Justice Alito preemptive OpEd on his Luxury Trip with Billionaire

"What's the problem? You get yours and I'll get mine."

 

What's even more ridiculous is McCarthy is talking about impeaching Biden over Hunter supposedly getting special treatment but they aren't gonna touch this

 

https://reason.com/volokh/2023/06/22/justice-alito-shouldnt-have-to-do-the-medias-job/

15 minutes ago
Justice Alito Shouldn't Have To Do The Media's Job
by Josh Blackman
6.22.2023 9:57 AM

In a series of stories, ProPublica has charged Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito with two types of misconduct. First, the reports contend that the justices failed to disclose certain travel they received. Second, ProPublica alleges that the justices failed to recuse themselves from cases that indirectly involved the people who provided that travel. There are very straightforward responses to each of these accusations. Until fairly recently, the ethics rules were reasonably understood to not require disclosing such "personal hospitality." Moreover, the Justices were unaware of alleged potential conflicts because the Supreme Court briefs did not indicate any connection between the parties in the cases and those who provided the travel. ProPublica is no doubt aware of these two facts. Yet, the outlet still persists in a globetrotting quest to tar the judicial branch with the brush of corruption.

Now, Justice Alito has taken matters into his own hands. On Friday, ProPublica asked Alito to provide comments about a planned story concerning Alito's 2008 fishing trip to Alaska. On Tuesday evening, he provided such a response–in the Wall Street Journal. Why did Justice Alito take this unorthodox step to preempt the scoop? Because ProPublica has proven itself unreliable. The outlet could not be trusted to accurately provide Alito's rejoinder in context. And Alito's concerns proved prudent.

Consider two examples. ProPublica wrote that "Alito appears to have violated a federal law that requires justices to disclose most gifts, according to ethics law experts." But ProPublica does not even acknowledge the 2023 rule revision. Indeed, the fact that the rule was changed reflects the prior uncertainty. ProPublica could fully inform readers about the relevant rule change. But it chose not to.

Second, ProPublica charged that Alito should have recused from Republic of Argentina v. NML Capital (2014). ProPublica reported that NML Capital was affiliated with billionaire Paul Singer, on whose private jet Alito flew to Alaska. ProPublica included a single explanatory sentence from Alito's Wall Street Journal op-ed to explain his failure to recuse: "It was and is my judgment that these facts would not cause a reasonable and unbiased person to doubt my ability to decide the matters in question impartially." But that generic line barely scratches the surface of what Alito wrote. Alito explained that "Singer was not listed as a party" in the briefs, and his name did not "appear in any of the corporate disclosure statements." Alito observed that it "would be utterly impossible . . . to search filings with the SEC or other government bodies to find the names of all individuals with a financial interest in every such entity."

Alito is correct on both fronts. On a plain reading of the old ethical rule, he complied with the standards as they were understood at the time. To prove the point, Judge A. Raymond Randolph of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals received permission from the ethics office to take a similar trip to Alaska in 2005. Moreover, there is no expectation that Justices unravel intricate business arrangements or comb through press stories to stumble upon phantom conflicts of interest.

ProPublica styles itself as "an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism with moral force." But consistently, their reporting targets only conservatives, with the same cookie-cutter series of allegations that crumble under the slightest scrutiny. Regrettably, this pervasively-progressive "moral force" undermines any pretenses of "investigative journalism." Justice Alito shouldn't have to do the media's job. Fortunately for the Supreme Court, he did so.

—

Josh Blackman holds the Centennial Chair of Constitutional Law at the South Texas College of Law Houston.
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Why did Justice Alito take this unorthodox step to preempt the scoop? Because ProPublica has proven itself unreliable

@Os Trigonum

Since you're wondering - He did this because he did pretty much all of the things that were reported, right up to the "**** eating grin while holding a giant fish" photo

 

Paul Singer Sets Fishing Record by Catching Two-Hundred-Pound Supreme Court Justice

ALASKA (The Borowitz Report)—The billionaire Paul Singer set a sport-fishing record by catching a Supreme Court Justice who weighed in at approximately two hundred pounds.

The Justice, who was estimated to measure over sixty inches, became Singer’s catch during a luxury fishing trip to Alaska in 2008.

Singer, who said that he kept his record catch a secret because he does not “like to brag,” revealed that the jurist was “much easier to catch” than he had anticipated.

“He required practically no bait whatsoever,” he said. “I’ve never caught something that seemed so happy to be flopping around on my boat.”

https://www.newyorker.com/humor/bor...ching-two-hundred-pound-supreme-court-justice

 

Another instance of alito receiving an expensive gift, this one after a SC ruling and from a group that has filed briefs to the court...

 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/justic...eme-court-5f4bd925?mod=hp_opin_pos_2#cxrecs_s

ProPublica’s Fishing Expedition for Justice Alito
The attack on the Supreme Court Justice on ethics and recusal is an attempt at Court-thinning.
By The Editorial Board
June 21, 2023 at 6:50 pm ET

The political assault on the Supreme Court continues, and the latest Justice in the grinder is Samuel Alito. ProPublica reports that the Justice went on a fishing trip to Alaska with a billionaire in 2008 and didn’t report it on his annual Court disclosure form. As usual, this is a non-scandal built on partisan spin intended to harm the Justice and the current Court majority.

The ProPublica story is a typically slanted piece alleging that Justice Alito broke ethics and recusal rules after the trip with businessmen Robin Arkley and Paul Singer. He flew on Mr. Singer’s private jet for part of the trip. The story also recounts a fishing trip that the late Justice Antonin Scalia took with Mr. Arkley in 2005. But Justice Alito is still on the Court so he is the big fish that ProPublica is attempting to catch and fillet.

***
Regarding ethics, the story flatly asserts that Justice Alito violated disclosure rules, but he did not. At the time of the trip, the Justices were authoritatively advised that such “personal hospitality” wasn’t reportable. Ray Randolph, a federal appellate judge who was on both trips, says he asked the judiciary’s disclosure office whether to report the trip on his 2005 form. Backed by his notes taken at the time, Judge Randolph said he was told he did not have to disclose.

This spring the Judicial Conference changed its rules to note that judges should disclose trips taken on private jets. The regulations specified that “transportation that substitutes for commercial transportation”—i.e., private planes—is now an exception to the disclosure exemption for personal hospitality. But Justice Alito violated no rules in 2008.

As it happens, the fishing trip isn’t even a ProPublica scoop. Justice Alito was so intent on concealing the trip that he told a large audience of lawyers and journalists about it at a Federalist Society dinner in 2009. Mr. Singer had introduced the Justice, and here’s how David Lat reported it on the Above the Law website on Nov. 18, 2009:

“Like a good dinner speaker, Justice Alito warmed up the crowd with a story. He talked about going on a fishing trip deep into the wilderness with Paul Singer (maybe to the wilds of Alaska, but the details escape us). One morning they woke up to find their camp surrounded by bears. Justice Alito said he asked himself: ‘Do you really want to go down in history as the first Supreme Court justice to be devoured by a bear?’”

The more serious allegation is that Justice Alito should have recused himself from cases involving Mr. Singer’s various companies. ProPublica cites seven certiorari petitions to hear a case that the Court rejected. The case the Court accepted, regarding a dispute over Argentine debt, was decided 7-1 six years after the fishing trip. The Justice’s recusal would have made no difference to the outcome.


Justice Alito says he didn’t know of Mr. Singer’s involvement in any of these cases at the time, and Mr. Singer says he never spoke to the Justice about them. ProPublica reports no evidence that Mr. Singer’s name even appeared in any of the Court documents prepared for either the certiorari petitions or the Argentine debt case.

ProPublica’s focus on recusal is the latest angle in the progressive campaign to cripple the Court’s new majority. By imposing even tenuous associations as grounds for recusal, litigants can exclude certain Justices from hearing a case. With a Court of only nine Justices, this could determine the outcome. Call it Court-thinning rather than Court-packing, but the effect would be similar.

Should Justice Elena Kagan have recused herself from the pending Harvard admissions case because she is a former Harvard law dean? Or Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson from cases about executive power because she must be grateful that President Biden appointed her? They shouldn’t recuse in our view, but those “appearances” of a conflict are more substantial than recusing over a plane ride from someone Justice Alito had no obvious reason to believe was associated with a case.

On the left’s logic regarding Justice Alito, there is no limiting principle for recusal. The grounds are whatever some group claims they are. The result would be that Justices and their clerks would have to hunt far and wide for even minor associations that may involve a distant stake in a case. This is the way to ruin the Court by further entangling it in politics.

***
We should add a word about our own role here. The press is in a lather because we ran Justice Alito’s response to ProPublica’s questions as an op-ed on Tuesday evening before the ProPublica article appeared. One classic headline from Wednesday in Politico: “Alito picks a fight with ProPublica.” The Justice defends himself against a phony ethics assault from the press, and he’s the one picking the fight?

Justice Alito clearly wanted his defense to receive public disclosure in full, not edited piecemeal. We saw ProPublica’s list of 18 questions and had a good idea of where the reporters were going. The story proved us right.

It is also hilarious to be denounced for betraying the media brotherhood for the offense of scooping the competition. This is the same crowd that would prefer if we didn’t exist. Their pearl-clutching reveals the degree of media conformity when it comes to approved progressive political targets like Justice Alito.

That’s the larger story to keep in mind as the campaign against the Court accelerates. This isn’t about ethics. This is about the left’s fury at having lost control of the Court, which they had counted on for decades as a second legislature to impose their priorities when they couldn’t persuade Congress. They can’t accept that loss, and they will destroy the Court if they must to get that control back.

We are defending the Court because someone has to. Someone has to stand up for judicial independence and an institution that is part of the bedrock of our constitutional order.

Appeared in the June 22, 2023, print edition as 'ProPublica’s Fishing Expedition'.
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if only Alioto had

• disclose these freebies that he had received from the billionaire
• recuse himself from cases affecting the businesses that impact the billionaire

 

ProPublica is the real villian here for reporting how USSC justices are accepting favors from people with business before the court.

 

if you believe that, i have a bridge in Arizona to sell you

 

tldr - A magazine funded by the billionaire Koch family agree that it's not a big deal when billionaires influence supreme court judges.

 

...and here all this time I thought that uniting the citizens...

...well, the ones who could afford it, anyway...

...was supposed to be a great idea...

 

The sad thing is, you can't even say these crooked mother****ers are the worst in government right now, not even by a long shot. We seriously need more checks and balances and accountability in our government. Ugh

 

The Supreme Court needs to be completely re-worked.

Complete loss of credibility.

 

I will say they are because they decide what laws are constitutional or not.