[[link removed]]

PORTSIDE CULTURE

WITH HIS NEW FILM, ALEX GIBNEY SHINES A LIGHT ON DARK MONEY  
[[link removed]]


 

An interview with Alex Gibney
April 27, 2025
Jacobin
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ Jacobin sat down with the prolific muckraking filmmaker Alex Gibney
to discuss his new documentary The Dark Money Game, on the terrifying
ramifications of Citizens United and how it’s empowered the same
oligarchy now unleashed by the Trump administra _

Filmmaker Alex Gibney speaks at Variety and Rolling Stone's 2024
Truth Seekers Summit on August 15, 2024, in New York City. , (Steven
Ferdman / Getty Images)

 

From 2007’s Oscar-winning documentary _Taxi to the Dark Side _to
the just released _The Dark Money Game_, producer-director Alex
Gibney has been tirelessly zooming in on the wrongs that need to
righted. From Enron to Jack Abramoff, Henry Kissinger’s war crimes
to WikiLeaks, Lance Armstrong’s doping to Scientology’s secrets,
and Russian oligarchs to the imperial presidency and beyond, Gibney
has relentlessly probed and illumined darkness with his camera lens.

_The Dark Money Game, _the filmmaker’s two-part, four-hour series
for HBO and Max, focuses on the corrosive effects of _Citizens United
v. FEC_, the Supreme Court decision that equated speech with money and
ushered in a tidal wave of campaign cash, undermining our democracy.
Like nonfiction versions of film noir mysteries, _Ohio
Confidential _and _Wealth of the Wicked_ — the two parts of
latest Gibney’s hard-hitting documentary — investigate and
chronicle the corruption flowing from this subversion of the US
electoral and legislative systems.

Ed Rampell

At April 1’s “Fight the Oligarchy” rally in Los Angeles, Bernie
Sanders vigorously denounced _Citizens United_. Your latest
documentary, _The Dark Money Game_, lays bare how the Supreme
Court’s 2010 ruling on campaign finance operates in practice. In
general, how does _Citizens United_ impact America’s electoral and
political system?

 

Alex Gibney

It essentially legalizes bribery. While those who support _Citizens
United_ maintain that no money goes directly to the candidate, we
know from the HB6 scandal that all that is done with a wink and a nod
between super PACs and 501(c)(4)s and the candidates themselves.
It’s kind of a mockery of a sham .

Ed Rampell

The HB6 scandal is covered in _Ohio Confidential_, wherein the
suicide of prominent lobbyist Neil Clark leads to an entire network of
corruption that goes all the way to the top — to Ohio’s speaker of
the house and his ties to a nuclear energy company he and others
shilled for. How did _Citizens United_ factor into this scandal?

Alex Gibney

The scandal — or the crime, for which two people were convicted,
Matt Borges and Larry Householder, plus others — went something like
this: FirstEnergy dropped $60 million into a 501(c)(4), which was used
at the direction of Larry Householder, first to get himself elected as
  speaker of the house, then to ram through a bill called HB6, which
had been written by FirstEnergy to subsidize FirstEnergy to the tune
of over $1 billion. Then some of that money was also used to muscle
people who were trying to come up with a referendum to repeal HB6.

Ed Rampell

Part two of _The Dark Money Game_, _Wealth of the Wicked_, reveals
the unscrupulous, behind-the-scenes ties between _Citizens
United_ and the crusade to overturn _Roe v. Wade_ — including one
zealot who flips sides, Robert Schenck. Tell us about all that and the
role that _Citizens United_ played in the defeat of reproductive
rights.

 

Alex Gibney

It’s about what I’d call “an unholy alliance” between big
business and evangelical Christians who are extremely antiabortion.
The evangelical Christians had popular fervor, a very emotional issue,
and some popular support. There was no popular support for what the
big-business people wanted to do. But they had a lot of money.

Along comes into this unholy alliance a gentleman named Jim Bopp, an
attorney, who was working very hard to try to overturn _Roe v. Wade_.
He concluded that nothing was ever going to happen unless he could
destroy the system of campaign finance restrictions that had been put
in place by John McCain and Russ Feingold. So he labored very hard
through a number of decisions that led up to _Citizens United_, and
he literally took it to the Supreme Court, where it was argued by
somebody else.

Ultimately, _Citizens United_ was decided, and henceforth there
would be no limits on contributions to political campaigns by
corporations and individuals. The only restriction was that money had
to go into independent organizations like super PACs or 501(c)(4)s,
and there was supposed to be no coordination with the candidate. Now
we all know that’s a joke. Particularly we know it because of the
events we show in _Ohio Confidential_.

Ed Rampell

Leonard Leo has been called one of the biggest kingmakers in American
history. What do you think about Leonard Leo and the Federalist
Society?

Alex Gibney

Leonard Leo is a very interesting figure. He was always a
money-raiser. You can go back to his yearbook
[[link removed]] and
see that, I believe, he was called the “moneybags .” In any event,
Leonard Leo turns out to be a master of raising money. He has two
agendas: one is an extreme deregulatory agenda, which is the
ideological agenda of the Federalist Society, even though it bills
itself as a grand debating society. Actually it’s deeply
conservative and interested in basically tearing down the regulatory
state.

The other thing about Leonard Leo is he’s a deeply devout Catholic,
but a deeply conservative Catholic. One of the things he does is to
raise enormous amounts of money to promote the campaigns of justices
who share both his deregulatory fervor and his religious inclinations,
so that when they form a majority on the Supreme Court, and _Roe v.
Wade_ comes up for consideration, it’s overturned — you have
the _Dobbs_ decision. Leonard Leo plays a very powerful role as a
dark-money aggregator, one who’s responsible for funding a lot of
extremely right-wing causes and also trying to enforce his vision of
Catholicism on the rest of the nation.

Ed Rampell

I believe Jane Mayer says in your films that _Citizens
United_ “basically legalized bribery by calling it free speech.”
I think you, as the narrator of the films, also say that in any other
democracy, this would be criminal.

Alex Gibney

When you give a candidate money, or effectively give a candidate
money, and you ask for something in return, that’s corruption.
That’s bribery. It’s simple; that’s quid pro quo. A long time
ago, that was illegal. But over time the Supreme Court has eroded the
statutes that were used to go after that kind of bribery. So much so
that in a recent decision — involving the mayor of an Indiana town
who gave a garbage truck contract to the Peterbilt Company and was
given a kickback — the Supreme Court said, “Well, because he got
the kickback _after _the awarding of the contract, we can’t
consider that to be a kickback at all; it’s a gratuity, therefore
utterly legal.”

Ed Rampell

Are some of the Supreme Court justices themselves receiving forms of
bribes?

 

Alex Gibney

In effect. We see that Supreme Court justices get trips, favors,
sometimes RVs from people who have business before the court.
There’s no doubt about that, and that’s been well documented.

Ed Rampell

The dark money engendered by _Citizens United_ and its corrupting
influence seem to be a logical extension of the capitalist system.
Will it take a socialist uprising to end _Citizens United_?

Alex Gibney

I don’t think so. But you can see the depth of fervor and anger that
is rippling throughout this society by the number of people showing up
for the demonstrations held by Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie
Sanders as they’re going cross-country. Even though the Supreme
Court is clearly resistant to the idea of overturning _Citizens
United_, I think you’re going to see rage and popular animus — you
saw it a little bit in Wisconsin recently, where despite the millions
of dollars spent by one oligarch, Elon Musk, the voters rose up and
overturned the party of money [by electing liberal-leaning judge Susan
Crawford to the state Supreme Court]. I think that’s what you’ll
see. I don’t know if it’ll take outright revolution.

Ed Rampell

Do you think America needs some form of socialism?

Alex Gibney

Depends on what you mean by socialism. If what we’re talking about
is rules and regulations for capitalism, then yes, I do. We had them;
we still have them somewhat. They’re being ripped apart. But these
are the things that protect us as citizens from the excesses of
capitalism. We need them. Things like Social Security, Medicare,
pollution controls, environmental controls. These are national
agendas. We don’t have good enough health care — but we should
have nationalized healthcare. All of the things we need to combat the
excesses of big business.

There’s no doubt that business can create enormous bounty and
wealth. The question is, whom is that bounty and wealth for? Is it to
be shared among all of us? Or is it for the benefit of a few
oligarchs?

Ed Rampell

What’s next for the prolific Alex Gibney?

Alex Gibney

Elon Musk. I’m afraid I’m not going to talk too much about my Elon
Musk film because it’s not made yet. But suffice it to say, we’re
uncovering a lot of very interesting information.

Share this article

Facebook  Twitter  Email

Contributors

Alex Gibney is an Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker. His films
include The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley, Going Clear:
Scientology and the Prison of Belief, and Enron: The Smartest Guys in
the Room.

Ed Rampell is an LA-based film historian/critic and the author
of Progressive Hollywood: A People’s Film History of the United
States. His novel about the native Hawaiian sovereignty movement for
indigenous rights, The Disinherited: Blood Blalahs, will be published
this spring.

 

* Subscribe [[link removed]]
* Donate [[link removed]]

Our new issue, “Progress,” is out now. Subscribe
[[link removed]] to our print edition at
a discounted rate today.

* Supreme Court
[[link removed]]
* Elon Musk
[[link removed]]
* Dark Money
[[link removed]]
* corruption
[[link removed]]
* Citizens United
[[link removed]]
* he Dark Money Game
[[link removed]]
* Alex Gibney
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]
Manage subscription
[[link removed]]
Visit portside.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 



########################################################################

[link removed]

To unsubscribe from the xxxxxx list, click the following link:
[link removed]