We Don't Talk About Leonard: Episode 2

About this episode

The episode investigates Leonard Leo's efforts to influence the Supreme Court through strategic case selection and funding.

Leonard Leo realized that in order to generate conservative rulings, the Supreme Court needs the right kind of cases. In the second episode of We Don't Talk About Leonard, ProPublica reporters Andrea Bernstein, Andy Kroll, and Ilya Marritz investigate the machine that Leonard Leo built across the country to bring cases to the Supreme Court and fill vacant judgeships, and the web of nonprofits he’s created through which to funnel dark money into judicial races. This series is created in partnership with On the Media and ProPublica. Listen to On the Media wherever you get your podcasts. ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive their biggest stories as soon as they’re published. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

People in this episode

Hosts: Andrea Bernstein, Ilya Marritz

Topics covered

• Supreme Court
• conservative rulings
• judicial races
• dark money
• nonprofits

Keywords

• Leonard Leo
• ProPublica
• On the Media

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: We Don't Talk About Leonard

More episodes of Trump, Inc.

• Introducing "Paper Trail": A new show from ProPublica about investigative journalism · May 18, 2026 · 5 min
• Ilya’s new series The Harvard Plan · November 18, 2025 · 47 min
• We Don't Talk About Leonard: Episode 3 · October 13, 2023 · 52 min
• Introducing We Don't Talk About Leonard · September 29, 2023 · 52 min
• Andrea Bernstein introduces Dead End: A New Jersey Political Murder Mystery · May 3, 2022 · 5 min
• Introducing Will Be Wild · April 25, 2022 · 4 min