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The Supreme Court ethics crisis continues, not with Clarence Thomas but with his right-wing comrade, Justice Samuel Alito.
In 2008, according to a recent ProPublica investigation, Alito took a trip to a more-than-$1,000-a-night luxury resort in a remote region of Alaska, arriving there on the private jet of Paul Singer, a billionaire hedge fund manager and Republican donor. If Alito had chartered the jet on his own dime, it could have cost him more than $100,000 for a one-way trip. Alito, however, flew for free.
Six years later, in 2014, Alito voted in Singer's favor in a dispute between Singer's hedge fund and the nation of Argentina. "The hedge fund was ultimately paid $2.4 billion," according to ProPublica.
In an unusual essay for the Wall Street Journal, Alito insisted that there was no corruption or undue influence. He said he had only spoken to Singer on a handful of occasions before the case in question and that his seat on the flight was of no ethical concern because it was "a seat that, as far as I am aware, would have otherwise been vacant."
As for the trip, Alito wrote that he stayed in a "rustic" and "modest one-room unit," that the meals were "home-style fare" and that if there was wine served, "it was certainly not wine that costs $1,000." Alito was adamant that he had no obligation to disclose any trip that he might have taken and that the facts at hand "would not cause a reasonable and unbiased person to doubt my ability to decide the matters in question impartially."
Judging from the trips and gifts they have received, both Alito and Thomas appear to have been beneficiaries of something like a billionaire buddies program, in which they're paired with a particularly generous friend. I say "paired" because these connections aren't as spontaneous as they may seem.