I’m Michael A. Cohen, and this is Truth and Consequences: A no-holds-barred look at the absurdities, hypocrisies, and surreality. If you were sent this email or are a free subscriber and would like to become a paid subscriber, you can sign up here.
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Something Fishy Is Going On
Over the past several months, Clarence Thomas has been accused of multiple ethical violations in failing to report gifts given to him and his family by Harlan Crow, a billionaire conservative donor.
Sam Alito’s response … hold my beer (from ProPublica, which also broke the Thomas story).
In early July 2008, Samuel Alito stood on a riverbank in a remote corner of Alaska. The Supreme Court justice was on vacation at a luxury fishing lodge that charged more than $1,000 a day, and after catching a king salmon nearly the size of his leg, Alito posed for a picture. To his left, a man stood beaming: Paul Singer, a hedge fund billionaire who has repeatedly asked the Supreme Court to rule in his favor in high-stakes business disputes.
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.
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.
As bad as this is (and it’s ethically nauseating), Alito’s response is far worse.
Rather than respond to questions ProPublica sent him, he wrote a pre-rebuttal for the Wall Street Journal opinion page. Here is his defense of flying on Singer’s private jet.
As for the flight, Mr. Singer and others had already made arrangements to fly to Alaska when I was invited shortly before the event, and I was asked whether I would like to fly there in a seat that, as far as I am aware, would have otherwise been vacant. It was my understanding that this would not impose any extra cost on Mr. Singer. Had I taken commercial flights, that would have imposed a substantial cost and inconvenience on the deputy U.S. Marshals who would have been required for security reasons to assist me.
This is like arguing that “yes, I did receive a $50,000 bribe, but if I hadn’t taken the money, it would have just sat in the bank unspent.” There’s a pretty basic rule when you work in the public sector: if a billionaire offers you a free gift, like a seat on a private jet and a luxury fishing trip to Alaska, you can’t take it and then not report it. This is government ethics 101. The fact that Alito then heard multiple cases in which Singer was a plaintiff and didn’t recuse himself makes the matter even worse. And his defense for not refusing himself doesn’t even pass the laugh test.
I had no obligation to recuse in any of the cases that ProPublica cites. First, even if I had been aware of Mr. Singer’s connection to the entities involved in those cases, recusal would not have been required or appropriate. ProPublica suggests that my failure to recuse in these cases created an appearance of impropriety, but that is incorrect. “There is an appearance of impropriety when an unbiased and reasonable person who is aware of all relevant facts would doubt that the Justice could fairly discharge his or her duties” (Statement on Ethics Principles and Practices appended to letter from the Chief Justice to Senator Durbin, April 25, 2023). No such person would think that my relationship with Mr. Singer meets that standard. My recollection is that I have spoken to Mr. 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. On no occasion have we discussed the activities of his businesses, and we have never talked about any case or issue before the Court.
Is there any unbiased or reasonable person who wouldn't think that a judge who received a luxury vacation from a potential plaintiff might possibly have a conflict of interest? Alito wants us to believe that he and Singer never talked Court business — and maybe that’s true. But none of us can know, and that’s why most judges would recuse themselves in these types of situations: because of the potential appearance of impropriety.
It speaks volumes about Alito’s arrogance and contempt for the legitimacy of the Supreme Court and the American people, in general, that he is basically waving away these ethical constraints and telling us to trust him. Like his partner in crime, Clarance Thomas, Alito doesn’t care. Both men know they can’t be impeached, and they can resist calls to resign. Cosseted in the sinecure of a lifetime appointment to the Court, which was intended to keep them safe from the push-and-pull of politics, they are instead immune from accountability. And it’s largely because of these two that the Supreme Court is a broken and corrupt institution that has lost the legitimacy of the American people.
One More Thing …
WTF is the Wall Street Journal thinking in allowing Alito to publish a pre-rebuttal to an expose that neither he nor the Journal has read? From a journalistic standpoint, this is absolutely disgraceful. How can anyone at the Journal take Alito’s argument seriously without reading ProPublica’s reporting? The simple answer is they can’t. But like Alito, they are willing to take his word that, as the headline of the piece says, “ProPublica misleads its readers.” If that isn’t bad enough, look at the Editor’s Note appended to Alito’s op-ed.
Justin Elliott and Josh Kaplan of ProPublica, which styles itself “an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism with moral force,” emailed Justice Alito Friday with a series of questions and asked him to respond by noon EDT Tuesday. They informed the justice that “we do serious, fair, accurate reporting in the public interest and have won six Pulitzer Prizes.”
“Styles itself” is the tell here. Could the Journal be any more condescending? The Journal’s stance here is clear: “Not only do we believe a Supreme Court justice accused of ethical violations and public corruption over fellow journalists.” So much for speaking truth to power. The editorial page is showing its true colors on this one. They’d rather carry water for Sam Alito than act like journalists.
What’s Going On
Important piece from the New York Times on the refusal of 2024 Republican presidential aspirants to publicly state that the president should not interfere in Department of Justice investigations and prosecutions. Before the 2016 election, I wrote that the gravest consequence of a Trump presidential victory would be the gradual erosion in the Republica Party of basic democratic norms. And that’s precisely what is happening. It’s not just Trump … the entire party has been infected with the virus of Trumpism.
The Washington Post had a major story earlier this week alleging Attorney General Merrick Garland dragged his feet on investigating Donald Trump’s role in the January 6 insurrection. And the paper intimated that driving Garland’s actions was a fear that he would appear overly partisan by going after Trump. The article is interesting and worth reading, but I didn’t find the accusation convincing. First of all, Garland was right to avoid appearing partisan. I know a lot of liberals don’t want to hear that, but if the Department of Justice is investigating a former president — and the current president’s main political rival — it’s important to go above and beyond in appearing non-partisan (if you don’t believe me, see what I wrote above). In investigating Trump, Garland took a methodical approach by prosecuting lower-level offenders and then hoping to use their testimony to work up the ladder to Trump and others. It turned out that approach didn’t quite work because few of those folks had much dirt on higher-ups. But that doesn’t mean it was the wrong strategy. Moreover, many of the criticisms of Garland — particularly the ones alleging that he was seeking to protect Trump from prosecution — are delivered off the record and from what appears to be lower-level officials at the Justice Department. The Post should have taken those comments with a grain of salt, but I suppose they wanted the flashier headline. The actual story is far more nuanced and offers no direct evidence to support the notion that Garland was worried about the political fallout from investigating Trump. You can read it for yourself and make your own judgment, but I don’t think the Post proved their argument.
This Bret Baier question to Donald Trump on all the terrible people he has hired is both a thing of beauty and absolutely brutal.
House Republicans are embracing a strategy of non-stop investigations of Joe Biden and his family … proving they learned absolutely nothing from the 2022 midterm campaign.
It sure seems like Hunter Biden got screwed:
Hunter Biden agreed with the Justice Department on Tuesday to plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges and accept terms that would allow him to avoid prosecution on a separate gun charge, a big step toward ending a long-running and politically explosive investigation into the finances, drug use and international business dealings of President Biden’s troubled son.
Under a deal hashed out with a federal prosecutor who was appointed by President Donald J. Trump, Mr. Biden agreed to plead guilty to misdemeanor counts of failing to pay his 2017 and 2018 taxes on time and be sentenced to probation.
As the article notes, Biden eventually paid all his 2017 and 2018 taxes plus fines and penalties — something that I’m guessing millions of Americans have done. As for the gun charge, Biden will plead guilty to having lied on his application to purchase a firearm, a charge that is almost never prosecuted. If not for the fact that this was a high-profile investigation and Biden is the president’s son, I doubt he would have been charged at all. Of course, none of this stopped Republicans from howling with outrage, but what do you expect? As far as I’m concerned, Biden got a raw deal.
Musical Interlude
Tonight, I’m off to see Dead and Company at Citi Field in New York City. It’ll be my third show in six days and the sixth of this tour (New Orleans, Dallas, Pittsburgh, Philly, Saratoga). Unfortunately, I missed the two shows in Wrigley. The second night of which is one of the band’s best ever. Here’s a taste.
And here’s a morsel from Philly, which was simply a fantastic show. These guys are hitting on all cylinders, and I will have a big old cry when this tour — the band’s final one — ends.
I don't get the defense "We never talked about his business/political opinions/case." You don't have to talk to one of these billionaires about specific policies to know what they want and what decisions will benefit them. Thomas didn't need to talk to Harlan Crow about the case to know that he would gain immense power from the Citizens United decision, for instance. Pretending they don't know what these benefactors' interests are is laughably disingenuous. Our urban farm leader has been going to a bunch of Dead and Company shows too but I just don't get it. I got all the cukes planted though.