We Don't Talk About Leonard

Have you listened to or read the ProPublica/On the Media joint series called We Don't Talk About Leonard?

I listened to the podcasts as they came out, but the written version may be easier to deal with if you don't have time to listen to podcasts (the first story is linked above, though it has the podcast linked in the sidebar). There are three altogether.

I see that I've only mentioned Leonard Leo a few times on the blog (mostly here and here), and all in 2023, since ProPublica began reporting on the various Supreme Court corruption scandals. Aside from Twitter round-ups, I mentioned the Federalist Society only once, in 2019. 

It's not that I didn't know about it. It's that I felt hopeless to do anything about it, especially after Trump was elected. And I'm sure it was at some point after that when I first heard of Leonard Leo, since up until then he made sure very few people knew about his role in the Federalist Society.

From the podcast I learned that Leo has been a piece of work since his youth.

Leo was so good at raising money for his senior class in high school that his nickname was “Moneybags Kid." In 1983, he always often wore a shirt and tie to school.

He's part of the Opus Dei crowd (like Bill Barr and, it seems, Samuel Alito), he helped get Clarence Thomas through the Senate Judiciary Committee and onto SCOTUS, and he's been building the Federalist Society's network of influence and money since then. 

Now he has more than a billion dollars to play with, courtesy of an electronics manufacturer who made the largest political donation in U.S. history in 2021. With that money, Leo has promised to do for the rest of American culture what he's done for the courts and the legal system. He sees his opponents as "not just uninformed or unchurched. They are often deeply wounded people whom the devil can easily take advantage of." That's a quote from Leo, by the way. Not someone else speaking about what he thinks.

Sounds like the kind of person I want deciding who's in our government! Let's have a billionaire-friendly theocracy. Sure, sounds great, thanks, Leonard.