An explosive new report
today from ProPublica showing that a U.S.
Supreme Court justice
accepted a luxury vacation in 2008
from a billionaire
Republican megadonor
who would go on to have cases
pending before the high court
for which
the justice did not recuse himself.
No, we're not talking about
Clarence Thomas and Harlan Crow
this time.
It's Justice
Samuel Alito
who flew with hedge
fund billionaire Paul Singer
to Alaska on a private jet,
the cost of which could have exceeded
$100,000 From the article, quote,
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.
Justice Alito
tried to get ahead of the story
by submitting
and having
published an op
ed in The Wall Street
Journal, where he wrote in part, quote,
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, unquote.
Let's discuss.
So, Nina,
before the article even came out, Alito
gave this op ed to
his friends at the Journal
disputing some of the charges
and his need to recuse himself
in writing, quote,
It was and is my judgment
these facts would not cause a reasonable
and unbiased person to doubt my ability
to decide the matters in question.
In part,
he also claims
he had
no idea
that Singer had
any business before the court.
Although I think if you Googled
some of the matters,
his name would have popped up.
What do you make of all this?
Well, listen,
I think this on top of the story around
Clarence Thomas accepting luxury
gifts and luxury trip is going to make it
impossible for the Supreme Court
to exist as it exists now.
Which is sort of above
all, ethics rules,
if you look at a lot of the data
on the Supreme Court.
It had been seen as sort of an above
board, apolitical institution
over the last two or three years.
That has declined.
I think their approval rating
has declined somewhere like 20 points
or in the last couple of years.
It's because of some of the things
they've done
in terms of decisions they made.
But this doesn't help.
You've got moves,
I think, that are going to happen
in Congress at some point
to put some laws in place to make this
not happen again,
because there is the appearance
of impropriety.
There's also just a lack of judgment.
Right.
I mean, here you are
on the highest court in the land
and you can't think that this is
a sort of improper thing to do,
even if sort of by appearances.
It's not to say
that he did anything wrong
or even necessarily unethical,
but the appearance of it,
it would seem to me
that somebody in that position would know
and have the judgment to not do this,
to either
recuse himself
from these cases,
to know that singer is coming before him
or certainly to list some of this stuff
on the documents
that you have to put forward.
One of the things
that I find so odd about this is it
seems like
there's this very political reaction
is a very political
response as opposed to,
you know, looking back on it
now, I should have disclosed it.
And, you know,
it didn't affect any decision I made.
But I realize I'm
on the highest court of the land
and there's a special obligation
and I'll do better in the future,
which as opposed to this
very fiery, feisty defensive response.
Right.
I mean, taking answers to questions
from a news outlet
and dumping it to a competitor
and frankly, to a competitor outlet
is something that does happen in politics
and perhaps
not in the coverage of the Supreme Court.
But New Week is just so right.
Just just declined a public trust
in the institution.
And it's not just mean stuff.
Certainly.
Definitely the last couple of years
with these activities
and it's certainly the last couple months
with the activities
of Clarence Thomas and with Sam Alito,
but also these nasty confirmation fights
that have also kind of helped, I believe,
contribute to the decline of public
trust in the Supreme Court.
And also just the rulings
that have really upended,
you know,
public life,
I think really has led to that as well.
Yeah.
And I don't want to jump in on that.
Like the polling came out today,
I believe NPR.
It's like nearly 60% of Americans
do not have faith
or a little
to no faith in the Supreme Court.
And look,
I actually spent time on the road
these past few months
talking to voters
with the coalition of organizations
like Planned Parenthood, Color
of Change, National Action Network
with Demand Justice.
And we were talking to voters
in several states who want ethics reform.
They want to even expand
the Supreme Court.
And it's to your point about these leaks
that are coming out,
as well as how some of these decisions
are coming out
that are taking away
the fundamental human
rights for a majority of Americans,
but benefiting the wealthy,
the wealthy, elite class,
who are the ones that these justices
are actually spending a lot of time in?
And so the other thing
I would say about all of this
is that it's kind of comical.
And the response to these questions
about the ethics,
listen, I'm
a communications professional.
I spent a lot of time
working for presidential campaigns
or Planned Parenthood.
This is actually not the best way
to handle a crisis communications issue.
And it's actually beyond
a communications issue.
But as a communications
strategist,
I actually think they are doubling
down on the problem
versus actually
doing anything
that I don't disagree with that part
as a communications professional,
what you don't want to do
is something known
as the Streisand effect,
which is
something that might not have gotten
a lot of attention.
You take action
that actually draws
a lot more attention to the story.
We probably would have been talking
about this
in the absence of The Wall Street
Journal op ed,
but we might not have
been talking about it
as long as it might not have
had as much in terms of legs.
And so
I am not sure that I would have advised
Justice Alito to write this piece.
But your question about, well,
then why did he
why would you take an action
that so political in the reality
is that the way people are thinking
about the legitimacy of the court
these days is extremely political.
You have a ruling like Dobbs
that comes down
and the political left
says this court is illegitimate.
And then you have a ruling come down
like two weeks ago
or a couple of weeks ago
that gives effectively sort of reorients
how Alabama
or other states in the South
will carve up their seats in the House.
It will benefit Democrats
politically by redrawing those lines.
Suddenly now the court is legitimate,
and it's Republicans who are saying, oh,
what's going on here?
And so the reality is that, yes,
we do need high standards
for ethics on the courts.
But the way most people
are making judgments about
do I like the Supreme Court or not
is much more about
do I like the rulings that they. Sure.
No, absolutely.
But I guess
one of the questions I have is so let's
let's just
first of all,
we have no idea what else is out there.
Right.
We've only learned
about Thomas and Perot.
Now, we learned about Singer and Alito.
There could be other stuff
even involving liberal justices.
I have no idea if there were one.
And I'm making this up,
so please
don't think that this is anything
other than my fevered imagination.
But if it were Sotomayor going on trips
with George Soros
and not disclosing it
and Soros said stuff before,
like I would have the exact same response
to this,
which is disclose it and apologize.
Do you think that ProPublica is doing
that kind of journalism, studying
the background of Sotomayor right now?
I mean, I think that's fair.
Conservatives also say ProPublica is
is being spun as this, like,
nonpartisan group,
but they have donors as well.
And if we're taking for granted the idea
that if you accept money from someone,
you are
therefore doing their bidding or biased,
I mean, who are the people
giving money to?
I do actually think that they would
and I think they would do
I think they would do it exactly.
To make it
so you couldn't make that comment.
And it may just be
that Elena Kagan or whoever,
I sort of
Sotomayor
doesn't want to go King
salmon fishing in Alaska.
Well, what do you make of this argument
that Alito made that,
you know, he
he used an empty seat in this private jet
and it would have gone empty
if he hadn't used it.
And he actually saved
the government money
since he had been flown commercial,
then U.S.
Marshals would have had needed
to accompany him I mean, listen.
Disclose it, right? Disclose it.
What's wrong
with putting it on the documents
where you're supposed to say
these are sort of the in-kind gifts
you would have, you know, you've taken?
And listen, that was an expensive seat.
I mean, the idea that it was an attorney
even know what he's talking about.
Well, yeah.
I mean, I think it's interesting
that they're doubling down.
We'll see if there any more changes.
Right.
There are certain
you press pressure on Roberts
to maybe make some rules around ethics.
But listen, you know,
I guess when Thomas came out,
he was a little bit
more like going forward, I'll do better.
So far,
it doesn't look like
Alito is saying that.
And then Durbin, who's
the Democratic chairman of the Senate
Judiciary Committee,
he reacted to this story today.
Take a look
at this state.
The obvious.
There's something rotten going on
in the Supreme Court
of the United States of America.
We returned from the July recess.
We will have a markup
of the Supreme Court
ethics bill in the Senate
Judiciary Committee.
I hope before that time, Chief
Justice Roberts will take a lead
and show some leadership.
I mean, it's true that he or any
one of the 500 other
Supreme Court justices,
however many their work
or chief justices,
could impose a rule of
at least disclosure.
No one's saying don't do it.
They're just saying disclose it. Right.
Which is why you see
senators such as Dick
Durbin, such as Sheldon Whitehouse,
be much more aggressive
about the need for the
at least the legislative branch
to exercise some oversight
on the judicial branch,
because they feel, as Senator Durbin
said, that they are not doing enough
to police themselves.
The court says you can't do that
separation of powers. Right.
But that is not certainly not stopping
the senators here.
What's really interesting,
if legislation does advance
and now this is something I don't expect
to actually pass, you know,
clear the Senate
much less pass the House.
But it might prompt another way.
Another instance for the White House
to weigh in,
because it's actually interesting.
The Biden White House has not
wanted to touch this issue at all.
If they won't comment on Clarence Thomas
and whether the president himself
feels at all icky about the situation,
certainly they have not commented
on this latest ProPublica report today.
I think they feel sort of where chief
Chief Justice Roberts feels that,
you know,
it's their branch of government.
They should police themselves.
And Durbin
and Whitehouse getting involved in
this doesn't make it
look any less partizan.
No.
And, you know,
we had a discussion on this show
a couple of days ago
about how it was good
that President Biden was not,
for instance, trying to fundraise off of
former President Trump being indicted.
It is good to not politicize things
that should not be politicized.
So assuming that President Biden
sort of stays out of this,
he's probably doing himself well.
Ethics reform would also hold
liberal justices accountable to.
So Democrats are actually being open
to that conversation.
Right.
It just
you know,
you have Mike Lee
and Tom Cotton
saying this is just a bunch of left
wing hacks attacking the court
because they hate Clarence Thomas.
And there is a way to approach this.
I don't see anybody in the Senate
doing it
the way that I think you two could
get on it right now
will solve everything. All right.
Thanks to all.