The Marble Freedom Trust, a nonprofit group formed in May 2020 and led by conservative activist Leonard A. Leo, received a total of $1.6 billion through a series of transactions originating with Barre Seid, an electronics manufacturing mogul, the New York Times reports.

As chairman and CEO of Tripp Lite, a Chicago-based electrical device manufacturing company, Seid donated 100 percent of the company’s shares to the Marble Freedom Trust before the company’s sale to Eaton—an Irish conglomerate—for $1.65 billion in March of 2021, which gave the trust all proceeds from the sale. According to Ray D. Madoff, professor of tax law at Boston College and director of the school’s Forum on Philanthropy and the Public Good, the structure of the transaction was most likely legal but did appear to allow a donor to avoid federal tax obligations from the sale of a company.

Registered under a section 501(c)(4) of Internal Revenue Code, the trust is allowed to engage in political advocacy, though supporters are not entitled to deduct donations from their income taxes. They can, however, donate assets that a nonprofit can sell and avoid capital gains taxes on that sale. “These actions by the super wealthy are actually costing the American taxpayers to support the political spending of the wealthiest Americans,” Madoff said.

Leo, a trustee and chair of the Marble trust, previously served as executive vice president of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group, and in 2020 became chairman of CRC Advisors, which advises and helps manage conservative nonprofits. Leo has previously used connections to help finance battles over judicial appointments, abortion rights, voting rules, and climate change policy. The trust already has reported donations totaling nearly $229 million to other nonprofits, with recipients including the Rule of Law Trust ($153 million), which has been involved in judicial confirmation fights, and the Concord Fund ($16.5 million). Seid’s family foundation, the Barbara and Barre Seid Foundation, has operated with an annual budget of several million dollars, giving most often to Chamber Opera Chicago, which was founded by Seid.

“It’s high time for the conservative movement to be among the ranks of George Soros, Hansjörg Wyss, Arabella Advisors, and other left-wing philanthropists,” said Leo in a statement, “going toe-to-toe in the fight to defend our constitution and its ideals.”

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