Why Justice Alito’s secretive phone call with Trump is ‘troubling’ 24 hours before hush money sentencing
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is facing criticism after he revealed he spoke with President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday.
Their call happened one day before Trump’s lawyers made a last-ditch effort to have the country’s highest court stop sentencing in his hush money case.
The conservative justice said he spoke with the president-elect by phone on Tuesday to recommend a former law clerk for a job.
‘William Levi, one of my former law clerks, asked me to take a call from President-elect Trump regarding his qualifications to serve in a government position,’ Alito said in a statement.
‘I agreed to discuss this matter with President-elect Trump, and he called me yesterday afternoon,’ Alito continued.
The statement from Alito was released after the call was first reported by ABC News.
‘We also did not discuss any other matter that is pending or might in the future come before the Supreme Court or any past Supreme Court decisions involving the President-elect,’ Alito said.
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito revealed he spoke with President-elect Trump on the phone the day before Trump’s lawyers asked the court to halt the hush money case sentencing
Sentencing in Trump’s hush money case is set for Friday, January 10, but the president-elect has been trying to have the case dismissed.
Trump, 78, was found guilty last May on 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments made to keep Stormy Daniels quiet about an alleged affair before the 2016 election.
Trump’s team successfully delayed sentencing until after the November election, but Judge Juan Merchan denied his efforts to have sentencing paused and scheduled it just days before his inauguration.
On Tuesday, an appeals court also rejected the president-elect’s request to pause sentencing, so his team turned to the Supreme Court.
On Thursday, New York’s highest court also denied Trump’s request to stop sentencing.
But the call between Alito and Trump comes as Supreme Court justices have been under intense scrutiny in recent years for actions which critics have slammed as unethical or in the very least given the appearance of impropriety.
Trump pictured with Alito at the White House in July 2019. Alito claimed their call Tuesday was about a recommendation for a former law clerk for a position and they did not discuss pending cases before the court
Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court, a nonpartisan organization which advocates for making the court system more open and accountable, slammed Tuesday’s call.
‘President-elect Trump, Justice Alito and Will Levi — who’s been a chief counsel in Senate Judiciary and a top DOJ advisor, and is the son of a federal judge and grandson of an attorney general — should know better,’ he wrote in an email to DailyMail.com.
‘But they don’t care because they know no one in Congress or the judiciary will hold them accountable for ethics violations. If anything, this type of breach in protocol is a badge of honor in Trump’s orbit,’ Roth added.
He argued the call was ‘merely an excuse’ for the president-elect to speak with one of the nine justices who will determine the fate of the hush money case and will review other Trump-related cases in the next four years.
‘Typically, Trump and Alito are better at hiding their ethics issues, at least for a few months or sometimes longer,’ Roth said. ‘But with the Supreme Court green-lighting near-absolute presidential immunity last year, and with Congress refusing to pass enforceable ethics for the justices, it appears there’s no reason to even try.’
President-elect Trump in the Manhattan criminal court in April. He was found guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records, but sentencing has been delayed. His lawyers asked the Supreme Court on Wednesday to stop the sentencing scheduled for Friday
He was not the only one who deemed the call between Trump and Alito troubling.
‘You have to understand, Alito is in a neck and neck contest with Clarence Thomas and Aileen Cannon as to who is the most corrupt and disgraceful jurist,’ said Norman Ornstein, senior fellow emeritus at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute, in a post.
‘This was a bold move that put Alito in the lead. For now,’ he added.
Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) blasted Alito as ‘brazenly unapologetic’ after the call was confirmed after reports.
‘Justice Alito has made impropriety the norm,’ Blumenthal wrote on X. He went on ‘this inexcusable call w/Trump certainly should compel recusal, disqualifying him from this case&much more. The Court’s current supposed ethical standards are an unenforceable sham.’
Alito came under fire last year after it was reported an upside-down American flag was flown outside his home in January 2021.
He claimed the flag had been raised by his wife in response to a fight with neighbors, but the timing raised alarms as an inverted flag was a symbol for Trump’s supporters who falsely claimed fraud in the 2020 election.
Congressional Democrats demanded he recuse himself from any cases related to election interference and the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, but Alito rejected those calls.
Justice Clarence Thomas has also come under fire in recent years for failing to report luxury trips paid for by billionaires.
In November 2023, the Supreme Court announced justices will adhere to a new code of conduct in an effort to tamp down ethics concerns, but the move and lack of enforcement measures has done little to stem the tide of criticism against the country’s highest court.
