Alito: ProPublica report on luxury vacation misleading

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito defended himself late Tuesday 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.

Just before midnight, 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 he did not report the trip on his financial disclosures.

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

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

In 2014, the high court agreed to hear Argentina’s appeal of a ruling that favored the subsidiary as it attempted to collect debt from the country. Alito sided with NML Capital as part of the 7-1 majority.

The Hill has reached out to Alito and Singer’s company for comment.

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. ” 

The justice further contends Singer was not listed as a party in any of the noted cases, and his name was not in filings in the 2014 case the court granted.

“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 conservative justice also defended not disclosing the fishing trip by arguing it fell under a personal hospitality exception under federal financial disclosure rules. 

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.”

ProPublica has also recently reported on financial disclosure concerns related to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who has come under scrutiny after reporting revealed Texas billionaire Harlan Crow paid for Thomas to take part in various luxury vacations without reporting them.

Thomas similarly cited the personal hospitality exception, indicating he was “advised” that he did not need to disclose the trips while vowing to follow the new guidance moving forward.

Updated at 9:19 a.m.