Brooke Gladstone: This is On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone. You are listening to our investigative collaboration with ProPublica, We Don't Talk About Leonard. In early 2020, the news website, Axios, reported a story with the headline, Leonard Leo to Shape New Conservative Network. Leonard had plans. He told Axios he was leaving his day job as the Federalist Society's executive VP to set up a group called CRC Advisors, a group inspired, Leo said, by an outfit called Arabella Advisors, described by Axios as a, "little-known yet powerful consulting firm that advises liberal donors and nonprofits about where to spend their money."

Leo said that he planned to work with two existing groups that we've talked so much about in this series, the Judicial Crisis Network and the Judicial Education Project. Only they were getting new names, the Concord Fund and the 85 Fund. One of Leo's first projects, a $10 million campaign focusing on judges. Soon, he would quietly set in motion a plan to transfer a $1.6 billion donation from an obscure electronics manufacturer to a political nonprofit that Leo alone controlled.

Another thing Leo kept mum about was that he'd soon be taking over the Teneo Network, a private national networking group. ProPublica and the investigative journalism project documented, obtained hours of internal videos and hundreds of pages of documents from Teneo, which taken together provide a roadmap of exactly what Leo wants to do, which simply put is to create a federalist society for everything. Here's Andy.

Andy Kroll: When we started reporting this series, there were some big driving questions. What does Leonard Leo do with $1.6 billion? People who work with Leo, like Federalist Society co-founder, David Macintosh, said that Leo had a choice. Take the berry side money to the Federalist Society or create his own new thing. He decided new thing.

David Macintosh: He in his own thinking of, should he stay at the Federalist Society or should he give up that position and move to heading up the network?

Andy Kroll: The network, among Leo Associates we spoke with, that term refers to the broader network, but also a specific one, the Teneo Network, one former leader of that group, told me that it was "high on his priority list." Leo not only funded it, he took it over.

Leonard Leo: Teneo shapes the broader culture by building networks of conservatives that can roll back or crush liberal dominance in the areas of American life.

Andy Kroll: This is Leo in a promotional video from not too long ago. He's sitting on a couch, wearing a charcoal gray jacket, no tie.

Leonard Leo: I spent close to 30 years, if not more, helping to build the conservative legal movement. At some point or another, I just said to myself, "Well, if this can work for law, why can't it work for lots of other areas of American culture and American life where things are really messed up right now?"

Andy Kroll: Leo ticks off a few of those areas, what he calls wokism in the corporate environment, one-sided journalism, entertainment that's, "corrupting our youth." He lays out the philosophy that's driven his work for the past three decades.

Leonard Leo: At the end of the day, the movements that have been most successful in human history have been the ones where relationships were built, where bonds were built, where friendships were made, where people had people's backs. If you can build talent pipelines of people who believe in the ideals around which our country were founded, and you can unite those people in common purpose.

Andy Kroll: We've seen Leo do this, hosting parties, bringing people together, building networks, spotting talent, and making calls on their behalf to high government officials.

Andrea Bernstein: One person who worked closely with Leo told me, "It's not like normal Washington networking, where you get a business card, and then add the person to your contacts list." This person who Leo scouted in law school told me, "He'd always make time. He'd see what an event and come over and say hi, you always knew he was in your corner." Leo, this person said, has a "generational timeframe." Those judges he's recommended, "He had known some of them for life."

Teneo would've been around for about a decade before Leo took it over. Its co-founder was a conservative entrepreneur named Evan Baehr. There's this one video made late in the Trump administration, where Baehr explains why he formed the group. He said, "Leonard Leo was an inspiration."

Evan Baehr: The secret sauce behind Leo's work is the following. There's about 75,000, members of the Federalist Society.

Andrea Bernstein: Baehr says there are about 3,000 people that are in Leo's inner core.

Evan Baehr: With those people, he is mostly identifying them and recruiting them for either specific roles to serve as judges or to spin up and launch critical projects often, which you would have no idea about.

Andrea Bernstein: Baehr is telling us exactly how it works, recruit and mentor conservatives and get them in top jobs where they can really have an influence.

Evan Baehr: Leo in the White House, White House Counsel's Office, State Department, AG, Pentagon, DOD. They're everywhere, and that's really cool.

Andy Kroll: In 2021, Leo takes over as chair of the board of the Teneo Network. Soon new members join, federal judges and attorney general, a Solicitor General, deputy solicitors general. Also, people who work for Leo's business, CRC Advisors.

Andrea Bernstein: The leaders of the Republican Attorneys General Association and the Republican state leadership committee, top staffers for Republican governors and senators, and a lot of conservative media figures, athletes, academics, venture capitalists, and bankers.

Andy Kroll: All these new members are a diagram of the people that are important to Leo. The leaders he wants to connect with one another to bring about a new era of social change. In one video, Evan Baehr explicitly lays out how they want to do this.

Evan Baehr: We think the left gets us right all the time, and we're learning from them.

Andrea Bernstein: In the video, Baehr is wearing a navy polo shirt standing at a clear plastic podium in front of a couple of potted plants. He wears a watch on each wrist and just gesticulates a lot.

Evan Baehr: Consider this case study. Imagine a group of four people sitting at the Harvard Club for lunch in Midtown, Manhattan, and you have a billionaire hedge funder, you have a film producer, you have a Harvard professor, and a New York Times writer.

Andrea Bernstein: It's a conspiratorial view of the left. It's Teneo's model,

Evan Baehr: The billionaire says, "Wouldn't it be cool if middle school kids had free access to sex change therapy paid for by the federal government?" Well, the filmmaker says, "I'd love to do a documentary on that'll be a major motion film." The Harvard professor says, "We can do studies on that that say that's absolutely biologically sound and safe." The New York Times person says, "I'll profile people who feel trapped in the wrong gender." After one lunch, you can put different kinds of capital together to go out into the world, and what, basically wreck shop.

Andrea Bernstein: Wreck shop, go to town.

Evan Baehr: That is our approach for how we're trying to advance our ideas.

Andrea Bernstein: In a statement, Leo told us Teneo it was a network of some of the most intelligent, strategic, and driven people I've ever met or known, spanning across many major professional sectors in American life. Leo added he's excited to, "level the playing field in this country for a fair fight over the direction of public policy, media, and other areas."

Andy Kroll: When the Federalist Society started in the 1980s, it wasn't obvious how powerful it would become. Leo was identifying and promoting talent and making connections for decades before some of his efforts came to fruition. Leaders on the left told me, "Shame on us. We should have been working on this too."

Andrea Bernstein: Leo has only been in charge of Teneo for a couple of years. It's hard to see exactly what the group has accomplished. What we can say Leo is getting ready to make a move should the pieces fall into place.

Brooke Gladstone: Coming up, Leo has moved his family to a coastal mansion in Maine, but it has not been smooth sailing. This is On The Media.