The Scheme

How the Right Wing Used Dark Money to Capture the Supreme Court

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Jennifer Mueller

• Publisher: The New Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN:
  9781620978344
  9781620972076
• eBook ISBN:
  9781620978375
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Courts
• Index: Politics & International Relations

“A damning investigation of dark money by a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee” (Kirkus Reviews) with a new preface on recent disclosures about efforts to influence the Court

“There’s no senator I can think of who’s done more sleuthing to figure out the money trail in American politics, particularly as it affects the courts.”—Jane Mayer, author of the national bestseller Dark Money

As the story of Supreme Court malfeasance and ethics violations repeatedly makes front-page news, the paperback version of The Scheme comes at a time of crisis for the American judiciary.

Following his book Captured on corporate capture of regulatory and government agencies, and his years of experience as a prosecutor, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, whom Senator Elizabeth Warren calls a “a powerful voice in defending our American democracy against the relentless, pervasive—and often hidden—power of corporate special interests,” here turns his attention to the right-wing scheme to capture the United States Supreme Court. Whitehouse chronicles a hidden-money campaign using an armada of front groups, helped by the infamous Citizens United Supreme Court decision, employing the Federalist Society as an appointments turnstile, and with the same small handful of right-wing billionaires and corporations enticing the Senate to break rules, norms, and precedents to confirm wildly inappropriate nominees who would advance their anti-government agenda.

Now available in an affordable paperback edition with a new preface addressing the Reverend Schenck disclosures about politicking the justices and Justice Thomas’s recently disclosed conflicts of interest, The Scheme offers what Kirkus Reviews calls “a maddening indictment of a corrupt and corrupted judiciary.”

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part I: Behind the Scheme
• Part II: Motive
• Part III: Means
• Part IV: Co-conspirators
• Part V: Method
• Part VI: A Susceptible Victim: The Compromised Court
• Part VII: Payday: The Captured Court
• Part VIII: Rebuttal
• Part IX: Closing Argument
• Acknowledgments
• Appendix A: “The 80”: Decisions by the Roberts Five, 2005–2019
• Appendix B: Amicus Briefs Filed by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse
• Appendix C: Whitehouse Brief Appendix: Overlapping Amici Funders in Seila Law
• Appendix D: Wharton Analysis of Corporate Funding Disclosure
• Notes
• Index
• About the Author
• Publishing in the Public Interest
• Copyright