In early July 2008, Samuel Alito stood on a riverbank in a remote corner of Alaska. The Supreme Court justice was on vacation at a luxury fishing lodge that charged more than $1,000 a day, and after catching a king salmon nearly the size of his leg, Alito posed for a picture. To his left, a man stood beaming: Paul Singer, a hedge fund billionaire who has repeatedly asked the Supreme Court to rule in his favor in high-stakes business disputes.
Singer was more than a fellow angler. He flew Alito to Alaska on a private jet. If the justice chartered the plane himself, the cost could have exceeded $100,000 one way.
https://www.propublica.org/article/samuel-alito-luxury-fishing-trip-paul-singer-scotus-supreme-court
Alito seems untouchable, there are dozens of stories like this about him and his wife.
Wonderful journalism, wow. I will say that it did take too long to read that Leonard Leo planned/coordinated the whole trip. This Supreme Court is so fully out in the open fucked.
In a legitimate society with a sliver of integrity this would not be tolerated.
Alito said that he was invited to fly on Singer’s plane shortly before the trip and that the seat “would have otherwise been vacant.” He defended his failure to report the trip to the public, writing that justices “commonly interpreted” the disclosure requirements to not include “accommodations and transportation for social events.”
This is such an insane defense. Yeah, this casual acquaintance of yours just got you a $100k personal flight for the giggles.
Corruption on full display … with zero consequences.
Alito did put out his own statement. Unfortunately it’s on WSJ and thoroughly paywalled: https://www.wsj.com/articles/propublica-misleads-its-readers-alito-gifts-disclosure-alaska-singer-23b51eda
He didn’t just “put out his own statement”. Propublica reached out to him for comment on this article, he didn’t respond and then he scrambled to have an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal hours later (always worth saying that that is a Rupert Murdoch owned company). It was a poor attempt at damage control by a weasel trying to get ahead on spinning the narrative.
