Leonard Leo, who has created a network of influential conservative legal and dark money groups, and has “an estimated $1 billion at his disposal, is threatening to withhold money from the dozens of groups he supports unless they develop plans to ‘weaponize’ their ideas,” Axios’ Hans Nichols recently reported.
Leo, a co-chairman of the Federalist Society, is calling on groups receiving funding from his 85 Fund to hold fewer seminars and wage more activist campaigns. Leo’s message is part of a plan to "crush liberal dominance at the choke points of influence and power in our society," he told an assortment of groups in a letter obtained by Axios (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25121805-grant_review_letter_final).
The goal, Axios noted, should be to direct “funding to operationalize or weaponize the conservative vision,” Leo wrote. (https://www.axios.com/2024/09/12/leonard-leo-conservative-groups-funding)
“If others are not going to devote funding to operationalize or weaponize the conservative vision, then the 85 Fund needs to weigh its support much more heavily in that direction,” Leo wrote.
In Leo’s letter, he expressed a desire to "identify, recruit, educate, and elevate a new generation of leaders" who can wield influence in "the courtroom, the Hollywood box-office, or the corporate C-Suite of the Fortune 500" and "operationalize the conservative movement’s objectives, shaping decisions and blocking threats at the highest levels of influence."
Leo has had a string of major political successes including his most impressive; stacking the Supreme Court with ultra-conservative justices. In recent years Leo’s Court has overturned Roe v. Wade, dismantled federal gun laws, and has been a leading force for de-regulation.
Leo has been building a sterling, if secretive, conservative resume for several years. It’s only in the recent past that he’s come out of the closet with letters and interviews. In October of last year Andy Kroll, Andrea Bernstein, and Ilya Marritz, writing for ProPublica, pointed out that, “Short and thick-bodied, dressed in a bespoke suit and round, owlish glasses, Leo looked like a character from an Agatha Christie mystery. Unlike the judges in attendance, Leo had never served a day on the bench. Unlike the other lawyers, he had never argued a case in court. He had never held elected office or run a law school. On paper, he was less important than almost all of his guests.
“If Americans had heard of Leo at all, it was for his role in building the conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court. He drew up the lists of potential justices that Donald Trump released during the 2016 campaign. He advised Trump on the nominations of Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Before that, he’d helped pick or confirm the court’s three other conservative justices — Clarence Thomas, John Roberts and Samuel Alito. But the guests who gathered that night under a tent in Leo’s backyard included key players in a less-understood effort, one aimed at transforming the entire judiciary” (https://www.propublica.org/article/we-dont-talk-about-leonard-leo-supreme-court-supermajority).
According to Slate, Leo has donated “over $50 million to groups that advised on Project 2025” (https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/09/leonard-leo-letter-85-fund-network-conservative-agenda-weaponize.html).
Leo recently told the Financial Times that “we need to crush liberal dominance where it’s most insidious” and focus on companies that “bend to the woke mind virus spread by regulators and NGOs, so that they have to pay a price for putting extreme leftwing ideology ahead of consumers.”
The money Leo controls has helped build a sharply honed conservative machine, especially related to the judiciary in this country. Now, he wants more. He wants his well-funded intellectuals to muck it up more, get more active. After all, crushing liberals isn’t powder puff, it’s definitely smash mouth politics.
