Leonard Leo says efforts to ‘delegitimize’ Supreme Court through media attacks are meant to undermine rulings

EXCLUSIVE -- Conservative activist Leonard Leo says Democrats and liberal media outlets working to "delegitimize the Supreme Court" are simply attempting to undermine its rulings. 

"The effort to delegitimize the Supreme Court has now been going on for, probably three or four years, and I think it really reached a peak right after the Dobbs case was decided, and in the run-up to it," Leo told Fox News Digital. 

"Democrats in the Senate knew full well that when a number of these conservative justices were appointed, and confirmed, that they were going to render decisions in big cases like abortion, religious freedom, the Second Amendment, they were going to render decisions in those cases that hard-left billionaire donors and advocacy groups on their side didn't like," Leo continued. "And ultimately, they lost those confirmations. The left groups that they’re in bed with have lost a lot of these cases." 

In 2022, the Supreme Court famously overturned Roe v. Wade, effectively ending recognition of a constitutional right to abortion and giving individual states the power to allow, limit, or ban the practice altogether. The ruling, which came in the court's opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, put a target on the Supreme Court, and it has since been attacked on a regular basis by Democrats and their allies in the media. 

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Conservative activist Leonard Leo says Democrats and liberal media outlets working to "delegitimize the Supreme Court" are simply attempting to undermine its rulings.  ((Photo by Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post via Getty Images))

Leo, an influential fundraiser and legal activist known for his work with the Federalist Society that has helped shape the conservative judiciary and who has attracted enormous media attention and hostility, believes efforts to "tear down" the court are attempts to delegitimize its rulings.

"It's very unfortunate because this is an institution that's very important in our country. I think all of the justices – conservative as well as liberal – are deciding these cases based on their view of the law," Leo said.

"They're not making decisions based on some form of undue influence or conflict of interest," he added. "I don't think any justice on the court is doing anything but trying to faithfully interpret the law as they see it." 

Leo said he feels "justices on the liberal side of the court spectrum get it wrong," but that doesn’t mean they have bad intentions. 

"I think they are trying to do the same thing that conservative justices are doing, interpreting the Constitution as they believe a judge should," he said. 

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Leonard Leo is "very troubled" by the way media outlets have covered the Supreme Court. (Fox News Photo/Joshua Comins)

Leo is "very troubled" by the way media outlets have covered the Supreme Court and its work over the years for a variety of reasons. MSNBC's Rachel Maddow has called it "flagrantly corrupt." Ex-MSNBC host Keith Olbermann called for the entire institution to be "dissolved" for overturning the banning of former President Trump from the Colorado ballot, and those attacks are just the tip of the iceberg.

"First of all, many of the stories that get written about the court's work are couched in terms of what the outcome of the case is, and whether people like or don't like the particular outcome of a case," Leo said. 

"And that's not really what the work of the court is all about. The question isn't whether you like or don't like a particular outcome. The question is what the law calls for," Leo continued. "And unfortunately, lots of media reporting treats the court more like it's a legislature or a political institution… and they encourage people to view the court that way, and to think about whether they like what the court is doing or not based on personal preferences, as opposed to what the law calls for." 

Leo has been the subject of critical coverage himself, due to his influence and prolific fundraising over the years that's helped steer conservative judges to the bench.

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes in 2023 called him "possibly the most powerful person in the world who almost no one knows about," and not in a flattering way.

"If there is one single man… aside from Donald Trump, one single man responsible for Roe v. Wade being overturned, it’s him," Hayes said of Leo. 

Leo is regularly criticized by Rolling Stone, which recently referred to him as a "Supreme Court Puppet Master," and several negative profiles have been published about him by liberal news organizations. 

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"Leo has shaped this Court and acted effectively to keep its Republican justices from abandoning his – and their – sectarian-right vision of America," Lawyers Defending American Democracy’s Dennis Aftergut wrote in Salon. 

ProPublica published a more than 9,000-word piece on Leo in 2023, calling him too important to "ignore." The New York Times admitted in 2022 that Leo’s success has made "him a leading target of criticism from the left."

"Trump Isn't Remaking The Supreme Court. Leonard Leo Is," blared HuffPost in 2018. The Guardian once called him the "architect of the rightwing takeover of the American judiciary."

Asked how he felt about being in the media's crosshairs, Leo simply praised the team effort across more than a generation to bring textualism back to the judiciary. He said it was the success of the movement that's motivated President Biden's radical overhaul efforts he announced this week for the Supreme Court, which would include term limits and a new ethics code for justices.

"I think the effort within the conservative movement to transform the Supreme Court and the federal courts and to bring it back to the Constitution, as it was originally understood, has been an enormously successful team effort, going all the way back to Ronald Reagan in the 1980s," he said. "And so what we've seen today on the court, these decisions that the Democrats are very upset with and what's motivating the Biden ethics and term limits roll out, what you're seeing is really the culmination of many, many years of hard work by many conservatives going all the way back to Ronald Reagan. It's probably the greatest success story of the modern conservative movement.."

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Leo is also irked that recent media coverage harped on issues like flags flying outside the home of Justice Samuel Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas being accused of accepting lavish gifts that influence his decisions. Their spouses have come in for attacks as well.

"There have been all these stories about ethics and undue influence and hospitality and flags, and, you know, the various justices’ wives might fly," he said. 

"The problem with all of this is, it creates this atmosphere of scandal. But where's the smoking gun? Where's the set of decisions that came out differently because the justices' wives are conservative, or because there's been some undue influence, or some external pressure," Leo added. "Where's the smoking gun?"

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Fox News Digital's Ramiro Vargas contributed to this report.