Long Arm of Law: Lavish Vacancy in Alaska to Justice Alito, Flores Indonesia to Justice Thomas (Thanks for ProPublica)
Juneau Alaska 3.11am; DC 6.11am; Flores Indonesia 7.11pm, London 11.11am
UPDATE:
6.50pm ET June 21 2023 (around 18.5 hours after new article by ProPublica to response Op-Ed by Justice Alito), Board Editorial of WSJ “DEFENDING” (again) Justice Alito.
It's very rare that the complicated gratification received by SCOTUS is related to Indonesia. But please give me a chance to explain it. A private jet. A beautiful picnic to tropical and exotic animals (Komodo). Glacier ice martinis. A hedge fund warring with the nation of Argentina. How ultrarich donors got access to SCOTUS justices by providing free luxury travel. And what happens when those same donors have case after case before the court.
Whenever asked to comment on a story or op-ed, send response directly to the WSJ edit page, which is renowned for its unrelenting commitment to fairness and accuracy. ProPublica emailed some questions for a story to SCOTUS Justice Samuel Anthony Alito Jr and instead of answering the questions or just ignoring the email, he (Justice Sam Alito) ran to his little gremlin friends at the WSJ Opinion section and wrote a blog post about it. According to the timestamp in WSJ, Alito op-ed is 6.25pm EDT (June 20th, 2023). during his Senate confirmation hearings, he (Alito) said he recuses himself when “any possible question might arise.” He now maintains that accepting private jet flights from a litigant is not grounds for recusal. He now maintains that accepting private jet flights from a litigant is not grounds for recusal.
ProPublica's response (via twitter account), according to the timestamp in twitter, is very dramatic: June 20th, 2023, 11.53pm, just 7 minutes before change day, no wasting time to waiting until Wednesday. ProPublica also and posted another investigation link about Alito, “Justice Alito didn't answer our questions. Instead, he wrote an opinion piece attacking as unfair a story he hadn't read.”
On ProPublica website, according to prominent writer Kurt B. Andersen, ProPublica posted article about Justice Alito 11.21pm (32 minutes before tweeted).
(I set up twitter timestamp-based Jakarta-Bangkok time. 10.53am means 11.53pm in DC)
6.50pm ET, June 21 2023 (around 18.5 hours after new article by ProPublica to response Op-Ed by Justice Alito), Board Editorial of WSJ “DEFENDING” (again) Justice Alito.
Zack Stanton from Politico
Steve Clemons, Founding Editor at Large of SEMAFOR
I’m thinking about how many columns WSJ opinion has published over the past couple years in which editorial board members seem to have well-placed sources who seem to know something about what’s going on behind closed doors at the Supreme Court.
(Around 11.54am Moscow time, June 22nd, 2023)
WSJ has been under scrutiny since the midterm election, thanks to Rupert Murdoch (owner), because Murdoch intended to favor Ron DeSantis rather than Trump again for the 2024 election. Also, of course, Evan Gershkovich, currently day-82 in Moscow prison. According to Matthew Stoller, WSJ (via op-ed) already sent the 67th attack on Lina Khan from the WSJ editorial page. They are (WSJ) obsessed, and it’s creepy.
According to Alex B. Ward (just 22 hours ago he reported Cuba - China military exercise near Florida) and Josh Gerstein (both are POLITICO journo), Justice Alito is key to how Roe v Wade overturned (EXACTLY 1 YEAR AGO, June 21, 2022). According to a new investigation by WIRED (posted minutes ago), “When Roe v. Wade fell, telehealth companies received a surge of inquiries from patients searching for mail-order abortion pills. New legal challenges could make it harder for them to get access.” According to the Intercept, on June 15th 2023 - still a fresh investigation, after Roe v. Wade was overturned, the FBI opened almost 10 times more terrorism investigations into abortion activists. (Still) other investigation by The Intercept, on May 23, 2023 (1 month ago), Dataminr, an “official partner” of Twitter, alerted a federal law enforcement agency to pro-abortion protests and rallies in the wake of the reversal of Roe v. Wade, according to documents obtained by The Intercept.
In May 2023, a group of women who went to high school with Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan wanted to send her bagels and lox from Russ & Daughters, the legendary deli on the Lower East Side. But they scrapped the plan after Kagan expressed concerns about the court’s ethics rules for reporting gifts.
The idea for the gift originated in a Facebook group for women who attended Hunter College High School in Manhattan in the 1970s. (Kagan was in the class of ’77.)
“I somewhat tongue-in-cheek said, ‘I feel so badly for her, it must be so lonely and difficult, we should send her a care package,’” recalled Ann Starer, Hunter class of ’75.
The idea of sending the appetizing spread was proposed in February 2021 and abandoned soon after. But Kagan’s ethical concerns about accepting bagels and lox from her high school pals are newly relevant in contrast with the scandal surrounding Justice Clarence Thomas, who failed to disclose luxury vacations and other gifts from billionaire Republican donor Harlan Crow.
The writer Sarah Schulman, who also went to Hunter, posted on Facebook on May 6 that the care package for Kagan was envisioned “as a sign of support for the nightmare of having to go to work with Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch every day. She turned it down because her ethical standard is to not accept any gifts. I mean, she said no to lox and bagels!”
Compare that to Thomas, Schulman added, with “his real estate, fancy travel and cold hard cash. Lox!”
Kagan is the eighth Jewish justice in the high court’s history, and currently its only Jewish member. During her 2010 Senate confirmation hearings, Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, asked where she was on Christmas, and she responded: “Like all Jews, I was probably at a Chinese restaurant.”
Schulman, a novelist, playwright, gay activist and historian, was one of several dozen Hunter alumnae who chipped in $10 apiece toward the proposed order — which also was meant to include babka. (“I was never sending a Russ and Daughters gift basket without the babka!” Starer said.) A few women also sent personal tchotchkes to pass along to Kagan, Starer said — including a bag of chocolates and a handmade work of crochet. The linguist Deborah Tannen, who graduated from Hunter in 1962, sent an autographed copy of her memoir.
Before shipping anything, though, Starer got in touch with Kagan because she “didn’t want to send it without having her OK.” Once Kagan expressed concerns that the gifts might pose issues under the Supreme Court’s rules on gifts and disclosures, Starer decided against following through with the package. The money and tchotchkes were returned to the contributors.
“It was creating more stress for her than it was worth,” Starer said. Although Kagan “was incredibly touched, she was definitely not comfortable with it.”
“Elena was always a very solid, trustworthy person,” Schulman, a professor at Northwestern University, said by phone. “She was the president of student government at Hunter, and just a very normal Jewish girl from Manhattan. And we were all very proud of her, but very concerned about her having to be on the front lines with these scoundrels. We thought it would be a sign of support to send her some lox, but she was too ethical to take the lox.”
Kagan’s reluctance to accept the small gifts from her high school friends left Starer with even more questions about Thomas. “There are guidelines about reporting; how could he have gotten this wrong?” Starer said.
ProPublica’s investigation sheds new light on how luxury travel has given prominent political donors — including one who has had cases before the Supreme Court — intimate access to the most powerful judges in the country. The undisclosed gifts have prompted lawmakers to launch investigations and call for ethics reform. Recent bills would impose tighter rules for justices’ recusals, require the Supreme Court to adopt a binding code of conduct and create an ethics body, which would investigate complaints. Neither a code nor an ethics office currently exists.
Another wealthy businessman provided expensive vacations to two members of the high court, ProPublica found. On his Alaska trip, Justice Alito stayed at a commercial fishing lodge owned by this businessman, who was also a major conservative donor. Three years before, that same businessman flew Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in 2016, on a private jet to Alaska and paid the bill for his stay.
This spring, ProPublica reported that Justice Clarence Thomas received decades of luxury travel from another Republican megadonor, Dallas real estate magnate Harlan Crow. Harlan Crow, who bestowed luxurious trips and private real estate deals on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his family, is signaling a will to do what auto-industry chieftains and Wall Street titans dared not: defy a Senate subpoena.
In a statement, Thomas defended the undisclosed trips, saying unnamed colleagues advised him that he didn’t need to report such gifts to the public. Crow also gave Thomas money in an undisclosed real estate deal and paid private school tuition for his grandnephew, who Thomas was raising as a son. Thomas reported neither transaction on his disclosure forms. In late June 2019, right after the U.S. Supreme Court released its final opinion of the term, Justice Clarence Thomas boarded a large private jet headed to Indonesia. He and his wife were going on vacation in Indonesia: nine days of island-hopping in a volcanic archipelago on a superyacht staffed by a coterie of attendants and a private chef.
If Thomas had chartered the plane and the 162-foot yacht himself, the total cost of the trip could have exceeded $500,000. Fortunately for him, that wasn’t necessary: He was on vacation with real estate magnate and Republican megadonor Harlan Crow, who owned the jet — and the yacht, too.
I believe he (Justice Thomas) chose Flores for vacation spot because he’s very conservative catholic: Flores may be the district to be “most catholic conservative in Indonesia”, and also one of the poorest districts in Indonesia. 1 month ago, a Flores citizen and appointed to be Indonesia’s Minister of Telecommunication from 2019, Mr Johny Gerard Plate, was arrested by the local Attorney General, for corruption on a telecommunication project worth US$600 million (around 8.1-8.2 trillion rupiah). Today in Indonesia (June 21th, 2023), after being hammered by coronavirus since March 2nd, 2020, President Indonesia Jokowi (Joko Widodo), on his birthday (also today, June 21th) announced an end of emergency for coronavirus.
Flores is actually very beautiful. Labuan Bajo Flores, just 1 month ago, to be venue for ASEAN Summit (*Indonesia as Chair of ASEAN this year). I believe, the same resort for Justice Thomas to stay in Flores is the same resort used by Jokowi and every President and PM in Southeast Asia to Summit 1 month ago: built by Harvard-Berkeley-UI alumni lawyer, respected lawyer named Yozua Makes. When Jokowi and other ASEAN leaders sailing with Phinisi Boat around Labuan Bajo, this phinisi owned by Yozua Makes, and maybe Justice Clarence Thomas also use this same phinisi when holidaying in Labuan Bajo.
Left side (black polo shirt) of President Jokowi (center) is Yozua Makes.
Jokowi with all Southeast Asian leader (except Thai PM because very busy to prepare election)
Use quote from “BILLIONS” (Showtime production) fictional character Chuck Rhoades (fictional Southern District NY / SDNY Attorney General), the gratification for Alito, Thomas, Scalia is “the long arm of the law.”
Back to Justice Alito. 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.
ProPublica’s examination of Alito’s and Scalia’s travel drew on trip planning emails, Alaska fishing licenses, and interviews with dozens of people including private jet pilots, fishing guides, former high-level employees of both Singer and the lodge owner, and other guests on the trips.
In the last decade, Singer has contributed over $80 million to Republican political groups. He has also given millions to the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank where he has served as chairman since 2008. The institute regularly files friend-of-the-court briefs with the Supreme Court — at least 15 this term, including one asking the court to block student loan relief.
Singer’s interest in the courts is more than ideological. His hedge fund, Elliott Management, is best known for making investments that promise handsome returns but could require bruising legal battles. Singer has said he’s drawn to positions where you “control your own destiny, not just riding up and down with the waves of financial markets.” That can mean pressuring corporate boards to fire a CEO, brawling with creditors over the remains of a bankrupt company and suing opponents.
The fund now manages more than $50 billion in assets. “The investments are extremely shrewdly litigation-driven,” a person familiar with Singer’s fund told ProPublica. “That’s why he’s a billionaire.”
Singer’s most famous gamble eventually made its way to the Supreme Court.
In 2001, Argentina was in a devastating economic depression. Unemployment skyrocketed and deadly riots broke out in the street. The day after Christmas, the government finally went into default. For Singer, the crisis was an opportunity. As other investors fled, his fund purchased Argentine government debt at a steep discount.
Mark Joseph Stern is Senior Writer for SLATE
Within several years, as the Argentine economy recovered, most creditors settled with the government and accepted a fraction of what the debt was originally worth. But Singer’s fund, an arm of Elliott called NML Capital, held out. Soon, they were at war: a midtown Manhattan-based hedge fund trying to impose its will on a sovereign nation thousands of miles away.
The fight played out on familiar turf for Singer: the U.S. courts. He launched an aggressive legal campaign to force Argentina to pay in full, and his personal involvement in the case attracted widespread media attention. Over 13 years of litigation, the arguments spanned what rights foreign governments have in the U.S. and whether Argentina could pay off debts to others before Singer settled his claim.
If Singer succeeded, he stood to make a fortune.
In 2007, for the first but not the last time, Singer’s fund asked the Supreme Court to intervene. A lower court had stopped Singer and another fund from seizing Argentine central bank funds held in the U.S. The investors appealed, but that October, the Supreme Court declined to take up the case.
On July 8 of the following year, Singer took Alito to Alaska on the private jet, according to emails, flight data from the Federal Aviation Administration and people familiar with the trip.
The group flew across the country to the town of King Salmon on the Alaska peninsula. They returned to the East Coast three days later.
In Alaska, they stayed at the King Salmon Lodge, a luxury fishing resort that drew celebrities, wealthy businessmen and sports stars. On July 9, one of the lodge’s pilots flew Alito and other guests around 70 miles to the west to fish the Nushagak River, known for one of the best salmon runs in the world. Snapshots from the trip show Alito in waders and an Indianapolis Grand Prix hat, smiling broadly as he holds his catch.
“Sam Alito is in the red jacket there,” one lodge worker said, as he narrated an amateur video of the justice on the water. “We take good care of him because he makes all the rules.”
“The exception only covers food, lodging and entertainment,” said Virginia Canter, a former government ethics lawyer now at the watchdog group CREW. “He’s trying to move away from the plain language of the statute and the regulation.”
The Alaska vacation was the first time Singer and Alito met, according to a person familiar with the trip. After the trip, the two appeared together at public events. When Alito spoke at the annual dinner of the Federalist Society lawyers convention the following year, the billionaire introduced him. The justice told a story about having an encounter with bears during a fishing trip with Singer, according to the legal blog Above the Law. He recalled asking himself: “Do you really want to go down in history as the first Supreme Court justice to be devoured by a bear?”
The year after that, in 2010, Alito delivered the keynote speech at a dinner for donors to the Manhattan Institute. Once again, Singer delivered a flattering introduction. “He and his small band of like-minded justices are a critical and much-appreciated bulwark of our freedom,” Singer told the crowd. “Samuel Alito is a model Supreme Court justice.”
Alito did not disclose the flight or the stay at the fishing lodge in his annual financial disclosures. A federal law passed after Watergate requires federal officials including Supreme Court justices to publicly report most gifts. (The year before, Alito reported getting $500 of Italian food and wine from a friend, noting that his friend was unlikely to “appear before this Court.”)
The law has a “personal hospitality” exemption: If someone hosts a justice on their own property, free “food, lodging, or entertainment” don’t always have to be disclosed. But the law clearly requires disclosure for gifts of private jet flights, according to seven ethics law experts, and Alito appears to have violated it. The typical interpretation of the law required disclosure for his stay at the lodge too, experts said, since it was a commercial property rather than a vacation home. The judiciary’s regulations did not make that explicit until they were updated earlier this year.
The judiciary’s ethics guidance didn’t explicitly address the ownership issue. The recent update to the filing instructions clarifies that disclosure is required for such stays.
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-prada- (Adi Mulia Pradana) is a Helper. Former adviser (President Indonesia) Jokowi for mapping 2-times election. I used to get paid to catch all these blunders—now I do it for free. Trying to work out what's going on, what happens next. Arch enemies of the tobacco industry, (still) survive after getting doxed.
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