Justice Samuel Alito penned a preemptive strike on Tuesday night against ProPublica, a media outlet bankrolled by a pro-court-packing group, which planned to release a hit piece painting the Supreme Court member as unethically rubbing elbows with power.
ProPublica’s chief complaint is that Alito went on a “luxury fishing vacation with GOP billionaire” Paul Singer in 2008 and then proceeded to preside over cases the hedge fund manager was involved in. One such case between Singer’s hedge fund and Argentina, ProPublica emphasized, resulted in a $2.4 billion win for the company.
The media outlet claimed “ethics law experts” believe Alito “appears to have violated a federal law that requires justices to disclose most gifts” and should have removed himself from hearing cases related to Singer’s financial interests. In reality, Alito’s absence would not have affected the outcome of that case, which even ProPublica acknowledges was decided 7 to 1 in favor of Singer’s hedge fund.
Alito, who noted he has “voted on approximately 100,000 certiorari petitions” since joining the bench, stated he was unaware of Singer’s involvement in the cases listed by ProPublica.
“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,” Alito noted.
Even if he did know about Singer’s connection to them, Alito wrote that “recusal would not have been required or appropriate.”
“ProPublica suggests that my failure
