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As RAGA leans further into far-right extremism, Leo-linked groups keep it alive

WASHINGTON, DC – This week, new reporting from ProPublica revealed that even as the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA) leans further into promoting MAGA extremism, organizations linked to conservative kingpin Leonard Leo are keeping the group alive.

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This is just one tactic in Leo’s decades-long ploy to use his dark money network to advance his own radical agenda and get rich while doing it. He pumps money into RAGA to support right-wing attorneys general that challenge laws he doesn’t like, then makes big bucks off of RAGA payments to his consulting firm. Leo is happy to profit off of manipulating the courts and undermining Americans’ rights and democracy.”

Accountable.US president Kyle Herrig.

ProPublica highlights:

“RAGA owes its returning health to corporations like J&J and UPS, but its life force comes from another source entirely: the nonprofits around conservative judicial activist and longtime Federalist Society executive Leonard Leo, including the Judicial Crisis Network and its parent organization, the Concord Fund.”

“The Judicial Crisis Network was one of RAGA’s very first donors in 2014, and the first to give five figures. In 2021, when many corporations paused their giving, the Concord Fund stepped in with gifts totaling $2.5 million, amounting to nearly 20% of RAGA’s income that year, compared with contributing just 15% a year earlier. In 2022, as companies came back, Concord’s contribution share dipped only slightly, to 19%.”

“The money has gone both ways. A for-profit political strategy company partly owned by Leo, CRC Advisors, has collected payments from RAGA worth about $250,000 since 2020. Expense reports describe its work simply as ‘consulting.’”

“Leo’s influence has been felt in other ways, too. In recent months, an obscure controversy has flared up, as some Republican attorneys general have quit the organization that supports bipartisan multistate settlements, the National Association of Attorneys General. In January, a group called the Alliance for Consumers Action Fund ran TV ads assailing NAAG as a “left wing racket” and accusing Ohio’s Republican Attorney General Dave Yost, who is the group’s chairman, of “protecting NAAG’s cash stash.” The Alliance for Consumers is a trade name for the Concord Fund.”

Accountable.US recently launched its “Mr. MAGA” campaign to expose Leonard Leo’s foundational role in the MAGA movement — from his time in Trump’s inner circle to his efforts to undermine democracy and his personal role in overturning Roe v. Wade. Learn more about Leo’s MAGA agenda and the Mr. MAGA campaign at LeonardLeo.org.

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