Oh, so they reversed Roe v Wade?
We'll show them, the fucks, who they're messing with.

 

I made a huge mistake and posted this on the wrong thread. And as far as mistakes go I could not have picked a worse thread to post it on if I tried. I sincerely apologize for that.

 

We are not talking about Roe v Wade. We are talking about monumental Supreme Court corruption.

 

No, we're talking about a court that no longer bows to the despicable agenda.
And that is not acceptable, eh?

 

More "alternative" facts and giant deflection.

And notice she does not explain why the payments were secret.



Kellyanne Conway defends reported concealed Ginni Thomas payments

Kellyanne Conway defends reported concealed Ginni Thomas payments
1.6k
Julia Shapero
Fri, May 5, 2023 at 12:47 PM MDT




Former President Trump aide Kellyanne Conway on Friday defended payments she reportedly made to Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, at the behest of a conservative judicial activist.

The Washington Post reported Thursday that legal activist Leonard Leo instructed Conway, then a GOP pollster, to “give” Ginni Thomas “another $25K” in January 2012, emphasizing that there should be “no mention of Ginni, of course” in the paperwork.



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Conway’s firm, the Polling Company, billed a nonprofit Leo advises, then known as the Judicial Education Project, for $25,000 that day, the Post reported.

In total, Conway’s Polling Company paid Thomas’s Liberty Consulting firm $80,000 between June 2011 and June 2012, according to the Post. It was expected to pay another $20,000 by the end of 2012.

Conway said Friday that Thomas was one of her contractors, emphasizing Thomas’s long history of involvement in the conservative movement.

“[Thomas] had worked with the Heritage Foundation. She was part of the grassroots, is part of the grassroots. She had worked in the Reagan administration,” Conway told Fox News. “This is a serious person who for years had worked in public policy.”

“And at the Polling Company, we did public opinion research and data analytics,” she added. “We had no business before the court.”

The Judicial Education Project, however, filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court later in 2012, according to the Post.

Conway also appeared to connect critical reporting on Supreme Court justices to an incident last year in which a man was charged with attempted murder after he was arrested outside of Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home carrying several weapons.

“Viciousness from 10 years ago, 11 years ago, has turned into violence now, where people are outside of Supreme Court justices’ homes trying to assassinate Justice Kavanaugh while his wife and daughters are sleeping in that home,” Conway said. “So, these people will stop at nothing.”

Justice Clarence Thomas is facing intense public scrutiny after several recent reports from ProPublica revealed the justice’s close relationship with GOP megadonor Harlan Crow.


https://www.yahoo.com/news/kellyanne-conway-defends-reported-concealed-184748159.html

 

Senator Kennedy said it all

 

Yes he did.
Not that despicables will even bother to listen.

 

Jane Roberts' anti-abortion advocacy helped her husband, Chief Justice John Roberts, land his spot on the Supreme Court years before Roe v. Wade was overturned

113
Erin Snodgrass
Sat, May 13, 2023 at 6:35 AM MDT



John Roberts is sworn in as Chief Justice of the U.S. as his wife, Jane Roberts, holds a bible during a ceremony in the East Room at the White House September 29, 2005.Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

• 
  Chief Justice John Roberts' wife's anti-abortion advocacy once helped bolster his judicial career.
  
  
• Details of Jane Roberts' work, though not new, are worth revisiting in the aftermath of Roe v. Wade's reversal.
  
  
• The Supreme Court's recent legitimacy crisis has spurred renewed scrutiny of its influences.
  

Jane Sullivan Roberts, the wife of Chief Justice John G. Roberts, played a key role in helping her husband secure a spot on the Supreme Court nearly twenty years before the court overturned Roe v. Wade thanks to conservative power players who heralded her anti-abortion advocacy as evidence that the now top justice was the right man for the job.

Seventeen years later, John Roberts voted to uphold a Mississippi law that prohibits nearly all abortions after 15 weeks in Jackson v. Dobbs, a decision that led to the 2021 reversal of Roe v. Wade and the dismantling of 50 years of abortion protections and precedence. Notably, though, Roberts broke with his fellow conservatives to vote against overturning the landmark decision entirely.

- ADVERTISEMENT -

Details of Jane Roberts' past anti-abortion activism are not new; her work with the nonprofit Feminists for Life was reported on during the run-up to her husband's confirmation in 2005. But amid a recent spate of misconduct allegations against the Supreme Court, the nine justices — as well as their families and spouses — are facing renewed scrutiny over their personal lives and financial dealings.

Questions of conflicts of interest combined with plummeting public trust in the top court have prompted deep dives into the justice's pasts in recent weeks, as well as growing calls for a Supreme Court code of conduct as the country considers how — and by whom — these powerful justices are influenced.

The court itself, however, seems to be resisting mounting public pressure. John Roberts last month declined an invitation from the Senate Judiciary Committee to testify about Supreme Court ethics, citing concerns about the preservation of judicial independence.

"Every federal judge is bound to an ethics code requiring them to avoid behavior that so much as looks improper — except for Supreme Court justices," Kyle Herrig, president of Accountable.US, a center-left advocacy organization, told Insider. "Chief Justice Roberts has the power to change that, but so far he hasn't shown the courage."

Jane Roberts' anti-abortion views bolstered her husband's judicial career
In the year leading up to John Roberts' nomination to the Supreme Court by then-President George W. Bush, many social conservatives were initially skeptical of the judge who seemed to have a lack of public opinions and speeches outlining his views, according to a 2005 New York Times profile following his nomination.

But Jane Roberts' work leading a top anti-abortion organization in the 1990s and her continued legal work on behalf of that nonprofit helped, in part, muster conservative support for her husband's Supreme Court nomination, according to research shared with Insider by the watchdog group Accountable.US.

From 1995 to 1999, Jane Roberts, a lawyer by trade, served as both a board member and executive vice president of Feminists for Life, a nonprofit anti-abortion group fighting to "make abortion unthinkable," according to the organization's president, Serrin Foster, who spoke to the Times about Jane Roberts' work with the group in 2005.

In a statement to Insider this week, Foster confirmed that Jane Roberts served as executive vice president and counsel for the group until the late 1990s.

"Her focus during her tenure was always on the unmet needs of women including mothers and birth mothers," Foster told Insider of Jane Roberts.


Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and his wife Jane exit the funeral service for Antonin Scalia.Chip Somodevilla/Getty
Even after stepping down from her leadership role with Feminists for Life, Jane Roberts continued to provide pro bono legal counsel for the group for several years, the Times reported.

Both Foster and a spokesperson for the Supreme Court separately confirmed to Insider that Jane Roberts stopped her work with the organization ahead of John Roberts' elevation to chief justice in 2005.

Feminists for Life filed several anti-abortion amicus briefs to the Supreme Court in the years before Jane Roberts joined the board, according to a 2005 Los Angeles Times article, including actions supporting the Pennsylvania Abortion Control Act of 1982, which sought to limit abortion access in the state, particularly for minors, and in support of the rights of abortion protesters to picket outside a Virginia Women's Health Clinic.

Jane Roberts' advocacy and public political beliefs ultimately helped convince two conservative legal power players, Leonard Leo and Jay Sekulow, to publicly advocate for John Roberts' confirmation, according to the Times.

Two years after her husband's confirmation, Jane Roberts retired from law and pivoted to legal recruiting, working at a top head-hunting firm. Insider reported last month that Jane Roberts brought in a whopping $10.3 million in commissions from 2007 to 2014 through her work at the legal recruiting firm Major, Lindsey & Africa.

In June 2022, seventeen years after John Roberts was confirmed, his court oversaw the overturning of Roe v. Wade in a shocking decision that sent legal, political, and social shockwaves across the country that have only begun to reverberate.

"It's reasonable to ask if Jane Roberts' leadership and pro bono counsel for a right-wing anti-choice group with prior business before the Court is a conflict of interest for Chief Justice Roberts," Herrig, the Accountable.US president, said.

John Roberts' opinion on Roe v. Wade complicates the possible influence of his wife's political views
While the recent wave of controversy surrounding the court has prompted legitimate speculation about the justices' behavior, a Supreme Court expert told Insider that Jane Roberts' past anti-abortion leadership likely doesn't rise to the level of being a bonafide conflict of interest.

"I don't think a Supreme Court justice's spouse being involved in activism or having political views is itself a problem," Scott Lemieux, a professor of political science at the University of Washington and an expert on the Supreme Court and constitutional law, told Insider.

Lemieux added that it doesn't compare to the eyebrow-raising allegations that Justice Clarence Thomas' wife, Virginia "Ginni" Thomas, was secretly paid nearly $100,000 for "consulting" by a nonprofit that ended up filing an amicus brief before the Supreme Court.

Ginni Thomas, unlike Jane Roberts, openly continued her political activism after her husband was appointed to the court. A 2022 report from The Guardian found that Ginni Thomas maintains close political ties to more than half of the groups that filed amicus briefs in support of overturning Roe v. Wade.

Neither Supreme Court spouses, nor the justices themselves, are expected to be entirely apolitical, said Lemieux, particularly in our increasingly ideological political sphere.


Supreme Court Chief Justice Nominee John Roberts turns to speak with his wife, Jane Sullivan Roberts, during a break on his third day of confirmation hearings September 14, 2005.Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images
At the time of John Roberts' nomination, liberals feared he might pose a threat to Roe v. Wade. But during his confirmation hearing, he repeatedly declined to answer questions about the case, insisting he believed the matter was "settled as a precedent of the court."

The suggestion then that Jane Roberts' anti-abortion work may have influenced her husband's judicial decisions on abortion cases is complicated by the fact that John Roberts did not ultimately join his fellow conservative justices in voting to overturn Roe v. Wade entirely, instead lending his support only to upholding the law at the center of Jackson v. Dobbs.

In his concurring opinion, John Roberts made clear that he felt the Supreme Court's five conservative justices went too far in overturning Roe v. Wade, calling it a "serious jolt" to the legal system while advocating for a "narrower" decision on the matter.

John Roberts even privately lobbied his fellow conservative justices to try and save the federal right to abortion up until the ruling went public, CNN reported in July 2022, focusing his efforts primarily on trying to sway Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

"If there was something about his wife's activism that made him particularly biased on that issue, it's pretty strange that, if anything, he's moved to the left on abortion over time," Lemieux said of John Roberts.

Roe v. Wade reversal will likely usher in a flood of abortion-related cases before the Supreme Court
Still, Lemieux said, it makes sense that the public has a renewed interest in reviewing the justice's personal lives, political dealings, and financial decisions amid troubling misconduct allegations, eyebrow-raising disclosure errors, and plummeting trust in the court in recent years.

"Ultimately, the Supreme Court is a powerful institution and all-powerful institutions deserve scrutiny," he told Insider. "It's not entitled to a fixed level of legitimacy."

That concept is especially true given the way abortion is shaping up to be an ongoing battleground issue in the aftermath of Roe's reversal. As states implement wide-ranging abortion restrictions following the overturning, Lemieux said it's likely many of those laws will be challenged and eventually make their way to the top court.

Already in the year since the landmark decision was overturned, the Supreme Court ruled on the abortion drug mifepristone, allowing continued access to the drug for the time being — a decision for which the individual justices' decisions were not made public, thanks to the court's "shadow docket."

"The idea that the Supreme Court will be out of the business of abortion, that just could not be more wrong," Lemieux said. "This is just the beginning."

Read the original article on Business Insider

https://www.yahoo.com/news/jane-roberts-anti-abortion-advocacy-123500620.html

 

Democrats, John Roberts, Slavery and Segregation: History Repeats | Human Events | humanevents.com

".......... Democrats understandably object when they are reminded of their party’s sordid history, even as they replay that history over and over again with regard to Roe. When Nancy Pelosi declares that the rulings of the Supreme Court are inviolable and tantamount to “the voice of God,” as she did recently in the Kelo eminent domain case, she is unconsciously echoing the pro-slavery and segregationist arguments of her Democratic forbears. The Democrats’ desperation to preserve a pro-Roe majority on the Supreme Court is of a piece with their party’s history on race. History, it seems, does repeat."

​

 

Clarence Thomas, who accepted lavish gifts from a billionaire, argued that a law prohibiting taking bribes is too vague to be fairly enforced

Rebecca Cohen,Madison Hall
Thu, May 11, 2023 at 12:00 PM MDT·2 min read



Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas.AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File

• 
  Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said a law prohibiting bribe-taking is too vague to enforce.
  
  
• He signed off on a concurring opinion written by Neil Gorsuch in a Thursday Supreme Court decision.
  
  
• In April, ProPublica revealed Thomas accepted lavish gifts from GOP megadonor Harlan Crow.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas — who accepted lavish gifts and luxury vacations from a billionaire for years — signed off on a Supreme Court opinion Thursday arguing that a law prohibiting taking bribes is too vague to be fairly enforced.

Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in a concurring opinion — on which Thomas signed off — that a federal anti-bribery law wasn't clear enough.

The case involved Joseph Percoco, a former aide of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo who was accused of taking money from a local developer and convicted in 2018 of conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud.

Percoco's lawyers argued he couldn't be prosecuted because the payments happened while he wasn't working for the government. At the time, he had quit his government job to join Cuomo's reelection campaign.

His attorneys said the law only applied to government workers, not people who don't hold actual political power.

The majority of the Supreme Court sidestepped that claim, but Gorsuch and Thomas tackled it head-on.

"To this day, no one knows what 'honest-services fraud' encompasses," Gorsuch wrote. "And the Constitution's promise of due process does not tolerate that kind of uncertainty in our laws — especially when criminal sanctions loom."

"The Legislature must identify the conduct it wishes to prohibit," he later added. "And its prohibition must be knowable in advance — not a lesson to be learned by individuals only when the prosecutor comes calling or the judge debuts a novel charging instruction."

In April, a ProPublica report found Thomas had accepted gifts, including lavish vacations, yacht travel, and school tuition for a child in his care, among other things, from GOP megadonor Harlan Crow over the course of years. Crow described Thomas as a friend and insisted he never sought to influence the conservative Supreme Court justice.

In the wake of the ProPublica report, a group of 15 Democratic senators called on Sen. Chris Van Hollen — the chair of a subcommittee in charge of the Supreme Court's budget — to withhold $10 million from the Supreme Court's budget until it institutes a public code of ethics.

Additionally, the Senate Judiciary Committee asked Crow for a list of any gifts he's given to a Supreme Court justice or their family.

Read the original article on Business Insider


https://www.yahoo.com/news/clarence-thomas-accepted-lavish-gifts-180010796.html

 

The Supreme Court’s 'shadow docket' is a 'symptom of a larger disease': law professor

Alex Henderson, AlterNet
May 16, 2023, 7:40 AM ET



Amy Coney Barrett (Screen Grab/Fox News)


In recent years, the U.S. Supreme Court has made extensive use of what is known as "the shadow docket" — that is, unsigned decisions often released in the middle of the night. The Brennan Center for Justice, in 2022, outlined the main differences between the shadow docket and the "merits docket," noting that cases decided on the shadow docket "typically do not receive extensive briefing or a hearing."

University of Texas law professor Stephen Vladeck, a vehement critic of the Roberts Court's use of the shadow docket, has devoted an entire book to the subject: "The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic." And he offered some reasons why he finds the Court's shadow docket activity so troubling during an interview with The Guardian.

Vladeck argued, "The rise of the shadow docket reflects a power grab by a Court that has, for better or worse, been insulated from any kind of legislative response…. Here we have the Court not just using emergency applications to change substantive legal principles, but doing so even as they are considering requests to make the same changes through merits decisions."

READ MORE: The Supreme Court is 'determined' to 'defy ethical accountability': journalist

The Roberts Court hasn't always been so quick to use the shadow docket to this degree. Chief Justice John Roberts was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2005, and according to Vladeck, there was an uptick in shadow docket cases after Justice Amy Coney Barrett replaced the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2020.

Barrett's appointment by President Donald Trump was a game-changer, giving Republicans a 6-3 supermajority on the High Court — whose reputation has suffered considerably.

Vladeck told The Guardian, "The shadow docket is a symptom of a larger disease. The disease is how unchecked and unaccountable the Court is today, compared to any of its predecessors."

READ MORE: Supreme Court’s 'unsigned, unexplained orders' are creating havoc: expert

The Guardian's interview with Stephen Vladeck continues here.



https://www.rawstory.com/why-the-su...-a-symptom-of-a-larger-disease-law-professor/

 

One justice explained absence from case. Another didn't. Ethics questions vexing Supreme Court

The U.S. Supreme Court is seen on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, May 2, 2023. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
350

• 
  

MARK SHERMAN
Tue, May 30, 2023 at 9:52 AM MDT·2 min read


In this article:

• 
  

• 
  

• 
  Clarence Thomas
  US Supreme Court justice since 1991

• 
  John Roberts
  Chief Justice of the United States since 2005

WASHINGTON (AP) — One Supreme Court justice explained her absence from a case. One justice didn't.

The difference shows how difficult forging consensus over even small steps on ethics can be at the Supreme Court, which is facing new calls to adopt an ethics code following revelations about undisclosed gifts from a Republican megadonor to Justice Clarence Thomas.

Last week, Chief Justice John Roberts acknowledged the court needs to do more to reassure a skeptical public that the justices take their ethical obligations seriously.

Though the justices have been resistant to a binding code of ethical standards, all nine signed a “statement on ethics principles and practices” issued in late April that promised at least some small additional disclosure when one or more among them opts not to take part in a case.


A justice “may provide a summary explanation of a recusal decision,” the statement reads, a change from the standard practice of saying nothing at all.

A week ago, Justice Elena Kagan became the first member of the court to explain herself, indicating that her previous employment in President Barack Obama's administration kept her out of an appeal, rejected by the court, from a death row inmate in Florida.

But on Tuesday, when the court turned away an appeal from energy companies, Justice Samuel Alito said nothing about why he was not involved.

Alito did not immediately respond to a request from The Associated Press for comment, sent through the court's public information office.

The probable reason for Alito's decision is not hard to find in his latest financial disclosure report: He owns between $15,000 and $50,000 in stock in Phillips 66, one of the companies that appealed.

Criticism of the court stems principally from a series of reports by the nonprofit investigative journalism organization ProPublica about undisclosed gifts including payment of a relative's school tuition and luxury trips provided to Thomas by Harlan Crow, a Dallas billionaire.



https://www.yahoo.com/news/one-justice-explained-absence-case-155226155.html

 

Clarence Thomas Delays Disclosures After Reports Of Secret Financial Dealings


Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has asked to delay filing his annual financial disclosure despite being under heightened scrutiny for receiving undisclosed gifts and other benefits from a Republican donor.

Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito both asked for an extension of up to 90 days, as confirmed by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. Alito has made such requests in previous years. It was unclear why either justice needed more time to file their disclosure reports.

The remaining justices, along with most other federal judges, provided their disclosure reports, which were released Wednesday. The reports span activity in 2022 and are supposed to include any paid travel, outside income, investments, significant gifts and the source of a spouse’s income.

Thomas’ filing in particular was highly anticipated after ProPublica released an investigation earlier this year of the justice’s financial dealings with his friend, Texas billionaire and Republican donor Harlan Crow. Thomas had failed to disclose luxury gifts he received from Crow for decades, including private jet travel, lavish vacations and private club admissions.

Crow also purchased the Georgia property where Thomas’ mother continues to live, and he paid for two years of private boarding school tuition for the justice’s grandnephew, who was being raised by the Thomases. Thomas’ wife, Ginni Thomas, also allegedly received secret payments from Leonard Leo, the man largely behind the court’s conservative makeup.

Top Senate Democrats have been trying to bring Crow to Congress for questioning after ProPublica’s report. Crow has so far refused to answer any of the senators’ questions, leaving Senate Democratic leaders on Tuesday to conclude that “all options are on the table,” including issuing a subpoena.

The report on Clarence Thomas’ dealings put the spotlight on the high court’s ethics and whether justices both liberal and conservative are honest in their recusals from cases in which there could be a conflict of interest. Justices have allegedly discussed in private creating an ethics code of conduct specific to the Supreme Court but so far have failed to come to a consensus. There is currently no binding code of ethics for the justices, who have resisted attempts by Congress to create one.

Revised ethics rules in March require the justices and federal judges to provide a more detailed accounting of gifts in the form of travel, as well as clarify which gifts can be exempt from disclosure due to being considered a “personal hospitality” from a friend.

The only justice who disclosed a gift during this round of filing was Ketanji Brown Jackson, who reported receiving a $1,200 congratulatory floral display from Oprah Winfrey and $6,580 in designer clothing for a photo shoot for Vogue magazine as the first Black woman on the Supreme Court.


https://www.yahoo.com/news/clarence-thomas-delays-disclosures-reports-214029559.html

 

Chief Justice John Roberts listed two vacation homes on two different continents in his real estate income disclosures while Elena Kagan listed a parking spot in DC

475
Kelly McLaughlin
Sun, June 11, 2023 at 8:06 AM MDT



Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, left, and Justice Elena Kagan, right.Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters

• 
  The US Supreme Court released financial disclosure reports for seven justices last week.
  
  
• Chief Justice Roberts' report revealed he rented out properties in Ireland and Maine.
  
  
• A report for Justice Elena Kagan revealed she rented out a parking spot in Washington, DC.
  

Seven Supreme Court justices released their financial disclosure reports last week, revealing how they made extra income in 2022.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Elena Kagan both earned extra income by renting out properties — though the properties are vastly different.

According to Roberts' report, shared online by SCOTUSblog, Roberts rented out cottages in Ireland's Limerick County and Maine's Knox County.

Kagan, meanwhile, rented out a parking space at a building in Washington, DC, according to her report, also shared by SCOTUSblog.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor earned income on a rental property with a New York apartment, according to her report. NPR reported that Sotomayor bought the apartment and lived in it before she joined the Supreme Court.

The reports don't reveal how much the justices earned through their rental properties in 2022.

The Supreme Court did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

All of the justices except Justice Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito released their 2022 financial disclosures last week under the Ethics in Government Act. Thomas and Alito had been granted extensions.

Thomas was harshly criticized after a ProPublica report earlier this year revealed that he went on multiple undisclosed vacations with billionaire GOP donor Harlan Crow.

Read the original article on Business Insider

https://www.yahoo.com/news/chief-justice-john-roberts-listed-140625943.html

 

Senate panel puts spotlight on Supreme Court ethics reform proposal

Stefani Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images
3
Devan Cole
Wed, June 14, 2023 at 1:04 PM MDT




A Senate panel on Wednesday zeroed in on a Democratic-led bill that would implement a range of ethics and transparency reforms at the Supreme Court, with a pair of experts urging passage of the legislation to address a “crisis” at the high court.

“If the Supreme Court isn’t going to do anything to restore the public’s trust, then it’s up to us in Congress,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, who chairs the Senate Judiciary subcommittee looking into court ethics, said during the hearing.

Wednesday’s hearing comes as the court has been in the hot seat over ethics and transparency following recent media reports about Justice Clarence Thomas’ pattern of nondisclosure on his financial reports for years, and the court’s continued resistance to calls for it to implement a formal ethics code.

“Justice Thomas’s pattern of conduct is at an entirely different level of seriousness than that of his conservative and liberal current and former colleagues and requires different consequences – but the issues all of these justices have run into makes clear the need for significant reform in the court’s ethics regime,” said Donald Sherman, the executive vice president and chief counsel for the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.


Though Thomas’ decision to not disclose years of luxury travel and expensive gifts that were paid for by GOP megadonor Harlan Crow, as well as a real estate deal he and his family cut with the donor, loomed large over the hearing, other justices were also front-and-center on Wednesday.

“Notably, eight of the current nine justices served on courts in which they were all required to comply with ethics rules previously,” James Sample, a law professor at Hofstra University, told the lawmakers. “It is hardly burdensome to extend regulations and recusal rules upwards when almost all of the current Justices complied with them previously when serving on lower courts.”

Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat, introduced a bill earlier this year that would bring a slew of reforms to the court, including requiring it to adopt a code of conduct and create a process for the public to lodge formal ethics complaints against the justices, which would be investigated by judges selected from lower courts.

The legislation, which hasn’t gained any traction in the chamber, would also make the court beef up its recusal requirements by, among other things, setting up new rules for when justices must recuse themselves from a case and requiring the justices to explain in writing why they decided to disqualify themselves from a matter. Additionally, the bill would require the court to implement more rigorous rules for disclosing gifts, travel and income received by the nine justices and their clerks.

Amid calls by lawmakers and public interest groups for the court to adopt a formal ethics code, Chief Justice John Roberts has sought to assure the public that his court is committed to adhering to the “highest standards of conduct.”

“We are continuing to look at things we can do to give practical effect to that commitment, and I am confident that there are ways to do that that are consistent with our status as an independent branch of government under the separation of powers,” the chief said in a speech last month.

A third witness Wednesday – Jennifer Mascott, a law professor at George Mason University – urged Congress to reject the proposed reforms, arguing that they represent a legislative overreach. Requiring the court and judicial conference to install a public notice and comment period when changing rules could unfairly influence the judiciary.

“This requirement is unwise and inconsistent with the federal judiciary’s role to adjudicate cases independent of political headwinds and considerations,” Mascott said.


https://www.yahoo.com/news/senate-panel-puts-spotlight-supreme-190458240.html

 

Most people probably think the Clarence Thomas scandal is about the ethics we don't need no ethics But no its much more than that. It is about Thomas actually violating federal laws.


Sen. Whitehouse: SCOTUS exists in ‘ethics-free’ zone on recusals

8
Wed, June 14, 2023 at 9:33 PM MDT




After an ethics reforms subcommittee hearing, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse joins MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell to discuss how a judicial agency could refer Justice Clarence Thomas, who according to an ethics expert witness violated federal law in failing to disclose travel from billionaire Harlan Crow, to the attorney general who could impose an “array” of sanctions against Clarence Thomas.


https://www.yahoo.com/news/fox-news-hits-panic-button-043229413.html

 

How about they be honest. They said it was states rights, and that's proven to be a lie.

 

Now let me show you a couple cases from the other side of the coin which are kind of surprising.

Springfield News-Leader
Judge rules Missouri hunters didn't trespass when "corner-crossing" over private land
https://sports.yahoo.com/judge-rules-missouri-hunters-didnt-091344152.html

This one is huge for us out west where there is lots of BLM land. That is government land that belongs to all of us. But especially ranchers, many times wealthy hobby ranchers, can surround thousandth of acres of BLM land with deeded land and try to keep everyone else from setting foot on it and charge them with trespassing if they cross deeded land. But in many cases the deeded sections butt up against BLM land making a corner. So the question was can someone just step over the corner of the deeded land to go from one section of BLM land top the next. Ranchers miners and even states have fought that tooth and nail because their objective is to keep the public off their own land. But now the Supreme Court has made corner crossing legal. Which will open untold thousands and thousands of acres of access to BLM land. I personally plan to do that myself this summer.


And this is another huge win for Native American tribes. And it goes deep with very old wounds.

Supreme Court Upholds Native American Adoption Law
At issue in the case was whether a law aimed at keeping Native American adoptees within tribes is constitutional.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/15/us/supreme-court-native-american-children-tribes.html


It actually goes back to the first official US child separation policy where Native American children were rounded up by the government and put into boarding schools trying to erase all hints of being Native Americans and make them more like Whites. It was cruel behind most people's understanding because it not only separated children and parents the Native American children were all too often mentally physically and sexually abused in the boarding schools and no one even knows how many of them died in the boarding schools but it is surely in the thousands.

But it also had a far more long lasting damaging impact. By Native American tradition the tribe as well as the parents played a role in raising their children. The parents were of course the primary teachers but all tribal members helped. But when the government rounded up Native American children that was another tradition that was stolen. And much worse generations of Native Americans lost the knowledge of even being parents. Which is
one of the reasons Native Americans have so many social problems now including alcoholism and drug addition.

So it is imperative for the tribes of today to be allowed to raise their children in their own traditions and knowledge and pass that along so the tribe survives. But the faced another form of child separation when Whites began adopting Native American children . So the tribes went to court saying as sovereign nations Native American children need to be adopted within the tribe first and the Supreme Court has now aqgreed.

 

WSJ publishes 'weird' attempt by Justice Alito to preempt ProPublica report on Supreme Court recusal

Elizabeth Preza, AlterNet
June 20, 2023, 9:32 PM ET



Official 2007 portrait of U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel Alito.


The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday published an op-ed by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito in what appeared to be an effort to preempt an upcoming ProPublica report that raises questions about Alito’s failure to recuse himself from a case involving hedge fund magnate Paul Singer, as well as allegations that Alito failed to “list certain items as gifts” on his 2008 financial disclosures.

Although ProPublica’s report has yet to be published, Alito’s description of the charges "leveled" against him makes it clear the story echoes recent investigations into Justice Clarence Thomas. Earlier this year, ProPublica released a number of bombshell reports that detailed Thomas’ failure to report lavish gifts from his billionaire benefactor Harlan Crow, among other allegations.

“ProPublica has leveled two charges against me,” Alito wrote in Tuesday’s op-ed. “First, that I should have recused in matters in which an entity connected with Paul Singer was a party and, second, that I was obligated to list certain items as gifts on my 2008 Financial Disclose [sic] Report.”

READ MORE: Busted: Analysis reveals billionaire Clarence Thomas benefactor gave millions to dark money groups

“Neither charge is valid,” Alito insisted.

Alito claimed he “had no obligation to recuse” himself in cases connected to Singer as he’s spoken to Singer “on no more than a handful of occasions” — “with the exception of small talk during a fishing trip 15 years ago” (emphasis ours) — and that he “had no good reason to be aware that Singer had an interest in any party” before the Court.

“As I will discuss, [Singer] allowed me to occupy what would have otherwise been an unoccupied seat on a private flight to Alaska,” Alito wrote, later arguing that he was not required to disclose the flight on his Financial Disclosure Report as “until a few months ago, the instructions for completing a Financial Disclosure Report told judges that ‘[p]ersonal hospitality need not be reported.’”

READ MORE: Harlan Crow’s lawyer agrees to meet with Senate Judiciary members

“When I joined the Court and until the recent amendment of the filing instructions, justices commonly interpreted this discussion of ‘hospitality’ to mean that accommodations and transportation for social events were not reportable gifts,” Alito argued. “The flight to Alaska was the only occasion when I have accepted transportation for a purely social event, and in doing so I followed what I understood to be standard practice.”

NBC News Supreme Court reporter Lawrence Hurley described Alito’s Wall Street Journal op-ed as “weird.”

“Weird for a judge to publish an opinion piece in response to another news org's story instead of just putting out a statement,” Hurley wrote on Twitter. “Don’t recall ever seeing that.”

READ MORE: 'Ethics-free zone': Senate Judiciary member says Congress 'absolutely can' impose reforms on SCOTUS

The reporter also called into question Alito’s claim that he was not aware of Singer’s relation to matters before the Court.

“Alito rejects notion that he should have recused in cases Singer was involved in, including one in which the court ruled in favor of a unit of Singer's hedge fund, saying he had no awareness of Singer's role,” Hurley wrote.

“Singer was mentioned in pretty much every news story about that case,” the reporter noted.

READ MORE: 'False and unsubstantiated': Georgia elections board clears 2 poll workers of Trump-backed fraud claims

https://www.rawstory.com/wsj-alito-weird/

 

BUT THE BIDENS BUT THE BIDENS BUT THE BIDENS!!!!! DON'T LOOK OVER HERE LOOK OVER THERE ITS THE BIDENS!!!!!!



Justice Samuel Alito Took Luxury Fishing Vacation With GOP Billionaire Who Later Had Cases Before The Court
1.2k
Justin Elliott
Tue, June 20, 2023 at 10:25 PM MDT



Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito accepted a luxury fishing vacation from a hedge fund billionaire who has had business before the court.
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito accepted a luxury fishing vacation from a hedge fund billionaire who has had business before the court.

This story was originally published by ProPublica.

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.

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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.

In the years that followed, Singer’s hedge fund came before the court at least 10 times in cases where his role was often covered by the legal press and mainstream media. In 2014, the court agreed to resolve a key issue in a decade-long battle between Singer’s hedge fund and the nation of Argentina. Alito did not recuse himself from the case and voted with the 7-1 majority in Singer’s favor. The hedge fund was ultimately paid $2.4 billion.

Alito did not report the 2008 fishing trip on his annual financial disclosures. By failing to disclose the private jet flight Singer provided, Alito appears to have violated a federal law that requires justices to disclose most gifts, according to ethics law experts.

Experts said they could not identify an instance of a justice ruling on a case after receiving an expensive gift paid for by one of the parties.

“If you were good friends, what were you doing ruling on his case?” said Charles Geyh, an Indiana University law professor and leading expert on recusals. “And if you weren’t good friends, what were you doing accepting this?” referring to the flight on the private jet.

Justices are almost entirely left to police themselves on ethical issues, with few restrictions on what gifts they can accept. When a potential conflict arises, the sole arbiter of whether a justice should step away from a case is the justice him or herself.

ProPublica’s investigation sheds new light on how luxury travel has given prominent political donors — including one who has had cases before the Supreme Court — intimate access to the most powerful judges in the country. Another wealthy businessman provided expensive vacations to two members of the high court, ProPublica found. On his Alaska trip, Alito stayed at a commercial fishing lodge owned by this businessman, who was also a major conservative donor. Three years before, that same businessman flew Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in 2016, on a private jet to Alaska and paid the bill for his stay.

Such trips would be unheard of for the vast majority of federal workers, who are generally barred from taking even modest gifts.

Leonard Leo, the longtime leader of the conservative Federalist Society, attended and helped organize the Alaska fishing vacation. Leo invited Singer to join, according to a person familiar with the trip, and asked Singer if he and Alito could fly on the billionaire’s jet. Leo had recently played an important role in the justice’s confirmation to the court. Singer and the lodge owner were both major donors to Leo’s political groups.

ProPublica’s examination of Alito’s and Scalia’s travel drew on trip planning emails, Alaska fishing licenses, and interviews with dozens of people including private jet pilots, fishing guides, former high-level employees of both Singer and the lodge owner, and other guests on the trips.

ProPublica sent Alito a list of detailed questions last week, and on Tuesday, the Supreme Court’s head spokeswoman told ProPublica that Alito would not be commenting. Several hours later, The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by Alito responding to ProPublica’s questions about the trip.

Alito said that when Singer’s companies came before the court, the justice was unaware of the billionaire’s connection to the cases. He said he recalled speaking to Singer on “no more than a handful of occasions,” and they never discussed Singer’s business or issues before the court.

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.”

In a statement, a spokesperson for Singer told ProPublica that Singer didn’t organize the trip and that he wasn’t aware Alito would be attending when he accepted the invitation. Singer “never discussed his business interests” with the justice, the spokesperson said, adding that at the time of trip, neither Singer nor his companies had “any pending matters before the Supreme Court, nor could Mr. Singer have anticipated in 2008 that a subsequent matter would arise that would merit Supreme Court review.”

Leo did not respond to questions about his organizing the trip but said in a statement that he “would never presume to tell” Alito and Scalia “what to do.”

This spring, ProPublica reported that Justice Clarence Thomas received decades of luxury travel from another Republican megadonor, Dallas real estate magnate Harlan Crow. In a statement, Thomas defended the undisclosed trips, saying unnamed colleagues advised him that he didn’t need to report such gifts to the public. Crow also gave Thomas money in an undisclosed real estate deal and paid private school tuition for his grandnephew, who Thomas was raising as a son. Thomas reported neither transaction on his disclosure forms.

The undisclosed gifts have prompted lawmakers to launch investigations and call for ethics reform. Recent bills would impose tighter rules for justices’ recusals, require the Supreme Court to adopt a binding code of conduct and create an ethics body, which would investigate complaints. Neither a code nor an ethics office currently exists.

“We wouldn’t tolerate this from a city council member or an alderman,” Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat and chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said of Thomas in a recent hearing. “And yet the Supreme Court won’t even acknowledge it’s a problem.”

So far, the court has chafed at the prospect of such reforms. Though the court recently laid out its ethics practices in a statement signed by all nine justices, Chief Justice John Roberts has not directly addressed the recent revelations. In fact, he has repeatedly suggested Congress might not have the power to regulate the court at all.

‘We Take Good Care Of Him Because He Makes All The Rules’
In the 1960s in his first year at Harvard Law School, Singer was listening to a lecture by a famed liberal professor when, he later recalled, he had an epiphany: “My goodness. They’re making it up as they go along.”

It was a common sentiment among conservative lawyers, who often accuse liberal judges of activist overreach. While Singer’s career as an attorney was short-lived, his convictions about the law stayed with him for decades. After starting a hedge fund that eventually made him one of the richest people in the country, he began directing huge sums to causes on the right. That included groups, like the Federalist Society, dedicated to fostering the conservative legal movement and putting its followers on the bench.

In the last decade, Singer has contributed over $80 million to Republican political groups. He has also given millions to the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank where he has served as chairman since 2008. The institute regularly files friend-of-the-court briefs with the Supreme Court — at least 15 this term, including one asking the court to block student loan relief.

Singer’s interest in the courts is more than ideological. His hedge fund, Elliott Management, is best known for making investments that promise handsome returns but could require bruising legal battles. Singer has said he’s drawn to positions where you “control your own destiny, not just riding up and down with the waves of financial markets.” That can mean pressuring corporate boards to fire a CEO, brawling with creditors over the remains of a bankrupt company and suing opponents.

The fund now manages more than $50 billion in assets. “The investments are extremely shrewdly litigation-driven,” a person familiar with Singer’s fund told ProPublica. “That’s why he’s a billionaire.”

Singer’s most famous gamble eventually made its way to the Supreme Court.

In 2001, Argentina was in a devastating economic depression. Unemployment skyrocketed and deadly riots broke out in the street. The day after Christmas, the government finally went into default. For Singer, the crisis was an opportunity. As other investors fled, his fund purchased Argentine government debt at a steep discount.

Within several years, as the Argentine economy recovered, most creditors settled with the government and accepted a fraction of what the debt was originally worth. But Singer’s fund, an arm of Elliott called NML Capital, held out. Soon, they were at war: a midtown Manhattan-based hedge fund trying to impose its will on a sovereign nation thousands of miles away.

The fight played out on familiar turf for Singer: the U.S. courts. He launched an aggressive legal campaign to force Argentina to pay in full, and his personal involvement in the case attracted widespreadmediaattention. Over 13 years of litigation, the arguments spanned what rights foreign governments have in the U.S. and whether Argentina could pay off debts to others before Singer settled his claim.

If Singer succeeded, he stood to make a fortune.

In 2007, for the first but not the last time, Singer’s fund asked the Supreme Court to intervene. A lower court had stopped Singer and another fund from seizing Argentine central bank funds held in the U.S. The investors appealed, but that October, the Supreme Court declined to take up the case.

On July 8 of the following year, Singer took Alito to Alaska on the private jet, according to emails, flight data from the Federal Aviation Administration and people familiar with the trip.

The group flew across the country to the town of King Salmon on the Alaska peninsula. They returned to the East Coast three days later.

In Alaska, they stayed at the King Salmon Lodge, a luxury fishing resort that drew celebrities, wealthy businessmen and sports stars. On July 9, one of the lodge’s pilots flew Alito and other guests around 70 miles to the west to fish the Nushagak River, known for one of the best salmon runs in the world. Snapshots from the trip show Alito in waders and an Indianapolis Grand Prix hat, smiling broadly as he holds his catch.

“Sam Alito is in the red jacket there,” one lodge worker said, as he narrated an amateur video of the justice on the water. “We take good care of him because he makes all the rules.”

Other guests on the trip included Leo, the Federalist Society leader, and Judge A. Raymond Randolph, a prominent conservative appellate judge for whom Leo had clerked, according to fishing licenses and interviews with lodge staff.

On another day, the group flew on one of the lodge’s bush planes to a waterfall in Katmai National Park, where bears snatch salmon from the water with their teeth. At night, the lodge’s chefs served multicourse meals of Alaskan king crab legs or Kobe filet. On the last evening, a member of Alito’s group bragged that the wine they were drinking cost $1,000 a bottle, one of the lodge’s fishing guides told ProPublica.

In his op-ed, Alito described the lodge as a “comfortable but rustic facility.” The justice said he does not remember if he was served wine, but if he was, it didn’t cost $1,000 a bottle. (Alito also pointed readers to the lodge’s website. The lodge has been sold since 2008 and is now a more downscale accommodation.)

The justice’s stay was provided free of charge by another major donor to the conservative legal movement: Robin Arkley II, the owner of a mortgage company then based in California. Arkley had recently acquired the fishing lodge, which catered to affluent tourists seeking a luxury experience in the Alaskan wilderness. A planning document prepared by lodge staff describes Alito as a guest of Arkley. Another guest on the trip told ProPublica the trip was a gift from Arkley, and two lodge employees said they were told that Alito wasn’t paying.

Arkley, who does not appear to have been involved in any cases before the court, did not respond to detailed questions for this story.


Brown bears fishing for salmon at Brooks Falls in Katmai National Park, Alaska.
Brown bears fishing for salmon at Brooks Falls in Katmai National Park, Alaska.

Alito did not disclose the flight or the stay at the fishing lodge in his annual financial disclosures. A federal law passed after Watergate requires federal officials including Supreme Court justices to publicly report most gifts. (The year before, Alito reported getting $500 of Italian food and wine from a friend, noting that his friend was unlikely to “appear before this Court.”)

The law has a “personal hospitality” exemption: If someone hosts a justice on their own property, free “food, lodging, or entertainment” don’t always have to be disclosed. But the law clearly requires disclosure for gifts of private jet flights, according to seven ethics law experts, and Alito appears to have violated it. The typical interpretation of the law required disclosure for his stay at the lodge too, experts said, since it was a commercial property rather than a vacation home. The judiciary’s regulations did not make that explicit until they were updated earlier this year.

In his op-ed, Alito said that justices “commonly interpreted” the law’s exception for hospitality “to mean that accommodations and transportation for social events were not reportable gifts.”

His op-ed pointed to language in the judiciary’s filing instructions and cited definitions from Black’s Law Dictionary and Webster’s. But he did not make reference to the judiciary’s regulations or the law itself, which experts said both clearly required disclosure for gifts of travel. ProPublica found at least six examples of other federal judges disclosing gifts of private jet travel in recent years.

“The exception only covers food, lodging and entertainment,” said Virginia Canter, a former government ethics lawyer now at the watchdog group CREW. “He’s trying to move away from the plain language of the statute and the regulation.”

The Alaska vacation was the first time Singer and Alito met, according to a person familiar with the trip. After the trip, the two appeared together at public events. When Alito spoke at the annual dinner of the Federalist Society lawyers convention the following year, the billionaire introduced him. The justice told a story about having an encounter with bears during a fishing trip with Singer, according to the legal blog Above the Law. He recalled asking himself: “Do you really want to go down in history as the first Supreme Court justice to be devoured by a bear?”

The year after that, in 2010, Alito delivered the keynote speech at a dinner for donors to the Manhattan Institute. Once again, Singer delivered a flattering introduction. “He and his small band of like-minded justices are a critical and much-appreciated bulwark of our freedom,” Singer told the crowd. “Samuel Alito is a model Supreme Court justice.”

Meanwhile, Singer and Argentina kept asking the Supreme Court to intervene in their legal fight. His fund enlisted Ted Olson, the famed appellate lawyer who represented George W. Bush in the Bush v. Gore case during the 2000 presidential election.

In January 2010, a year and a half after the Alaska vacation, the fund once again asked the high court to take up an aspect of the dispute. The court declined. In total, parties asked the court to hear appeals in the litigation eight times in the six years after the trip. In most instances, it was Singer’s adversaries filing an appeal, with Singer’s fund successfully arguing for the justices to decline the case and let stand a lower court ruling.

The Supreme Court hears a tiny portion of the many cases it’s asked to rule on each year. Under the court’s rules, cases are only accepted when at least four of the nine justices vote to take it up. The deliberations on whether to take a case are shrouded in secrecy and happen at meetings attended only by the justices. These decisions are a fundamental way the court wields power. The justices’ votes are not typically made public, so it is unclear how Alito voted on the petitions involving Singer.

As Singer’s battle with Argentina intensified, his hedge fund launched an expansive public relations and lobbying campaign. In 2012, the hedge fund even attempted to seize an Argentine navy ship docked in Ghana to secure payment from the country. (The effort was thwarted by a ruling from the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea.) Argentina’s president labeled Singer and his fellow investors “vultures” attempting extortion; Singer complained the country was scapegoating him.

In 2014, the Supreme Court finally agreed to hear a case on the matter. It centered on an important issue: how much protection Argentina could claim as a sovereign nation against the hedge fund’s legal maneuvers in U.S. courts. The U.S. government filed a brief on Argentina’s side, warning that the case raised “extraordinarily sensitive foreign policy concerns.”

The case featured an unusual intervention by the Judicial Crisis Network, a group affiliated with Leo known for spending millions on judicial confirmation fights. The group filed a brief supporting Singer, which appears to be the only Supreme Court friend-of-the-court brief in the organization’s history.

The court ruled in Singer’s favor 7-1 with Alito joining the majority. The justice did not recuse himself from the case or from any of the other petitions involving Singer.

“The tide turned” thanks to that “decisive” ruling and another from the court, as Singer’s law firm described it. After the legal setbacks and the election of a new president in Argentina, the country finally capitulated in 2016. Singer’s fund walked away with a $2.4 billion payout, a spectacular return.

Abbe Smith, a law professor at Georgetown who co-wrote a textbook on legal and judicial ethics, said that Alito should have recused himself. If she were representing a client and learned the judge had taken a gift from the party on the other side, Smith said, she would immediately move for recusal. “If I found out after the fact, I’d be outraged on behalf of my client,” she said. “And, frankly, I’d be outraged on behalf of the legal system.”

The law that governs when justices must recuse themselves from a case sets a high but subjective standard. It requires justices to withdraw from any case when their “impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” But the court allows individual justices to interpret that requirement for themselves. Historically, they’ve almost never explained why they are or are not recusing themselves, and unlike lower court judges, their decisions cannot be appealed.

Alito articulated his own standard during his Senate confirmation process, writing that he believed in stepping away from cases when “any possible question might arise.”

In his Wall Street Journal op-ed, Alito wrote of his failure to recuse himself from Singer’s cases at the court: “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.”

Critics have long assailed the Supreme Court’s practices on this issue as both opaque and inconsistent. “The idea ‘just trust us to do the right thing’ while remaining in total secrecy is unworkable,” said Amanda Frost, a judicial ethics expert at the University of Virginia School of Law.

For Singer, appeals to the Supreme Court are an almost unavoidable result of his business model. Since the Argentina case, Singer’s funds were named parties in at least two other cases that were appealed to the court, both stemming from battles with Fortune 500 companies. One of the petitions is currently pending.

Grey Goose And Glacier Ice
The month after Singer got home from the 2008 fishing trip, he realized he had a problem. He was supposed to receive a shipment of frozen salmon from the Alaska lodge. But the fish hadn’t arrived. So the billionaire emailed an unlikely person to get to the bottom of it: Leo, the powerful Federalist Society executive.

“They’ve escaped!!” Singer wrote. Leo then sent an email to Arkley, the lodge owner, to track down the missing seafood.

The only clear thread connecting the prominent guests on the trip is that they all had a relationship with Leo. Leo is now a giant in judicial politics who helped handpick Donald Trump’s list of potential Supreme Court nominees and recently received a $1.6 billion donation to further his political interests. Leo’s network of political groups was in its early days, however, when he traveled with Alito to Alaska. It had run an advertising campaign supporting Alito in his confirmation fight, and Leo was reportedly part of the team that prepared Alito for his Senate hearings.

Singer and Arkley, the businessmen who provided the trip to the justice, were both significant donors to Leo’s groups at the time, according to public records and reporting by The Daily Beast. Arkley also sometimes provided Leo with one of his private planes to travel to business meetings, according to a former pilot of Arkley’s.

In his statement, Leo did not address detailed questions about the trip, but he said “no objective and well-informed observer of the judiciary honestly could believe that they decide cases in order to cull favor with friends, or in return for a free plane seat or fishing trip.”

He added that the public should wonder whether ProPublica’s coverage is “bait for reeling in more dark money from woke billionaires who want to damage this Supreme Court and remake it into one that will disregard the law by rubber stamping their disordered and highly unpopular cultural preferences.”

Arkley is a fixture in local politics in his hometown of Eureka, California, known for lashing out at city officials and for once starting his own newspaper reportedly out of disdain for the local press. By the early 2000s, he’d made a fortune buying and servicing distressed mortgages and also become a significant donor in national GOP politics.

As his political profile rose, Arkley bragged to friends that he’d gotten to know one-third of the sitting Supreme Court justices. He told friends he had a relationship with Clarence Thomas, according to two people who were close with Arkley. And the Alito trip was not Arkley’s first time covering a Supreme Court justice’s travel to Alaska.

In June 2005, Arkley flew Scalia on his private jet to Kodiak Island, Alaska, two of Arkley’s former pilots told ProPublica. Arkley had paid to rent out a remote fishing lodge that cost $3,200 a week per person, according to the lodge’s owner, Martha Sikes.

Snapshots from the trip, found in the justice’s papers at Harvard Law School, capture Scalia knee-deep in a river as he fights to reel in a fish. Randolph, the appellate judge who was also on the later trip, joined Scalia and Arkley on the vacation, flying on the businessman’s jet.

Scalia did not report the trip on his annual filing, another apparent violation of the law, according to ethics law experts. Scalia’s travels briefly drew scrutiny in 2016 after he died while staying at the hunting ranch of a Texas businessman. Scalia had a pattern of disclosing trips to deliver lectures while not mentioning hunting excursions he took to nearby locales hosted by local attorneys and businessmen, according to a research paper published after his death.

Randolph, now a senior judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, did not disclose the trip. (Nor did he disclose the later trip with Alito.) Randolph told ProPublica that when he was preparing his form for 2005, he called the judiciary’s financial disclosure office to ask about disclosing the trip. He shared his notes from the call with a staffer, which say “don’t have to report trip to Alaska with Rob Arkley & others / private jet / lodge.” Kathleen Clark, an ethics law expert at Washington University in St. Louis, said, “I don’t understand how the staff member came to that conclusion based on the language in the statute.”

On June 9, Arkley’s group chartered a boat, the Happy Hooker IV, to tour Yakutat Bay. On the way over, Scalia and Arkley discussed whether Senate Republicans, then in a contentious fight over judicial confirmations, should abolish the filibuster to move forward, according to a person traveling with them.

A photo captures Arkley and Scalia later that day gazing off the side of the boat at the famed Hubbard Glacier. At one point, a guide chiseled chunks off an iceberg and passed them to Scalia. The justice then mixed martinis from Grey Goose vodka and glacier ice.

It remains unclear how Scalia ended up in Alaska with Arkley. But the justice’s archives at Harvard Law School offer a tantalizing clue. Immediately before the fishing trip, Scalia gave a speech for the Federalist Society in Napa, California. The next day, Arkley’s plane flew from Napa to Alaska. Scalia’s papers contain a folder labeled “Federalist Society, Napa and Alaska, 2005 June 3-10,” suggesting a possible connection between the conservative organization and the fishing trip.

The contents of that folder are currently sealed, however. They will be opened to the public in 2036.


https://www.yahoo.com/news/justice-samuel-alito-took-luxury-042512872.html