1/ I have a BIG new story to share with you.

It’s about LEONARD LEO, the man who’s been called the “hidden architect” of the Supreme Court’s conservative majority.

Our investigation goes deeper, and reveals more, than any story about Leo.

It's 🧵 time… 2/ If Leo’s name rings a bell, it’s probably for his work advising Donald Trump.

Remember Trump's list of SCOTUS picks from 2016?

Leo crafted it.

But what Leo built is SO MUCH bigger than just — just! — the Supreme Court.

Here’s what we learned…
propub.li/3RVSKXA

As someone who reported extensively on Fox News's high-profile settlement with Seth Rich's parents, I wanted to share a few observations about today's news.

The $787 million sum is massive.

This is a huge win for Dominion Voting Systems.

A win for truth? Not so much...

🧵 Settlement agreements — even 11th-hour ones — usually emerge from many hours of grueling negotiations.

The dollar figure, public remarks, and what the plaintiffs & defendants can — and can't — say afterward is agreed to by all parties.

It's usually quite choreographed. 2/x

🚨 I’ve got a juicy story to tell you about Leonard Leo.

Last time we checked in with Leo, we revealed details about a $1.6 BILLION gift he'd received.

That huge donation begged the question:

What will Leo do next?

Answer: “Crush liberal dominance.”

How?

It's 🧵 time Leo helped run the Federalist Society for 3 decades, building a pipeline for conservative judges & justices.

He was an architect of the 6-3 SCOTUS conservative supermajority that overturned Roe.

His latest project?

It’s called the Teneo Network. 2/

propublica.org/article/leonar…

Let me tell you a story about an ultrasecretive donor, a key architect of the Supreme Court's rightward lurch, and a whole lot of money.

$1.6 billion. With a B.

We @propublica & @levernews went deep on it.

Let's talk about how massive this dark-money deal is.

It's 🧵time 2/ Start w/ that $1.6B, which @kenvogel & @ShaneGoldmacher broke the news of.

It’s nearly the GDP of Belize.

It's more than the DNC & RNC's COMBINED spending in '20.

At first, I couldn’t think of a donation remotely close to it.

So we started to dig… propublica.org/article/dark-m…

Today we heard Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman tell the @January6thCmte about the threats they faced as Georgia election workers in 2020.

Threats fueled by no less than former President Trump himself.

There's an intriguing backstory to their testimony.

A Jan. 6 🧵... Moss & Freeman are a mother-daughter duo who processed ballots in Fulton County, GA.

They were accused of many crimes, like unloading "suitcases" of fake Biden ballots, double-counting ballots, and tampering w/ voting machines.

The "crime of the century," Giuliani claimed. 2/

BIDEN at 1st press conf: "My Republican colleagues are going to have to determine whether we want to work together or decide if they want to proceed to just divide the country, continue the politics of division."

He adds: "I've been hired to solve problems, not create division." BIDEN: From 1917 to 1971, there were 58 motions to break a filibuster.

In 2020 alone, he says, there were five times that many.

"It's been abused in a gigantic way. People got tired of talking and tired of collapsing."

Says he "strongly" supports talking filibuster reform.

Folks, it's time for a ~thread~

@RollingStone's next issue is our climate issue.

For four years, we catalogued the Trump administration’s corruption and assault on science.

Now, we have a president who takes the crisis seriously and has an ambitious, gov't-wide agenda... 1/ For the 2021 climate issue, we go deep on Biden's climate plans.

The people driving those plans. The policies to make those plans a reality.

The activists applying pressure from the outside.

And the lessons (hopefully) learned from the last big climate-bill debacle... 2/

As someone who's spent, conservatively, thousands of hours reporting on and thinking about Seth Rich, Fox News, and conspiracy theories, the timing of the settlement highlighted in @benyt's new column doesn't infuriate me as much as the substance of it 1/x nytimes.com/2021/01/17/bus… What's infuriating is the absence of any contrition, apology, or remediation by Fox, especially @seanhannity.

As I've reported, Hannity arguably did more than anyone else to amplify the baseless, discredited, and cruel conspiracy theories about Seth. 2/x rollingstone.com/politics/polit…

Tom Clare, lawyer for Dominion Voting Systems, tells reporters just now that Dominion's $1.3 billion suit against Sidney Powell "is the first in a series of legal steps Dominion will be taking. But the process of setting the record straight starts today with" Powell suit. Tom Clare seems to suggest — but only suggest — that media companies who amplified the conspiracy theories about Dominion spread by Sidney Powell could face future legal action.

Another Seth Rich-related update for you.

This one takes a bit of explaining, so bear with me.

In May 2017, @FoxNews published its now-infamous story claiming Seth Rich was WikiLeaks' source for the DNC email hack... 1/x Fox's story went viral. It amplified the claim that the DNC hack was an inside job — and Rich was the insider.

The key source in the story was an unnamed "federal investigator" who had reviewed an "FBI forensic report" and said there were "emails between Rich & WikiLeaks"... 2/x

A short THREAD:

If you want to understand how Fox News creates alternate realities, and how baseless theories flourish in those alt-realities, read my new story about Fox News, Seth Rich, and his family's fight for justice. 1/x rollingstone.com/politics/polit… What I don't mention in this story is the personal angle.

Seth was roughly my age. Friends in common. We came to DC after college hoping to leave a mark on the world.

When he was killed, it hit home. It could've been me walking home late at night. Wrong place, wrong time. 2/x

1/ I want to break out a few important points about this California hacking scoop of mine for @RollingStone — and what it tells us about what to expect in the 2018 midterms. rollingstone.com/politics/polit… 2/ Dr. Hans Keirstead, a Democrat who ran against Rep. Dana Rohrabacher in CA’s 48th district, faced multiple cyberattacks in the months leading up to the nonpartisan, top-two June 5 primary. Keirstead would lose by less than 150 votes. (His campaign doesn't blame the hacks.)

1/ Here are some details about David Smith and Sinclair Broadcasting worth bearing in mind as you're reading about the company. 2/ These details come from a legal fight in the 2000s when a Sinclair political reporter went public with criticism that an anti-John Kerry set to be aired by Sinclair was "biased political propaganda."