Opinion | The Man Behind the End of Roe v. Wade Has Big Plans for America

In the world of political fund-raising, there is hard money, soft money, dark money — and Leonard Leo money.

Political advocacy and charitable groups controlled by Leo now have far more assets than the combined total cash on hand of the Republican and Democratic National, Congressional and Senatorial committees: $440.9 million.

Leo is a 58-year-old graduate of Cornell Law School, a Catholic with ties to Opus Dei — the most conservative “personal prelature” in the church hierarchy — chief strategist of the Federalist Society for more than a quarter century and a crucial force behind the confirmations of John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. He has emerged over the past five years as the dominant fund-raiser on the right.

As Leo has risen to this pinnacle of influence, he has become rich, profiting from the organizations he has created and from the consulting fees paid by the conservative advocacy and lobbying groups he funds.

Leo has an overarching agenda. In a 2022 speech he made upon receiving the John Paul II New Evangelization Award at the Catholic Information Center, he warned fellow Catholics: “Catholic evangelization faces extraordinary threats and hurdles. Our culture is more hateful and intolerant of Catholicism than at any other point in our lives. It despises who we are, what we profess and how we act.”

Leo describes the adversaries of Catholicism as “these barbarians, secularists and bigots” who “have been growing more numerous over the past few years. They control and use many levers of power.” He is determined to wrest the levers of power from “the grasp of liberals” and place them, permanently if possible, with those he sees as their rightful owner: social and economic conservatives.

Leo has most famously used his network and personal influence not only to establish a 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court but also to secure appointment of deeply conservative justices throughout the federal and state court systems.

At the same time, Leo has provided essential support to the full gamut of right-wing advocacy and lobbying organizations, including the Federalist Society, Susan B. Anthony Pro-life America and the Faith and Freedom Coalition.

The millions of dollars Leo has raised through his tax-exempt nonprofits have, in turn, flowed to profit-making consulting companies owned, in part or wholly, by him. In 2016, he created the BH Group, a for-profit consulting firm that is now defunct, which received at least $6.9 million from tax- exempt donor nonprofits run by him.

Four years later, Leo formed CRC Advisors, also a profit-making consulting firm. Since then, two of his tax-exempt donor organizations, the 85 Fund and the Concord Fund, have paid CRC Advisors more than $77 million, according to reports filed with the I.R.S.

Leo is a prodigious fund-raiser whose organizations take in and hand out hundreds of millions annually. For example, the 85 Fund, according to the I.R.S., raised $317.9 million from 2020 to 2022 and gave out grants totaling $147.4 million. During that same period, the 85 Fund paid CRC Advisors — of which Leo is chairman — fees totaling $55.2 million, according to I.R.S. filings and research by Accountable.us and ProPublica.

Similarly, the Concord Fund raised $150.7 million from 2020 to 2023 and awarded grants totaling $96.8 million, according to the I.R.S., and the Concord Fund paid CRC Advisors a total of $21.9 million.

In effect, Leo has created for himself and his for-profit partners at CRC Advisors a lucrative business model.

In 2021, Leo was the recipient of what is believed to be the single largest contribution to a politically oriented advocacy group: $1.6 billion from Barre Seid, an obscure but very wealthy Chicago electronics manufacturer. Leo used the money to create the Marble Freedom Trust, which had assets of more than $1 billion in April 2023, according to its most recent I.R.S. filing. That report shows that it gave $153.8 million to Schwab Charitable, $55.5 million to Leo’s Concord Fund and $7.6 million to the Knights of Columbus Charitable Fund.

The vast sums under Leo’s command have elevated him to the highest echelons of conservative influence and power.

Tracking payments to CRC Advisors from groups supported by Leo’s three major charities is particularly difficult because of his deliberate secretiveness. For a majority of grants, Leo uses specific “donor-advised funds,” or pass-throughs — vehicles designed to prevent the public from knowing who the beneficiaries of his largess are. Over the three years covered in the most recent I.R.S. reports, Leo’s charities channeled a total of $325.5 million through Schwab Charitable and $216.7 million through Donors Trust.

Leo or his designated representative can direct Schwab or Donors Trust to make contributions to specific groups, but those groups remain largely out of public view.

Here is how Donors Trust describes its services:

In today’s polarized climate, many conservative and libertarian donors worry about being able to manage their charitable giving in a way that aligns with their values. We help donors like you to have a positive, principled impact with your giving in a private, tax-friendly way. We are a charitable partner that not only understands your commitment to liberty but shares it, too.

The Donor Trust lists the grants it makes without identifying the source of the money. A quick scan of the groups receiving money from the Donor Trust in 2021 and 2022 includes many entities that Leo has publicly supported, including the Competitive Enterprise Institute, $1.3 million; the Constitutional Defense Fund, $7.4 million; the Foundation for Government Accountability, $2.5 million; the State Policy Network, $17.4 million; the Federalist Society, $3.7 million; and Teneo Network, $6 million.

A second factor contributing to the opacity of financial transactions involving Leo’s donor organizations and the groups they fund is that they are not required to file timely reports. Instead, many tax-exempt groups file reports with the I.R.S. in November for the previous year. So the most recent filings for many of these organizations is November 2023 for information on activities in 2022, now nearly two years out of date.

By email, I asked Leo a series of questions about his financial transactions, including:

Can you explain what CRC Advisors did for the $6,058,832 in 2023, the $3,757,454 paid in 2022, the $7,679,331 in 2021 by the Concord Fund? What did CRC Advisors do for the 85 Fund after receiving payments of $21,360,985 in 2022, $21,715,382 in 2021, and $12,117,335 in 2020?


Do these payments from 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) charities, which are controlled by you, to CRC Advisors — a for-profit consulting firm that you chair — amount to self-dealing, in violation of tax law? If not, what justifies these payments? I know you have dismissed these concerns as baseless, but could you explain how they are baseless?


In addition to the payments to CRC Advisors from the Leo-Leonard-run donor groups, many of the groups that have received payments from the 85 Fund, the Concord Fund and the Marble Trust have hired CRC Advisors. What services do you provide these groups? Do you assist them in making grant applications to your donor groups?

In his emailed reply, Leo argued that all payments were legitimate and based on the quality of the product clients received:

CRC Advisors is a firm that employs over 100 best-in-class professionals who provide an unsurpassed level of value and impact through an all-encompassing suite of services, including program and events management, content creation, research, and all aspects of public affairs. Our fees and services are based on a rigorous compliance system that is established and managed by leading legal counsel, accountants, and management and compensation consultants. We are paid less for more than our progressive rivals, and the nonprofit clients we work with are governed by independent boards. We are happy to have these standards judged against the progressives’ Arabella and Tides networks, or any other enterprise that is similar to us.

In May 2019, Leo told The Washington Post: “I don’t waste my time on stories that involve money and politics because what I care about is ideas.”

Despite the disclosure limitations surrounding the money flowing through the donor-advised funds, Leo’s charities do list some of their grantees, and some of those grantees, in turn, disclose payments to CRC Advisors on their reports to the I.R.S.

The tax filings from 2020 to 2023 show, for example, that Leo’s donor groups gave Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America at least $12 million. In its most recent tax filing, the Anthony group reported that it paid CRC Advisors $543,821 for “public relations consulting.”

Leo’s charities have given the Foundation for Government Accountability at least $2 million. From 2020 to 2022, the accountability foundation told the I.R.S. that it paid CRC Advisors $640,000 for “public relations.”

Or take the Federalist Society, the conservative legal think tank. Leo was formerly the vice president and is now a co-chairman of its board. His donor nonprofits have given it at least $15.5 million during the 2020s, according to tax records. In its most recent filings with the I.R.S., the Federalist Society reported paying CRC Advisors $4.78 million from 2020 to 2022.

Last week, Hans Nichols, a reporter at Axios, published a letter Leo wrote to the recipients of grants from the 85 Fund. It said in part:

“Conservative philanthropy is too heavily weighted in the direction of ‘ideation’ — the development of and education about conservative ideas and policies. In contrast, vastly insufficient funds are going toward operationalizing and weaponizing those ideas and policies to crush liberal dominance at the choke points of influence and power in our society.”

To counter this misallocation of right-wing money, Leo told the grantees, “If others are not going to devote funding to operationalize or weaponize the conservative vision, then the 85 Fund needs to weight its support much more heavily in that direction and much less in the direction of research, policy and general education.”

The 85 Fund, Leo continued, “intends to gap-fill by placing much, much greater emphasis on projects and leaders that operationalize or weaponize ideas and policies.”

For beneficiaries of Leo’s grant-making organization struggling to figure out how to “operationalize or weaponize” ideas and policies, what better place is there than CRC Advisors to get guidance?

Leo’s financial activities have been subject to repeated investigations by such liberal groups as True North Research, which has released several studies; Accountable.us, which has also put Leo under the magnifying glass; and the Campaign for Accountability.

In April 2023, the Campaign for Accountability filed a complaint with the I.R.S. seeking an investigation into seven Leo-affiliated organizations in order to determine

whether the Leo-affiliated nonprofits have diverted substantial portions of their income and assets, directly or indirectly, to the personal benefit of Leonard Leo. Most of these entities have either made substantial independent contractor payments to one or more of his for-profit business entities or made major contributions to other Leo-affiliated nonprofits that made such payments. Such payments were generally listed as made in exchange for alleged consulting, research, public relations, or similar services; however, CFA has reasonable questions about whether those alleged services were actually rendered at all or, if services were rendered, whether the payments made were substantially in excess of the fair market value of those services.

The Campaign for Accountability, in its complaint, cited investigative reporting by Heidi Przybyla of Politico about Leo’s growing affluence: “Beginning in 2016, coinciding with the multimillion-dollar payments paid to BH Group, Leonard Leo began living more lavishly. In 2017, Leonard Leo pledged to donate $1 million to Vatican initiatives worldwide.”

I asked Philip Hackney, a former I.R.S. expert in the law governing tax-exempt groups who is now a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh, about Leo’s involvement with tax-exempt and for-profit groups.

In a phone interview, Hackney said the crucial issue when examining situations like Leo’s is whether the fees paid to his for-profit firms are “a fair amount for the services he is rendering.” The $77 million paid to CRC Advisors by Leo’s charitable funds “seems like a lot,” Hackney said.

Hackney noted, however, that when the I.R.S. seeks remedies in such cases, “it’s a hard battle to win” because the judgment of a fair price is subject to so many different interpretations, many of them subjective.

Marcus Owens, a former director of the I.R.S. Exempt Organizations Division — who is now a co-chair for nonprofits and tax-exempt organizations at the Washington law firm Loeb & Loeb — wrote by email:

There are, indeed, federal tax rules that govern related party transactions, particularly when the transactions involve a “disqualified person,” the phrase Congress used when it enacted section 4958 of the Internal Revenue Code back in 1986 to refer to an insider with the ability to wield influence over an organization that is exempt from federal income tax under either section 501(c)(3) or section 501(c)(4).


For example, the Marble Trust and the Concord Fund are exempt under section 501(c)(4), while the 85 Fund is exempt under section 501(c)(3). Insider transactions that result in the insider receiving an excessive return, i.e., one that is greater than what fair market terms and conditions would provide, can lead to loss of tax-exempt status or the imposition of a penalty excise tax on the insider of 25 percent of the excessive amount, or both. Fair market terms and conditions are defined as what similar organizations would pay for similar goods or services under similar circumstances, a standard that encourages creative expression by attorneys and accountants.

While Leo has reached a pinnacle of power, he still has a lot riding on the outcome not only of the presidential election but also of the battle for control of the Senate.

Capturing the presidency is important to Leo not only for policy and ideological reasons, but also because, if Donald Trump is elected, he will appoint the next I.R.S. commissioner. It would be very unlikely that such an appointee would pursue an investigation into Leo’s finances.

Control of the Senate is also crucial because the Democratic-controlled Judiciary Committee last year subpoenaed Leo to talk about whether he was involved in gifts to members of the Supreme Court by prominent Republican donors.

In April, Leo declared that he was refusing to comply with the subpoena. “I am not capitulating,” he told reporters, to “Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and the left’s dark money effort to silence and cancel political opposition.”

Since then, the Senate Democratic leadership has been reluctant to try to enforce the subpoena — a virtually impossible task since it would require overcoming a filibuster. If Democrats retain control after the coming elections, they will be under considerable pressure to change the filibuster rules, raising the possibility that Leo could be forced to testify under oath about his activities.

The chances of that happening are, however, slim at best. The most likely outcome of the controversies surrounding Leo is that he will continue, unabated, in his drive to make America great again by devoting vast sums, relentless pressure and every kind of imaginable financial ingenuity to alter the balance of power and push America ever further to the right.

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