Samuel Alito says the seat on the billionaire’s private jet would have been empty anyway.
That was part of his explanation for accepting a flight to an exclusive Alaska fishing lodge from hedge-fund billionaire Paul Singer without reporting it. The trip was arranged partly through Leonard Leo, the conservative legal activist who helped build the Supreme Court’s current majority. Singer’s business interests later came before the Court. Alito didn’t recuse himself.¹
But there was an empty seat.
Most people understand why that defense doesn’t work. A gift doesn’t stop being valuable because the giver can easily afford it. A free week at a beach house is still a free week at a beach house. A seat on a private jet is still something almost none of us will ever receive.
Yet Alito’s explanation captures the strange world in which some Supreme Court justices now live. They accept favors ordinary judges would avoid, disclose them only after reporters start asking questions and then decide for themselves whether they did anything wrong.
Trust us.
Clarence Thomas has taken this much further.
For years, Republican megadonor Harlan Crow provided Thomas with private-plane travel, yacht cruises and luxury vacations that Thomas didn’t originally disclose. Crow bought property from Thomas and his family, including the house where Thomas’s mother continued to live. He also paid private-school tuition for Thomas’s grandnephew, whom Thomas had described as a son.²