WASHINGTON (CN) — Supreme Court ethics concerns swelled on Wednesday as new reporting revealed an unreported luxury vacation Justice Samuel Alito accepted from a billionaire GOP donor with business before the court.
Alito accepted private jet flights totaling over $100,000 from hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer, who has had over 10 cases before the high court, according to a ProPublica report published Tuesday night. Just one of the cases where Alito voted in the majority led Singer to a $2.4 billion payout. Alito did not disclose Singer’s gifts or recuse himself from cases involving the wealthy investor.
The allegations focus on a 2008 fishing trip Alito took to Alaska, heading north in search of king salmon. ProPublica quotes the Bush appointee as describing his free accommodations in a luxury lodge that charged over $1,000 a day as “comfortable but rustic.” He arrived at the remote riverbank location by a private jet, again free of charge, and also took part in a bush plane excursion to watch bears catch salmon at a waterfall in Katmai National Park. The dining menu at the lodge reportedly included Alaskan king crab legs and Kobe filet, along with $1,000 bottles of wine.
Robin Arkley II, a major donor to conservative legal causes, footed the bill. Alito did not report Arkley’s gift on his financial disclosure forms. Federalist Society leader Leonard Leo reportedly coordinated the trip.
Ethics experts say Alito’s failure to disclose this trip on his annual report likely violated federal disclosure law requiring justices to report all gifts they are given.
“What has been reported absolutely should have been reported in the justice's filings whether or not there was ambiguity in the guidelines that existed at the time, and that justice should have known that this was sufficiently problematic, that he should have, A., not done this trip, but B., reported it and potentially recused himself from any cases involving the person in question, Paul Singer,” said Paul Schiff Berman, a law professor at George Washington University, in a phone interview.
ProPublica reached out to Alito for comments on the allegations. Instead of responding to reporters through the court’s public information office, Alito penned an op-ed Tuesday evening in The Wall Street Journal.
Claiming the “charges” against him were not valid, Alito says he spoke to Singer only a handful of times. He says Singer let him claim an empty seat on the Alaska flight, a move that Alito does not believe would cause anyone question his neutrality.
"He allowed me to occupy what would have otherwise been an unoccupied seat on a private flight to Alaska," Alito wrote.
Although Singer’s connections to the cases before the court were well-documented in the media, Alito argues he was unaware of those links. He claims his staff do checks for possible recusal requirements and found nothing in the cases involving Singer.
“During my time on the Court, I have voted on approximately 100,000 certiorari petitions,” Alito wrote. “The vast majority receive little personal attention from the justices because even a cursory examination reveals that they do not meet our requirements for review.”
Alito says neither the gifted luxury trip nor private jet flight required reporting, thanks to a hospitality exemption to the law.
“The flight to Alaska was the only occasion when I have accepted transportation for a purely social event," Alito wrote, "and in doing so I followed what I understood to be standard practice.”
The hospitality exemption was also at the center of potential ethics violations by Justice Clarence Thomas. It allows officials to go over to a friend's house for dinner without having to pay them back for the meal.
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