Justice Samuel Alito Hits Back At ‘Nonsense’ Written About Him In Past Year

Justice Samuel Alito Hits Back At ‘Nonsense’ Written About Him In Past Year

Katelynn Richardson on July 28, 2023

Justice Samuel Alito told the Wall Street Journal in an interview published Friday that he “marvel[s] at all the nonsense that has been written” about him in the last year.

ProPublica published a story in June alleging he violated federal law by failing to disclose that he traveled on a private jet provided by billionaire Paul Singer to a 2008 fishing trip with Singer and others, which Alito preempted with an op-ed in the WSJ. “I have to defend myself,” Alito told the WSJ Friday, saying he saw at a certain point that “nobody else” would.

ProPublica, which has also published multiple stories alleging Justice Clarence Thomas violated ethics rules, shares some of its top donors with left-wing groups campaigning for Thomas to resign or be investigated, a Daily Caller News Foundation review of tax documents found. Additionally, a majority of ethics experts cited in its stories on Thomas and Alito donated to Democratic campaigns or left-wing causes, the DCNF found in a review of Federal Election Commission (FEC) records.

In another time, political pushback would be left for others to fend off, especially “the organized bar,” Alito told the WSJ. “[T]he traditional idea about how judges and justices should behave is they should be mute,” he told the outlet.

“But that’s just not happening,” Alito said to the WSJ. “And so at a certain point I’ve said to myself, nobody else is going to do this, so I have to defend myself.”

Alito also told the WSJ Friday what might happen if the Supreme Court is “viewed as illegitimate,” wondering if people may consider defying their decisions.

“If we’re viewed as illegitimate, then disregard of our decisions becomes more acceptable and more popular,” he told the WSJ. “So you can have a revival of the massive resistance that occurred in the South after [Brown v. Board of Education].”