[OC] A visual map of Leonard Leo’s dark money and legal influence network that reshaped the American judiciary

9 comments

1. If you’re interested in how this network operated and how Leonard A. Leo used the network to reshape the American judiciary (6 Supreme Court judges and 220+ federal appellate judges) here’s the documentary on YouTube that uses this chart:
   https://youtu.be/7lUkCNHE0i0

   The mods want to know where I got this data from and which tools I used to create it. Here are the sources:

   • https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/crew-investigations/leonard-leos-firm-continues-to-rake-in-millions-from-his-own-dark-money-network/
   • https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/crew-investigations/leonard-leo-tied-nonprofits-businesses-88-million/
   • https://www.politico.com/news/2023/05/02/leonard-leo-federalist-society-00094761
   • https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Marble_Freedom_Trust
   • https://www.propublica.org/article/we-dont-talk-about-leonard-leo-supreme-court-supermajority
   • https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-01/charles-schwab-donor-advised-fund-fuels-leonard-leo-s-network
   • https://baptistnews.com/article/following-leonard-leos-dark-money-in-pushing-america-to-the-far-right/
   • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concord_Fund
   • https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/leonard-leo-koch-networks-pour-millions-prep-potential-second-trump-ad-rcna144360
   • https://electionlawblog.org/?p=142098
   • https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/law/leonard-leo
   • https://apnews.com/article/trump-leonard-leo-federalist-society-judges-trade-454c4ae1b946bd2d37a29de9b24b02a1
   • https://newrepublic.com/article/166993/leonard-leo-christian-right-future

   I used mostly Claude to create the chart once I collected the data, but then I took it into Photoshop to fix the visual errors.

2. Do the colours have any meaning, or is it just to look nice?

3. WOW! That’s a powerful lawyer! How did you make that chart?!? Is there an app or something?

4. I miss the Barre I knew in the 1980s. One of the most brilliant men I’ve ever known. Also, kind and thoughtful. He had some sort of realignment of values in the aughts that I can only speculate about.

5. What does this mean? I don’t know who this person is.

6. We don’t have a conservative majority on the supreme court. If we did, abortion would have been declared unconstitutional.

7. There is no meaning behind who is on what row. Why is the Supreme Court “descended” from the Concord Fund and DonorsTrust? Why is the purple row seemingly not descended from anything? What is the relationship between Leonard Leo and, well, anything else on this graph? Did he found the Federalist Society? Does he donate to Marble Freedom Trust? I guess it says CRC Advisors is his consulting firm, but I can’t tell how that relates to anything else.

   OP, I wonder if this is better visualized as a network graph rather than a family tree, where each node can be related to multiple other nodes, and where the connection between each node has a different line type or weight or color to denote different types of relations (e.g. “donates to,” “founded,” etc.).

8. What is this supposed to show? How is the lower purple row of groups at all connected to any of the others? Is the inference here that somehow if Leonard Leo’s ‘dark money’ did not exist, that the supreme court would not be a 6-3 conservative majority? Or that Trump wouldn’t have appointed 220+ judges?

9. This makes it look like 1 person is responsible for subverting the will of everyone else. But that’s just not true. These organizations have thousands of people in them and are no different than the corresponding progressive NGOs funded by a handful of progressive billionaires.

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