After weeks of news reports revealing a series of ethics scandals surrounding U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas for his acceptance of extravagant gifts from conservative billionaire Harlan Crow, the Pulitzer Prize-winning online news site ProPublica has uncovered more apparent ethics violations, this time by Justice Samuel Alito.
ProPublica reports that in 2008 Justice Alito accepted a seat on a private plane owned by Republican megadonor Paul Singer which flew him to Alaska for a luxury fishing trip hosted by another right-wing businessman. Alito failed to declare such gifts or recuse himself when Singer had business before the court. Thus far Chief Justice John Roberts has resisted calls to institute ethics rules for the Supreme Court or testify in Congress about the Thomas-Crow affair.
Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with investigative journalist Greg Palast, New York Times best-selling author of “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.” Here, Palast, who has investigated hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer’s ruthless financial schemes that have brought misery to millions in the Congo, Argentina and Peru, talks about how Alito was the Supreme Court’s deciding vote that gutted the 1965 Voting Rights Act, an outcome in which Singer had invested millions of his fortune.
GREG PALAST: Paul Singer. Let’s say who he is, okay? He’s known as The Vulture. While I’ve given him the name The Vulture, everyone uses it. I’ve been hunting this guy since 2007 for BBC Television. I’ve literally tracked him from Africa to Asia to Latin America to Detroit, Michigan, one of the Third World countries he’s attacked.
He’s known as The Vulture.He runs a vulture fund. It’s called a Vulture Fund — that I didn’t make up. It’s actually called a vulture fund whose job is to take dying companies, dying nations. And by the way, dying people. He’s kind of like a repo man who takes old debts and then does whatever it takes. I mean, whatever it takes. In most cases, his activities are illegal. Whatever it takes to collect basically a pound of flesh from his victims.
2008, we find out that he has a couple of private jets, a couple of them. And he takes politicians, judges, you name it, for free rides. You know, a seat on a private jet from New York to Alaska is about $100,000, usually, given free to Alito. I love Alito’s line that if he didn’t take it, the seat would have been empty.
I’m very disappointed in ProPublica, for one thing, for only looking at one single case. And they said, “Well, and Alito made the point, okay, there was one case in which (Singer) was directly named as a plaintiff that the court ruled on in 2008 and just a couple of years after the trip where Singer went with Justice Alito (and) also the head of the Federalist Society.
That’s very important because if you’re a judge, and there’s a Republican administration and you basically have to be approved by the Federalist Society, so if you’re a judge and you’re looking at this — you want to move up to the Supreme Court, you see Singer and the head of the Federalist Society and the Supreme Court justice with this vulture. You’re going to pleasure this vulture because he’s the guy who can give you a judgeship. He’s like the new Roy Cohn picking our judges for us. That’s very important.
But he voted in a case where, I mean, I don’t think that they found a legal scholar yet who said that he shouldn’t have recused himself, removed himself from a case. So that’s the immediate ProPublica story. That’s only beginning of the way this guy’s operating.
The most important case to me, Scott, frankly, is that it was Singer who pushed the case Shelby v Holder. Singer is the big money and the power behind the Manhattan Institute. And they ran and funded with the Koch brothers — Singer and the Koch brothers, hand-in-hand, they also work in coordination, Singer’s far more right-wing than the Koch brothers, I should note. Singer, through the Manhattan Institute pushed so Shelby v Holder.
Now actually yesterday happened to be the 10th anniversary of Shelby v Holder. And that’s the case that basically gutted the Voting Rights Act. And that was Paul Singer and that was a 5-4 vote.
What they said about the Argentina vote. Yeah, maybe Alito shouldn’t have been on that case, but it was a 7 to 1 decision. Well, that’s only a minor case that he is involving Shelby v Holder, which has entirely changed our political landscape made it much, much more difficult for people of color to vote. Much more difficult. And that was a 5-4 decision. Alito should not have been on that.
SCOTT HARRIS: Greg, public confidence in the U.S. Supreme Court is at its lowest since 1973. And this follows a string of revelations about Justice Clarence Thomas and the lavish trips and gifts that he’s received from other billionaires. Tell us a bit about your perspective here. What should the American people conclude from all this money or gifts changing hands between the wealthiest people in the country and these Supreme Court justices?
GREG PALAST: People still think of the Supreme Court as these wise — you watch TV, you know, judges in their wise robes and they’re always judicious. The Supreme Court, it’s already been decaying. I should note that Paul Singer also gave free rides, these free $100,000 seat hunting trips to Justice Antonin Scalia before then. And there were a lot of 5-4 decisions.
Remember, until Scalia was on the court, we didn’t have the Second Amendment — never, never, ever in the court’s history had it interpreted the right to own a gun. Personally. There was never a right to own guns (personally) in the Constitution — never recognized by the court. And Scalia pulled that off on a 5-4 decision. He was also pleasured by Singer.
So you have basically our Supreme Court of our land, our final arbiter on the Constitution has been corrupted and it’s getting more corrupt and more ideological and less judicious. So it’s been a decayed court for a long time. People are just waking up to it.
Palast’s new award-winning film “Vigilante: Georgia’s Vote Suppression Hitman,” will premiere next year.
For more information, visit Greg Palast’s website at gregpalast.com.
Listen to Scott Harris’ in-depth interview with Greg Palast (15:55) and see more articles and opinion pieces in the Related Links section of this page.
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