The ethical implications of President-elect Trump's call with Justice Alito; NPR, January 9, 2025

Michel Martin, NPR; The ethical implications of President-elect Trump's call with Justice Alito

"Alito and Trump spoke Tuesday, a day before the president-elect urged the Supreme Court to halt his Jan. 10 sentencing in the New York hush-money case, the justice said in a statement from the court. They did not discuss the case, however, Alito said.

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: 

Donald Trump spoke with Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito on Tuesday, just hours before the president-elect asked the top court to block his sentencing over his New York hush money case. Alito said in a statement that the two of them did not discuss the case or any others involving Mr. Trump or potentially involving him. Gabe Roth joined me earlier to talk about this development, which was first reported by ABC News. Mr. Roth founded Fix the Court. His group advocates for ways to make the federal courts more open and accountable to the public. Good morning. Thanks for joining us.

GABE ROTH: Good morning.

MARTIN: So let me give a picture of the call, as we understand it. Justice Alito said in a statement that one of his former law clerks asked him to take a call from Mr. Trump regarding his qualifications to serve in a government position, in essence, to give him a job reference. What do you make of it?

ROTH: I mean, well, it's obviously an unmistakable breach of protocol. You have an individual and the president-elect, who is petitioning the Supreme Court related to his sentencing in the hush money case, a Supreme Court justice, who, frankly, should know better. This conversation should not have taken place. And someone like Will Levi, the man in question who's looking for a credential, he has plenty of other credentials. He worked for Mike Lee. He could have Mike Lee call. He could - he's worked - he's been a partner in the law. His dad's a former federal judge. His grandfather was the attorney general. So, you know, it doesn't make sense from his perspective, and it's just - this episode shows the justices don't really care about the ethics because they know that no one's going to stop them from doing whatever it is that they want to do.

MARTIN: Have any ethical rules or laws been broken here, to your knowledge?

ROTH: Laws - I don't see any laws having been broken, but, you know, there are certain protocols that if you are a Supreme Court justice, you really don't intermingle with the executive branch or the incoming executive branch. I mean, maybe you attend the State of the Union speech that happens every year, though Justice Alito famously stopped attending that. But generally, the two branches don't intermingle - and especially at a time when President Trump, we know, is going to have all these executive orders coming down the pike whose fate will be decided by the justices. This, to me, just seems like an opportunity for him to have an audience before one of the nine people determining his and his administration's fate in so many of these issues...

It's all self-enforcing and self-policing. So that is really, you know, sort of what the challenge is for people like me and other people who care about the ethics of our highest court is - how do you get the justices to act in a way that is sort of consistent with what most people would believe are their ethical responsibilities?"

Alito Spoke With Trump Shortly Before Supreme Court Filing; The New York Times, January 8, 2025

Adam Liptak, The New York Times ; Alito Spoke With Trump Shortly Before Supreme Court Filing

"Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. spoke with President-elect Donald J. Trump on Tuesday, not long before Mr. Trump’s lawyers asked the Supreme Court to delay his sentencing following his conviction in New York in a case arising from hush money payments.

Justice Alito said the call was a routine job reference for a former law clerk whom Mr. Trump was considering for a government position.

It was not clear, however, why Mr. Trump would make a call to check references, a task generally left to lower-level aides.

Gabe Roth, the executive director of Fix the Court, an advocacy group that seeks more openness at the Supreme Court, said the call was deeply problematic given the ethics controversies swirling around the court in general and Justice Alito in particular."

‘This Is the Land of Wolves Now’: Two Columnists Get to the Heart of Biden’s Pardon; The New York Times, December 3, 2024

ROSS DOUTHAT AND DAVID FRENCH, The New York Times; ‘This Is the Land of Wolves Now’: Two Columnists Get to the Heart of Biden’s Pardon

"Patrick Healy, the deputy Opinion editor, hosted an online conversation with the Times Opinion columnists Ross Douthat and David French about President Biden’s decision to issue a broad pardon to his son Hunter Biden.

Patrick Healy: Ross and David, you both have written extensively about the rule of law and presidential power. You both have a good sense of what American voters care about. And you both are fathers. So I’m curious what struck you most about President Biden’s statement that he was pardoning his son Hunter Biden.

David French: As a father, I think it would be very, very hard to watch your son go to prison — especially if you have the power to set him free. I can’t imagine the pain of watching Hunter’s long battle with substance abuse and then watching his conviction in court. But in his role as president, Biden’s primary responsibility is to the country and the Constitution, not his family.

As president, this pardon represents a profound failure. Biden was dishonest — he told us that he wouldn’t pardon Hunter — and this use of the pardon power reeks of the kind of royal privilege that is antithetical to America’s republican values...

Ross Douthat: I think it’s important to stress that Biden always kept Hunter close, within the larger aura of his own power, in ways that likely helped his son trade on his dad’s name even as his own life was completely out of control. This pardon is a continuation or completion of that closeness: It’s a moral failure, as David says, a dereliction, but one that’s of a piece with the president’s larger inability to create a sustained separation between his own position and his troubled son’s lifestyle and business dealings and place in the family’s inner circle. A clearer separation would have been better not just for the president and the country, but also for Hunter himself — even if he’s benefiting from it now, at the last."

Trump Holds Up Transition Process Over Ethics Code; The New York Times, November 9, 2024

 Ken Bensinger, The New York Times; Trump Holds Up Transition Process Over Ethics Code

[Kip Currier: Incipit (It begins)...]

"President-elect Donald J. Trump has not yet submitted a legally required ethics pledge stating that he will avoid conflicts of interest and other ethical concerns while in office, raising concerns that his refusal to do so will hamper the smooth transition to power.

Mr. Trump’s transition team was required to submit the ethics plan by Oct. 1, according to the Presidential Transition Act.

While the transition team’s leadership has privately drafted an ethics code and a conflict-of-interest statement governing its staff, those documents do not include language, required under the law, that explains how Mr. Trump himself will address conflicts of interest during his presidency.

Since Mr. Trump created his transition team in August, it has refused to participate in the normal handoff process, which typically begins months before the election.

It has missed multiple deadlines for signing required agreements governing the process. That has prevented Mr. Trump’s transition team from participating in national security briefings or gaining access to federal agencies to begin the complicated work of preparing to take control of the government on Jan. 20, 2025."

‘Anticipatory obedience’: newspapers’ refusal to endorse shines light on billionaire owners’ motives; The Guardian, October 26, 2024

Lois Beckett, The Guardian; ‘Anticipatory obedience’: newspapers’ refusal to endorse shines light on billionaire owners’ motives

"When two American billionaires blocked the newspapers they own from endorsing Kamala Harris this month, they tried to frame the decision as an act of civic responsibility.

“I think my fear is, if we chose either one, that it would just add to the division,” Patrick Soon-Shiong, the biotech billionaire who owns the Los Angeles Times, said. He emphasised that though some might assume his family is “ultra-progressive”, he is a registered “independent”.

At the Washington Post, which reported that its billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos, was behind the decision, publisher William Lewis described the retreat from making presidential endorsements as “a statement in support of our readers’ ability to make up their own minds”.

Veteran journalists and media critics are using a very different phrase to describe Soon-Shiong’s and Bezos’s choice: they’re saying the two billionaires, among the richest men on the entire globe, are performing “anticipatory obedience” to Donald Trump.

Yes, “cowardice” has also been a popular way to describe the choice by the billionaire owners of two of the country’s major newspapers to not to risk angering Trump by allowing their papers to endorse his opponent.

But “anticipatory obedience” is more specific. The term comes from On Tyranny, the bestselling guide to authoritarianism by Timothy Snyder, a historian of eastern and central Europe. The phrase describes, in Snyder’s words, “the major lesson of the Nazi takeover, and what was supposed to be one of the major lessons of the twentieth century: don’t hand over the power you have before you have to. Don’t protect yourself too early.” It’s a way of describing what Europeans did wrong as totalitarians came to power: by “mentally and physically conceding, you’re already giving over your power to the aspiring authoritarian”, Snyder explains."

Ex-WaPo Editor: This Is a Straight Bezos-Trump ‘Quid Pro Quo’; The Washington Post, October 27, 2024

 Lily Mae Lazarus , The Daily Beast; Ex-WaPo Editor: This Is a Straight Bezos-Trump ‘Quid Pro Quo’

"The Washington Post’s outgoing editor-at-large and longtime columnist has made explosive claims that its owner Jeff Bezos struck a deal with Donald Trump in order to kill the newspaper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris.

Robert Kagan, who resigned from his position on Friday after more than two decades at the publication, told the Daily Beast that Trump’s meeting with executives of Bezos’ Blue Origin space company the same day that the Amazonfounder killed a plan to support Harris was proof of the backroom deal."

Here’s what will happen to library executive who took Super Bowl tickets; Las Vegas Review-Journal, October 16, 2024

Jessica Hill,  Las Vegas Review-Journal; Here’s what will happen to library executive who took Super Bowl tickets

"For one year, Watson must comply with the ethics law and not be the subject of a complaint that a Commission on Ethics review panel finds sufficient cause to refer to the panel, Armstrong said.

He also said Watson must arrange and implement ethics law training for himself and all of the library district’s staff.

If Watson complies with the agreement and meets those requirements, the alleged violation will be dismissed, “and the library district will have a strong ethics foundation to build on going forward,” Armstrong said.

Ethics commissioner Teresa Lowry urged government employees not to accept tickets for the many sporting events offered in Las Vegas, from football to the National Finals Rodeo to Formula 1.

Lowry said Watson’s case is an outlier in that he relied on the advice of counsel, but it can serve as a cautionary tale for employees subject to Nevada ethics laws.

“It was wrong advice. It was bad advice, but our law looks at and gives mitigators to people who reasonably go to their counsel, and the safe harbor implications are then going to apply,” she said. “But just as a cautionary tale, as the events unfold for the remainder of this year and moving forward, if you are a public official, public employee, do not take tickets, accept gifts to these various sporting events.”"

He Regulated Medical Devices. His Wife Represented Their Makers.; The New York Times, August 20, 2024

 Christina Jewett, The New York Times; He Regulated Medical Devices. His Wife Represented Their Makers.

"For 15 years, Dr. Jeffrey E. Shuren was the federal official charged with ensuring the safety of a vast array of medical devices including artificial knees, breast implants and Covid tests.

When he announced in July that he would be retiring from the Food and Drug Administration later this year, Dr. Robert Califf, the agency’s commissioner, praised him for overseeing the approval of more novel devices last year than ever before in the nearly half-century history of the device division.

But the admiration for Dr. Shuren is far from universal. Consumer advocates see his tenure as marred by the approval of too many devices that harmed patients and by his own close ties to the $500 billion global device industry.

One connection stood out: While Dr. Shuren regulated the booming medical device industry, his wife, Allison W. Shuren, represented the interests of device makers as the co-leader of a team of lawyers at Arnold & Porter, one of Washington’s most powerful law firms."

Sasse’s spending spree: Former UF president channeled millions to GOP allies, secretive contracts; The Independent Florida Alligator, August 12, 2024

Garrett Shanley, The Independent Florida Alligator; Sasse’s spending spree: Former UF president channeled millions to GOP allies, secretive contracts

"In his 17-month stint as UF president, Ben Sasse more than tripled his office’s spending, directing millions in university funds into secretive consulting contracts and high-paying positions for his GOP allies.

Sasse ballooned spending under the president’s office to $17.3 million in his first year in office — up from $5.6 million in former UF President Kent Fuchs’ last year, according to publicly available administrative budget data.

A majority of the spending surge was driven by lucrative contracts with big-name consulting firms and high-salaried, remote positions for Sasse’s former U.S. Senate staff and Republican officials.

Sasse’s consulting contracts have been kept largely under wraps, leaving the public in the dark about what the contracted firms did to earn their fees. The university also declined to clarify specific duties carried out by Sasse’s ex-Senate staff, several of whom were salaried as presidential advisers."

Why the Supreme Court’s wasted time on ethics may cost it; CNN, November 1, 2023

Joan Biskupic, CNN; Why the Supreme Court’s wasted time on ethics may cost it

"Supreme Court justices, who have infinite power over American lives, have continually resisted calls for greater accountability in a formal code of conduct.

Some justices recently signaled that they might be ready to adopt a binding ethics code. But their record of inaction reflects the difficulty of compromise among the nine and suggests any real change may not come at their own hand.

The delay has had consequences.

Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats plan to authorize subpoenas for three wealthy conservatives, including real estate magnate Harlan Crow, who has provided luxury travel and other gifts to Justice Clarence Thomas."

Clarence Thomas Secretly Participated in Koch Network Donor Events; ProPublica, September 22, 2023

 Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott  Alex Mierjeski, ProPublica ; Clarence Thomas Secretly Participated in Koch Network Donor Events

"The code of conduct for the federal judiciary lays out rules designed to preserve judges’ impartiality and independence, which it calls “indispensable to justice in our society.” The code specifically prohibits both political activity and participation in fundraising. Judges are advised, for instance, not to “associate themselves” with any group “publicly identified with controversial legal, social, or political positions.”

But the code of conduct only applies to the lower courts. At the Supreme Court, justices decide what’s appropriate for themselves.

“I can’t imagine — it takes my breath away, frankly — that he would go to a Koch network event for donors,” said John E. Jones III, a retired federal judge appointed by President George W. Bush. Jones said that if he had gone to a Koch summit as a district court judge, “I’d have gotten a letter that would’ve commenced a disciplinary proceeding.”

“What you’re seeing is a slow creep toward unethical behavior. Do it if you can get away with it,” Jones said."

Clarence Thomas’ 38 Vacations: The Other Billionaires Who Have Treated the Supreme Court Justice to Luxury Travel; ProPublica, August 10, 2023

 Brett Murphy and Alex Mierjeski, ProPublica; Clarence Thomas’ 38 Vacations: The Other Billionaires Who Have Treated the Supreme Court Justice to Luxury Travel

"This accounting of Thomas’ travel, revealed for the first time here from an array of previously unavailable information, is the fullest to date of the generosity that has regularly afforded Thomas a lifestyle far beyond what his income could provide. And it is almost certainly an undercount.

While some of the hospitality, such as stays in personal homes, may not have required disclosure, Thomas appears to have violated the law by failing to disclose flights, yacht cruises and expensive sports tickets, according to ethics experts.

Perhaps even more significant, the pattern exposes consistent violations of judicial norms, experts, including seven current and former federal judges appointed by both parties, told ProPublica. “In my career I don’t remember ever seeing this degree of largesse given to anybody,” said Jeremy Fogel, a former federal judge who served for years on the judicial committee that reviews judges’ financial disclosures. “I think it’s unprecedented.”"

Clarence Thomas’ 38 Vacations: The Other Billionaires Who Have Treated the Supreme Court Justice to Luxury Travel

A Federal Judge Asks: Does the Supreme Court Realize How Bad It Smells?; The New York Times, July 14, 2023

Michael Ponsor, The New York Times ; A Federal Judge Asks: Does the Supreme Court Realize How Bad It Smells?

"All my judicial colleagues, whoever has appointed them, run into situations like these regularly, and I expect they have responded in just the same way. You don’t just stay inside the lines; you stay well inside the lines. This is not a matter of politics or judicial philosophy. It is ethics in the trenches.

The recent descriptions of the behavior of some of our justices and particularly their attempts to defend their conduct have not just raised my eyebrows; they’ve raised the whole top of my head. Lavish, no-cost vacations? Hypertechnical arguments about how a free private airplane flight is a kind of facility? A justice’s spouse prominently involved in advocating on issues before the court without the justice’s recusal? Repeated omissions in mandatory financial disclosure statements brushed under the rug as inadvertent? A justice’s taxpayer-financed staff reportedly helping to promote her books? Private school tuition for a justice’s family member covered by a wealthy benefactor? Wow.

Although the exact numbers fluctuate because of vacancies, the core of our federal judiciary comprises roughly 540 magistrate judges, 670 district judges, 180 appeals court judges and nine Supreme Court justices — fewer than 1,500 men and women in a country of more than 330 million people and 3.8 million square miles. Much depends on this small cohort’s acute sense of smell, its instinctive, uncompromising integrity and its appearance of integrity. If reports are true, some of our justices are, sadly, letting us down."

Don’t downplay Sonia Sotomayor’s poor conduct. Fix it.; MSNBC, July 13, 2023

 Zeeshan Aleem, MSNBC ; Don’t downplay Sonia Sotomayor’s poor conduct. Fix it.

"The response from some liberal commentators has been to downplay the matter. They correctly point out that Sotomayor’s impropriety is minor in comparison to recent ethics scandals involving fellow Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, who have been lavished with vacations and gifts from billionaire GOP activists. But a purely comparative lens distracts from the problem. Once again we’re seeing that the Supreme Court has no guardrails against exploitation of power, whether large or small, liberal justice or conservative. And that makes ethics reform at the court even more necessary...

On yet another occasion, an aide said the number of books a library had purchased in advance of an event was “definitely not enough,” prompting library staff members to push back by saying it was a book publisher and bookseller matter...

Sotomayor’s recently revealed conduct isn’t even close to the worst of the things we’ve learned about how justices have inappropriately used their power. But an error is an error. That it’s a liberal Supreme Court justice doesn’t make me more inclined to dismiss it — it makes me less so: I expect more from people whose ideology should make them more vigilant against misuse of power. It’s a reminder that we need rules rather than blind trust to protect the public. The solution here is not to point the finger elsewhere, but to call with even more urgency for Supreme Court ethics reform through Congress."

The Supreme Court makes almost all of its decisions on the 'shadow docket.' An author argues it should worry Americans more than luxury trips.; Insider, July 7, 2023

Erin Snodgrass, Insider; The Supreme Court makes almost all of its decisions on the 'shadow docket.' An author argues it should worry Americans more than luxury trips.

"The decisions made on the shadow docket are not inherently biased, Vladeck said, but the lack of transparency stokes legitimate concerns about the court's politicization and polarization, especially as the public's trust in the institution reaches an all-time low.

"Even judges and justices acting in good faith can leave the impression that their decisions are motivated by bias or bad faith — which is why judicial ethics standards, even those few that apply to the Supreme Court itself, worry about both bias and the appearance thereof," Vladeck writes.

The dangers posed by the shadow docket are more perilous than the wrongs of individual justices, Vladeck argues, because the shadow docket's ills are inherently institutional." 

The One Ethics Rule the Supreme Court Needs Before Its Next Term; The Washington Post, July 3, 2023

Gabe Roth | Bloomberg; The One Ethics Rule the Supreme Court Needs Before Its Next Term

[Kip Currier: Interesting idea of "cooling off period" for U.S. Supreme Court Justices, as Gabe Roth describes: "If you’re a justice who, in the last 10 years, has received income, including book advances and royalties, from an individual, corporation, security or government office, and that entity finds itself before the court, recusal should be required."

It is absolutely appalling that these nine highest judicial arbiters in America are not out in front on this issue of U.S. Supreme Court ethics reform.

Shame on all nine of you for not speaking out on your ethical lapses and for not taking substantive action to make amends to the American people for whom you serve, to inspire greater public confidence in the vital roles to which you have been entrusted. Each one of you has a responsibility to avoid appearances of impropriety and to set the highest standards of judicial conduct and ethics.]

"What might be worse: Some court-watchers are insisting Thomas and Alito did nothing wrong in accepting their largesse. That’s a preposterous position considering the legal standard for bias, as summarized three decades ago by Justice John Paul Stevens: “The relevant inquiry […] is not whether or not the judge was actually biased but whether he or she appeared biased.” Put it another way, as the Code of Conduct for US Judges does: “An appearance of impropriety occurs when reasonable minds, with knowledge of all the relevant circumstances […], would conclude that the judge’s honesty, integrity, impartiality, temperament or fitness to serve as a judge is impaired.”...

Again, you don’t need to verify that X (a gift or free trip) led to Y (a specific outcome in a case). If the X is fishy, the specifics of the Y don’t matter much. And these days, SCOTUS smells like weeks-old salmon...

Ethics rules exist not so that public officials can come as close as possible to crossing the line and then generate a debate on the line’s contours. They’re not policies from which officials can cherry-pick certain phrases that they believe to be loopholes. They’re there to help navigate difficult questions with an eye toward maintaining public confidence. It’s clear the Supreme Court has strayed from that vision and needs help getting back on track.

It’s worth noting that although Thomas’s and Alito’s lapses are the most egregious, every justice currently on the court could be accused of some ethical failure...

Here’s my solution, and it’s not the uber-nonspecific “ethics code.” Instead, Congress should institute a hard-and-fast cooling off period for the justices."

The Tragedy of John Roberts; The New York Times, July 3, 2023

Jeff Shesol, The New York Times ; The Tragedy of John Roberts

"The chief justice is portrayed by some as a tragic figure, powerless to save his court from itself. But the tragedy of John Roberts is that he does have the power to restore some measure of the court’s reputation — he just hasn’t used it...

This term will likely be remembered as the year the Supreme Court, led by its chief justice, ended race-conscious admissions at the nation’s colleges and universities. But the larger story of this term has been one of ethical rot and official indifference...

But the appearance of impropriety cannot simply be waved away. It cannot be ruled inadmissible in the court of public opinion. To paraphrase Justice Potter Stewart, we know it when we see it — and indeed, we have seen a good deal of it. Perhaps, behind the scenes, the chief is working toward reform. Perhaps he has admonished his colleagues, urged restraint. If so, he has failed. To redeem the reputation of his court, he must do more to put his house in order."

Documents reveal justices’ long-running tensions over ethics; The Washington Post, June 26, 2023

 Tobi Raji

, 

Theodoric Meyer

 and 

Leigh Ann Caldwell

, The Washington Post ; Documents reveal justices’ long-running tensions over ethics

"Newly released and previously unreported court documents that belonged to Justice John Paul Stevens, who led the marble palace’s liberal wing, show just how aware the justices were of charges that the appearance of impropriety could shake the public’s faith in the institution. They also show just how quick they were to push back against these concerns. 

The Library of Congress opened the papers to the public on May 2.

The issues the justices wrestled with back then echo the controversies engulfing the court today. Although the court often puts up a united front in public, the documents provide a rare glimpse into its inner workings and show that at least one justice — Stevens — found Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist’s rationale for not recusing himself from a major case to be insufficient."

Justice Samuel Alito Took Luxury Fishing Vacation With GOP Billionaire Who Later Had Cases Before the Court; ProPublica, June 20, 2023

Justin Elliott, Joshua Kaplan, Alex Mierjeski, ProPublica; Justice Samuel Alito Took Luxury Fishing Vacation With GOP Billionaire Who Later Had Cases Before the Court

"In the years that followed, Singer’s hedge fund came before the court at least 10 times in cases where his role was often covered by the legal press and mainstream media. In 2014, the court agreed to resolve a key issue in a decade-long battle between Singer’s hedge fund and the nation of Argentina. Alito did not recuse himself from the case and voted with the 7-1 majority in Singer’s favor. The hedge fund was ultimately paid $2.4 billion.

Alito did not report the 2008 fishing trip on his annual financial disclosures. By failing to disclose the private jet flight Singer provided, Alito appears to have violated a federal law that requires justices to disclose most gifts, according to ethics law experts.

Experts said they could not identify an instance of a justice ruling on a case after receiving an expensive gift paid for by one of the parties."

The US supreme court’s alleged ethics issues are worse than you probably realize; The Guardian, April 28, 2023

Moira Donegan, The Guardian; The US supreme court’s alleged ethics issues are worse than you probably realize

"Bad intent by the justices need not be present for the mere appearance of corruption to have a corrosive effect on the rule of law, and both Gorsuch and Thomas have allowed a quite severe appearance of corruption to attach itself to the court. Both have claimed that they are such intelligent and gifted legal minds that they should be given lifelong appointments of unparalleled power, and also that they have made innocent mistakes on legal forms that they are too dumb to understand.

The claim strains credulity. What it looks like, to the American people who have to live under the laws that the supreme court shapes, is that Thomas has long been living lavishly on the dime of a rightwing billionaire who wants rightwing rulings, and that Gorsuch conveniently managed to sell a house he didn’t want at the precise moment when he became important enough to be worth bribing.

The chief justice doesn’t seem very worried about this appearance of impropriety. In light of these alarming ethics concerns, Roberts’ curt rejection of the committee’s invitation to testify speaks to an evident indifference to ethical standards, or a contempt for the oversight powers of the nominally coequal branches. Ironically enough, his nonchalance has made the reality even more plain than it was before: the court will not police itself. The other branches need to show the justices their place."