Justice Alito Reportedly Took $100K Private Jet Flight, Drank Wine That Cost $1K Per Bottle
The ProPublica story Samuel Alito attempted to prebut with a WSJ op-ed is out, and it's as delicious as the Kobe beef that GOP megadonors served him.
JusticePolitics

On Tuesday evening, the Wall Street Journal published an absurd op-ed by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito letting the world know that reporters were looking into his connections to a billionaire, which he thinks is all very unfair. ProPublica then published its story shortly before midnight—which many more people are now inclined to read than they were before Alito published his preemptive screed—and wouldn’t you know, it’s quite damning.
The reporting outlines how Alito took a luxury fishing trip to Alaska in July 2008 with a billionaire hedge fund manager and Republican megadonor who, in the coming years, would have business before the Supreme Court. Alito didn’t recuse himself from those cases or even report the trip on his required disclosure forms—an apparent violation of federal laws passed in the wake of the Watergate scandal. The billionaire in question, Paul Singer, has donated more than $80 million to Republican political groups and serves as the chair of the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank that frequently files Supreme Court amicus briefs.
Singer flew Alito and others, including federal Judge Raymond Randolph, to Alaska on his private jet. ProPublica estimates that the flight would have cost $100,000 if Alito had chartered it himself. The group stayed for free at the luxury King Salmon Lodge, owned by a different conservative donor, Robin Arkley II. (In 2005, Arkley flew Justice Antonin Scalia to another Alaskan lodge on a private jet and paid for his stay; Scalia had a martini made with Grey Goose and ice from the Hubbard Glacier. Scalia died in 2016 during a stay at a different businessman’s Texas hunting ranch.) The guests ate multicourse meals that included Kobe beef and Alaskan king crab legs and, on the final night, “a member of Alito’s group bragged that the wine they were drinking cost $1,000 a bottle,” per one of the lodge’s fishing guides.
And just like Justice Clarence Thomas’ luxury lodge stays, there’s a Leonard Leo connection. Leo is the co-chairman of the conservative judicial group, the Federalist Society. Not only did Donald Trump choose all three of his Supreme Court nominees from a FedSoc list drawn up by Leo himself, but Leo helped Alito get confirmed in 2006. Just two years later, Leo helped organize the fishing trip, invited Singer, and reportedly asked the billionaire if he and Alito could travel on his jet. (Both Singer and the lodge owner were major donors to Leo’s various political groups.)