A NEWSLETTER FROM DAVID CORN

There Is a Deep State…on the Right

By David Corn October 28, 2023

Leonard Leo speaks at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington, DC, on April 23, 2019. Michael Robinson Chavez/Washington Post via Getty

Throughout the Trump Era, Republicans and conservatives have been pushing a dark conspiracy theory: There’s a shadowy, behind-the-scenes force controlled by power-hungry elites that secretly shapes the government and subverts the will of the American people. Well, they’re right. But this clandestine network is not on the left. It’s on the right. And it’s controlled by one man: Leonard Leo.

For years, we have known that Leo, a longtime officer of the Federalist Society, a collection of right-wing lawyers and legal activists, is an influential player, using dark money—that is, big donations from unidentified wealthy donors—to run multiple operations that aim to capture the judiciary, including the Supreme Court, for conservatives. When one of the groups he controls recently scored a $1.6 billion (with a B!) donation from an obscure Illinois businessman named Barre Seid—the largest known contribution to a political advocacy outfit in US history—Leo was able to expand his scope beyond the courts to include culture-war battles against so-called wokeism, liberal academia, the media, and other favorite targets of the right.

He is the right’s puppet master, a puller of strings, the power behind the throne (that is, the bench), the grand wizard of the right. In his late 50s, Leo has kept a low public profile, though his immense sway within the conservative movement has long been recognized. His largely clandestine exploits have been fodder for journalists for years. But recently ProPublica published a major piece on Leo that fully explores his role as a right-wing kingpin. The article—written by Andy Kroll, Andrea Bernstein, and Ilya Marritz—exposes the world of Leo.

The piece opens at a 2022 party at Leo’s Tudor-style mansion in Maine. The 70 or so guests include two dozen federal and state judges—many of whom owe their jobs to Leo—and other right-wing legal luminaries. The mood is celebratory. A leaked draft from the Supreme Court suggests the court—dominated by conservative justices Leo handpicked or helped win their seats—is about to overturn Roe v. Wade and end a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion. More than any other American, Leo can claim credit for this blow to women’s freedom. At this event, Winston Churchill’s favorite champagne is served. The judges are there as part of a weeklong all-expenses-paid conference organized by the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University, a hotbed of right-wing legal action that Leo helped fund and that is a critical piece of his far-flung network.

Welcome to the power elite built by Leo, which he spent 30 years constructing. It is highly secretive. It is underwritten by millionaires and billionaires who generally prefer to remain anonymous. It is far more influential than any big-city political machine. Here’s how ProPublica describes his project:

He didn’t just cultivate friendships with conservative Supreme Court justices, arranging private jet trips, joining them on vacation, brokering speaking engagements. He also drew on his network of contacts to place Federalist Society protégés in clerkships, judgeships and jobs in the White House and across the federal government. He personally called state attorneys general to recommend hires for positions he presciently understood were key, like solicitors general, the unsung litigators who represent states before the U.S. Supreme Court. In states that elect jurists, groups close to him spent millions of dollars to place his allies on the bench. In states that appoint top judges, he maneuvered to play a role in their selection.

The article tracks how Leo became the No. 1 influencer in right-wing legal circles from his perch at the Federalist Society, where he found a job after graduating from Cornell Law School and after assisting Clarence Thomas during his contentious Supreme Court nomination battle. He came to form an extensive web of nonprofit outfits that he didn’t run but essentially controlled. He was the Godfather of the legal right. For Republicans, judicial nominations, including those for the highest court in the land, needed his approval. He baby-sat the right’s favorite justices, encouraging them to stay on the court. He held dinners at fancy DC restaurants that brought together conservative justices or senior political officials with major donors.

In 2008, Leo helped organize a fishing trip to Alaska that included Justice Samuel Alito and hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer, a major financial underwriter of Leo’s efforts. He made sure that Justices Thomas and Scalia attended the private donor retreats held by the Koch brothers. He directed GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway to sign up Ginni Thomas as a subcontractor when the justice’s wife opened a consulting firm. He leaned on Republican governors to appoint the most conservative judges. During the Trump years, he oversaw and vetted Trump’s judicial picks. According to ProPublica, “With Leo’s help, Trump appointed 231 judges to the bench in his four years. Of the judges Trump appointed to the circuit courts and the Supreme Court, 86% were former or current Federalist Society members.”

In late 2021, Leo left his day-to-day job at the Federalist Society and became chairman of a “private and confidential” group called the Teneo Network. His goal there, he said in a promotional video, is to “crush liberal domination” in “areas of American culture.” He’s also behind a group pushing to grant state legislatures total control over elections, without any court oversight. This would allow partisans to go crazy in gerrymandering and even overrule vote counts, including in presidential contests.

The tale of Leonard Leo demonstrates how power functions in America. It happens behind closed doors. There’s a subterranean network that places conservatives in important government positions and that is funded by billionaires seeking to serve their own interests. Leo’s activities occasionally break the surface. But many are not subject to public scrutiny. When ProPublica asked Leo for an interview, he agreed but on the condition that he not be asked about his financial activities or relationships with Supreme Court justices. ProPublica rightfully wouldn’t accept those terms.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Deep State. But it’s a vast right-wing conspiracy that has burrowed into the federal judiciary, and it keeps much of its operations out of view so it can better rig the system and escape accountability. So the next time you hear some right-wing firebrand ranting that malevolent schemers have grabbed control of the US government, know that this is a deflection from Leonard Leo’s underground operation, in which he and his comrades sip on champagne, eat fancy food, and plot how to bend the judiciary and the government to their will.

In August, the news broke that Washington, DC Attorney general Brian Schwalb was investigating Leo, following a report that one of his nonprofits paid his for-profit company tens of millions of dollars. Early this month, Leo’s lawyer said that Leo would not cooperate with the investigation. Of course.

By the way, ProPublica has a podcast that accompanies its important article. You can find it here.

Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at ourland@motherjones.com.

Mike Johnson, Mitt Romney: Don’t Miss These

Like many journalists, I jumped into the pool of Mike Johnson’s backstory when he became the House GOP’s latest—and final (for now)— pick to be speaker. By this point, you probably have the gist: He’s a far-right Christian fundamentalist who supports a full nationwide ban on abortion, who has called for criminalizing homosexuality (which he has compared to pedophilia), who wants to get rid of no-fault divorce, and who led the effort to block the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 victory. But because he’s mild-mannered and pleasant, he has avoided developing a reputation for being a theocratic extremist. As I researched him, I learned that Johnson has a dark view of the world: America is an “amoral society,” “sinister” global elites are plotting domination, and the nation needs to be saved by an increasingly small group of people who share a “biblical worldview”—that is, theocratic fundamentalists like him. It’s quite the story. No doubt, Johnson sees his improbable rise to the speakership as an act of God and a step toward achieving the Christian kingdom he seeks. You can read my full report here.

I received a surprise this week. The Atlantic’s McKay Coppins published a biography of Mitt Romney called Romney: A Reckoning. Coppins had extensive access to Romney and journals he kept, and the book is full of revelations and scoops and chronicles Romney’s disaffection with the GOP of Donald Trump. In these pages, Romney dishes hard on top Republicans. What caught my eye was the section that recounted Romney’s reaction to the posting of a secretly recorded video during his 2012 presidential run that caught him dissing 47 percent of Americans as freeloading mooches who refuse to take responsibility for their lives. I broke that story on September 17, 2012. It rocked the presidential contest and remained part of the news cycle for a whopping two weeks.

I have long wondered how that story influenced the race. Some people think the video killed Romney’s shot. Perhaps it did. Coppins doesn’t weigh in on this, exactly. But he covers a piece of the story I haven’t considered much: how that scoop affected Romney. It turns out this bombshell drove Romney into a funk for a long stretch. His aides feared it was depression. He blamed himself for committing a dumb mistake that in his mind had sunk his campaign. He even pondered quitting the race with five weeks to go. But a top staffer talked him out of that. This section of the book is rather poignant. For me, it’s a reminder that the politicians I cover are more than the two-dimensional images they often project. I don’t feel bad for Romney. But I now have a deeper understanding of the fellow. You can read the piece I wrote about this here.

Dumbass Comment of the Week

There is never not a busy week for the judges, who like many of us remain heartbroken about the death and destruction in Israel and Gaza. But they had plenty of material from US politics this week. Jenna Ellis, onetime Donald Trump lawyer who connived with Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell to overthrow an American election, appeared in court to plead guilty to criminally interfering in the 2020 contest. As part of her plea bargain, she had to read a statement of remorse: “If I knew then what I know now I would have declined to represent Donald Trump in these post-election challenges. I look back on this whole experience with deep remorse.”

Ellis claimed that she had been misled by her compatriots regarding the allegations of election fraud in 2020 and that she had merely been conveying to the public information others had fed her. (Narrator: There were no facts indicating massive fraud.) But her explanation was—in legalese—phony baloney. She wasn’t the victim of others. She repeatedly declared in the postelection period that she knew fraud had occurred. Look at this video complied by the folks at MSNBC’s The Beat with Ari Melber:

Case closed.

Still smarting after being de-speakerized, Rep. Kevin McCarthy slammed what he called the Crazy Eights—the gang of Republicans led by Rep. Matt Gaetz whose votes against McCarthy caused him to lose the top House position: “The amount of damage they have done to this party and to this country is insurmountable. I’ve never seen this amount of damage done...It’s astonishing to me. We are in a very bad position as a party.”

Two words: January 6. We have seen much greater damage done than the McCarthy defenestration.

As the news broke of the horrific mass shooting in Maine on Wednesday night, Fox host Sean Hannity chimed in with this observation:

What bothers me is—I could literally probably count the seconds before an incident like this becomes politicized, and that part of it I never like because that’s not going to bring back lives. And then I always ask the question: when something like this happens, what is your plan? What do you do? I have a personal security plan. I train in mixed martial arts. I’ve been a big believer in the Second Amendment for a long time, with the prayer that I never would ever to use it.

Actually, there’s nothing more predictable than gun lobby toadies declaring when yet another gun massacre occurs that now is not the time to discuss how we can prevent such tragedies and save lives. Of course, these folks never get around to that after the blood is mopped up. Hannity’s remarks in that regard were so rote, the judges believed they didn’t deserve notice. But his discussion of his own “personal security plan” earned him yet another DCotW nomination. He’s trained in mixed martial arts? So a good guy with a karate chop can defeat a bad guy with an AR-15? I doubt we’ll ever see Hannity try to pull that off.

I’m not sure if this was inevitable, but GOP presidential candidate and hypster-huckster Vivek Ramaswamy hooked up with the scurrilous conspiracy-monger Alex Jones this week. He interviewed Jones on his podcast. In a tweet promoting this interview, Ramaswamy declared, “I’ve been looking forward to this conversation for a long time. I’m excited about it. Alex Jones, it’s good to see you, man.”

The judges think Ramaswamy is lying and that he has not been pining for Jones for “a long time.” In a related tweet, Ramaswamy celebrated Jones as “the most censored man in the world”—another false statement, given that Jones still has a media empire that peddles his filth to millions.

So this GOP candidate is validating a conspiracy nutball who has claimed that the Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax (and has been ordered by two courts to pay $1.5 billion in damages for his false statements about this), that chemicals are being inserted into juice boxes to turn kids gay, and that an evil cabal of globalists has been plotting to depopulate the planet and dines on babies delivered in gold foil? (I recently wrote about Jones here.) This is just more evidence that in the GOP race to the bottom, there is no bottom.

As soon as little-known Rep. Mike Johnson became House speaker, there was an orgy of digging into his past comments. The judges thought this one was especially absurd: “You think about the implications of [Roe v. Wade] on the economy. We’re all struggling here to cover the bases of Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid and all the rest. If we had all these able-bodied workers in the economy, we wouldn’t be going upside down and toppling over like this.”

Yeah, let's force women to give birth to bolster Social Security and Medicare. Finally, some policy out of the GOP leadership!

After Johnson was selected as GOP nominee for speaker, he held a press conference—but not really. When a reporter tried to ask him perhaps the most critical question of the moment—referencing his attempt to overturn the 2020 election results—Johnson’s colleagues wouldn’t let her finish. Look what happened:

These lawmakers had each sworn an oath to defend the US Constitution. Now they were embracing and protecting a fellow who bills himself as a Bible-loving Christian and constitutional lawyer but who tried to subvert the constitutional order to serve Donald Trump. This gaggle of GOPers drowned out the question with boos, with Rep. Virginia Foxx of North Carolina yelling, “Shut up!” These MAGA clowns all win this week’s prize. But they will have to share.

The Mailbag

Mail related to the Our Land issue that first addressed the heinous Hamas attack on Israel and the subsequent Israeli counterstrikes on Gaza that claimed the lives of many civilians kept pouring in. Allen Johnson wrote:

You stated the problem(s) objectively and rather perfectly. I hope that there will be an appropriate solution to the Israeli-Palestinian situation, but if past is prologue, there will be no progress, but rather vengeance.

Gene Daugherity emailed:

Thank you for expressing so clearly in this column my feelings about this latest horrific act from Hamas. My question is, after the retaliation, what is the end game for Gaza-Israel co-existence?

Like many, I’ve been pondering where this will lead: what should come next and what will come next. The two, of course, are probably not the same. I may write more about that in the coming days. For now, the bottom line seems to me that if Israel does pursue a massive ground assault on Gaza and causes more destruction and civilian deaths, a peace deal will not be likely for a very long time.

Regarding Rep. Jim Jordan, the acerbic Republican coup-plotter and threat to democracy, who came close to becoming House speaker only to fail, Dee McMurrey asked:

Can Fani Willis include Jim Jordan in her witness list? A subpoena from Fani Willis might reveal some of the Jim Jordan dirty laundry if he helped Trump with decertifying GA presidential election efforts. Just hoping and wishing for legal steps to reveal the evils of Jim Jordan.

As far as we know, Jordan did not play a major role in Trump’s efforts to steal the election in Georgia. He was busy scheming with Trump on other fronts. Consequently, he may not be a key target for Fani Willis, the Fulton County DA in Atlanta. But, as noted in that Our Land issue on Jordan, he has yet to publicly discuss how he conspired with Trump. The House committee that investigated January 6 requested his cooperation, and he withheld it, even defying a subpoena. To this date, there’s a lot we don’t know about what Jordan did as part of Trump’s plot to end American democracy.

Dee also sent in this request:

Please consider republishing your strong report dated September 17, 2022. I reread this missive frequently as your words address the seriousness of our challenges and the evil undermining the GOP "psychotic" world that is energized for the self-destruction for our country. At least reference this report to bring us up to date on your thoughts.

I had to look up what issue that was. It was an edition about my book American Psychosis and whether recovering Republicans who opposed Trump could accept its main premise that the GOP establishment had long courted and encouraged far-right extremists before Trump hit its stage. The opening paragraph of that essay:

History compels reckonings. That’s what I realized as I was making the rounds this week to promote my new book. As you no doubt know by now, American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy tells the story of the GOP’s seven-decades-long relationship with far-right fanaticism and chronicles how the party has exploited and encouraged right-wing extremism, bigotry, paranoia, tribalism, fear, and conspiracy theory. It’s a history of the dark side of the GOP that has generally been under-covered by the media and not acknowledged by the party. The big point is that Donald Trump is no aberration but a continuation (culmination?) of the party’s long-running efforts to stoke fear and hatred, from McCarthyism to the Tea Party to Trumpism.

You can read the full piece here. As for my more current thoughts, I would say that all recent developments—including the GOP’s speakership chaos—bolsters the book’s primary contentions. And my updated thoughts are included in the expanded paperback version that came out last month. Thanks for asking!

A reader with the moniker Baffle found a typo in that issue on Jordan: “an assistant wrestling couch.” He or she thought it was funny: “😂😂😂.” My deepest apologies to couches everywhere.

MoxieCam™

“Will this thing on my foot be there forever?”

“No, Moxie, it comes off on Wednesday.”

“That’s great...What’s Wednesday?”

Read Recent Issues of Our Land

October 24, 2023: Imagine Trump in charge during the Hamas-Israel war; Steve Bannon and Alex Jones conspiracy-mongering together; a Jim Jordan tale; George Santos speaks; and more.

October 21, 2023: Biden and Netanyahu’s delicate dance; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Ari Fleischer); the Mailbag: MoxieCam™; and more.

October 18, 2023: No blank check for Bibi; the strange trip of Asteroid City; Devon Gilfillian gives us a closer with “Love You Anyway”; and more.

October 14, 2023: Jim Jordan’s threat to democracy; from George Santos scoop to indictment; the day the GOP died; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Nancy Mace); the Mailbag: MoxieCam™; and more.

October 11, 2023: The Hamas-Israel war—what can be discussed?; The Bear makes you care; Native Americans at the National Gallery of Art; and more.

October 7, 2023: How our George Santos scoop ended up in the criminal case; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Elon Musk); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

October 4, 2023: How media framing aids Trump’s assault on democracy; why do GOP and Trump donors like Robert F. Kennedy Jr.?; am I a redbaiter?; Crooked chronicles an actual weaponization of the Justice Department; a classic Willie Nelson tune; and more.

September 30, 2023: Trump loses a battle in his long war on reality; GOP donors look to Gov. Glenn Youngkin; comedians make a serious gun-safety video; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Marjorie Taylor Greene); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

September 27, 2023: Donald Trump, stochastic terrorist; Joan Osborne’s regrets; Invasion’s slow pace; and more.

September 23, 2023: Joe Biden and Saudi Arabia: what the heck?; a killer attack ad for abortion rights; an apology for Chile; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Rep. Victoria Spartz); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

Got suggestions, comments, complaints, tips related to any of the above, or anything else? Email me at ourland@motherjones.com.

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