyer leading Republicans’ case is Tyler Green, a partner at Consovoy McCarthy PLLC, a small but highly influential conservative law firm that has received millions from a Leo-linked nonprofit. He is also the administrative trustee of a dark-money slush fund run by Leo that in 2022 received a record-breaking $1.6 billion donation from an elusive billionaire.
Sometimes I wonder if it wouldn’t be easier for billionaires to just pay their fair share in taxes. But of course it's not just about taxes, it’s also about wielding power and imposing their opinions on everyone else.
Green and other Consovoy McCarthy attorneys are also spearheading legal attacks on voting rights in three other battleground states: George [sic, read Georgia], Michigan, and Nevada. Another dark-money group tied to Leo has filed briefs in support of the Republicans’ cases in Arizona and Georgia.
Leo and his political apparatus have exerted influence by installing conservative judges, then spearheading cases before those judges that have the potential to skew the country’s laws in their favor. It’s why Leo is credited with helping to overturn Roe v. Wade — and now his operation appears to be using the same playbook to control swing-state ballot boxes, with the potential to tip the scales this November.
Republicans brazenly play dirty.
Leo has wielded power by amassing immense financial influence through a network of clandestine nonprofits that obscure where exactly his billions are going — an arrangement that is now under investigation by Washington, D.C.’s attorney general. Leo’s network bankrolled Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation campaign and arranged payments to Ginni Thomas, Thomas’s wife, while his legal groups had cases before the Supreme Court.
I’ve been aware of toxic philanthropy for a long time, but “network of clandestine nonprofits” just takes it up to a whole new level.
Leonard Leo has effectively purchased the U. S. Supreme Court and various lower courts. Now he’s trying to purchase the presidency, because he needs it to safeguard his court purchases.
That’s yet another reason we need to elect Kamala Harris president and give her decisive majorities in both chambers of Congress. It’s the only way the people can reclaim the Supreme Court and balance the court.
