Who is Barre Seid? Secretive tycoon gives record $1.6 billion to fund GOP takeover of the courts

The donor is Barre Seid, who donated all of his shares in his electronics company, Tripp Lite, to the nonprofit group run by Leonard Leo, who helped select former President Trump’s conservative Supreme Court nominees.

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We speak with one of the reporters who this week exposed the secretive Chicago industrial mogul who has quietly given $1.6 billion to the architect of the right-wing takeover of the courts — the largest known political advocacy donation in U.S. history. The donor is Barre Seid, who donated all of his shares in his electronics company, Tripp Lite, to the nonprofit group run by Leonard Leo, who helped select former President Trump’s conservative Supreme Court nominees. “This transaction was all structured in a way that really gamed the rules around donations to nonprofits,” says Andrew Perez, a reporter for The Lever, who co-authored an exposé about Seid headlined “Inside The Right’s Historic Billion-Dollar Dark Money Transfer.”

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