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There aren’t many activists who have directly influenced the course of the United States more than Leonard Leo. The right-wing money man and longtime Federalist Society honcho effectively built the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, feeding Donald Trump the justices who would go on to overturn Roe v. Wade and grant the chronically corrupt president immunity from prosecution.
Leo and his dark money network have continued to spend millions to advance his conservative agenda. He tried to get Will Scharf — who just so happened to represent Trump in his immunity case before the Supreme Court — elected attorney general of Missouri last year. Scharf lost in the Republican primary to Andrew Bailey, whom Trump tapped this week to become a deputy director at the FBI. Scharf is also now a member of the Trump administration, serving as a White House staff secretary, along with a cadre of Trump’s other personal lawyers.
Trump lashed out at Leo in May, calling him a “sleazebag” who “probably hates America,” ostensibly because the judicial nominees Leo recommended weren’t sufficiently willing to bend the law in Trump’s favor. The Supreme Court justices have been much more compliant of late — and Leo is still doing what he can to ensure the president can impose his will on the United States.
Over the past year, Leo’s new dark money node, the Lexington Fund, has poured $2 million into First Principles PAC, part of a series of groups that use some variation of that moniker, and were all registered in Tennessee last November. These First Principles groups, led by a former top Leo deputy,have been spending big on key races across the nation.
First Principles PAC, for example, funded another group called First Principles Wisconsin, which pumped over $600,000 into the critical Wisconsin Supreme Court election. The group spent the spring buying ads and robocalls on a race that saw Elon Musk contributing $20 million in an effort to secure conservative control of the state’s highest court. It was the most expensive judicial race in U.S. history, one that the Democratic-endorsed Susan Crawford wound up winning relatively easily — despite the tens of millions in right-wing money spent to defeat her.
Meanwhile, First Principles Action has given over $1 million this summer to Republican Katherine Robinson’s campaign for Alabama attorney general. Robinson is currently the chief counsel for the state’s current attorney general, Steve Marshall.
Marshall ran the Rule of Law Defense Fund — the dark money arm of the Republican Attorneys General Association — when it paid for robocalls encouraging people to march on Washington, D.C., to protest the results of the 2020 presidential election. “At 1 p.m., we will march to the Capitol building and call on Congress to stop the steal,” the robocall said, per NBC News. Marshall has denied knowledge of the robocalls, calling it “unacceptable” that he wasn’t informed about them.
First Principles PAC has also given to a group supporting MAGA loyalist Kris Kobach in his campaign to be reelected attorney general of Kansas.
The Lexington Fund, which has provided First Principles PAC with over 99 percent of its reported revenue, gave $1 million to a Super PAC working to ensure Maine Republican Susan Collins is able to fend off any challengers to her Senate seat next year.
Though Collins is publicly pro-choice, she provided essential votes for Trump’s right-wing Supreme Court nominees, who promptly gutted federal protections for abortion rights — fulfilling a decades-long goal of Leo’s.
Leo lives in Maine now, too, and Collins once attended a lavish fundraiser at his mansion in the ritzy Bar Harbor area.
