In early July 2008 Samuel Alito stood on a riverbank in the remote part of Alaska. Samuel Alito, the Supreme Court justice was on holiday at a posh fishing lodge, which charged more than $1000 per day. After landing a king fish that was nearly as big as one’s leg Alito took a photo. To to his left there was a man who looked smiling: Paul Singer, a hedge fund billionaire who has repeatedly pleaded with for the Supreme Court to rule in his favor in high-stakes disputes.

Singer was much more than a fellow angler. He flew Alito to Alaska on a private jet. If the justice had chartered the plane on his own then the price would be over 100,000 one way.

In the years following Singer’s hedge funds appeared before the courts at least 10 times in instances in which his involvement was frequently mentioned in the legal press and mainstream media. This year, the Court voted to settle a crucial issue in the ten-year-long fight with Singer’s hedge fund as well as the country of Argentina. Alito did not decide to recuse himself from the trial and voted with a 7-1 majority to favor Singer. The hedge fund was paid $2.4 billion.

Alito did not disclose the trip to fish in 2008 on the annual disclosures of his financial transactions. In failing to report the private jet trip Singer offered, Alito appears to have violated a federal law which obliges justices to report the majority of gifts according to ethics experts in the field of law.

Experts have said they cannot find a single instance of a decision by a judge in a court case that was a result of receiving a large gift from any of the defendants.

“If you were good friends, what were you doing ruling on his case?” asked Charles Geyh, an Indiana University law professor and a leading specialist on recusals. “And if you weren’t good friends, what were you doing accepting this?” refers to the the private aircraft.

Justices are largely free to decide on ethics, and there are no restrictions on the kind of gifts they may accept. In the event of a conflict the only judge of whether a justice has to take a break from an instance is the judge himself or herself.

ProPublica’s investigation sheds insight into the ways that luxury travel has allowed prominent political donors – even one with issues with the Supreme Court — intimate access to the most influential judges in the United States. Another businessman with a wealth of money provided extravagant trips to two judges of the court’s highest level, ProPublica found. While on the Alaska excursion, Alito stayed at a commercial fishing lodge that was owned by the businessman and was also known as a significant donor to the conservative movement. Three years prior, the same businessman flies Justice Antonin Scalia, who passed away in the year 2016 via a private plane to Alaska and repaid the bill of his trip.

The kind of trips that are not thought of by the majority of federal employees, who are typically prohibited from accepting even small gifts.

Leonard Leo, the longtime leader of the conservative Federalist Society, attended and was instrumental in arranging the Alaska fishing trip. Leo requested Singer to join the trip, according to someone who was familiar with the trip and also asked Singer to join him as well as Alito would be able to travel on the billionaire’s plane. Leo has played an important role in legal confirmation of the justice by the court. Singer as well as the lodge’s owner were the two major contributors to the Leo’s political organizations.

ProPublica’s analysis of Alito’s as well as Scalia’s travels drew upon travel planning emails, Alaska fishing licenses, and interviews with hundreds of people, including private jet pilots fishing guides as well as former high-level staffers for the lodge owner and Singer and the lodge’s owner, as well as other passengers on the trip.

ProPublica has sent Alito an extensive list of questions earlier this week. However, on Tuesday the Supreme Court’s top spokeswoman informed ProPublica that Alito was not going to comment. A few hours later, The Wall Street Journal published an opinion piece written by Alito in response to ProPublica’s queries regarding the trip.

Alito claimed that when Singer’s firms appeared before the judge the justice was not aware of his connection to the case. He said he was able to recall speaking with Singer about “no more than a handful of occasions,” and they did not discuss the business of Singer or any issues with the justice.

Alito claimed that he was invited travel on Singer’s plane shortly before the trip, and his seat “would have otherwise been vacant.” Alito defended his decision not to disclose the excursion to the public, noting that the court “commonly interpreted” the disclosure obligations to not include “accommodations and transportation for social events.”

In an announcement an official for Singer said to ProPublica that Singer did not arrange the trip and was unaware Alito would be there when Alito decided to accept the invite. Singer “never discussed his business interests” with Justice Alito the spokesperson stated and added that, at the time of the traveling there was no indication that Singer nor his company did have “any pending matters before the Supreme Court, nor could Mr. Singer have anticipated in 2008 that a subsequent matter would arise that would merit Supreme Court review.”

Leo did not answer inquiries about the organization of the trip. However, he stated in the statement that the “would never presume to tell” Alito and Scalia “what to do.”

In the spring of this year, ProPublica reported that Justice Clarence Thomas was given decades of luxurious travel from a different Republican big-time donor Dallas real estate entrepreneur Harlan Crow. In an announcement, Thomas defended the undisclosed trips, claiming that anonymous colleagues had advised him that there was no need to disclose such gifts to the media. Crow also offered Thomas money from an unidentified real estate deal, and he also paid for private school tuition for his grandchild who Thomas had raised like an adult son. Thomas didn’t report either transaction on his declaration forms.

The unannounced gifts have led lawmakers to conduct investigations and to call for reforms in ethics. Recent legislation could impose stricter rules on recusals by justices and make it mandatory for to the Supreme Court to adopt a legally binding code of conduct, and establish an ethics body that would look into complaints. There is no code of conduct or an ethics office exists at the moment.

“We wouldn’t tolerate this from a city council member or an alderman,” Senator. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said about Thomas during the course of a recent hearing. “And yet the Supreme Court won’t even acknowledge it’s a problem.”

The justices have been dismayed by the possibility of such reforms. While the court has revealed its ethics procedures in a document that was signed by nine justices the Chief Justice John Roberts has not directly discussed the revelations of recent times. In fact, he’s repeatedly suggested that Congress may not be in a position to regulate the court in any way.

“We Take Good Care of Him Because He Makes All the Rules”

In the 1960s, during the first semester of his time at Harvard Law School, Singer was absorbing a lecture given by a well-known liberal professor. As he later remembered, he had an insight: “My goodness. They’re making up things in the process of making it up.”

It was a prevalent belief among conservative lawyers who frequently complain about liberal judges’ excessive activism. While the career of Singer in the field of law was a short one but his beliefs about the law remained in his mind for a long time. After establishing an investment fund which eventually made Singer one of the wealthiest people in America and directing massive amounts to causes that were that were deemed right. This included organizations, such as The Federalist Society, dedicated to supporting the legal rights of conservatives and putting its adherents in the courtroom.

In the last ten years, Singer has contributed over $80 million to Republican political organizations. Singer has also donated thousands of dollars to Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, where he is chairman since 2008. The Manhattan Institute regularly files friend-of-the court briefs to the Supreme Court — at minimum 15 in this term which includes one that asks the court to deny students from receiving loan aid.

Singer’s interest in courts goes beyond the realm of ideology. The hedge fund he runs, Elliott Management, is famous for investing in investments that are able to yield huge returns, but can also bring about fierce legal fights. Singer has stated that he’s attracted to jobs where the investor can “control your own destiny, not just riding up and down with the waves of financial markets.” This can include influencing corporate boards to sack the CEO, fighting between creditors on the remnants of a failed company, or fighting against opposition.

The fund is now managing greater than $50 billion worth of assets. “The investments are extremely shrewdly litigation-driven,” an individual who is familiar with the Singer fund revealed to ProPublica. “That’s why he’s a billionaire.”

Singer’s most famous bet ultimately made it to Supreme Court. Supreme Court.

As of 2001 Argentina had entered a terrible economic slump. The unemployment rate soared and violent violence broke out in the streets. On the day following christmas, government fell into default. For Singer his fund, the financial crisis represented an opportunity. While other investors fled, his company invested in Argentine government bonds at a significant discount.

After a few years, when the Argentine economy grew, the majority of creditors negotiated with the government, and they accepted just a tiny fraction of what their debts were originally worth. But Singer’s Fund, an part of Elliott known as NML Capital, held out. In the next few days they were fighting with a hedge fund attempting to impose its will on a sovereign country many thousands miles from home.

The battle played out on the same ground that is familiar to Singer The courtrooms of The U.S. courts. Singer launched a ferocious legal campaign to compel Argentina to pay the full amount as well as his involvement personally in the dispute received a lot of media attention. In the course of the course of 13 years the argument covered right foreign government have within America. U.S. and whether Argentina could repay debts to other nations prior to when Singer was able to settle his claim.

If Singer had succeeded, he was likely to earn a lot.

In 2007 For the first time, but not the final time, Singer’s Fund requested for the Supreme Court to intervene. An earlier court blocked Singer as well as another from taking Argentine central bank accounts held by the U.S. The investors filed an appeal, but in this October in October, the Supreme Court declined to take on the matter.

On the 8th of July in the year following, Singer took Alito to Alaska aboard a private jet according the emails and flight records provided by the Federal Aviation Administration and people who were aware of the trip.

They flew over America to reach the King Salmon town. King Salmon on the Alaska peninsula. The group returned to the East Coast three days later.

In Alaska They resided in The King Salmon Lodge, a luxurious fishing lodge that attracted famous people, wealthy businessmen, and sports celebrities. On the 9th of July their pilots took Alito along with other guests 70 miles to the west to catch in the Nushagak River, renowned for being one of the finest salmon runs anywhere in the world. The photos from the trip capture Alito wearing waders as well as a Indianapolis Grand Prix hat, smiling while he holds his catch.

“Sam Alito is in the red jacket there,” one lodge employee claimed as he read an amateur video of Justice on the Water. “We take good care of him because he makes all the rules.”

Other guests who were on the excursion were Leo The Federalist Society leader, and Judge A. Raymond Randolph, an influential conservative appellate judge, for whom Leo had worked as a clerk according to fishing permits as well as interviews conducted with the lodge employees.

The next day the group took some of the bush planes at lodge an impressive waterfall located in Katmai National Park, where bears steal salmon from the water using their teeth. The chef at the lodge served a variety of meals consisting of Alaskan King crab legs and Kobe filet. The last night the group was replete with Alito’s party boasted about how the wines they sip was 1,000 dollars per bottle One of lodge’s fishing guides said to ProPublica.

In his op-ed Alito said the lodge was an “comfortable but rustic facility.” The justice noted that the lodge was “simple and comfortable.” He doesn’t remember whether he was served wine however, if he did served, it wasn’t a huge expense of $1000 to buy a bottle. (Alito advised readers to visit their website for the lodge. The lodge was closed since 2008 and is currently an affordable hotel.)

The court’s stay was made for free by a important donor to the legal conservative group: Robin Arkley II, the founder of a mortgage firm that was located in California. Arkley had recently purchased the fishing lodge that served to wealthy tourists looking for an extravagant experience on Alaska. Alaskan wilderness. A document of planning prepared by the lodge’s staff identifies Alito being a client at Arkley. A guest who was on the trip informed ProPublica that the trip was an offer from Arkley and two lodge employees claimed they were informed that Alito didn’t pay for the trip.

Arkley did appear not be involved in any case in the courts, didn’t answer specific questions to this story.

Alito did not mention the cost of the flight or the time spent at the lodge for fishing when he made his annual disclosure of financial information. A law that was passed by Congress following Watergate mandates federal officials, which includes Supreme Court justices to publicly disclose the majority of gifts. (The prior year, Alito reported getting $500 of Italian food and wine from a relative and stating that the friend was not likely to “appear before this Court.”)

The law provides an exemption for “personal hospitality” exemption: If a person hosts an event on their own property, their free “food, lodging, or entertainment” aren’t required to be reported. However, the law does require disclosure for gifts made on private jet travel, according to 7 ethics experts and Alito has allegedly committed a violation. The usual version of the law requires disclosure of guests staying at the hotel, too experts said, given that the lodge was commercial property, rather than a holiday home. The rules of the judiciary did not provide that information until they were revised in the spring of this year.

In his op-ed Alito declared Justices “commonly interpreted” the law’s exemption to hosting “to mean that accommodations and transportation for social events were not reportable gifts.”

The op-ed referred to the specific language used in the court’s filing guidelines and also cited the definitions of Black’s Law Dictionary and Webster’s. However, he didn’t refer to the rules of the judiciary, and the laws themselves, and experts said required disclosure of gifts to travel. ProPublica has found at the least six instances of federal judges revealing gifts of private jets in recent years.

“The exception only covers food, lodging and entertainment,” said Virginia Canter, a former federal ethics lawyer who is now working for the group that monitors government ethics, CREW. “He’s trying to move away from the plain language of the statute and the regulation.”

The Alaska trip is the very first time Singer and Alito had a relationship according to someone who was familiar with the trip. Following the trip, they attended public events together. When Alito addressed the annual dinner at the Federalist Society lawyers convention the next year The billionaire introduced to him. Alito told a tale about encountering bears while fishing with Singer According to a legal website Above the Law. He was recalled asking him: “Do you really want to go down in history as the first Supreme Court justice to be devoured by a bear?”

The next year was 2010, when Alito gave the keynote address at a reception for supporters of the Manhattan Institute. Again, Singer delivered a flattering introduction. “He and his small band of like-minded justices are a critical and much-appreciated bulwark of our freedom,” Singer informed the crowd. “Samuel Alito is a model Supreme Court justice.”

In the meantime, Singer and Argentina kept insisting on Argentina and Singer to ask the Supreme Court to intervene in their legal battle. His fund brought in Ted Olson, the famed appellate lawyer who defended George W. Bush in the Bush v. Gore case during the 2000 presidential election.

In the month of January one year and a half following the Alaska vacation The fund again demanded that the court examine a specific element of their dispute. The court denied. In all, the parties requested the court to consider appeals in the litigation eight times during the period of six years following the trip. Most of the time that case, it was his adversaries making an appeal, with Singer’s fund successfully arguing justices to dismiss the case and allow the lower court’s ruling.

The Supreme Court hears a tiny part of the numerous cases it’s required to decide on each year. According to the court’s rules cases are only considered when at most four of the nine justices agree to consider the case. The discussions on whether or not to accept the case are encased in secrecy and occur in meetings only attended by justices. These decisions are an essential manner in which the court exercise its the power. The justices’ opinions aren’t usually made public as a result, making it unclear what Alito decided on the petitions of Singer.

In the midst of Singer’s war with Argentina escalated his hedge fund began a massive lobbying and public relations campaign. In 2012 the hedge fund tried to take over an Argentine navy vessel that was docked in Ghana in order to get payments from Argentina. (The plan was foiled by a decision of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea.) The president of Argentina called Singer and the other Investors “vultures” attempting extortion; Singer claimed that Argentina was making him scapegoats.

In 2014 in 2014, the Supreme Court finally agreed to consider a case in the issue. The case was centered around a crucial issue: how much security Argentina can claim as a sovereign country against hedge fund’s legal moves within U.S. courts. It was reported that the U.S. government filed a brief for Argentina’s behalf and warned that the matter brought up “extraordinarily sensitive foreign policy concerns.”

The case was notable for its intervening by Judicial Crisis Network, a organization that is a part of Leo famous for its large-scale expenditures on court confirmation fights. The Judicial Crisis Network filed a petition in support of Singer and is believed to be the sole Supreme Court friend-of-the-court brief in the history of the organization.

The justices ruled in the favor of Singer 7-1, with Alito being a part of the majority. Justice Alito did not recuse himself from the matter or from any other petitions filed by Singer.

“The tide turned” thanks to the “decisive” ruling and another from the court, according to Singer’s law firm put it. Following the legal setbacks as well as the election of the new president of Argentina and the nation’s final caved in the year 2016. Singer’s fund received the sum of $2.4 billion in payouts, a staggering return.

Abbe Smith is a law professor at Georgetown who co-authored a book on ethics in the judicial and legal professions she said Alito ought to have been disqualified. If she were a lawyer and found out that the judge received a cash gift from the side that was on the other side, Smith said, she would be quick to request recusal. “If I found out after the fact, I’d be outraged on behalf of my client,” she added. “And, frankly, I’d be outraged on behalf of the legal system.”

The law governing the moment when justices are required to be removed from a case is a strict but a subjective threshold. Justices are required to be removed from any case whenever they believe that their “impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” However, the court lets the justices to interpret this rule in their own way. In the past, they’ve rarely given a reason for why they are or have not recused themselves, and, unlike judges in lower courts their decisions are not able to be challenged.

Alito established his own criteria in the course of the Senate approval process. in which he wrote his belief in taking a step off cases whenever “any possible question might arise.”

in his Wall Street Journal op-ed, Alito admitted to having failed to disqualify himself from Singer’s proceedings before the court: “It was and is my judgment that these facts would not cause a reasonable and unbiased person to doubt my ability to decide the matters in question impartially.”

Many critics have long denigrated the Supreme Court’s practice regarding this matter as transparent and inconsistency. “The idea ‘just trust us to do the right thing’ while remaining in total secrecy is unworkable,” said Amanda Frost, a judicial ethics expert at the University of Virginia School of Law.

For Singer appealing to the Supreme Court are an almost inevitable consequence due to his business strategy. In the wake of Argentina instance, the Singer assets were identified as parties in two additional cases which were referred to the court, both arising from disputes against Fortune 500 companies. The petition is in the process of being heard.

Grey Goose and Glacier Ice

After Singer returned home from his 2009 fishing expedition, the angler realized that he was having a problem. The plan was to get an order of frozen salmon from an Alaska lodge. The fish didn’t arrive. So, the billionaire wrote an unlikely source to find the root of it all: Leo The strong Federalist Society executive.

“They’ve escaped! !” Singer wrote. Leo followed up with an email sent to Arkley the lodge’s owner, asking him to find any missing food items.

The only definite link between the most prominent guests of the tour is all had a close relationship with Leo. Leo has become a huge figure in the field of judicial politics. He was instrumental in deciding Donald Trump’s list of possible Supreme Court nominees and recently was awarded the $1.6 billion contribution to advance his political goals. Leo’s political group network was just beginning but Leo travelled together with Alito in Alaska. It was running an advertisement campaign in support of Alito during his confirmation battle and Leo was reported to have been one of those that helped prepare Alito ahead of the Senate hearings.

Singer and Arkley Arkley, two businessmen who arranged the transportation to the justice department, were major donors to Leo’s organizations at the time, as per public information and the report of The Daily Beast. Arkley often provided Leo the use of one his own aircrafts to take him to business gatherings as per the former Arkley pilot.

In the statement, Leo did not address specific questions about his trip. However, declared that “no objective and well-informed observer of the judiciary honestly could believe that they decide cases in order to cull favor with friends, or in return for a free plane seat or fishing trip.”

He said that the public ought to consider whether ProPublica’s reporting is “bait for reeling in more dark money from woke billionaires who want to damage this Supreme Court and remake it into one that will disregard the law by rubber stamping their disordered and highly unpopular cultural preferences.”

Arkley is a prominent figure within the local politics of his home town in Eureka, California, known for his rage against officials of the city and even started his own newspaper due to his disdain for the local newspaper. At the beginning of 2000 Arkley was making an impressive sum by purchasing as well as servicing mortgages that were in distress. He’s became a major donor to the national GOP politics.

In the wake of his rise in popularity, Arkley bragged to friends that he’d met about one-third of the currently sitting Supreme Court justices. Arkley told his friends that he had a connection to Clarence Thomas, according to two people who had a close relationship with Arkley. Also, the Alito excursion wasn’t the first occasion covering the Supreme Court justice’s travel to Alaska.

At the end of June, 2005 Arkley took flight in June 2005 Scalia in his personal aircraft on a private jet to Kodiak Island, Alaska, two former Arkley pilots reported to ProPublica. Arkley was able to rent the lodge, which cost $3200 a weekly per guest, as per the lodge’s proprietor, Martha Sikes.

Snapshots of the trip, discovered in the justice’s files in Harvard Law School, capture Scalia knee-deep in the river while he fights to catch an eel. Randolph the judge who was on appeal, who was also on the trip, was with Scalia and Arkley on their trip and flew on the businessman’s plane.

Scalia didn’t report the trip in his annual tax return, an obvious infraction of the law according to experts in ethics law. Scalia’s trips were briefly scrutinized in 2016, following his death in the hunter’s ranch of an Texas businessman. Scalia used to be a regular visitor, revealing trips to give talks, but not talking about hunts he went on to other locales, which were that were hosted by local lawyers and businessmen, according the research paper released after his death.

Randolph currently a judge of the senior level on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit was not able to disclose the trip. (Nor did he make public the second trip to Alito.) Randolph said to ProPublica that as he was making his form for the year 2005, he phoned the office of financial disclosure for the judiciary to inquire about the disclosure of the trip. Randolph shared the notes from the conversation with a member of staff, which states that “don’t have to report trip to Alaska with Rob Arkley & others / private jet / lodge.” Kathleen Clark who is an expert in ethics law from Washington University in St. Louis she stated, “I don’t understand how the staff member came to that conclusion based on the language in the statute.”

The 9th of June, Arkley’s crew hired a boat, called known as the Happy Hooker IV, to visit Yakutat Bay. The way back, Scalia and Arkley discussed the possibility of whether Senate Republicans were then engaged in a heated debate about the confirmation of judges, should eliminate the filibuster in order to move forward according to someone who was traveling with the pair.

A photograph captures Arkley and Scalia at the end of the day, looking from the shore of the boat to the famous Hubbard Glacier. In one instance an expert chiseled chunks from an iceberg and gave them to Scalia. Scalia then mix martinis made from Grey Goose vodka and glacier Ice.

It is not clear what exactly happened to Scalia ended to be in Alaska together with Arkley. The justice’s archives at Harvard Law School offer a intriguing clue. Prior to the fishing excursion, Scalia gave a speech to the Federalist Society in Napa, California. The following day, Arkley’s aircraft flew across the Pacific from Napa in California to Alaska. The papers of Scalia contain an album titled “Federalist Society, Napa and Alaska, 2005 June 3-10,” possibly indicating a relationship between this conservative group as well as the trip to fish.

The contents of this folder are still sealed however. The folder will be open for public viewing in 2036.

Source: https://www.propublica.org/article/samuel-alito-luxury-fishing-trip-paul-singer-scotus-supreme-court