Leonard Leo Is Funneling Dark Money Into Law Schools

Leonard Leo had a imaginative and prescient for his alma mater, and he had the cash to again it up. With a donation of as a lot as $25 million, he wished Cornell Regulation to ascertain the Middle for the Research of the Structural Structure — the most important effort but by the conservative megadonor to reshape academia in his right-wing picture. 

After months of courtship, the proposal — which has earlier than by no means been disclosed — hit a snag within the fall of 2021.

Cornell professors fearful a middle sponsored by Leo, one of many architects of the conservative authorized motion, would set up a beachhead for far-right scholarship. Unable to persuade the college that gave him each his undergraduate and regulation levels to construct his analysis heart, Leo walked away, or so he claims.

However he didn’t abandon his regulation faculty marketing campaign.

Snubbed by the Ivy League, Leo discovered a brand new dwelling for his pet undertaking. The Intercept adopted the cash path to disclose how the person recognized primarily because the Trump administration’s “court docket whisperer” has secretly funneled a part of his billion-dollar conflict chest to the regulation faculty at Texas A&M College. Cash has additionally flowed to a number of different regulation faculties by means of one among Leo’s favourite dark-money funds, with many donations bearing the hallmarks of his broader goal to overtake the authorized academy.

Professors on the regulation faculties Leo focused for shadow philanthropy — greater than a dozen of whom spoke with The Intercept, most on situation of anonymity as a result of sensitivity of the discussions — are fearful Leo is attempting to incubate fringe conservative scholarship at prime packages.

And plenty of suppose he’s simply getting began.

The Double Cornellian

Leo is a Cornell man twice over, having completed his undergrad in 1987 and his J.D. from Cornell Regulation in 1989. After founding Cornell’s pupil chapter of the Federalist Society, he went on to change into the nationwide group’s government vice chairman and now co-chair. Within the a long time that adopted, Leo suggested on each conservative nomination to the Supreme Court docket since Chief Justice John Roberts.

On prime of handpicking judges, Leo made himself a dominant fundraiser for conservative authorized causes, particularly efforts to overturn Roe v. Wade. In the course of the Obama administration, teams linked to Leo spent hundreds of thousands to stonewall the nomination of then-Decide Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court docket. In 2018, Justice Clarence Thomas, a longtime buddy, quipped Leo had made himself “the Quantity Three strongest particular person on this planet.”

In 2021, Leo orchestrated a historic $1.6 billion windfall for his main dark-money automobile, the Marble Freedom Belief, which he controls as chair. It was doubtless the biggest donation to a political nonprofit ever.Alongside the way in which to turning into one of many conservative authorized motion’s chief architects and piggybanks, Leo honed his tutorial philanthropy chops too.

In 2016, Leo helped dealer a $20 million nameless present to George Mason College in change for renaming its regulation faculty after the late Justice Antonin Scalia. This donation is broadly suspected to be from the identical donor who later gave Leo greater than $1 billion.

Leo maintained an in depth relationship with Cornell over the a long time, together with throughout his time advising the Trump administration on judicial nominations, when he gave two talks at Cornell Regulation discussing his views on the “structural Structure.” Cleverly bland and amorphous — very similar to “originalism” or “textualism” — a “structuralist” evaluation of the Structure can imply many issues, together with primary rules like separation of powers and federalism.

To many Cornell Regulation professors, nevertheless, a Leo-sponsored heart dedicated to the “structural Structure” registered as a possible launchpad for right-wing authorized theories at an elite, usually liberal establishment. They noticed it as an try to purchase credibility for Leo’s broader, arch-conservative views, a lot of which have terribly low assist amongst authorized students nationwide.

Leo first mentioned a donation of as much as $25 million with Cornell Regulation’s then-dean, Eduardo Peñalver, who stepped down in late 2020, in line with a supply near Leo. The donation would have been among the many largest in Cornell Regulation’s historical past. (Peñalver, now the president of Seattle College, didn’t reply to The Intercept’s inquiries.)

By fall 2021, the plan was put in writing. The supply shared a duplicate of an undated proposal, which he stated Cornell despatched to Leo in October 2021.

Cornell declined to reply The Intercept’s questions on its discussions with Leo, together with why the deal finally stalled. “We have now many conversations with alumni and others round potential philanthropic items — conversations which are confidential,” the present Cornell Regulation dean, Jens David Ohlin, stated in an emailed assertion.

The proposal laid out the imaginative and prescient for the “Charles Evans Hughes Middle for the Research of the Structural Structure,” to be named for the Supreme Court docket’s chief justice in the course of the New Deal. Hughes briefly served on Cornell’s college within the late nineteenth century, and, because the proposal highlights, he wrote a unanimous opinion gutting one of many New Deal’s legislative centerpieces.

Based on the doc, the middle can be funded by Leo to the tune of $15 million over 5 years, with $5 million dedicated to an endowed chair. “This professor would be the mental coronary heart of the middle and the architect of its scholarly program,” per the proposal, which additionally floated an inventory of 4 “thinkers we’d take into account for the function.”

The middle would have its personal bodily area, workers, programming, visiting professors, and fellows-in-residence, making it “a locus of exercise for the structuralist motion, with a kind of gravitational pull attracting the perfect of these at its coronary heart.”

The aim was to show Cornell Regulation College into “a vacation spot, or least a essential cease, on the mental journey undertaken by structuralism’s proponents,” reads the proposal.

When Ohlin introduced the concept of the middle to the school, they pushed again on “what gave the impression to be pretty robust constraints about what the middle would research,” stated George Hay, a longtime Cornell Regulation professor.

School fearful the middle can be “politically tilted towards supporting a sure view of how the authorized system ought to run, which slot in properly with Federalist Society rules,” Hay stated.

“It appeared just like the agenda was preset and the school didn’t need it with these strings,” Hay stated.

Professors urged Ohlin to politely decline. When Cornell despatched a revised proposal the next month, its phrases had modified. The draft letter, addressed to Leo and the Marble Freedom Belief and shared with The Intercept by the supply near Leo, nixed the middle.

As an alternative, Cornell proposed a $10 million endowment for the “Charles Evans Hughes Professorship in Constitutional Regulation,” which might be attributed publicly to Leo and Marble Freedom Belief. The professorship can be awarded on the discretion of the dean “to an impressive scholar of the structural structure,” per the letter.

Leo took the letter as a renege, because the heart had been his precedence. Leo walked away in early 2022, the supply stated. Cornell didn’t reply to requests for remark about Leo’s rendition of the break up.

However the collapse of the Cornell deal was a brief setback for Leo’s imaginative and prescient. Within the fall of 2022, the regulation faculty dean of Texas A&M, greater than 1,500 miles away in Fort Value, despatched an e mail announcement: “COMING SOON: Middle on the Structural Structure.”

Leo Goes West

The tons of of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} Leo pumps into the conservative authorized motion every year are troublesome to hint. He controls a number of pots of darkish cash, most of which he then funnels by means of varied pass-through mechanisms, together with through donor-advised funds that make sure disclosures opaque.

One such fund, DonorsTrust, is a favourite of Leo and like-minded right-wing donors, which has earned it the nickname “the dark-money ATM of the conservative motion.” DonorsTrust’s tax filings had been the important thing to unraveling Leo’s unsuccessful wooing of Cornell and touchdown his analysis heart at Texas A&M.

Texas A&M, which is steadily climbing the regulation faculty rankings, obtained $5 million through DonorsTrust in 2022. Per the submitting, this was earmarked particularly “for the Middle on the Structural Structure” — just about the identical identify because the scuttled Cornell Regulation program.

Requested when he first approached Texas A&M with the concept for the middle, Leo declined to remark.

By June 2022, Texas A&M had signed a $15 million deal — payable in three installments of $5 million — to ascertain the “Middle on the Structural Structure,” in line with a duplicate of the settlement supplied by the college, which redacted the donor’s identify.

The subsequent month, Texas A&M Regulation’s dean, Robert Ahdieh, introduced the middle internally, telling the school in an e mail that it was a part of an nameless $15 million present.

Later that fall, the dean despatched an e mail concerning the new heart to “varied regulation faculty college across the nation,” in line with a regulation faculty spokesperson, who supplied a duplicate to The Intercept. Ahdieh’s announcement described the present as “among the many largest donations ever obtained by Texas A&M College.”

Texas A&M has by no means loudly trumpeted this hefty present. In contrast to at Cornell, Leo’s identify shouldn’t be explicitly hooked up, and lots of on the Texas A&M regulation faculty college had been unaware of his involvement earlier than The Intercept’s reporting. Underneath the settlement, Texas A&M promised “to not publicly identify or acknowledge the Donor with out prior categorical approval.”

In contrast to at Cornell, Leo doesn’t have a protracted historical past with Texas A&M. However he has a connection to its former president. In 2020, Texas A&M’s then-president, Michael Okay. Younger, tapped Leo to function an exterior reviewer for Younger’s new analysis institute on faith and worldwide affairs. Younger and Leo each beforehand served as chairs of the U.S. Fee on Worldwide Spiritual Freedom, although their tenures didn’t overlap.

Younger, who returned to show at Texas A&M’s regulation faculty on the finish of 2020, confirmed that Leo funded Texas A&M’s Middle on the Structural Structure. “I used to be conscious of the donation,” he instructed The Intercept.

Along with the middle’s identify, the Texas A&M present had loads of Leo’s calling playing cards.

Final 12 months, Texas A&M tried to rent a professor for the middle who was additionally on the shortlist Cornell floated to Leo. After a job put up circulated in Leo’s circles, the college employed an government director with spectacular Federalist Society credentials.

Ahdieh apparently exchanged emails with Leo himself, per responses to public data requests. Since January 2022, Ahdieh additionally despatched or obtained dozens of emails associated to Leo’s Marble Freedom Belief. Final week, the college stated it could attempt to withhold not less than among the dean’s emails beneath a state regulation that protects the identification of donors to larger schooling establishments.

Ahdieh didn’t reply to quite a few questions, together with about Leo’s function in funding the middle. “Underneath state regulation, the identification of a donor could stay confidential if that donor so chooses, which is what occurred on this scenario,” stated a spokesperson for Texas A&M College.

Nearly two years after Texas A&M accepted the present, its Middle on the Structural Structure has not but formally launched, stated a regulation faculty spokesperson, who declined to reply further questions. A spokesperson for the broader college stated the regulation faculty was nonetheless “creating a proposal” concerning the heart that “could also be introduced sooner or later to the Board of Regents for consideration and approval.”

Regardless of this bureaucratic limbo, final fall, Texas A&M tried to recruit a widely known originalist scholar, Gary Lawson, to hitch the middle. Lawson, a founding member of the Federalist Society and present board member with Leo, was additionally on Cornell’s shortlist. Lawson instructed The Intercept he declined Texas A&M’s provide “for private (largely geographical) causes,” and accepted a unique place.

Texas A&M additionally employed a non-faculty director for the middle with sterling conservative bona fides. William Payne began as director of the Middle on the Structural Structure final October, in line with his LinkedIn profile. (After The Intercept reached out to Texas A&M concerning the middle, Payne modified his title to director of “New Initiatives,” however as of publication his title remained unchanged in Texas A&M’s public listing. Payne didn’t reply to questions on his function.)

The 12 months earlier than coming to Texas A&M, Payne clerked for Decide James Ho, one of the crucial right-wing members of the fifth U.S. Circuit Court docket of Appeals. Payne, who was a vice chairman of Harvard Regulation College’s chapter of the Federalist Society, additionally beforehand labored for former Republican Sens. Ben Sasse and Orrin Hatch, in line with his LinkedIn.

A Knight of Constitutional Originalism

Leo sometimes operates within the background and goes to appreciable lengths to cowl his philanthropic tracks. Annually, his teams ship hundreds of thousands by means of DonorsTrust, which markets itself as a “principled philanthropic companion for conservative and libertarian donors” and a method to anonymously fund “delicate or controversial points.”

Deep-pocketed benefactors like Leo can inform DonorsTrust the place they need their cash to finally go. Its board of administrators will “all the time respect grant requests that fall inside the DonorsTrust mission and objective,” per its web site.

DonorsTrust declined to debate the specifics of any contributions recognized by The Intercept. “We don’t launch to most of the people both the names of our accountholders nor particular grants that they could have advisable,” stated Lawson Bader, its president and CEO. Bader famous that among the contributions listed on DonorsTrust’s tax filings could have originated from a number of donors.

However Leo’s funding automobiles — particularly the Marble Freedom Belief and the 85 Fund, which he rebranded in 2020 and sure bankrolls through yet one more donor-advised fund — are among the many largest contributors to DonorsTrust.

In 2022, the 85 Fund despatched $92 million by means of DonorsTrust, greater than 1 / 4 of all contributions to DonorsTrust that 12 months. Marble Freedom Belief has distributed greater than $41 million through DonorsTrust, in line with a submitting for its 2020 fiscal 12 months. The Rule of Regulation Belief, additionally run by Leo, gave $5.8 million through DonorsTrust in 2020.

Beside Leo’s teams, different prime contributors to DonorsTrust embody Rebekah Mercer of Cambridge Analytica and Parler fame, whose Mercer Household Basis gave $31 million in 2022. Mercer and different prime contributors to DonorsTrust didn’t reply to The Intercept’s questions for this text.

Whether or not from Leo or different sources, conservative cash has been already flowing to regulation faculties through DonorsTrust for years, principally to premiere packages. Since 2019, Yale Regulation College has obtained $250,000 per 12 months for the “Variety in Democracy Professorship Fund”; Yale declined to elucidate the aim of this fund or say whether or not these contributions got here from Leo. New York College Regulation College obtained $350,000 in 2021 and $300,000 in 2022 for a libertarian analysis institute. NYU additionally declined to offer further particulars concerning the supply of those contributions. And since 2020, Stanford’s pupil chapter of the Federalist Society obtained $25,000 per 12 months. Stanford referred inquiries to the Federalist Society and DonorsTrust.

There have been additionally hundreds of thousands despatched to George Mason College’s Scalia Regulation College, which Leo helped make one of many gravitational facilities for conservative authorized academia. Since 2017, Scalia Regulation College obtained not less than $4 million every year through DonorsTrust, a lot of it earmarked for its Regulation & Economics Middle, which places on typically lavish doctrinal bootcamps for judges, one among which was held in Leo’s literal yard.

However in 2022, after the Cornell deal soured, new regulation faculty donations appeared on DonorsTrust’s filings. These nameless items went to varsities with out the hefty endowments of Cornell, Yale, Stanford, or NYU, or the conservative cachet of George Mason.

And just like the earmark for Leo’s new heart at Texas A&M, these new donations additionally had specific directions for a way the money have to be used, directions which appear to align carefully with Leo’s priorities.

One such faculty on DonorsTrust’s submitting in 2022 was Catholic College of America in Washington, D.C.

In November 2022, after Texas A&M soft-launched his Middle on the Structural Structure, Leo took the stage at Catholic College’s regulation faculty alongside Patrick Kelly, “Supreme Knight” of the Knights of Columbus, the all-male Catholic fraternal order.

The event: to have a good time a brand new endowed professorship and the launch of a brand new analysis heart, each targeted on the intersection of the U.S. Structure and the Catholic mental custom.

It was a uncommon public recognition of Leo’s fundraising prowess on the intersection of religion and the regulation. A religious Catholic, Leo is a member of the Sovereign Navy Order of Malta, a Catholic knighthood, and recipient of the highest honor from Opus Dei’s Catholic Data Middle.

At Catholic College’s celebration, Leo stated its regulation faculty was “turning into very impactful within the discipline of authorized schooling.”

At first, cash for the brand new heart — the Challenge on Constitutional Originalism and the Catholic Mental Custom — got here in with none point out of Leo. In April 2021, Catholic College introduced it had obtained $4.25 million from an “nameless belief” for a three-year program, with the potential for increasing “into a bigger constitutional regulation heart” after that, primarily based on a joint evaluation by the “supporting donor” and the college.

A 12 months later, in Might 2022, the college introduced the creation of a brand new professorship to steer the brand new undertaking. Leo, in partnership with the Knights of Columbus, had “directed a present” to endow the “Knights of Columbus Professor of Regulation and the Catholic Custom,” which was awarded to Kevin Walsh, a former Scalia clerk. The full funding for Walsh’s professorship and the middle got here to $8.25 million, in line with the announcement.

On the November 2022 occasion, the Knights of Columbus had been credited with chipping in $1 million towards the professorship, whereas an “nameless donor” contributed $3 million that was “overseen” by Leo.

DonorsTrust’s year-end tax filings for 2022 present a $4.1 million contribution to Catholic College of America, earmarked “for the Knights of Columbus Professor of Regulation.”

Leo declined to remark about his involvement in funding Catholic College’s new heart and professorship.

“I can’t thank sufficient our college trustees, Leonard Leo and Supreme Knight Patrick Kelly,” stated the regulation faculty’s dean, Stephen Payne, in remarks on the November 2022 occasion, “for recognizing the worth {that a} program and chair comparable to this may convey not solely to our personal regulation faculty however to authorized schooling usually.” Each Leo and Kelly are on Catholic College’s board of trustees.

Catholic College and the Knights of Columbus didn’t reply to questions from The Intercept.

Because it launched, Catholic College’s new analysis heart has hosted talks by two Supreme Court docket justices: Samuel Alito and Amy Coney Barrett, two of six practising Catholics presently on the excessive court docket. Alito serves because the undertaking’s honorary chair, and it has additionally attracted highly effective conservative appellate judges as “visiting jurists.”

“Catholic custom shouldn’t be an add-on, not one thing additional,” stated Walsh on the November 2022 occasion. “It’s the matrix inside which we’re to grab all actuality, together with the realities of regulation and justice.”

Funding Different Colleges

Different regulation faculties on DonorsTrust’s submitting for 2022 don’t have clear fingerprints from Leo, who declined to touch upon any of them.

However one earmark was much more focused than a selected conservative authorized heart: In 2022, South Texas Faculty of Regulation Houston obtained $1 million “for the endowed chair for Professor Josh Blackman.” This got here after the college obtained $50,000 in 2021 through DonorsTrust “for an Endowed Chair,” with out specifying any single professor.

South Texas Faculty of Regulation, which isn’t hooked up to a bigger college, shouldn’t be a family identify. In 2016, the college briefly modified its identify to “Houston Faculty of Regulation,” earlier than being ordered to vary it again throughout a trademark dispute with the College of Houston.

Blackman is a prolific pundit and “nationwide thought chief on constitutional regulation,” in line with his private web site. He ceaselessly feedback on Supreme Court docket rulings and different authorized developments, quoted by native TV information in addition to NPR and Politico.

In a single profile of Leo’s function within the Trump administration’s judicial nominations, Blackman spoke with familiarity. “Leonard has a considerably distinctive expertise in Washington in that he can truly maintain confidences, and he could be a reliable particular person,” Blackman instructed The Related Press in 2018.

A self-described libertarian, Blackman is an everyday on the Federalist Society speaker circuit who’s given talks to the scholar chapters at Cornell, Texas A&M, George Mason, and lots of different faculties.Blackman additionally contributed to the “Challenge 2025” manifesto and argued “heroically,” in a single Federalist Society co-founder’s view, that former President Donald Trump couldn’t be disqualified from this 12 months’s poll over his function within the January 6 rebellion primarily based on the unique that means of the phrase “officer” within the Structure. In March, the Supreme Court docket dominated for Trump with out addressing Blackman’s argument.

Blackman has critiqued latest investigative reporting about conservative Supreme Court docket justices Alito and Thomas — together with protection of Alito’s obvious penchant for mixed-message flags.

Blackman directed questions on his funding to South Texas Faculty of Regulation, which didn’t reply to The Intercept.

South Texas Faculty of Regulation attracts only a few giant donations, its tax data present. In comparison with the $1 million earmarked for Blackman in 2022, during the last decade for which data can be found, the college by no means raised greater than $10 million in a single 12 months. In its most up-to-date submitting, which covers June 2022 by means of Might 2023, it raised simply $3.7 million whole, and simply $1 million excluding authorities grants.

In truth, the contribution to Blackman’s endowment is the only largest to South Texas Faculty of Regulation since its alumni basis folded and transferred $1.5 million in money to the college in 2014, The Intercept discovered.

Regardless of the heft of the present, South Texas Faculty of Regulation, like Texas A&M, didn’t announce it publicly. In March 2023, with out fanfare, Blackman grew to become the “Centennial Chair of Constitutional Regulation,” in line with his CV.

This was not the one lesser recognized faculty that obtained donations through DonorsTrust in 2022. Ave Maria College of Regulation, an impartial Catholic regulation faculty in Florida, obtained $600,000. An Ave Maria spokesperson declined to determine who made that present, citing the college’s “coverage to not disclose donor data.” Leo beforehand served on Ave Maria’s board.

And $40,000 went to the College of San Diego, additionally a Catholic faculty, earmarked for a regulation faculty heart with a well-recognized, although barely completely different identify: “the Middle for the Research of Constitutional Originalism.”