Meet the shadowy rightwing activist who helped fund last year’s Dylan Mulvaney/Bud Light outrage

A watchdog group has uncovered tax filings linking rightwing lawyer and Federalist Society funder Leonard Leo to the Bud Light boycott campaign, last year’s rightwing backlash against the beer brand sponsoring a 50-second video by trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney.

Tax records for 2022 obtained by watchdog group Accountable.US show the Concord Group, a nonprofit that Politico describes as “shadowy” and linked to the conservative judicial activist, gave $350,000 to Consumers Defense, an arm of Consumers Research, not long before that group played a central role in the Bud Light boycott, The Guardian reports.

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Dylan Mulvaney calls out Bud Light for not supporting her in powerful new statement

“For a company to hire a trans person and then not publicly stand by them is worse, in my opinion, than not hiring a trans person at all,” she said.

Leo is behind the Federalist Society’s push to stock the judiciary with rightwing judges, including Donald Trump’s three conservative appointments to the Supreme Court. He personally assisted Clarence Thomas in his Supreme Court confirmation hearings and led campaigns supporting the nominations of Chief Justice John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Cavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett.

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Mulvaney sparked outrage among the right when she partnered with Bud Light in April 2023, part of a strategy laid out by the company’s vice president of marketing to update the “fratty” and “out of touch” legacy beer brand’s image. 

The company put Mulvaney’s face on a beer can that appeared in Mulvaney’s video, and the far right lost its mind. Consumers Defense was central to pushing the issue with a six-figure “woke alerts” digital ad campaign.

The group’s executive director, Will Hild, announced, “In light of the recent direction taken by companies like Bud Light, Jack Daniels, and Bank of America, we are launching ‘woke alerts’ to help consumers make better-informed decisions about where to spend their money.”

The massively promoted boycott campaign resulted in Bud Light losing its top spot among beer brands, a tumbling share price, and death threats against Mulvaney.

“For months now, I’ve been scared to leave my house,” she said in a video posted to Instagram. “I have been ridiculed in public, I’ve been followed, and I have felt a loneliness that I wouldn’t wish on anyone.” 

In one memorable protest, Kid Rock shot up a case of the once-popular blue-collar beer brand using an AR-15 semiautomatic machine gun, saying, “F**k Bud Light, and f**k Anheuser-Busch.”

Not long before the Bud Light boycott, Leo – an avowed opponent of “woke” culture, DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), and ESG (environmental, social, and governance investing) – described Consumer Research as “executing the most impactful pushback I know against ESG and other aspects of woke corporate culture.”

“It’s time that businesses that are out of step with the sentiments of most Americans pay a price for their standing up for woke special interest instead of consumers,” he told the Washington Post in 2023.

Caroline Ciccone, president of Accountable.US, said, “Leonard Leo hasn’t just leveraged his dark money network to reshape our courts for the worse – he’s also fueling hateful anti-LGBTQ+ causes.”

“Leo’s billion-dollar operation and web of shadowy organizations actively work to marginalize vulnerable communities, posing a direct threat to LGBTQ+ Americans.”

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