The Hypocrisy of Samuel Alito

The U.S. Supreme Court has an ethics and corruption problem which has been writ large by the corruption of Clarence Thomas who has received a huge amount expensive gifts by those with business before the Court.  As new reporting from ProPublica is documenting, Thomas has equally company in the person of seemingly equally corrupt Samuel Alito who in the Dobbs case overturning Roe v. Wade proved to be a shrill right wing extremist in the mold of the Spanish Inquisition. And just like many in the Inquisition of old, Alito has proven to be a total hypocrite who demands that all Americans live strictly in accordance with his 12th century beliefs yet views himself above the laws and rules by which  he wants to bind others.   Indeed, Thomas and Alito, while the most reactionary of the justices and the most inclined to erase religious freedom for the majority, have shown a breathtaking level of arrogance and total disregard for the need to avoid the appearance of impropriety. A piece in Politico skewers Alito and looks at his total cluelessness about public relations for a Court already facing legitimacy challenges.  It is far  past time for ethics reforms for the Court and possible removal of some of the corrupt justices.  Here are column highlights: 

Not since 1974 when New Times magazine called Sen. William Scott (R-Va.) Congress’ dumbest member and he called a press conference in response to deny the charge and thereby prove mental deficiencies has a member of the Washington elite so mishandled a critical press salvo as Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. did this week.

Alito, who shares with Donald Trump a toddler’s lack of impulse control, once again demonstrated his inability to plan more than one move ahead at a time after the investigative news outfit ProPublica emailed a list of questions for its story pegged to his flight to a comped 2008 luxury fishing trip in Alaska on a hedge fund billionaire’s private jet.

As if to shout, “I’m not on trial here,” the justice declined to answer ProPublica’s questions, sending that message to the news organization through a court spokesperson. But in a contradictory move, Alito mounted a 1,200-word defense in the form of a Wall Street Journal op-ed to dispute ProPublica’s article — which had not yet been published. Essentially, the justice scooped the news outlet on its own story.

Alito had every right to sting ProPublica before it stung him. But in his case, getting out in front of the story before it published was a little like a judge delivering a verdict after hearing the charges but before the trial had taken place. For one thing, his dense-as-a-legal-brief argument was hard to follow because it lacked the connective tissue to explain what precisely ProPublica’s piece was accusing him of. A billboard mounted on a flatbed truck reading “ProPublica Is Being Mean to Me” and driven in a circle around the Supreme Court Building would have been a more effective public relations ploy. Perhaps the most blockheaded thing about Alito’s preemption was that it gave fresh publicity to the latest installment in a growing series about the justices licking sugar off the tummies of their sugar daddies.

Alito’s excuse-making was William Scott caliber but with a modern, Trumpian twist. While Alito wasn’t as incoherent as Trump was in his recent credibility-destroying appearance on Fox, the justice did himself no favors, even in an ostensibly friendly forum. Like Trump, he is not actually denying anything, just waving his hands. To wit: The seat he took on the private jet would have gone empty if he had not claimed it, he wrote. Yes, there was wine at the retreat, but it didn’t cost $1,000. . . . as if that erases the onus of avoiding the appearance of conflict of interest.

When the ProPublica story, “Justice Samuel Alito Took Luxury Fishing Vacation With GOP Billionaire Who Later Had Cases Before the Court,” landed Tuesday evening after the Alito hors d’oeuvre, the capital’s appetite was hyper-stimulated for the main course. Alito didn’t report the Alaska trip, in apparent violation of the law that requires members of the Supreme Court report most gifts. Also, the billionaire’s hedge fund came before the Supreme Court at least 10 times after the trip, ProPublica reports, and the outlet got several ethics cops to say Alito should have recused himself from these cases but didn’t.

Alito’s ProPublica blow-up is only his latest PR miscue. In April, he gave an interview with his allies at the Wall Street Journal editorial page in which he complained resentfully about the criticism leveled at the court. “We’re being bombarded with this,” Alito said.. . . Instead of accepting or battling the criticism, Alito chooses to whine. He didn’t exactly convene a press conference to say he’s not the dumbest member of the Supreme Court, but almost.

Essentially, Alito wants to get away with something a mere federal employee could get busted for and probably fired.

As somebody who makes his living pushing words around on a page that govern the conduct of hundreds of millions, Alito should have had a better rejoinder to the ProPublica article than his Journal prebuttal. Is it a lack of intelligence or an emotional deficiency that compels him to go off half-cocked like this?

Poor, poor, pitiful Sam. Report on the ethics of the justices, and in his view you’re undermining government. Report on how the court’s decisions are shaped, and you’re trying to intimidate it. Why, things have gotten so bad for the justices, to see it Alito’s way, that a guy can’t accept a plush vacation from people who do business with the court without being criticized for it. Such protestations could be dumber than anything William Scott ever said or did.