Justice Samuel Alito told the Wall Street Journal in an interview published Friday that he “marvel[s] at all the nonsense that has been written” about him in the last year.
ProPublica published a story in June alleging he violated federal law by failing to disclose that he traveled on a private jet provided by billionaire Paul Singer to a 2008 fishing trip with Singer and others, which Alito preempted with an op-ed in the WSJ. “I have to defend myself,” Alito told the WSJ Friday, saying he saw at a certain point that “nobody else” would.
ProPublica, which has also published multiple stories alleging Justice Clarence Thomas violated ethics rules, shares some of its top donors with left-wing groups campaigning for Thomas to resign or be investigated, a Daily Caller News Foundation review of tax documents found. Additionally, a majority of ethics experts cited in its stories on Thomas and Alito donated to Democratic campaigns or left-wing causes, the DCNF found in a review of Federal Election Commission (FEC) records. (RELATED: ‘Destroys Its Own Story’: Look What ProPublica Buried In The 73rd Paragraph Of Its Piece On Justice Alito)
In another time, political pushback would be left for others to fend off, especially “the organized bar,” Alito told the WSJ. “[T]he traditional idea about how judges and justices should behave is they should be mute,” he told the outlet.
WASHINGTON, DC – OCTOBER 07: United States Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel Alito poses for an official portrait at the East Conference Room of the Supreme Court building on October 7, 2022 in Washington, DC. The Supreme Court has begun a new term after Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was officially added to the bench in September. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)ProPublica’s story on Justice Samuel Alito mentions — in the 73rd paragraph — that a federal judge who went on the trip with Alito previously asked the judiciary’s financial disclosure office for advice after taking a similar fishing trip in 2005. According to notes the judge saved from the time, the financial disclosure office said the trip the judge took with the late Justice Antonin Scalia and conservative donor Robin Arkley, along with the transportation on a private jet, did not need to be disclosed.
“But that’s just not happening,” Alito said to the WSJ. “And so at a certain point I’ve said to myself, nobody else is going to do this, so I have to defend myself.”
Alito also told the WSJ Friday what might happen if the Supreme Court is “viewed as illegitimate,” wondering if people may consider defying their decisions.
“If we’re viewed as illegitimate, then disregard of our decisions becomes more acceptable and more popular,” he told the WSJ. “So you can have a revival of the massive resistance that occurred in the South after [Brown v. Board of Education].”
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