Conservatives Slam ProPublica’s ‘Hit Piece’ on SCOTUS Justice Samuel Alito: ‘Baseless Smears Meant to Undermine Court’

WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 07: U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel Alito testifies abo
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Katherine Hamilton

Conservatives are denouncing the nonprofit news outlet ProPublica for seemingly targeting Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito in an article this week.

ProPublica published a story on Tuesday about Alito taking a “luxury fishing vacation” in 2008 with GOP billionaire Paul Singer, who later had cases before the Supreme Court. The story implied that the conservative justice acted unethically, citing leftists who said Alito should have recused himself from cases connected to Singer and listed parts of the trip on his 2008 Financial Disclose Report.

Justice Alito refuted the article’s claims in an op-ed that ran in the Wall Street Journal on the same day and accused ProPublica of misleading its readers.

Conservatives called out ProPublica after the story was published, accusing the outlet of continuing its pattern of going after conservative Supreme Court Justices while also receiving millions of dollars in funding from left-wing organizations that target both Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas.

“Justice Alito demolishes a coming @propublica smear job with superb oped. These baseless smears are meant to undermine Court because it is no longer doing Left’s bidding,” tweeted Mark Paoletta, a prominent D.C. lawyer who served in multiple presidential administrations and also worked on the confirmations of Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. “It won’t work. @propublica gets funding from major Lefty donors & is a cog in leftwing smear machine.”

During an interview with Fox News’ Laura Ingram, Paoletta alleged that “these attacks are all coordinated,” saying:

It’s because the left is furious that the Supreme Court has finally become a court that is committed to the Constitution. It is no longer a left-wing super-legislator that is imposing left-wing policies that the left could never get enacted. They are trying to destroy the Supreme Court. You saw this all the way back to Chuck Schumer, who has physically threatened two justices in March of 2020. I think there is a through-line from that to the attacks on the justices, the assassination attempts on the justices, and death threats.

…

He went on a trip with a friend, and the personal hospitality rule, as it was interpreted back then, allows you not to report it. Here is the dishonest thing that ProPublica does. In their article, they cite ethics experts — all of them are either Democrats or are funded by the left or funded by these same groups — to say that it’s illegal, that he violated the law.

Paoletta further contended leftists “didn’t have any problem with the fact that Justice [Ruth Bader] Ginsburg went on a trip with a billionaire to the Middle East, Morris Kahn, right after Morris Kahn’s company had a favorable ruling from the Supreme Court the year before.”

“Nobody had a problem when Justice Breyer went on billionaire David Rubenstein’s plane to go to a wedding in Nantucket,” he continued. “Nobody said that they are bought and paid for. Nobody said they are corrupt.”

Former Acting Director of United States National Intelligence Richard Grenell tweeted, “ProPublica is far-left – it’s the worst. It’s completely predictable.”

President of the Judicial Crisis Network Carrie Severino tweeted in support of Alito’s Wall Street Journal rebuttal, commending the justice for not standing for a “blatant character assassination attempt.”

“ProPublica, which is backed by the same donors who fund the left-wing dark money groups attacking the Supreme Court, had their upcoming hit piece debunked by Justice Alito before it was even released,” Severino said. “Justice Alito wouldn’t stand for a blatant character assassination attempt.”

“The Left is relentlessly attacking specific Supreme Court justices in an attempt to undermine the institution’s legitimacy and pack the Court with liberal politicians in robes,” the Judicial Crisis Network Twitter account posted.

The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board also hit back at ProPublica in an article on Tuesday, calling the story a “typically slanted piece” and a “non-scandal built on partisan spin intended to harm to the Justice and the current Court majority.”

The editorial board wrote:

ProPublica’s focus on recusal is the latest angle in the progressive campaign to cripple the Court’s new majority. By imposing even tenuous associations as grounds for recusal, litigants can exclude certain Justices from hearing a case. With a Court of only nine Justices, this could determine the outcome. Call it Court-thinning rather than Court-packing, but the effect would be similar.

“…This isn’t about ethics. This is about the left’s fury at having lost control of the Court, which they had counted on for decades as a second legislature to impose their priorities when they couldn’t persuade Congress,” it continued. “They can’t accept that loss, and they will destroy the Court if they must to get that control back.”

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