By Dan Christensen, FloridaBulldog.org
When Ashley Moody takes the oath and becomes Florida’s next U.S. Senator Congress will get yet another politician who played a role in whipping up President Donald Trump’s supporters to march on the Capitol “to stop the steal” on Jan. 6, 2021.
Florida Attorney General Moody – picked Thursday by Gov. Ron DeSantis to succeed Marco Rubio, Trump’s choice for Secretary of State – was a director of a conservative dark money group ironically called the Rule of Law Defense Fund (RLDF). On Jan. 5, the group sent out robocalls to Trump adherents imploring them to “march to the Capitol building and call on Congress to stop the steal” and “fight to protect the integrity of our elections.”
The next day, after President Trump instructed rallygoers nearby to descend on the Capitol, violent insurrectionists broke into the building as the nation watched on television. Their assault threatened the peaceful transition of power to Joe Biden, caused the nation’s leaders to flee in panic and left four people dead. A Capitol Police officer who had fought with insurgents died the next day.
Earlier, Moody had tried unsuccessfully in court to overturn the 2020 presidential election. In early December, after the courts had rejected numerous challenges to the vote, Moody signed onto a brief filed by the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA) with the U.S. Supreme Court in support of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s lawsuit asking the justices to delay Senate certification of presidential electors in four battleground states. Paxton’s lawsuit was bounced out of court three days later.
The RLDF is a fundraising arm of RAGA. Moody has been a member of RAGA’s executive committee since 2020.
It was amid public outrage over the attack on the Capitol that that the Associated Press publicized the RLDF’s disturbing robocalls. Moody quickly sought to distance herself from the fund. Her office scrubbed her state website to remove mention of her connection. A spokeswoman told Florida Bulldog in January 2021 that Moody “had no prior knowledge of this decision” regarding the robocalls.
The RLDF does not list its directors on site. But Moody remains credited as a RLDF board member in a biography on RAGA’s website.
THE RULE OF LAW DEFENSE FUND
The RLDF, created in 2014, was set up by the nation’s Republican attorneys general to – among other things – hide who gives them money. RAGA, created in the 1990s, is a tax-exempt 527 organization that can accept unlimited contributions, but must publicly disclose its donors.
The RLDF is a tax-exempt “social welfare organization,” a 501(c)(4) that can also accept unlimited contributions but doesn’t have to tell anyone – not even the Internal Revenue Service – who gives them money, an opaque status conferred on 501(c)(4)s during Donald Trump’s first term.
The RLDF’s federal tax form 990 shows that in 2020 it received $2.43 million and spent slightly more than that – $2.47 million. In 2023 its reported revenues jumped to just over $4 million while its expenses remained about the same. Cash in the bank swelled from $470,000 to more than $2 million.
Tax-exempt section 527 political organizations like RAGA must periodically file Form 8872 with the IRS to report contributions and expenditures. IRS records as compiled by ProPublica show that from January through Sept. 30, 2024 RAGA raked in $17.3 million in contributions and spent $16.7 million.
The biggest contributor to RAGA is The Concord Fund, formerly known as the Judicial Crisis Network. The New York Times and others have reported it is part of a network of big money groups that influential businessman Leonard Leo, an advisor on judicial appointments to President Trump and co-chair of the conservative Federalist Society, helped develop. The Concord Fund’s president is Carrie Severino, a Leo ally and former law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
The Concord Fund contributed $3.5 million to RAGA in 2024. Since 2014, the total is more than $23 million. It is also noteworthy that the fund, which The Times reported in 2022 received $16.5 million funneled to it via a Leo-controlled trust from a $1.6 billion contribution made by Barre Seid, the 93-year-old former owner of Tripp Lite, a Chicago-based maker of power protection and electrical connecting devices.
It is also noteworthy that Concord kicked more than $6 million in “consulting” fees to Leonard’s Alexandria, VA public relations firm CRC Advisors in 2022, according to Concord’s Form 990.
Moody, who has been Florida’s elected attorney general since 2019, will serve in the Senate until 2026 if Rubio is confirmed in his new post. Then, her Senate seat will be back on the ballot.
Meanwhile, her camp has already sent an unmistakable message that she intends to hold onto that seat for a while.
Within hours of being chosen by the governor, Moody’s camp planted its flag by registering her campaign committee with the Federal Election Commission: Moody for Florida.
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