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Washington, DC —  A new story in the Washington Post unveils Leonard Leo as the architect of a plan to pay Ginni Thomas tens of thousands of dollars, raising serious ethical and legal questions.

According to the Post, “Leo instructed the GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway to bill a nonprofit group he advises and use that money to pay Virginia “Ginni” Thomas… The same year, the nonprofit, the Judicial Education Project, filed a brief to the Supreme Court in a landmark voting rights case.”

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Leonard Leo has written the definition of court corruption. These shady schemes are a call to action to bring about ethics reform at the highest levels of the judiciary.”

Kyle Herrig, President of Accountable.US.

The Washington Post reports Leo instructed Conway to give Ginni Thomas “another $25K.”  He said the paperwork should have “No mention of Ginni.” Conway’s firm, the Polling Company, then sent the Judicial Education Project a $25,000 bill and later paid Thomas’s firm, Liberty Consulting, $80,000 between June 2011 and June 2012. This was just months before the Judicial Education Project filed the amicus brief in Shelby County v. Holder, a case where Justice Clarence Thomas went on to vote with the majority to overturn a key segment of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

“The arrangement reveals that Leo, a longtime Federalist Society leader and friend of the Thomases, has functioned not only as an ideological ally of Clarence Thomas’s but also has worked to provide financial remuneration to his family. And it shows Leo arranging for the money to be drawn from a nonprofit that soon would have an interest before the court,” write reporters Emma Brown, Shawn Boburg, and Jonathan O’Connell.

You can read the full story HERE.

Accountable.US recently launched a campaign to hold Leonard Leo accountable, alongside a website Monitoring Influence to arm Americans with information about the constellation of right-wing groups working to undermine our democracy.  

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