The Supreme Secret Billionaire Travel Club

— and the powerful zealot singularly responsible for routing Roe v. Wade

Laugh line...

“I want to assure people that I’m committed to making certain that we as a court adhere to the highest standards of conduct. We are continuing to look at things we can do to give practical effect to that commitment,” Chief Justice John Roberts said when accepting an award from the American Law Institute.

But the hits just keep coming for corrupt-to-the-core “conservative” Supreme Court justices. Just in April, Clarence Thomas was busted when muckraking reporting at ProPublica exposed his twenty-year bromance with right-wing billionaire, Harlan Crow … an influential figure in corporate conservative politics, who has spent millions on ideological efforts to shape the law and the judiciary.

Thomas did NOT report the cozy arrangement on a single one of his financial disclosure statements.

“For more than two decades, Thomas has accepted luxury trips virtually every year from the Dallas businessman without disclosing them, documents and interviews show. A ‘public servant’ who has a salary of $285,000, he has vacationed on Crow’s superyacht around the globe. He flies on Crow’s Bombardier Global 5000 jet. He has gone with Crow to the Bohemian Grove, the exclusive California all-male retreat, and to Crow’s sprawling ranch in East Texas. And Thomas typically spends about a week every summer at Crow’s private resort in the Adirondacks.”

And now, ProPublica has outed Sam Alito as a member of the same club.

Per the Washington Post:

"Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. took issue with questions raised by the investigative journalism outlet ProPublica about his travel with a politically active billionaire, and on Tuesday evening, he outlined his defense in an op-ed published by the Wall Street Journal.

Yet Alito was responding to a news story that ProPublica hadn’t yet published.”

What a surprise that the sleazy Murdoch corporate propaganda rag would try to cover Alito’s ample ass, just like they did for Thomas.

“The Journal’s editorial page has veered sharply to the right in recent years and often expresses support of the more-conservative members of the Supreme Court. In April, it blasted “left-leaning” ProPublica’s reporting on Thomas, "The left gins up another phony ethics assault to tarnish the Supreme Court”.

I don’t know how exactly they could have ‘veered sharply to the right’ since they have been anchored at the far, far edge for years, but that ‘s typical of the way the mainstream media has moved the Overton window ever rightward, so that what was far right 20 years ago [and still is in most countries] is described as the “center” in American politics.

Like how these Sieg-heiling, self-identifed Nazis protesting outside a library are now the darlings of the GOP establishment. Fine people, you know.

But back to witch-burner apologist Alito…

"The article details the conservative justice’s relationship with billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Singer, including their trip to an Alaskan fishing resort in 2008. According to the story, Singer — whose hedge fund subsequently came before the court 10 times in cases involving business disputes — flew Alito to the resort on his private jet, a trip ProPublica reported would have cost Alito more than $100,000 one way if he had chartered the jet on his own.

Alito, who wrote the landmark Dobbs decision that struck down federal abortion rights last year, didn’t list the trip on his financial disclosure forms, an omission that could violate federal law.

Also noted was the role of conservative judicial activist Leonard Leo in organizing the Alaska trip, including recruiting Singer to fly Alito to the lodge. The longtime head of the Federalist Society, Leo helped Alito win confirmation to the Supreme Court. Singer and the lodge’s owner were major donors to the Federalist Society.”

Who is conservative activist Leonard Leo?

A friend of Clarence Thomas. And Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Comey Barrett, all of whom voted to overturn Roe. And all of whom were on a much publicized list of potential SCOTUS nominees that Donald Trump publicly shared. A list that was personally curated by Leo.

No one has been more dedicated to the enterprise of building a Supreme Court that will overturn Roe than the Federalist Society's Leonard Leo," conservative writer and lawyer Ed Whelan wrote in the National Review.

In fact, Leo is the one man most responsible for the current assault on women’s rights — the result of a long game that has made Leo one of the most important gatekeepers to the federal bench for ambitious conservative lawyers.

As Clarence Thomas prepared to take questions from members of the Federalist Society a few years back, he turned to the moderator and joked that the nondescript man was the “No 3 most powerful person in the world”, and laughed. That was Leo.

Leo, a 56 year-old whose opposition to abortion is ‘rooted in his Catholic faith’, remains an obscure figure to much of the US public, even after revelations that he heads a political group that has received an astonishing $1.6bn in a single donation in 2022 — from Barre Seid, a Chicago electronics manufacturer, to push conservative causes including election manipulation in the 2022 midterms.

Judicial confirmation proceedings have become expensive political campaigns, funded by dark money from a complex network of anonymous donors. Leo is particularly skilled at drawing those kinds of donors to help install his hand-picked political tools. He seems to have "a singular knack for coaxing huge checks, some as large as eight figures, out of billionaire donors."

In fact, a Washington Post analysis found Leo and his allies raised $250 million between 2014 and 2017 from undisclosed donors. Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, strongly believes that anonymous donors should not have a role in shaping the federal judiciary.

Whitehouse, one of the most outspoken critics of dark money’s influence on politics, said that 2005 was a turning point.

“It was at that point that the grip of this little donor elite and Leo, its Federalist Society operative, really took hold. Justice Samuel Alito was the product of that and he has proven himself on the court as being a faithful workhorse for that dark money rightwing corporate crew.”

"It has created a captured court that makes decisions based on who they want to win," Whitehouse said.”

It should be noted that all six conservative justices are devout practicing Catholics — Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett., as is Leo, whose highest allegiance is to “the laws of God, not man.”

Make no mistake, they will be coming for contraception next… and who knows what else. In the U.S. now, as through much of recorded history, a few extremely powerful black-robed clerics dictate women’s most personal, and consequential, life decisions.

And the next time you read that women are dying because doctors are afraid to treat pregnancy complications out of justifiable fear of prosecution, thank Leonard Leo and his crony crew of rightwing kleptocrats.