of this man you see here, the infamous leonard. leo you may remember him as the guys the each and every supreme court justice seated on the bench. he is the same guy who as we featured on the show, we just handed 1. 6 billion dollars in tax free untraceable dark money, a transaction that was, of course, itself made legal and possible by the right-wing court he helped bring about. and now the organization linked to leonard leo will help argue to justices leonard leo helped install about the legislature north carolina should be able to do whatever once with the states elections regardless of democracy. rick hasen is director of the safeguarding democracy project. he joins me now. rick, first, did anything wrong there as it s a very technical and complicated case. the theories kind of bizarre. so, please correct me if i misstated anything. no, i think you basically stated the right thing. i would just say that even some of the more extreme versions of the independence day legislat
particularly their senate candidates. remember that all of leonard leo s court capture work was done with mitch mcconnell, so he s used to dealing with the senate. he cares about the senate, it s his target area. you look at what mitch mcconnell said about the quality of the republican candidates. you ve got oz, who is a crashing joke. you ve got j. d. vance who can t get out of his own way. you have herschel walker who, i m not even gonna go there. and they are petrified, looking around at candidates that just don t measure up to the moment, they ve never done this before and they re collapsing in plain view. so how do you solve a collapsing candidate? you dump untold hundreds of millions of dollars into those states in anonymous dark money attack ads, and now he s got the cleverness for that, he s got the array of phony front groups for that. and he s got the 1. 6 billion dollars to spend on that. so yeah, if you can t predict
citizens united said that this was all going to be transparent, that we d actually know who is going to be spending it. and of course, we don t know that. we are awash in dark money. our tvs are filled with preposterous slimy advertisements, from groups that nobody has ever heard of, because they re fake groups set up just to be a screen for the ad to hide whoever is really behind it. so, we will see this 1. 6 billion dollars go in to the dark money operation that the republican party runs. but but when it comes out into tv ads, campaigns, and two campaigns of harassment. all of that is going to be anonymized, and you won t know who any of it is. and by the way, the guy who has this was a very clever rascal, he s a guy who took $580 million, and captured it for
and by the way, that s for the benefit of the defendant so that the prosecutors don t get ahead of themselves, and don t start smearing people. donald trump is actually the beneficiary of this and if he had better lawyers, i think he wouldn t be creating something predicaments for himself. now, no one follows the money better than sheldon lighthouse follows the money, you follow it into the darkest corners of politics where many of us can see it or understand it. the story of the day in that regard, is 1. 6 billion dollars in one donation, moving into the republican dark money world. the new york times has unearthed the evidence of this. whatever happened to the limits on campaign contributions? well, they got blown up by citizens united. and weirdly, the court in
candidates. doctor oz is embarrassing himself almost daily, we have doug mastriano in pennsylvania, parading around in the confederate army suit when he represents gettysburg, the scene of a great union, bloody victory in the civil war. these people are terrible. listen, i just want to raise one alarm because we all read, i m sure, that great and alarming new york times piece this week about leonard leo, the catholic right-winger getting 1. 6 billion dollars in to spend as dark money from a big right wing billionaire. that money cannot go directly to candidates, but it can go to issues, we don t know have to know about it, we won t know about it. so i always have the feeling they will come up with a lot of money in the end. we shouldn t sit here and think the democratic fundraising