Every day a new hatchet job aimed at justices, judges, and the conservative legal movement appears in the corporate media. The purpose of this coordinated campaign, as we saw today during the Senate’s judiciary hearings, is to provide more fodder to delegitimize the court and intimidate jurists.
Now, activist groups have always shopped oppo research to journalists. Most of it is so absurdly unpersuasive that no self-respecting writer, partisan or not, would take ownership of it. These days, though, with little quality control and virtually no consequences for spreading false partisan attacks, a person who lacks any journalistic ethics can probably build a career on the stuff.
Which brings me to Heidi Przybyla’s new piece at Politico: “Leonard Leo used Federalist Society contact to obtain $1.6 billion donation.” This is her second hit piece in a week — in the first, she couldn’t decipher/purposely misrepresented Neil Gorsuch’s financial disclosure form.
This one begins like so:
“Leonard Leo, who helped to choose judicial nominees for former President Donald Trump, obtained a historic $1.6 billion gift for his conservative legal network via an introduction through the Federalist Society, whose tax status forbids political activism.”
It’s difficult to untangle the accusation being leveled here. The three chilling components of the tale — “Donald Trump,” the “$1.6 billion gift,” and the “Federalist Society” — all make for good conspiratorial copy, but they have nothing to do with each other in the context of this story.
Basically, a well-known Washington operative named Leonard
