Tens of millions of dollars of “dark money” are being poured into a Supreme Court case that could upend election laws. Conservative donors have been flooding millions of anonymous money into groups supporting Republican lawmakers in the case.
The conservative donors backed several groups that have filed supreme court amicus briefs in support of North Carolina legislators in Moore v Harper.
The Republicans want are a ruling that would take ultimate decisions about voting rights and congressional gerrymandering away from state courts and hand those powers to state legislatures, of which Republicans now control the majority.
Eight conservative groups have submitted amicus briefs in the Supreme Court case. And those groups have received close to $90 million from dark money donors since 2016.
Several of these conservative bastions are also champions of restrictive voting laws.
Conservatives want the Supreme Court to adopt the independent state legislature theory. It’s a once fringe idea now promoted by a swath of conservative groups that filed amicus briefs.
The independent state legislature theory played a key role in Trump’s failed crusade to get states to invalidate the 2020 election results and was the handiwork of John Eastman, who filed the amicus brief for the Claremont Institute, a conservative California based thinktank, that made a similar argument.
Eastman was heavily involved with Trump’s baseless drive to overturn the 2020 election result.
The groups boast strong ties to rightwing lawyers Leonard Leo, John Eastman, and Cleta Mitchell respectively. Eastman and Mitchell were allies in Donald Trump’s baseless crusade to overturn the 2020 election.
Groups include the Honest Elections Project, the Claremont Institute, and the Public Interest Legal Foundation. A whopping $70.5 million was contributed by the leading dark money financier, DonorsTrust.
Other top dark money donors include Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, which gave $6.1 million, and America First Works, which gave $4.8 million, to groups that supported the fringe theory.
Critics of the right’s drive to push the independent state legislature theory note the strong influence of well-financed conservative groups along with several like-minded justices.
Be the first to comment