A little-known, 90-year-old Chicago businessman reportedly gave $1.65 billion to Republican causes. Meet Barre Seid, who gifted all of his company's shares to the 'third most powerful person in the world.'

There are few known photos of publicly shy Barre Seid, who went to college at age 14 and reportedly made the largest political donation in US history.

• Barre Seid is the most important right-wing political donor that you may have never heard of.
• He reportedly gave $1.65 billion in his company's shares to Leonard Leo, who Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has called the "third most powerful person in the world."
• The public-shy Seid has given hundreds of millions to conservative causes over the decades.

You may not have heard of Barre Seid, but he broke the record for the largest-ever known donation to a political advocacy group in America, new reporting reveals.

The 90-year-old donated $1.65 billion to a conservative nonprofit fronted by Leonard Leo, the co-chairman of the right-wing powerhouse, Federalist Society. Leo helped fuel the rise of five of the six Republican Supreme Court justices, as ProPublica noted, and has helped fund fights over abortion rights, voting laws, and other conservative causes.

The transaction was completed in March 2021 and represents Seid ceding his fortune to Leo, who's now solely in charge of the money and is poised to further grow the Republican movement in the US with one of the largest chunks of political cash in history.

Seid didn't just hand it over

He's the CEO of Tripp Lite, a 100-year-old electronics manufacturer based in Chicago, and in 2020 donated 100% of his company's shares to a Leo-run nonprofit called Marble Freedom Trust, which is known as a "dark-money group" since donors can move money without having to publicly disclose it, per ProPublica.

Marble Freedom Trust then sold the shares to an Irish company called Eaton and pocketed $1.65 billion, according to The New York Times, which viewed tax records. The move allowed Seid and all parties involved to avoid paying up to $400 million in taxes, according to the report.

Eaton, which now owns Tripp Lite, told Insider that Sied is not an employee. But Eaton spokeswoman Katy Brasser told The Times: "We have no additional information to share regarding the acquisition that was announced last year."

Leo — who Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has called the "third most powerful person in the world" — told The Times that "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, going toe-to-toe in the fight to defend our constitution and its ideals."

Sied has raised eyebrows before

Born in 1932 to Russian and Jewish immigrants, Sied attended the University of Chicago through a special bachelor's degree program.

Seid (pronounced "side") has reportedly kept an ultra-low profile over the decades, restricting his visibility to smaller social circles in the political world. 

He became Tripp Lite's leader in the 1960s and about thirty years later was earning $30 million a year. His income increased fivefold by 2018 to $157 million," per ProPublica.

—Andy Kroll (@AndyKroll) August 23, 2022

But Sied has appeared in controversial headlines over the years, giving at least $775 million in donations between 1996 and 2018, according to tax records viewed by ProPublica.

In 2008, a New York nonprofit called Clarion Fund distributed more than 20 million DVD copies of a movie called "Obsessions: Radical Islam's Ware Against the West" and was criticized as trying to stir anti-Muslim sentiment ahead of that year's presidential election, as Salon reported in 2010. The fund accidentally disclosed its donor information, which showed that a "Barry Seid" had donated $17 million, per the report.

Sied and Clarion denied the filing at the time, but Salon also found that a donor-advised fund called Donors Capital Fund had given $17.7 million to Clarion in 2008 around the time of the DVD campaign. Sied had worked with the fund before and had made at least one donation to it, according to the report.

Also around 2008, his Barbara and Barre Sied Foundation gifted $825,000 to Shimer College, a small, yet established Chicago liberal arts school, as the Chronicle of Higher Education reported. New members that shared right-wing viewpoints and that had ties with Sied were appointed to the Board, prompting outrage from faculty, alumni, and students who worried the move indicated a conservative take-over attempt, per the Chicago Reader.

The new president, Thomas Lindsay, was appointed after Sied's donation and revised the school's mission statement to include "serious study" of American Founding documents like the US Constitution and The Federalist, according to the National Association of Scholars. He was fired soon after, per the Chicago Tribune.

There's also speculation that Seid was the anonymous donor that pushed for George Mason University's law school to be renamed after Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative who died in 2016, ProPublica reported. 

And his foundation donated $250,000 to the think tank Heartland Institute, which has a track record of denying climate change, as ProPublica noted.