Transcripts For CSPAN Senate Hearing On Judicary Branch Special Interest Group Money 20210311

>> let us call this hearing to order. senator whitehouse: i am very grateful to my friend, senator kennedy of the louisiana for acting as ranking member on this committee. i look forward to lively proceedings in this committee during this congress. we have some terrific witnesses and i will introduce them briefly before we present our opening statements. we have the president of the board -- miss graves previously served as deputy assistant attorney general and the clinton administration where i also served. the deputy chief for the u.s. court and as chief counsel for nominations on this senate judiciary committee for chairman the 80 -- leahy. serving as a familiar presence to us in this room. we will then hear from it professor of law at harvard law school who writes objectively about constitutional law, voting and the supreme court, our topic for today. ben is a civil rights leader and the people for the american way. he is a visiting scholar at the university of pennsylvania and a former visiting professor at princeton university. he was the youngest ever national leader when he served as president and ceo from 2008 until 2013 and he also formally was managing editor of the low -- the oldest black newspaper in mississippi. scott water is the president of the president of the capital research center. he was previously executive director and a senior fellow at the becket fund for religious liberty. before that, he was special assistant to president george w. bush on domestic policy. he is a senior editor and has been at the american enterprise institute and our final witness is jonathan adler. this was at the case western university school of law. they have worked at the competitive enterprise institute, he is the author of his 2016 book, business and the roberts court. i will recognize myself for an opening statement followed by senator kennedy for his opening statement and then we will proceed with the statement of the witnesses which i urge them to keep well within the seven minute limit. i will be policing and enforcing that. the enthusiastic support of all of the subcommittee on that point and then we will go forward on ever questions. as the chair, i will be here through the entire proceedings so i will reserve my questions until the end and let my colleagues move forward. we are here because our great american republic is mired in dark money. huge goats of money by covert political influence. the dark money pours in through donations and the hundreds of thousands, the millions, even in the tens of millions of dollars. an entire new political infrastructure has been set up in our country to manage the dark money cascade and to hide the donors. it is a multi-hundred million dollar covert operation. it is unleashed in our republic and -- it has unleashed in our republic over $100 million. this sly machinery was mostly republican and then in recent years, democratic dark money has caught up and now, republican colleagues have faced massive attacks leveled through democratic front groups. the focus of the series of hearings we begin today on the encroachment of the dark money machinery into the judicial branch of government. the first hearing will provide an overview of various avenues of dark money influence. we will dig into each separate play in hearings to come. it begins with the selection of judges, a private organization has long sought influence over judicial nomination to be the good housekeeping seal of approval for conservative judges. when president trump formalized this gatekeeper role, things turned toxic. first, a private entity obtained over judicial nominations to our country's courts. that alone ought to be a problem. second, the private organization is completely nontransparent in deploying its influence. also there are massive contemporaneous donations. it looks like the gatekeeping function of this private organization was sold or licensed to anonymous bidders. related groups sprang up with to get creepy -- gatekeeper group. we don't over the big donors are behind this operation. it appears that the last three supreme court justices and many court of appeal judges were ushered onto the bench through this operation. it is no small thing. once a supreme court nominee gets through, the next step is to run political campaigns for the next nominations. in each confirmation, one or two anonymous contributions under the advertising campaigns. there is no reason to rule out that the same donor made all these contributions, meaning someone from hiding spent over $50 million to influence the makeup of the supreme court. we don't know who they are and we don't know what business they have had before the court. we do know that the gatekeeper organization and the campaign organization share the same floor. all the evidence says this is the same covert operation. when the leader of the court left the home at the gatekeeper organization to go wage voter suppression, it was the leader of the campaign organization. with justices thus selected, the dark money task becomes how to tell them what to do. private back channels will lose the justice their jobs and the industry emerges to hide in plain view the special interest signaling. dozens of anonymously -- sometimes they go out and find a plaintiff to produce a case, to bring to the court to solicit the outcome they seek. sometimes they form up in choral groups to signal the donor wishes to the court. again, all of this is covert secrecy. see -- flotilla owned by the same group appear without disclosing to the court their affiliation and the planners and funders of this team discuss orchestration of briefs and private memos. usually in cases of interest to this operation. this numbers about a dozen. in the case before the court right now, one of the central interests the dark money operations, nearly 50 have appeared. the funders behind the clinical campaigns as well. there are many questions to answer about how it interconnects and what reward is for spending such vast sums. there is no question about one thing. this machinery is operated right now in all three of these avenues. we know that. i understand how politically charged this is but i submit that if the labels were removed, if this were described as a law school exam, no one would contest that something is wrong here. no private organization should control the turnstile for a country. worse, they should not control the turnstile without transparency. they should certainly not be excepting massive donations while controlling the turnstiles. they should not hide the identities of the massive donors . if we have to have advertising campaigns, they should not be paid for by anonymous big donors and no one with business before the court should be engaged in any of this mischief. courtrooms ought to be open places where you know who is present. not a place where powerful players can come masked behind front groups, hiding both their own identity and interconnections. the supreme court should not be a place that has a special interest control fast lane, bringing certain special interest cases before the court at high speed without the trappings of a real case or controversy. the court itself should not tolerate this. but if it won't respond, we must. >> i want to think the chairman of the white house for calling the subcommittee here and he is my friend. as he knows. i am looking forward to working with him and every member of this committee on both sides of the table and the aisle on the issues before this committee. therefore i begin my prepared remarks, i will make an observation, it has been my experience that senators generally approach hearings in one of two ways, sometimes both but generally one or two. to make a point or to learn. sometimes both but usually it is one or the other. i am certainly not criticizing either approach. i have used both. i came here today to learn. i want to listen and i intend to listen very carefully to our distinguished witnesses. i did want to make a few formal points for the record. i think all of us, both republicans and democrats and independents can agree that our people deserve the very best government we can give them. as a result of human frailty, sometimes they always don't -- don't always get the government they deserve. we are here today to look at the connection of money in our federal judiciary. the debate over money and politics is not new. i think the partisan bickering in congress over the supreme court and other federal benches has almost reached a fever pitch. during the last administration, i personally witnessed an unprecedented level of vitriol leveled at justice brett kavanaugh and justice amy coney barrett. there confirmation proceedings at times became circuses. -- circuses without attend. if i never see any genitalia shaved headgear in my life again, i can die a happy man. i was disappointed in that. other nominees for federal judgeships have also been targeted. nominees have been targeted for their personal beliefs. including their beliefs with respect to human life. and when it begins. i hope that in this congress, we can do better. i mean that sincerely. i don't mean that to be a boko statement. i thing a balance has to be struck. i have many friends on the democratic side. i have many friends on the republican side who do the same thing. but i would observe that it is import to keep in mind that in criticizing someone, it is important to take a look at both sides. there have been days here in washington when i believed were observed that if it weren't for double standards, we would not have any standard at all. that is not a good thing. the american people may not read aristotle every day. they don't have time but they did it and they know hypocrisy when they see it. our first amendment has to be honored. that is something i hope we can talk about today. people have a right in america to express their opinion. you're not free if you can't say what you think. you're just not. there are reasonable limits on that as they should be. but we have entered -- i hesitate to call it cancer culture -- cancel culture. it could cost you your job. it could cost her spouse's job. some people don't have thick skin. they are embarrassed. they are embarrassed when they are subject to the tweets that trend on twitter. i think it is fair to say for a variety of reasons that it is not limited to one political point of view or persuasion. for a variety of reasons, we do live in a cancel culture. you can technically say someone has a first amendment right, but if they are canceled for exercising it, they really don't. on the issue of transparency, who can be against it? i think it has to be balanced with those first amendment concerns. i want to make it clear, this will be my final thought, i support transparency. i come from a state, and there are other states like it, i am not picking on the louisiana, but there have been times in my state's history, some of our political leaders would have stolen everything that wasn't nailed down if it wasn't for transparency. i am not proud of that. that is not the case today, but there was a time, and i have always believed, that the best way to resist him patient is a proper upbringing -- to resist temptation is a proper upbringing, a strong set of values, and witnesses. that is all transparency is. i do not want any of my remarks to be construed as not supporting that as i'm -- as an ideal. thank you mr. senator, chairman, general white house for calling this hearing today. >> i think ranking member kennedy for his remarks. i turn to our first witness, lisa graves who is appearing electronically, assuming our electronic team can bring her to life on the screens. hurtful testimony, -- hurtful testimony will be made a part -- her full testimony will be made a part of the record. lisa: thank you for the opportunity to testify. members of the subcommittee, ranking member. my name is lisa graves, member of a nationally recognized watchdog group. i helped a number of historical research projects about charles koch. our democracy is facing a trio of export never challenges right now. a debbie pandemic that some refused to take seriously, even as it ravages families. a bigger tip monetization of poisonous lies about our election, and a calamity of dark money that is amplifying the voices of the superrich and corroding the integrity of our court system. thank you for inviting me to talk about the calamity in our courts. i have devoted much of my career to try and protect fair courts for all. i have served as an advisor and all three ranches of the federal government. i have a deep reverence for the role a fair judiciary plays in a healthy republic to ensure that the laws adopted are fairly applied, and that the sacred promises of our constitution are kept. i have focused on the judiciary, because for most of our history, the supreme court failed to play that role. the courts have terribly felt like it america -- the courts have terribly failed to black americans, conscientious objectors, women, and people like fred korematsu. after world war ii the supreme court finally had independent justices with the courage to protect people protection of the law. that freedom of speech applied to white passionate for peace into one's. the backlash against those landmark rulings -- [indiscernible] it has endured and expanded, adding grievances by elite ceos who have stepped on workers rights to form unions. there is a true line from the regressive force from chief justice earl warren to richard nixon, all the way through to free-market fundamentalists peddling arguments about limited government as a cloak for limited democracy. the secret cash trying to capture the court nowadays is massive. the temptation to use storehouses of money as a secret power, turned into a multimillion dollar industry, trying to capture our courts and turn back the clock. our nation's highest court is engulfed in dark money. over the -- special interest have pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into judicial decisions, nominations, judges themselves. our intention is noted that that amount of cash is not a positive sign of civic engagement, it is an exercise in raw power. the supreme court will issue rulings, we can protect our rights to vote [indiscernible] if we can regulate carbon and secure -- even if we can eliminate corruption by exposing [indiscernible] as a federal society leader but said, to which i say let's treat them that they -- that way by regulating them as such as the chairman has proposed. i think the process for choosing judges needs even greater transparency, because judges are supposed to be fair, they are pointed to jobs for life. some argue that there are dark money on the left. that argument has no bearing on the reforms coming before the senate. disclosure rules will apply regardless regardless -- of the point of view. i must emphasize that there is simply no evidence that there was anyone on the left lane the kind of singular role in the selection of supreme court judges. the marshaling of resources to secure their confirmation. [indiscernible] leo has boasted to donors that america stands at the precipice of what he calls a revival of the structural constitution, harkening back before the new deal, back in the robber baron era. the washington post estimated the combined revenue to be $250 million between the years 2014 and 2017. that was before the brett kavanaugh nomination. when 2018 is added into that tally, the total reaches more than $409. that does not in cash $400 million. during this period, his assets alive seem to increase. a close on a mansion in maine, literally on the date the senate voted to invoke cloture. [indiscernible] he took a pay cut to spend time volunteering, but he was not required by law to file any white house financial disclosure forms. what are the results? five of the current justices are former federalist society members, and 86% of the appellate judges were members. just as judicial apartments have become a political campaign, getting a case heard by the supreme court has become a defective form of lobbying. the number of amicus briefs has soared in recent years as the national journal found, saying that justices have cited 55% of cases last term. [indiscernible] by searching past records, our researchers found that between 2015 and 2019, a total of $160 million was donated by 12 funding people to 18 repeat player groups who filed amicus briefs in three or more of those cases. $40 million of that came from three right-wing donors. [indiscernible] another 47 nine dollars came from coke industries. i am you it is l pastime for mandatory disclosure. finally, the binding code of conduct means our highest court has the lowest binding ethical standard, none. in my written statement i detail a shocking array of problems related to compass of interest, disclosure of outside family incomes, and more. many of these anecdotes involve justice clarence thomas. in american democracy at its best, we expect judges to be fair and not favor powerful corporations. that plays an increasing role in appointments, amicus briefs, and other points of influence. it is essential to having a system of justice worthy of respect and deference. these are some of the reasons why we strongly support crucial reform, like those contained in the for the people act, the disclose act, the amicus act. thank you for considering our views. >> let me now call on a professor. coming to us from cambridge, perhaps. >> thank you chairman white house, members of the subcommittee. this is my first testimony, i am honored and humbled. democracy as you know is under threat around the world. countries such as poland, hungary, turkey and brazil have experienced substantial deteriorations over the last decade. astonishingly, this democratic degradation is even adversely affected the united states, according to democracy ratings of freedom house, american democracy is under assault from multiple directions. our last president displayed an openly authoritarian bent, attacked the press, and sales judicial independence. politicized agencies, encourage violence, undermine fundamental norms, delegitimize elections, and manifested a bizarre adoration for foreign autocrats. in the months following the 2020 election, that president propagated the big lie, that the election had been stolen from him, solicited election fraud by the georgia secretary of state by demanding he find votes, and on january 6, he incited a violent coup against the u.s. capitol congressional republicans were surprisingly complacent. they do not want the 2016 trump campaign's with russia investigated, they were untroubled by the president's systematic obstruction. they voted against his impeachment and removal from office over a shakedown phone call, and did not object to his systematic obstruction of congressional oversight. of possibly greater significance has been the gop's assault on democracy over the last 15 years, through a wide variety of state electoral practices. republican-controlled state governments have suppressed votes through restrictive voter identification laws, and purges of the voter rolls. they have gerrymandered districts, enabling republicans to maintain control over state legislatures in the house, while failing to win majorities of the boat. they have also erected obstacles to college student starting, delayed elections that they anticipated they would lose, this writer the powers of democratic governors, rejected the results of voter initiatives, and post obstacles to putting such initiatives on the ballot in the first place, creating trivial -- crippling legal barriers. in the month prior to the 2020 election, republican officials across the nation made it harder to vote during a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic, refusing in some states to expand absentee balloting, restricting the availability of drop boxes to collect such ballots, refusing to relax witness signature requirements, and declining to allow the counting of absentee ballots postmarked but not received by election day. since the election, we learn everyday about new assault by republican legislatures, especially in states that have recently turned against the party. these assaults include, the restrictions on absentee balloting, more stringent voter identification, reductions in early voting opportunities, often specifically, those methods used disproportionately by african-americans, and promises up even more grotesque gerrymandering. two factors explain this relatively recent republican assault on democracy at the state level. this sort of behavior did not go on as recently as the 1990's. first, the nationally electorate is more evenly divided. it means that suppressing a few thousand votes can affect election outcomes with a political consequences. second, rheumatic demographic changes, together with increased secularization have led republicans to conclude that their political agenda no longer commands majority support, recognizing that their party performs better when voter turnout decreases, republicans have chosen to shrink the electorate rather than to make the policy agenda more popular. republican supreme court justices have been largely complicit with this assault on democracy. in 2013, they effectively nullified the provision of the 1965 voting act, one of the most consequential and noble statutes ever enacted. republican justices have also upheld strict voter identification laws and purges of the voter rolls on the basis of the states interest in reducing voter fraud, which numerous studies have demonstrated is a virtually nonexistent problem. in 2019, the republican justices refused to remedy the problem of artisan gerrymandering, which today mostly benefits republicans. the public and justices have also unleashed a virtually unrestricted flow of money into politics, on the basis of contrived constitutional rationales, which just proportionately represent -- benefit well-funded interest groups. 10 years ago, the justices ruled that corporations have the same free-speech speech rights as people, and extraordinary departure from precedent, original understanding and common sense. in the run-up to the 2020 election, republican justices defer to republican elected officials who saw political advantage by seeking to make it more difficult for citizens to vote during a once in a century pandemic. rather than defending democracy, the court under republican control has become another engine of democratic degradation. more generally, today's republican justices have aggressively advanced the gop's agenda, comprising the most conservative court since before world war ii, today's republican justices have avidly championed the interests of the u.s. chamber of commerce. they have undermined public sector labor unions by interpreting the first amendment in a departure from decades-old president, has giving workers a right to be free riders, benefiting from union protection without paying membership dues. republican duchesses have protected corporations for punitive damage awards bite inventing previously unheard of due process protections. they have pared back class action litigation by rewriting the federal rules of civil procedure to impose more stringent requirements on the certification of a class, thus fulfilling a longtime wish of the chamber of commerce. republican justices have also stretched to sustain forced arbitration agreements that compel corporate employees and customers to air their grievances, not in court, but rather in arbitration proceedings that are rigged in favor of the corporation. bethany, today's republican justices advance the social agenda of today's republican party, eroding the constitutional right to abortion, and validating good control measures on the basis of a novel and historically unsound interpretation of the second amendment, and threatening to invalidate race-based affirmative action on the basis of a colorblind reading of the constitution that has no firm grounding in text, original understanding or judicial precedent. today's supreme court has shown itself to be no friend to democracy, but almost always a friend to the republican party. thank you very much. sen. whitehouse: i am impressed with your, if nothing else. within five seconds of your seven minutes. well done. that will qualify were next witness -- i will call governor's witness. >> thank you for the opportunity to testify today. my name is benjamin, president of people for the american way. we are more than one million citizens dedicated to the ideals of freedom, equality, opportunity and justice for all. throughout my career as a community organizer, investigator reporter and civil rights leader, i have been inspired by supreme court rulings that moved our country closer to the promise of liberty and justice for all. that promise has been hurt by the pro-corporate activism of the supreme court under chief justice john roberts. today i will touch briefly on three areas. first, voting and democracy. in citizens united, a five-four majority ruled that it is unconstitutional for congress to provide our elections -- to protect our elections from unlimited spending by corporations. citizens united and other rulings enhance corporate power by unleashing a flood of big money, and secret spending. corporations power was further enhanced by the courts decision to cut section five of the voting rights act. section five provided key protections to black and latino voters, voters who we know are most likely to support environmental regulations. my friend van jones has often said, there is no green but without the black and brown vote. roberts said it was ok to get rid of section five because voter dissemination was not as bad as it used to be. legally it may no sense. the late justice ruth bader ginsburg said, it was like throwing away your umbrella and a rainstorm because you are not getting wet. it had a powerful political impact. within hours, some states began to enforce voting restrictions and throw people off voting roles. that continues today. as we speak, 43 state legislatures are considering ways to make it harder for americans to vote. the demographic groups hit hardest by those laws, black and latino voters, less likely to support pro-corporate, anti-consumer, anti-environmental, anti-worker policies. it brings me to my second point. the roberts court ruling against workers and unions undermined an important check on corporate power. in our country, there are two types of political power. organize money and organize people. they are often at hearts with each other. in this case, justice neil gorsuch provided the fifth vote to overturn long-standing workplace rules and we can unions. that tif the balance of power even more strongly towards corporations, almost unlimited organize money. my third port is about religious freedom. -- my third point is about religious freedom. people for the american way was founded to defend the first amendment and its protections for religious freedom. it's allowed for diverse communities of faith to flourish in this country. george washington expressed the spirit of our founders in a letter to a jewish congregation in newport, rhode island. he assured them that they shared the same rights as other people in this country, adding that the u.s. government would give bigotry no sanction in persecution no assistance. the roberts court has contorted these values, and converted religious freedom from a shield to protect worshipers into a sword to attack workers. the 5-4 ruling in hobby lobby allowed corporations to tonight legally required health benefits to workers based on a company owners religious beliefs. betty corporations use religious claims to evade laws designed to protect workers was, as justice ginsburg said, unnecessary to protect religious freedom and like entering a minefield. the corporate war on the people's court as a threat to every person in this country, and the values that unite us as a people. while i am a democrat, it is important to note this is not a partisan issue. whether you spend more time with liberals or libertarians, you hear concerns over the power that big corporations have in our society, our government, specifically our courts. that is why bipartisan majorities, people of this country, support the policies in the for the people act which with them at corporate power over our elections. as members of the senate, you have the power to pass the for the people act, and we hope you do. we pray that as members of this committee, you will support the confirmation of fair-minded judges who have spent their lives serving people rather than those who spend their lives serving corporations. consider other reforms to rescue our courts from corporate domination. thank you very much. sen. whitehouse: thank you very much mr. jealous, and the terrific leadership. i now turn to mr. walter. mr. scott walter. scott: thank you so much, ranking member kennedy, distinguish memories of the subcommittee. thank you for the opportunity to speak, even though you may disagree with me. it is a great privilege in these grim days of silencing and canceling free-speech, and i respect you for allowing it. i am sure we all agree that democracy is disagreement. the capital research center by work studies the type of money flows discussed in the chairman's cap reports report. i paid to the respective reading every word. despite his 18 references to dark money, i was surprised that report does not define that term with any legal position. is it money in nonprofits? all of those types of groups and more meet the reports make criteria, funding organizations and activities. my preferred definition of dark money came from a man who said, dark money is support for speech the left wants to silence. that definition reveals how dark money conjures up a bogeyman. it's just away from the substance of dispute. it implies that one's opponents are somehow -- just because they use the same funding everyone else does. not that both sides are equal in dark money. by any measure, the left has far more dark money than conservatives, and the left is sometimes more dark than conservatives. before looking at the numbers, just consider, this very hearing is unthinkable without dark money flowing to everyone here. members and witnesses and both political parties. a decade ago a liberal group coin start money to refer only to see for nonprofits. independent into dispenser groups that grew. now the term has grew to encompass all nonprofits, sometimes super pac's. those different groups have helped every member of the subcommittee get elected. every single witness you have called today works at and collaborates with nonprofits that receive not completely disclosed support from donors on left and right. to paraphrase president nixon, we are all dark money users now. every single activity this committee engages in, every single political and judicial dispute, including judgeships, the regulations, force union dues. every single one has groups that receive dark money and make arguments on both sides. yet that simple fact, well known to everyone in this hearing, is never mentioned. with one glancing exception when it says in passing that dark money is now used by republican and democratic interest alike. even there, the report claims dark money was quote, a republican political device. the report gave no evidence for that amazing claim, because it is false. the report says that in court battles, the right is fueled by hundreds of billions of special interest dollars, with sources never fully disclosed. this money powers a complex network of think tanks, policy front groups, political campaign norms and public relation shops. mr. chairman, you make wonderful charts on all of those things, depicting the side you disagree with. i can make you charts of the identical thing among your friends. every chart i make will show more proof, finding more years, with a lot more dark money. to be fair, you may not realize how fast and rich your site is, because you have been misled by the partisan one side research you rely on from folks like the washington post and the center for media and democracy. a few examples. to be fair, the type of dark money your report criticized and i will cite the identical dark money. first, foundations. the report cites the bradley foundation because it funds groups and amicus groups you disagree with. what about the ford foundation, whose funding towards bradley's, and its influence on the court began decades earlier. forts influence has been enormous. ford virtually invented the public interest law movement, and got a reluctant treasury department to allowed charitable status for those law firms, even though assuming people had previously been considered charitable. that tax law also open the floodgates for left-wing foundation to use dark money to fund lawsuits. second, public interest law firms. your report criticizes the specific legal foundation, but it was founded years after ford's big expansion of such firms on the others. third, the report criticizes donors trust. one fund was created a quarter of a century before donors trust, and for the years your report uses, the other one discoursed almost twice as much. fourth, the campaign for and against judicial nominees. you target the judicial crisis network, but today you invited people from the american way. that is also a c4 and it invented multimillion dollar nomination campaigns in 1987, when it smeared my friend. incidentally, the people for the american way was initially launched out of a dark money empire which has long funded it. dark money also goes for the center to immediate -- the center for media and democracy. beth, your report criticizes conservative networks working together. you sent over five years it raised to $59. your report ignores the network of front groups run by the little-known advisors. even though they run demand justice and fix the court. again, your report criticizes the conservative network that raised $250 million over five years. the other advisors network, over the same five years raised $1.5 billion. now let's look at the big numbers. if dark money means nonprofits, you and your friends have gotten ahead for half a decade. issue one reports the left got 54% of the cycle. in the 2020 cycle, the democratic party's candidate won the dark money raised by roughly $132 million to $22 million, according to the center for responsive politics. if dark money means c3 nonprofits like the bradley foundation, you are even more ahead. our last study found left over funding with 3.7 to one. we are talking $3.2 million for conservative groups, $8.1 billion for liberal groups. permit me a no on fundraising. there are various funds with people who agree on your argument. to hire staff from other offices or other groups? of course not. every member here is proud to fight for what he or she believes in, to raise money for what he or she believes in, to work with anyone who will work with you in your fight. they are no different from you and your friends, they just have less money. sen. whitehouse: thank you. we now turn to professor adler. professor, the floor is now yours. adler: thank you. thank you for being able to testify. i care deeply about the court and it has been much of my focus on research of the court and its relationship to business. i care deeply about the roles of accountability and law which is why i helped with checks and balances three years ago. an important aspect is our judicial system. it is common for those who disagree with the court's decisions to question the motives of the justices rather than their decisions or merits or seek the relevant laws, they prefer to demonize the justices and imply nefarious motivations. we have seen some today. when public commentary fails and seeks to apply labels to the courts work. focusing on outcomes more than rationales. an interesting minute of corporate -- an interesting instrument for corporate dark money. berger court or linker court. specifically the roberts court overturns residences and holds federal laws to be unconstitutional at a lower rate than its predecessors. it is not close. such decisions have not moved uniformly in one direction. for every citizens united, there is a rebel or ramose. the roberts court is more of a status quo then any court in the past 60 years. we can disagree on the courts decisions but that is a fact on how the chorus acted. it is best understood as a consequence of the justice conduct. and not undue favoritism or influence by any group economic or otherwise. this is white business groups win some cases and lose others. this is why the conservative justices agree with each other in some cases and disagree and others. it is a supreme court or majority, they were enthralled to an agenda. one would expect business groups would prevail or states are the highest. where they had the most to gain or lose. there were free exceptions and not what we witnessed from the roberts court. there are unprecedented litigation theories and they seek dramatic changes in doctrine, particularly constitutional doctrine. this is also in some of the most consequential cases in court. we are with pro-corporate agenda and it would be hard to explain decisions like homer city, or i could go on and on. jurisprudence, an area that businesses care about, one cannot see any evidence of corporate influence. one cannot explain differences or the recent uranium decision based on theory of corporate influence. we can explain those if we pay attention to that individual preferences of the justices. roberts court is a concerned car on most issues most of the time and sometimes conservative rulings do help. as it is failing to find the new cause action. all of the justices on both the left and the right place there commitments at head of any desire to help or harm in particular interest or a particular group. some groups do not seek to influence a court, of course they do. the courts decisions are important and people care about how they come out. the searing is a testament to that. organizations on both sides try to influence the judiciary weather by the confirmation process or encouraging the courts to reach a conclusion. some see it as a fundraising opportunity. there is nothing nefarious about groups of americans seeking to get their voices heard about the actions of the government. they say a videogame netted over $1 billion over a year, i am not sure why this here is a sign of the crisis. there is an influence to influence the federal courts as a consequence for turning over so many questions to the federal courts. more is at stake in the judiciary the more they will seek to ensure their perspectives prevail. the only way this will -- the range of issues has expanded so too has the value of influencing decisions. this has increased the incentive. whether nomination process, briefs, or over efforts to place political pressure on courts. in judicial decisions, they are going to resolve the key questions, that is where interest should focus their research and attention. if you want to lower the incentive, we have to lower mistakes. more questions congress can resolve, the less pressure there will be on the courts. the less people would care about who is nominated or confirming individual judges. take more care in pressing statutes, restore programs, avoid partisan attacks on integrity and independence. it should return to judicial qualifications. these and others steps are things that congress could do. they queue for the opportunity to be that my views. i hope my perspective has been helpful. i am available to answer any questions. sen. whitehouse: thank you professor. i appreciate it. for the questioning, i will begin with a chairman of the committee. senator durbin. i will yield him my time. i will go last. sen. durbin: thank you very much. thank you for having this hearing. i know of your intense interest in the subject and your interest in the matter beyond any other senator that i know. today bringing in some experts to test their opinions. i have a statement for the record i am not good to read, but i would like to say a few things. this week we were reminded how dark money operates. the judicial crisis network, well-known, targeted the president's group to the campaign with lies. the ad that they were running, " a baseless peer campaign -- smear campaign. this was not our first experience. they are known for spending marion's -- millions of dollars to bluffton nomination of the judge to the supreme court five years ago. what an irony that today he gets his next assignment in public life with a bipartisan vote in the united states senate. maybe that is of good things to come. i would like to know more about the judicial crisis network. i'm not saying they do not have a right to speak their mind, but i think i have a right to ask who paid for it? who is behind this effort? when you bring of this question with some they say, if you disclose the sources of money, it will scare them away. they do not want to be terrorized by the press or anyone. they want to be able to just exercise their free speech and to do it without fear of retribution. interesting. to argue the point of view with a group of senators who are obliged under law to disclose all of their donors, virtually. certainly every significant donor. that is our standard of operation. there may be areas that may be questioned about how we raise money, but disclosure is not one of them as far as i am concerned. it is appropriate to disclose people who contribute to my campaign. having said that, we all know what is going on with super pac's and other entities. i will save that for another day. bottom line, i don't think any of us have any doubts on how the american people would answer the following question. do you believe we need longer political campaigns? do you believe we need more people putting negative ads on television? we know the answer to that, too. we are now reaching a breaking point, i am afraid, and this whole progress that would discourage the common woman or man from engaging. i salute you for bringing this issue before us. i would like to make one last point. in the notes i have read in preparation, i understand that now this dark money effort is going towards the voter suppression campaign across america in 40 states, 250 proposals, all of which are designed to restrict voting in america. i am an amateur student of history, i quickly underline amateur. i see reoccurring themes. ku klux klan, appears and reappears every 50 years. look at history, 1865, 1915, mid 60's, and now again in some new form. the effort of voter suppression appears and reappears in history. when it first started in 1890, during jim crow era there was something called a mississippi plan, the mississippi plant was a ingenious device by racist to include blacks from voting -- preclude blacks from voting, answer questions on the constitution, pay a poll tax, all of these were designed from stopping african-americans from voting. they were successful. they drove down voting to levels we have never seen again. it worked. now, there is an effort underway to impose voter suppression across the united states again, to suppress the votes of black and brown people. why is this a recurring theme in american history? what does it say about us that we want to make it more difficult for people to exercise their right to vote? if there is broad, go after it. certainly, this president has proven flames -- claims of fraud don't meet the evidence test when he takes it to court. i will close by this, monday this week, the last trump case to go to court went to court and was dismissed without comment. even a president with millions of dollars cannot say that fraud does not exist. this is a sad commentary that we have not learned a lesson in history. i think we all understand that if you are going to win in election you have to have a winning message. simply deciding you will reduce the number of people voting is not a winning message. i yield. sen. whitehouse: senator. when he speaks he will come up. >> let me apologize in advance. i may have to interrupt some of your answers. we only have time for some. i am not trying to be rude. i guess i don't understand exactly what you're mentioning. the difference between proper money and dark money. were you don't think chief justice roberts is doing a swell job. nor do you like any of his opinions. connect this to for me. are you suggesting that someone is using the corporate money to bribe the chief justice? >> we had trouble hearing at the beginning. sen. kennedy: you mean i have to repeat all that? >> no. i heard the question. i just wanted to make sure it was for me. sen. kennedy: help me get to the bottom line. are you suggesting that someone is using the corporate money, the dark money, to bribe the chief justice? >> what i am suggesting is that there is a rank system that is pretty obvious. when you look -- sen. kennedy: what do you mean by rate? -- rigged? >> what i mean is that you have dark money spending $18 billion to put a justice on the court. sen. kennedy: how do you know that is informing the way he decides cases? ben: it is notable that the justice who got held back -- sen. kennedy: how do you know that that money is influencing the way he assigns cases? you have made a serious allegation, tell me how you back it up. ben: what i described is a reg system -- a great system -- a rigged system. sen. kennedy: i listen to your speech. i appreciate your passion. we need to make a connection with the two. you made serious allegations. are you saying that dark money and this corporate money is being used -- let me put it another way, are you saying he is voting the way he's owning because of this dark? money? ben: in part. sen. kennedy: let me go to miss graves. go on to the federal society. you made some comments about dark money. i take it you are not a fan of justice kavanaugh's nomination. how do you connect those two? are you suggesting that the federal society arrived somebody -- bribed somebody to nominate justice kavanaugh? >> the record shows that donald trump outsourced the process -- sen. kennedy: i remember that. i am trying to understand what you are alleging. are you alleging that the federalist society bribed him with his dark money. lisa: he had hand-picked and then he went to donors to tell them that due to the selections, america was on precipice of a revival, stating that more than 100 years -- sen. kennedy: i listen to your speech. i am trying to understand. these are serious allegations. you have to connect the money to the decision. lisa: yes certainly -- sen. kennedy: but you are saying that trump would not have selected him for this dark money? lisa: what i am saying is that it is quite clear that these individuals were handpicked for donald trump to choose from because he thought they would advance his agenda -- sen. kennedy: how do you know that? lisa: because he told the national policy in his old words -- sen. kennedy: no. i am not defending him. he said he was influence. how do you know what is in the president said? lisa: i don't think anyone knows what is in his, donald trump's head. he spoke many times about how he was given the role of choosing, they have advanced a number of positions -- sen. kennedy: let me ask another question. i don't want to hold the time. are you suggesting that the federal society is using this dark money to bribe anybody? lisa: senator, there is an array of ways in which judicial can be corrupted. dark money is a way of corruption. sen. kennedy: are they bribing somebody? who is it? lisa: a brown paper bag of money of cash is not the only way to influence and distort the rulings of judges. this issue of how you define bribery, is somewhat a red herring. sen. kennedy: who is being bribed? just tell me. i just want to know what you're saying. are they bribing anyone to have someone nominated? lisa: there is a legal definition of bribery that is of very specific narrow definition -- sen. kennedy: i am done. lisa: corruption and undue influence. sen. whitehouse: senator lee. sen. lee: thank you mr. chairman. thank you to all of you for being willing to testify today. i want to pick up with you with where you left off with senator kennedy. you talk in your testimony about the dangers of dark money. to further conservative, causes. the liberal organizations, type, schwab, promoting open society, arabella advisors, this may have been an oversight. perhaps until i realize that your organization, center for media and democracy, receives donations from these same dark money groups. in an effort to be consistent with your testimony about the evils of dark money, will you commit that the center for media and democracy will no longer accept these donations? lisa: senator, i think there is a specific definition of dark money that is embodied in the statute that seeks to obtain disclosure -- sen. lee: how does that definition encompass the organizations that you do not like and exclude the dark money that you received? tell me, what the difference there is? lisa: senator lee, what my testimony says is that i support these neutral laws applying to all groups equally whether they are democratic or republican, progressive or libertarian. the standards are above their conduct in terms of influence elections, spending money on advertising. there is a spread of thresholds embodied in those measures. i think it sets a very neutral and appropriate range for when money should be disclosed and it does not reach a number of nonprofits that are involved in running ads, it does not reach nonprofit activities around hospitals or other charitable functions. it is tailored to those entities that are running as if they were aipac -- a pac. sen. lee: were you taking anonymous donations? lisa: i received one a few months ago. sen. lee: what about from groups that do not publicly disclose their donor list? or the amounts that have received? how much of the dark money you received was used to support the filing of the brief in the supreme court? lisa: i reject your premise quite respectively. there was no dark money that i received. for that the center for democracy received. i am puzzled by your premise. if you look at the definitions in the statute for the activity that congress is attempting to regulate, it does not apply to the work i have been doing and the work the center for democracy has done. sen. lee: interesting. i am very perplexed by the distinctions that are being drawn. we have distinctions being made by our witnesses between conservative groups and liberal groups. take a horse and write it. if you do not like dark money, that is one thing. if you like it, own it where you take it. this middleground of trying to suggest that it is holy, righteous if it is in support of a liberal because does not sit well with most people. let's go to professor adler for a moment. professor, you mentioned your testimony. chairman white house report with the society made much about the spies between 2005 and 2006 and 2017-2018 and a number of partisan decisions. a closer look shows of the 212 decisions over this time. of the 212 decisions over that time period, over 50% were instances where the member of the roberts side sided with the liberal side. only 36% were 5-4 decisions where the conservatives stuck together. would you expect the numbers to be different than that if the conservative groups and the justices that had previously been supported or defended by conservative groups, were themselves beholden to nefarious special interest groups? adler: sure. there are actually several reasons why i think those numbers are surprising, but in different ways that the report. first, as i note in my written testimony, supreme court only takes about 70 or so cases among the thousands of thousands. they are only taking cases in which lower courts have split. these are cases in which lower court judges, very smart people with capable clerks, are giving their best effort and could not reach united committee about the proper result. the supreme court is only taking the hardest cases to begin with. and then, of those, only a small fraction of those cases are decided 5-4. and then of those cases, you have five conservative appointed justices and for democratic appointed liberal justices. you still maintain 36%, splitting along those lines. given that these are the harder cases that divide the lower courts so much, if what we are seeing was a conservative vote, we would not expect the number of decisions to be higher, we would expect the number of 5-4 decisions decided along partisan lines to be larger. it is lower than a third of the 5-4 decisions over that time period. they are not guilty of believing they owe whoever may have supported them when they were nominated but their best effort to get the answer right. and these really hard cases were the statutes might not be clear, the fact that we get this agreement and that sometimes they line up based on their underlying prerogatives, should not surprise us. what should surprise us and inspire us, despite these deep differences they are able to be unanimous, decide decisions a-one, 7-2. there is a low number of 5-4 cases because it is really low when placed into perspective. sen. whitehouse: i on apology to a senator who i've skipped over. sen. hirono: does that mean i get 10 minutes? [laughter] i heard professor adler say that the roberts court is quantitated limply -- quantitatively business oriented. i would say one of the most controversial decisions is citizens united. i say that decision, we can argue about some of the other decisions that were not so consequential. to me, this is a consequential decision. i have a question for professor, the bottom line for me in this hearing is that we can argue all we want about who is excepting dark money, both left and right. the bottom line is that all of this should be disclosed. i want to start by saying there is dark money being used to fund political campaigns and activities. there are arguments from democrats that the federalist society and the banks have been using dark money to capture our federal courts. how do i know this? i have been sitting on the committee ever since i have been elected to the senate. republicans have been arguing that the left is increasingly using dark money. a simple solution would be to require everyone to disclose where their money comes from, but so far, only democrats are supporting that. only democrats are saying that everybody's dark money should be disclosed. so far ms. graves, what role can disclosure play in addressing the dark money problem? >> senator, thank you so much for that question and i think that is precisely the point my friends and i have been talking about, while the women on the panel want to talk about less spending, what is interesting is that if less spending is the biggest, why are almost all the left groups urging that the disclosed act be passed? it should be common sense american values to say we want more transparency, we want to ensure the dark money is not hidden. i support what you said and how you described it, senator. >> i certainly agree with that. the case that was made by the other witnesses was a good argument for requiring the left to disclose dark money as well as the right. if you just ask an ordinary citizen their opinion, if you doctor is giving you advice about what medications to take, i think everybody would agree they would want to know if the doctor had a financial interest with the pharmaceutical company in prescribing a certain drug. of course the answer is yes, everybody would like to know, if the network is prescribing money and this -- the argument is simply this will raise your taxes, i think the are near citizen would want to know that the coke brothers continue on continuing to use fossil fuels and drive their cars. the answer is of course, everybody would want to know that. the only question here is whether there is some constitutional constraint and i imagine were going to talk about that. there's the naacp versus alabama which is a very different case. >> i'm familiar with the facts of that 1958 case. i say to you that to protect the disclosure of dark money that some people might get hurt or whatever, i'd like to see the evidence. there's no evidence there was fraud in the u.s. election but that didn't stop people from continuing to push. that -- if that is the only case, it ain't much. would you like to add to the discussion? >> is deeply troubling and offensive i think, this being used by the right. i've sat with adult children of the martyrs of our association, of the naacp. the reason the membership links were protected at the time is at the alabama state government was indeed with the ku klux klan in unleashing terror on our members and we protested to make sure they would not be killed. i would -- or colleagues that they would be willing to ask the group that support them in their causes to disclose what were asking for here is bilateral disarmament, to turn on the lights. i know that mr. walker thought it was unthinkable to have a hearing without dark money. i guess it was a time in the congress where was unthinkable to have a hearing without gas lighting but we found that more light made the process work better. so respectfully i do think it is quite thinkable to have a hearing without dark money and his fat -- in fact what most people are counting on. >> exactly. by referring to some of the questions -- the federalist society is not spending $17 million to get people onto the supreme court because they've done their research as to where the nominees they are supporting are coming from. they are of course spending this money to support judicial nominees for lifetime positions that are probably more in alignment with their positions, based on their prior records, their statement, their writings. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you, senator. you might want to sit around for a second. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i will be brief. transparency is one thing. but that's not what you talked about in your opening statement. what i heard you say was that chief justice roberts would not have voted the way he did in many of the cases you criticized but for this dark money and corporate money. that's what you alleged. i'm serious as four heart attacks and a stroke. >> i don't want to have a heart attack and i don't want you to have one. what i tell you is this, it's pretty obvious when you see $17 million to push a nominee through, a pro-corporate nominee through. it's even more obvious when you look at the hundreds of movements of dollars that are spent to push -- when you see how many of their donors support the federalist society or support the campaigns of senators who will then preside over the nominations process. the people of this country, sir, all we want is transparency. >> but that's not what you allege. you allege -- you said, you said that chief justice roberts would not have voted as he did in some of the cases but for this corporate dark money. that's a serious allegation. >> i would refer you back to my testimony. what i described was a rigged system in which chief justice roberts operates, in which the supreme court has become captured by corporate interest, in which the u.s. chamber of commerce -- >> but you're alleging -- >> let me interrupt here. >> i abuse my privilege, and i ask your forgiveness. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i want to thank the witnesses for coming here. it was interesting in your opening statement, how you tried to be balanced somewhat in recognizing that there is dark money on both sides. you did make one comment i'm not quite sure i agree with and that's at least in my brief time in politics for 14 years, i didn't see any catching up necessarily on the democrats part. i don't know when that happened, maybe long before i got into public service, but i talk a little bit about really giving some context. we have had hearings and you had speeches and comments in the committee talking about some conservative groups, but this is a cnn report, $320 million of dark money supporting white house and congressional campaigns just in 2020. and i know that very well. in my race last year there was almost 296 million dollars spent. the majority of the dark money came from liberal interest to either supported my opponent or try to beat me into the ground. the same was true in 2014, only the disparity was about to-one. i know that we have a number of members and a number of the witnesses after your tone setting opening statement then launched into their liberal, from their liberal worldview of how bad dark money was on the conservative side. but i think we also need to understand the infrastructure, the anatomy of at least one example of dark money on the liberal side. i think one of the witnesses testified over a five-year period that arabella advisors has raised about $1.5 billion. can you see that? probably about five times more than the conservatives. the way that they do this is they provide money through arabella advisors and that money is funneled to any number of organizations. i think one represented here today, people for the american way, demand justice, take back the court. they are intended to influence the courts, they clearly want to bring the court to their worldview. i do take exception to anybody that thinks that money influences the outcome of lifetime appointed judges. i think they prove to be independent. i think one of the witnesses said it's hard to say that the roberts court has really been a conservative activist court. these organizations are following through all these different groups and they are trying to expand the court. they are trying to nuke the filibuster, they're trying to do all the things that liberal interest groups want to do. just yesterday we had someone in the hearing for her possible note -- association -- nomination as the attorney general she's currently on leave, let's go ahead and move to the final graph. from one of these organizations that are in the system. she is right here under the umbrella of arabella advisors where you can see the structure. these groups gave money to group to this organization that went on to push the liberal agenda from the leadership conference. they use the money to influence the supreme court through direct candidate opposition, through astroturf campaigns, and supporting packing the courts and supporting the filing of amicus briefs. i'm glad at least you acknowledge that the democrats are in this game. we are talking about dark money. i absolutely believe that some level of accountability or transparency may be appropriate if we are willing to talk about all of the sources of money. the weekend after the untimely death of justice ginsburg, my opponent, through his campaign account, raised $6 million. over 48 hours. that comes to a new tool that we have that i will call dem money. it's doing the same thing. i don't hear anybody on the democrat side saying they want to get rid of those tools. so they're not suggesting a disarmament of both sides. they simply found another way to do exactly the same thing. people providing money to candidates and influencing elections. they've just come up with a more sophisticated broad-based policy that i doubt very seriously they would be willing to abandon because among liberals, they're doing it to the tuna probably 10-20 fold what conservative candidates do. think we are in a time where we do have to recognize that some peoples speech would be muted if you just simply disclosed everything. i've had the protesters out in front of my house before sunrise on two different occasions. dozens of them blocking my driveway. i wonder if they were funded by some dark money groups or by one of these aggregation engines that are not necessarily from millionaires. in the time that we are today, as frustrating as it may be in us frustrating as the cease-and-desist orders are to same -- see the same group bring another add up in 72 hours, i don't think that it's time to actually strip away and unilaterally disarm because i don't believe the witnesses are being honest with themselves, if they really do believe that that would actually net 20. the democrats have done extraordinary job of raising money and finally to campaigns in the came up with one that starts under the dark money umbrella. to me it's an analog to exactly what we are talking about today, and i thank the witnesses and i am over time. >> if it helps at all, the disclose act which is been my anti-dark money bill and applies to dark money on both sides, it's been a matter of record for four congress is now -- >> would it apply to aggregators? >> we've not had any such proposal. there's been no effort to try to work in a bipartisan fashion for a bill, so i hope that we can promote something like this. i will tell you what is a lot more rotten than the partisanship between us is the influence that nobody sees, because nobody knows who is behind the money. and i don't care which side that comes out of, it is wrong. i will work with anyone who's willing to do that to try to get rid of that stuff. it is a poison in our democracy. senator cruz. sen. cruz: i would note to the chairman that i've invited the chairman and other democrats multiple times to join me in the super pac elimination act which i've introduced in multiple congress is that does to very simple things. number one, it allows unlimited individual contributions directly to campaigns, and number two, it requires immediate 24 hour disclosure. as a functional matter, it would eliminate super pac's and largely ill it -- eliminate dark money, and it would do it on both sides. that solution we have yet to have a democrat interested in actually doing this. i would note to my good friend senator tillis that the charts were really great with all the boxes. they would've been more persuasive had you used red yarn to connect them. it weaves a much better web and a much better story. there are a lot of issues and politics in which we see hypocrisy. there's the old line that hypocrisy is a tribute to virtue. maybe no issue has more hypocrisy than debates over campaign-finance reform and so-called dark money. yet democrats dominate dark money. of the top 20 organizations that gave money for political speech in 2016, 14 of them gave virtually all their money to democrats. if you look at the top 10 organizations and individuals contributing to super pac's, eight of them, only two were republican donors, eight were democratic donors. in that cycle, the top 20 super pac donors gave 20 two moon dollars to democrats and $189 million to republicans. those numbers only grew in 2018, democratic dark money outnumbered republican 221 and in 2020, to defeat their nemesis, donald trump, democratic dark money outnumbered publican dark money 6-1. so all the people thundering about dark money are getting elected with it. mr. walter, we have at this hearing, albeit virtually, the leaders of groups such as the center for media democracy and people for the american way criticizing dark money from conservative groups. i want to make sure everyone understands. does the center for media and democracy except dark money? >> absolutely, senator. sen. cruz: and is there some magical distinction between left-wing or socialist dark money and conservative dark money? >> none at all. sen. cruz: and when money was spent in judicial nomination pots, what do they do and is it any different than what the conservative organizations are doing? >> none at all. >> and now that joe biden's president, do we expect that these left-wing dark money groups will be working with democratic senators and working to help confirm democratic judges? >> every single day. >> arabella advisors has been mentioned several times and you write that politico has called one a massive dark money network. why is that? >> on almost every scale, it registers, some of the top in lobbying, in fundraising, in tv advise against republicans, in every possible way it a huge heavyweight. >> there's also been a lot of coverage and handwringing about conservative groups that advocate judges who will be faithful to the constitution. for example the washington post wrote a long hit piece on my long-time friend, leonard leo, and his involvement with dark money. curiously, the washington post never wrote about demand justice or other groups who were opposing president trump's nominees using massive amounts of dark money. why do you think that is? do you think the post simply wasn't aware that there was dark money on the other? >> senator, i know for a fact that's not the reason. i know the lead author of that article and is soon as the article came out i said very interesting piece, but the huge network on the others, talk about that. i sent in my research and i got eight someday, maybe. >> final question for mr. jealous. senator whitehouse has invited you here to make the case for transparency and maybe this hearing is a good place to start. people for the american way is a 501(c) four that doesn't have to disclose its donors. in the interest of disclosure and transparency which you're calling for an senator whitehouse is calling for, will you today tell this committee top five donors and how much they have contributed? >> will be happy to disclose. you say you want to talk money on the left but it would seem to be in your best interests to help us champion transparency. >> then perhaps we have an agreement to get disclosure and if we can work together on the super pac elimination act, that would be a major bipartisan accomplishment. thank you, mr. chairman. sen. whitehouse: before we conclude, i want to give both ms. graves and mr. jealous a chance to comment on what mr. walter has said in his testimony about their organizations. he mentions each of their organizations specifically and i think it would be fair for them to have the chance to reply whether his comparisons you believe to be well-founded. let me start with ms. graves. >> thank you, chairman. i think there's a lot i disagree with in the statement by mr. walter and i disagree with the characterization of the finding that was received. i think what congress has done in hr one is draw some very broad lines, if groups are spending $10,000 to influence a did not -- they would have to disclose all those who gave $10,000 or more. they are significant thresholds and it's a type of thing that does not apply to the work the senator -- the center does. important thing from my perspective is that what i set on behalf of others out there who are concerned with this is that it doesn't matter whether scott walter is right or wrong. i think is incorrect in numerous ways, but what matters is that if we have this disclosure, we would all know definitively the answers to those questions. as senator hirono said, the only members of congress who are supporting this kind of disclosure in hr one in the disclose act and the travel bill that you proposed democrats, and that's a shame. this should not be a partisan issue. everyone should be in favor of this kind of transparency in the effort to try to command a particular group like people for the american way to disclose their donors when there's not the same parity is sort of a way to have a show not to actually do anything to embrace and support laws that would level the playing field for everyone. the measures you supported would apply equally to engage in that activity. i would say that as a granddaughter of immigrants who fled to communist revolutions, i take personal issue with senator cruz's efforts to cast a smear across the press responders by calling them socialists or communists. it's not the type of smear that i think we should tolerate in congress. >> missed -- mr. jealous, i don't know if there's anything you'd like to add about the characterization of your organization. >> thank you, senator whitehouse. first, -- we are happy to disclose the five top donors to our organization. we believe that it's time for every group to just be clear about who their donors are, to in kind of throwing the rock and hiding the hand to politics in this country. there is time for to be bilateral disarmament, the hypocrisy you see from the right , as they claim there is more dark money on the left, yet they refuse to be transparent. if the first were true, then the second would be a no-brainer. i've spent a lot of my career working with republicans to forge bipartisan agreements on criminal justice reform. know that bipartisan agreements are possible. an easy place would be for mr. walter to accept the challenge as i did and agree to disclose his top five donors. >> professor adler suggested, to characterize his testimony, there was really no partisan or corporate signal that could be taken out of the supreme court's decision. there's no signal in the noise basically. we've looked at 80 partisan 5-4 decisions, which seems like a lot from a court that presumably should have an interest for its own sake in putting out positions that have the broadest possible constituency within the court. in those 85 -- 85-4 decisions, kind of 80-0, and that seems to me like a powerful signal out of the noise. would you care to comment on what you think the basis is for detecting some pro-corporate signal out of the roberts court? >> it doesn't make a lot of sense to add up the total number of decisions. it makes sense to look at the most important decisions and whether those are decisions that are favorable to the chamber of commerce agenda. the supreme court has rewritten the law of class actions for the supreme court as ineffective new rationales to protect corporate speech under the first amendment. the supreme court has made more difficult under the first amendment for public sector unions to operate. the supreme court has enforced agreements to not go to court but rather to arbitrate disputes . these are big decisions. these are often issues where the chamber of commerce has been struggling politically to get its agenda enacted, for example in the form of class actions or punitive damage reforms and they've often been unsuccessful politically and getting the reform agenda and republican justices on the court have come along and given them what they sought by reinterpreting federal rules are reinterpreting statutes or creating new interpretations of the first amendment. that's true at the corporate agenda and more broadly with the republican agenda. on all of these big issues, the republican party gets what it wants from today's republican justices. i don't think that's because the justices are bought, i think it's because they've been very careful to select justices whose lives intertwined with the republican party. they've been vetted by the federalist society now for essentially their entire adult lives. these people trying to promote people onto the court who they are pretty confident think about the world the same way they do. i don't think that is insidious. democrats also try to put people on the supreme court to do the things i want them to do. it just turns out that the courts been captured by the republican party owing to a bunch of systematic democratic defense in our political system. even if today's 50 democratic senators represent 40 million more people than republican senators, you still get a conservative court. i don't think it's a question of the justices being bought, i think it's a question of them ideologically being in line with the republican party and naturally empathetic to the republican interest -- to the interests of their hope -- republican party. >> all conclude by thanking all the witnesses for their participation and i also thank my ranking member for his patients and participation, and all the members who have appeared during the course of the hearing. this was one of the livelier hearings that have had the pleasure to be at. i hope that it begins some of the kind of conversations for which the senate is famous. if i have to use an analogy to my colleagues, i would use the analogy of a football game. in which under the rules, the football players have been allowed to bring a baseball bat out onto the field and wail away at the members of the other team. we have the chance to actually get rid of that rule, but the baseball bats have to go to the baseball field and use for baseball games instead of on the football field to hit other players. while that is the rule, to ask one team to say, if you were serious about changing the rule, you would put down your baseball bats and lettuce well on you -- let us whale on you. it makes no sense at all. senator blumenthal has returned. i will recognize senator blumenthal, my apologies. but i think you get the idea that if were trying to fix the rule, let's fix it for everybody , and it's about as much fun as politics is watched right now. senator blumenthal, i'm sorry. sen. blumenthal: thank you, mr. chairman. i very much appreciate you recognizing me even though i'm not formally a member of the subcommittee. i think this is one of the most important subcommittees that we have the judiciary committee and my hope is that maybe we can have some bipartisan agreement, at least on the need for more judges in our federal system, and i see gathered here some pretty able litigators in absentia and present, who know that the lower court simply haven't grown to meet the needs of the american people. anybody who has talked to litigators recently and almost any part of the state, particularly parts of our country that have grown in population know that the caseload over the last several years has grown by 20, 30, 40% in the same period the u.s. population has grown by 33%, and the courts simply haven't kept pace. i'm not going to keep all of us here to go over the statistics, they are abundant. i hope is that we can put more people on the bench by creating more judgeships that will better meet the needs of the american people. and i hope also that lower courts can be made to look more like the people of america right now -- right now they are 80% white, 73% male. there's a lot of talent out there, both sides of the aisle, that could be put on the bench. we need more diversity to reflect not only what the american people look like, but what the american people think like, and i hope that we can also move together in bipartisan fashion to achieve more diversity. i have a couple of quick questions, but i want to thank the chairman for focusing on the issue of dark money because it is such a pressing and important topic. it degrades and demeans the process that we hold dear and supposedly objective and independent appointments of federal judges at every level, most especially in the supreme court. i would like to ask all of the witnesses, yes or no, do you support stronger disclosure laws across the board? relating to contributions? >> yes, senator, i do. >> yes, absolutely. >> anyone else? >> senator, i stand with the naacp in 1958 and the naacp today in opposing such efforts. >> i think it depends on the details, but i would certainly think there are types of disclosures that are acceptable and types that aren't. >> we've heard some testimony today about dark money on the left being as large as on the right. her testimony persuasively disagrees with that view. could you expand on that contention? >> yes, senator, i would love to, because i think there an effort to create -- or even a false portrait of what's been happening. what we know from the faxes that over the past four years, the president outsourced the preselection of judges to leonard leo and as a result of that outsourcing, the supreme court and the lower courts have become stacked with federalist society lawyers and now judges. we know that leonard leo has helped marshall millions of dollars to both get those individuals nominated or supported and then to get some -- get them confirmed. that is a particular role that is singular in the form of this person playing that role. if you look at the amicus reefs, what you see is a flotilla as senator whitehouse has described of some of the same groups that were actively getting those supreme court justices on the bench, then coming to court to ask him to rule in their favor. if you look at that ceremony with amy coney barrett and you look at each of those groups that were out in the audience at the announcement of her nomination, group after group then sent money after going there to celebrate her nomination meeting her, they sent money to get her confirmed. many those groups now have cases that are coming to the supreme court that she will rule on. helped secure her confirmation, in part because they believed they invested that money because they believe she will rule in their favor. that's what senator leo said in my interpretation of it when he told -- going back to the type of activism or changing the law that we haven't seen since before the new deal. i think it is quite clear that there's no equivalent to that that is happening on the left that is a particular, unique, and very serious flaw that allows mr. leo, who i'm not alleging has done anything legally wrong, was not required by the law to file any financial disclosures on his income while he plays at special and unique role. these are all signs of a serious problem in the nomination process and in the effort to roll back decades of law. sen. whitehouse: thank you very much. the hearing is now concluded for the record. senator blumenthal is more than welcome to continue, members are welcome at any subcommittee hearing. his presence was both welcome here within our roles and i thank the witnesses and by ranking member. the final step is to put into the record without objection a number of letters from groups that have sin in their views as well as our courts report of so much subject of the conversation. >> mr. chairman, i would like to put something in the record. sen. whitehouse: without objection.

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