The 85 Fund

Enshrining Christian precepts in the law has been a goal of the religious right for a long time. Rightwing Christian legal advocacy groups are doing it through the courts; they're launching religious-liberty cases and advancing conservative judges to give them the rulings they want. They almost got the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that businesses have a Constitutional right to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people based on religious beliefs, and they convinced the Supreme Court to let private-sector employers shirk responsibility to provide women with federally mandated birth control coverage. At the heart of this transformative effort is a man named Leonard A. Leo, a conservative Catholic activist and co-chair of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group. Leonard Leo has been called "one of the most powerful conservatives in the country." Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society have played a key role in putting 234 conservative judges on the federal bench and flipping three federal appeals courts for Republicans during the Trump administration. The group has been involved in appointing and confirming five of the current Supreme Court's six conservative justices, including Amy Coney Barrett, whom Leonard Leo "hand-picked" to replace the late Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2020-10. Leonard Leo has done this by fundraising an estimated $400 million from undisclosed donors and funneling millions of these funds through a sprawling network of tax-exempt nonprofits to Creative Response Concepts, a conservative public relations firm in Alexandria, Virginia. It's run by Leo's friend and business partner   Greg Mueller, who also worked on the Human Capital Project  [fraudulent anti-abortion movements group - see also: Center for Medical Progress].  [Source,]
Corporate Information
Name	The 85 Fund
Former name	Judicial Education Project
Founded	2011
Key people	Leonard A. Leo  (leadership; networking) Carrie Severino  (Secretary)
Type	501(c)(3) nonprofit organization
Status	Active
Focus	Judicial appointments Legal advocacy
Location	United States
Headquarters	Washington, D.C., U.S.A.
Areas served	United States
Political position	Conservatism Conservatism in the United States
Affiliations	Judicial Crisis Network

Background

The 85 Fund, formerly known as the Judicial Education Project, is a 501(c)(3) organization based in Washington, D.C. It is part of a network of nonprofits linked to Leonard A. Leo, a prominent leader in the conservative legal movement. The 85 Fund was founded to counter the influence of Arabella Advisors, a liberal group with a similar structure. The 85 Fund raised at least $20 million in 2020.

Organization and Finances

The Secretary of The 85 Fund is Carrie Severino, who is the President of the Judicial Crisis Network. The 85 Fund is closely connected to Leonard Leo, the vice president of the Federalist Society. The 85 Fund's 2017 tax return listed a payment of $675,000 to the BH Group, an employer of Leonard Leo. Neil Corkery formerly served as president of the group [Wellspring Committee].

Between 2012 and 2017, The 85 Fund raised $46 million. In 2018, more than 99% of The 85 Fund's funding came from a single $7.8 million donation from DonorsTrust, a donor-advised fund. In 2020, The 85 Fund received $20 million in donations from DonorsTrust.

Obfuscation of Name

Funding

• See also: [OpenSecrets.org, 2020-05-27] Conservative "dark money" network rebranded to push voting restrictions before the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

According to OpenSecrets.org and The Guardian, the Judicial Education Project (an alias for the Honest Elections Project) has been funded almost entirely by DonorsTrust, a donor-advised fund sponsor that specializes in helping conservative donors anonymously fund "sensitive or controversial issues" while also securing special tax advantages. DonorsTrust has been a major funder of groups in the Koch network, including Americans for Prosperity, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and the State Policy Network - and in 2018, DonorsTrust provided 99% of Judicial Education Project's funding.

Expenditures

The 85 Fund donated $300,000 to the Independent Women's Forum, a conservative nonprofit organization.

In 2020, The 85 Fund provided $750,000 in funding to the Mercatus Center, a think tank affiliated with George Mason University.

In 2020, The 85 Fund donated $1 million to the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust, formerly run by Matthew Whitaker. The Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust filed a complaint to the United States Office of Special Counsel to investigate Jennifer Granholm, the current United States Secretary of Energy.

In 2020, The 85 Fund donated $2 million to the Government Accountability Institute, a group founded by former White House strategist Steve Bannon and investigator Peter Schweizer, and chaired by Rebekah Mercer  [note: Mercer Family Foundation].

Honest Elections Project

The 85 Fund has provided funding for the Honest Elections Project.

In 2020-04, the Honest Elections Project announced it was launching a week-long $250,000 digital and television ad campaign on Fox News,  MSNBC, and CNN against mail-in voting.

Lawyers contracted by the Honest Elections Project sent letters to the secretaries of state in Colorado,  Florida, and Michigan to lobby for purges of voter rolls in these states. The Guardian reported that these letters used "misleading data to accuse jurisdictions of having bloated voter rolls" and threatened legal action. The Honest Elections Project filed legal briefs in favor of voting restrictions in Nevada,  Virginia,  Texas, and Minnesota.

In 2020, The 85 Fund provided $70,000 in funding to the Honest Elections Project.

In 2020-09 the Honest Elections Project was involved in legal action concerning whether mail-in ballots that were postmarked before the 2020 U.S. presidential election but arrived up to 14 days after it should be counted; the suit was successful.

The Honest Elections Project concluded that there was no widespread fraud in the 2020 United States presidential election and did not participate in any litigation to try to challenge or overturn the election results. The Honest Elections Project issued a statement criticizing the 2021 United States Capitol attack that occurred on 2021-01-06, saying: "The violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol was a heinous attack against democracy, the rule of law, and the election system the Honest Elections Project was created to defend."

In 2021-05 the Honest Elections Project lobbied against H.R. 1, also known as the For the People Act. As of 2021, the executive director of the Honest Elections Project was Jason Snead  [local copy].

Additional Reading

A dark money group at the center of a secretive network that helped former President Donald Trump   remake the federal judiciary brought in at least $50 million in revenue after it rebranded at the start of 2020 and created an alias focused on elections, an OpenSecrets.org review of tax records found.

The Judicial Education Project legally changed its name to The 85 Fund at the start of 2020. As part of the redesign, The 85 Fund took on "fictitious names" - or legal aliases - allowing it to operate under multiple different identities. The 85 Fund is part of a shape-shifting network of secretly-funded conservative nonprofits that includes the Concord Fund, which is better known as the Judicial Crisis Network.

One of the most prominent identities adopted by The 85 Fund is the Honest Elections Project, which pushed for voting restrictions ahead of the 2020 United States elections. As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, The 85 Fund is not allowed to spend on political activity in support of candidates but spending on voter engagement and other election issues is generally not considered to be political activity so long as it is done in a nonpartisan way.

The The 85 Fund is closely linked to Leonard Leo  [Leonard Leo], a powerful leader in the conservative legal movement who helped shape Donald Trump's unprecedented effort to stack the federal judiciary with conservative judges. Leonard Leo told   Axios the nonprofits were rebranded to funnel tens of millions of dollars into conservative causes around the country in a move "inspired" by the growth of an opaque liberal dark money network. Sixteen Thirty Fund, the 501(c)(4) organization at the center of this liberal dark money   network, has sponsored projects that rivalled the conservative network's spending on judicial nominations and Supreme Court confirmation processes.

The 85 Fund's tax returns have not been made public as of the date of publication, but the haul of at least $50 million in 2020 marks a new record for the group's annual revenue, raising nearly as much in 2020 as it did in the entire decade prior. In 2019, The 85 Fund raised about $13 million, and in 2018 it raised less than $8 million.

[ ... snip ... ]

... The Judicial Education Project  [now: The 85 Fund] is also closely linked to Leonard A. Leo - one of the most powerful people in Washington, D.C. - who has shaped Donald Trump's unprecedented effort to remake the federal judiciary with conservative judges.

The Judicial Education Project / The 85 Fund has deftly hidden the changes to its name from public view. In 2019-12, the Judicial Education Project formally changed its legal name to The 85 Fund, a group Leonard Leo backed to funnel "tens of millions" of dollars into conservative causes, according to Axios. The Honest Elections Project is merely a fictitious name -- an alias -- the fund legally adopted in 2020-02. The change was nearly indiscernible because The 85 Fund registered two other legal aliases on the same day, including the Judicial Education Project, its old name. The legal maneuver allows it to operate under four different names with little public disclosure that it is the same group.

The Judicial Education Project (The 85 Fund) is closely aligned with the Judicial Crisis Network, a group with unmatched influence in recent years in shaping the federal judiciary. The Judicial Crisis Network spearheaded the campaigns to get Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court, spending millions of dollars in each instance. It has also spent significantly on critical state Supreme Court races across the country.

There is a lot of overlap between the Honest Elections Project and the Judicial Crisis Network. Both groups share personnel, including Carrie Severino, the influential president of the Judicial Crisis Network. Both groups have been funded by Wellspring Committee, a group Leonard Leo raised money for until it shut down in 2018. Both have also paid money to the BH Group - a limited liability company (LLC) Leonard Leo once disclosed as his employer - that made a $1 million mystery donation to Trump's inauguration.

The Judicial Crisis Network also rebranded in recent months, changing its name in 2019-12 to The Concord Fund. The Concord Fund then registered Judicial Crisis Network, its old name, as an alias.

"This is a small community that is really trying to push forward these more suppressive tactics that will be challenged in court and having those judges on the bench, they're really hoping it's going to continue to rig the system in their favor," said Lena Zwarensteyn, who closely follows judicial nominations at the Leadership conference. "By changing the rules of the game and who the referees are, they're trying to change the landscape." ...

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