A conservative, dark money group that’s pushed a far-right agenda in the U.S. judiciary received $1.6 billion in funding last year from an obscure Republican donor — the largest known donation to a political advocacy group in U.S. history. That’s according to The New York Times, as well as a joint investigation by ProPublica and The Lever. The donor is Barre Seid, a 90-year-old conservative industrialist from Chicago. Over the past two years, Seid funneled hundreds of millions of dollars through secretive transactions to a nonprofit led by Leonard Leo, the co-chair of the far-right Federalist Society who’s known as Donald Trump’s “Supreme Court whisperer.” Leonard Leo has been instrumental in the rollback of federal voting rights and reproductive rights. Leo also directly helped select judges to be nominated to the Supreme Court, including Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch, and organized massive media campaigns to see them confirmed.
— source democracynow.org | Aug 23, 2022
