This interview is also available on podcast platforms and Rumble.
On this episode of The Chris Hedges Report, Chris Hedges speaks with filmmaker Alex Gibney about Gibney’s documentary series The Dark Money Game, which examines the “labyrinth of mirrors” that facilitates untraceable corruption through the American political system. Although both the Democratic and Republican parties have served the interests of the billionaire class since well before the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission Supreme Court ruling in 2010, the removal of restrictions on political spending created a system by which corporations could route millions of dollars in bribes through an intricate, opaque network of nonprofit organizations and super PACs.
FirstEnergy, a failing Ohio nuclear power operator, exploited this network to pay $60 million to former Ohio State Representative Larry Householder, in exchange for his support of a “Clean Energy” bill that would award FirstEnergy $1.3 billion in benefits. Ohio Confidential, the first documentary in Gibney’s series, follows the affair, which was subject to an FBI investigation, and which offers a view into mechanisms of illegitimate influence which are rarely visible to the public. Nonetheless, Hedges notes, the FirstEnergy story is likely a “microcosm of the whole system.”
The second film in the series, Wealth of the Wicked, portrays the contradictory but effective partnership between the anti-abortion Christian right and the billionaire class, which has used a variety of sordid tactics to sway the Supreme Court towards conservative and pro-corporate decisions. For example, Gibney describes how wealthy donors would “engage in a kind of romance” with justices, offering expensive gifts and pursuing “friendships that ultimately would have the effect of turning their perspectives…”
The faster the dark money flows through the American political system, the greater the power of the billionaire class to oppose regulations and steal wealth. “It’s a series of interlocking favors,” Gibney observes, “but all these interlocking favors, which—let’s face it—are traditional tools of the political system… are made possible and made far more corrupt by the application of tens of millions of dollars, which to the public is completely invisible.”
Host
Chris Hedges
Producer:
Max Jones
Intro:
Diego Ramos
Crew:
Diego Ramos, Sofia Menemenlis and Thomas Hedges
Transcript:
Diego Ramos
Transcript
Chris Hedges
The United States, with the 2010 Supreme Court ruling on Citizens United [Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission], which bizarrely defines unlimited dark money pumped into political campaigns as a form of free speech, legalized bribery. Alex Gibney, in his new series of documentaries, The Dark Money Game, examines how billions of untraceable dollars—outside groups have spent more than $4.4 billion in federal elections, almost $1 billion of which was dark money—have been pumped into the political system and the courts, used to protect the predatory activities of corporations and block healthcare reform, gun control, and environmental controls to confront the climate crisis. The infusion of dark money has not only given tremendous power to the billionaire class but eviscerated our democracy. The films [Ohio Confidential and Wealth of the Wicked] are inspired by Jane Mayer’s book, Dark Money, The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, focuses first on a bribery scandal in the tens of millions of dollars in the state of Ohio. The second film looks at the corruption of the courts, especially the Supreme Court, which passes laws demanded by the wealthy and corporations. The result is the authoritarianism of Donald Trump, who promises mendaciously to drain the swamp and the rise of a crony capitalism that mirrors that of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, and Narendra Modi’s India. The Justice Department and the FBI, once tasked with enforcing the law, now refuses to enforce the rulings of a handful of judges seeking to roll back the tide of despotism. The films lay out how we got here, from the 1971 Lewis Powell memo, the blueprint for our corporate coup d’état, to the rise of the Federalist Society and the unholy alliance between the billionaire class and the Christian right. Joining me to discuss the dark money game is Alex Gibney.
Chris Hedges
They’re great films, both of them, and I said before we went on the air—the second one, even though I had written a book on the Christian right, there was stuff in there that I didn’t understand that you got. The system was corrupt already before 2010. The Clintons had basically sold out the Democratic Party to corporate interests. But what you’re chronicling is something completely new, and that is untraceable money. One of the things I found fascinating about the first of the two films is the labyrinth by which dark money is transferred to candidates to do the bidding—in this case, a nuclear power company, FirstEnergy—but even the FBI with all of their tools has tremendous difficulty in finding the source. Define for us what the 2010 ruling did because Roberts, actually, from the film, I think overstepped what the actual ruling was supposed to enforce. And lay out how you define dark money and how it works, especially with these PACs.
Alex Gibney
Well, the Citizens United decision basically made it possible for corporations and “unions” —I put unions in quotes because they are so much less powerful than the corporations—to pour unlimited amounts of money into the campaign process under the guise of free speech. Now, there was one check or balance in this ruling, which was you’re supposed to only be able to give it to independent organizations like super PACs, that could have it and so long as they didn’t coordinate directly with the candidate, which is a kind of a joke really, but so long as they didn’t coordinate directly with the candidate in theory, it would not lead to corruption. That floodgate opening has really changed everything because now the amounts of money are so vast that 90%, I believe it’s 90 % of elections are won by the candidate who spends the most money. So it means that money rules. Now the dark part of it is interesting because you know originally the idea was, or the rationalization was, that if you put money into a super PAC you can see where it comes from. So, sunlight—you can see that, you know, General Motors has poured blah blah, however many hundreds of millions of dollars into a super PAC. But what the dark money groups learned, and particularly people who didn’t want to take the political flack for trying to, say, ending environmental controls, or Big Pharma didn’t want to take the flack for trying to goose pharmaceutical prices, is that you could donate money to a 501(c)(4), which is a not-for-profit organization whose donors can’t be penetrated by public inquiry. So you donate to a 501(c)(4), the 501(c)(4), gives to the super PAC and lo and behold, you don’t know where the money’s coming from.
Chris Hedges
And these were, I mean, you have a point in the film where you have, like, all these threads from all these boxes. We’re not talking about one 501(c)(4). We’re talking, it’s a kind of house of mirrors.
Alex Gibney
Right, that’s the job. mean, it’s not unlike what the Sinaloa cartel does, which is what one of the prosecutors in Ohio told us. You know, the whole job is to hide the money, right? And so you can have a 501(c)(4), which gives to another 501(c)(4), which gives to a super PAC, which then gives to a 501(c)(4). A whole bunch of interlocking entities, not to mention, you know, you create these corporations who have one function, which then own another corporation, which has another function. So it’s a labyrinth of mirrors in terms of hiding the source of the money.
Chris Hedges
Well, your interview, and I believe an FBI agent in the film, and they talk about how, that they really found out, we’ll talk about the corruption case in Ohio, over $60 million of corrupt money. But they said there’s so much out there, and they stumbled onto what happened in Ohio by accident.
Alex Gibney
That’s right.
Chris Hedges
And that, you know, there’s vast amounts of money floating around out there that they can’t even see.
Alex Gibney
That’s right. I mean, in Ohio, the corruption case was successfully prosecuted. The Speaker of the House, Larry Householder, who was at the center of the ring, did go to jail, as did another gentleman who was involved in conspiracy. But that’s extremely rare. And it’s extremely rare because the Supreme Court has made it very difficult to prosecute these kinds of crimes. And also because of the dark money, it’s very hard to see where the money’s coming from to know whether or how you should prosecute. In this case, the federal agents had gotten a permission to wiretap somebody as a result, you know, to inquire into a gambling, potential gambling crime. While those wiretaps were active, they heard the voice of a man named Neil Clark, who was a lobbyist in Ohio. And he started bragging about this kind of quid pro quo that they were running with FirstEnergy, this energy company. And so the agents stumbled into a much, much bigger case, which they were then able to follow the trail of. Initially, mostly through wiretaps and body wires from agents.
Chris Hedges
So let’s explain how it works. You do make a point in the film, both you and Jane, of saying this is hardly restricted to the Republican Party. I live in New Jersey. George Norcross, the political boss, is now on trial for a very similar situation to Ohio. Let’s explain how it works. So FirstEnergy was a nuclear power facility. They wanted a state bailout. I love the names. It’s all out of Orwell. What was it called? The Clean Energy for Ohio bill or something.
Alex Gibney
That’s right.
Chris Hedges
But explain how it works, how the system, which you do a tremendous job of showing in the film, but explain how it works. The quid pro quo, the pay for play. And also the ruthlessness of it. These people are ruthless if you challenge them, as Norcross is.
Alex Gibney
Well, and one of the great things about the wiretaps is you can hear what people say in private and how ruthless they are and how willing they are to go after people. So that was the, for a filmmaker, that was the benefit of this. Anyway, here’s the way it worked. FirstEnergy was a failing power company. In fact, it had fallen into bankruptcy. They were in terrible shape.
What they did was, they dropped $60 million into a dark money slush fund, a 501(c)(4) slush fund, which was–
Chris Hedges
Alex, I have to interrupt you because isn’t it one of the FBI agents or somebody says, they said, it must be a mistake. It must be six million.
Alex Gibney
Yeah, you know, one of the reporters, one of the great reporters in Ohio, Laura Bischoff, when she first heard 60 million, she thought, well, that can’t be right. You know, nobody would, you know—but she thought they had gotten, yeah, a decimal point wrong. But no, was 60 million, 6-0. They had dropped into this 501(c)(4), which was to be used in the direction of a guy named Larry Householder, who was a member of the Ohio House of Representatives. He initially used the money to fund a brass knuckles campaign to become Speaker of the House. And in so doing, of course, he got a lot of people who owed him big time. And so he insisted they pay him back by ramming through a bill called HB6, which had been written prior to the 60 million changing hands by the FirstEnergy Corporation. And lo and behold, that bill gave FirstEnergy $1.3 billion. So if you’re looking at it from a return on investment standpoint, it’s pretty good. You drop $60 million into a slush fund, you get that $1.3 billion off the backs of the taxpayers of Ohio. So that’s what happened. But in addition—some of the brass knuckles tactics are revealed—they passed this bill. And by the way, that bill, a lot of that bill is still in effect, even though, you know, the two people who, two of the people who put it there were put in prison for their corrupt activities. But then there was a citizens group who was so appalled by this bill that they started a signature collection campaign, because in Ohio, with a referendum, you can overturn bills that have been passed through the legislature. So they did, but then, Householder had all this money to spend, and he began to start muscling the signature collectors, and he began buying up signature collection companies and asking them to stand down. And then for other signature collectors, he would literally pay them to leave the state so that they wouldn’t be collecting signatures. And representatives who objected, he literally threatened them. So they’re using these brass knuckles tactics in order to get people to stand down. And they’re using it with the money that they’d gotten from FirstEnergy. So it’s pretty interesting. And one of the stories in the film relates to a whistleblower named Tyler Furman, who was a dyed-in-the-wool young Republican, who nevertheless, as a traditional conservative Republican, objected to the idea of a kind of state-sponsored bailout of a failing company, the kind of thing the Republicans used to object to as crony capitalism. He objected to it, so he was on the side of the signature collectors, and then he gets approached by an old pal of his who’s now working for Householder, to say, how’d you like to spy on those folks that you’re working with now? And he initially says, absolutely not. But then he reports it to the FBI and the FBI says, no, go back and tell them you will do it. And then they put a body wire and a phone tap on Tyler and ultimately they were able to get extraordinary evidence from this guy, Matt Borges, who was part of the conspiracy to defraud the state of Ohio.
Chris Hedges
Yeah, and of course it’s money. What did they give him, $15,000 cash or something?
Alex Gibney
Yeah, Yeah, no, he was paying Tyler to betray his pals. And Tyler was willing to do it because he was an informant now for the FBI and ultimately revealing much of how the case worked. And I think a lot of Tyler’s evidence was hugely useful at trial…
Chris Hedges
So this money goes into negative advertising, which turns out to be quite effective. They saturate the airwaves. First of all, they promote it, we should be clear, as a clean energy bill.
Alex Gibney
(laughs)
Chris Hedges
Yeah. And if you want clean air, make sure you vote for the—
Alex Gibney
—the failing nuclear power plant, which by the way, part of the bill was to shut down all of this wind power. So, and to actually subsidize some coal companies. So you couldn’t ask for a dirtier clean energy bill than this one.
Chris Hedges
But the problem is the opponents don’t have those resources by which they can counter the smears. And the dirty tactics they use to go after people who oppose the bill—I mean, there was a scene in there—a poor guy had left a bar, he was running for the legislature and he’d had one beer or something. They stopped him. He wasn’t drunk. But they just twisted that into—you show the ad in the film, they smeared him, they destroyed him.
Alex Gibney
We showed the body cam footage, you know, he had to do a sobriety test, he passed it, but they didn’t mention that in the ad. And of course, that was one of the few swing districts in Ohio. Ohio is a terribly gerrymandered state. But I think he lost by a handful of votes. But a lot of the money behind the negative campaigning for this, you know, Christian nationalist opponent of his, you know, came from FirstEnergy. So that was one of the ways that they were muscling the whole system. You know, make sure to run against people who are vulnerable, get them out of office, make sure to fill up the campaign coffers of some of your allies and let them know that in exchange for that, they owe you favors like voting for House Bill 6. So it’s a series of interlocking favors, but all these interlocking favors, which—let’s face it—are traditional tools of the political system, but they’re made possible and made far more corrupt by the application of tens of millions of dollars, which to the public is completely invisible. Because in this case, in the case of Ohio, as opposed to say Elon Musk during the presidential campaign, nobody knew where all this money was coming from. There was a, you know, a cutout company called Generation Now, which was part of this 501(c)(4). Nobody knew what Generation Now was, nobody knew where the money came from, but Generation Now was paying for massive amounts of negative ads toward people who were opposing Householder’s agenda.
Chris Hedges
We should talk about gerrymandering. My friend Dennis Kucinich lost his House seat when it was gerrymandered, we should be clear, by the Democratic Party at the time, not the Republican Party. Well, you show a map, and it doesn’t make any sense, of course, what you gerrymander so that, essentially, the Republican Party in Ohio is guaranteed a kind of majority. Well, this is just writ, of course, nationwide. So actually, contested seats are in the minority.
Alex Gibney
Correct. And that way, let’s just say that you, you know, let’s just say you live in a purple state. And Ohio is not dyed in the wool red, but let’s just say you live in a purple state, which is 53 to 47, you know, in the red, right? But in the legislature, it might be 70-30 red because of the way they gerrymandered the state. There was one example, we have, again, another Republican judge, a woman named Maureen O’Connor, who was the Supreme Court justice in Ohio, opposed this outrageous gerrymandering and was much vilified by the hard right part of the Republican Party. She points out there was one district called the snake on the lake, which is just a little ribbon of territory along Lake Michigan, which is there only to be able to capture, you know, the group that they want to capture. It bears no relation to what you would call a community. Because a community is full of lots of different kinds of people. But the key to the gerrymandering is packing and cracking. You crack up reliable districts of the opposition and pack them into one district so that you can have the rest.
Chris Hedges
Well, what’s amazing is that because of the gerrymandering, despite overwhelming repulsion by most voters in Ohio, the speaker, and now it’s been exposed, I mean, he’s going to trial, he gets reelected.
Alex Gibney
Well, he gets reelected after he’s convicted. And that’s no surprise to us now. We have a president for whom that is true.
Chris Hedges
Yeah. How much, I mean, for me, it was a kind of microcosm of the whole system, isn’t it?
Alex Gibney
Yes, I agree. That’s why we use the Ohio example because it’s rare because of these wiretaps that you get a kind of vivisection of how the corruption works. But I think the important thing about the Ohio story is that this is likely the kind of thing that’s going on in every state. The other thing that was delicious about the Ohio story is that, you know, kind of as a sort of corrupt response to the high-minded principles of the Supreme Court in saying, well, you know, Citizens Unitedwill never lead to corruption. All these guys are chuckling on wiretaps saying, since Citizens United, bribery is legal. We can do whatever we want now. They’re just howling over the fact that Citizens United was a gateway to bribery. Now these guys went so far over the line that they were actually convicted. But I’m sure other people are more sophisticated in terms of the wink and the nod between the super PAC that’s independent and the candidate, in terms of making sure that they’re aligned. Speaking of relating it to the national scene, what was it recently? There was a, I believe, a one million a person candlelight dinner at Mar-a-Lago and for a super PAC called MAGA Inc. And with Trump’s, you know—but by law, MAGA Inc. can’t coordinate with Trump’s campaign organization. So invitations say that Trump is a “guest speaker”. Now, do you imagine that there’s any coordination between Trump and MAGA Inc.? Oh, perish the though!
Chris Hedges
I want just before we go on to the second film talk a little bit about one of the central characters in the film, Clark, who ends up committing suicide. I mean, you leave that open. Do you think it was suicide?
Alex Gibney
I do think it was suicide. I think there were people initially who thought it might’ve been murder, you know, because he was exposing a lot of dirty laundry. He was a lobbyist that I think would have gone to trial with arrest, but before going to trial, he ended up committing suicide. He commits suicide, by the way, wearing a t-shirt, a campaign t-shirt for Mike DeWine, who is the governor of Ohio. That was, I think, a not-so-subtle way of saying that the death and Neil Clark’s activities were directly related to Mike DeWine. And we do know that people have been investigating DeWine’s complicity in the case. But Neil Clark is an intriguing figure. And, you know, he’s kind of the main character of the film. Because he’s a bare-knuckled brawler in the tradition of American politics. But there’s also something kind of decent about him. And he definitely, he has a sense of right and wrong, and yet he rationalizes what became his utterly corrupt behavior in ways that ultimately I think caused him not to believe he could live with himself. So in that sense, he’s kind of a metaphor for the way in which so many Americans have kind of rationalized bad behavior for the sake of money.
Chris Hedges
Yeah, I mean, I think you narrate the film and I think you come to the conclusion that he believed that he was not committing a crime.
Alex Gibney
Yes. Well, I think he convinced himself that he was not committing a crime. And that was very much the speech he made to the FBI when the FBI tried to get him to flip, which he refused to do, because he was convinced that Citizens Unitedmade all of this stuff OK. But it’s not OK, even with Citizens United, when a candidate is literally getting money from the party that he’s about to enrich through a bill in Congress.
Chris Hedges
So this was, it was technically a bailout bill for FirstEnergy, is that correct?
Alex Gibney
That’s right.
Chris Hedges
Yeah. And I think from the film, what, the president or CEO or something of FirstEnergy, immediately after the bailout, took a hundred million dollar cut or something, is that right?
Alex Gibney
No, it was evident that they were going to use this money to do some financial prestidigitation, which would have caused them to earn maybe $100 million of ill-gained profits themselves. But also, you kind of get the sense: this is a utility, right, who’s providing energy to the citizens of Ohio. And I’m sure in public, they’re also dedicated to the public good. But in private, a group of these guys sent around an email in which they put their heads on Mount Rushmore. And the message at the bottom was, fuck anybody who ain’t us.
Chris Hedges
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s kind of like kind of like an Enron.
Alex Gibney
Yeah, “ask why, asshole” was the famous phrase from Jeff Skilling.
Chris Hedges
Let’s talk about the second film. There were several points in that that I found really fascinating. I mean, we can talk about Schenck at the end. So, you have the anti-abortion movement, primarily, out of the Christian right. And so they are backing all sorts of candidates like Bush and Reagan. But in fact, they’re not overturning Roe v. Wade, which is their main demand. They’re being played by these politicians. And so there’s a kind of epiphany. And I want to talk about Leo, what’s his last name?
Alex Gibney
Leonard Leo.
Chris Hedges
Yeah, Leonard Leo, Leonard Leo. Because he becomes a focus of your film. But I had written a book on the Christian right: American Fascists: the Christian Right and the War on America.
Chris Hedges
And I knew that there was Walmart money, and this and that, hobby lobby. But I didn’t understand until I watched the film that this was a completely upfront transactional relationship. The decision on the part of the Christian right to get into bed with the billionaire class, because nobody wants what the billionaires want, of course, except billionaires. And to fund their movement. There was a very unholy alliance. And, was it Leonard Leo? Was he the one whose house you showed, his big house in Maine? I mean, these people also made a killing on this stuff. Talk about that. I think it was really, really interesting.
Alex Gibney
Well, it’s a little complicated, but let me see if I can break it down. I mean, as you suggest, there was a deal made between the religious right—principally evangelical Christians—and big money. Big money wanted to get rid of regulations. They didn’t want any regulations on things like pollution or cigarettes or voting rights, and particularly campaign finance limits. And the religious right wanted one thing in particular, they wanted to end abortion. But they needed money to do it. And indeed the lawyer who ends up taking down Citizens United, a guy named Jim Bopp from Indiana, he started out as very much a character whose sole job was to work for the abolition of Roe v. Wade. So these groups join forces. And, as Reverend Bob Schenck, who was an evangelical minister, one of these guys who used to show up at anti-abortion rallies with literally aborted fetuses, hardcore guy, says at one point, sure, we can baptize the billionaire’s money. And he quotes something which became the title of the film, which is, “the wealth of the wicked can be laid up for the righteous”. And it testifies to a kind of religious corruption. Now into this larger picture, enter a guy named Leonard Leo, who’s not a Protestant, he’s a Catholic, and a very conservative Catholic. He’s a lawyer, comes out of the Federalist Society, but he shares with the evangelicals a desire or a belief that life begins not only at conception, but actually before conception, which is what Pope John Paul II said. So he’s radically opposed to abortion. And his job is to use money, in many cases, dark money, to fund the campaigns not of candidates for office, but of Supreme Court justices. Because what’s one mechanism you could use that doesn’t depend on the popular will to get your way? Well, you pack the Supreme Court because the Supreme Court in a way, as Justice Scalia says in the film, is a supremely undemocratic organization. And if you can co-opt or corrupt the Supreme Court and pack it with anti-abortion zealots, then you can get what you want done. And along the way, if you, you know, match up the justices with pals who happen to have a lot of money, over time, you know, the Supreme Court justices also began to intuit that deregulatory agenda.
Chris Hedges
I just want to stop you Alex because that’s a really interesting part of your film. You spend a lot of time on the Supreme Court. And you show how incestuous the relationship is—and Leonard Leo did a lot of setting up, I believe, of this kind of stuff—between these incredibly wealthy donors and the justices.
Alex Gibney
That’s right. What Schenck is doing from the evangelical Protestant side, Leonard Leo is doing from the Catholic side. And basically what they’re doing, literally, taking people and showing them the back door of the Supreme Court and ingratiating them with the Supreme Court justices so that they end up being friends with these billionaires who take them on lovely trips, fishing trips, or…
Chris Hedges
Well they buy them. Wasn’t Clarence Thomas driving a $200,000 RV…
Alex Gibney
Yes, it was a loan which was mysteriously forgiven. And lo and behold this person ended up having business before the Supreme Court. So, you know, it’s a transactional relationship, but also, these justices, as Schenck points out, are kind of lonely, you know. And so, they called them stealth missionaries, is what Schenck called them, you know, very wealthy people that they would introduce to the justices and over time they would engage in a kind of romance. It wasn’t really a romance, but they would engage in these friendships that ultimately would have the effect of turning their perspectives in a very pro-corporate direction, which is evident by the decisions of the Supreme Court.
Chris Hedges
But they also control the nomination process. They’re stacking—they’ve already stacked—the court. And then after you talk about that, I want you to talk about Trump, and what happened with the Federalist Society and their list of candidates.
Alex Gibney
Well, that becomes a key, that might be the way to get into it. Because how do you stack or pack the Supreme Court? Now, obviously we know about some of Mitch McConnell’s crazy procedural inventions.
Chris Hedges
Well, this is with Merrick Garland who, they just refused to hold hearings while Obama’s in office.
Alex Gibney
Yeah, that’s right. Even though Obama had some months to go. And then of course they rammed through somebody else in the last month or so of Trump’s term. But I think that the point here is that in order to pack the court, it turns out that you can do quite a bit to elevate the profile of people with the application of money. And in the case of Trump, who may be, you know, unless you go back to the Gilded Age, the most transactional president of our time, you know, he then sees this because he knows he’ll have the religious right in his pocket in 2016 if he waves a list, sort of like the Joe McCarthy list of people in the State Department. He waves the list, like I have a list of judges from which I’m gonna nominate Supreme Court justices and they’re all gonna be opposed to abortion. So if you want to end Roe v. Wade, vote for me. It was that simple. And the person who put that list together for Donald Trump was Leonard Leo, who is a very intense conservative Catholic and, not surprisingly, almost all of the Supreme Court bench is comprised either of practicing conservative Catholics or people who were raised Catholics and are now high Episcopalian, which is Gorsuch.
Chris Hedges
The other thing they do is you have a clip from Anita Hill, you have the Kavanaugh hearing. They go at these boats—and of course Clarence Thomas with Anita Hill—but they’re accused of sexual assault, and part of this dark money goes to destroy the credibility, or attempt to destroy the credibility of the victims.
Alex Gibney
That’s right. And that gets back to the kind of thing that Larry Householder was doing in Ohio. You run negative ads, effectively. And the negative ads are paid for by mysterious, dark money forces. Because that was the, Leonard Leo’s key function for the longest time was to raise money. That’s what he was really good at. He’s not an intellectual.
Chris Hedges
Isn’t there in the film where somebody, what do they give him, a billion and—how much is it? Was it a billion and a half?
Alex Gibney
Well, later on he was rewarded. There’s a billionaire named Barre Seid who basically dropped over a billion dollars into an organization run by Leonard Leo. So now Leonard Leo is a huge broker for conservative causes because he has massive amounts of money at his disposal. And that also was a kind of tax dodge because it was a way of Barre Seid avoiding a tremendous amount of taxes even as he dumped over a billion dollars into the pockets of an organization run by Leonard Leo so that he could pursue the kinds of agendas that Seid was interested in.
Chris Hedges
Let’s talk about Schenck. I found him, you know, maybe the most interesting character in the film. So at the beginning, you have these clips of a young Schenck. He’s a minister. He’s carrying an aborted fetus in his hand outside of abortion clinics. He’s harassing the poor women who want to go into the clinics. It’s very ugly. But he has a kind of epiphany. I mean, obviously he has some kind of a conscience. Talk about him a little bit: what he saw and his conclusions about what all this did to the Christian right, in particular.
Alex Gibney
Well, he begins to be a student of the corruption of the Christian right and not just a student from afar. He sees it from the inside out. And the first time he kind of sees it is when, is in 2016 when the evangelical Christian groups all decide to throw their weight behind Trump. And he’s extremely uncomfortable because Trump is not a paragon of virtue. Trump is not somebody who you would think of as being imbued by the principles of Jesus Christ. He’s just the opposite. He’s a vain, corrupt womanizer, woman abuser, who’s anathema to everything that they theoretically stand for. But as one evangelical minister put it to Schenck, “he’ll get us the court we need”. Okay, so suddenly a light bulb goes off in Schenck’s head. It’s like, this doesn’t feel right to me, but I’m going to go along with it for the moment. And then he has a moment when he’s put in jail overnight as a result of one of his demonstrations. He like, you know, in sort of the bizarro reverse of the civil rights movement, I mean, he becomes one of these characters who, in pursuing his anti-abortion agenda, is routinely put into jail for extreme demonstrations. He’s in jail one night and he hears a woman wailing for her children because she’s been imprisoned without access to her children. And that sets off in him a series of kind of reverberations as he begins to realize that in his crusade to protect the unborn child, he hasn’t really been paying any attention to the crisis of mothers, who must live lives, who have to sometimes agonize over a decision that is very personal and important to them. And they’re the ones who are carrying these fetuses. They’re the ones who have to live the real world as opposed to the phony world of the imagined beautiful life that the evangelical Christians posit, that every child will be born into a land of plenty where all the neighbors will come and help. And so he begins step by step by step to undergo a kind of transformation where he begins to realize that he was wrong. He was wrong about the violence he used to meet on women, or at least the threatened violence he used to meet on in so many of the demonstrations. He was wrong to have ignored their needs and their rights for so long, and actually even before the overturning of Roe v. Wade he writes an editorial or an op-ed in the New York Times saying he now is for Roe v. Wade, that every woman should have the right to choose. So it’s a very moving conversion experience that he has because he follows an ethical path that it took some time for him to get to, but he allows for the possibility of changing his mind as a way of engaging with an essential moral code.
Chris Hedges
But it comes at a very steep price.
Alex Gibney
Yes, he loses everything. But you can see that, and that in its own way is inspiring in this moment, when so many people—universities, law firms—are doing the wrong thing for the sake of money. We have a fiduciary responsibility to our partners, blah, blah, blah, while they’re selling out.
Chris Hedges
Well, it’s like Columbia’s sole purpose is to protect their endowment, I guess, and their real estate holdings.
Alex Gibney
Right, well, that’s what I said, universities and law firms. And Columbia was the first to bend the knee, and they bent the knee—they should have read the Art of the Deal—they bent the knee even before they had actually made a deal with Trump, which ensured that Trump was going to ask for more, and more, and more, because of course Trump only wants to destroy the universities, that’s his goal.
Chris Hedges
Well, they thought it was a good faith conversation. They didn’t understand. It was a complete misreading of power. And the intent of power.
Alex Gibney
Correct. But also, they didn’t properly reckon with the principles of an educational institution as opposed to moving quickly to protect the financial underpinning of the institution. And that was clearly the problem with the law firms too.
Chris Hedges
So the two films together, I think, really explain how we got where we are. Where are we?
Alex Gibney
We’re in a system of legalized bribery. It’s more like Al Capone’s Chicago than what we think of as American democracy. And even worse, thanks to this Supreme Court, which I think was deeply corrupted, we have a decision which allows complete and utter immunity from prosecution for the president of the United States, so long as his acts are part of his official capacity as president. So you can have a president who can engage in bribery so long as it’s part of his presidential brief. And then all the way down the line, he enforces loyalty, not only through the application of money via his friend Elon Musk, but also through the stick or through the carrot of knowing that if you do something that’s loyal to the capo di tutti capi, then you will be pardoned. Because he has, in addition to having a get out of jail free card, he’s too big to jail, he also has the power to get everybody else out of jail. Imagine, I mean, it’s like buying, like I say, it’s like buying the police chief in Chicago.
Chris Hedges
But he’s also destroyed, I mean, I’m sure you do too, are well aware of the very dark history of the FBI that went after COINTELPRO and the Black Panthers and everything else. On the other hand, when the FBI functions as the FBI should function or when the police functions as it should function, it serves a very vital role in a democracy. He’s destroyed those institutions as well. Which means now there’s just no mechanism by which corruption, malfeasance can be investigated. And with the Department of Justice, essentially none of it can be enforced.
Alex Gibney
That’s right. I think it’s fair to say that Donald Trump is trying to destroy the rule of law. After all, that’s what Vladimir Putin did. The last remaining holdout, of course, is the court system, which is showing itself resistant, even though it has no power to enforce its rulings. And we get closer and closer and closer to open confrontation, particularly if the Supreme Court actually shows some spine, which is an open question. But I think if law is only based on personal loyalty, then it’s not law at all, because it’s not a law that applies to everyone. And I think even the rich in this society will find that ultimately what they thought protected their property no longer does. So one day if they run afoul of Trump, they’re going to be in the dock like everyone else. It’s funny, I did a film a number of years ago called Citizen K about Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was Russia’s richest oligarch. And then in 2003, Putin put him in prison because he found him to be a political rival. And he spent 10 years in the gulag. But that was an example of how in a crony capitalist country, if you don’t bend the knee to the capo, then you find yourself in prison even if you’re the country’s richest man.
Chris Hedges
Yeah, that’s, you know, every autocracy essentially demands complete fealty and loyalty, no matter where you are on the social strata. Where do you think we’re headed? Where do you, I mean, do you, I don’t see, if the Department of Justice will not, of course, the Supreme Court has no ability, but at least you have, under the Supreme Court, you have federal marshals. I mean, under the DOJ. If they won’t deploy, if they won’t enforce, what, and I don’t know how you look at Harvard’s, you know, belated act of resistance, but what do you see happening? Because it’s happening with such rapidity. It’s—we’re falling so swiftly.
Alex Gibney
We are falling swiftly, but I think there are signs of resistance. I mean, I think the popular resistance, which was slow to manifest itself is happening. And there are even moments, bits and pieces of evidence where the popular will outflanks the power of money, such as in Wisconsin with the recent election of the Supreme Court justice. So, you know, it’s bleak, it’s dire, but, you know, at the bottom of Pandora’s box was hope. And I think there is hope. And I think it’s every, every act of resistance is important because at some point, you know, it’s one of the things that was important to me about doing these two films because everybody rolls their eyes about the role of money in politics. Of course, blah, blah, blah. But when you really boil it down and you say, no, no, what this is, this is about bribery. This is about somebody taking some money and giving it to somebody else so that they have an advantage that they get something that you won’t get, your children won’t get because they’re getting it because they paid somebody off. I think most people are pretty opposed to that and once we see
Chris Hedges
Well, that’s why they, but Alex, that’s why they voted for Trump. Many of them, because he promised to drain the swamp. He wasn’t wrong about the corruption in the swamp. Of course, he’s making it worse.
Alex Gibney
Well, of course he is the swamp. But I think also there were a lot of people, a lot of people voted, I mean, why people voted for Trump is dispiriting, but it’s also hugely complex. I think there was a huge amount of tribalism that went into that. And also, you know, you have a great many business people who just thought, well, he’ll be good for business. Well, think again, because he’s a capricious man who is not tethered by anything except for self-aggrandizement and the need for revenge and demand for loyalty. That’s not, know, even business likes a good stable environment. Trump is not stable. So I think people are beginning to see that the emperor has no clothes. But will they act in time before he’s snuffed out? You know, what’s left of American democracy remains to be seen, but I think the hope is that we all say no, you’re not going to destroy it.
Chris Hedges
Great. Thank you. That was Alex Gibney on his two films, The Dark Money Game. What’s the name of the second one?
Alex Gibney
There’s two, Ohio Confidential and Wealth of the Wicked.
Chris Hedges
Ohio Confidential and Wealth of the Wicked. I want to thank Diego, Max, Thomas, and Sofia who produced the show. You can find me at chrishedges.substack.com.
Photos
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(L-R) Priscilla Chan, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg, Lauren Sanchez, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Tesla CEO Elon Musk attend the inauguration ceremony before Donald Trump is sworn in as the 47th US President in the US Capitol Rotunda in Washington, DC, on January 20, 2025. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla / POOL / AFP) (Photo by CHIP SOMODEVILLA/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
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Jim Bopp
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This post has been syndicated from The Chris Hedges Report, where it was published under this address.