How a top right-wing 'judicial activist' helped 'facilitate' the sale of Kellyanne Conway's company: report

20 December 2022

As vice president of the Federalist Society, activist Leonard A. Leo has a long history of trying to push the U.S. Courts to the right — including the U.S. Supreme Court. After Justice Antonin Scalia’s death in 2016, Leo encouraged Sen. Mitch McConnell’s efforts to block then-President Barack Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland (now U.S. attorney general under the Biden Administration). And he has pushed for socially conservative justices such as Amy Coney Barrett.

According to Politico’s Heidi Przybyla, Leo “appears to have helped facilitate” the sale of former White House Senior Adviser Kellyanne Conway’s the Polling Company in 2017. Przybyla, in an article published by Politico on December 20, reports that the transaction came at a time when Conway “was playing a key role in advocating for Leo’s handpicked list of Supreme Court candidates.” And the Polling Company was sold to the firm Creative Response Concepts (CRC).

“The transaction came at a critical moment for Conway — shortly after her ownership of The Polling Company had come under scrutiny from a congressional oversight committee for potential ‘conflicts of interest,’ likely creating pressure to unload it even though its value was unclear because she was its biggest asset and committed to her White House job,” Przybyla explains. “It appears Leo, via one of his dark money groups, helped finance the transaction between the firm, Creative Response Concepts Inc., and Conway — worth between $1 million and $5 million, according to experts citing the timing of the transactions filed through the same attorney and bank. At the time, CRC was also bringing in millions of dollars from dark money groups to promote Leo’s picks.”

That 2017 transaction, according to Przybyla, is an example of “how Leo has used his network to secure and protect allies at the highest levels of government to successfully advance his decades-long agenda of shifting the Supreme Court rightward for the next generation.”

Bruce Freed, president of the Center for Political Accountability (CPA) reviewed the “previously unreported financial documents” pertaining to the sale of Conway’s company. And Freed told Politico, “It really shows Kellyanne as a vehicle for Leo, the leading role Leo has played and how Trump became his instrument.”

Przybyla notes that Leo has “longstanding ties” to both Kellyanne Conway and her husband, conservative attorney George Conway.

“At the time of the sale of (Kellyanne) Conway’s company,” Przybyla observes, “Leo was executive vice president of the Federalist Society, the conservative legal group for which many of Trump’s judicial appointees were members. Conway’s husband, George, was a longtime friend of Leo’s and one of the Federalist Society’s earliest members.”

Although the Conways have been major players on the right, they have radically different views on Donald Trump. While Kellyanne Conway was a loyal ally of Trump during his four years in the White House, Never Trumper George Conway has been one of the former president’s most scathing critics on the right. George Conway has made no secret of his view that Trump has been terrible for the Republican Party and terrible for the conservative movement.

George Conway and Przybyla have both been frequent guests on MSNBC.

“The financial deal between (Kellyanne) Conway and CRC adds to an emerging picture of the extent to which groups associated with Leo — who now controls more than $1.6 billion in conservative donor funds — interacted with key players in the conservative movement’s efforts to reshape the judiciary,” Przybyla reports. “The New York Times first reported the windfall donation to a Leo-controlled group, among the largest single contributions ever to a political nonprofit.”

Przybyla adds, “Leo served on the board of a group led by Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, and he and the Thomases have maintained a longstanding friendship. Leo’s network has been among the most prolific forces behind the new conservative majority, successfully advocating to confirm Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett as well as to block former President Barack Obama’s nominee Merrick Garland.”

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