Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito issued a fiery — and bizarre — rebuttal in The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, defending himself against apparent ethics claims that have not been published yet.
The Journal published the op-ed under the headline “ProPublica Misleads its Readers,” which accuses the outlet of leveling false charges against the justice. The rebuttal addresses whether Alito should have recused himself in cases linked to a billionaire named Paul Singer and whether he failed to report gifts on his annual financial disclosure forms.
As of Tuesday evening, ProPublic had not yet published any story on Alito.
The Journal included an editor’s note saying two reporters at ProPublica had emailed the justice last Friday with a series of questions, asking for a response by noon on Tuesday, as is standard practice in the media.
Other journalists, however, quickly noted that publishing a rebuttal to a story that isn’t even public is not normal and questioned why the Journal would have done so.
Still, Alito’s unusual response suggests that ProPublica has been delving into the justice’s relationship with Singer and a past trip in which he traveled in “what would have otherwise been an unoccupied seat on a private flight to Alaska.”
“ProPublica suggests that my failure to recuse in these cases created an appearance of impropriety, but that is incorrect,” Alito wrote. “My recollection is that I have spoken to Mr. Singer on no more than a handful of occasions … On no occasion have we discussed the activities of his businesses, and we have never talked about any case or issue before the Court.”
Alito later added that Singer’s name did not appear in any filings as a party to cases before the Supreme Court: “During my time on the Court, I have voted on approximately 100,000 certiorari petitions. The vast majority receive little personal attention from the justices because even a cursory examination reveals that they do not meet our requirements for review.”
The allegations are similar to those leveled against Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Earlier this year, ProPublica detailed decades of lavish trips Thomas took with the billionaire Harlan Crow, including travel aboard private jets and a yacht and a real estate deal in which Crow bought property from the justice and his family. Thomas’ mother still lives rent-free in one of those homes.
Alito’s ethics have been scrutinized in the past. He was previously accused of leaking the outcome of the 2014 Hobby Lobby case, which involved the company’s religious objections to covering the cost of some contraceptives for female employees.
