Democracy & Destiny EP 4 with Lisa Graves

[00:00:00] This is Democracy and Destiny with Ciara Torres Spelliscy. I have the per curiam opinion and judgment to announce on behalf of the court in Buckley against Valeo. We have a cancer within close to the presidency that's growing in case 0 8 2 0 5, Citizens United versus the FEC, Justice Kennedy has the opinion of the court.

The First Amendment's core purpose is to foster a vibrant political system full of robust discussion and debate. There is no right more basic in our democracy than the right to participate in electing our political leaders. With fear for our democracy, I, along with Justices Kagan and Jackson dissent.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: Welcome to the show. [00:00:54] I'm Ciara Torres Spelliscy. I'm a law professor at Stetson Law School in Florida, [00:01:00] and I'm a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law. I work on the intersection of election law and corporate law. This show was inspired by my third book, Corporatocracy: How to Protect Democracy From Dark Money and Corrupt Politicians, published by NYU Press election day 2024. I realize in today's busy world, reading a 300-page book is not on everyone's to-do list. But even as a law professor, I have time to listen to radio shows and podcasts when I'm commuting to campus or walking my dog. So here we are. This is "Democracy and Destiny." I will be joined in a few minutes with my guest, Lisa Graves from True North Research, who will talk about her work tracking dark money. But first, let's start with pay to play today.[00:02:00]

The term pay to play comes from the radio. Payola scandals. From the 1950s and 1960s, record companies would pay radio stations to play their music. Hence, it was literally pay to play. Today the phrase pay to play is shorthand for all kinds of political corruption, especially when government contractors or others with business pending in front of the government, pay bribes to public officials to get a private benefit, like a lucrative no-bid contract or approval of a corporate merger.

One of the things that I learned while writing my book Corporatocracy is that political corruption is prosecuted frequently, but the media just doesn't report on it as often as they report on other things like celebrity news. That leaves the misimpression with the public that corrupt politicians or shady government contractors are always getting away with crimes.

So I swore to myself if I ever had a news-generating [00:03:00] platform that I would highlight that political corruption can be met with serious legal consequences, including fines and jail time. So our example of pay to play today is from the DOJ. I'll call this one “The Illegal Gym Equipment.” Four individuals and one company pled guilty to bid rigging schemes and related crimes plaguing public schools in Mississippi and Louisiana.

Four individuals and one company pleaded guilty for their roles in various bid rigging and wire fraud conspiracies, which targeted the sale of sports equipment to public schools throughout Mississippi and Louisiana. The schemes affected sales to hundreds of public schools in both states. The individuals and company pleaded guilty.

Between February and March of 2025, Mississippi Company, Wilder [00:04:00] Fitness Equipment, Inc. Pleaded guilty to two counts of bid rigging, affecting sales to at least 60 public schools in the northern district of Mississippi. Quote, “school sports are integral to the development and upbringing of American children. From these opportunities, they learn the benefits of teamwork and open competition. Bid rigging, on the other hand is the antithesis of American meritocracy. It is also patently unlawful.” End quote said, acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the Justice Department's antitrust division.

“The defendants here selfishly targeted school sports programs depriving students of an opportunity to thrive. The antitrust division's, procurement collusion strike force has zero tolerance for bid collusion schemes, particularly when they target children.” End quote, [00:05:00] Quote: “Defendants rigged bids for school sports equipment, which resulted in an unfair playing field.” said acting US attorney Patrick Lemon for the Southern District of Mississippi. “Financial fraud perpetrated against the US government is a serious crime.” said acting US Attorney Michael M. Simpson for the Eastern District of Louisiana. “This investigation underscores the FBI's commitment to safeguarding public schools from criminal schemes that defraud the American people and exploit taxpayer money.” said special agent in charge, Robert Eikhoff of the FBI Jackson Field Office. “Stewart, Bowering, Craig, Heflin, and Wilder Fitness Equipment Inc. were in positions to help [00:06:00] shape children's learning the benefits of physical fitness in living prosperous lives. Instead, these co-conspirators chose to abuse the trust given to them by stealing opportunities from students. Fraudulently filling their pockets with the hard-earned tax dollars. Schools are entrusted to invest in the development of America's future leaders. The FBI will continue to work with our federal partners to relentlessly pursue and bring to justice individuals and companies who use fraudulent schemes to defraud our communities.” End quote. According to court documents, Craig, Bowering, Heflin, Stewart and Wilder Fitness Inc. entered into conspiracies in which they agreed to submit complementary bids to public schools to obtain procurements for sports equipment and related services. The longest of the [00:07:00] charge conspiracies lasted more than a decade.

Two other co-conspirators, Charles Ferrell Trimm and Bradley D. Willcutt previously pleaded guilty in the Southern District of Mississippi in May of 2024 and September, 2024, respectively. The maximum penalty for the Sherman Act is 10 years in prison and a $1 million criminal fine, the fines may be increased to twice the gain derived from the crime or twice the loss suffered by the victims of the crime. The maximum penalty for conspiracy to commit wire fraud is 20 years in prison, a criminal fine, and court ordered restitution, the maximum penalty for obstruction. In violation of 18 USC, section 1512 C is 20 years in prison and a criminal fine of no more than a quarter of a [00:08:00] million dollars. A federal district court judge will determine the sentence after considering the US sentencing guidelines and other statutory factors.

Today's guilty pleas from an ongoing federal antitrust investigation into bid rigging and other anti-competitive conduct in the school sports equipment industry.

Our next segment is Corruption Junction. I've been writing about money and politics for two decades. I was inspired to write my book Corporatocracy because of the events of January 6th at the US Capitol. One way to think about this book is it's the Supreme Court's horrible Citizens United decision meets with the horrifying events of January 6th, so that we are literally on the same page.

Let me read a short excerpt from Corporatocracy. [00:09:00] [Reading from Chapter 4 of Corporatocracy]

Let's take a short break. [00:25:00] We're back.

Now we get to the heart of the matter, which is the problem of political corruption. My guest, Lisa Graves, writes on political corruption. She is the author of forthcoming book Without Precedent, How Chief Justice Roberts and his Accomplices Rewrote the Constitution and Dismantled our Rights. When I interviewed Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, he [00:26:00] name checked your great research.

I'm so glad to have you here to speak about the State of American democracy.

[00:26:06] Lisa Graves: Thank you so much for inviting me on. I really appreciate it. It's an honor to be here with you.

[00:26:11] Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: Who inspired your approach to law?

[00:26:13] Lisa Graves: My hero is Thurgood Marshall. I have studied the litigation strategies he took to move the Constitution's equal protection clause from theory into reality. I deeply appreciated his work on the Supreme Court. Another hero of mine is Frederick Douglass. I named True North Research in sort of homage to his North Star and Frederick Douglass is a black man, obviously a tremendous hero and speaker, and activist in opposition to slavery, but he also was the only man to attend the Seneca Falls Convention for the Rights of Women. He was someone who talked the talk and walked the walk. These two men, Thurgood Marshall and Frederick Douglass are my heroes who've inspired me in numerous ways, by the things they wrote in the things they did.

[00:26:59] Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: What [00:27:00] keeps you sane in these trying times?

[00:27:02] Lisa Graves: Ooh. You know it. These are trying times. You know, this is just a moment in time and it can feel really daunting on a daily basis to see the assault on laws and rules and regulations and common sense. These are unprecedented times in terms of American history. That's not the end of the story. We the people get to help write this story. It's so important that we not lose our agency and that we not lose hope. Part of the tactical plan that of authoritarian leaders or authoritarian movement is to create a sense of inevitability or a sense that they cannot be stopped or cannot be defeated, but they have been, authoritarian forces have been defeated and repelled in the past.

Numerous groups of courageous individuals have done so. It's just vitally important that we maintain hope. And not give into the construct of inevitability that authoritarian forces seek to create, to limit [00:28:00] imagination, to limit people's willingness to stand up and speak out, and to assert that there are other ways we can proceed that would restore human dignity, restore individual rights, and overcome these dark and repressive and regressive forces.

[00:28:14] Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: What is True North Research?

[00:28:17] Lisa Graves: True North Research is my research group. We focus on helping to map the right-wing infrastructure and groups and individuals who are engaged in agendas to repress and limit people's rights in America, and to help make sure that policy makers have the best information they can in order to respond to the challenges that we're facing from this administration, from Project 2025, and more.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: When I teach election law, I tell my students the elections that have an outsized impact are the ones that end in zero, like 2000, 2010, and 2020, because the legislatures that you elect in those elections are the ones who do redistricting. [00:28:55]: Can you explain what Red Map was?

[00:28:58] Lisa Graves: Red Map was a program that [00:29:00] was spearheaded by a group called the Republican State Leadership Committee, RSLC. RSLC is an entity that receives funds from a lot of enormous corporations, along with some pass through groups. Basically, donor Anonymizes, RSLC deploys that money in order to try to maximize Republican control in the states of key levers of power, in particular legislatures, but also that has an effect on Congress. And so Red Map was a scheme that was funded by RSLC to use the 2010 election. As you point out the election in the year of the United States Census so that the legislature that comes after that Census is completed is the legislature that draws the map. A census is taken every 10 years. Then the maps are redrawn.

A project like Red Map is designed to redraw maps in a hyper-partisan way that locked in any gains for Republicans for a decade. Not just lock in those Republican gains, but to lock out fair Democratic representation. And by fair [00:30:00] representation, I would describe that as more proportionate representation. So for example, if in a presidential election the overall population, of people who voted, let's say it's 51% went for Trump and 49% went for Harris, that's a legislature that's like 50/50 or 51/49. And instead we, if you look back at that Red Map scheme, what you saw was legislatures in Wisconsin where that state Wisconsin had gone for Obama in 2008. There was a bit of a wave in that 2010 election, the Tea Party election, with a lot of money coming in from Charles Koch. You ended up with super majority maps for Republicans controlling both the legislative houses in the state of Wisconsin, in North Carolina , in a way that we're dissonant with the actual percentage of registered Democrats and Republicans in the state. What that means then is: You have domination of the legislative branch by one party in a way in which they don't have to compromise. But the part that I feel like is [00:31:00] underdiscussed in other fora is those maps that came out of the 2010 census, the effect of that is a driver of extremism in America. When people say America's divided and there's this divisiveness, that divisiveness is substantially related, not just to outlets like Fox and the constant drumbeat of disinformation and xenophobia, but it's driven by the fact that we now have so many legislators who don't ever have to appeal to the middle or to the other party progressives in order to win. All they have to do is basically play to the right wing base, won't be primaried. They have a safe seat that they can win in a general election without doing anything to appeal to moderates or Independents or Democrats. That has bred a culture of extremism and divisiveness on the Republican party that has driven it further and further to the right. This Red Map plan was designed to capture state legislative positions. Through spending money in those elections like by [00:32:00] RSLC and outside groups like Americans for Prosperity at aiding in the GOTV effort for the GOP. They were successful in that midterm election in 2010 in capturing an increased number of state legislative offices. They used that power to create extraordinarily potent maps that secured substantial majority super majorities for Republicans in a number of states in ways that could not be easily overcome, even though in the next election cycle in 2012, Barack Obama was elected again. But the maps that were baked in in 2011 did not change. And so, the legislature in Wisconsin continued to be Republican dominated despite the number of Democrats in the state who were not getting fair representation in the state. And then also how that laid out in terms of the congressional delegation in the state that voted for Obama for president, and I take that example because I live in Wisconsin.

[00:32:52] Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: One of the ways that gerrymandering is so potent is whoever has the pen and is drawing the [00:33:00] map can ensure that a majority of the legislature is represented by their political party. And the way that they do this Isra and pack the other political party. You crack a group of Democrats to make sure that they're a minority in two different districts instead of being a majority in one district. Then the other tactic is to pack as many Democrats into as few districts as possible. You grant that they will win those few districts, but they are a minority in every other district in the state, and that is why you can get a simple majority in a state to become a super majority in a legislature. Then I think what is even more troubling about gerrymandering is if you do it in clever enough way, you can literally have minority rule where…

[00:33:48] Lisa Graves: Yes

[00:33:48] Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: The Republicans aren't even a majority in the state by population, but because things have been packed and cracked, they end up with a majority of the legislature. What role did [00:34:00] Thomas Hofeller play in this saga?

[00:34:02] Lisa Graves: That is a great and important question, he is the person who was instrumental in helping to draw those maps after the 2010 census. He also played a crucial role in other components of this gerrymandering, including trying to put a citizenship question in the 2020 census. So he's someone who looked very closely at how to draw these maps with that precision in a way that secured the illegitimate super majorities for Republicans in a number of states, including North Carolina and Wisconsin, who have been trying to ensure Republican rule, even when the Republican party is not in the majority basically to retain power even as more Democrats come out to vote. We know about him because after he died, computer files were found by his relatives and turned over to public interest groups who had been involved in litigation about these gerrymandered maps. And revealed the behind-the-scenes maneuvers in trying to [00:35:00] skew the maps to favor of Republicans in a case called Rucho versus Common Cause. The US Supreme Court intervened in decades of legal precedent by asserting that federal courts did not have a cognizable basis for assessing gerrymandering, and that decision held out the fig leaf, in essence that: but if there were a racially partisan gerrymander, the courts would still have jurisdiction.

And then we saw last year in the case involving the NAACP of South Carolina against the gerrymander in that state, which had bleached out a congressional district to remove 30,000 African Americans from a congressional district that they had been voting in for decades to protect Nancy Mace's district. There was affirmative evidence of a racial gerrymander factual findings by the judicial panel below were that there was no way that this could have been created with anything other than being cognizant of race. The lower court panel found this map was illegitimate under the Voting Rights Act and then the US Supreme Court and allowed that gerrymander to go forward on the outlandish basis.

[00:36:00] That as long as the Republicans were trying to limit democratic representation, even if that meant targeting black citizens of the state, that was not a racial gerrymandering.

[00:36:09] Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: When his [Hofeller’s] daughter gets ahold of his gerrymandering files, she turns them over to activists and who are in the middle of a litigation in North Carolina State Courts about these gerrymanders. She gave them to these litigators, including my former firm of Arnold & Porter. Arnold & Porter, to its credit, wrote to the people they're suing and said, we have these files. Do you object to them becoming evidence in this suit? For whatever reason, maybe they were having a bad or busy day, the other side did not object.

[00:36:47] Lisa Graves: Right.

[00:36:47] Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: That allowed these very sensitive gerrymandering files to go into these court cases. And it influenced how those court cases came out. They said, this is illegal. These [00:37:00] maps were done with discrimination and partisan gerrymandering. That has violated the state constitution.

[00:37:07] Lisa Graves: Yep.

[00:37:07] Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: Bonus to all of this is these lawyers realized that these files had an implication for a different Supreme Court case that was ongoing. New York versus Department of Commerce. That was a fight over whether a citizenship question would be added to the US Census. So it's up at the Supreme Court and the excuse that Trump had given for why we need a census question on citizenship was--and this really drives me nuts-- to enforce the Voting Rights Act, an act that they were trying to thwart at every turn, but it was a plausible excuse. And then, this letter comes into the Supreme Court while this case is going revealing some of the dirty secrets from the Hofeller files.

[00:37:52] Lisa Graves: Right, right.

[00:37:52] Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: Then when you know that and you read the Department of Commerce opinion, it really reads like the Court was angry that they were [00:38:00] being lied to.

[00:38:01] Lisa Graves: Yeah.

[00:38:02] Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: That “we have to enforce the Voting Rights Act” was a complete fabrication. It was totally pretextual. And so there's language in that opinion: administrative law requires you to at least give the honest reason for why you're doing something.

[00:38:15] Lisa Graves: Yes, yes.

[00:38:16] Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: But you have to know a lot of backstory to appreciate what is going on in that case.

[00:38:20] Lisa Graves: That was terrific though. That was exactly spot on.

[00:38:22] Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: Who is Leonard Leo?

[00:38:24] Lisa Graves: Leonard Leo is someone who has been involved in trying to capture the U.S. Supreme Court for years. He is a lawyer who worked for the Federalist Society, which is a group that was created over 40 years ago to create a pipeline to power for right wing lawyers, to get federal judgeships and state judgeships and other positions of power in order to advance a regressive vision of the Constitution to create a basis for reversing key legal precedents of the 20th century, where the court had finally actually enforced the terms of the constitution, like the Equal Protection Clause to [00:39:00] protect the individual rights of Americans and people in the United States.

He was instrumentally involved in George W. Bush's nominations and centrally involved in the confirmation of John Roberts and Sam Alito. Donald Trump chose him to create the list for Trump to choose from for appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court. And so, Leonard Leo handpicked people, including Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, and others for that list that Trump choose from. And then Leonard Leo directed outside spending by groups that he was closely tied to, to push them through confirmation to fight the controversies that surrounded their nomination in all three instances. And so, Leonard Leo helped secure a six-to-three majority on the Supreme Court. Leonard Leo at the beginning of his legal career got to know Clarence Thomas when Clarence Thomas briefly sat on the DC Circuit. Leonard Leo helped on Thomas' confirmation as well. And so, you have one person, Leonard Leo, who has played a significant role, either the selection and certainly [00:40:00] the confirmation in all six instances of the faction that dominates the US Supreme Court. In the midst of this Leonard Leo started creating other non-profit and for-profit groups and appears to have secured other forms of revenue in that period. Such that the Washington Post reported in May of 2019 when Justice Kennedy announced his retirement from the Supreme Court and when his former clerk, Brett Kavanaugh was nominated that position. In that period, Leonard Leo paid off his home mortgage 22 years early. And then, on the eve of the confirmation vote for Kavanaugh to be confirmed to the US Supreme Court in the narrowest confirmation vote in US History, Leonard Leo closed on a mansion in Maine with a million dollars cash. But because Leonard Leo was a volunteer, he did not have to fill out any financial disclosures showing the sources of his income. Fast forward to shortly after that story broke, Leonard Leo paid off the rest of that mortgage in Maine, with $2 million cash just a year later. In 2020, Leonard Leo announced that [00:41:00] he was leaving his day job at the Federalist Society to rebrand for-profit PR firm as a donor advisory firm, calling it CRC advisors. And then two years after that, we learned that that same year in 2020, a billionaire named Barry Seid, who made his fortune selling power strip cords, Barry Seid, gave Leonard Leo control of a $1.6 billion trust fund to advance his agenda to remake American Law and Society to bring us fully up to speed, we've seen this spat breakout in essence between Leonard Leo and President Trump, where Trump called Leonard Leo a sleaze bag and described Leonard Leo as having extraordinary influence over the Supreme Court. Trump suggested that Trump was a chump in outsourcing this judicial selection to Leonard Leo. tTo be fair, in the words of Don McGann, who was Trump's first White House Counsel, Don McGahn said, “no. The Federal Society, it wasn't outsourced to the Federal Society. It was Insourced.” because Don McGahn was part of the Federal Society and was working closely with Leonard [00:42:00] Leo on that selection process, including moving Amy Coney Barrett into position on the Seven Circuit. In the event Ruth Bader Ginsburg would die during Trump's presidency and that they would be able to slot her into that position on the Supreme Court. We've documented how Leonard Leo has moved millions of dollars into State Supreme Court races through a group that was spawned by the Republican State Leadership Committee, called the Judicial Fairness Initiative, that moves millions of dollars into state Supreme Court races. So Leonard Leo has sought to reshape both the federal judiciary and the state judiciary through the dark money that he's had access to through billionaires like Barry Seid has also been aligned with Charles Koch, the billionaire from Wichita, who leads the second largest privately held corporation in the United States. And Charles Koch has been one of the substantial funders of Leonard Leo's operations, including the Federal Society, both through his non-profit empire and his for-profit company, which was previously known as “Koch Industries” and is now known as “Koch.”

[00:42:58] Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: Law Professor Michael [00:43:00] Dorf thinks that this is the time that liberal rule of law people need to get together with conservative rule of law people, and I'd love to get your reaction.

[00:43:07] Lisa Graves: They're truly conservative, rule of law people that would be of interest. There are some, and we've certainly seen a whole host of defections. There's the advent of Bulwark and other work going on by conservatives with the Contrarian. So I think there are a number of potential alliances that can be formed and that are already underway among people who are trying to protect the rule of law. We are also at this sort of inflection point where the rule of law is diverging from justice. Basically, we had been moving, I think, as a society toward bringing the strand of justice and law closer together, and now we have an administration that seems devoted to an attack on the rule of law beyond Nixon's wildest dreams, a lower court judges who've been appointed by presidents of both parties across decades that have ruled against Trump, that have ruled that he's been acting in violation of the writ of habeas corpus guaranteed by the Constitution, by the [00:44:00] guarantee of due process. So you have lower court judges that have been intervening and attempting to protect the rule of law from this assaultive administration. We've also seen the Roberts Court intervening in stopping temporary restraining orders issued by lower courts. We've even seen the Supreme Court consider trying to stop some of these nationwide class actions that have been instrumental in trying to protect the rights of people in the United States under our Constitution and not have our rights be splintered by whether someone manages to move an immigrant to Louisiana or Texas and get the case to the Fifth Circuit, even though they and their family reside in the First Circuit or the Third Circuit. At the same time, Leo and Koch are tied to some of the groups that are now challenging Trump's trade edicts his, the tariffs that he's attempting to unilaterally impose. So there is this fight emerging in part over this tariff litigation where there are quote “conservatives” who are trying to defend the allocation of power within the Constitution, in particular on tariffs. I [00:45:00] have to approach the question with a bit of skepticism about who are the “conservatives” are. Which of them are really on the side of justice and law, versus maybe on the side of business, in the case of the tariffs not actually weighing in where it matters. For example, on the writ of habeas corpus, which dates back to the Magna Carta in 1066, and is the fundamental notion that in a society based on rights, a king, or subsequently, a president cannot just imprison people without cause, without an ability to have a resort to the courts. And as you know, and as your listeners know, Trump has been suggesting that A. he's not bound by the Constitution. B. That it's outlandish for judges to say no. When in fact, the very heart of the Constitution on the writ of habeas corpus is that that's exactly how it's supposed to work. I welcome allies in standing up for that. Those principles of due process that are central to our liberty, we need people from all backgrounds to come together in order to protect and preserve our democracy. And I would urge any listener to [00:46:00] read the opinion of J. Harvie Wilkinson and he wrote eloquently about the vital importance of due process. This should be a non-partisan issue: defending the rule of law.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: Should the public care what the spouses of Supreme Court Justices are up to?

Lisa Graves: Absolutely. Here's what we know: under Federal Disclosure Rules, the Justices have to disclose the trips that they take, the source of income, and then there's a provision in that form where they disclose the source of a spouse's income. That is not very helpful information because you can have a spouse like Ginni Thomas, who then creates a consulting firm, Liberty Consulting, and then it's a black box. Who are her clients? Who is paying her, and what are their agendas? Do any of them appear before the Supreme Court? As Jane Mayer documented in a story for The New Yorker that in fact, yes, Ginni Thomas has received funding from groups that have appeared in briefs before the US Supreme Court, a clear conflict of [00:47:00] interest that would warrant recusal. We know for a fact through documentary evidence that Leonard Leo arranged for Ginni Thomas secretly to be paid by one of his key ally groups of group that was then called the Judicial Education Project, it rebranded itself as the 85 Fund, and now goes under a number of aliases, including the “Honest Elections Project.” That Leonard Leo made arrangements for Ginni Thomas to be secretly paid a six figure sum. He knows that the true source of that funding, but the American people do not. As that group, “The Judicial Education Project” was suddenly becoming a pass through to get money paid to Ginni Thomas, it began filing amicus briefs in cases, involving our rights. It filed numerous briefs in the subsequent years. You fast forward to a 2023 report by investigative reporter Heidi Przybyla for Politico, in which she took a look at what we now know about that period. Ginni Thomas's creation of her, Liberty Central [00:48:00] nonprofit group as this Citizen United decision and was pending, and that article helped document the true timeline was that Clarence Thomas sat on that case during a time in which his wife was actively creating a nonprofit group to exploit the ruling to come.

She worked with Cleta Mitchell in creating that nonprofit because she had received a gift of $500,000 from Harlan Crow, the billionaire benefactor of Clarence Thomas, her husband. She filed that expedited approval process for her group on New Year's Eve. And then almost three weeks later, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Citizens United, striking down key regulations of the spending by outside groups like Liberty Central. And that was a five-to-four decision that Clarence Thomas sat on. Thomas should have recused himself had he done so, it would've been a four-to-four decision. And the McCain Feingold would have held, at least for that time, it would've been held constitutional. And so people might say, oh, well it would be discriminatory particularly against women who are [00:49:00] wives of Supreme Court justices. It would impair their ability to earn money. And I say, yeah, so what? That is the price of having a Supreme Court where there's true accountability. Where these contracts, arrangements with spouses, cannot corrupt the judicial process. And we certainly should have a rule that requires the disclosure of every significant client. This is basic common sense, and the fact that we don't is just a breeding ground for corruption.

[00:49:27] Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: Is there a final thought that you'd like to leave with our audience?

[00:49:30] Lisa Graves: Everything is impossible until it isn't. Often in this arena, we encounter people who say, “oh, you'll never be able to reform the Court.” I don't give in to that kind of thinking. I believe in bold reforms. I think that these reforms are vitally necessary. I think they're possible. I think the American people would support them. And the fact is, is that it's not just possible, but it's absolutely necessary. We have got to reform this court. The Roberts Court, in my view, is out of control, and John Roberts is presiding over the most corrupted court in US history.

[00:50:00] Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: Lisa Graves, where can the audience find your work?

[00:50:02] Lisa Graves: I have a new book coming out, as you mentioned, and we have a new website up called WithoutPrecedent.info. I was gonna say, I love your book and your books, but I love the most recent book as well.

[00:50:12] Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: Well, thank you so much for being here today.

[00:50:14] Lisa Graves: Thank you so much for having me. But I really appreciate the opportunity to be on and have the chance to answer in paragraph form.

[00:50:20] Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: Of course. Let's take a short break.[00:51:00]

We're back.

As someone who spends her time focused on political corruption, it is easy to end up with a dim view of humanity. But one of the things that has kept me happy and sane over the past eight years is my 100 pound chocolate labradoodle. Let me share my life motto with you, which is: "Loves dogs hates corruption."

During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, I had friends, family, and colleagues who were all stuck in New York City. I wanted to do something positive. In those early days when the whole world shut down, I heard an interview with former astronauts, Scott and Mark Kelly. They're twins and astronauts. I'm not sure which one it was because they sound identical on the radio, but one of them said that the hardest [00:52:00] part of being in space in the International Space Station is that you can't just go outside and breathe a breath of fresh air. This astronaut was encouraging people who were experiencing COVID lockdowns to take walks when you could so that you could fight cabin fever.

I made it a mission to walk with my doodle and take pictures of flowers. At first, this seemed to annoy my dog because I was stopping when he wanted to keep walking. But eventually he learned how to stop and smell the flowers too. And sometimes he would come home with flowers stuck to his thick brown fur.

I posted a flower a day on Twitter for the entire COVID lockdown, which was over a year where I lived. Okay, back to business.[00:53:00]

So now we get to our final segment. “The fixes in.” Many of the problems with our democracy seem unfixable, but that is not true. These problems were created by human beings, and they can be solved by human beings. We can improve laws and practices at the local, state, and federal levels. And the first step is realizing that these are not unsolvable problems. We can fix it. Today, we talked about dark money, especially with respect to the Supreme Court. Dark money becomes dark because it is rooted through opaque nonprofits. Typically, this is a 5 0 1 C four social welfare organization, or a 5 0 1 C six, which is a trade association with the C fours. They are supposed to use half of their resources for social welfare, not just partisan politics. One of the ways that there could be less dark money is if the IRS was really better at policing the use of C fours and C sixes. If an entity is really [00:54:00] doing a hundred percent partisan politics, then they have turned themselves into a 527 and they should have the concomitant disclosure requirements. Now I know the IRS is not a popular agency, but they do keep the lights on in our democracy and they can help to solve the dark money problem. Just remember that democracy is worth defending and a little truth goes a long way.

Thank you to my guest for joining me today. This is a production of Ciara Torres-Spelliscy who can be found on social media as @ProfCiara, P-R-O-F-C-I-A-R-A. The episode was mixed by WBAI. Our logo is by entire world. Theme music was composed and performed by Matt Boehler. This show is based on the book Corporatocracy, published by NYU Press. This has been Democracy and Destiny with Ciara Torres- [00:55:00] Spelliscy.