I’ve had a chance to listen to parts of the Confirmation Hearing - and the cold blooded, petty viciousness, of the Republican Senators (who’s questions are wholly inappropriate to this particular hearing was mind numbing. And everything I write from here on, I don’t like, and delete, because I do want to be a little positive. …
Moving right along. Senator Whitehouse once again impressed me, he did a superb job of deconstructing the Republican Dark Money diversion. Such a good job that I believe it’s worth highlighting with this post.
Sen. Whitehouse Questions Judge Jackson on Day Two of (Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s) Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings
YouTube, March 22, 2022 | Senator Sheldon Whitehouse
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse delivers a presentation on right-wing dark money and questions Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson on the role of the civil jury on the 2nd day of her confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court.
Senator Whitehouse 5:12:
(This) relates to yesterday’s activities
A lot was said in this room yesterday about Dark Money by our Republican friends to the point where one of the headlines about yesterday [Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson SOTUS nomination] read Republicans hammer dark money groups.I’ll be the first to concede that there is Dark Money on both sides and I hope very much we can get rid of it on both sides shortly by legislation.
5:35
But there is a difference I believe between a Dark Money interest rooting for someone, and right-wing Dark Money interests having a role in actually picking the last three Supreme Court Justices.Now, how do we know that they had a role in doing that well we know because everybody involved said so. It was pretty straightforward stuff. President trump said we’re going to have great judges conservative all picked by the Federalist Society.
That’s pretty plain, Senator Orrin Hatch former Chairman said some have accused President trump of outsourcing his judicial selection process to the Federalist Society, I say damn right.
The co-founder of the Federal Society said, that the (trump) Administration is relying on the Federal Society to come up with qualified nominees. Then Don McGahn who ran the operation for trump in the White House said I’ve been a member of the Federal Society since law school, I still am, so frankly it seems like that role has been insourced.
So, there’s pretty clear and pretty broad agreement that that selection process took place out of the public eye and it appears to have been informed heavily by Dark Money interests. They were not alone in saying this.
7:15
Here’s Laura Ingraham on Fox News, concerned about abortion cases coming up before the Court. “We have Six republican appointees on this Court after all the money that’s been raised the Federalist Society, all these big fat cat dinners. If this court with six Justices cannot do the right thing… then I think it’s time to circumscribe the jurisdiction of this court (and if they want to blow it up, then that’s the way to change thing finally”)
That’s the way to change things finally. So we have people who are in a position to know what was going on behind the scenes describing the six Republican appointees on the court who got there after all the money that has been raised the Federalist Society and all these big fat cat dinners and threatening that they don’t do what she considers to be the right thing they’ll be punished by circumscribing the jurisdiction of the court.
That’s pretty big talk but it’s backed up by pretty big dollars. If you go back to before this enterprise got underway the money that came into the Federal Society from what’s called Donors Trust which has been described as the Dark Money ATM of the right Koch Brothers affiliated operation. Back say in 2002, it got $5,000.
No big deal by 2019 when this operation was in full swing it got $7,000,000. We don’t know who the real donor was, because that’s the job of Donor’s Trust is to de-identify the donor. To launder the identity off the donation so you can’t connect the dots any longer. But, $7,000,000 I think is quite a lot of money and unfortunately the Federalist Society was not alone. Right down the hallway is something called the Judicial Crisis Network its offices on the same hallway of the Federal Society in the downtown Washington building.
Although JCN’s website and tax filings list a mailing address at a different location an address shared by multiple companies, and right down that hallway at that Judicial Crisis Network there’s even more money pouring and here’s how much poured into the last three nominations via the Judicial Crisis Network (aka Concord Fund)
Gorsuch……………… $21,000,000
Kavanaugh…………… $17,000,000
Barrett………………… $14,000,000Of course, we don’t know who the actual donor is, could be the same donor, who knows, and because we don’t know who the donor is, we don’t know what business they might have had before the court.
I think it matters when people are seeking to influence the makeup of the Court that the public understand what business they may have before the court and anonymity hides all of that.
10:11
They didn’t stop with the trump nominees. They got up on the air, a Dark Money group, using Dark Money, to accuse Biden’s Supreme Court Nominee at that point a player to be named later, Judge Jackson had not been selected at this point, of being a tool or stooge of liberal activist Dark Money this is a screenshot from their advertisement paid for by the Judicial Crisis Network.So, it’s worth understanding for a moment what the Judicial Crisis Network is and where it lies. It lies in a network of organizations. The prevailing way that political mischief is accomplished these days is with a paired 501c3 and 501c4 organization - the 501c3 gets the tax deduction, the 501c4 gets to participate in political activity and sure enough there’s an 85 Fund and a Concord Fund that are twinned together as a 501c3 and 501c4 organization.
They filed under Virginia Corporation Law to operate under what they call “Fictitious Names” that’s the term of law under which they file fictitious names. There’s the Judicial Crisis Network one of the fictitious names of the Concord Fund it has a parallel Judicial Education Project that is a Fictitious Name of the 85 Fund.
If you’re interested in voter suppression you can move down to the Honest Elections Project Action another Fictitious Name and it’s 501c3 twin the Honest Elections Project and they’ve even got new ones, that are less active Free to Learn Action and Free to Learn so these are 8 organizations that are essentially one organization.
As lawyers we think from time to time about piercing the corporate veil. That’s corporate veiling, that you could pierce with a banana and it runs back and forth with three groups called CRC Advisors, CRC Strategies and CRC Public Relations that take and send money to these organizations as part of the, sort of, planning element you might say that CRC Advisors, CRC Strategies and CRC Public Relations, this trio is the command center and this is the operational torso of the creature.
I show all this because it shows considerable effort when somebody goes to that much trouble to create that many organizations to hide how much money they’ve spent to control the nomination process to the Court.
It’s no small amount of money. In the original Washington Post research they pegged it at 250 million dollars. Further research led to testimony in my Court Subcommittee that the number was actually 400 million dollars and we have a recent report, that we haven’t fact checked, that the number is actually even higher than that. So I may amend this number upward once we’re done with our fact checking. 400 million dollars funding conservative activists behind the scenes campaign to remake the nation’s courts.
That operation is a very different thing than a group rooting for somebody and I want to make sure that that difference is clear since our friends on the republican side have made Dark Money such a big focus of their attention already. There is a drastic difference between rooting for somebody and controlling the turnstile that decides who gets on the court.
14:30
Controlling the funding of the political campaigns that pursue the folks on the court, and actually once you get on the court, we’re working now with the Judiciary itself, to try to clean up the mess of that same anonymous money appearing before the court through phony front groups that file Amicus Briefs and little flotillas, or if it’s an important enough case and a full armada of Dark Money-funded front groups.So that bears not at all on this nominee but because this is a very public forum and because we’ve heard all that so-called hammering of Dark Money groups I wanted to make sure that it was clear to everybody how this game is played and what the difference is in the way the two sides play it.
Back to our business, Judge Jackson, have served as a trial court judge I have you have served as an Appellate Court Judge. …