through leonard leo. and in an epic new report today politico gave new meaning to ginni thomas' statement about leo. soon after leo became trump's advisor in 2016 he amassed a sort of unnatural amount of wealth. he bought two multi-million dollar mansions in maine, four new cars, spots in private schools for his children and a wine locker at morton's steakhouse. i don't know what a wine locker is but it sounds fancy and also unnecessary. mr. leo certainly didn't tell the public how he bought all of that, but thanks to politico we now have a pretty good idea. leo's personal wealth appears to have skyrocketed in tandem to major victories on the road. one day after the senate took a controversial procedural vote clearing the way for kavanaugh's appointment to replace kennedy, that was the day leonard leo bought his first mansion up in the state of maine. that lifestyle upgrade was reportedly funded by leo's network of non-profit organizations. based on dozens of records from 2000 to 2021 plit cefound after he

leonard leo. additional advisor, leo was a source of president trump's list of approve conservative nominees for the supreme court. that is how we got justices and neil gorsuch, brett kavanaugh, and amy coney barrett through trump's judge whisperer. through leonard leo. and in an epic new report today, politico gave new meaning to ginni thomas's statement about leo. he doesn't tell all that he does, but i know enough to know that the man is a force of nature. soon after leo became trump's advisor in 2016, he amassed an actual amount of wealth. you've got to multi million dollar mountains in maine, along with four new cars, spots and private schools for his children, and a wine locker at mortise steakhouse, i mean i don't know exactly what a wine locker is, but it sounds fancy and maybe a necessary. mr. leo certainly didn't tell the public how he bought all of that. but thanks to politico we now have a pretty good idea. lee of personal wealth appears to have skyrocketed in tandem with major victori

enter leonard leo. we have talked about him on the show before.-wing federalist society. he's essentially the reason for the supreme court's right wing supermajority. and his latest venture is backing a group called the teneo network that aims to replicate what leo did to the courts in every aspect of life. he told potential donors in a private video that he plans to crush liberal dominance on wall street, in silicon valley, and in books, schools, and sports, and hollywood. a federalist society for everything. this is how the right thinks they can take the culture back. as ridiculous as it sounds, they have a lot of money and a lot of republican heavy hitter onboard. joining me is propublica's andrea bernstein, one of the reporters who broke the story, along with torraye, host of masters of the game on the grillo, and my friend. thank you for being here. let me start with you, ms. bernstein. let me play a quick sound bite of leonard leo so people can kind of hear him talk. here he is. >> i spent close to 30 years if not more helping to build the c

leonard leo was critical in creating the network that enabled that to happen. looking to do is expand that outward. it is not just talking about law, but law, politics, culture and media, and bringing conservative values to all of those areas and creating a pipeline of individuals who can go and work in organizations, government advancing conservative causes. lisa: what is his agenda or his hopes, and is he affecting the overall conservative agenda? andrea: absolute. almost everybody i speak with, both people who oppose his views and support him, feel he has been pivotal, key in creating a culture where it is much harder to obtain an abortion. where in some states, it can be more difficult to vote. where he has ideas that pulled back on federal regulation. these are all causes he support and many people do. he is someone who has created a pipeline in their legal world of judges and lawyers who have pushed these ideas. now as we have repord and found out, he's worked on this group which is elevating people all across society to work for conservative ideas. given

created by leonard leo, for the specific purpose of receiving the 1. 6 billion.friends very wealthy. it's a slush fund granted to further political mischief. it's a pretty big reward for having to help billionaires capture the supreme court. and it's used for themselves. >> what do the billionaires get from the supreme court in exchange? >> the biggest thing that they get is the ability to continue to manipulate democracy from behind dark money screens. in fact, the 6 to 3 courts with the justice barren on its, actually created the first constitutional rights to spend money anonymously to influence politics. while they took the rights to determine your own health care away from half the population. the female half of the population. they added a constitutional rights that helps a bunch of very anonymous billionaires secretly influence politics through these 5013 c four twin front groups. >> senator sheldon whitehouse, thank you very much for enlightening us on the subject. really appreciate it. >> yes sir. >> we'll be right back. with our two-year-old. so natural

>> well, duck judge because marin was picked by leonard leo for this spot on the texas court that he now occupies, there has been a lot of reporting this week about leonard leo's role in the trump administration, the outsource source for all of those trump nominations, and matthew kaz merrick is one of those individuals -- well the student of the university of texas law school, he is very conservative, he has some ties to forced liberty institute which is incredibly conservative christian organization that defends religious freedom, he swore when he was confirmed that he would shift from the advocate to being a judge. but he -- when individuals have to file lawsuits for suing conservative causes in court they seem to find their way to amarillo, texas, where judge has merrick happens to be the only judge in the only court house in amarillo. >> coincidental, don't you think? >> there is a lot. of photo shopping there. people know what they are going to get. this is the same judge that invalidated the biden administration's care for transgender individuals, it is also the same judge tha

that put in the hands of a guy namedre leonard a leo i've talkd about here on the floor the orchestrator of that to capture the supreme court and put it into special interest hands. his reward for his success and that projects with this $1.6 billion slush fund that he now controls and he controls it through utah 5o1c pop up and the guy who delivered that money into the marble freedom trust was also famous for his support for the heartland i institute. which is really an epic climate denial crowd to the .1 of the more notorious acts was to put up a billboard equating clay claimantte scientists that is te quality of the debate about climate change that the heartland institute brought in the billionaire who keyed up was a private backer of all of that. indeed cfo go on the board of heartland a institute could be continued to do great work of billboards that compare the claimant scientists to the unit bomber. these guys are deep into this anti- esg push the dark money i talk about on the floor all the time behind this thing just the way it's behind the whole climate denial t operation. a few

we've mapped out who's funding them some are tied to allies of former president trump leonard leo is their esg platform through a multiple dollar platform. and, you know, these are the things that are going on behind the scenes, as republicans at both the state and federal level try to make this part of their political goals. >> and by the way, this is from axios this week as well. but venture capital and private equity funds are defunding esg considerations there's been an 11 point drop in those says esg is a determining factor a key challenge has backup claims to avoid accusations of green washing and the politicization of the issue. >> it's not even just that in a market where things are drifting lower or have no real upside catalyst, in a bull market it's very easy to talk about esg. when it's a down market you're just trying to make money or not lose it. so, how is the environment factor into. so nature of these campaigns, either anti or for esg you're right, that's part of the debate that's what republicans are discussing on the hill, this kind of environment we're seeing here

that put it into the hands of a guy named leonard leo who i talked about here on the floor before who is the orchestrator of the scheme capture the supreme court and put it into special interest hands. his reward for his success in that project was this $1.6 billion slush fund that he now controls and he controls it through that utah 501(c)(4) pop-up called the marble freedom trust. and the guy who delivered that money into the marble freedom trust was also famous for his support for the heartland institute which is really just an epic climate denial crowd to the point where one of their more notorious acts was to put up a billboard equating climate scientists to the unabomber. that is the quality of the debate about climate change that the heartland institute brought, and the billionaire who's teed up marble freedom trust was the prime backer of all of that and indeed had his cfo go on the board of heartland institute, try to keep the thing afloat so that it could be moderately well managed and continue to do its great work of build boards that compared the climate scientists -- bill

leonard birenbaum, a real pleasure having you on my show, and thanks for your time. i know you like to go by leo leo, on the show this week, we've been looking at the mighty rise of data centres around the world as our lives are just going more and more online. and of course, these are very power hungry facilities and with growing populations and globalisation, it feels like this isn't a problem that's going to go away. how do we make this work? first, aaron, pleasure to be on your show. second, no, the mighty data and energy hunger is going to remain. so data centres globally consume something right now, we estimate between a0 and 80% of the total electricity consumption of germany. and if we look at the growth rates, we assume that in 2030 this might rise actually to something like half of the electricity consumption of the us, something like 2,000 terawatt hours. and it's not only the population and the population growth and globalisation which is driving it, it's also new technology like chatgtp, it uses three times the energy consumption of a google search. now how do we do? what do we do a