Digging in SCOTUS dirt

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito late Tuesday defended himself against a new ProPublica report that raised questions about his ethical conduct and financial disclosures, arguing it is misleading.

“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 Disclose Report. Neither charge is valid,” Alito wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed before the report was published.

[...]

Alito said in the op-ed that he had “no obligation to recuse” in the cases cited by ProPublica, adding that he’s spoken to Singer “on no more than a handful of occasions, all of which (with the exception of small talk during a fishing trip 15 years ago) consisted of brief and casual comments at events attended by large groups. ”

[...]

“Because his name did not appear in these filings, I was unaware of his connection with any of the listed entities, and I had no good reason to be aware of that,” Alito added.

  The Hill

Sure.

Times have changed when Supreme Court justices are defending themselves in op-eds.

ProPublica reported that Alito was flown to Alaska on a private jet to take a pricey fishing trip in 2008 with hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer and that he did not report the trip on his financial disclosures.

[...]

In the years following, a subsidiary of Singer’s hedge fund, NML Capital, came before the Supreme Court several times, court documents show.

[...]

The trip was organized by Leonard Leo, a conservative judicial activist who helped move the Supreme Court to the right in recent years.

[...]

The federal judiciary’s policy-making arm clarified the exception earlier this year to make explicit that it does not apply to stays at commercial properties or transportation.

Alito pushed back on some experts’ notion, cited by ProPublica, that private flights should have been disclosed even before the new guidance. Alito wrote that “justices commonly interpreted” a line on “hospitality” to mean “that accommodations and transportation for social events were not reportable gifts.”

Alito and Thomas seem to have been advising each other on reporting requirements.  Or maybe taking their advice from Antonin Scalia.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 10:02 am:

Also, as it turns out, Alito pre-empted the story, which came out after his op-ed.