August 22, 2022
Today’s big news is an eye-popping $1.6 billion donation to a right-wing nonprofit organized in May 2020. This is the largest known single donation made to a political influence organization.
The money came from Barre Seid, a 90-year-old electronics company executive, and the new organization, Marble Freedom Trust, is controlled by Leonard A. Leo, the co-chair of the Federalist Society, who has been behind the right-wing takeover of the Supreme Court. Leo has also been prominent in challenges to abortion rights, voting rights, climate change action, and so on. He announced in early 2020 that he was stepping back from the Federalist Society to remake politics at every level, but information about the massive grant and the new organization was broken today by Kenneth P. Vogel and Shane Goldmacher of the New York Times.
Marble is organized as a nonprofit, so when Seid gave it 100% of the stock in Tripp Lite, a privately held company that makes surge protectors and other electronic equipment, it could sell the stock without paying taxes. The arrangement also likely enabled Seid to avoid paying as much as $400 million in capital gains taxes on the stock. Law professor Ray Madoff of Boston College Law School, who specializes in philanthropic policy, told the New York Times: “These actions by the super wealthy are actually costing the American taxpayers to support the political spending of the wealthiest Americans.”
This massive donation is an example of so-called “dark money”: funds donated for political advocacy to nonprofits that do not have to disclose their donors. In the 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (FEC) decision, the Supreme Court said that limiting the ability of corporations and other entities to advertise their political preferences violates their First Amendment right to free speech. This was a new interpretation: until the 1970s, the Supreme Court did not agree that companies had free speech protections.
Now, nonprofit organizations can receive unlimited donations from people, corporations, or other entities for political speech. They cannot collaborate directly with candidates or campaigns, but they can promote a candidate’s policies and attack opponents, all without identifying their donors.
“I've never seen a group of this magnitude before,” Robert Maguire of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) told Casey Tolan, Curt Devine, and Drew Griffin of CNN. “This is the kind of money that can help these political operatives and their allies start to move the needle on issues like reshaping the federal judiciary, making it more difficult to vote, a state-by-state campaign to remake election laws and lay the groundwork for undermining future elections.” Our campaign finance system, he said, gives “wealthy donors, whether they be corporations or individuals, access and influence over the system far greater than any regular American can ever imagine.”
It’s an interesting revelation at this particular juncture, when the Republican Party is splitting over former president Donald Trump. Today, a Colorado state senator switched from the Republican to the Democratic Party because he refuses to support the lie that Trump won the 2020 election. “I cannot continue to be a part of a political party that is okay with a violent attempt to overturn a free and fair election and continues to peddle claims that the 2020 election was stolen,” Kevin Priola wrote. “We need Democrats in charge because our planet and our democracy depend on it.” Priola has thrown in his lot with those Republicans like Representatives Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Adam Kinzinger (R-IL).
Priola has voted with Democrats in the past, although he voted with the Republicans 90% of the time. His switch will make it more difficult for Republicans to retake control of the Colorado Senate. Governor Jared Polis, a Democrat, tweeted that he was proud to welcome Priola to the Democratic Party. “We are a broad tent party, always seeking good ideas from the left and right to move CO forward. Senator Priola is a strong leader on climate issues & will hopefully be even more effective on the Democratic side of the aisle.”
In contrast, Sean Paige, former spokesperson for the Colorado Republican Party, tweeted: “Kevin Priola a Democrat? Who knew, LOL? That’s been an open ‘secret’ at the Statehouse since I worked there. He’s beyond just a big phony; he’s a squirrely and calculating opportunist. But I’m glad, for his conscience, that he finally came out of the closet.”
The new extremist Republican Party is driving away voters in part by this very sort of chaos. This afternoon, Trump’s lawyers asked a federal judge to stop the FBI from looking at the documents recovered from Mar-a-Lago until a special master reviews them. But the filing appeared to have been less about the law than about asserting power over the Republican Party. While legal analyst Bradley Moss called it “just garbage” legally, it stated its political principle at the start: “President Donald J. Trump is the clear frontrunner in the 2024 Republican Presidential Primary and in the 2024 General Election, should he decide to run.”
The motion reiterated the arguments he has made since the search warrant was carried out; Moss mused, “[t]he more I read Trump’s motion, the more I am completely confused and shocked he got three lawyers to risk their law licenses by filing this thing.”
Then, this evening, it turned out that the motion was likely intended to distract attention from a new story dropping from Maggie Haberman, Jodi Kantor, Adam Goldman and Ben Protess of the New York Times, who reported that Trump took more than 300 classified documents with him to Mar-a-Lago and that he went through the boxes himself in late 2021, meaning he was aware that he had taken classified documents out of the White House.
The National Archives and Records Administration recovered more than 150 classified documents in January 2022, including intelligence from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the National Security Agency (NSA), and the FBI. Worried by the sheer number of those documents, the Department of Justice moved to get the rest. In June, Trump’s aides turned over a few dozen more, and Trump lawyer Christina Bobb signed a document asserting that, to the best of her knowledge, all the classified materials had been returned. They had not, of course, and on June 22 the Justice Department subpoenaed the security video tapes from the area, which showed people moving the documents. Hence the search warrant, which the FBI executed two weeks ago, finding yet more documents, including some in a closet in Trump’s office. Some had the highest possible level of classification. It remains unclear whether any U.S. documents remain at Mar-a-Lago.
Meanwhile, according to Andrew Desiderio of Politico, members of the Gang of Eight—the leaders of the House and Senate from each party, and the chairs and ranking members of the intelligence committees from both houses—want to know what was in those recovered files.
Finally, today, Dr. Anthony Fauci announced that he will be retiring from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which he has led since 1984, in December. Fauci has served seven presidents, and after his work on HIV/AIDS, President George W. Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Nonetheless, today’s Republicans have tried to deflect blame for the nation’s poor response to the coronavirus pandemic from Trump to Fauci. After the announcement of the 81-year-old’s retirement, Representative Steve Scalise (R-LA) said: “It’s good to know that with his retirement, Dr. Fauci will have ample time to appear before Congress and share under oath what he knew about the Wuhan lab, as well as the ever-changing guidance under his watch that resulted in wrongful mandates being imposed on Americans.”
—
Notes:
https://www.axios.com/2020/01/07/leonard-leo-crc-advisors-federalist-society
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/22/us/politics/republican-dark-money.html
https://constitution.findlaw.com/amendment1/freedom-of-speech-for-corporations.html
https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/22/politics/dark-money-donation-conservative-group-invs/index.html
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/08/22/gang-of-8-trump-mar-a-lago-search-00053118
https://www.axios.com/2022/08/22/colorado-lawmaker-leaves-gop-jan-6-attack-trump
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.618763/gov.uscourts.flsd.618763.1.0.pdf
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.618763/gov.uscourts.flsd.618763.1.0.pdf
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/22/us/politics/fauci-retire.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/22/us/politics/trump-mar-a-lago-documents.html
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/citizens-united-explained
Just FYI Leo also has time for local small time corruption.
This evening I participated in a protest in NorthEast Harbor outside the estate of Leonard Leo. I painted graffiti in chalk paint on the public road. It read "google Leonard Leo = Corrupt Courts and a drawing imagined how Leo turns dark money into corrupt courts. Pretty tame stuff.
I just (9pm) got off the phone with the NEH Police. Who gave me the option of going out to NEH now and removing the chalk painting or being served to appear before the court on charges of Criminal Mischief Title 17A sub. 806 of the Maine Criminal Code He informed me that he had already consulted with the ADA and they are ready to serve me. I said that was interesting. And it might be interesting to have Leo put me in jail for chalk paint graffiti.
Well we got Leo's attention. And he moves fast. As you may know, Leo has already had a local 21 year old arrested on charges of Disorderly Conduct for shouting an obscenity out of a moving car. But I am surprised that between 6pm and 9:00pm he already had the police and the DA on this. I told the sergeant that saddling a 21 year old with an arrest record at the start of his adult life is very different from threatening a 73 year old with less at stake.
Part of the background. Before protesting and 'tagging' I consulted with the Bar Harbor Police (who are a joint force with NEH) to find out the rules. I was told that using chalk paint on public property is allowed. They got a complaint one day, found me in the act. And agreed I was in compliance with the law. So there we are.
And an interesting point. The officer said he had hosed the road and it did not remove the chalk paint. He said he did that because it is part of the police's job to protect public property. I explained the composition of the chalk paint, and while it is not permanent, it may be water resistant for a while. Although other graffiti with it has washed away with rain and worn away with foot traffic. In my opinion, my chalk paint graffiti did not damage the tarmac materially or hinder normal use of the road. But Sgt. Sundberg told me my opinion does not matter. So there we are.
To be cont'd ; )
It saddens me that Dr. Fauci has to see comments like Scalise made. Decisions were made as we all learned more about COVID-19. We’re still learning about this “novel” virus. Mr. Trump said it would “just disappear”, remember? I will be forever grateful for all Dr. Fauci has done.