Inside the mind of Leonard Leo, Trump's Supreme Court right-hand man

by Melissa Quinn | Jan 28, 2018

Leonard Leo didn’t intend to stay long in Washington, D.C.  When he was a brand new law school graduate, Leo received an offer to clerk for Judge Randall Rader on the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in 1989. He and his then-fiancée, Sally, planned for a temporary, one-year stay in D.C.  She would transfer to Washington with her job at the Naval Air Systems Command in New Jersey, and when his clerkship ended, they would return to the Garden State.  Since it was supposed to be temporary, they rented an apartment, rented furniture, “rented everything,” Leo recalls, and left for the nation's capital.

Now nearly three decades later, Leo and his wife long ago traded in their rented furniture for couches and tables they own. And Leo, executive vice president of the Federalist Society, has become a staple of Washington with an expansive network in the legal world.  He’s been called the “judicial puppet master,” “Trump’s Supreme Court whisperer,” and the “conservative pipeline to the Supreme Court.” He has played roles big and small in the confirmations of four of the nine U.S. Supreme Court justices, including the most recent, Justice Neil Gorsuch..........To Read More....