,
10 tweets,
4 min read
Read on Twitter
WATCH LIVE: The Third Federalist Society twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1…
One @FedSoc darling has received a particular amount of attention recently, the newly confirmed DC Court of Appeals judge Neomi Rao. Her deep connections to the Federalist Society are no secret. #CapturedCourts
When Rao testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, I asked her about the funding of her so-called Center for the Study of the Administrative State at George Mason’s Scalia Law School. She testified to me that NO anonymous or Koch brothers funding had gone to her Center.
The thing was, @nytimes and others had documents showing that wasn’t true. A Virginia open records request revealed that an anonymous donor and the Charles Koch Foundation, working with Leonard Leo, donated $30 million, much of which was earmarked for her organization.
Here’s what’s also interesting: open records documents show the law school dean regularly reported to Leonard Leo and the Koch Foundation on developments at the Center, including faculty hiring, student admissions, and other @FedSoc priorities.
In one email, the dean asked an influential donor for $1.5 million to fund Neomi Rao’s center, to "entice Neomi to return home to Scalia Law after she dismantles the administrative state while serving” in the @realDonaldTrump administration.
Now “dismantler" Rao is a life-tenured judge on the nation’s second highest court, supposed to treat our U.S. agencies fairly. #CapturedCourts
nytimes.com/2019/03/13/us/…
nytimes.com/2019/03/13/us/…
Weird, cozy relationships between public law school deans and DC power brokers can seem in the weeds, but let’s not lose sight of the bigger picture:
Americans are seeing their courts packed with judges who always rule against them whenever big corporate and Republican partisan interests have a skin in the game. Every time.
Leonard Leo’s dark @FedSoc is installing judges to dismantle the protections that keep us safe from corporate greed. I’m glad the @washingtonpost’s reporting shows more of how this operation works. #CapturedCourts 
