ALT Leonard Leo stands outside of the Supreme Court. Photo by Mark Peterson / Redux.

ALT A photo of Trump ally and former Office of Management and Budget director Russ Vought.

ALT Conservative activist Leonard Leo

ALT The "Appeal to Heaven" flag flies outside of conservative powerbroker Leonard Leo's home in Maine.

ALT Leonard Leo stands outside the Palace of Versailles with Justice Sam Alito and Alito's wife, Martha-Ann.

ALT “There was always a concern that Scalia or Thomas would say, ‘Fuck it,’ and quit the job and go make way more money at Jones Day or somewhere else,” George Conway said, referring to the powerful conservative law firm.

ALT Leonard Leo rides a camel in the desert wearing a suit and loafers. Photo obtained by ProPublica.

ALT Leonard Leo, co-chairman of the Federalist Society, stands in a crowd of supporters for judge Neil Gorsuch in Washington, D.C., in March 2017.

ALT Leo began building a machine to do just that. He didn’t just cultivate friendships with conservative Supreme Court justices, arranging private jet trips, joining them on vacation, brokering speaking engagements. He also drew on his network of contacts to place Federalist Society protégés in clerkships, judgeships and jobs in the White House and across the federal government. He personally called state attorneys general to recommend hires for positions he presciently understood were key, like solicitors general, the unsung litigators who represent states before the U.S. Supreme Court. In states that elect jurists, groups close to him spent millions of dollars to place his allies on the bench. In states that appoint top judges, he maneuvered to play a role in their selection.

ALT “With Leonard, it went both ways,” George Conway said. “It made the justices happy to meet people who revered them. It made the donors happy to meet the justices and no doubt more inclined to give to Leonard’s causes.”

ALT Leonard Leo stands alongside Justices Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia, and Samuel Alito, as well as Federalist Society president Eugene Meyer.

ALT A photo of a plaque listing Leonard Leo and his wife as major donors to the Catholic Information Center in downtown Washington, DC.

ALT Having reshaped the courts, Leo now has grander ambitions. Today, he sees a nation plagued with ills: “wokism” in education, “one-sided” journalism, and ideas like environmental, social and governance, or ESG, policies sweeping corporate America. A member of the Roman Catholic Church, he intends to wage a broader cultural war against a “progressive Ku Klux Klan” and “vile and immoral current-day barbarians, secularists and bigots” who demonize people of faith and move society further from its “natural order.”

ALT Blunt appointed Breckenridge anyway. Leo piled on. “Your boss is a coward and conservatives have neither the time nor the patience for the likes of him,” he wrote to Martin.

ALT A constituent wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat at a state Republican convention in early March. Photo by Nick Hagen for ProPublica.

ALT Kelly’s loss was Leo’s loss. But it was also, paradoxically, a win. Conservatives were acting as if judgeships were a prize for a political party, rather than an independent branch of government — what Geske calls “super-legislators.” And thanks to Leo, those super-legislators could be especially hard-line.

ALT A photo of Leonard Leo from his high school yearbook, which lists his nickname as "Moneybags Kid."

ALT Leo told ProPublica that while not all of the alliance’s donors give money to his causes: “They are thought leaders who should know more about the Constitution and the rule of law. I was happy to arrange for them to hear about these topics from one of the best teachers on that I know, Clarence Thomas.” Singer declined to comment. The Supreme Court didn’t respond to a request for comment.

ALT A story excerpt that reads: Vought laid out how his think tank is crafting the legal rationale for invoking the Insurrection Act, a law that gives the president broad power to use the military for domestic law enforcement. The Washington Post previously reported the issue was at the top of the Center for Renewing America’s priorities. “We want to be able to shut down the riots and not have the legal community or the defense community come in and say, ‘That’s an inappropriate use of what you’re trying to do,’” he said. Vought held up the summer 2020 unrest following George Floyd’s murder as an example of when Trump ought to have had the ability to deploy the armed forces but was stymied.

ALT A tweet from US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse calling for a vote on the DISCLOSE Act, which would require more transparency from dark-money nonprofit organizations.

ALT ProPublica question to Leo: ":Over the past three decades, you built an influence machine that reaches from the Supreme Court to state courts, state attorneys general to the Justice Department, law schools to boutique litigation firms. You have been personally involved in selecting conservative state judges, in backing state AGs and in placing protégés in clerkships, judgeships, and top government jobs in the White House and Justice Department. How would you describe your vision for how to make the kind of change you want to see in government and the judiciary?" Leo response: “The work I have done in the legal culture has been shaped by the conviction that respecting and enforcing limits on the power of the state are essential to advancing the dignity and worth of all individuals.”

ALT ProPublica question: "You’ve also become one of the most prolific fundraisers in the conservative movement. According to our reporting, part of your success stems from your unique relationships with judges and justices, and those relationships have enhanced your reputation and helped you raise money and recruit talent for your various projects. Do you see it that way? If not, why not?" Leo answer: “To the extent that I have been successful at raising funds, it has been because the ideas I have tried to advance are compelling and because I have always placed a premium on driving results through highly effective talent pipelines and infrastructure.”

ALT A story excerpt that reads: Vought also revealed the extent of the Center for Renewing America’s role in whipping up right-wing panic ahead of the 2022 midterms over an increase in asylum-seekers crossing at the U.S.-Mexico border. In February 2022, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich released a legal opinion claiming the state was under “invasion” by violent cartels and could invoke war powers to deploy National Guard troops to its southern border. The legally dubious “invasion” theory became a potent Republican talking point. Vought said in the 2023 speech that he and Cuccinelli, the former top Homeland Security official for Trump, personally lobbied Brnovich on the effort. “We said, ‘Look, you can write your own opinion, but here’s a draft opinion of what this should look like,’” Vought said.

ALT Leonard Leo and Justice Clarence Thomas appear together at an event hosted by the Federalist Society.

ALT A story excerpt that reads: The two speeches delivered by Vought, taken together, offer an unvarnished look at the animating ideology and political worldview of a key figure in the MAGA movement. Over the last century, Vought said, the U.S. has “experienced nothing short of a quiet revolution” and abandoned what he saw as the true meaning and force of the Constitution. The country today, he argued, was a “post-constitutional regime,” one that no longer adhered to the separation of powers among the three branches of government as laid out by the framers. He lamented that the conservative right and the nation writ large had become “too secular” and “too globalist.” He urged his allies to join his mission to “renew a consensus of America as a nation under God.”

ALT A billboard funded by the Heartland Institute linked climate science with Ted Kaczynski, aka the Unabomber

ALT A story excerpt that reads: “We are here in the year of 2024, a year that very well [could] — and I believe it will — rival 1776 and 1860 for the complexity and the uncertainty of the forces arrayed against us,” Vought told his audience, referring to years when the colonies declared independence from Britain and the first state seceded over President Abraham Lincoln’s election. “God put us here for such a time as this.”

ALT An old newspaper photo shows Barre Seid and four students walking across the University of Chicago campus

ALT A story excerpt that reads: “In the aftermath of the election, we had all these people going around saying, ‘Well, I don’t see any evidence of voter fraud. The media’s not giving enough [of] a compelling case,’” he said. “Well, that compelling case has emerged. But does a Christian in China ask and come away saying, ‘You know, there’s no persecution, because I haven’t read about it in the state regime press?’ No, they don’t.”

ALT A story excerpt that reads: Yet in his 2024 speech, Vought accused the Federalist Society and “originalist judges” of being a part of the problem, perpetuating the “post-constitutional structure” that Vought lamented by not ruling more aggressively to weaken or dismantle independent regulatory agencies that Vought and his allies view as illegitimate or unconstitutional. It was “like being in a contract quietly revoked two decades ago, in which one party didn’t tell the other,” he said. “At some point, reality needs to set in. Instead, we have the vaunted so-called Federalist Society and originalist judges acting as a Praetorian Guard for this post-constitutional structure.”

ALT A story excerpt that reads: "Since the Fall of 2023, President Trump’s campaign made it clear that only President Trump and the campaign, and NOT any other organization or former staff, represent policies for the second term,” Danielle Alvarez, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign, said in a statement. She did not directly address Vought’s statements. Karoline Leavitt, his campaign’s national press secretary, added there have been no discussions on who would serve in a second Trump administration. In addition to running his think tank, Vought was the policy director of the Republican National Committee’s official platform committee ahead of the nominating convention. He’s also an architect of Project 2025, the controversial coalition effort mapping out how a second Trump administration can quickly eliminate obstacles to rolling out a hard-right policy agenda.

ALT A story excerpt that reads: Brnovich wrote in an email to ProPublica that he recalled multiple discussions with Cuccinelli about border security. But he added that “the invasion opinion was the result of a formal request from a member of the Arizona legislature. And I can assure you it was drafted and written by hard working attorneys (including myself) in our office.”