#Leonard #Leo’s status as the world’s third most powerful figure soon made him a rich man.

During his time at the Federalist Society,
he had hardly been a pauper,
bringing in around $400,000 a year.

But with six children attending The Heights and Oakcrest, the two Opus Dei schools that charged up to $30,000 tuition annually per student,
and a burgeoning taste for good food and expensive wines,
it didn’t take long to burn through his salary.

But his life had taken a lavish turn after Trump’s victory
and his appointment as an unpaid advisor to the president on judicial appointments.

The dramatic uptick in his personal fortune dovetailed with his joining a for-profit entity called "CRC Advisors", alongside another CIC board member #Greg #Mueller.

Mueller had spearheaded the "National Organization for Marriage" vitriolic public relations strategy,
and #CRC quickly established itself as the go-to advisory firm for the dark-money network of nonprofit entities that Leo had helped set up over the years.

Once again, the Corkery name was all over the money flow.

The majority of CRC’s income came from
👉 "The 85 Fund",
a dark money non-profit that
⚠️ Leo repurposed to fund conservative causes nationwide,
and
💥that fund paid $34 million in fees to his new advisory firm over a single two-year period.

As the money rolled in, Leo began to enjoy some of the same luxuries as the billionaires he had spent years courting.

For most of his three decades in Washington, Leo had led a modest home life,
living for years in a small apartment in the Randolph Towers complex in downtown Arlington,
before moving to a single-story five-bedroom family home in suburban McLean in 2010.

But in the years since 2016, he had spent millions of dollars on two new mansions in Maine,
bought four new cars,
and hired a wine buyer and locker at Morton’s, an upscale steakhouse three blocks from the Catholic Information Center.

It was only a foretaste of what was to come.

➡️ In 2020, Leo stepped back from his duties at the Federalist Society to focus on the
dark-money network he had fostered as a side hustle during his time there.

With him, he took one of the Federalist Society’s biggest donors:
a manufacturing billionaire from Chicago called
#Barre #Seid, who was Jewish by heritage but who shared many of Leo’s conservative views.

🧨Over two decades, Seid had pumped at least $775 million into campaigns for libertarian and conservative causes,
quietly transforming himself into one of the most important donors on the political right.

Almost ninety, Seid had decided to leave his money continuing that work
— and concluded that Leo was the man to oversee that largesse.

🔥Leo had betrayed his bosses, who had tasked him with wooing the billionaire as a potential donor for the Federalist Society.

Instead, Leo had cultivated him for his own network.

Seid signed his business over to Leo, giving him control over a
🔥$1.6 billion war chest and
👉transforming him from a proxy for
dark-money donors into a donor himself.