Justice Alito has been, well, let's just say,
caught, according to a ProPublica investigation,
he was the subject to one of these particular disclosure dynamics.
It seems as if every Supreme Court Justice has at least one billionaire who they ride
on planes with, all right?
Must be nice.
Okay, so this was undisclosed, this the private jet,
these things are mandated to be disclosed.
So the jet flight to Alaska in 2008 with billionaire Paul Singer and
other conservative donors who had business before the court, Alito,
for his part, wrote a defensive op-ed, and I say defensive, intentionally.
He knew the story was coming, he writes an op-ed, and then the story comes out.
Well, the op-ed was to create damage control.
Anytime a US Supreme Court justice who cannot be mandated to say a damn
thing when they start talking, there's, there, there guaranteed, all right?
That's how this works.
So he obviously denied any wrongdoing in the Wall Street Journal earlier Tuesday.
Before we get into the rebuttal, here's what ProPublica contends.
Number one, Alito in 2008 flew on
billionaire Hall Singer's private jet,
this was on a trip that included room and
board at Alaska's pricey Salmon Lodge.
That was paid for by then-owner Robin Arkley II,
who is a prolific donor to conservative legal causes,
like Singer, according to the report.
Number two, Singer had connections with corporate entities who later made
cases in front of the Supreme Court and won with the support of Justice Alito.
Instead of addressing the allegations, the Supreme Court Justice took
to The Wall Street Journal to publish an opinion piece, all right?
And then we have this headline,
Justice Samuel Alito ProPublica misleads his readers.
The publication levels false charges against Supreme Court recusal,
financial disclosures, and a 2008 fishing trip.
This is an opinion editorial, don't forget.
So here's what Alito argued.
ProPublica has leveled two charges against me, 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 Disclosure Report.
Neither charge is valid.
Wait a minute, Justice, neither is it a charge.
You're a judge, you should know better.
Alito denies knowing of the billionaires connections adding
that the plane ride was not a significant matter.
Not a significant matter because he was simply taking a seat,
according to him, of a seat that would otherwise be vacant,
someone else would have occupied that seat.
And because he occupied the seat, he did not have to disclose because no money,
no value, no thing of value was given to him.
I want you to follow this insane logic.
My recollection, is what he says, is that I have spoken to
Singer on no more than a handful of occasions, all right?
Let's mark that, that is confession of conversation,
all of which consisted of brief and casual comments
at events attended by large groups, we'll note that.
He allowed me to occupy what would have otherwise been
an unoccupied seat on a private flight to Alaska.
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.
Second, when I reviewed the cases in question to determine
whether I was required to recuse, I was not aware and
had no good reason to be aware that Singer had an interest in any party.
But while defending himself,
he did skip some important details that I'm happy to highlight here.
Alito omitted the detail that Leonard Leo,
co-chair of the conservative Federalist Society and
a key figure in the decades-long effort to pull
the US judiciary to the right, actually helped
organize the Alaska trip, he left that out.
A Raymond Randolph, a conservative appellate judge, also attended.
According to the ProPublica report, Leo invited Singer to join,
Leo invited Singer to join and asked the hedge fund tycoon if he and
Justice Alito could fly on the billionaires jet, quote,
Leo had recently played an important role in the justice's
confirmation to the court, ProPublica reported.
Singer and the lodge owner were both major
donors to Leo's political groups, end quote.
He must have forgotten about it.
This exposee comes after series of investigations.
ProPublica has been primary.
An early investigation by ProPublica also exposed Clarence Thomas
his involvement with Nazi memorabilia collector billionaire Crow,
we all know that that was front and center,
looks like Crow bought Clarence Thomas purchased Clarence Thomas's wife and
also Clarence Thomas's mama.
There's more.
Nonetheless, Republicans, they're defending the Jester.
So [INAUDIBLE] Rodriguez, okay?
I'm just saying, why is it that they're all caught with billionaires?
I mean, would a regular ass millionaire have done?
>> You know what's funny is they're always called with billionaires because
billionaires run this country.
Our congress is for sale.
The presidential seat is for sale.
Our president is for sale.
And apparently now the Supreme Court, the highest court in the land, is for
sale as well.
And no wonder they don't prioritize, nor do they fight for
education the way they fight for guns and
abortion because they don't want people to know the judicial process.
They don't want people to know how this is supposed to work because people would
revolt if they had the information.
But they're too busy struggling, trying to work jobs so
that they can pay to go to the doctor because healthcare is not even accessible
the way that it should be to Americans.
But it is unbelievable and egregious to see a continuous
revelation of how compromised our system is.
The Supreme Court, which is always supposed to be lauded as the highest
court of the land making these decisions, and it is available,
it is negotiable, and it has a price.
And I urge all Americans, whether they are Republicans, Democrats, independents,
Green Party members, or whatever they claim, to be alarmed by this,
because if we continue to compromise, it will become standard.
And at some point, it will affect you too, no matter what your beliefs
are if everything is about being handled by people who are for sale.
>> That's right.
And the reality is, the rules exist so that transparency can be applied,
that we need to connect dots, we can connect them publicly.
Those rules are not there.
Those disclosure rules are not there for them, they are there for us, okay?
That's why they exist.
And let me say this, a Supreme Court Justice is a de facto lawmaker.
Understand, when a Supreme Court makes a ruling, there is nothing
that will override that ruling except a future ruling by the Supreme Court.
If you can control the Supreme Court, you control not only policy,
you control statutory interpretation of law.
They create case law every single day.
All right, so Tom Cotton had this to say, let's put it up.
Good for Justice Alito to push back against the left
wing hacks trying to intimidate the Supreme Court.
Dems took the opportunity, however, to call out the Court's corruption.
Let's see what Ted says.
Americans used to respect the Supreme Court, he's right.
They used to rate highest on popularity.
No more.
Now, the flagrant violations of ethical rules and
possibly laws by Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas and
potentially other Justices, Americans can rightfully ask,
has the Supreme Court turned into a cesspool of corruption?
Let me pose a wisdom question to everybody,
if somebody gave you a permanent job and said,
there is nothing that you can do, basically, that would get you fired.
And this permanent job puts you in policy making position,
you're not a millionaire, typically, and you get all of these shiny things,
it's nothing they can do to you, you know why?
Because the Supreme Court does not have an actual statutory document that says,
here's what you must do and must not do.
Every court has an actual adopted ethical guideline that must be adhered to.
Even traffic court judges have this.
The Supreme Court, however, does not, doesn't exist.
They are able to self-govern, something that no other
judge in the United States of America has the ability to do.
Let's put it up.
Sheldon White House.
My question.
My, the questions, first,
who orchestrated this weird pre-buddle in the infamous WSJ polluted page?
And did a little get help from a PR firm?
If so, who paid?
Yes, bright questions.
All right, my dear sister, thoughts.
>> I'm just in awe of all of this and the fact that Tom Cotton is
perpetuating this stuff, knowing how important.
It's amazing how the Republicans are capable and
able to support anything that happens, so long as they feel it
is in line with their personal mission and what they want to get accomplished.
If this had been one of the liberal Supreme Court Justices,
they'd be all over them.
They would be all over them.
The issue that I have with our political system right now is that that GOP,
they tend to stand in solidarity a lot more solidly than the Democrats and
the left do.
They will fight for to the death, I mean, literally to the death.
They kill officers at the Capitol.
Those officers took their lives as a result of the traumas and
the issues that they felt.
They will fight till the end to support their own causes,
to get their own agendas fulfilled.
And here we stand, divided, constantly compromised.
We have allowed the left to also become negotiable.
And so it's just interesting to see the way they stand in the gap for one another,
knowing that they're wrong.
But the Supreme Court is that's the end right there.
If the Supreme Court is a joke now, which it is, and
it is slowly becoming a big joke, where does the American person
look to to think that there's any type of justice or order in our lawmaking system?
I mean, it's just America is a joke.
And I hate to say that because I love it here, I don't hate America, but
we have to call it what it is.
This is a joke, and our entire system is broken.
We need a wash.
>> Yeah, and we're learning about these things, but they've been happening for
many, many years, right?
ProPublica is giving us information from way back when, no telling how many and
more egregious actions like this have been taken.
We will continue to follow, obviously.