The Scheme: How the Right Wing Used Dark Money to Capture the Supreme Court

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse · Jennifer Mueller

Oct 2022 · Highbridge Audio · Narrated by Charles Constant

About this audiobook

Following his book Captured on corporate capture of regulatory and government agencies, and his years of experience as a prosecutor, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse here turns his attention to the right-wing scheme to capture the courts, and how it influenced the Trump administration's appointment of over 230 "business-friendly" judges, including the last three justices of the United States Supreme Court. Whitehouse traces the motive to control the court system back to Lewis Powell's notorious memo, which gave a road map for corporate influence to target the judiciary, and chronicles a hidden-money campaign using an armada of front groups and helped by the infamous Citizens United Supreme Court decision. The scheme utilized the Federalist Society as an appointments turnstile, spent secret millions to support the nominees, orchestrated an "amicus brief" signaling apparatus, and propped up front-group litigants to "fast-lane" strategic test cases to the friendly justices. Whitehouse finds the same small handful of right-wing billionaires and corporations running operations that he likens to "covert ops," ultimately enticing the Senate to break rules, norms, and precedents to confirm wildly inappropriate nominees who would advance the anti-government agenda of a small number of corporate oligarchs.

About the author

Sheldon Whitehouse represents Rhode Island in the US Senate. He has served as his state's United States Attorney and as the state Attorney General, as well as its top business regulator. The author of Captured and The Scheme, he lives in Newport, Rhode Island.

Jennifer Mueller has worked as a judicial clerk, big-firm litigator, policy consultant, law school professor, mediator, coach, writer, and English teacher. Today she works with clients in the public, private, and philanthropic sectors and coaches Public Voices Fellows with The OpEd Project.

Charles Constant is an actor whose professional storytelling career began at the age of thirteen, when he became an Actors' Equity Association apprentice. An accomplished audiobook narrator, Charles has recorded many popular titles, including How to Win at the Sport of Business by Mark Cuban. He lives in Los Angeles.