Secrecy works better for modern royals
From the Illuminati to the Knights Templar to the Freemasons, the lore of secret societies has fascinated men and endured for centuries. Propping up the legends these days are actual societies working, if not in the shadows, semi-shrouded from public notice to affect changes to their elite members’ benefit. Often quite well-funded, they operate outside of, parallel to, and beyond the control of democratic institutions.
The New York Times reported on Monday that a $1.6 billion infusion of dark-money cash from a little-known manufacturing billionaire will boost conservative causes for years to come:
The source of the money was Barre Seid, an electronics manufacturing mogul, and the donation is among the largest — if not the largest — single contributions ever made to a politically focused nonprofit. The beneficiary is a new political group controlled by Leonard A. Leo, an activist who has used his connections to Republican donors and politicians to help engineer the conservative dominance of the Supreme Court and to finance battles over abortion rights, voting rules and climate change policy.
Rick Hasen and Dahlia Lithwick examine how Leo has “created an interconnected series of institutions and firms designed to fundamentally reshape the American judiciary and in turn American society.”
The pair explain (Salon):
The success of Leo’s empire has long depended upon compartmentalizing and bootstrapping. It begins with the Federalist Society, an idea factory and conservative farm team which Leo led for a long time and where he continues to exert influence. He remains co-Chairman of its board of directors. The Federalist Society—which styled itself a “debate society” long after it ceased to be anything of the sort—has been the incubator for conservative ideas championed by the late Justice Antonin Scalia and others to create jurisprudential theories such as originalism and textualism that, at least in the hands of ideologically conservative people, often leads to deeply conservative results. Even though the organization’s leadership has been deeply conservative if not reactionary, it maintains that it is simply a neutral forum for airing competing ideas. This ostensible neutrality provides cover so that sitting judges and Supreme Court Justices can speak at Federalist Society events and use the network to recruit judicial clerks who can come into the pipeline to help further conservative ideas ever without running afoul of rules barring judges from engaging in partisan political activities. It’s also a showcase to vet and prep future judges.
But an idea factory alone would not have been enough to make fundamental changes in society. Which is why Leo also has run an extensive political operation to elevate conservative judges and justices onto the bench and to block liberal nominees whenever possible. This includes the organization that used to be known as the “Judicial Crisis Network” (now called the Concord Fund) headed by former Clarence Thomas clerk Carrie Severino. The Concord Fund runs advertising and essentially operates as a political entity that, among other things, defends FedSoc judicial nominees such as Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett. The same operation, which does not disclose its donors, also uses its platform to successfully oppose Democratic appointees such as Merrick Garland, whom Barack Obama nominated to fill Justice Scalia’s Supreme Court seat after Scalia’s death, and whose nomination was successfully scuttled.
Preserving federal regulations that prevent disclosure of donors is key to the fundraising for such groups as Leo’s Marble Freedom Trust. Secrecy allows it “wide latitude to spend directly on elections as well as on ideological projects such as funding issue-advocacy groups, think tanks, universities, religious institutions and organizing efforts,” Pro Publica reported this week:
The group’s name does not appear in any public database of business, tax or securities records. The Marble Freedom Trust is organized for legal purposes as a trust, rather than as a corporation. That means it did not have to publicly disclose basic details like its name, directors and address.
The trust was formed in Utah. Its address is a house in North Salt Lake owned by Tyler Green, a lawyer who clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Green is listed in the trust’s tax return as an administrative trustee. The donation does not appear to violate any laws.
Leo’s flush, interconnected network of organizations has a range of conservative projects that, like the Koch network, are neither well-publicized or well known. And that’s how they like it.
Hasen and Lithwick continue:
But Leonard Leo isn’t just hellbent on reshaping the federal judiciary. His fingerprints (and the obligatory dollar signs) are all over state court races, too. One of Leo’s dark money groups, the one formerly known as the Judicial Crisis Network reportedly “has given RSLC at least $5.24 million since 2014, when RSLC launched what it calls the ‘Judicial Fairness Initiative’ (JFI) to spend money in state judicial elections. According to its own site, by launching JFI, ‘RSLC became the only national political organization focused exclusively on the electoral process of judicial branches at the state level.’” These efforts will fundamentally reshape state judicial races by infusing them with unusual levels of cash. The recipients of these funds will help advance the same causes pushed by Leo’s federal judges.
Here’s where the bootstrapping comes in. The very same conservative judiciary that Leo helped create has been central to crafting new legal rules which help elect more Republicans to office. Cases like Citizens United and Speech Now have opened the floodgates to fund large outside political groups such as Super PACs. Cases like Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta are making it easier for that large money to be contributed anonymously or through entities that can mask the identity of those who are pulling the strings, providing an easier path to influence without giving voters valuable information about who is trying to influence them and elected officials.
Plus, voting rights cases such as Shelby County and Brnovich v. DNC have seriously weakened the protection for minority voters under the Voting Rights Act, providing the path for white Republicans to gain ever more influence. The upcoming Milligan v. Merrill case that the Supreme Court will hear this term threatens to further weaken minority voting power in the redistricting process. Leo’s organizations seed the judiciary with jurists who advance the very theories that undermine core democratic principles from voting rights to financial disclosure rules. As doom loops go, it’s a successful operation in making sure that minorities have fewer and fewer protections while judges arrogate to themselves power to say more and more.
Election law changes are “just a means to an end.” Besides the Dobbs decision, putting Christian prayer back into public schools and reinforcing anti-LGBTQ discrimination, the goal “is, and has always has been, to ensure that wildly unpopular ideas and policies can be put into effect by a life-tenured judicial branch that represents a well-funded conservative minority.” Ideas and policies that do not reflect broad public sentiment and are in fact resistent to it.
“For ye have the poor always with you,” Jesus said. The rich as well, he did not add, although his views on them are well known. Feudalism may be dead, but its legacy, like that of American slavery, lives on. There will always be a wealthy elite working to secure more for themselves and to keep “lessers” from sharing in it. Their castles no longer feature moats and parapets. They no longer launch wars in which peasants shed blood to expand their lords’ holdings. They’ve learned that discretion is more effective in the age of nation states and international finance. Democracy is a tool modern royals manipulate, another opiate for controlling the hoi polloi. It is an affectation maintained for appearance’s sake, not a principle of shared power to be defended. Until that great day when their control is so complete that they no longer require secrecy.
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