Judicial Crisis Network

Leonard Leo and longtime political ally Neil Corkery conceived the Judicial Crisis Network at a dinner party attended by conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Leo and Corkery, a fellow right-wing ideologue and operative, wanted to create an organization to help confirm conservative nominees in anticipation of Supreme Court vacancies that George W. Bush ultimately filled with Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito. Reporting from OpenSecrets states that Neil’s wife Ann Corkery, an experienced lawyer, conservative fundraiser, and Koch brothers ally, and California “foreclosure king” Robin Arkley II were also in attendance and were instrumental in securing initial funding for the organization.

In 2005, it was reported that Jay Sekulow, a personal attorney to Trump who served as lead outside counsel for Trump’s first impeachment trial, invited conservative political strategist and George W Bush’s 2004 coalition leader Gary Marx to “set up the Judicial Confirmation Network in his offices so they could combine forces.” 

The Judicial Confirmation Network rebranded itself to the Judicial Crisis Network during the Obama administration.

• At the time, Leo was also working for the Bush White House as an outside adviser and coordinator of “all outside coalition activity regarding judicial nominations.” At the Bush White House, Leo was known as a money man who was able to secure funding and drum up support for key judicial nominations among grassroots and advocacy organizations. He would also provide media training for key pundits. 

• In 2005 and 2006, the Judicial Crisis Network “spent hundreds of thousands of dollars” on radio and online advertisements to influence public opinion and ensure that Supreme Court Justices Roberts and Alito earned Senate confirmation. In late 2005, JCN ran a radio ad blitz in Arkansas that featured a local minister who told listeners that extremist liberals, who wanted to limit religious freedom and Christmas celebrations, “want our senators to vote against Judge Alito.”  

• Leo’s web of political connections in Washington, which includes legal societies, sitting Supreme Court justices, and powerful politicians such as Donald Trump has allowed Leo to wield considerable power behind the scenes. Leo has also used JCN’s immense war chest to bombard the airwaves to influence public opinion and pressure senators and presidential administrations who select individuals for the federal judiciary. JCN’s campaigns have been criticized by opponents of dark money who see the group as a vehicle for conservative donors to influence the courts without accountability.

Seed funding for JCN was funneled through the Wellspring Committee, a “dark money conduit,” founded with the help of conservative donors, most notably the Koch Brothers and Robin Arkley II, a California “foreclosure king” who was also a major funder of the powerful conservative legal cadre the Federalist Society. The Federalist Society has created an ideological backbone and a tight-knit political network that has enabled Leo’s vision for the U.S. judiciary. 

Carrie Severino, President

Carrie Severino is the president of the Judicial Crisis Network (legally registered as the Concord Fund) and she is also affiliated with the Judicial Education Project (now known as the 85 Fund). She is a former law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. 

Severino is tied to the Heritage Foundation’s DeVos Center through her husband Roger, who works there as the Vice President of Domestic Policy. During the Trump Administration, Roger led the Office Of Civil Rights in the Department of Health and Human Services. There, Roger created a ‘religious freedom’ division that aided healthcare providers who refused to provide abortions or gender-affirming care. He also reversed Obama-era protections that banned LGBTQ discrimination in healthcare. 

The New York Times called Roger and Carrie Severino “leaders in the anti-abortion movement” and said the couple “celebrated” the fall of Roe v. Wade. Carrie Severino called Roe “the most egregious judicial distortion of the constitution in living memory.” A different piece from The New York Times said that the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court was the realization of the Severinos’ “dream” to enforce a socially conservative legal mandate on the United States.

Throughout the years, Carrie Severino has advocated for the anti-abortion movement while working at JCN:

• 2013: Severino wrote a USA Today op-ed where she claimed liberal justices such as Ruth Bader Ginsberg saw the Roe decision as a “divisive” decision that caused “harm.”

• 2014: Severino filed an amicus brief opposing a Massachusetts “buffer zone” law that mandated physical distance between anti-abortion protestors and health centers for safety reasons.

Carrie Severino faced public criticism for her zealous defense of Brett Kavanaugh as he faced accusations of sexual assault and misconduct. 

• Following the allegation that as a teenager Kavanaugh pinned a girl onto a bed and sexually assaulted her, Severnio went on CNN and said the “allegations cover a whole range of conduct from boorishness to rough horseplay to actual attempted rape.” Severino’s comments faced pushback from writers at The Washington Post, The New Yorker, and Vox. 

• After Kavanaugh’s confirmation, Severino co-authored a book titled Justice On Trial, chronicling the process. The book aims to debunk the allegations against Kavanaugh and paint him as a victim of a liberal press junket. A Politico review of the book said that it “was so one-sided that it read more like a legal brief written by two very competent and fiercely committed advocates.”

Severino’s father was a business partner of Daniel DeVos of the right-wing megadonor DeVos family. The Guardian said that the DeVos family has “promoted right-wing causes and candidates for years” and HuffPost described the family as “conservative royalty.” Vanity Fair found that the DeVos family gave as much as $200 million to conservative causes since the 1970s. Trump’s controversial education secretary, Betsy DeVos, is a member of the family.

Severino is also a frequent Fox News contributor. 

Ann Corkery, Counsel

Ann Corkery, known for her fundraising prowess, founded the Wellspring Committee, the Koch-funded dark money group that was the main funder of Judicial Crisis Network until it sunsetted in 2018. She was also “instrumental” in launching JCN and currently serves as counsel of the 85 Fund, Leonard Leo’s primary fundraising operation. Ann and her husband are influential right-wing operatives closely involved in Leonard Leo’s network of nonprofits seeking to advance religious right-wing agendas. Salon reported that the Corkerys have used the network they built alongside Leonard Leo “to prop up conservative judicial nominees”

Right-Wing Religious Activism

• Watchdog group OpenSecrets hypothesized that the political influence of the Corkerys is tied to their deep roots in right-wing religious communities.

• In a 1990 interview, the Corkerys claimed to be members of Opus Dei, which has been accused of “having cult-like practices and promoting a right-wing agenda.” Opus Dei opposes same-sex marriage, divorce, abortion, and contraception. 

• Ann Corkery served as a delegate to the United Nations General Assembly and the UN Commission on Women under President George W. Bush. She fought to institute a ban on human cloning at the UN.

• Neil served on the boards of the anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ advocacy group The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights and The Becket Fund, a legal giant which has opposed LGBTQ and abortion rights. Neil additionally held roles at conservative PAC ActRight Action, and the anti-marriage equality group The National Organization for Marriage. 

• Ann was also a board member at The Becket Fund and The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights.

Media Ties

• Neil and Ann Corkery were involved in efforts to promote conservative art. Ann worked with Friends of Abe, a group of Hollywood conservatives who aim to push back on the industry’s perceived liberal bias and was an associate producer on a movie mocking Michael Moore. Neil is the former CEO of Wedgewood Circle, a group that aims to fund “redemptive cultural content.”

Connections to the Leonard Leo Network

• The Corkerys helped launch Leonard Leo’s Judicial Crisis Network. Leonard Leo and Neil Corkery conceived the Judicial Crisis Network at a dinner party attended by conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Leo and Corkery wanted to create an organization to help confirm conservative nominees in anticipation of Supreme Court vacancies that George W. Bush ultimately filled with Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito.

• Neil Corkery is the former president of Judicial Crisis Network’s sister organization the 85 Fund (FKA the Judicial Education Project) and Ann Corkery currently serves as its counsel. The 85 Fund operates within Leo’s network of conservative nonprofits that aims to influence the federal judiciary and American political system more broadly. In 2020, the group legally changed its name to the 85 Fund and almost immediately raised $20 million dollars, much of it from the powerful conservative “dark money” group, Donors Trust. In recent years, the 85 Fund has sent money to other conservative and right-wing groups, including groups that were tied to efforts to overturn the 2020 election. 

• Ann Corkery founded the Wellspring Committee in 2008. As OpenSecrets said in 2019, Wellspring and its operatives “reshaped the way the game is played” and “ushered in a new era of increasingly expensive judicial battles largely fueled by deep-pocketed donors whose identities remain secret.” The group continued to have an outsize influence in judicial battles after its dissolution in 2018 through the “countless dark money groups it helped sire and judges now on the bench thanks in part to its anonymous financiers’ generosity.” Neil Corkery also served in various leadership roles at Wellspring during its tenure. 

• Neil Corkery was the principal officer at America Engaged in 2016. America Engaged is a non-profit within the Leo network formed by Leo with no public presence. In 2017, American Engaged gave $1 million to the National Rifle Association (NRA); that same year, the NRA announced a $1 million ad campaign supporting Neil Gorsuch’s Supreme Court nomination. 

• Neil Corkery reportedly served as an accountant at Liberty Central, a tea party group where Leo served as a board member. Ginni Thomas, the wife of Clarence Thomas, who sought to overturn the 2020 election results, founded and led Liberty Central. The Thomases both count Leonard Leo as a friend.

Gary Marx, President, Secretary, Treasurer, Director

Gary Marx is a political strategist identified as one of the “official partners in Leo’s consolidated dark money network.” Marx is a consistent aid to Leo and was present alongside Leo at a private reception celebrating Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation. 

In addition to roles with the Judicial Crisis Network and the 85 Fund, Marx is the president and co-founder of Madison Strategies, a conservative political consulting firm. Madison Strategies counts Walmart, Senator Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, and Judicial Crisis Network among its clients.

Frank Scaturro, Counsel

Frank Scaturro is a lawyer and 3-time former Republican congressional candidate for the fourth district of New York.

• Scaturro describes himself as “Vice-President and Senior Counsel at Judicial Crisis Network,” according to his LinkedIn and Twitter, despite only being listed as Counsel on JCN’s 2021 IRS form 990. 

• Scaturro’s page on the Republican National Lawyers Association identifies his employer as America Engaged, and reveals his one-year position as a visiting professor at Hofstra University School of Law. America Engaged is a non-profit formed by Leonard Leo with no public presence that sent $1 million to the National Rifle Association (NRA) in 2017. The NRA then announced a $1 million ad campaign in support of Gorsuch, coinciding with JCN’s own $10 million campaign.
• Scaturro is a member of the powerful conservative legal cadre the Federalist Society. The Federalist Society has created an ideological backbone and a tight-knit political network that has enabled Leo’s vision for the U.S. judiciary. While working for the Senate Judiciary Committee from 2005-2009, Scaturro worked on the Supreme Court confirmations of John Roberts and Samuel Alito.

Wendy Long, Former Counsel

Wendy Long is a founding member of JCN and served as chief counsel in its nascent years. She previously clerked for JusticeClarence Thomas, where she met her husband Authur Long and worked for Republican Senators William L. Armstrong and Gordon J. Humphrey. Long was a Publius Fellow at the Claremont Institute in 1987 and worked for the anti-abortion group Americans United for Life before entering law school. After her clerkship, she moved to New York to join Kirkland & Ellis, before helping to launch JCN. A 2012 profile of Long by Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America described her as “a constant pro-life voice” who Laura Ingraham referred to as the “female future of the Republican Party.”

• During Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, Long was a legal advisor to Romney and served on his National Faith And Values Steering Committee during the 2008 primary along with fellow JCN founders Jay Sekulow and Gary Marx.

• As a part of her unsuccessful 2012 Senate run, Long filed a letter to GOP chairs that said she“served as chief counsel and national spokesman for [JCN] for five years, working to confirm Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito.”

• Long was the Republican Senate nominee for New York in 2012 against Kirsten Gillibrand and in 2016 against Chuck Schumer; she lost both races. Long’s campaign “promoted her support for gun rights, said she opposed same-sex marriage and vowed never to vote to raise the federal debt ceiling.”

• In 2014, Dinesh D’Souza was charged and sentenced for breaking campaign finance laws by making illegal contributions to Long’s 2012 Senate campaign. D’Souza “directed other individuals” to donate to Long’s campaign and reimbursed them for the donations. His lawyer described D’Souza’s actions as “an act of misguided friendship.”

• During her 2016 run, Long spoke to the New York state chapter of the Oath Keepers and blamed rising crime in Syracuse on the conversion of a Catholic church into a mosque.

In an interview with OpenSecrets, Brendan Fischer of the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center in Washington said that JCN’s funding apparatus “has the effect of layering secrecy on top of secrecy, and almost entirely insulating donors from any form of public accountability.”

Initial funding for the Judicial Crisis Network came from Robin Arkley II, a California “foreclosure king” who was also a major funder to JCN’s predecessor, the Wellspring Committee, as well as the Federalist Society. The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), a conservative legal advocacy organization run by Jay Sekulow, also provided seed money for JCN in its nascent years.

Leonard Leo’s now-defunct dark money fundraiser, Wellspring Committee “accounted for more than 90 percent of JCN’s total funding” until the Committee was dissolved in 2018. In 2016 alone, the Wellspring Committee donated $23 million to JCN, and in total between 2012 and 2018 the Wellspring Committee gave JCN $53,684,772. While the Wellspring Committee was the preeminent funder of JCN for a decade, JCN also received funding from various other sources for the first three years of its lifespan. 

One regular donor to JCN is the 45Committee, a “pro-Trump nonprofit organization” founded in 2015 and “primarily funded” by Sheldon Adelson and TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts. In 2016, the 45Committee gave JCN $200,000 and in 2018, the 45Committee gave JCN $3,000,000.

In 2020, the Rule of Law Trust, a nonprofit organization whose sole employee is Leonard Leo, made a $21.5 million grant to JCN, accounting for nearly half of JCN’s revenue that year. 

Judicial Crisis Network’s campaigns were key to the appointments and confirmations of Justices John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court—as well as the obstruction of Merrick Garland’s confirmation to the Court. JCN spent roughly $10 million per justice to ensure the confirmations of Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, and Barrett and $7 million to block Garland. 

Samuel Alito and John Roberts

OpenSecrets and The Daily Beast reported that the Judicial Crisis Network—then known as the Judicial Confirmation Network—was founded in 2004 with the goal of “drumming up support for [George W.] Bush Supreme Court nominees John Roberts Jr. and Samuel Alito Jr.” 

• JCN worked “in tandem with a well-organized conservative coalition” to ensure that the Senate confirmed George W. Bush’s Supreme Court two nominees, who would serve as “​​allies for Scalia on the Court’s right flank.” 

• The coalition reportedly included Leonard Leo, then-vice executive president of the Federalist Society, and Ann Corkery, founder of dark money group the Wellspring Committee that would later serve as JCN’s primary funding source. The Daily Beast reported that Leo “played the decisive role” in the appointments of Justice Alito and Chief Justice Roberts.

• According to OpenSecrets and The Daily Beast, JCN “spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in 2005 and January 2006 on radio and online ads, as well as on grassroots efforts, to shape public opinion.” This campaign reportedly included “a radio ad blitz in late 2005 in Arkansas, where the two Democratic Senators’ votes were considered in play, using Christmas themes and an appeal from a black minister.”

• During the Obama administration’s first term, the Supreme Court that JCN helped shape issued decisions that opened the floodgates for more anonymous political spending, a victory for JCN and its dark money network. U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) noted that “the Roberts Court handed down Citizens United and other decisions opening donor pipelines to 501(c)(4) groups like JCN.” The Wellspring Committee subsequently upped its contributions to JCN, allowing JCN organization to expand its influence campaigns to state supreme courts and state attorneys general seats.

In 2008, JCN ran an advertisement touting their support for Roberts and Alito, and hitting Obama for various staffing choices while voting against Roberts and Alito while in the Senate. JCN had previously spent over $570,000 in opposition to Obama’s candidacy in 2008.

Sonia Sotomayor

JCN reportedly went “all in” opposing Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor in 2009, “setting up state-level opposition groups to pressure vulnerable Democratic senators.”  Reporting from Roll Call at the time of Sotomayor’s nomination claimed that Republicans were “planning to coordinate closely with outside activist groups like the Judicial Confirmation Network.”

JCN Counsel Wendy Long said at the time “I hope for and I expect a fight,” and after news of Justice David Souter’s retirement broke, Long joined with other conservative groups to arrange for a conference call the next morning “to talk strategy with representatives of more than 60 groups.” Subsequent reporting confirmed that JCN led a coalition of over 60 groups to oppose Sotomayor’s nomination. 

Sotomayor’s nomination fight proved to be financially beneficial for JCN. Less than three weeks after Souter announced his retirement on May 1, 2009,  “[Gary] Marx said his group ha[d] raised more than a million dollars and [would] devote several million to the Supreme Court fight.” The surge in donations followed a “breakfast meeting of conservative groups” where Souter’s retirement “dominated the discussion and one participant offered $200,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee.”

According to The Atlantic, JCN launched a website in May 2009 called Obama’s Frontrunners that hosted attack ads targeting several of Obama’s prospective Supreme Court nominees: Sonia Sotomayor, Elana Kagan, and Diane Wood. The ad against Sotomayor alleged that she racially discriminated against white firefighters in a case she had been previously involved with.  Wendy Long amplified this attack on Sotomayor, calling her decision in the case “the equivalent of a pilot error resulting in a bad plane crash. And now the pilot is being offered to fly Air Force One.” In a separate comment, Long invoked firefighters’ role in 9/11 and said that Sotomayor “would sacrifice their claims to fair treatment in employment promotions to racial preferences and quotas.” Long also claimed that Sotomayor’s career was the beneficiary of “racial preferences.” 

JCN continued to attack Sotomayor on issues of race, running an ad that implied she discriminated against white men based on a speech she made in 2001. Long released a statement accompanying the ad stating that Sotomayor believed “judges should dictate policy, and that one’s sex, race, and ethnicity ought to affect the decisions one renders from the bench.” PoliticFact said Sotomayor’s statement “isn’t suggesting the intellect of Latina women is superior to that of white men, only that a greater diversity of experience and thought would be a valuable addition to the court system.”

JCN also criticized Sotomayor for signing a memo in 1981 opposing capital punishment and claiming it is “associated with evident racism in our society.” JCN said the memo was further evidence that Sotomayor was a “a hard-left liberal judicial activist” unfit for the Supreme Court.

Sotomayor’s past statements on whether judges make policy were raised in several ads run by JCN, and the Republican National Committee distributed a talking points memo claiming ‘Judge Sotomayor has also said that policy is made on the U.S. Court of Appeals.’”

After Sotomayor’s confirmation, JCN criticized Senator Lindsey Graham (R – SC) for defending Sotomayor’s record in her confirmation hearing and voting to confirm her. JCN said Graham “lack[ed] courage, statesmanship, and an understanding of the Constitution and rule of law” and that he appeared to be “even more of a judicial activist than [Sotomayor] is.”

Elena Kagan

According to JCN’s 2010 tax filing, the group focused heavily on opposing Elena Kagan’s nomination to the Supreme Court:

“Our most significant efforts in the past year included taking the lead in opposing the nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court marshalling grass-roots, earned media, and social media, as well as briefings of senators and staffers and a video project making the case against her nomination.”

In a 2010 advertisement opposing Kagan’s nomination, JCN accused Kagan of “kicking the military off campus, incredibly, during a time of war” while she was the dean of Harvard Law School. This attack against Kagan originated in the months preceding the Sotomayor nomination, when JCN launched a website in May 2009 called Obama’s Frontrunners that hosted an attack ad Sonia Sotomayor, Elana Kagan, and Diane Wood who were all potential choices to be Obama’s first Supreme Court nominee. The Atlantic reported at the time that JCN sought to portray Kagan as an “Academic peacenik opposed to the military.”

Months after the initial 2010 advertisement, JCN posted a 9 minute video titled “Closing Arguments: The case against Elena Kagan” featuring Carrie Severino and concluding that Kagan was unfit to serve on the Supreme Court. 

• In one example provided, Severino said that Kagan’s “lifetime legacy of scholarly articles amounts to a stack of paper under two inches thick” before returning to the previous attack on Kagan “kicking the military off campus,” this time specifying that Kagan “banned the U.S. Military from recruiting through the [Harvard Law] campus career office during a time of war.” Severino also attacked Kagan for protesting Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, a since-repealed policy that was adopted in 1994 that prevented those serving in the military from being openly LGBTQ. 

Merrick Garland

In 2016, during the wake of Antonin Scalia’s death and the potential for former President Obama to nominate another Justice to the Supreme Court, JCN engaged in a widespread fight to block the nomination of Merrick Garland, and eventually bolster the nomination of Neil Gorsuch.

JCN ran identical advertisements in Iowa, Wisconsin, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky as a part of the “Let The People Decide Campaign,” which stated that Republican Senators agreed that “the people should decide” who fills the Supreme Court vacancy via the upcoming presidential election. The ads claimed that this “isn’t about Republicans or Democrats, it’s about your voice.” A separate advertisement was created and ran in Ohio, crediting Rob Portman for his belief that “it’s wrong to nominate someone without the American people’s input.” Additional advertisements ran in Iowa, supporting Chuck Grassley for stopping Obama from “installing a new liberal majority on the Supreme Court.” 

Advertisements in West Virginia attacked Joe Manchin for “siding with Washington liberals” in favor of Garland and pushed Manchin to “stand with Patrick Morrisey,” the Attorney General of West Virginia who was “fighting to protect the coal industry.”

One ad spot against Garland posited that he would “be the tie-breaking vote for Obama’s big government liberalism,” that the second amendment would be “gutted,” “partial-birth abortion” would be legalized, and “unaccountable agencies like the EPA” would be “unleashed” if he were to be confirmed. Another advertisement titled “He’s No Moderate” said that the NRA and “small business leaders” opposed Garland because he would “harm our fragile economy.”

After the 2016 election, JCN ran a final ad spot thanking Chuck Grassley for “standing strong for conservative values and the rule of law.” In total, reporting on JCN’s advertisements showed that the organization spent more than $5 million to block Garland’s nomination.

Following the successful obstruction of Garland’s nomination and the election of Donald Trump, the New York Times Editorial Board lamented the “shameful, infuriating actions of the Senate Republicans” who “rejected their own professed values of preserving American institutions” and argued that “the person who gets confirmed will sit in a stolen seat.”

Neil Gorsuch

Following the 2016 election, JCN launched a $500,000 ad campaign “praising Trump’s SCOTUS pledge,” with the 30-second ad spot running in Washington, D.C., New York City, and South Florida.

Once Trump announced his choice of Neil Gorsuch to fill the vacant seat, JCN launched a $10 million advertisement campaign to support Gorsuch’s nomination. The campaign began with over $2 million spent “on TV and online ads in Washington, D.C., and in Indiana, Missouri, North Dakota and Montana.”

JCN advertisements supporting Gorsuch ranged from a biographical piece, testimonials from former clerks, and one touting “bipartisan support” in an advertisement calling Gorsuch a “real outdoorsman” who “rides horses and knows his way around a barn.” One advertisment featured clips of Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s nomination hearings, while others stated that Gorsuch “enforces the law and is fair to everyone.” 

JCN then released numerous advertisements in Montana and West Virginia, as well as multiple ads in Colorado, Missouri, North Dakota, and Indiana, calling on senators in these states to support Gorsuch’s nomination, and accusing those who don’t of “creating gridlock.”

After Gorsuch’s confirmation, JCN ran a final set of advertisements thanking Senators Donnelly, Heitkamp, Manchin, Grassley, and McConnell for their votes to confirm Gorsuch, in addition to an ad spot thanking President Trump for nominating Gorsuch.

Brett Kavanaugh

Following the 2018 announcement of Justice Kennedy’s retirement, the Judicial Crisis Network launched “a seven-figure national cable and digital ad buy” titled #AnotherGreatJustice, touting Gorsuch’s confirmation and Trumps’ infamous list of potential Supreme Court nominees compiled by Leonard Leo. The ad kicked off JCN’s campaign to replace Justice Kennedy.

JCN launched confirmkavanaugh.com which “went live as Mr. Trump announced his selection” of Brett Kavanaugh. This website was followed by a larger campaign by JCN involving numerous ad buys in a variety of states over the course of Kavanaugh’s nomination process. 

• In July 2018, JCN launched their first ad buy in support of Kavanaugh to the tune of $1.4 million which included “national cable as well as broadcast and digital in  Alabama, Indiana, North Dakota and West Virginia.” A week later, JCN launched a second $1.4 million advertisement, again targeting national cable, Alabama, Indiana, North Dakota and West Virginia. The next week, JCN launched yet another ad buy in Alabama, Indiana, North Dakota, and West Virginia, this time costing $1.5 million, and included polling in these states from North Star Opinion Research that showed “a majority of voters in each of the four states support confirming Judge Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.” In total, JCN spent about $5.3 million across the four ad buys since Kennedy’s retirement announcement on June 27th.

• In August, JCN launched two more advertisements, one featuring a former Kavanaugh clerk and another featuring Hillbilly Elegy author and conservative activist J.D. Vance. These ads were “rotated into JCN’s current spending and are a part of JCN’s previously announced ad buys.” 

• In September, JCN introduced yet another advertisement into their previously announced ad buys, this time defending Kavanaugh from allegations of sexual assault by Christine Blasey Ford, concluding that “It Doesnt Add Up.” Shortly after airing these ads, JCN released two press releases on new polling conducted in West Virginia and North Dakota announcing that voters in both states supported Kavanaugh’s nomination. 

• Once hearings wrapped up, JCN released two more polls, this time in West Virginia and Arizona, again positing that voters in these states supported Kavanaugh’s nomination. JCN parlayed their West Virginia polling into a new $210,000 cable and digital ad buy in the state, titled “Search and Destroy” and urged Senator Manchin to vote to confirm Kavanaugh. The same was done in ND with a new $215,000 cable and digital ad buy pressuring Senator Heitkamp to vote to confirm Kavanaugh.

• Finally, after Kavanaugh’s confirmation, JCN launched a final six-figure ad buy in Maine “thanking Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) for supporting Justice Kavanaugh.” The advertisement was titled “One Leader,” and promoted Collins’ vote to confirm Kavanaugh. 

In addition to the millions spent on advertisements, JCN’s Carrie Severino frequently released statements responding to the hearings and opposition to Kavanaugh. JCN statements ranged from calling on Senators Manchin, Heitkamp, Donnelly and other “red state Democrats” to  “distance themselves from this extremist behavior,” referencing Democratic opposition to Kavanaugh in the hearings, to positing that Democratic Senators were “taking marching orders from a liberal NY Senator.“

In 2018, JCN also sent robotexts to Indiana residents, “urging recipients to contact the office of [now-former] U.S. Senator Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) about the nomination of then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court.” This action prompted the Campaign for Accountability to file a complaint to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on the grounds that JCN was “violating the Telephone Consumer Protection Act by sending mass robotexts from a misleading number.” 

• Along with the FCC complaint, a class action lawsuit was filed against JCN which “shows that the texts were meant to appear as if they originated from Donnelly’s office.”

• Representing JCN in this case was Jason Brett Torchinsky of the political law firm Holtzman Vogel.The plaintiffs voluntarily dismissed the case in December 2018

Amy Coney Barrett

On September 26, 2020, the same day that President Donald Trump nominated Amy Coney Barrett to fill the Supreme Court vacancy created by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, JCN announced that it would spend at least $10 million over the course of 30 days to support Barrett’s confirmation. 

Vox described Barrett, who bills herself as a “faithful Catholic,” as a favorite of the religious right, with a record that “suggests she’ll be a reliable conservative if confirmed to the Supreme Court.” 

As a judge of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Barrett “twice signaled opposition to rulings that struck down abortion-related restrictions, voting to have those decisions reconsidered.” In her earlier academic writings, Barrett “weighed in on many of the cultural fights that animate religious conservatism,” making her “a favorite among social conservatives and conservative Christian leaders even before she became a judge.” AP News called Barrett “an heir” to hardline conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, whom Barrett clerked for from 1998 to 1999. Barrett was also a “longtime member of the conservative judge pipeline the Federalist Society” before becoming a federal judge.

• JCN spent $3 million preparing an ad blitz that would “air within three hours of Trump officially announcing Barrett as his pick.” According to AP News, JCN spent “at least $6.3 million in five weeks on national television spots” and “an additional $2.9 million on digital ads, direct mail, and text messages.”

• According to the New York Times, JCN President Carrie Severino “said promotion of Judge Barrett’s nomination is being coordinated from a ‘war room’ at the Judicial Crisis Network that included the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List, Catholic Vote, America First Policies, the Club for Growth and Heritage Action.”

• As the group did with Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination, JCN launched a website to promote Barrett’s nomination and serve as a hub for its campaign materials. The website—“https://confirmamy.com/”—also features quotes from Leonard Leo and other highly influential conservative figures, includingRepublican members of Congress. 

• JCN’s “Confirm Amy” website includes a section detailing Barrett’s experience “defending religious liberty,” featured beside a photo of Barrett and her husband on their wedding day. AP News said JCN’s campaign to confirm Barrett “sought to frame any questions about her involvement in a charismatic religious community that opposes abortion and same-sex marriage as attacks on her Christian faith.” The New York Times said Severino’s network “has worked to disqualify concerns about Judge Barrett’s faith while simultaneously emphasizing it.” 

After the Senate voted to confirm Barrett, JCN claimed credit for the “historic achievement for the conservative legal movement, which has persevered for more than three decades in pursuit of a Supreme Court majority that will follow the Constitution.” 

• JCN President Carrie Severino boasted that the organization had spent $10 million on an advertising campaign “on behalf of Judge Barrett.” 

• JCN’s press release also explicitly said that “JCN played a major role in previous Supreme Court battles and ran multimillion-dollar campaigns to support the successful confirmations of Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh.” 

Ketanji Brown Jackson

In 2022, immediately following the announcement of Justice Stephen Breyer’s retirement, JCN began preparing its attacks on Biden’s yet-to-be-named Supreme Court nominee. They went on to attack Biden’s eventual nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson over her past criticism of Clarence Thomas, and JCN president Carrie Severino said she would be a “radical liberal justice.”

• JCN pledged $2.5 million in spending against Biden’s future nominee before their name was even announced. At the same time, JCN President Carrie Severino railed against Democrats and liberal groups, claiming that they “want payback for their dark money spending in the form of a Supreme Court justice who will be a rubber stamp for their unpopular and far-left political agendas.” 

• A Washington Post fact checker noted the hypocrisy of right-wing groups like JCN attacking liberals: “If these groups are going to air such complaints, they need to disclose they engage in the same practice of collecting huge sums of money without revealing donors.”

After Biden announced Ketanji Brown Jackson as the nominee, JCN spent $1.5 million on an ad highlighting a singular comment that Jackson made over 15 years ago about Justice Clarence Thomas.

• The week of Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Senate confirmation hearings, JCN launched a $1.5 million ad campaign attempting to draw a connection between “vile and baseless attacks from the left” against Justice Clarence Thomas and a comment Jackson made about Thomas at least 15 years ago. JCN pulled Jackson’s statement from a 2007 biography of Thomas titled Supreme Discomfort: 

“Ketanji Brown Jackson, a former clerk for Justice Stephen G. Breyer, remembers sitting across from Thomas at lunch once with a quizzical expression on her face. Jackson, who is black, said Thomas ‘spoke the language,’ meaning he reminded her of the black men she knew. ‘But I just sat there the whole time thinking: ‘I don’t understand you. You sound like my parents. You sound like the people I grew up with.’ But the lessons he tended to draw from the experiences of the segregated South seemed to be different than those of everybody I know.’”

• JCN’s ad and accompanying press release overplayed Jackson’s comment about not “understanding” Thomas, conflating Jackson’s reflections on her and Thomas’ similar backgrounds and diverging beliefs with “attacks from the left”: 

“Justice Thomas’ role in shaping legal thought in the country and his fidelity to the Constitution has drawn attacks from the left for diverging from their approved ideology. Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, Biden’s nominee for the Court has said that she does not ‘understand’ Justice Thomas because he does not think like most people she knows.”

Carrie Severino continued the attacks on Jackson in an interview with the Washington Examiner, calling her a “radical liberal justice.” The article, titled “Conservative judicial activist says there’s a lot to criticize in Jackson record,” contained no substantive criticism of Jackson’s record. The piece includes only one out-of-context quote from Jackson about constitutional interpretation and a statistic showing that 0.017% of Jackson’s decisions as a U.S. District Court judge were reversed in whole or in part. In reality, the Alliance for Justice (AFJ) found that Jackson’s case reversal rate was much lower than the average district judge’s rate: “the D.C. Circuit reverses 13% of the cases it reviews on appeal, and the national average for such reversals across all circuit courts is 9%.” Additionally, AFJ found that Jackson’s case reversal rate was lower than some judges supported by Republicans.

Attacks On President Biden’s Other Nominees

After President Joe Biden assumed office, JCN shifted its attention toward attacking Biden’s nominees. JCN repeatedly railed against “left-wing dark money groups” influencing nominations, even though the group had explicitly claimed credit for the confirmations of Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh just a few months prior.

• In March 2021, JCN spent $1 million on an ad attacking Vanita Gupta, Biden’s nominee for associate attorney general, after having already spent $800,000 on a previous ad against her. The ad railed against “liberal dark money pools and extreme left billionaires,” accusing them of paying for “Gupta’s dark money assault on the Supreme Court, trying to stack the court in their favor, opposing excellent justices, pushing a radical far-left agenda.” JCN’s efforts to block Gupta’s nomination were part of a larger conservative coalition, including groups like Heritage Action for America and Americans for Public Trust, seeking to thwart Biden’s nominees. When asked about JCN’s campaign against Gupta, the executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, which previously endorsed Donald Trump said “The real crisis in this country is not a judicial crisis. The real crisis in this country is partisan demagoguery and the politics of personal destruction.” The Washington Post’s Editorial Board described the campaign against Gupta as a “baseless smear campaign” and said one of JCN’s ads targeting her nomination was “mainly notable for the magnitude of the lies and distortions it crams into 30 seconds.” The Post also compared the smears levied against Gupta to unsubstantiated attacks against Kristen Clarke, another woman of color and Biden’s nominee to be the first Black woman to lead the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department.
• In April 2021, JCN launched another $1 million ad campaign repeating its talking point about “left-wing dark money,” focusing on Biden’s judicial nominees. JCN’s press release alleged that “radical interest groups” are trying to install “radical activist judges” who will “transform the country, ignore the people, and shred the Constitution.” Meanwhile, JCN spent millions of dollars to help build the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority that overturned Roe v. Wade, going against the will of most Americans who believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
• In a column for the National Review, JCN President Carrie Severino dismissed Jennifer Sung, the first Asian American woman to hold a seat on Oregon’s Ninth Circuit, and Beth Robinson, the first LGBTQ woman to serve on any federal circuit court, as “ideologues.” Severino said that Sung showed “temperamental unfitness for the bench” during her Senate confirmation hearings, citing a letter she signed opposing Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation. Severino also said that Robinson, “a tireless champion for equal rights and equal justice,” raised “red flags about her hostility to religious freedom” because of her professional experience in anti-discrimination law. Severino claimed that Sung and Robinson showed “ideological obtuseness” during their Senate confirmation hearings and demonstrated “just how extreme Joe Biden’s judicial nominees are turning out to be.” 

According to Open Secrets, Judicial Crisis Network was a key player in the right’s push to influence state-level judiciaries and legal systems. This push aimed to create a “friendlier legal climate” for conservative and business groups. With funding from the Wellspring Committee, Judicial Crisis Network began to spend large sums in state elections in 2010. Open Secrets credits Leonard Leo’s Federalist Society for providing the “intellectual heft” for this effort. 

A spokesperson for the nonpartisan Brennan Center said JCN is “actively engaged in a campaign to take over state supreme courts.” In response to criticism, JCN president Carrie Severino said that “the average voter doesn’t need to trace every dollar to figure out whether to vote for a candidate.”

Relationship With Republican State Leadership Committee And Republican Attorneys General Association

• In 2014, JCN was the third largest donor to the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA), giving the group $1 million. They also gave $750,000 to American Future Fund, which in turn gave RAGA $680,000 the same year. RAGA helped Republicans hold a majority of Attorney General seats in the country. 
• Judicial Crisis Network gave the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) at least $5.24 million from 2014 to 2019. According to True North Research, the RSLC spent “$2.6 million in Arkansas, $1.7 million in West Virginia, and over $600,000 in Ohio” on state supreme court elections in 2018 alone. That year, JCN gave the RSLC $3.01 million–making it the committee’s largest donor.
• Since 2023, JCN (The Concord Fund) has been the Republican Attorneys General Association’s top donor, giving the group $1 million in just the first half of 2023, and another $1 million in the first quarter of 2024. As of October 2024, when the Concord Fund was revealed to once again be RAGA’s top donor for the third quarter of 2024, the total amount given by JCN/The Concord Fund to RAGA since 2014 totaled $20.3 million.

Wisconsin

• Judicial Crisis Network helped Wellspring Committee funnel money to Wisconsin Club For Growth in 2011. Wisconsin Club For Growth was key to electing conservative Justice Patience Roggensack to a second ten-year term in 2013, spending $400,000 to boost his campaign. The Wisconsin Supreme Court was a key ally to Republican Governor Scott Walker’s agenda, upholding key agenda items on collective bargaining and voter ID.

• Walker’s voter ID initiative was later upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court despite a legal challenge by the ACLU. Voter ID laws disproportionately disenfranchise minority voters.

• Walked passed Act 10, which “gutted the collective bargaining rights of labor unions and devastated the resources and membership rolls of the state teachers union” according to Politico. 
• In the final stretch of the 2019 Wisconsin Supreme Court election, JCN gave the RSLC $1 million as the committee spent $1.2 million on last-minute ads supporting a right-wing justice, who won the race by less than one percent of the vote.

Michigan

• In 2012, Judicial Crisis Network spent more than $2 million on two Michigan court races. 

• JCN spent more than $1 million on last-minute attack ads against a Democratic candidate for Michigan Supreme Court, Bridget Mary McCormack. The ad accused McCormack of “help[ing] to free a terrorist” by the mother of a veteran. This claim was debunked by The New York Times. 
• JCN spent $1 million to block the election of Oakland County Circuit candidate ​​Phyllis McMillen. Another million was poured into the race by fellow Wellspring-funded entity Americans for Job Security.

Arkansas

• In the 2015-16 election cycle, JCN spent $600,000 on ads to block Justice Courtney Goodson’s bid for Chief Justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court. 

• In 2018, JCN spent nearly $1 million to oppose Goodson’s reelection. Goodson sued JCN over further ads opposing her re-election campaign, which alleged she accepted improperly accepted donations and perks. Goodson claimed the ads were defamatory and was granted a temporary ban on the ads by a Circuit Court. The nonpartisan nonprofit Arkansas Judicial Campaign Conduct and Education Committee described JCN’s ads as “false and misleading.”

• The RSLC spent $1.2 million to oppose Goodson’s 2018 reelection. 

Iowa

• In Iowa, JCN financed a 2018 campaign that changed the state’s judicial nomination commission’s makeup from half partisan appointments and half professionals, to entirely partisan appointments. This campaign led to a more conservative Iowa Supreme Court that has ruled against abortion rights and upheld a policy that allows police officers to charge drivers with crimes other than what they were stopped for, which was criticized as racially discriminatory.

North Carolina

• Judicial Crisis Network spent $75,000 to elect North Carolina Supreme Court candidate Paul Martin Newby in 2012.

Additional Figures

• In the 2015-16 election cycle, JCN spent nearly $2 million to influence state supreme court elections in North Carolina, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Ohio, And Pennsylvania. 

Anti-LGBTQ+ Efforts

In 2022, the Concord Fund contributed $750,000 to the lobbying arm of the “influential” anti-LGBTQ+ group Do No Harm, which is responsible for a wave of harmful anti-trans legislation in multiple states. The lobbying arm, Do No Harm Action, has been described as “a significant leader in statehouses seeking to ban gender-affirming care for transgender youths.” According to the Associated Press, Montana, Arkansas, and Iowa have all passed bills restricting gender-affirming care including language nearly identical to Do No Harm’s model legislation.

The 85 Fund

The 85 Fund (formerly known as the Judicial Education Project) is a 501(c)(3) organization that operates within a network of conservative nonprofits aiming to influence the federal judiciary and the American political system more broadly. The 85 Fund was founded in 2011 by prominent Republican operatives and is closely linked to its sister organization the Judicial Crisis Network and Trump judicial advisor and conservative legal activist Leonard Leo.

• In 2020, the group legally changed its name to the 85 Fund and almost immediately raised $20 million dollars, much of it from the influential conservative “dark money” group, Donors Trust. In recent years, the 85 Fund has sent money to other ultra-conservative and right-wing groups, including groups that were tied to efforts to overturn the 2020 election. 

Leonard Leo  

Leonard Leo was “widely known as a confidant to Trump” and served as Trump’s Supreme Court Advisor during the nominations of Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, and Neil Gorsuch.

Leo has been called “arguably the most powerful figure in the federal justice system” with his “network of interlocking nonprofits” that aggressively support conservative judges. 

• One of these nonprofits is the Federalist Society, which cultivates conservative judicial nominees in his fight to take over the courts. 

• This shadow empire has allowed Leo to meet and “cultivate almost every important Republican lawyer in more than a generation.”

• Leo operates a series of nonprofits that can move money without public scrutiny, such as the 85 Fund, the BH Fund, America Engaged, and the Freedom and Opportunity Fund.

• Leo’s network executed successful advocacy campaigns to appoint and confirm John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court—as well as block Merrick Garland from the Court. 

• During the nomination process for Trump nominee Brett Kavanaugh, Leo assured a group of top Koch network donors that it was “just the beginning of an even bigger effort to load up the federal judiciary with conservative judges.”  

Leo has personal and professional ties to Justice Clarence Thomas, who is an original faculty member of the Federalist Society and a frequent speaker at the organization’s events. 

• Thomas has hired Leo’s PR firm CRC Advisors to promote his memoir and a documentary about Thomas.

• The Washington Post reports that Leo and Clarence Thomas have been close friends since meeting in the 1990s.

• Thomas is the godfather to one of Leo’s children, and has spent time vacationing at Leo’s New England home.

• During the George H.W. Bush administration, Leo delayed his start at the Federalist Society to help get Thomas confirmed to the Supreme Court.

In August 2023, Politico reported that Washington D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb was opening an investigation into Leonard Leo and his network of nonprofits. This news came shortly after the non-profit watchdog group Campaign for Accountability accused Leo of inappropriately directing over $73 million from his network of nonprofits to for-profit entities he is associated with. In October 2023, Leo said he would not cooperate with Attorney General Schwalb’s investigation.

In December 2023, two House Republican committee chairs threatened to subpoena Schwalb for “failing to comply with their investigation into the reasons for his targeting” of Leo. A day later, the Concord Fund contributed $250,000 to the Congressional Leadership Fund, a PAC associated with Republican House leadership.

Payments to Leo For-Profit Entities CRC Advisors and BH Group

CRC Advisors, a public relations firm founded in 2020 by Leonard Leo and his longtime associate, Greg Mueller, evolved out of Mueller’s existing conservative communications firm CRC Strategies, which formerly assumed the names CRC Public Relations and Creative Response Concepts. Virtually all of Leo’s nonprofit groups, including Judicial Crisis Network, have paid CRC for public relations work over the years. Since 2014, Judicial Crisis Network has paid Creative Response Concepts over $23 million.

Judicial Crisis Network Contracting Payments to Creative Response Concepts

BH Group is a limited liability company formed in 2016 in Virginia. According to a 2018 IRS filing for the Leo-linked Rule of Law Trust, Leo owned more than 35% of the BH Group at the time. The BH Group’s Virginia business records do not list any staff; however, Leonard Leo was identified as an “authorized person” in a 2022 filing update with the Virginia State Corporation Commission regarding the organization’s registered agent. Leo also listed BH Group as his employer in a 2018 campaign finance filing. Since 2016, Judicial Crisis Network has paid BH Group over $4.4 million.

Judicial Crisis Network Contracting Payments To BH Group

Scott Pruitt

In 2018 The Washington Post reported that Scott Pruitt, then-head of the EPA, “had a top aide help contact Republican donors who might offer his wife a job,” who ended up being an independent contractor with JCN. A JCN spokesperson said, “the position came about after the group received her résumé from Leonard Leo.” Pruitt and Leo are “longtime close friends,” and Pruitt founded the Rule of Law Defense Fund and chaired the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA), both of which have received money from JCN and other Leo nonprofits.