Opus Dei’s Mission to Convert D.C. Powers Like J.D. Vance
Photograph-Illustration: Adam Maida. Photograph: Getty Pictures.
In 1998, a prematurely silver-haired, baby-faced priest named C. John McCloskey was dispatched by Opus Dei, the secretive right-wing Roman Catholic group, to Washington, D.C., to minister to a number of the world’s strongest males. He arrived on the Catholic Data Middle, which the group runs, on Ok Road, the lobbying district of the nation’s capital, to behave as a form of lobbyist for the nation’s soul. Earlier than being ordained, the priest had spent a number of years on Wall Road at Citibank and Merrill Lynch. And even after taking his vows, he retained his dealmaker’s persona.
From his workplace on the CIC (which payments itself on-line as “the closest tabernacle to the White Home … offering sacramental entry to busy Washingtonians for seven many years”), to the capital metropolis’s non-public golf equipment and white-linen eating places, McCloskey — identified to the flock as “Father John” — set about networking. In a number of years, he succeeded in changing a number of the most influential American conservatives of his time, amongst them Robert Bork, columnist Robert Novak, Kansas senator Sam Brownback, Larry Kudlow, Newt Gingrich, in addition to lesser-known figures like right-wing writer Alfred Regnery. Fox Information host Laura Ingraham credit Opus Dei–linked lawyer Pat Cipollone along with her conversion.
Father John is gone — faraway from his put up by a sex-abuse scandal, he died final yr — however the CIC continues to be on Ok Road. It’s nonetheless run by Opus Dei (Latin for “the Work of God”), which isn’t targeted on ministering to the plenty (and if it had been, it will be failing spectacularly, as extra People are leaving the Catholic Church than becoming a member of it, by as a lot as 4 to at least one). As a substitute, it’s targeted on marshaling the individuals who have numerous types of authority over the plenty (Opus Dei reportedly calls them the “intellectuals”) to its numerous revanchist causes. The group targets, and attracts, folks like Donald Trump’s present working mate, J.D. Vance, a convert to conservative Catholicism by means of Opus Dei–linked clergy and influencers.
Wait, Opus Dei, you say? That menacing group of self-flagellators to which albino assassin-monk Silas belonged that lies on the middle of the online of conspiracies in The Da Vinci Code? Within the Tom Hanks film, Paul Bettany performed Silas. The group was admittedly fictionalized to up the drama within the thriller, nevertheless it does, actually, exist and has for almost a century, one of many extra unique of the numerous factions throughout the huge Catholic Church. It could appear to be exactly the form of mysterious clique with tentacles into the elites that may pique MAGA’s conspiratorial fever. However the CIC, which doubles because the Opus Dei workplace in Washington, and the nationwide community of rich and highly effective right-wing Catholics affiliated with it are among the many simplest forces in MAGA world and the American Christian-nationalist motion. It’s allied with Protestant Evangelicals in lots of its objectives however is extra hierarchical and infrequently extra institutionally organized. Opus Dei can marshal centuries of mental heft of the Church behind it.
An incredible deal has been written this yr concerning the resurgence of the Catholic proper in America. This isn’t President Biden’s liberal Catholicism. In surveys, American Catholics as a complete are firmly within the mainstream of their political beliefs, from contraception to divorce, homosexual marriage to abortion rights. However there’s an elite vanguard on the rise that holds far more conservative views — many of those elites have some affiliation with Opus Dei — and has sought to affect insurance policies that could be enacted in a second Trump presidency. The now-infamous Undertaking 2025 was cooked up below the auspices of the Heritage Basis’s conservative Catholic and Opus Dei–linked president, Kevin Roberts. All three of the Trump-appointed Roe-wrecking Supreme Courtroom justices (two of whom are Catholic) acquired there thanks partly to the tireless dark-money-funded efforts of the right-wing Catholic Leonard Leo, a serious CIC donor who has additionally change into the go-to conservative disburser of anonymously donated large bucks to political causes. The three different justices within the Dobbs majority are hard-right Catholics. Past the excessive courtroom, present and former Washington energy legal professionals and influencers have Opus Dei connections. The present CIC board chairman, Brian Svoboda, is a companion with the big-shot legislation agency Perkins Coie. Former board members embrace Trump-administration legal professional basic Invoice Barr, Trump White Home counsel Pat Cipollone, and Kirkland & Ellis companion Thomas Yannucci. Opus Dei associates sit on the board of one other big within the right-wing political-donor community, the Bradley Basis (which is at present pouring cash into the rightist stream, together with far-right Trumpist teams run by Stephen Miller and Charlie Kirk).
Particulars of the Opus Dei community within the American capital are a major a part of a brand new, deeply researched e book by British monetary journalist Gareth Gore, Opus: The Cult of Darkish Cash, Human Trafficking, and Proper-Wing Conspiracy Contained in the Catholic Church (Simon & Schuster; October 1). Gore traces the historical past of the cultish group from Franco’s Spain by way of its growth globally and, lastly, to the group’s rising affect in Washington and the American conservative motion. (Opus Dei declined to remark for this piece, though it had expressed preemptive concern concerning the e book when its publication was introduced.)
Opus Dei runs faculties and elite non-public faculties around the globe in addition to establishments just like the CIC, all designed to draw and mould the influential. It has residences the place its most devoted members — “numeraries,” a few of whom are ordained clergymen, as was Father John — dwell below strict regimens tailor-made to push back the sensual temptations of the secular world even whereas encouraging participation in it. The residence in Manhattan homes numeraries in a 17-story constructing on thirty fourth Road referred to as Murray Hill Place, which has separate entrances for women and men.
Formally, Opus Dei has 3,000 members within the U.S., and Gore was instructed 800 of them are in Washington. Not all are numeraries residing within the residences; there are “supernumeraries” who dwell among the many remainder of us. (There are additionally these referred to as “cooperators” who should not formally members however are related to the group and its numerous actions.) The names of numeraries and supernumeraries should not public until the members need them to be. And Gore says the numbers don’t reveal the extent of the group’s affect: “Once I first began writing the e book, I grew to become obsessive about establishing who’s a member. I made a decision to surrender on that. It’s a rabbit gap down which you may be looking ceaselessly.” What he discovered is that “below each stone, you discover a entire ecosystem of Opus Dei associates.”
Opus Dei has seen its sway rise and fall within the Vatican over the many years, with the extra traditionalist popes, together with John Paul II and Benedict, extra sympathetic. Just lately, the extra progressive Pope Francis has tried in numerous methods to rein within the forces of conservativism. However proper now, within the U.S. anyway, the group is on a roll.
Opus Dei founder Saint Josemaria Escrivá de Balaguer (middle) prays in Argentina in 1974.
Photograph: Opus Dei Archive for Franco Origlia/Getty Pictures
Opus Dei was born in one other interval of battle and turmoil not not like ours: Twenties Spain, simply earlier than anarchists and socialists pitted themselves in opposition to authoritarian Falangists and monarchists, with the latter teams profitable and forming what would change into the longest working military-junta authorities in Europe, Francisco Franco’s regime. The founding father of Opus Dei was a priest, Josemaría Escrivá, now Saint Josemaría, who envisioned a lay brotherhood of males who would interact within the Work of God, a brotherhood that in the end thrived below Franco’s fascist regime.
From the start, the group had cultish qualities. The founder’s directions whole a whole lot of pages that dictate each facet of life inside Opus Dei. Life within the residences for the low-level numeraries could possibly be harsh, in line with the founder’s ascetic, urge-denying perfect. Numeraries slept on wood boards, and a few, in accordance with courtroom data Gore references, labored for 12 hours a day for little or no pay. The corporal mortification that The DaVinci Code made a lot use of is, actually, actual. A former numerary instructed the Mail on Sunday in 2005 concerning the whip and the cilice (a spiked garter members strap on their thighs) at an Opus Dei home. “As a member of Opus Dei, I used to be anticipated to undertake a weekly self-discipline of personal self-flagellation 40 strokes with a waxed, corded whip” former member John Roche wrote. “We had been inspired to ‘draw a bit blood’ and continuously instructed how ‘the Father’ [Escrivá] … drew a lot blood that he spattered the partitions and ceiling with it.”
Escrivá’s rigorous spirituality was in service to a higher purpose, bending adherents to the foundations and morals of their creed: “The illness is extraordinary — and the drugs is simply as extraordinary,” wrote Escrivá. “We’re an intravenous injection, inserted into the circulatory torrent of society … to immunize the corruption of mankind and to light up all minds with the sunshine of Christ.”
After spending six years on the e book, Gore concluded that Opus Dei’s place of energy in Washington immediately represents the success of the founder’s dream : “I’d summarize it as nothing lower than the whole ‘re-Christianization’ of society — of all the pieces from schooling to politics, the courts and the non-public lifetime of each citizen,” Gore stated in an interview.
The trendy period of energy and affect dates again to Father John and the CIC in Washington. The CIC was presupposed to be simply “a shopwindow for Opus Dei,” Gore writes. However inside a decade, it grew to become a hub for changing highly effective D.C. gamers to a model of Catholicism shared by a tiny minority of American Catholics.
Within the many years since Father John first got here to Washington, numerary clergymen, affiliated converts, and their allies have labored within the courts and in league with non-Catholic “faith-based” politicians to crush reproductive rights, oppose homosexual marriage, and bash down the wall between church and state by way of Congress and on the Supreme Courtroom. The conservative Catholic convert group in Washington consists of some energy gamers on this lengthy sport: One is Ginni Thomas, who transformed in 2002, not lengthy after Opus Dei affiliate Leonard Leo shepherded her husband, Clarence, by way of contentious nomination hearings and Anita Hill’s sexual-harassment allegations. Ginni Thomas has credited the Opus Dei–affiliated Scalias — Maureen Scalia, spouse of the late Supreme Courtroom justice Antonin “Nino” Scalia, has been spiritually directed at Opus Dei — for bringing Thomas again to the church. “Each Nino and Maureen [Scalia] actually cherished and prayed Clarence again to the Church,” Ginni Thomas has stated. Clarence had grown up Catholic, and even thought of turning into a priest, however had fallen away.
“There’s a sure reward that Opus Dei has,” McCloskey stated in a phone interview with the New York Occasions throughout his heyday, “by way of coping with folks of affect.” In just a few years, Slate referred to as him “the Catholic Church’s Ok Road lobbyist.” The Catholic Herald referred to as him the “unofficial chaplain to the higher echelons of the Republican Social gathering” who ran his changing operation “just like the brokerage enterprise.”
Gore writes that that is precisely what Opus Dei leaders had hoped of Father John. Opus Dei leaders had recognized McCloskey as a promising influencer when he was only a supernumerary in New York, then summoned him to Rome for coaching to change into a numerary priest for simply such a profession.
Gore says that just about from its beginnings in Spain, Opus Dei aimed to focus on probably the most highly effective folks in society. The conversion course of was systematic. “They establish ‘the intellectuals,’ as they name them,” Gore stated. “They invite them to Mass, to talks for non secular steerage classes, and to Opus Dei retreats. They inform them that they’re simply attempting to assist odd Catholics to dwell out their religion. However, the entire time they’re courting you, the numeraries and clergymen are gathering info.”
Throughout his analysis, Gore realized the group retains detailed data on clergymen and numeraries to gauge how critical a possible convert or member’s Catholicism is, who’s of their networks and households, and the way a lot cash they’ve acquired — info even gleaned generally, he stated, from Confession, which formally is below seal of confidentiality.
“Opus Dei has extra in widespread with the KGB or the Stasi than it does with different components of the Catholic Church,” Gore stated. “It has this meticulous recordkeeping. I spoke to at least one distinguished D.C. conservative who stated he had incontrovertible proof that McCloskey had collected deeply private and compromising details about him throughout Confession after which handed it on to senior members of Opus Dei.”
(One precise American spy is thought to have been Opus Dei: FBI agent Robert Hanssen was a infamous double agent arrested in 2001. He died final yr in jail, the place he was serving a sentence for sharing nationwide safety secrets and techniques with the Soviets, together with names of collaborators who had been killed. Hanssen had confessed his position to an Opus Dei priest 20 years earlier than he was arrested.)
McCloskey’s high-level converts testified to his allure and tenacity. “A number of doses of Father McCloskey and we’ll flip this nation round,” his convert Larry Kudlow, former Trump-administration director of the Nationwide Financial Council, stated. Kudlow, who transformed after recovering from a drug and alcohol dependancy, had stated of him, “As soon as Father John will get his claws into you, he by no means lets go.”
McCloskey was an efficient converter however removed from saintly in his private life. Gore says McCloskey definitely strapped the spiked garter on and practiced the weekly self-whipping the group requires of its numerary clergymen — however corporal mortification didn’t quell the urges.
In November 2002 — the identical month he appeared on NBC saying that clergymen accused of sexual misconduct must be protected — a lady he endorsed lodged a criticism with Opus Dei that he had been touching her inappropriately throughout their classes. For a yr after the girl made her allegation, McCloskey continued to look as an everyday on nationwide political discuss exhibits, together with Crossfire and Meet the Press, and on the Everlasting Phrase Tv Community, a conservative Catholic cable channel.
Father John McCloskey (left) and Father Richard McBrien of the College of Notre Dame on Meet the Press in 2002 in the course of the priest sex-abuse scandals.
Photograph: Alex Wong/Getty Pictures
However in December 2003, McCloskey abruptly and with out public discover disappeared from Washington. In 2005, Opus Dei quietly paid the girl virtually 1,000,000 {dollars} — a pile of cash that got here with a nondisclosure settlement. The payoff was not revealed till 14 years later, when the girl approached the Washington Put up after studying a glowing article about McCloskey, who was by then ministering in Palo Alto. She instructed a reporter she had determined to inform her story, in accordance with the paper, in an effort to assist different ladies come ahead (two extra did).
Opus Dei spokesman Brian Finnerty — who broke down in tears speaking about it — instructed the Put up the settlement for McCloskey was the one sexual-misconduct settlement Opus Dei had ever paid out within the U.S. and that it was coated by “a particular contribution particularly for it.” He declined to call the donor.
The telegenic Opus Dei priest is gone, however the transformed politicians and influencers and their potent and well-financed allies have grown more and more highly effective within the many years since his work within the capital. And his fashion of anti-democratic warrior religiosity is now the norm in MAGA politics.
“Do I feel it’s attainable for somebody who believes within the sanctity of marriage, the sanctity of life, the sanctity of household, over a time period to decide on to outlive with individuals who thinks it’s OK to kill ladies and youngsters or for — quote — gay {couples} to exist and be acknowledged? No, I don’t assume that’s attainable,” McCloskey stated in a Boston Globe story printed within the early aughts and recounted in Gore’s e book. “I don’t know the way it’s going to work itself out, however I do know it’s not attainable, and my hope and prayer is that it doesn’t finish in violence, However, sadly, previously, some of these issues have tended to finish this manner. If American Catholics really feel that’s troubling, allow them to. I don’t really feel it’s troubling in any respect.”
In an episode from the early aughts that Gore recounts in his books, McCloskey “actively inspired [Kansas senator Sam] Brownback and different highly effective politicians in his orbit to rethink how they considered democracy. ‘What number of constituents do you could have?’ McCloskey challenged a gaggle of senators. 4 million, 9 million, twelve million got here the solutions from across the room. ‘Might I recommend,’ the priest replied, ‘that you’ve got just one constituent?’”
That second, Gore writes, modified Brownback’s life. He was quickly leaving the United Methodist flock and kneeling within the CIC chapel, receiving the sacraments of initiation below Father McCloskey’s hand.
In October 2022, three months after the Dobbs choice, the CIC hosted a $25,000-a-table dinner on the Mayflower Resort in Washington to bestow its highest honor, the John Paul II New Evangelization Award, to right-wing fundraiser and Opus Dei benefactor Leonard Leo. Supreme Courtroom justice Clarence Thomas has referred to as him “the No. 3 strongest individual on this planet.” However his position in overturning 50 years of settled legislation affecting the non-public lives of a whole lot of hundreds of thousands of People had maybe catapulted him even larger within the eyes of the assembled ideologues.
Clad in a tux, his face shiny with perspiration in order that he stored pushing his spherical glasses up his nostril, Leo singled out the well-heeled visitors as an oppressed minority and claimed his work in D.C. was a warfare with the Satan.
“Catholicism faces vile and amoral current-day barbarians, secularists, and bigots,” Leo stated in a 20-minute speech nonetheless viewable on YouTube. “These barbarians will be identified by their indicators: They vandalized and burnt our church buildings after the Supreme Courtroom overturned Roe v. Wade, they present up at occasions like this one attempting to frighten and muzzle us.” He assails “the current-day bigots, the progressive Ku Klux Klan … they repeat the KKK canard that Catholics need this nation to be dominated and managed by a theocracy.” The lawyer-lobbyist launched into a short historical past of the Catholic Church versus its enemies, beginning with the Christians repelling the Ottomans at Vienna within the seventeenth century, and concluded: “Catholic evangelization faces extraordinary threats and hurdles. Our tradition is extra hateful and illiberal of Catholicism than at every other level in our lives. It despises who we’re, what we profess and the way we act. Our opponents should not simply uninformed or unchurched; they’re usually deeply wounded folks whom the Satan can simply make the most of.”
The CIC is among the many many recipients of a few of Leo’s donor cash. His identify is on a plaque of benefactors who paid for a latest renovation of the headquarters, however the group’s gratitude is on show in different methods. The primary picture a customer coming into the constructing confronts within the lobby shouldn’t be Christ on a cross however a big portrait of a smiling, modern-day teen lady with a bearded fair-haired man (presumably Jesus) holding his hand over her head and, behind him, a blurry nun. The lady within the portray is Margaret Mary Leo, Leonard Leo’s daughter. She died in 2007 at age 14 from problems of spina bifida. The portrait was painted by Igor Babailov, a prolific artist whose oeuvre consists largely of highly effective right-wing males — Justice Samuel Alito, George W. Bush, Rudy Giuliani, and anti-abortion fanatic and Domino’s Pizza CEO Thomas Monaghan are a number of of his topics. Additionally Putin, the pope, and Prince Andrew.
Because it seems, the Supreme Courtroom launched its Dobbs choice on June 24, which additionally was the date of the Feast of the Sacred Coronary heart within the Catholic calendar that yr. That feast is related to Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647–1690), a saint who occurs to share her identify with Leo’s late daughter. Leo advised to a pair of New York Occasions writers that it appeared attainable the chief justice timed the ruling launch to that date. When the CIC reopened after a renovation in September 2022 that Leo helped pay for, months after the Dobbs choice, the Babailov portrait of Margaret Mary Leo hung within the lobby. Some D.C. Catholics have claimed miracles in her identify, a sign of a attainable transfer to beatification. Sainting the offspring of a rich benefactor is a really Thirteenth-century factor to do.
Leo has denied being an Opus Dei member. “To me, it’s clear Leonard Leo is a supporter of Opus Dei. Whether or not he’s a member I don’t know, and in some ways I don’t care,” says Gore. “His actions converse for themselves.”
Leo put large cash behind the work Father John began. His community and energy have steadily grown with the three many years of right-wing advances, juiced by the 2010 Residents United ruling and, in 2021, by a $1.6 billion windfall, after a secular Jewish Chicago billionaire, Barre Seid, signed over his electronics enterprise — to a nonprofit belief arrange by Leo. That sum permits Leo to spend $200 million yearly with out touching the nut, in accordance with philanthropy specialists. He’s at present promising to dole out $1 billion with choice to conservative teams with plans to “weaponize” their concepts. It’s not not possible to think about future historians relating to Leo because the Robert Moses of a theocratic America. Even with out that further billion, Leo’s community of donors is huge and consists of secular billionaires in addition to hard-right Catholic cash. Neil and Ann Corkery (married longtime D.C. operatives and former Opus Dei members), Tim Busch (who has publicly and approvingly referred to the U.S. Supreme Courtroom as “the Leo Courtroom”), and anti-gay crusader Sean Fieler are a number of of the Opus Dei–linked moneybags financing the conservative agenda. Leo-connected networks poured no less than $50 million into the organizations behind Undertaking 2025, in accordance with Accountable.US. Undertaking 2025 comprises quite a few proposals that align with Opus Dei ideas of how society must be ordered, from banning abortion to rising the ability of a conservative presidency, to creating heteronormative marriage a nationwide coverage purpose.
Leo has additionally finished properly sufficient personally that in 2018 he bought a $3.3 million mansion in Maine close to Acadia Nationwide Park. Utilizing cash from a fund he controls referred to as the Sacred Areas Basis, he paid the Portland Roman Catholic diocese $2.7 million for the native church, Saint Ignatius of Loyola Catholic Church in Northeast Harbor, Maine. He made his spouse choirmaster.
Leo’s connection to Opus Dei can also be extra private — and extra mysterious. Leonard Leo has stated that his late daughter’s attachment to faith impressed him to change into extra non secular, and since her loss of life, he goes to each day Mass as usually as attainable. He has instructed tales, printed in Catholic journals and a e book, about how she underwent grueling surgical procedures, lived her life in a wheelchair, however developed a love for clergymen and nuns that was exemplary.
A Washington-area Opus Dei supernumerary named Austin Ruse, president of the fiercely anti-LGBTQ Middle for Household and Human Rights, printed a e book about kids whose quick lives “level us to Christ” and included supposed miracles Leo’s disabled daughter had labored after loss of life. In his e book and subsequent articles within the Catholic media, Ruse described no less than three miracles (the requisite quantity for beatification) attributed to Margaret Mary Leo.
Once I reached out to Ruse to ask if there was a transfer underway to beatify Margaret, he instantly tweeted his denial, which he then deleted. However by gathering and reporting the attainable miracles, he seems to have set the stage for the method to start.
Gore believes Leonard Leo’s document of profitable activism and Trump’s receptivity to the Opus Dei points plus the Vatican’s slight transfer to the left below Francis have collectively attracted extra right-wing Catholic cash to the conservative trigger and Opus Dei. With “recruitment starting to path off around the globe due to an rising incompatibility of its message to talk to the overwhelming majority of Catholics,” Opus Dei offered itself as a champion for disgruntled American Catholic billionaires, which, Gore writes, “provided Opus Dei a brand new lease on life.”
Now Leo and his fellow crusaders have an opportunity to not solely remake the Supreme Courtroom of their picture but additionally the White Home itself. J.D. Vance’s path to conversion started with Opus Dei–linked clergymen and different converts, beginning with Rod Dreher, a convert himself and “post-liberal” author staunchly against homosexual marriage. Dreher has since moved from the U.S. to dwell in Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, the place he works for the Danube Institute. Dreher has approvingly in contrast Vance to a younger Orbán.
After Vance printed Hillbilly Elegy, Dreher interviewed Vance for an article and apparently talked faith with him. He later linked Vance with Dominic Legge, a priest and former Justice Division trial legal professional who has proclaimed, “A authorized system … is in the end subordinated to the best widespread good, which is God himself.” This fall, Opus Dei will bestow on Legge the identical New Evangelization Award that it gave to Leonard Leo.
Vance has written that he was initially moved to think about Catholicism by studying Augustine’s Metropolis of God after listening to a Peter Thiel discuss concerning the miseries of the self-centered yuppie meritocracy. Thiel shouldn’t be Catholic — he was raised an Evangelical Protestant — however was influenced by the “mimetic want” principle of French Catholic professor René Girard at Stanford.
Thiel was additionally near the priest who ran the Opus Dei home on the Stanford campus. After his time period at Stanford, Father Arne Panula was appointed vicar of Opus Dei, based mostly in New York, from 1998 to 2002. He later grew to become director of the CIC in D.C. till his loss of life in 2017. Amongst his observations, delivered from hospice and printed in a e book: “What we name feminism is the try to flee each of the punishments handed to Eve: the ache of procreation and the ache of turning to males for approval and vanity.”
Opus Dei’s basic posture towards ladies is that they exist to be wives and moms. Josemaría Escrivá’s phrases within the final century stay as doctrine for the group: “Within the care she takes of her husband and youngsters, a lady fulfills probably the most indispensable a part of her mission.” Anti-feminist writers Kathryn Jean Lopez of the Nationwide Assessment and Mary Eberstadt have served on the CIC board.
Now awash in conservative donor cash, the group is within the strategy of increasing its attain into new generations. It’s opening 40 Opus Dei faculties across the U.S., Gore stated. “The endgame is the whole re-Christianization of society from the highest down, by focusing on the elites first. They’ve all types of initiatives geared toward younger folks,” Gore says. “They have already got immediately’s elite. And now they’re going after tomorrow’s.”
The one draw back of Leo’s success — for him and Opus Dei — is that every one that profitable has attracted undesirable discover. Journalists digging into his funds have made allegations of self-dealing and private enrichment —together with directing funds to Ginni Thomas — that Leo has denied.
These allegations attracted the consideration of the Washington, D.C., legal professional basic. As of June, the AG was nonetheless trying into these monetary trails, though Leo, by way of his legal professional, has vowed to not cooperate. (In revenge for that prosecutorial intrusion, Consultant Jim Jordan, a Republican of Ohio, opened a counterinvestigation into the D.C. AG.) In the meantime, Leo not too long ago promised to spend $1 billion of his dark-money warfare chest to “crush liberal dominance.”
