Justice Alito's op-ed is a confession of corruption

On Tuesday afternoon, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito was gifted op-ed
space in The Wall Street Journal, in which he attempted to make a
preemptive strike on a ProPublica article reporting on evidence of his
accepting gifts from someone with business before the court. Even though
the ProPublica article had not appeared at the time the op-ed ran, Alito
was shockingly accurate about what it would say.

But then, it�s always easy to predict the evidence of guilt when you�re
the one who is guilty. In fact, it�s easy to read Alito�s op-ed for what
it really is: a confession.

Alito took a huge gift from someone who has had business before the court
not once, but at least 10 times. And all Alito can provide as
justification is that he really didn�t remember a once-in-a-lifetime trip
with a six-figure price tag, and didn�t manage to put together that the
hedge fund he was ruling on was connected to the person who gave him that
trip. Who was a hedge fund manager.

In other words, ignorance is his only excuse. According to Alito, that�s
just fine.

What the ProPublica article shows is that Alito took a very expensive
fishing trip in 2008. That included being flown to a remote location in
Alaska on a private jet, and being put up in a room at an exclusive lodge
where he was wined, dined, and guided to catch some very large king
salmon. His flight, his fishing, his meals, wine, and room were covered
by hedge fund manager Paul Singer.

Alito never reported this gift. Because, he says, he only had a �modest
room� and �if there was wine it was certainly not wine that costs
$1,000.� Which skips right past the fact that the room, no matter if it
wasn�t up to Alito�s high standards, cost $1,000 a night all on its
own�enough that a single night there should have made the trip subject to
reporting.

When it comes to his flight on a private jet, Alito has a Very Good
Reason why he didn�t have to report that.

As for the flight, Mr. Singer and others had already made
arrangements to fly to Alaska when I was invited shortly before the
event, and I was asked whether I would like to fly there in a seat that,
as far as I am aware, would have otherwise been vacant. It was my
understanding that this would not impose any extra cost on Mr. Singer.
Had I taken commercial flights, that would have imposed a substantial
cost and inconvenience on the deputy U.S. Marshals who would have been
required for security reasons to assist me.

There�s the minor problem that every seat on a scheduled flight, private
or commercial, would be �have otherwise been vacant� if someone didn�t
put their butt in it. That doesn�t make the value of these seats in any
sense free. He might want to try walking up to the gate at any airline
and telling them he wants to use one of those empty seats, just to check.

When it comes to the U.S. Marshals service, deputy marshals do generally
provide protection for federal judges, but Alito seems to be saying that
he would need their protection if flying with the general public, but not
in the company of these wealthy men who he had never met before. It�s
almost as if he�s saying that because they were rich, they were treated
differently.

Singer�s hedge fund was party to at least 10 cases before the Supreme
Court. These aren�t complex relationships, in which Singer contributed to
an organization, or was a partial owner of some entity through a nest of
overlapping corporations. Singer was a hedge fund manager. That hedge
fund was party to a case. But Alito has a firm response to why he
couldn�t possibly draw the connection.

It would be utterly impossible for my staff or any other Supreme
Court employees to search filings with the SEC or other government bodies
to find the names of all individuals with a financial interest in every
such entity named as a party in the thousands of cases that are brought
to us each year.

It would be utterly impossible � Except that the case was in 2014 and
even if Alito�s memory of Singer�s fund was faulty, it was an answer that
could have been returned in three seconds by any search engine. This is a
Supreme Court justice asking to be forgiven for failing to do the level
of research that would be required of a high school freshman turning in a
history paper. And, as might be obvious, ProPublica had no trouble making
this �impossible� connection.

In �Chinatown,� corruption is a complex web of connections tying city
officials to a wealthy land developer who is using a manufactured drought
to buy up land cheaply. In �The Godfather,� it�s cops being paid under
the table by both sides in a competing mob war. In many films and
television shows, corruption happens in the shadows, with the exchange of
a briefcase filled with cash, or the promise of a little somethin�
somethin� directed to an offshore account.

As is being vividly demonstrated here, that�s not what real corruption
looks like at all. What real corruption looks like is a billionaire
�friend� buying up your childhood home at far above the market value,
fixing it up, and letting your mom live there gratis. It looks like
expensive private school tuition for a family member being paid by a pal.
It looks like millions of dollars in business being directed to your
wife�s business�the business that was �accidentally� left off income
disclosure forms for 20 years.

And maybe more than anything else, it looks like trips, gifts, and
experiences that would be utterly unavailable to the average person�and
whose acceptance would be absolutely forbidden to any federal employee
who was not a Supreme Court justice. The reason articles keep appearing
about this kind of trip being enjoyed by justices and not other
officials, or judges at other levels of the courts, is because the
Supreme Court has written themselves an out. They are not just the judges
of everyone else, they�re also the only judges over their own behavior.

Who watches the watchmen? Why, the watchmen, of course. What could go
wrong?

The excuses in the cases of both Thomas and Alito keep coming back to the
same things. Either it was acceptable to take a gift because someone was
�a good friend� or it was acceptable to rule on a case related to that
person because there was no relationship. As one law professor put it in
that ProPublic article:

�If you were good friends, what were you doing ruling on his case?
And if you weren�t good friends, what were you doing accepting this?�

Alito wants to have it both ways. He�s saying that Singer was a nonentity
to him, someone with whom he barely shared a few words. But that didn�t
stop him from accepting a flight on the man�s private jet, a stay at that
exclusive lodge, and a fishing trip that would make most anglers drool
with envy.

Maybe Alito and Singer didn�t talk much. But accepting that trip is an
enormous statement. It tells us who Alito is. It tells us who he values.

Alito uses his op-ed to deliver a hashwork of snippets from the court�s
own self-generated codes, defending his actions with deflections and
deceptive statements that try to make it seem as if the whole trip was a
gift from the lodge, and not the man who paid for his �free� jet travel
and everything else. But in a way, it almost doesn�t matter who paid.

Ordinary people do not get big free vacations�at least, not unless it�s
part of a scam to sell them a timeshare. They don�t get these trips from
companies. They don�t get these trips from admirers, They don�t get these
trips from �friends.� They don�t get these trips at all.

If you can�t afford to take a trip, why are you taking it from someone
else? They may not be selling a timeshare, but they�re certainly selling
something, and if you sit down in that private jet, you have signed the
contract.

If Alito is looking for a little tip, it�s actually quite simple to tell
if an act is corrupt. Just ask, �If I was not a judge, member of
Congress, or other public official, would I be getting this gift?" If the
answer is no, then accepting it is corrupt.

And that includes being gifted op-ed space in The Wall Street Journal.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/6/21/2176673/-Justice-Alito-s-op-
ed-is-a-confession-of-corruption

A retired command sergeant major accused Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz of having 'quit' his Minnesota National Guard unit after it was informed to prepare for a deployment to Iraq.

Walz, who is Vice President Kamala Harris' selection as her running mate, served for more than two decades in the Army National Guard, and his selection helps bolster the nominee on defense issues.

The timing of his separation from the military surfaced during his 2018 campaign for governor.

Retired Command Sergeant Major Thomas Behrends of the Minnesota National Guard accused Walz of having 'embellished' his record and of having abandoned his unit when he left the Guard to run for Congress.

'Tim Walz has embellished and selectively omitted facts and circumstances of his military career for years,' Behrends wrote in 2018.

'In early 2005, a warning order was issued to the 1-125th Field Artillery Battalion, which included the position he was serving in, to prepare to be mobilized for active duty for a deployment to Iraq,' Behrends and Paul Herr in a letter they posted on Facebook.

'On May 16th, 2005, he quit, betraying his country, leaving the 1-125th Field Artillery Battalion and its Soldiers hanging; without its senior Non-Commissioned Officer, as the battalion prepared for war.'

'His excuse to other leaders was that he needed to retire in order to run for Congress,' they wrote, calling the claim 'false.' They say the decision left his unit without a critical leader as it prepared for the deployment.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13715303/Tim-Walz-betrayed-country-left-unit-Iraq-deployment-Kamalas-VP-pick-suddenly-retired-military-gave-hearing-problems.html