leonard leo was going to be the conduit of that. n idea of how much money leo has directed to ginni thomas or the timeline of when the payments began? >> the timeline of when the payments began, i might be able to be more helpful on, the full amount of the money i made several passes at them on, and asked both representatives for thomas as well as leonard leo's group and got no answers on that. but the timeline is extremely interesting and i encourage everybody to click inside the story because we worked hard to distill that for you. however, it shows that to the month that the nonprofit experiment between leonard leo and ginni blew up, by the way, because of a phone call that she made to anita hill, which drew unwanted attention to her. but when that blew up, they voted immediately, i mean, like, within days. ginni thomas filed paperwork to create her own for profit group. and this group, the judicial education project, which was used subsequently by her, was retroactively reactivated to a little bit earlier in the year. and the sam

the same story, and it's the same story, that the pay to play guys, who are all involved with leonard, leo who is involved with efforts to suppress the vote -- they are now paying to play the game of managing the docket itself, of doctrine itself. it is one story, and we have to start treating it like it is one. >> it is devastating and deeply distressing. there is truly no better person to talk, to especially when night when i'm losing my voice, but definitely, when we are talking about -- the great dahlia lithwick, who is book, lady justice is, once again -- did i mention? it -- out in paperback today. -- that is it for our show tonight. now it is time for "the last word with lawrence o'donnell". >> >> -- good evening, alex. i am ripping up the script that i have for senator sheldon whitehouse's introduction on this show tonight, because you just did it with dahlia lithwick. -- remember everything that alex and dahlia lithwick said. >> yes, and later, in the show, apply that as an imagined introduction to senator sheldon whitehouse. >> can i just say, lawrence o'donnell, you have been so

its name on a list of supreme court nominees that you and your right wing billionaire pals, and leonard leod, never an agenda item, never a vote. but a list from some backroom of the federalist society, pulled together by leo and the billionaires that candidate trump promised to follow. and let's say that when trump kept that promise, and nominated your chosen ones, you send millions more to the judicial crisis network and to mitch mcconnell's political operation. not just to stop merrick garland, but to push the confirmation of your chosen ones. neil gorsuch, brett kavanaugh, and amy coney barrett. and let's say that to keep your chosen ones loyal and happy and entertained, you secretly pay for their personal lives. you paid for family tuitions. you bought family houses, and let family members live rent free. you paid for lifestyles of the rich and famous level vacations. including, free travel to resorts, on private jets, travel on private yachts, and you gave them expensive gifts, and you directed money to their spouses, and of course you hung out with then. and let's say that that lost

based law firm called consaboy mccarthy, which works hand in glove with right wing groups tied to leonard leoety who argued the original case before the supreme court is working with the d.c. law firm, since he is the original architect of the defiance plan. his wife also happens to work on brett kavanaugh's confirmation team. a direct link from alabama to a sitting member of the court which was unknown until it was reported just today. the state's attorney general, steve marshall, looking to capitalize on this obstruction also has tied to multiple leo organizations including the federalist society and the republican attorney generals association which gets a whole lot of money from leo. this comes days after politico reported leonard leo has created an extensive infrastructure to push key conservative issues like gerrymandering, abortion access, religious liberty, and pro fossil fuel cases before a friendly court, with the heb of one of the justices' wives, ginni thomas. you can understand why republicans across the country are emboldened to strip people of their rights given the majority of

what does it say about who leonard leo's?oz to manipulate the levers of the ultra conservative movements. >> yes, katie, you have nailed the main thing here. we are not just talking about billionaires finding luxury vacations anymore. we are talking about the nation's most prolific supreme court conservative advocates organizing secret payments directly to the wife of the supreme court justice. these are payments via a group that became a juggernaut. seeking to influence the supreme court on key issues like abortion, and he issues they couldn't get done legislatively. a group that then came to be partially run by a former supreme court to clarence thomas. here are some key revelations. this collaboration like you pointed out just weeks before the citizens united ruling. and, fact they sign the paperwork incorporating and putting lettered leo as a director on this in new years eve. it's hard to believe according to experts that clarence thomas was discussing about that ruling. of course, to be, fair advise widely expected the

and we've all known that leonard leo is kind of the -- of this court.gini thomas, it's too elaborate for me to go into in the remaining television we have, but the relationship between conservative dark money and the justices on the supreme court is not hard to trace. and in this particular case it seems that is very much at the root of how these justices send out their smoke signals and how the lawmakers and the lawyers on the other end understand them and read the smoke signals to begin with. >> that's why i'm so glad you said that because that's why this particular incident is so telling. we tend to completely bifurcate the supreme court coverage. we cover the cases, we cover the docket. oh, i wonder whether the chevron docket is going to be overruled this turn. and we cover the scandal and the pay to play. and this illuminates it's the same story that the pay to play guys all involved with leonard leo, involved in efforts to suppress the vote, they're now paying to play the game of managing the docket itself, of doctrine itself. it's one story and w

we are asking questions of leonard leo.et any information about the leo and alito travel and gifts. as for the lawyer who conducted the interview and in the interview, alito brings up the case that the lawyer was making for why his client and alito's friend did not have to disclose anything about those trips. so that's a much bigger story than i just had an interview who, an interview with a lawyer who's involved in a particular dispute against me, actually. and he used alito to prop up his argument in that dispute. apparently, it was two alito's full knowledge. and at the end of the day, he was a beneficiary of the scheme because it was his free travel that would be left undisclosed according to our investigation. >> yeah, and the ways in which his recusal message distorts his accusations about other members of the court who have never done anything like what we are talking about in this case. >> yeah, and i think this is just a particularly bad case because, you know, the core principle, the basic foundation of due proces

the theories that they have intel, because one third of the alabama legislature is in bed with leonard leoy are just going to take this course back to the supreme court under the theory that brett kavanaugh is really into a recording opinion we think we can flip them this time. >> it seems like for those of us who are expecting bad for civil rights ruling on affirmative action and were given exactly that bad ruling, the anna alabama ruling was a look surprised, the court isn't denying our country's racist history in the way we thought it would. it now seems that affirmative action ruling may be of use to people who want to get rid effectively of the ruling the supreme court made in alabama. can you explain that better than i have? >> you have exactly nailed it. justice kavanaugh's theory in both cases is that there is -- remediation of centuries of civil rights abuses is like milk and it has a shelf life. in the affirmative action cases, he won on that theory. that's what the court said. he said being, your pop-tart is done and we can't use affirmative action anymore. it almost makes more

don't worry, ginni thomas launched a new nonprofit consulting group and leonard leo found a differentl. kellyanne conway would serve as the conduit for that. leo arranged for between $80 and $1then,000 to go to ginni thomas through conway for unspecified work in 2011 and 2012. as she stepped back, leo reactivated a nonprofit group, the judicial education project which would file numerous briefs before his friend's supreme court. here's where things get tricky and trust me, this is tricky. the judicial education project is tax exempt as a charity, and has to file forms to keep that status. it is a legal requirement that their funds are used for charitable or educational purposes. politico is reporting and subsequent probes have raised questions that leo's groups have taken advantage of tax disclosure laws to send additional business and funds to ginni thomas amongst other activists. joining me now to pull all of this apart is melissa murray, nyu law professor, msnbc legal analyst, cohost of the strict scrutiny podcast, and fellow wahoo. thank you for joining us this evening. look, i al

nor is it illegal for ginni thomas to work with leonard leo on these conservative causes.preme court and forest justices is that this is an institution that depends on public legitimacy for its authority. it depends on the public believing that it is legitimate for it to have authority and because this information has been disclosed and buried into the shadows. it seems more nefarious than it is. we don't know what to the real nature of this relationship is. that by itself is the problem. for this court, it is the fact of impropriety that's the problem. it is the appearance of impropriety. if there is impropriety, it's obviously worse. it's such a delicate institution. it's so delicately poised in the public mind that it really depends on the public understanding and perceiving it as legitimate for to have authority. this does not help. >> does this fit into whatever effort we think we should be involved in and creating greater transparency and ethics rules on the supreme court or in your mind is this just a separate issue that we should know about? >> it's in next wind. j

it has leonard leo. it's got violent quote, the guy with a garden of evil.ot the kochs, missing up until now. and of course it's got ginni thomas, of course it's got hurt. let me read a piece of this. during one of these events, the group announced new initiatives focused on getting conservatives off the supreme court, the federal bench. the network which had already given millions of lls to leonard leo's federalist society plan to mobilize activists to buy advertisement to push senators to vote f president donald trump's judicial nominees. they appointed a former employee of ginni thomas, the justice wife, to lead the effort. it's got everything, elie, and at this point, how do we conclude that the supreme court is anything other than a bought and paid for trifle of the superrich, or at least six of them, or some of them. >>, look i've been waiting for the koch to show up because anytime a public official goes out for auction in this country, the koch brothers have a front row seat. like, you know they're gonna get involved in this story eventually. but her

and then there's another one for the billionaire that has one paragraph, that says what leonard leo's lawyer said, reweefer you to the relevant portions -- refer you to the relevant portions to the letter to mr. leo. i feel bad for these lawyers because you don't get to bill as much for one paragraph. poor fellows. i ask unanimous consent to append the letter of lawyer bop for billionaire crow and the little of rivkin for billionaire operative leo at the end of my remark with the short one-paragraph letter, the tag-along letter from attorney clarke. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. whitehouse: lawyers bop and rifkin tell me that investigating this is unconstitutional under the separation of powers, we can't legislate supreme court ethics, so we can't investigate supreme court ethics. first, remember alongside separation of powers is its twins, checks and balances which requires branches, like the legislative branch to check and balance the other branches, like in this case the judicial branch. that's what we're doing here, checks and balances. let's dive down into the spe

amy: leonard leo said in a statement to you to propublica -- usti thomas attends events all over thetry, as do all the justices, and i was privileged to join him. all the necessary due diligence was performed to ensure the justice's attendance at the events was compliant with all ethics requirements." your response to that? and then just summarize, in an, propublica has published one story after another. one with clarence thomas recusing himself and where these stories -- it is not only harlan crow or the koch brothers, had the peace in between talking about other billionaires subsidizing his vacations come to the tune of millions of dollars. >> in terms of the recusal, another thing about the supreme court, the recusal decisions are made entirely by each justice him or herself. chairman durbin of the senate called on friday for justice thomas to recuse himself from this case the koch network has brought to the case. justice thomas has not responded that i have seen. in terms of where the stories are going, we are still reporting on the entire supreme court. if anyone out there knows

nicolle, we have long known that leonard leo is the man behind the conservative dark money movement.nown is that there was also a plan back just before citizens united for him to be the conduit for ginni thomas to become a movement leader. now, that blew up pretty quickly due to a call she made to anita hill, which is a whole other story. but when it did blow up, nicolle, there was a plan b. and that's what people don't know and haven't known until our reporting, is that they quickly pivoted. that plan was to use one of leo's outside dark money groups, a different one that he reactivated almost -- just coinciding with ginni thomas's failed experiment with him and that that group was used to pay ginni thomas. we know that from the post's previous reporting. what i uncovered is that began almost exactly when their own experiment blew up. and what's very important to understand here, nicolle, and what they refuse to answer to me in my reporting was whether those payments ever stopped. how much she was paid and what she was paid to do because there's all kinds of issues here, right? whic

in infamous court fixture, leonard leo, and that the information we were seeking, the gravity of the he needs to be done to flesh out those remaining segments. and that's what made this very interesting to me. you had a clear violation by justice alito. it would be hard for the court, or the judicial conference, to just shrug this off. and you have a clear interest in further fact finding, which is a thing the court has gone out of its way to avoid having any of. >> i just want to, you know, give the audience a sense of just how much constitutional law you have to know to know how wrong his statement is. and that, is of course, there are nine supreme court justices, because congress decided it would be nine. it had been other numbers and other point in time. i'm not aware of any supreme court justice in history, including the very first supreme court justices, having the slightest doubt that congress gets to decide how many supreme court justices there are, which is to say, congress does get to regulate the supreme court. >> indeed. not only as to its number, but as to its jurisdictio

indeed in the picture you're showing right now one of the chief court manipulators, leonard leo, is sittingre looking over at harlan crow and justice thomas. so the backdrop to this is an enormous amount of billionaire influence around the court, and this is a story that's going to continue to develop. >> and it is important the point you just made these are people thawho have some connection to court business. initially when asked about these cases the justices either prevaricated about why they took these things or knew about them or why they did it and then why these people potentially for business before the court. >> one billionaire's hedge fund actually did have business before the court. other billionaires are the supporters of front groups that file briefs and assert themselves into the business of the court. and several of these billionaires are involved in the longer term overarching effort to capture and control the supreme court and manipulate it and turn it into a captured weapon for their political influence. >> senator, good to see you. thank you for joining us. we appreciate

is a court that has been fed by conservative ideological groups, like the federal society, and leonard leoas done. so this is not accidental that we have ideologically determined 62 conservative majority completely adjust up with the american people. but this did not just happen overnight. >> the minute we have, left what do you want viewers to come away with after watching that lock? >> i want people to remember how important the court, is and how it once was the champion of individual liberty. and i want people to pressure the government -- we are so beyond just asking for ethical standards, we are beyond asking for the governance itself, and it cannot do, that the public has a choice, in who is elected, and who is nominated, and who is confirming these justices. the public needs to make its opinions known. >> dawn porter thank you very much for coming to the saturday show. you can catch the four-part docuseries right now on showtime. coming up next on the special extended edition of the saturday show, countdown to shut down. dnc chair jaime harrison on how government shutdowns have usua

we had reporting yesterday there's a leonard leo cabal that is pushing that state to defy the court becausethe tank and he will overturn the voting rights act. there's good reason to believe they are right. this six membersf the court want conservative republican outcomes. and so if they want conservative republican outcomes, why should we trust the supreme court at all? >> well, i think we have to assume that the supreme court, if it wants to be an institution that has any longevity, that continues to have currency in this country, that it will want to preserve its own authority. and many people were surprised we won in the supreme court as we did in june. and i firmly believe and i felt this way when we brought the case, these facts are so strong, the law is so clearly on our side that the court really had no other option unless it wanted to reveal itself to be completely co-opted, to rule in our favor. and i expect that the court will be consistent, that it will insure that it does not reward states like alabama that are obstinate, that are trying to subvert the rule of law with any bene

we also know that leonard leo has been in the mix of it, holding meetings, hoping to arrange them andral society that even though the court draw was thomas sitting around a table at the club with koch's biggest donors. >> for people who say that this is some sort of a left-wing attack on clarence thomas, and that these justices have the ability to be entirely fair and neutral on these things. justice ketanji brown jackson has recused herself from the south chevron and deference discussion. it happens. judges should have the ability to say, there is a valid reason why i perhaps should not be involved in this. this thaw and sentiment on any level does not seem to have occurred to samuel alito, who goes on fishing trips with harlan crow or with justice clarence thomas, going on private planes to fancy events. this concept might be influenced by those who are given food, fish and airplanes, both, things like that, boat rides -- what am i missing here? why is it that the conservatives on the court seem to think that they are immune to influence? ketanji brown jackson, the newest associate

and this illuminates it's the same story that the pay to play guys all involved with leonard leo, involved in efforts to suppress the vote, they're now paying to play the game of managing the docket itself, of doctrine itself. it's one story and we have to start treating it like it's one story. >> it is devastating and deeply distressing. there's truly no better person to talk to especially when we're talking about matters of great import. the book is out in paper back today. that is our show for tonight. "way too early" with jonathan lemire is coming up next. >>> for the second year in a row this gathering dedicated to peaceful resolution of conflicts has been darkened by the shadow of war. an illegal war. like every nation in the world, the united states wants this war to end. no nation wants this war to end more than ukraine. >> that's president joe biden during his united nations speech yesterday urging the world to stand with ukraine. we'll break down his call to action for the u.s. allies and president zelenskyy's warning to world leaders on how russian aggression could expand beyond

begin to see that it's always a right-wing billionaire, that it's always a right-wing justice, that leonard leotous little court fixer is almost inevitably involved, that it always involves a federalist society or ginni thomas's little charity or the americans for prosperity battleship of the koch brothers. and while every single one doesn't have every one of these pieces, when you stack them all up over and over again it's the same little network of a few right-wing billionaires. i think we're up to six right now. and a few right-wing justices, two we've discovered so far, and the front groups that intermediate between the billionaires and the right-wing justices. and as you said, it involves actual cases. so this is for real. and the technique that the justices are applying right now is simply no answering of questions, i'm just going to pretend everything is fine, there's no process for fact finding, there's no investigative effort whatsoever. so i think that's what's going to have to break. and i think it probably will break either through the judicial conference with real judges who are ge

we saw another important article come not just this morning about the nexus between leonard leo, and his front group. and his billionaires who fund him, and one of the justices on the supreme court. it just keeps getting worse. so i would urge a no vote on this amendment. i think we have a form vote. we will call the roll. >> [inaudible] >> the amendment does not agree to. if there are no more amendments, we'd like to vote on final passage. unfavourably reporting as -- >> this is the bill? mister chairman. >> senator whitehouse. i would like to make a few points that we wrap this up. the first is that i would react to the comments that the democrats want to pack the court. the court has already been passed. it has been packed as a result of a very long and expensive efforts run by a handful of secretive right-wing billionaires through a bunch of front groups. the tally of the cost of the operation has risen from the original 250 million dollar estimate of the washington post, and now 500 and $80 million spent on trying to make sure that those billionaire succeeded in what has been ch

rivkin's client is leonard leo. leo is not just a friend and ally of alito. our oversight questions that attorney rivkin is blocking relate to mr. leo's actions to facilitate gifts for supreme court justices. from right wing billionaires, a free and undisclosed transportation and lodging. mr. leo didn't just facilitate, he was justice alito's companion on the luxurious alaskan fishing trip in 2008 that right wing billionaires funded. the relationship goes back. leo's political organization, and i quote here, had run an advertising campaign supporting alito in his confirmation fight, and leo was reportedly part of the team that prepared alito for his senate hearings. so, it appears that justice alito, a., improperly opined in "the wall street journal," b., to influence a specific, ongoing dispute, c., possibly at the behest of counsel in that dispute, and d., to the benefit of a personal friend and ally. none of that was disclosed in the interview, either. and it brings us to the last and most damning point. justice alito's opining, potentially at the behest o