This shouldn’t be too surprising. The Federalist Society has long been a powerful GOP advocacy group but they are feeling their oats now that they’ve achieved their goal of packing the courts. It’s understandable. Now that the NRA has pretty much imploded, they’ve become the most powerful right-wing institution in Washington.
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.
As the three Democratic senators were quick to note on a phone call Wednesday morning, the effort to seat 200 Trump judges has gone from a Leonard Leo juggernaut to a Mitch McConnell obsession. Even in the midst of the pandemic, McConnell has been pushing through nominees for federal appellate seats, including the nomination of a protégé, 37-year-old Justin Walker, for a seat that has not even become vacant yet, on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
The senators’ report tells us much of what we knew or suspected. But the big news today is where that conservative network is heading: Their activities now go well beyond dark money political hardball into conspiracy-mongering and election-meddling efforts around the November presidential elections that endanger our democracy.
The GOP has been doing this vote suppression since the 60s. Former Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist was directly involved in those efforts in Arizona. And after Jesse Jackson registered so many urban voters in the 80s they ramped up their efforts by creating a group called the Republican National Lawyer’s Association dedicated to challenging voting laws all over the country. They were instrumental in the Florida Recount shenanigans in 2000.
So, the Federalist Society being involved isn’t really surprising. It’s just that they have decided to completely abdicate any claim they ever had to being an honest broker merely pursuing a conservative legal agenda. Now that they’re full MAGA the veil is lifted and their unprincipled partisan power agenda is laid bare.