The megadonor’s plan for a $25 million research center at Cornell fell apart. So he took his money to Texas A&M.
Leonard Leo had a vision for his alma mater, and he had the money to back it up. With a donation of as much as $25 million, he wanted Cornell Law to establish the Center for the Study of the Structural Constitution — the biggest effort yet by the conservative megadonor to reshape academia in his right-wing image.
After months of courtship, the proposal — which has before never been disclosed — hit a snag in the fall of 2021.
Cornell professors worried a center sponsored by Leo, one of the architects of the conservative legal movement, would establish a beachhead for far-right scholarship. Unable to convince the school that gave him both his undergraduate and law degrees to build his research center, Leo walked away, or so he claims.
But he didn’t abandon his law school campaign.
Snubbed by the Ivy League, Leo found a new home for his pet project. The Intercept followed the money trail to reveal how the man known primarily as the Trump administration’s “court whisperer” has secretly funneled part of his billion-dollar war chest to the law school at Texas A&M University. Money has also flowed to several other law schools through one of Leo’s favorite dark-money funds, with many donations bearing the hallmarks of his broader aim to overhaul the legal academy.
Professors at the law schools Leo targeted for shadow philanthropy — more than a dozen of whom spoke with The Intercept, most on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the discussions — are worried Leo is trying to incubate fringe conservative scholarship at top programs.
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