The big Supreme Court news today is that Sam Alito once accepted a fishing vacation in Alaska that was arranged and paid for by a guy named Robin Arkley II. Other guests on the trip included Leonard Leo, head of the Federalist Society, and Paul Singer, a hedge fund zillionaire.
ProPublica, which broke the story, sent Alito questions on Friday and asked for a response by Tuesday. This gave Alito the time to write a pre-buttal in the Wall Street Journal opinion page before ProPublica even had a chance to release its story. This is considered bad form, but it's one of the risks of modern journalism.
I hate to say it, but it's kind of a weak story and Alito probably has the best of it:
- It involves a single 3-day trip in 2008. That's 15 years ago, a time when the court's ethics advisors said that such a trip didn't have to be disclosed. (There is, however, some question about whether the free private jet that Singer provided for Alito and Leo should have been reported.¹)
- Robin Arkley II, who organized and funded the trip, has apparently never had business before the Supreme Court.
- So instead the story focuses on Singer, who has indeed had business before the court. But Alito makes a reasonable case that he barely even talked to Singer and had no idea he was a party to any of the cases brought before the court.
The nickel summary here is that the whole story is about a single trip that cost a few thousand dollars 15 years ago. The law at the time was (a) clear that Alito didn't have to disclose the food and lodging, (b) a little muddy about whether he had to disclose the private jet, and (c) more or less silent on whether Alito's apparently mild relationship with Singer was enough to require him to recuse himself when Singer's Elliott Management brought cases before the court.
Overall, I'd say that Alito showed bad judgment here, but it doesn't seem like he did anything illegal.
¹Here's the relevant text of what Alito was and wasn't required to disclose:
In paragraph A, there's a clear exemption for food, lodging, and entertainment, but nothing about travel. In paragraph B, the law suggests that a "travel itinerary" should be disclosed if it's a "reimbursement."
Alito claims he follows the advice of Judicial Conference, which interprets the law to say that disclosure is exempt for "hospitality . . . on property or facilities owned by [a] person." Alito then makes a long and convoluted argument that "facilities" has always included travel.
But this is all pretty sketchy, especially in light of Paragraph B, which specifically mentions that a travel itinerary isn't exempted if it's a reimbursement. Was Alito's free trip a reimbursement? Not in normal usage, I think, but it may be a term of art here.
Long story short, the private jet business is a dog's breakfast. I don't know what its legal status is.
"a single trip that cost a few thousand dollars" may be a substantial understatement. Private jets are not cheap to operate. I've seen one estimate that the jet travel alone may have cost over a hundred thousand dollars.
No business before the court? These billionaires ALL have CONSTANT business before the court, to wit, to make sure big cases are always decided for capital and against labor unions and to make sure “social issue” decisions like. abortion are decided in such a way that aging white people believe the court is the only branch of government which still has some mojo. Chevron deference, as an example, is a huge one for any billionaire whose “lifestyle” is dependent on how the stock market is doing. Destroying the “administrative state” (i.e., pollution regulations) would be great for billionaires.
If a person in power receives a gift whose price far exceeds their own ability to pay by far I do not tally up details and decide that it is no big deal.
If that person is a notorious liar and has demonstrated poor judgement throughout his career the deal is even bigger. I call such a gift an attempt at bribing someone.
The only way you could say that this trip is not a bribe would be to argue that Alito would decide in favor of the billionaire even if he were not bribed. The gift would then be a reward--also inappropriate.
BTW Singer did have a case before the court* and Alito was part of the 7 : 1 majority ruling in Singer's favor. He clearly would have had to recuse himself.
* According to the article
As always Josh Marshall gets it right and he puts the whole thing in context: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/leonard-leos-scotus-fedsoc-sponsor-family-program
Oh, and BTW: Would Kevin still think this is "weak tea" if it did not follow the Thomas story? The Thomas story is certainly larger with regular installments of corrupt vacationing and it makes the Alito story small by comparison. But if the Thomas story had not (or not yet) been published: What Kevin still pooh pooh this one?
Steve Vladeck [in his Substack subscription newsletter] has three good responses to this story.
"1. there’s a larger issue with the substance of Justice Alito’s response: It’s not remotely responsive. As Binyamin Applebaum tweeted on Tuesday night, “The crazy thing about the Alito op-ed is you can believe every word he wrote and he’s still straight up confessing to taking a bribe from a rich guy who had business before the court.”
2. Justice Alito publishing an op-ed in his own name as a rejoinder to a critical media report strikes me as crossing an elusive but critically important line—stooping to the very behavior of which he has so often been so critical. ... by taking to the nearest friendly editorial page, he is only reinforcing the central charge animating so many of his critics—that his behavior more closely resembles that of a partisan political warrior than it does that of an independent, neutral jurist.
3. The broader problem here is the rather shocking evaporation of congressional leverage over the Court. the crisis of the contemporary Court is one of interbranch unaccountability, in which the justices are, and act as if they are, beholden to no one other than themselves."
"I hate to say it, but it's kind of a weak story and Alito probably has the best of it"
But why write an op-ed piece about it in the Wall Street Journal if a simple statement, no different than what you wrote, would have sufficed for such a "weak story," ? Hmmm?
Not only Alito humiliate himself by showing he has skin as thick as a dime by taking to the media outside the normal behavior of a Supreme Court justice, he also outed himself as the leaker of the Dobbs decision. Who else could it be that such access to the Journal op-ed page whenever he feels like it?
Alito's a Federal Judge, not a Senior Accounts Analyst at Veteran's Affairs. His federal disclosure requirements aren't the issue; it's his blatant corruption as a sitting judge. He's supposed to avoid even the APPEARANCE of impropriety, not look for excuses for taking bribes from litigants before him. If any California Superior Court judge did something like this, they'd be removed from office! That's the problem here.
My god, this is a disgusting take from Kevin. Hand-waving away unethical and corrupt practices by a Supreme Court Justice is low, worthy of a Fox News pundit.
I would interpret "a few thousand" as 3, 4, 5 thousand. What I read is that it was a $100,000 trip on a private jet, and 100 is not a few of anything.
I'm a little late to the party....
If Alito did something stupid when he started as a Justice, realized that, then stopped that behavior--then it is weak tea.
After the WSJ "pre-buttal", it seems Alito can not admit ever making a mistake. Now, I just think he just hates fishing.