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3. Alito says his phone call with Trump concerned…

U.S. Supreme Court

Alito says his phone call with Trump concerned former clerk

By Debra Cassens Weiss

January 9, 2025, 9:09 am CST

Updated: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito said he spoke with President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday to provide a job reference for one of his former law clerks.

Alito said in a statement the ex-clerk, William Levi, had asked him to take the phone call, according to ABC News, which broke the story.

Stories followed in publications that include the New York Times, Reuters, CNN and Fox News.

Levi formerly work as chief of staff to then-U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr during Trump’s first presidency. He is now being considered for a government position in the new administration.

A day after the phone call, lawyers for Trump asked the Supreme Court to stay his Friday sentencing for allegedly falsifying business records to conceal a hush-money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. Prosecutors said the payment violated a New York law barring use of unlawful means to promote a candidacy—in this case, Trump’s presidential bid in 2016.

Alito said Wednesday, however, that the case was not discussed.

“We did not discuss the emergency application he filed today, and indeed, I was not even aware at the time of our conversation that such an application would be filed,” Alito said in the statement. “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.”

On Thursday evening, the Supreme Court denied Trump’s emergency application in a 5-4 vote. Alito, who did not recuse himself, voted with Justices Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh in favor of granting Trump’s request to delay his Friday sentencing. They did not indicate their reasoning in the unsigned order.

Updated on Jan. 9 at 9:05 p.m. to note Justice Samuel Alito’s vote on Donald Trump’s emergency application.

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3. Federal judge offers ‘unreserved apology’…

Judiciary

Federal judge offers ‘unreserved apology’ after order says his Alito criticism violated ethics rules

By Debra Cassens Weiss

December 18, 2024, 12:09 pm CST

Senior U.S. District Judge Michael A. Ponsor of the District of Massachusetts is offering an “unreserved apology” and a commitment to “scrupulously avoid” future transgressions after he was found to have violated the judicial code of ethics for criticizing U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito in an op-ed in the New York Times.

Ponsor’s apology letter resolves the ethics complaint, according to the Dec. 10 order by Chief Judge Albert Diaz of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at Richmond, Virginia. Diaz investigated after the case was transferred to his court from the appeals court with jurisdiction in Massachusetts, where Ponsor is located.

The Wall Street Journal broke the story on Diaz’s order, followed by coverage by Reuters and Bloomberg Law.

Ponsor, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton, had criticized the display of an upside-down flag at Alito’s home and an “Appeal to Heaven” flag at the justice’s vacation home in the May op-ed.

The flags are associated with stolen-election claims and Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol rioters. Alito has said his wife erected the flags.

“Flying those flags was tantamount to sticking a ‘Stop the Steal’ bumper sticker on your car,” Ponsor wrote in the op-ed. “You just don’t do it.”

Noting Alito’s claim that his wife flew the flags, Ponsor offered a hypothetical. If his wife had expressed her view of the death penalty when he had a case pending on that issue, Ponsor said, he would have recused himself based on the appearance of partiality.

Diaz said Ponsor’s criticism harmed public confidence in the integrity of the judiciary, and its “political implications and undertones” violated a ban on commenting on the merits of pending cases.

Following the flags controversy, Democrats had called for Alito’s recusal in pending cases involving obstruction charges against accused Capitol rioters and President-elect Donald Trump’s immunity from prosecution in the federal election-interference case.

The public might have interpreted Ponsor’s op-ed “as a commentary on partisan issues and as a call for Justice Alito’s recusal” in pending Jan. 6 cases, Diaz said.

Ponsor’s apology letter said the ethics violations were “unintentional at the time but clear in retrospect.”

The Article III Project, a conservative group, had filed the ethics complaint against Ponsor.

“The courts and Judge Ponsor took this seriously,” said Mike Davis, the founder of the Article III Project, in a statement cited by Reuters and the Wall Street Journal. “I accept his apology letter at face value.”

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3. Anti-abortion princess explains her friendship…

U.S. Supreme Court

Anti-abortion princess explains her friendship with Justice Alito after he discloses $900 gift

By Debra Cassens Weiss

October 23, 2024, 12:18 pm CDT

A German princess has said she first met U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito at a Catholic conference while summering in Rome.

Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis, whose primary home is a 500-room palace, told the New York Times that she was introduced to Alito by a priest who is a mutual acquaintance. She couldn’t recall the exact date, but the New York Times said Alito was in Rome for a 2018 event sponsored by a law school.

Princess Gloria said she immediately liked Alito and his “very fun, bubbly” wife, so she invited them to a music festival in which she opens her palace to guests.

“I met him as a Catholic, and I realized that he’s a judge who is pro-life,” Princess Gloria told the New York Times. That was a great thing, she said, “because very few people I know are pro-life.”

The Alitos stayed in the palace when they attended the music festival in 2023; the accommodation does not have to be disclosed. The festival included a performance of “The Magic Flute” and a concert by a Michael Jackson tribune band. Princess Gloria also obtained tickets for the Alitos to attend a music festival celebrating the work of German composer Richard Wagner.

Alito valued the gift of concert tickets at $900.

Princess Gloria was once dubbed “Princess TNT” for being a “wild version” of Princess Diana of Wales, a member of the British royal family, according to the New York Times. In her younger days, she sported a multicolored mohawk and rode motorcycles. She became more religious after her husband died in 1990.

The 64-year-old princess is now “an anti-abortion and anti-immigration provocateur” with “ties to the European far right,” the New York Times said.

Princess Gloria toured the Supreme Court in 2019 and posed with Alito and Justice Brett Kavanaugh. With her on the tour were the president of a nonprofit that opposes the legalization of same-sex marriage and a “right-wing German cardinal,” according to the New York Times.

She said she isn’t political, however.

“The only thing that I care about in politics is that somebody is fighting abortion and helping reproduction rates go up,” she told the New York Times. “I think that killing our own offspring and reducing our reproduction rates, eventually, we will kill our own kind.”

Hat tip to How Appealing.