[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 147 (Tuesday, September 13, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4564-S4566]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                           U.S. Supreme Court

  Mr. President, I am here on a different subject. I will now turn to 
that subject.
  This is the 18th time that I have come to the floor to expose the 
dark money scheme that has captured and controlled our Supreme Court.
  Over the last 2 years, I have, over and over, exposed how dark money 
operatives, working from the shadows, have installed Supreme Court 
Justices handpicked--handpicked--by the minions of far-right donors.
  I have exposed the key front groups through which this Court-packing 
operation is driven and the tactics that the schemers have used to hide 
the dark money donors who pull its strings.
  And when you take a close look at the scheme, the little spider that 
you find at the center of the dark money web behind it is a character 
named Leonard Leo.

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  From his perch at the dark money-funded Federalist Society, Leo 
crafted a reputation as the Court-capture scheme's puppet master. The 
key to his craft is an armada of phony front groups that shuffle dark 
money back and forth, around and amongst each other, to deploy as spin, 
as propaganda, as political ads, or as hidden campaign funding.
  During Donald Trump's time in office, Leonard Leo brokered the scheme 
to have the Federalist Society or--more accurately--the big secret 
donors behind the Federalist Society handpick Trump's Supreme Court 
nominees. Remember that list we all heard about?
  Leo coordinated the dark money propaganda machine that kept the heat 
on Senate Republicans to confirm those nominees, and he supported the 
big donors' doctrine factories where donor-approved fringe legal 
doctrines are concocted for the anointed judges to weaponize from the 
Bench.
  Look no further than the recent West Virginia v. EPA decision 
weaponizing the doctrine factory-concocted major questions' doctrine. 
And this was no small scheme. The latest estimate from earlier this 
year is that these big donors put $580 million, more than half a 
billion dollars, into Leo's network of Court-capture front groups.
  Well, little did we know, that was just the beginning. Last month, 
ProPublica and the New York Times broke the news that a reclusive, far-
right billionaire supercharged Leo's dark money operation with a $1.6 
billion donation to a Leo front group. You heard that right, $1.6 
billion into this dark money operation.
  The man behind this new slush fund is a billionaire named Barre Seid, 
and even the way the donation was made was creepy and clandestine. Seid 
and Leo devised a plan to transfer all the shares in an electronics 
company to Leo's front group, on the way to selling that company.
  So when that company sold for $1.6 billion, it all went straight to 
Leo's group and, by the way, helped Seid avoid what would have been 
roughly $400 million in taxes.
  Seid has a long history of funding far-right front groups. Here is 
how ProPublica characterized what Seid calls his ``attack 
philanthropy.''

       Seid has funded climate denialism as well as a national 
     network of state-level think tanks that promote business 
     deregulation and fight Medicaid expansion. He's also 
     supported efforts to remake the higher education system in a 
     conservative mold, including to turn one of the nation's most 
     politically influential law schools into a training ground 
     for future generations of right-wing judges and justices.

  So let's unpack all of that, starting with the climate denialism. The 
``climate denialism'' that they are referencing came from a group that 
he funded called the Heartland Institute. I have talked about the 
Heartland Institute on the floor before in my ``Web of Denial'' 
speeches.
  Heartland is a dark money disinformation mouthpiece for fossil fuel 
interests. In 2012, Heartland compared climate scientists to the 
Unabomber. So you can see it is a classy bunch.
  According to one of Seid's advisers, he was Heartland's major patron, 
and he even convinced his business's chief financial officer to join 
Heartland's board of directors.
  If that isn't creepy enough for you, we move on to the national 
network of State-level think tanks that promote business deregulation 
and fight Medicaid expansion.
  That is a reference to the State Policy Network, a web of dark money 
front groups that pump into State legislatures the propaganda and 
legislation designed by fossil fuel and other corporate interests.
  The State Policy Network has also received millions from DonorsTrust, 
which has been called the ``dark money ATM of the right,'' a central 
node of the rightwing Koch dark money network.
  The service that DonorsTrust provides is to scrub the identities of 
actual donors. It creates dark money. Anonymity is key for these 
donors, many of whom have financial interests behind their political 
schemes that they really don't want disclosed.
  If a fossil fuel billionaire, say, wants to run ads against me in 
Rhode Island--folks will get the joke. So the real donor's identity 
gets laundered through groups like DonorsTrust and comes out under 
other groups with names like--I am making this one up, but they sound 
this way ``Rhode Islanders for Peace and Puppies and Prosperity.''

  All of that, of course, leaves citizens in the dark about both the 
actors and the plot in the politics in which they are supposed to be 
active participants. And that brings us to Seid's project to ``turn one 
of the nation's most politically influential law schools into a 
training ground for future generations of right-wing judges and 
justices.'' That is a reference to Antonin Scalia Law School at George 
Mason University, a central cog in the right-wing doctrine factory.
  The cog was not always named Antonin Scalia Law School. In 2016, 
George Mason received $10 million from the Charles Koch Foundation, 
plus another $20 million from an anonymous donor, orchestrated by that 
same Leonard Leo, and one of the strings attached was that George Mason 
rename its law school after Scalia.
  When folks at George Mason University, a public university, pushed 
for answers about all of this, the university, after a legal battle, 
had to disclose that renaming the law school wasn't the only string 
attached to that $20 million donation.
  Leo and his donor wanted input over faculty hiring. And that legal 
battle also unearthed the name of the anonymous donor: Barre Seid. And 
all of that brings us back to Seid's $1.6 billion to the Leonard Leo 
dark money apparatus.
  Remember that with $0.6 billion, Leo was able to orchestrate a dark 
money takeover of our Supreme Court, stacking it with far-right 
Justices, who have already delivered massive victories for their 
donors: overturning Roe v. Wade, undermining the government's power to 
combat climate change, throwing out century-old commonsense gun 
regulations.
  If he can do that with $0.6 billion, imagine what kind of damage he 
will be able to do with $1.6 billion to squirt out as dark money 
through his armada of phony front groups.
  Leo's already dispensed $153 million to Rule of Law Trust, which 
appears to exist solely to funnel money to other dark money groups and 
another $16.5 million to his own Concord Fund. If you have been 
watching these ``Scheme'' speeches, you will remember that the last 
time I addressed the scheme in this Chamber, I laid out how the Concord 
Fund and its corporate twin, the 85 Fund, are the central nodes in a 
collection of phony front groups that deploy fictitious names, 
fictitious names to mask their connections.
  The coordinated and colocated front groups, Concord Fund and 85 Fund, 
operate through the fictitious names Judicial Crisis Network and Honest 
Elections Project, among other fictitious names. So, yes, you have got 
this right. In this dark money netherworld, the front groups have front 
groups.
  With this new billion-dollar slush fund, Leo can take those efforts 
to entirely new levels: more voter suppression, which is the job of 
Honest Elections Project; more abortion bans, which was the 
accomplishment of Dobbs; more climate denial, which was powered by West 
Virginia v. EPA and the earlier EPA decision by the Supreme Court about 
the Clean Power Plan; more power for corporations, which is, of course, 
the constant goal of this dark money operation; more disinformation; 
and more dirty dark money in politics--sluiced around inside this 
covert apparatus until it gets squirted out through even more phony 
front groups.
  This dark money slime will ooze everywhere. With pivotal elections 
coming up this fall, this slime will ooze out through your television 
sets, through your mailboxes, through your telephone, all of it 
designed to smear and lie to benefit far-right donor interests.
  The phony front group squirting out the slime will have innocuous-
sounding names, but make no mistake, hiding behind many of them will be 
Leo and his secretive billionaire backers.
  While this tactic isn't new, it has been perfected by the rightwing. 
It began with the Koch brothers, who spent the last decade pumping dark 
money into our politics, producing a decade of successful climate 
obstruction, until finally we got the Inflation Reduction Act passed 
with the first real climate measures Congress has

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ever passed, but because of the Koch brothers' pressure, we had to rely 
entirely on Democrats to get that bill passed. We did not get one 
Republican vote in the Senate. We did not get one Republican vote in 
the House.
  Constant assaults on workers' rights, endless attacks on the 
Affordable Care Act, and, of course, the rightwing billionaires own big 
payoff, big tax cuts for billionaires--it is probable that for all of 
the money that got thrown into this dark money apparatus by rightwing 
billionaires, some of them probably made more money than that back from 
the tax cuts that were delivered for them under the Trump 
administration. This is a it-pays-to-play dark money operation.
  And the result is that all this dark money has reduced the once Grand 
Old Party to the political operation of a handful of extremist 
megadonors.
  The dark money assault on our democracy is not over. Right now, 
Leonard Leo, his rightwing donors, and their dark money apparatus are 
devising the next phases of the scheme.
  They have already captured the highest Court in the land, but they 
will not stop until they have enacted their entire radical agenda. They 
will turn their sights on State courts, on city councils, on local 
school boards--anywhere they can find a way to subvert democracy with 
dark money.
  So now is the time to fight back, and the first step is to pass the 
DISCLOSE Act. It is way long past time that we shine the light on the 
dark money schemers.
  You may recall that in the Citizens United decision, by a vote of 8 
to 1, even that Court said that dark money is corrupting. That is an 
established principle of the Citizens United decision.
  Well, if it is corrupting, we ought to get rid of it, because the 
American people deserve to know who captured their Supreme Court and 
who keeps flooding our politics with dark money.
  When you spend that kind of money, there is a motivation, and voters, 
citizens, deserve to know.
  To be continued.

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