Leonard Leo spent decades moving the Supreme Court to the right. But one recent campaign tied to Leo centered on Thomas, per The Washington Post.
A yearslong public relations campaign praising and defending Supreme Court Judge Clarence Thomas can be traced to a network of nonprofit groups tied to a prominent conservative activist, The reported.
Leonard Leo, co-chairman of The Federalist Society, has spent several decades pushing federal courts to the right by leveraging a large network of nonprofit organizations in which he holds formal or informal roles.
According to the Post, Leo has also used that network to support the confirmation of every conservative Supreme Court justice in the past two decades. But one more recent campaign was directed at Justice Thomas, who had already spent about three decades on the Court’s bench.
The initiative includes a two-hour movie, „Created Equal,“ released in 2020, that followed Thomas‘ upbringing; websites that praise Thomas’s life or dispute the sexual harassment allegations made by Anita Hill; and even a Twitter fan account with close to 30,000 followers. The Post found that the effort cost at least $1.8 million from conservative nonprofits tied to Leo.
The campaign began in early 2016, the Post reported, when HBO was set to release „Confirmation,“ a film that centers on Hill’s explosive allegations during Thomas‘ 1991 nomination hearings. The movie starred Kerry Washington as Hill and Wendell Pierce as Thomas.
One person who was tapped to lead the elaborate public relations campaign was Mark Paoletta — a former Trump White House aide, attorney, and close friend of Thomas. According to the Post, a nonprofit called the Judicial Education Project paid the lawyer about $300,000 in 2016 for „media projects.“
Leo does not have a formal role in the Judicial Education Project nonprofit, according to the Post.
