Billionaire Leonard Leo rejects Senate subpoena over supreme court gifts

Progressive groups hail long-brewed move against influential donor but protest lack of summons for Harlan Crow

The big-money rightwing donor Leonard Leo said he would not comply with a subpoena issued by the US Senate judiciary committee, as it investigates undisclosed gifts to conservative supreme court justices that have stoked an ethics crisis at a court already held in historically low public esteem.

Referring to Dick Durbin, the Illinois Democrat who chairs the committee, Leo said: I am not capitulating to his lawless support of Senator Sheldon Whitehouse [a Democrat from Rhode Island] and the left's dark money effort to silence and cancel political opposition."