The headline for Alito’s Tuesday op-ed was blunt: “ProPublica Misleads its Readers.” Alito flatly rejected the two main positions of a ProPublica article that had not yet been published: that he did not disclose a 2008 gift from a Republican “megadonor” that he should have disclosed, and that he should have recused himself when a case involving said megadonor appeared before the high court years later.
ProPublica ran the story a few hours after Alito’s op-ed was published, titled: “Justice Samuel Alito Took Luxury Fishing Vacation With GOP Billionaire Who Later Had Cases Before the Court.”
Also on the trip was Leonard Leo, the head of the Federalist Society, a powerful conservative legal organization of which Alito was once a member, as were all five other conservative Supreme Court Justices.
The outlet further noted that then-Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in 2016, made the same trip financed by Singer three years before Alito did.
In the years since, cases involving Singer’s assets have come before the high court 10 times, according to the outlet, and in none of those cases did Alito recuse himself due to the 2008 trip. In one case, the court ruled in favor of Singer, which won him a $2.4 billion payout in a dispute with the Argentinian government.
In his op-ed, Alito rejected the notion that his Singer-financed trip could create “an appearance of impropriety when an unbiased and reasonable person who is aware of all relevant facts would doubt that the Justice could fairly discharge his or her duties” - a passage lifted from the high court’s declaration of principles.
“No such person would think that my relationship with Mr. Singer meets that standard,” Alito continued. “My recollection is that I have spoken to Mr. 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. On no occasion have we discussed the activities of his businesses, and we have never talked about any case or issue before the Court.”
He also rejected the assertion that he should have recused himself from cases involving Singer, noting he has voted on approximately 100,000 certiorari petitions and “had no good reason to be aware that Mr. Singer had an interest in any party.”
“Mr. Singer was not listed as a party in any of the cases listed by ProPublica. Nor did his name appear in any of the corporate disclosure statements or the certiorari petitions or briefs in opposition to certiorari. In the one case in which review was granted, Republic of Argentina v. NML Capital, Ltd., No. 12-842, Mr. Singer’s name did not appear in either the certiorari petition, the brief in opposition, or the merits briefs. 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 wrote.
The conservative justice previously courted controversy last July when during a speech in Rome, Italy, he mocked those upset by the court’s recent ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson, which overturned the nationwide right to an abortion. In that 6-3 ruling, Alito penned the majority’s position.
Thomas has also faced demands to recuse himself from cases involving participants in the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol by supporters of then-US President Donald Trump, after it was revealed the justice’s wife, Ginni Thomas, was active in Trump’s movement to overturn the results of the November 2020 US presidential election, although was was not part of the violent actions on January 6.