Index: Leonard Leo
Everything you need to know about the radical who captured the Court.
An index of my coverage of Leonard Leo:
Leo the Cancer
February 26, 2021
Leonard Leo, Opus Dei & the Radical Catholic Takeover of the Supreme Court
WHAT LEONARD LEO wants you to know about Leonard Leo, first and foremost, is that he is a Knight of Malta. The Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM) is a lay Catholic order that claims descent from the Knights Hospitaller, founded in Jerusalem in 1099, at the end of the First Crusade. It’s an extremely selective group. Of the 1.2 billion Catholics in the world, only 13,000 are Knights of Malta—although most of them don’t go around bragging about it.
Leo, I’m told, is very proud of this honor. First, because it demonstrates just how radically Catholic his radical Catholicism runs. And second, because it speaks to his importance. SMOM membership is the sort of status symbol that eluded him, growing up middle-class in the suburbs of New Jersey, where his high school classmates derisively nicknamed him “Moneybags.” His mother and step-father weren’t blue bloods. He wasn’t some wealthy boarding school kid. Poor guy had to make due with Cornell instead of Harvard or Yale. He was a nobody.
But look at him now! Leonard Leo, 56, has made himself one of the most powerful figures in the United States. He’s put five—count ‘em, five!—justices on the Supreme Court: Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, Sam Alito, and John Roberts. A sixth, Clarence Thomas, is one of his closest friends. And, perhaps most impressively, he quietly led the 2016 crusade to deny Merrick Garland a hearing, when Barack Obama nominated the highly-regarded jurist to replace the late Antonin Scalia (another of Leo’s pals). In the lower courts, he’s been even busier. He’s installed so many judges on so many courts, it makes you wonder if he really is the instrument of God’s will he believes himself to be. I mean, there are only three branches of government. One of those three—arguably the most important one—is Leonard Leo’s domain.
You wouldn’t know it to look at him. Leonard Leo is a short, foppish, pear-shaped man, in wire-rimmed glasses and pricey suits. Think a dandier George Constanza, or if The Penguin worked at Jones Day.
Leonard Leo’s Unheavenly Rewards
March 7, 2023
He captured the Supreme Court. His SCOTUS selections torpedoed Roe, just like he wanted—needlessly endangering women's lives. And he walked away with millions.
In the 50 years since Roe v. Wade, many individuals played a role in the fascistic assault on safe, legal abortion—not least the odious Supreme Court Justices who ignored popular opinion, medical science, and stare decisis in issuing the abominable Dobbs decision.
But if we pull back a little, we see that the reversal of Roe is largely the work of a single man. His name is Leonard Leo. He is a staunch—and, in my view, a radical—Catholic. He is the master of puppets behind the Federalist Society, the Judicial Crisis Network, Becket, the 85 Fund, and other dark money groups. As Trump’s“judge whisperer,”he is responsible for the installation of Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, where they joined his radical Catholic chums Clarence Thomas, Sam Alito, and John Roberts. And since he began advising FPOTUS in 2016, he has become inordinately wealthy.
According to POLITICO, from January 2020 through December 2021, Leo—always a big wheel in political non-profits, but traditionally more concerned with pushing policy than stockpiling cash—seeded his latest for-profit political consulting firm, CRC Advisors, with some $43 million. This is on top of the $15 million his other for-profit firm, BH Group, raked in during the Trump years. As POLITICO’s Heidi Przybyla puts it, “Leo’s lifestyle took a lavish turn beginning in 2016, the year he was tapped as an unpaid adviser to incoming President Donald Trump on Supreme Court justices. It’s the same period during which he erected a for-profit ecosystem around his longtime nonprofit empire that is shielded from taxes.”
The key word in that quote is “lavish.” If Leonard Leo attends Mass every day, as has been reported, he must be familiar with Matthew 19, in which Jesus sends away the rich young man who refuses to sell his possessions and give to the poor:
Then Jesus said to His disciples, “Truly I tell you, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”
But here is the devoutly pious Leonard Leo, a Knight of Malta don’t you know, greasing up the camels! To be fair, he does give generously to Catholic causes. He is a Steward of St. Peter, and you don’t get to be a Steward of St. Peter without coughing up at least a million bucks in contributions. But there’s plenty of bread left over, as Przybyla explains, for him to enjoy la dolce vita.
The Dark Seid
May 19, 2023
There’s a new Pope Leo. He owns the Supreme Court. And now, he has more money than God.
The horror of the 91-year-old reclusive billionaire Barre Seid—his name rhymes with “parricide”—bequeathing $1.6 billion of his vast fortune to radical Catholic forced birth activist and Supreme Court fixer Leonard Leo did not hit home for me until this week, when I read Nina Burleigh’s article in the New Republic. Her must-read piece is titled “Who Is Leonard Leo’s New Dark Money King?,” but the question I found myself asking after finishing it was: How can democracy possibly survive this?
Seid made his vast fortune selling power strips. He’s now spent it ensuring that his power, and the power of his cohort of rich, soulless, libertarian assholes, will not be easily stripped away. As Burleigh writes, the $1,600,000,000 gift is basically “altruism in reverse: a fire hose of cash aimed at destroying American liberal culture through lawsuits and support for politicians challenging gay rights, unions, environmental protection, voting rights, and public education.”
Yes, I know, the guy’s given considerable sums of money to the arts. His wife is an opera singer, so he’s endowed the opera. Wow, what a man of the people! Call me crazy, but I think that in order to call yourself a philanthropist, your charitable donations have to actually, you know, help humanity. Now Seid’s passed the one-point-six-billion-dollar baton to Leo, the dark money maestro, who will conduct an aria of his own. And because of the breathtaking size of the endowment, in Payoff Lenny’s metaphorical opera, the fat lady will never sing. Burleigh explains this horror:
The money will last a good long while. Philanthropic recipients usually follow a 5 percent rule: They try not to spend more than 5 percent of the endowment per year. Seid’s pile is so large that it could return an average $136 million a year, or north of $230 million on a good year, to influence U.S. law and policy. Without ever having to touch the nut. For a sense of how enormous that is, consider this. The Heritage Foundation and its affiliates spent about $86 million in 2021. Heritage is a huge, and hugely influential, conservative think tank. Leo could create two Heritage Foundations and one more sizable organization on the side—all, again, without having to dip into the principal at all.
Another rich soulless libertarian asshole, Elon Musk, won’t stop yammering about the “woke mind virus.” That’s a shit analogy, though. What more closely resembles a virus is the Seid gift to Leo. Once released into the world, that self-perpetuating dark-money fortune is almost impossible to get rid of. It is a herpes sore. It will flare up again and again and again, ad infinitum, because there is no easy cure for Citizens United.
Leonard Leo: Man in the Middle, Part I
June 27, 2023
He’s one of the most powerful individuals in the country. His spiderweb of connections is extensive. But most Americans, including many working in Washington, have never heard of him.
Occupying the center of an intricate web of political, legal, religious, and business connections, Leonard Leo is the quintessential Man in the Middle, a veritable dark-money spider. Like a spider, he is patient, painstaking, relentless, and much more powerful that he appears. And like a spider, he prefers to stay hidden. . .
When I began researching that piece, I didn’t know much about the guy beyond his silly, comic-book-villain name. I was surprised to discover that he was, like me, a middle-class product of Catholic upbringing and Italian descent who graduated from a public high school in New Jersey—not at all the well-heeled, oenophilic Master of the Universe he has become. He’s also much younger than I expected; born in 1965, he’s solidly Gen X—only seven years older than Yours Truly.
Yet Leonard Leo, somehow, is the individual most responsible for stripping away federal abortion rights. (The anniversary of the odious Dobbs decision was this past weekend.) As his admiring chum Ed Wheelan presciently wrote in 2016, “No one has been more dedicated to the enterprise of building a Supreme Court that will overturn Roe v. Wade than the Federalist Society’s Leonard Leo.”
As Politico reported—and as I outlined on these pages three months ago—Leo has been rewarded handsomely for his troubles. “I personally don’t believe that Leonard is motivated by greed,” Steven Calabresi, who founded the Federalist Society with Leo and still runs the organization, told Politico. “I think Leonard is motivated by ideology and ideas. I do think he likes to live a high-rolling lifestyle, but I don’t think he’s in the business because of the money.”
To be fair, Leo does spread that money around. He endows more organizations than I can succinctly list here. Friends like Ginni Thomas get a taste. He brings his SCOTUS cronies on lavish fishing trips with his billionaire backers. And yet Payoff Lenny—as I call him—has amassed a fortune for himself, and spends that fortune lavishly: on tailored suits, palatial vacation homes in Maine, and bottles of wine that cost more that what most Americans pay for a month’s rent.
Jesus liked wine, yes, and Jesus hung out with fishermen, sure, but I’m not sure the Son of God would approve of Leo’s stockpile of dirty loot—although his fellow Knights of Malta don’t seem to mind. Money washes away a lot of sins, as anyone familiar with the history of the Catholic Church well knows.
And so the rich and powerful Leonard Leo presides spider-like over Washington, moving chess pieces across the great board, raising unfathomably vast sums of money, and cultivating his extensive network, which I have attempted to map out here.
Leonard Leo: Man in the Middle, Part II
July 4, 2023
He’s one of the most powerful individuals in the country. His spiderweb of connections is extensive. And he owns the Supreme Court.
Since Part One of this two-part dispatch dropped last Tuesday, Leonard Leo’s Supreme Court handed down a bevy of wretched decisions that are now the law of the land. These decisions have two things in common: All of them will cause more harm than good. And all of them are wins for Leonard Leo.
As many legal scholars have pointed out, the internal logic of the Leonard Leo Court is functionally nonexistent. Nothing holds. It’s like you’re halfway through Succession, one of the White Walkers from Game of Thrones shows up, and Kendall Roy starts shooting lasers from his eyes. There is no rhyme or reason to these decisions. The Leonard Leo judges will dredge up some anti-witchcraft statute from medieval England, while ignoring the last 50 years of settled law in the here and now; “Starry Decisis” may as well be Sam Alito’s drag name. Automatic weapons have more rights than women. Corporations have more rights than gays and Lesbians. And Leonard Leo and his moneyed chums have more rights than anyone.
Too, the hypocrisy of the Court is next level. Clarence Thomas struck down Affirmative Action—Clarence Thomas! Brett Kavanaugh ruled against debt forgiveness—Brett Kavanaugh! Amy Coney Barrett—a Gen X woman who has been pregnant no fewer than five times, and thus is presumably familiar with the many things that can go medically wrong—took away abortion rights. And John Roberts, that corrupt and sneaky fascist, gets all indignant whenever anyone points out that he’s a corrupt and sneaky fascist. Ethics, schmethics, as long as the checks clear.
There has been popular outrage this past week about these putrid decisions, and, perhaps, a more concerted attempt to shame these jerks into behaving better; lovely trees, but let’s not miss the forest here. The Court ruled as it did because that’s what Leonard Leo wanted. Leonard Leo is opposed to abortion, as an article of his faith; the Leonard Leo Court strikes down abortion rights. Leonard Leo is opposed to homosexuality, as an article of faith; the Leonard Leo Court concocts some fictitious legal dispute out of whole cloth, just so it can strip away the rights of the LGBTQ community. Leonard Leo knows he can’t get the America he wants if America continues to be a democracy; the Leonard Leo Court continues to chip away at voting rights, and, in Moore, ominously, sets itself up to be the ultimate arbiter of future presidential elections. Whatever Leonard Leo wants, Leonard Leo gets.
What Do You Get For the Man Who Has Everything?
Finally, Leo is also the subject of this bit of satire, which appeared in audio form on the PREVAIL podcast, and later with Chunk’s animation on The Five 8.
Use this interactive relationship map to FOLLOW THE MONEY and see how Leonard Leo has captured the Supreme Court. https://thedemlabs.org/2023/06/27/follow-the-money-behind-supreme-court-corruption-alito-barrett-clarence-thomas/
As noted, much of what Pope Leo does is an article of "Vatican" faith. His opposition to abortion, gay rights etc. is based on that article of faith. So how to address his egregious damage to our democracy? To date very little has been offered to solve the Leo problem other than expand the SCOTUS. That won't end Leo's interference in our political/cultural future even if it might mitigate the harm being done by the Vatican's Extreme Court. After all, as you note he will still have a billion plus to play with in order to continue his evil.
I've noted here before that until Leo's puppetmasters in the Vatican are held to account for Leo's activities he will continue doing what he does. If the Vatican nation were to directly address if not confront Leo he could be reined in. One way to pressure the Vatican to rein in Leo is to start naming names beginning with the Vatican. Many of those you've named in your article who are empowering Leo is a beginning but you're leaving out the primary enabler which is the Vatican nation.
This might address your concern re: " "Let me reiterate: this is not mainstream Catholicism. The perverse strain of radical Catholicism Leo practices doesn’t have a convenient label." My view is that by holding the Vatican nation accountable one can make obvious the dichotomy between mainstream Catholic Laity and the political power of the Vatican being wielded around the world including the U.S.. A convenient label might be the "Vatican's Leo" or some derivation thereof. Over time this might get the Vatican's attention.
I speak here as someone who, like you, was raised Catholic. For 11 years I attended classes in Catholic theology 5 days a week in parochial schools. I studied to be a priest for 3 yrs in a Benedictine monastery. In the early 60's I was one of the first to begin to point out the Vatican's institutionalized pedophilia running rampant in parishes around the world for which I paid heavily. I know how the Vatican works from both the inside and out. Moreover, I'm still in touch with many of my Catholic friends, the Laity, and many if not most of them do not hold the Vatican nation in high regard. Even among Catholics there is a distinction between the Vatican and themselves.
For the Vatican, money talks more than theology. "Saint" Theresa might not have been declared a saint by the Vatican if she hadn't left the Vatican bank $30 million when she died. The billions of dollars that Leo controls could be a powerful incentive for the Vatican's money changers to begin to ask Leo to share the wealth aka the parable of the rich man. After all, as you point out, he's already doing such with various Vatican organizations. This might create a conflict between Vatican/Leo that could be the beginning of the end of Leo. Maybe a promise of future sainthood for Leo would be the carrot. I suspect "Saint" Leo would be music to his ears.