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Texas federal court judge Matthew Kacsmaryk has ties to rightwing judicial activist Leonard Leo, according to a new report in Jezebel. Reporter Susan Rinkunas detailed the following relationship between the Judge and Leo:

  • Kacsmaryk has deep connections to the conservative Federalist Society, where Leo is the current Board co-chair.
  • Leo has financial ties to the firm, First Liberty Institute, where Kacsmaryk worked immediately before becoming a judge. After Trump first nominated Kacsmaryk in 2017, First Liberty Institute began paying the Leo-aligned firm CRC Advisors over $100,000 a year.
  • Kacsmaryk’s friend Roger Severino is married to Carrie Severino, a close associate of Leo and the president of the Concord Fund, which has gotten the vast majority of its funding from groups led by Leo.
“

Leonard Leo and Judge Kacsmaryk are cut from the same cloth—they both see the court as a place to force an extreme, unpopular agenda on the American people.

Leo has helped pack the courts with ultra MAGA judges like Kacsmaryk who are merely pawns in his game to upend precedents and policies he disagrees with. This is just the latest piece of Leo’s decades long effort to ban abortion at every level and get rich while doing it.”

Kyle Herrig, president of Accountable.US.

This report comes on the heels of an explosive investigative story in POLITICO detailing a circular payment scheme where Leo connected nonprofits pay Leo’s for profit consulting firms. 

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