The author of the dreadful Dobbs opinion, Sam the Sham Alito is at it again. He’s pitching a public fit over an expose in ProPublica.

Supremes are supposed to be tight-lipped and stoical: Alito is loose-lipped and pouty. They’re supposed to reply to critics in their opinions or the occasional press release. Even Clarence Thomas knows better than to write an op-ed aimed at his accusers; all it does is invite closer scrutiny.

Sam the Sham thinks he’s above such mundane considerations. He has a glass jaw, but stuck it out to be punched in the Wall Street Journal. His obstreperous op-ed was published *before* ProPublica skinned and gutted him.

It turns out that Justice Thomas isn’t the only Justice who freeloads luxury vacations from wealthy GOP donors. Sam the Sham has his own fishy fish story of an unreported trip on a rich guy’s dime.

That rich guy, Paul Singer, is the worst of the worst: a hedge fund billionaire. Think Bobby Axelrod in Billions. This time, Sam the Sham is the one with an axe to grind.

The ProPublica piece is must-read BUT this image floating about on Twitter sums it up neatly:

In a word, fishy. I feel a fish song coming on:

The latest SCOTUS scandal is worse than the Crow-Thomas mishigas. Here’s the money quote, literally:

“Singer was more than a fellow angler. He flew Alito to Alaska on a private jet. If the justice chartered the plane himself, the cost could have exceeded $100,000 one way.

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.”

I don’t subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, but The Hill has a fulsome account of Alito’s rant:

“Alito said in the op-ed that he had “no obligation to recuse” in the cases cited by ProPublica, adding that he’s spoken to Singer “on no more than a handful of occasions, all of which (with the exception of small talk during a fishing trip 15 years ago) consisted of brief and casual comments at events attended by large groups. ” 

“Because his name did not appear in these filings, I was unaware of his connection with any of the listed entities, and I had no good reason to be aware of that,” Alito added. “

This is bluster and bullshit worthy of Federal Defendant Trump. It’s unbecoming for a Supreme Court Justice or at least should be. Alito is a schnorrer, not an angler.

A fellow past malaka of the week was the political yenta who brought Alito and Singer together:

“Leonard Leo, the longtime leader of the conservative Federalist Society, attended and helped organize the Alaska fishing vacation. Leo invited Singer to join, according to a person familiar with the trip, and asked Singer if he and Alito could fly on the billionaire’s jet. Leo had recently played an important role in the justice’s confirmation to the court. Singer and the lodge owner were both major donors to Leo’s political groups.”

The malakatude, it burns.

Legal pundits have been scathing in response to the Leo-Alito-Singer scandal.

So Justice Alito & the WSJ unethically leaked elements of ProPublica’s ongoing investigation into Alito’s unethical conduct re a billionaire hedge fund manager with cases pending at SCOTUS, involving huge gifts Alito illegally failed to report!https://t.co/aMhdxHIMwI

— Laurence Tribe 🇺🇦 ⚖️ (@tribelaw) June 21, 2023

As always, I dig The Puppetmaster’s comment the most. He calls a bribe a bribe:

Just gotta love a Justice arguing that he had to take the bribe otherwise the money would have gone to waste.

Welcome to lawlessness. https://t.co/Sx6axE5M3g

— Andrew Weissmann 🌻 (@AWeissmann_) June 21, 2023

Like the American democracy it’s supposed to uphold, the Supreme Court is in crisis. So much dirty laundry has been aired that Senator Ed Markey proposed a bill expanding the high court from 9 to 13 even before the latest Alito shoe dropped. That way we might be able to have a few more honest justices. Two have been exposed as deeply corrupt, Alito and Thomas, whereas the Chief Justice is merely sleazy. Earl Warren weeps.

The latest SCOTUS scandal smells as bad as a dead fish left on the beach for 48 hours. That’s my angle on the Curious Case of the Runaway Justice. I added the first bit because I seem to be turning into Erle Stanley Gardner who knew a curious case when he saw one.

Repeat after me: Sam the Sham Alito is a schnorrer, not an angler.

The last word goes to Del Shannon followed by Jefferson Starship with a different song of the same title: