HE VIEWS ABORTION AS WITCHCRAFT!
Tatyana Tandanpolie
Dominick Mastrangelo
Thu, June 13, 2024
A liberal activist’s secret recordings of two Supreme Court justices has engulfed the nation’s highest court into political controversy, while also raising questions about the ethics in how the conversations were obtained.
The activist, Lauren Windsor, approached conservative Justice Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts while wearing a concealed recording device at the Supreme Court Historical Society gala earlier this month.
Windsor attended as a member under her own name, but posed as a Catholic conservative with the explicit goal of eliciting unfiltered, controversial comments from those in attendance.
Windsor has argued going undercover was the only way to expose what she and many liberals have said is the court’s unacceptable right-wing tilt and the personal bitterness of its conservatives.
But critics contend Windsor crossed a line by misrepresenting herself to obtain the recordings, and warn her move might have further opened a Pandora’s box of political dirty tricks in the midst of an increasingly contentious election year.
“I worry about the cascading effect that something like this can have,” said William Howell, a professor at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy. “It invites people with whom she disagrees with ideologically to do much the same and point to her actions as justification for doing it.”
On one recording, Windsor, who has a history of using surreptitious methods to catch conservatives saying embarrassing things, captured Alito saying of the left and right, “One side or the other is going to win.”
Windsor also talked to the justice’s wife, Martha-Ann Alito, who is heard on the recording promising revenge on the people who have raised controversy surrounding her and her husband.
The audio’s publication sparked instant outrage from court watchers and the historical society itself.
“We condemn the surreptitious recording of Justices at the event, which is inconsistent with the entire spirit of the evening,” the organization said in a statement to The Hill. “Attendees are advised that discussion of current cases, cases decided by this Court, or a Justice’s jurisprudence is strictly prohibited and may result in forfeiture of membership in the Society.”
Windsor did not respond to a request for comment from The Hill this week but in various media interviews has expressed no regret for her reporting methods.
The activist insists that recording the justices secretly was the only way she would have been able to shine a light on their personal beliefs.
“To people who want to pearl-clutch about this, please tell me how we’re going to get answers when the Supreme Court has been shrouded in secrecy and really refusing any degree of accountability whatsoever,” she said Tuesday on CNN.
During a subsequent appearance on cable news channel NewsNation, Windsor pushed back on suggestions she baited Alito into making controversial comments.
“I don’t think that I was baiting him,” she insisted. “I think that it coaxed him into a position that either was already held or that he came to that over the past year.”
Windsor’s expose comes amid a whirlwind time for the conservative-majority court, which has seen its objectivity and political independence questioned, particularly by those on the political left.
ProPublica has reported extensively in recent months on alleged ethics violations by members of the court while just last month, the Alitos were embroiled in a controversy over various flags flying over their properties.
Outside observers to the latest scandal say the increased scrutiny of conservatives on the court in recent months undermines Windsor’s argument that her recordings were revelatory enough to justify the means she used.
“We didn’t learn very much we didn’t already know from this,” said Susan Keith, a professor of media studies at Rutgers University. “There was nothing in what Alito said to her that you wouldn’t already expect to hear from him publicly.”
Covert operations and secret recordings with political agendas in mind are nothing new in modern election cycles and semiregular partisan publicity fights.
The right-wing group Project Veritas was well known during the years of the Trump administration for using hidden cameras and secret recording devices to obtain audio and video of public health officials, journalists and other perceived enemies of the right making unflattering remarks or espousing personal opinions on matters of public debate.
“This sort of technique [on both sides] of sneaking up on people and secretly recording them is just not fair,” Keith said. “I just don’t think it’s necessary in most situations.”
Windsor has, at the same time, shown deft media strategy in rolling out the audio clips she captured at the June 3 gala.
On Wednesday, as Windsor was making the rounds on cable news, Rolling Stone published new audio of Alito, provided to the outlet by the activist, on which he is heard bashing ProPublica’s reporting on the court, saying “they don’t like our decisions.”
And while Windsor is receiving outsized attention for her clandestine recordings, some observers note her work should be viewed differently from mainstream journalists covering the court regularly.
“Every time a major mainstream news outlet or news organization promotes one of her stories, they’re essentially paying her money and sending millions of people to her website,” said John Watson,
Tatyana Tandanpolie
SALON
Thu, June 13, 2024
Samuel Alito Erin Schaff-Pool/Getty Images
Secret tapes of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito released publicly Monday have plunged the conservative justice and the high court into deeper controversy, exposing a conversation that saw Alito endorsing ultra-conservative hot-takes.
The audio, obtained and first reported by Rolling Stone, came just weeks after reports of far-right-aligned flags being flown outside Alito's home sparked widespread backlash. The reports follow a year of ethics scandal-exposés involving both him and Justice Clarence Thomas. The newly revealed recordings have similarly prompted harsh rebuke of the justice, with legal experts decrying Alito's boosting of Christian nationalist rhetoric on the tapes as unethical.
"Justice Alito’s recorded comments aren’t so much revealing as they are confirming," James Sample, a Hofstra University constitutional law professor, told Salon. "They reinforce what we already know: that Justice Alito sees his raison d’etre as being more of an ideological culture warrior more than a jurist. And he’s indisputably winning the wars he is waging."
The bevy of revelations have also intensified public scrutiny of the Supreme Court in the wake of a series of contentious decisions in recent years, including eliminating federal protections for abortion care and gutting race-based affirmative action, and have led ethics watchdogs and government officials to declare that an externally enforced ethics code be imposed on the justices, a call that Senate Democrats renewed by seeking to pass a binding-ethics code proposal Wednesday in light of the new tapes.
These new tapes mark "yet another self-inflicted wound on the part of the Supreme Court," according to David Schultz, a professor of legal studies and political science at Hamline University.
"We've seen this gradual deterioration of support for the courts, and it's clearly collapsed after the Dobbs opinion. I mean, none of this is going to turn it around," Schultz told Salon, adding: "It's just going to further erode support for the judiciary. And I hate to say this at a time where you've got [former president Donald Trump] attacking the court system and where you really need people to be defending the courts."
Alito's conversation occurred during the Supreme Court Historical Society's annual dinner earlier this month and was recorded by liberal documentary filmmaker Lauren Windsor, who describes herself as an "advocacy journalist" and has a reputation for secretly recording conservatives.
Windsor, who attended the event under her real name and peppered Alito with questions aligned with far-right ideology, got the justice to offer up his perspective on the opinions she touted. At one point in their exchange, she received an endorsement from the justice of her argument that ending the nation's political polarization by negotiating with the political left not possible, and that it's a matter of "winning" rather than compromise.
“I think you’re probably right,” Alito told Windsor. “On one side or the other — one side or the other is going to win. I don’t know. I mean, there can be a way of working — a way of living together peacefully, but it’s difficult, you know, because there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised. They really can’t be compromised. So it’s not like you are going to split the difference.”
In another instance, Alito said he agreed with her position that the country's Christian population has "got to keep fighting" to “return our country to a place of godliness.”
EXCLUSIVE UNDERCOVER AUDIO:
Sam Alito x John Roberts x The Undercurrent 🧵
1/ Justice Alito admits lack of impartiality with the Left, says: “One side or the other is going to win.” pic.twitter.com/b5nmxToZ9z
— Lauren Windsor (@lawindsor) June 10, 2024
Schultz argued that the problems with the exchange are three-fold. First, it presents "almost an apocalyptic vision of American politics" of "dual-contending forces" that Alito appears to hint the resolution to aligns more with a "Christian vision." The second arises from his articulation of this vision, which flies in the face of the "myth" that these "justices are apolitical" and supposed to avoid "abandoning the neutrality."
Third, Alito's statements on the recording also appear to "reinforce both the appearance and the reality that he's voting ideology," that he's not "reading the Constitution neutrally," Schultz continued.
Windsor also secretly taped a conversation Chief Justice John Roberts at the dinner, but his responses to a line of questioning similar to what his colleague received appeared to come in sharp contrast to Alito's, ringing more neutral.
Roberts, according to The New York Times, instead, pushed back against Windsor's assertion that the court had to return the county to a more "moral path."
“Would you want me to be in charge of putting the nation on a more moral path?” Roberts rebutted. “That’s for people we elect. That’s not for lawyers.”
When Windsor expressed views that the U.S. is a "Christian nation" and the Supreme Court "should be guiding us in that path," the chief justice also disagreed, offering a more pluralistic counterpoint.
“I don’t know if that’s true," he said, adding: “I don’t know that we live in a Christian nation. I know a lot of Jewish and Muslim friends who would say maybe not, and it’s not our job to do that.”
2/ Chief Justice Roberts denies that America is a Christian nation. pic.twitter.com/hb3iFa5Jnv
— Lauren Windsor (@lawindsor) June 10, 2024
While Schultz said Roberts still shouldn't have addressed the questions, the chief justice's responses reflected a "more classic view" in terms of acknowledging the array of perspectives in the nation even with his orientation as a conservative justice.
"Roberts looks like he's a Chief Justice trying to defend the institution of the Supreme Court by at least coming across and looking somewhat more neutral," Schultz said. By comparison, Alito "looks like he's an advocate now," Schultz argued, adding: "He's the politician with robes."
"Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito often reach similar results on the merits," Sample added. "The difference is the extent to which they respect judicial norms."
Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.
Charles Geyh, a scholar of judicial ethics and law professor at Indiana University's Maurer School of Law, told Salon that, while he was still "troubled" by Alito's responses — calling Alito's rejection of political compromise disheartening — he finds the justice's comments to reflect a different interpretation of Windsor's questioning from that of Roberts.
Alito appeared to answer the questions, not in an official capacity, but as a conservative with matching views, Geyh said, whereas Roberts seemed to interpret the questioning from the perspective of his role as chief justice and the aims of the court.
"From a judicial ethics standpoint, I would have been deeply troubled if [Alito] had made it clear that he was saying the court needs to be turning us in a more godly direction, that the court needs to assert moral authority and move us to a particular place, that he, as a justice, sees it as his role to interpret the First Amendment — more specifically, the Freedom of Religion clause, the Establishment Clause — in a way that turns us to a godlier nation," Geyh, told Salon. "Then, I'd be flinging flares in the air. But I don't interpret him answering the question that way."
A 2002 Supreme Court decision, Republican Party of Minnesota v. White, held that state Supreme Court justices have a First Amendment right to voice their personal opinions on issues in the context of running for a judgeship, Geyh explained, arguing that the same thing applies here insofar as judges having opinions that they're entitled to.
While allowing his personal views to guide his decision-making on the bench is one of the ethics abuses critics have accused Alito of, especially in the wake of his recent scandals, Geyh argued that Alito's responses on the tape don't offer enough information about how he approaches his role to indicate that his personal beliefs do more than influence his read of the law in close cases as opposed to usurping his approach to his duties and decision making.
"Even if Alito thinks that we need a godlier nation, that doesn't automatically mean that he's going to disregard the First Amendment," said Geyh, who also previously served as counsel to the House Judiciary Committee.
While the justice's remarks do offer insight into his belief and how they may inform his legal views, Geyh continued, it "leads us down a path that's illegitimate if he basically is saying, 'Law be damned, I'm going to impose my personal views.' But if what we're saying is, 'The law is ambiguous. It's unclear how this case should be resolved under the establishment clause or the freedom of religion clause, and I am doing my best to interpret it as it should be understood, and my views inevitably influence the way I think about what outcome's best,' that's not illegitimate. That's just the way the world works in close cases."
Still, Geyh said, in a political climate when activists like Windsor are "arguably playing gotcha games" and the court's legitimacy is suffering in the public eye, in part, because of beliefs "bipartisan politics and agendas" drive the justices' decisions, the recent incidents signify the importance of judges being "cautious" and "ever-mindful of how their conduct has been politicized, and they have politicized their conduct themselves," especially in the case of a "political lightning rod" like Alito.
"It's not openly, affirmatively unethical for them to do what he did, but I think the preferred course is to stay under the radar, to do what you can to preserve your open mindedness as best you can and not lock yourself in in public statements that imply that you've got an ax to grind," he explained, referencing canon two of the ethics code the Supreme Court adopted last year.
The Supreme Court Historical Society's executive director, James Duff, condemned Windsor's "surreptitious recording of Justices at the event" as "inconsistent with the entire spirit of the evening" in a statement Monday. “Our policy is to ensure that all attendees, including the Justices, are treated with respect," Duff said.
Windsor, however, has defended her actions, explaining that she felt she had no other means of reporting on the justices' true thoughts.
“We have a court that has refused to submit to any accountability whatsoever — they are shrouded in secrecy,” Windsor said, per The Times. “I don’t know how, other than going undercover, I would have been able to get answers to these questions.”
On Tuesday night, Windsor dropped another undercover audio of Alito, recorded by a colleague at the same June 3 dinner.
In the latest tape, the justice appeared to blame partisan funding for the coverage of the Supreme Court's undisclosed lavish gifts and travel, specifically citing ProPublica, which published a series of bombshell reports in the last year on Alito and Thomas' failure to report the gifts on annual disclosures.
Asked why the Supreme Court is being "so attacked" and "targeted by the media these days," Alito responded plainly.
“They don’t like our decisions, and they don’t like how they anticipate we may decide some cases that are coming up. That’s the beginning of the end of it,” he said, according to Rolling Stone. “There are groups that are very well-funded by ideological groups that have spearheaded these attacks," he added. "That’s what it is.
EXCLUSIVE UNDERCOVER AUDIO feat. the debut of my colleague @Ally_Sammarco:
Alito v @ProPublica
Justice Alito rants on ProPublica and minimizes Justice Thomas’ extraordinary ethics breaches as “any little thing they can find" pic.twitter.com/HXFlaxRpWm
— Lauren Windsor (@lawindsor) June 12, 2024
Thu, June 13, 2024
Samuel Alito Erin Schaff-Pool/Getty Images
Secret tapes of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito released publicly Monday have plunged the conservative justice and the high court into deeper controversy, exposing a conversation that saw Alito endorsing ultra-conservative hot-takes.
The audio, obtained and first reported by Rolling Stone, came just weeks after reports of far-right-aligned flags being flown outside Alito's home sparked widespread backlash. The reports follow a year of ethics scandal-exposés involving both him and Justice Clarence Thomas. The newly revealed recordings have similarly prompted harsh rebuke of the justice, with legal experts decrying Alito's boosting of Christian nationalist rhetoric on the tapes as unethical.
"Justice Alito’s recorded comments aren’t so much revealing as they are confirming," James Sample, a Hofstra University constitutional law professor, told Salon. "They reinforce what we already know: that Justice Alito sees his raison d’etre as being more of an ideological culture warrior more than a jurist. And he’s indisputably winning the wars he is waging."
The bevy of revelations have also intensified public scrutiny of the Supreme Court in the wake of a series of contentious decisions in recent years, including eliminating federal protections for abortion care and gutting race-based affirmative action, and have led ethics watchdogs and government officials to declare that an externally enforced ethics code be imposed on the justices, a call that Senate Democrats renewed by seeking to pass a binding-ethics code proposal Wednesday in light of the new tapes.
These new tapes mark "yet another self-inflicted wound on the part of the Supreme Court," according to David Schultz, a professor of legal studies and political science at Hamline University.
"We've seen this gradual deterioration of support for the courts, and it's clearly collapsed after the Dobbs opinion. I mean, none of this is going to turn it around," Schultz told Salon, adding: "It's just going to further erode support for the judiciary. And I hate to say this at a time where you've got [former president Donald Trump] attacking the court system and where you really need people to be defending the courts."
Alito's conversation occurred during the Supreme Court Historical Society's annual dinner earlier this month and was recorded by liberal documentary filmmaker Lauren Windsor, who describes herself as an "advocacy journalist" and has a reputation for secretly recording conservatives.
Windsor, who attended the event under her real name and peppered Alito with questions aligned with far-right ideology, got the justice to offer up his perspective on the opinions she touted. At one point in their exchange, she received an endorsement from the justice of her argument that ending the nation's political polarization by negotiating with the political left not possible, and that it's a matter of "winning" rather than compromise.
“I think you’re probably right,” Alito told Windsor. “On one side or the other — one side or the other is going to win. I don’t know. I mean, there can be a way of working — a way of living together peacefully, but it’s difficult, you know, because there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised. They really can’t be compromised. So it’s not like you are going to split the difference.”
In another instance, Alito said he agreed with her position that the country's Christian population has "got to keep fighting" to “return our country to a place of godliness.”
EXCLUSIVE UNDERCOVER AUDIO:
Sam Alito x John Roberts x The Undercurrent 🧵
1/ Justice Alito admits lack of impartiality with the Left, says: “One side or the other is going to win.” pic.twitter.com/b5nmxToZ9z
— Lauren Windsor (@lawindsor) June 10, 2024
Schultz argued that the problems with the exchange are three-fold. First, it presents "almost an apocalyptic vision of American politics" of "dual-contending forces" that Alito appears to hint the resolution to aligns more with a "Christian vision." The second arises from his articulation of this vision, which flies in the face of the "myth" that these "justices are apolitical" and supposed to avoid "abandoning the neutrality."
Third, Alito's statements on the recording also appear to "reinforce both the appearance and the reality that he's voting ideology," that he's not "reading the Constitution neutrally," Schultz continued.
Windsor also secretly taped a conversation Chief Justice John Roberts at the dinner, but his responses to a line of questioning similar to what his colleague received appeared to come in sharp contrast to Alito's, ringing more neutral.
Roberts, according to The New York Times, instead, pushed back against Windsor's assertion that the court had to return the county to a more "moral path."
“Would you want me to be in charge of putting the nation on a more moral path?” Roberts rebutted. “That’s for people we elect. That’s not for lawyers.”
When Windsor expressed views that the U.S. is a "Christian nation" and the Supreme Court "should be guiding us in that path," the chief justice also disagreed, offering a more pluralistic counterpoint.
“I don’t know if that’s true," he said, adding: “I don’t know that we live in a Christian nation. I know a lot of Jewish and Muslim friends who would say maybe not, and it’s not our job to do that.”
2/ Chief Justice Roberts denies that America is a Christian nation. pic.twitter.com/hb3iFa5Jnv
— Lauren Windsor (@lawindsor) June 10, 2024
While Schultz said Roberts still shouldn't have addressed the questions, the chief justice's responses reflected a "more classic view" in terms of acknowledging the array of perspectives in the nation even with his orientation as a conservative justice.
"Roberts looks like he's a Chief Justice trying to defend the institution of the Supreme Court by at least coming across and looking somewhat more neutral," Schultz said. By comparison, Alito "looks like he's an advocate now," Schultz argued, adding: "He's the politician with robes."
"Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito often reach similar results on the merits," Sample added. "The difference is the extent to which they respect judicial norms."
Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.
Charles Geyh, a scholar of judicial ethics and law professor at Indiana University's Maurer School of Law, told Salon that, while he was still "troubled" by Alito's responses — calling Alito's rejection of political compromise disheartening — he finds the justice's comments to reflect a different interpretation of Windsor's questioning from that of Roberts.
Alito appeared to answer the questions, not in an official capacity, but as a conservative with matching views, Geyh said, whereas Roberts seemed to interpret the questioning from the perspective of his role as chief justice and the aims of the court.
"From a judicial ethics standpoint, I would have been deeply troubled if [Alito] had made it clear that he was saying the court needs to be turning us in a more godly direction, that the court needs to assert moral authority and move us to a particular place, that he, as a justice, sees it as his role to interpret the First Amendment — more specifically, the Freedom of Religion clause, the Establishment Clause — in a way that turns us to a godlier nation," Geyh, told Salon. "Then, I'd be flinging flares in the air. But I don't interpret him answering the question that way."
A 2002 Supreme Court decision, Republican Party of Minnesota v. White, held that state Supreme Court justices have a First Amendment right to voice their personal opinions on issues in the context of running for a judgeship, Geyh explained, arguing that the same thing applies here insofar as judges having opinions that they're entitled to.
While allowing his personal views to guide his decision-making on the bench is one of the ethics abuses critics have accused Alito of, especially in the wake of his recent scandals, Geyh argued that Alito's responses on the tape don't offer enough information about how he approaches his role to indicate that his personal beliefs do more than influence his read of the law in close cases as opposed to usurping his approach to his duties and decision making.
"Even if Alito thinks that we need a godlier nation, that doesn't automatically mean that he's going to disregard the First Amendment," said Geyh, who also previously served as counsel to the House Judiciary Committee.
While the justice's remarks do offer insight into his belief and how they may inform his legal views, Geyh continued, it "leads us down a path that's illegitimate if he basically is saying, 'Law be damned, I'm going to impose my personal views.' But if what we're saying is, 'The law is ambiguous. It's unclear how this case should be resolved under the establishment clause or the freedom of religion clause, and I am doing my best to interpret it as it should be understood, and my views inevitably influence the way I think about what outcome's best,' that's not illegitimate. That's just the way the world works in close cases."
Still, Geyh said, in a political climate when activists like Windsor are "arguably playing gotcha games" and the court's legitimacy is suffering in the public eye, in part, because of beliefs "bipartisan politics and agendas" drive the justices' decisions, the recent incidents signify the importance of judges being "cautious" and "ever-mindful of how their conduct has been politicized, and they have politicized their conduct themselves," especially in the case of a "political lightning rod" like Alito.
"It's not openly, affirmatively unethical for them to do what he did, but I think the preferred course is to stay under the radar, to do what you can to preserve your open mindedness as best you can and not lock yourself in in public statements that imply that you've got an ax to grind," he explained, referencing canon two of the ethics code the Supreme Court adopted last year.
The Supreme Court Historical Society's executive director, James Duff, condemned Windsor's "surreptitious recording of Justices at the event" as "inconsistent with the entire spirit of the evening" in a statement Monday. “Our policy is to ensure that all attendees, including the Justices, are treated with respect," Duff said.
Windsor, however, has defended her actions, explaining that she felt she had no other means of reporting on the justices' true thoughts.
“We have a court that has refused to submit to any accountability whatsoever — they are shrouded in secrecy,” Windsor said, per The Times. “I don’t know how, other than going undercover, I would have been able to get answers to these questions.”
On Tuesday night, Windsor dropped another undercover audio of Alito, recorded by a colleague at the same June 3 dinner.
In the latest tape, the justice appeared to blame partisan funding for the coverage of the Supreme Court's undisclosed lavish gifts and travel, specifically citing ProPublica, which published a series of bombshell reports in the last year on Alito and Thomas' failure to report the gifts on annual disclosures.
Asked why the Supreme Court is being "so attacked" and "targeted by the media these days," Alito responded plainly.
“They don’t like our decisions, and they don’t like how they anticipate we may decide some cases that are coming up. That’s the beginning of the end of it,” he said, according to Rolling Stone. “There are groups that are very well-funded by ideological groups that have spearheaded these attacks," he added. "That’s what it is.
EXCLUSIVE UNDERCOVER AUDIO feat. the debut of my colleague @Ally_Sammarco:
Alito v @ProPublica
Justice Alito rants on ProPublica and minimizes Justice Thomas’ extraordinary ethics breaches as “any little thing they can find" pic.twitter.com/HXFlaxRpWm
— Lauren Windsor (@lawindsor) June 12, 2024
Alito, Roberts secret recordings spark ethics concerns
FOR WHO?!
Dominick Mastrangelo
Thu, June 13, 2024
A liberal activist’s secret recordings of two Supreme Court justices has engulfed the nation’s highest court into political controversy, while also raising questions about the ethics in how the conversations were obtained.
The activist, Lauren Windsor, approached conservative Justice Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts while wearing a concealed recording device at the Supreme Court Historical Society gala earlier this month.
Windsor attended as a member under her own name, but posed as a Catholic conservative with the explicit goal of eliciting unfiltered, controversial comments from those in attendance.
Windsor has argued going undercover was the only way to expose what she and many liberals have said is the court’s unacceptable right-wing tilt and the personal bitterness of its conservatives.
But critics contend Windsor crossed a line by misrepresenting herself to obtain the recordings, and warn her move might have further opened a Pandora’s box of political dirty tricks in the midst of an increasingly contentious election year.
“I worry about the cascading effect that something like this can have,” said William Howell, a professor at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy. “It invites people with whom she disagrees with ideologically to do much the same and point to her actions as justification for doing it.”
On one recording, Windsor, who has a history of using surreptitious methods to catch conservatives saying embarrassing things, captured Alito saying of the left and right, “One side or the other is going to win.”
Windsor also talked to the justice’s wife, Martha-Ann Alito, who is heard on the recording promising revenge on the people who have raised controversy surrounding her and her husband.
The audio’s publication sparked instant outrage from court watchers and the historical society itself.
“We condemn the surreptitious recording of Justices at the event, which is inconsistent with the entire spirit of the evening,” the organization said in a statement to The Hill. “Attendees are advised that discussion of current cases, cases decided by this Court, or a Justice’s jurisprudence is strictly prohibited and may result in forfeiture of membership in the Society.”
Windsor did not respond to a request for comment from The Hill this week but in various media interviews has expressed no regret for her reporting methods.
The activist insists that recording the justices secretly was the only way she would have been able to shine a light on their personal beliefs.
“To people who want to pearl-clutch about this, please tell me how we’re going to get answers when the Supreme Court has been shrouded in secrecy and really refusing any degree of accountability whatsoever,” she said Tuesday on CNN.
During a subsequent appearance on cable news channel NewsNation, Windsor pushed back on suggestions she baited Alito into making controversial comments.
“I don’t think that I was baiting him,” she insisted. “I think that it coaxed him into a position that either was already held or that he came to that over the past year.”
Windsor’s expose comes amid a whirlwind time for the conservative-majority court, which has seen its objectivity and political independence questioned, particularly by those on the political left.
ProPublica has reported extensively in recent months on alleged ethics violations by members of the court while just last month, the Alitos were embroiled in a controversy over various flags flying over their properties.
Outside observers to the latest scandal say the increased scrutiny of conservatives on the court in recent months undermines Windsor’s argument that her recordings were revelatory enough to justify the means she used.
“We didn’t learn very much we didn’t already know from this,” said Susan Keith, a professor of media studies at Rutgers University. “There was nothing in what Alito said to her that you wouldn’t already expect to hear from him publicly.”
Covert operations and secret recordings with political agendas in mind are nothing new in modern election cycles and semiregular partisan publicity fights.
The right-wing group Project Veritas was well known during the years of the Trump administration for using hidden cameras and secret recording devices to obtain audio and video of public health officials, journalists and other perceived enemies of the right making unflattering remarks or espousing personal opinions on matters of public debate.
“This sort of technique [on both sides] of sneaking up on people and secretly recording them is just not fair,” Keith said. “I just don’t think it’s necessary in most situations.”
Windsor has, at the same time, shown deft media strategy in rolling out the audio clips she captured at the June 3 gala.
On Wednesday, as Windsor was making the rounds on cable news, Rolling Stone published new audio of Alito, provided to the outlet by the activist, on which he is heard bashing ProPublica’s reporting on the court, saying “they don’t like our decisions.”
And while Windsor is receiving outsized attention for her clandestine recordings, some observers note her work should be viewed differently from mainstream journalists covering the court regularly.
“Every time a major mainstream news outlet or news organization promotes one of her stories, they’re essentially paying her money and sending millions of people to her website,” said John Watson,
a professor of journalism at American University.
“In journalism using deception to get information is inherently unethical. However, if the information is absolutely important for the public to have and there’s no other way to get it … I have yet to see anything she has done that reaches that threshold.”
The Hill.
“In journalism using deception to get information is inherently unethical. However, if the information is absolutely important for the public to have and there’s no other way to get it … I have yet to see anything she has done that reaches that threshold.”
The Hill.
Justice Clarence Thomas took more trips on GOP megadonor’s private plane than previously known
Tierney Sneed and John Fritze, CNN
Thu, June 13, 2024
Justice Clarence Thomas took several more trips on the private plane of GOP megadonor Harlan Crow than were previously known, a top Senate Democrat revealed Thursday.
According to information obtained by Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin, Thomas traveled on Crow’s private jet during trips in 2017, 2019 and 2021 between various US states, as well as on a previously known 2019 trip to Indonesia, during which Thomas also stayed on Crow’s mega-yacht.
The newly revealed private plane trips add to the picture of luxury travel enjoyed by Thomas and bankrolled by friends of the justice who have ties to conservative politics.
Thomas has come under fire for his failure to include such trips on financial disclosure forms the justices release each year, though he and his defenders argue that he followed the court’s disclosure rules as they were understood at the time.
The revelation was likely to add to the tension between the high court, where conservatives hold a 6-3 majority, and Democrats on Capitol Hill, who have been pushing for more than a year for tighter ethics rules. A series of ethics scandals involving Thomas and, more recently, Justice Samuel Alito, have left public approval of the court at historic lows.
Last year, amid stories by ProPublica on the justice’s jet-setting lifestyle, the federal judiciary’s policy-making body said that travel on private planes should be reported by the justices closing a loophole that Thomas said had exempted him from reporting the “personal hospitality” he had received form his uber-wealthy friends. The court’s critics argue that the current understanding of the disclosure rules should apply retroactively.
Thomas, through a court spokeswoman, did not respond to a CNN inquiry about the new revelations and why the trips were not disclosed.
He previously said that he was advised at the time that he was not required to disclose the hospitality he received from the Crows, but that he intended to follow the recent changes to the guidance going forward. His defenders have pointed to a 2012 letter from the Judicial Conference, which administers the regulations for judges’ financial disclosures, that cleared him of claims at the time that he should have been reporting his trips with Crow.
Last week, with the release of his financial disclosures for 2023, Thomas said he had “inadvertently omitted” from previous financial filings a hotel stay paid by the Crows during the 2019 trip to Indonesia and his accommodations that same year at a private club they are members of in Monte Rio, California.
Yet he did not disclose his travel on Crow’s private plane for either of those trips that was revealed by Durbin.
In addition to that trip, according to the documents released by Durbin, Thomas traveled on Crow’s plane from St. Louis to Montana and then on to Dallas in 2017; on a 2019 round trip from Washington, DC, to Savannah, Georgia; and on a 2021 round trip from Washington, DC, to San Jose, California.
“The Senate Judiciary Committee’s ongoing investigation into the Supreme Court’s ethical crisis is producing new information - like what we’ve revealed today - and makes it crystal clear that the highest court needs an enforceable code of conduct, because its members continue to choose not to meet the moment,” Durbin said in a statement that pointed to Supreme Court ethics legislation put forward by Senate Democrats. A procedural maneuver by Durbin on Wednesday to pass the bill on the Senate floor was blocked by Republicans.
Elliot Berke, an attorney for Thomas, said the trips Senate Democrats called attention to on Thursday fell under the “hospitality exemption.” Thomas and others have previously said they understood the disclosure rules to exclude situations involving “personal hospitality.”
“Consequently, and as Justice Thomas has already explained, he and many other federal judges were advised that they were not required to report gifts of personal hospitality from friends who did not have business before the Court,” Berke told CNN.
Mark Paoletta, a former top Trump administration official and prominent Thomas ally, similarly said on X that Thomas disclosed the hotel and private club stays from the previous trips because they were not covered under the personal hospitality exemption – even before the 2023 changes to the disclosure guidance. He argued that a justice’s stays on a friend’s “home, planes” and “boats” were exempted under the rules until the 2023 revision.
Durbin and other Democrats launched probes into gifts and lavish travel Thomas received after a bombshell ProPublica report that detailed the Indonesia trip with Crow – during which Thomas and his wife Ginni Thomas stayed on Crow’s 162-foot yacht – and other extravagant trips that the Thomases took with Crow and Crow’s wife.
Crow – whom Thomas has described as among his family’s “dearest friends” – has said that he has never talked to Thomas about matters in front of the judiciary.
“Mr. Crow reached an agreement with the Senate Judiciary Committee to provide information responsive to its requests going back seven years,” Crow spokesperson Michael Zona said of the information revealed Thursday.
“Despite his serious and continued concerns about the legality and necessity of the inquiry, Mr. Crow engaged in good faith negotiations with the Committee from the beginning to resolve the matter. As a condition of this agreement, the Committee agreed to end its probe with respect to Mr. Crow,” Zona added.
Clarence Thomas Was A More Frequent Flyer On Harlan Crow Air Than We Knew
David Kurtz
Thu, June 13, 2024
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas went up and away into the wild blue yonder aboard billionaire GOP donor Harlan Crow’s private jet three other times that he hasn’t reported on his financial disclosure filings, according to Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-IL).
Durbin’s revelation of the new information about Thomas’ travels came this afternoon, not even 24 hours after Senate Republicans killed a Durbin measure that would have imposed new ethics standards on the Supreme Court.
The demand for greater Supreme Court accountability has ramped up in the months since ProPublica published a Pulitzer Prize-winning series on freebies, gifts, and other financial benefits — including travel — that Crow had bestowed on Thomas but which Thomas had not included in his public financial disclosures.
Just last week, Thomas filed an amended 2019 report that for the first time included the travel that ProPublica had previously reported, a tacit though begrudging acknowledgement by Thomas that he should have included them in the original filing.
The three newly revealed trips announced today by Durbin were not included in Thomas’ amended filing last week.
The three previously unreported trips on Crow’s private jet include:
A May 2017 flight from St. Louis to Kalispell, Montana, with a return flight to Dallas;
A March 2019 round-trip flight between Washington, D.C. and Savannah, Georgia;
A June 2021 round-trip flight between Washington, D.C., and San Jose, California.
Durbin obtained the information about the three flights via a Judiciary Committee subpoena of Crow last November. You can see a portion of the relevant response from Crow’s lawyer here. It’s not clear when the committee obtained Crow’s responses or why Durbin released them today.
In a statement to CBS News, Crow’s office said he had reached an agreement with the committee to provide certain information going back seven years to resolve the matter.
Despite his serious and continued concerns about the legality and necessity of the inquiry, Mr. Crow engaged in good faith negotiations with the Committee from the beginning to resolve the matter. As a condition of this agreement, the Committee agreed to end its probe with respect to Mr. Crow.
Durbin has been a very reluctant warrior on Supreme Court ethics oversight, dismissing as useless the prospect of holding public committee hearings on the court’s ethical lapses and lack of institutional accountability. But Durbin did launch an investigation last fall and has slowly budged in recent days, a result of a combination of outside pressure and a new round of news reports about insurrectionist flags flying outside two of Justice Samuel Alito’s homes.
“The Senate Judiciary Committee’s ongoing investigation into the Supreme Court’s ethical crisis is producing new information — like what we’ve revealed today — and makes it crystal clear that the highest court needs an enforceable code of conduct, because its members continue to choose not to meet the moment,” Durbin said in a press release.
Crow owns a Bombardier Global 5000, ProPublica previously reported. It’s a long-range, twin-engine business jet with a reported range of more than 5,000 nautical miles and cruising speed upwards of 560 m.p.h.
Tierney Sneed and John Fritze, CNN
Thu, June 13, 2024
Justice Clarence Thomas took several more trips on the private plane of GOP megadonor Harlan Crow than were previously known, a top Senate Democrat revealed Thursday.
According to information obtained by Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin, Thomas traveled on Crow’s private jet during trips in 2017, 2019 and 2021 between various US states, as well as on a previously known 2019 trip to Indonesia, during which Thomas also stayed on Crow’s mega-yacht.
The newly revealed private plane trips add to the picture of luxury travel enjoyed by Thomas and bankrolled by friends of the justice who have ties to conservative politics.
Thomas has come under fire for his failure to include such trips on financial disclosure forms the justices release each year, though he and his defenders argue that he followed the court’s disclosure rules as they were understood at the time.
The revelation was likely to add to the tension between the high court, where conservatives hold a 6-3 majority, and Democrats on Capitol Hill, who have been pushing for more than a year for tighter ethics rules. A series of ethics scandals involving Thomas and, more recently, Justice Samuel Alito, have left public approval of the court at historic lows.
Last year, amid stories by ProPublica on the justice’s jet-setting lifestyle, the federal judiciary’s policy-making body said that travel on private planes should be reported by the justices closing a loophole that Thomas said had exempted him from reporting the “personal hospitality” he had received form his uber-wealthy friends. The court’s critics argue that the current understanding of the disclosure rules should apply retroactively.
Thomas, through a court spokeswoman, did not respond to a CNN inquiry about the new revelations and why the trips were not disclosed.
He previously said that he was advised at the time that he was not required to disclose the hospitality he received from the Crows, but that he intended to follow the recent changes to the guidance going forward. His defenders have pointed to a 2012 letter from the Judicial Conference, which administers the regulations for judges’ financial disclosures, that cleared him of claims at the time that he should have been reporting his trips with Crow.
Last week, with the release of his financial disclosures for 2023, Thomas said he had “inadvertently omitted” from previous financial filings a hotel stay paid by the Crows during the 2019 trip to Indonesia and his accommodations that same year at a private club they are members of in Monte Rio, California.
Yet he did not disclose his travel on Crow’s private plane for either of those trips that was revealed by Durbin.
In addition to that trip, according to the documents released by Durbin, Thomas traveled on Crow’s plane from St. Louis to Montana and then on to Dallas in 2017; on a 2019 round trip from Washington, DC, to Savannah, Georgia; and on a 2021 round trip from Washington, DC, to San Jose, California.
“The Senate Judiciary Committee’s ongoing investigation into the Supreme Court’s ethical crisis is producing new information - like what we’ve revealed today - and makes it crystal clear that the highest court needs an enforceable code of conduct, because its members continue to choose not to meet the moment,” Durbin said in a statement that pointed to Supreme Court ethics legislation put forward by Senate Democrats. A procedural maneuver by Durbin on Wednesday to pass the bill on the Senate floor was blocked by Republicans.
Elliot Berke, an attorney for Thomas, said the trips Senate Democrats called attention to on Thursday fell under the “hospitality exemption.” Thomas and others have previously said they understood the disclosure rules to exclude situations involving “personal hospitality.”
“Consequently, and as Justice Thomas has already explained, he and many other federal judges were advised that they were not required to report gifts of personal hospitality from friends who did not have business before the Court,” Berke told CNN.
Mark Paoletta, a former top Trump administration official and prominent Thomas ally, similarly said on X that Thomas disclosed the hotel and private club stays from the previous trips because they were not covered under the personal hospitality exemption – even before the 2023 changes to the disclosure guidance. He argued that a justice’s stays on a friend’s “home, planes” and “boats” were exempted under the rules until the 2023 revision.
Durbin and other Democrats launched probes into gifts and lavish travel Thomas received after a bombshell ProPublica report that detailed the Indonesia trip with Crow – during which Thomas and his wife Ginni Thomas stayed on Crow’s 162-foot yacht – and other extravagant trips that the Thomases took with Crow and Crow’s wife.
Crow – whom Thomas has described as among his family’s “dearest friends” – has said that he has never talked to Thomas about matters in front of the judiciary.
“Mr. Crow reached an agreement with the Senate Judiciary Committee to provide information responsive to its requests going back seven years,” Crow spokesperson Michael Zona said of the information revealed Thursday.
“Despite his serious and continued concerns about the legality and necessity of the inquiry, Mr. Crow engaged in good faith negotiations with the Committee from the beginning to resolve the matter. As a condition of this agreement, the Committee agreed to end its probe with respect to Mr. Crow,” Zona added.
Clarence Thomas Was A More Frequent Flyer On Harlan Crow Air Than We Knew
David Kurtz
Thu, June 13, 2024
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas went up and away into the wild blue yonder aboard billionaire GOP donor Harlan Crow’s private jet three other times that he hasn’t reported on his financial disclosure filings, according to Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-IL).
Durbin’s revelation of the new information about Thomas’ travels came this afternoon, not even 24 hours after Senate Republicans killed a Durbin measure that would have imposed new ethics standards on the Supreme Court.
The demand for greater Supreme Court accountability has ramped up in the months since ProPublica published a Pulitzer Prize-winning series on freebies, gifts, and other financial benefits — including travel — that Crow had bestowed on Thomas but which Thomas had not included in his public financial disclosures.
Just last week, Thomas filed an amended 2019 report that for the first time included the travel that ProPublica had previously reported, a tacit though begrudging acknowledgement by Thomas that he should have included them in the original filing.
The three newly revealed trips announced today by Durbin were not included in Thomas’ amended filing last week.
The three previously unreported trips on Crow’s private jet include:
A May 2017 flight from St. Louis to Kalispell, Montana, with a return flight to Dallas;
A March 2019 round-trip flight between Washington, D.C. and Savannah, Georgia;
A June 2021 round-trip flight between Washington, D.C., and San Jose, California.
Durbin obtained the information about the three flights via a Judiciary Committee subpoena of Crow last November. You can see a portion of the relevant response from Crow’s lawyer here. It’s not clear when the committee obtained Crow’s responses or why Durbin released them today.
In a statement to CBS News, Crow’s office said he had reached an agreement with the committee to provide certain information going back seven years to resolve the matter.
Despite his serious and continued concerns about the legality and necessity of the inquiry, Mr. Crow engaged in good faith negotiations with the Committee from the beginning to resolve the matter. As a condition of this agreement, the Committee agreed to end its probe with respect to Mr. Crow.
Durbin has been a very reluctant warrior on Supreme Court ethics oversight, dismissing as useless the prospect of holding public committee hearings on the court’s ethical lapses and lack of institutional accountability. But Durbin did launch an investigation last fall and has slowly budged in recent days, a result of a combination of outside pressure and a new round of news reports about insurrectionist flags flying outside two of Justice Samuel Alito’s homes.
“The Senate Judiciary Committee’s ongoing investigation into the Supreme Court’s ethical crisis is producing new information — like what we’ve revealed today — and makes it crystal clear that the highest court needs an enforceable code of conduct, because its members continue to choose not to meet the moment,” Durbin said in a press release.
Crow owns a Bombardier Global 5000, ProPublica previously reported. It’s a long-range, twin-engine business jet with a reported range of more than 5,000 nautical miles and cruising speed upwards of 560 m.p.h.
Opinion
Clarence Thomas Fails to Disclose More Gifts From Right-Wing Buddy
Clarence Thomas Fails to Disclose More Gifts From Right-Wing Buddy
Hafiz Rashid
Thu, June 13, 2024 at 3:33 PM MDT·2 min read
17
Thu, June 13, 2024 at 3:33 PM MDT·2 min read
17
It turns out Clarence Thomas has failed to disclose even more free trips from conservative billionaire Harlan Crow, a Senate Judiciary Committee investigation uncovered.
At least three times, Crow provided trips on his private jet to the Supreme Court justice to destinations including a March 2019 trip to Thomas’s Georgia hometown, a May 2017 trip to Montana near Glacier National Park with a return flight to Dallas two days later, and a June 2021 roundtrip flight between San Jose, California, and Washington, D.C. The revelations were provided to the committee from Crow’s lawyer.
The purpose of the trips was not mentioned in the report, and Thomas has not reported them in his financial disclosures, even though some legal experts say it violates the law.
It may be the first of more revelations to come, according to Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin, who said that a full investigative report from Democrats on the committee would be released later in the summer.
“As a result of our investigation and subpoena authorization, we are providing the American public greater clarity on the extent of ethical lapses by Supreme Court justices,” Durbin said in a statement. The revelations make it “crystal clear that the highest court needs an enforceable code of conduct,” he added.
Last year, a ProPublica investigation found that Thomas received free luxury vacations from Crow nearly every year, which the Supreme Court justice failed to report until just last week. The publication also reported that Crow funded the renovation of the home where Thomas’s mother lives, as well as the private school tuition of Mark Martin, the grandson of Thomas’s sister Emma Mae Martin. Thomas and his wife, Ginni Thomas, were Martin’s legal guardians from age 6 to 19 but have since cut ties with Martin, whom Thomas once said he was raising as a “son,” Martin revealed in a recent interview.
At least three times, Crow provided trips on his private jet to the Supreme Court justice to destinations including a March 2019 trip to Thomas’s Georgia hometown, a May 2017 trip to Montana near Glacier National Park with a return flight to Dallas two days later, and a June 2021 roundtrip flight between San Jose, California, and Washington, D.C. The revelations were provided to the committee from Crow’s lawyer.
The purpose of the trips was not mentioned in the report, and Thomas has not reported them in his financial disclosures, even though some legal experts say it violates the law.
It may be the first of more revelations to come, according to Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin, who said that a full investigative report from Democrats on the committee would be released later in the summer.
“As a result of our investigation and subpoena authorization, we are providing the American public greater clarity on the extent of ethical lapses by Supreme Court justices,” Durbin said in a statement. The revelations make it “crystal clear that the highest court needs an enforceable code of conduct,” he added.
Last year, a ProPublica investigation found that Thomas received free luxury vacations from Crow nearly every year, which the Supreme Court justice failed to report until just last week. The publication also reported that Crow funded the renovation of the home where Thomas’s mother lives, as well as the private school tuition of Mark Martin, the grandson of Thomas’s sister Emma Mae Martin. Thomas and his wife, Ginni Thomas, were Martin’s legal guardians from age 6 to 19 but have since cut ties with Martin, whom Thomas once said he was raising as a “son,” Martin revealed in a recent interview.
No comments:
Post a Comment