In the years after the undisclosed trip to Alaska, Republican megadonor Paul Singer’s hedge fund has repeatedly had business before the Supreme Court. Alito has never recused himself.
In early July 2008, Samuel Alito stood on a riverbank in a remote corner of Alaska. The Supreme Court justice was on vacation at a luxury fishing lodge that charged more than $1,000 a day, and after catching a king salmon nearly the size of his leg, Alito posed for a picture. To his left, a man stood beaming: Paul Singer, a hedge fund billionaire who has repeatedly asked the Supreme Court to rule in his favor in high-stakes business disputes.
Singer was more than a fellow angler. He flew Alito to Alaska on a private jet. If the justice chartered the plane himself, the cost could have exceeded $100,000 one way.
He didn’t just “put out his own statement”. Propublica reached out to him for comment on this article, he didn’t respond and then he scrambled to have an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal hours later (always worth saying that that is a Rupert Murdoch owned company). It was a poor attempt at damage control by a weasel trying to get ahead on spinning the narrative.
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Alito did put out his own statement. Unfortunately it’s on WSJ and thoroughly paywalled: https://www.wsj.com/articles/propublica-misleads-its-readers-alito-gifts-disclosure-alaska-singer-23b51eda
Edit: non-paywalled summary of Alito’s stonewalling https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4060023-alito-propublica-report-on-luxury-vacation-misleading/
TLDR: “Nothing to see here, move along. And who is ProPublica to question me anyways? -Alito”
He didn’t just “put out his own statement”. Propublica reached out to him for comment on this article, he didn’t respond and then he scrambled to have an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal hours later (always worth saying that that is a Rupert Murdoch owned company). It was a poor attempt at damage control by a weasel trying to get ahead on spinning the narrative.