 Hey Justin. How are you? Hey, long time. Yeah. Yeah, it's good to see you again How have you been in the last 15 minutes? So I'm through tips for our next story actually Maybe we'll get some From the viewers and listeners here today. I I feel like we're gonna go back a long way We once wrote a story about antitrust economics And the consumer welfare standard I feel like we didn't get to do a IG live event for that. Why is that? I Don't know. We're here to talk about the submarine and the Titanic, right? Yeah, exactly We got it finally something that was popular. I don't know. I think the this stuff has arrived with the popularity of that So, um, so why I'm just the eyes of your I guess I should have introduced myself I'm a long-time pro-publica Uh reporter now an editor senior editor Justin is a reporter he reports On democracy issues and the judiciary. Um, you've been doing this all year Uh, we did a big series of stories on Justice Clarence Thomas with Your colleagues and my colleagues josh Kaplan and Alex Meyerjewski And why don't you summarize a little bit more? Alexis already gave a little bit Um of summary, but why don't you expand a little bit on the latest story on? justice Samuel Olito Sure, so the basic outlines of the story are that Back in 2008 justice Olito, uh, took a lavish fishing like vacation to alaska that he didn't pay A sense for as we understand it He was flown to alaska on a private jet by Paul singer who's a hedge fund billionaire and uh important donor to republican and conservative legal causes um justice Olito, uh You know did also did not pay for a stay at the fishing lodge was owned by another donor um, and importantly he did not disclose Uh, the gifts of this flight or the stay at the lodge on his annual financial disclosure, which is the one of the few kind of instruments of transparency that we have or supposed to have for supreme court justices And then uh in the years that followed starting about a year a year and a half later um singers hedge funds start to have cases at the core um as part of uh this long running and very high stakes litigation they had with the nation of argentina We can talk more about that if people want but the kind of relevant fact is that justice Olito did not recuse himself from any of these cases even though Uh, he'd he'd taken this expensive gift of a private jet flight from singer Um, and in the in the one case the court did here and rule on um Olito voted in the majority for singer Um, and you know, we can talk more about justice Olito's response But he has basically said that he didn't do anything wrong. Yeah, I think What we'll get into his response in a second, but I just want to outline um this so there are two Uh aspects of this that were um troubling one was the issue of the lack of disclosure and then the other was the issue of Uh, the lack of recusal failure to recuse. Um, what did ethics experts tell us about both of those? Yeah, so the disclosure question, uh, according to everyone we talked to is a real kind of open and shut case, uh, but you know There's a law it was passed after watergate that requires Supreme Court justices to disclose most gifts they get um, there are some carve outs Related to personal hospitality, but everyone we talked about this. I think we've now talked to probably eight ethics lawyers Uh said that um, you have to disclose gifts of private jet trips. They're not Not covered by any exemption and these are quite expensive. You know, I uh, I've never had the privilege of flying private but um, we have been talking to a lot of, uh, uh Private jet charter companies to get a sense of the prices and you know This this flight from the east coast to alaska just one way one leg event. We were told, uh, could Easily the cost could easily exceed a hundred thousand dollars for for the charter. Um, so You know depending on how you slice it. This is a gift worth tens and tens of thousands of dollars to justice alito So that's the disclosure Part you should have disclosed that and did and the one other thing about that is we have and we link in the story to Uh Several other federal judges who have disclosed gifts of private jet flights. Um, the recusal is kind of a slightly more Fuzzy question, uh, there is also a law that says justices have to recuse themselves when a reasonable person, uh, would Would look at the situation and see either impropriety or the or the appearance of impropriety But the decision on whether to recuse is left entirely up to the justices themselves each justice Um, and it's not appealable, uh, but the experts we talked to And quoted in the story said that look, it's it's not even a closed call if you got a gift from one of the litigants Uh, of course, you should recuse yourself and I think the most convincing Argument that one of these recusal experts made to us was like look imagine if you were suing somebody In court and you found out that the person on the other side of your case Had been flying the the judge around on a private jet and vacationing with them. How would you feel about that? Uh, and if the answer to that is, you know, I probably wouldn't feel very good about it I'd probably want a different judge than the judge should recuse themselves Uh, if if you knew one of these experts, uh, I thought you guys got a great quote saying, um, if Uh, he was a good friend of yours. Why didn't you refuse if he wasn't a good friend of yours? Why did you take this gift? Uh, and I think that sort of succinctly sums up the findings of the story Uh, now there have been some questions, uh, uh that people dare to ask about Our sources and uh, these legal experts And so are we just culling the ranks of antifa for the legal experts? left-wing Organizations that want to tear down the judiciary and all that sacred. What who are these experts? Right. They either they either have to have antifa credentials or in some cases the revolutionary communist party would also be acceptable. No, but I Uh, no, that's a joke to be clear. Uh, the people that we quoted, I encourage anyone Yes, I encourage if if you are interested in this, I you should look at their resumes. They're all they're all easily findable on their websites Uh, these are, you know, some of the leading ethics, uh, judicial ethics experts in the country people who have, uh, in many cases worked for administrations of both parties published Uh, respected books on, you know, the issues we're quoting them on. I mean to give one example, uh, the first person we quote in the story Uh, he was actually the person who made the comment. You just, uh, Read jesse about why, uh, you know, if he's your friend, you should be refusing yourself And if he's not your friend, why are you taking this expensive private jet flight from him? Um, That quote came from a a law professor named, uh, Charlie J. Um, and uh, this is not a partisan guy. He has a long record of being quoted Uh, and being involved in criticizing, um, you know, people for ethical violations On from across the political spectrum and I think most relevantly he actually wrote the leading treatise on judicial recusals Uh, that was actually published by the uh, by the u.s. Federal judiciary itself Which you can look up. Uh, it's a very, um, it's a very thorough read I think it goes on for about 200 pages about when all the examples of when judges have recused themselves and what the consideration should be Um, so this is not somebody that's a partisan that would, uh, you know Frankly, I don't think he cares, uh, what the party Of the judge is that that, you know, he's being asked to comment on he was very careful to try and understand the facts and Um, you know, give a sober thoughtful response to our questions. Yeah Um, and we've quoted, uh, republicans. We've quoted people who've worked in republican administrations or have been appointed by republican judges Um, uh, we've spoken to republican judges, uh, you know, or judges who were appointed by republicans as well Um, and i'm not aware of any, uh, expert with relevant legal ethics Experience who's actually, um, defended this behavior from thomas or from, uh, alito Now, uh, alito did defend himself. Um, uh, which led to a an exciting tuesday evening for us. Um, uh, can you sort of recount How this all went down? Um, because we published very late on, uh, tuesday night, I believe Yeah, so last week, uh, we did sort of what we always do when we're, um, getting Closer when we think we're getting closer to publishing a story, which is we reached out to the subjects of the story, including justice alito through the supreme court press office And, uh, we sent a long, um, list of questions and an interview request Uh, basically laying out, um, sort of in question form everything that we were considering putting in the story, which had not actually Which was not actually fully written yet Um, and you know, uh, we call this the the no surprises process and the idea is that you know, we're reaching out in In good faith to get the person's comments sometimes Sometimes during our reporting, uh, our sources get things wrong. Um, and we want Uh, the subjects of the story is to tell us that so we can Consider their evidence consider their point of view and adjust our story Accordingly, uh, you know before putting it out in the world, you know, we take things out of stories all the time Uh, as you know, because of this process change change what's in stories, you know, occasionally kill stories altogether Um, so our deadline was was this this week tuesday um My reporting partner, uh, josh cappell and i got on the phone Uh on around midday tuesday with the spokeswoman for the supreme court, um, patricia mccabe Who told us that uh, justice alito would not be responding. Um, she uh You know asked us, uh about the timing of publication and you know, sort of as a courtesy we told her Uh, well, we're definitely not going to publish today, which was tuesday But it could be tomorrow wednesday more likely thursday We don't actually have a specific date yet and she said, um, okay So you're sure that you're not publishing today and we said that's right then Uh, about six hours later Um, one of us looked to open up, uh, twitter or the internet and saw that the wall street journal had published, uh, It should be unusual probably unprecedented op-ed piece by justice alito himself with the headline uh, republica misleads its readers um Attacking us for the story that had not been published yet And so then we decided that we should probably put the story out so people could see how we were misleading them Um, and we ended up publishing about six hours later. It's hard to mislead readers. Uh, um with no words to mislead them Um, so, uh, that was that was unusual. That was exciting. Um, we worked hard and quickly to Uh, finish up the story. Let's let's summarize what alito's arguments were Um, because uh, essentially he said no, I didn't have to recuse and no, I didn't have to disclose Um, why is he what's what's the basis for those two contentions? Sure. So on the, uh, disclosure question, uh, whether he should have disclosed the gift of this private jet flight And the stay at the at the at the luxury fishing lodge um He quoted from uh, and this gets a little bit in the weeds the Uh, the filing instructions for the justice's annual financial disclosure So there's these forms that you can go look up that are public in which the justice's Layout and many other public officials federal officials layout Uh, how much money they made from Selling stocks and outside income. Uh, and then there's an important section about gifts that they've received um and Justice Alito's argument is that the filing instructions said That he did not have to disclose gifts that were quote unquote personal hospitality Because personal hospitality according to him was carved out of the requirement to disclose gifts Um, now what he didn't mention at all But kind of not right and and so the what he did not mention Which was somewhat surprising especially given that he's in the business of Statutory interpretation is that there is actually a law here, uh, which we linked to in our story it's called the ethics and government act and He did not mention the text of this law, which says which is pretty clear even if you're not a lawyer Uh, it says that you have to disclose gifts But you don't have to disclose Food lodging or entertainment that is extended to you as personal hospitality. Now if you notice Um transportation private jet flight is not would not be included in any Uh, you know, I think in anyone's understanding of of of food lodging or entertainment Um, justice Alito did not mention that this is what the law says. You actually didn't mention the law period and instead Uh, only refer to these filing instructions um, and and then made uh, kind of ran with the file instructions and said that I don't have to disclose private jet flights because um They could be considered a facility, which is a another word used in a different part of the law It was very confusing. Um, and again As I said earlier, none of the ethics law experts may talk to agree with this and there are Many other federal judges who actually have reported gifts of private jet flights. So that's the disclosure piece Yeah, I uh, I I think everybody's familiar with uh, saying I gotta wait gotta leave Early night because I gotta wake up early in the morning to take a facility out of JFK um, uh, classic, uh, English locution there, um, the, um, uh, and You know, so the the question is, you know, the the omission there was to not cite the law, which was um odd and then Go into some calisthenics, uh about the definition. What about the recusal issue? Yeah, so the recusal issue, um, he said a couple things. One is he said, um First of all, uh, all of these cases that Paul Singer's hedge fund had the court Um, Justice Alito said I didn't know Paul Singer had anything to do with these cases because they didn't say the the case title was not Paul Singer versus uh, the republic of argentina the case title was NML capital, which was an arm of singer's hedge fund versus the republic of argentina, um, and If you haven't if you're not steeped in this, uh, it's true that nml capital sounds a little obscure But it turns out that this, uh, decade long legal battle between singer's hedge fund and argentina was, you know, on the front pages of business sections And and you know just newspapers like the wall street journal New York times, you know around the world really for years. Uh, there was a there was a major international incident in which uh back in 2012 in which singers hedge fund actually tried to see an argentine navy ship That was docked off the coast of gana and uh, and A un united nations court Called the international tribunal on the law of the sea ended up having to get involved This was like a major international story. Paul Singer was extremely closely and publicly Linked to this case But just as just as Alito says and there's not really any way to fact check this inside his head That he didn't know that so that was and therefore He how could why would he recuse himself when he didn't even know there was this connection to singer and then he goes on to say Well, even if I had known, um, I wouldn't have recused myself because I barely know Paul Singer I've only sure I took this trip with him, but I've only talked to him a few times and This private jet flight he gave me All I was doing was occupying an empty seat that otherwise would have gone to waste Um, and so it didn't cost anything anything to singer. Um, and so therefore no reasonable person could uh, You know, believe there's any question or appearance of of impropriety here, which again, um, the recusal experts we spoke to vociferously disagreed with said, you know, if you're getting something of immense value from a litigant It's just a no-brainer. You can't be on the case Uh, as many people have said try that the next time you're on a delta Facility that is, uh, I'd like to sit in that empty first-class seat Um, probably not going to be able to convince them. Um that that gana, uh ship incident was so well known I I think I'll get in trouble for um revealing that my wife told me. Uh, it was a plot point on Madam secretary So, uh, so people people knew about this. Um, uh, all right So including but including including by the way in the wall street journal itself the wall street journal editorial page Journal editorial page exactly a uh, a page that we know that uh, sammelito has some familiarity with Um, okay, so, uh, we've talked about this guy paul singer. Um He's obviously an extraordinarily important figure. Um Explain a little bit about his business and where he sits in the firmament of conservative politics because he's an important figure in both arenas Yeah, so in terms of his business, um, so his hedge fund is called elliot management No relation to me sadly for my financial affairs No private debts for you. Yeah, um And you know, they uh, it's you know, I You you probably know it better than I do jesse But as I understand it's been you know, one of the most successful hedge funds of the last half century I think they have any annualized returns going back to the 70s of 9% a year or something like that Very very consistent high returns that has made paul singer One of the top few hundred richest people in the country if you believe the forbes list Um, so he's a very wealthy guy and what the hedge fund is specifically known for they do a lot of things But what they're best known for are making investments that are not passive but are In which they play an active role and that often involve high-stakes litigation The best example is this argentina saga which which parenthetically The singers hedge fund prevailed ultimately in part because of you know, a series of these supreme court rulings Um, they ultimately walked away Uh with a payout of over two billion dollars from argentina After like 13 years of litigation Um, but they've also been involved in um, you know a series of other high-profile lawsuits. Uh, they often get um are They often involve corporate bankruptcies trying to Shake up the management of public companies getting on the boards of companies Right now they're involved in a a really high-profile lawsuit in which they're actually suing the london metal exchange over Some Over the the exchange canceling a bunch of trades and nickel After the market kind of went haywire a couple years ago And that again is you know, is on like the front page of the financial time. So they're very big You know many of their investments or their best known investments involve litigation Singer himself went to law school was was an attorney for a few years They hired the best lawyers the argentina case They had teddles in the appellate lawyer who Represented george busch in busch v agor And so it's not surprising that he has had you know more than 10 Matters at the supreme court now at the same time as his business has been thriving He's also become one of the biggest republican donors in the country You know just the donations that we know about are easily over a hundred million dollars And uh, it's pretty clear. There's also a lot of undisclosed donations We know that he's been a major donor to the federal of society We can't put a number on it, but he's a big donor to the federal society Which is you know this conservative legal group And that sort of connects to or does connect to somebody else that was on this fishing trip Leonard leo the longtime federal society executive who seem to be Let's get to leo and Yeah, that's uh, he's important, but yeah keep keep on singer because um, I I think the important thing here is that Singer we're not in this head. We don't really know but um, he's articulated his views On both politics and investing and he's got a Political view and a view of what the courts should do But uh, also it's crucial to his business model What the courts do? It's a crucial element Of how he makes money, which is to invest and then try to shape the outcomes through litigation Um, I think that's a very important thing that there's a nice confluence here between the ideology and uh, the Uh and the business Right, I mean when you know when we wrote about clarence thomas and his uh billionaire Benefactor harlan crow. I mean, I don't I don't know that we know the full picture there yet But one thing that's pretty clear is that crowed has not consistently had actual cases as a litigant before the court crow Has all kinds of ideological interests related to the court as an important funder of groups that Are filing amicus briefs that are trying to shape the law Um, but with singer it's really a step further several steps further than that where he has extremely clear material interests Before the court regularly in fact right now as we speak um, his hedge fund again is a party to a petition asking The supreme court to take a case as part of a new legal dispute they're in And the court has said they're gonna be looking at that. I believe this coming september Uh, justice alito has not said whether he's going to reduce himself. I assume he's not going to But um, yeah that we have a whole timeline of story of just repeated cases Um, and going back to thomas, uh thomas, of course said it was okay to take flights from crow because they were Dear family friends. Um, alito says it's okay to take a flight because he uh barely knew singer. Um It's not worth anything. Uh, yeah Um, okay. So, uh, we you mentioned Leonard leo. Why don't you explain that then we'll get to some audience questions in the second But um leo is a uh, who's Leonard leo seems like a very important figure in this whole story Yeah, so Leonard leo is uh, also an attorney, but was never never a practicing attorney as I understand it but he for for many years was uh, one of the top executives at the federalist society and the federalist society is this conservative legal organization that does a number of different things some of which are just uh, you know Every law school have a federal society student chapter where kind of like-minded law students can meet and hang out and uh, you know network and sponsor panel discussions that you know, they'll uh, but kind of more importantly for uh, for our politics, um The federal society and in particular leo in particular leo Over the last 15 or 20 years, especially has played a really important role in creating the conservative super majority on the supreme court. So going back to the uh, nominations and confirmations of of john roberts and elito in the second uh, second george w bush term leo was uh Played an important role in um, organizing outside support running ad campaigns for elito, uh, you know, doing doing research uh, doing oppo research, um, you know, uh sort of having a whole media strategy and then in the years since that his profile has grown to um, you know, I think kind of culminating in the trump administration when he uh, famously Played an important role, uh writing drafting the list that trump released of his potential supreme court picks during the primary when trump was still trying to court the various, um Various segments of the republican base and kind of proved that he would Appoint types of judges that they wanted him to appoint. So leo, uh, you know helped write that list of judges and then you know fast forward to um a year or two ago, uh We along with the new york times broke the story that elito that leo received Um by far the single biggest political donation in history Uh 1.6 billion dollars. So 1 billion 600 million dollars um for a new group called the marvel freedom trust, uh that you know We're not totally sure how it's gonna deploy all that money yet But to sort of generally advance his political interests with respect to not just the law but kind of us politics more generally so he uh is you know It's fair to say one of the most powerful un-elected people in us politics right now Yeah, and um now he called up a singer and um said, uh, hey Uh, we're going to alaska. Can you take me on your plane and can you take a sammelita? um Uh, which you you and josh and alex reporting. Uh, okay. So, uh, let me take some questions from the uh the audience um one one is Uh kind of explaining a little bit of the magic of the reporting I and I do think that the reporting has been dazzling here. Um full of Uh extraordinary detail. Um the kinds of people you've been talking to Um are really kind of imaginative and remarkable Why why don't you sort of walk us through a little bit about the genesis of this and how you guys have Found the people you found to get you to talk Get them and how you've gotten them to talk I would like to take lessons because I used to think I was a pretty good reporter until I started editing this series Yeah, so obviously there's some things we we still can't talk about because a lot of our sources are not named in this in the story And we um, you know have to have to keep keep folks anonymous who needs to be anonymous, but the um, you know, uh Contrary to what some people have accused us of um when we started this reporting We actually had no idea we were going to write about the supreme court, let alone Uh just as a just as Alito and thomas Um about six months ago. Josh and I were thinking about uh covered the judiciary more broadly looking at the appellate courts Which we still find really interesting state supreme courts Um, and we initially thought well, supreme court, uh, seems like it's probably the best covered court in the judiciary So we should look elsewhere But the the genesis of this story actually was um, we noticed that uh, justice Scalia who Died of course six or seven years ago His papers are now at harvard law school and most of them are sealed For several decades, but for reasons that are still not clear the photographs are are open for To the public. So we went up there. Um, and we knew that that justice Scalia had died While on this kind of exclusive hunting ranch in texas owned by a businessman and he had a reputation for taking these hunting trips Um, and we were curious to learn more about that and we found all these photos of of justice uh, Scalia hunting and fishing um with all kinds of interesting seeming people some of whom we actually recognized and um, One of those trips that justice Scalia took We actually wrote about in the same story this week was to alaska Sponsored by paid for by the same businessman who owned the fishing lodge that justice alito went to in 2008 and so um, once we started kind of poking around on this fishing trip We you know found out about this trip that justice alito had taken Um, we started uh, trying to talk to everyone we could who was involved in this like fishing guides Um at the lodge private jet pilots Uh at the lodge You know getting uh flight records from the government that sort of allow you to sketch out to some extent private jet The routes of private jets And we ended up, uh, you know and what we told people um Everyone we talked to Uh, you know, we we told them what we were working on that we were that that you know, this aspect of the justice's lives Was not well understood. They were traveling with some people who seemed really interesting Uh, you know powerful political players uh billionaire businessmen um It's it seems to us obvious that it's in the public interest that should be in the public domain when billionaires are getting Private access the justices by financing their, you know extracurricular vacations. We would do that story Uh, you know in a minute if we heard about it with the senator or president um and uh So we you know started talking to people and it kind of just snowballed from there and um Yeah, and uh, and of course we would do that story in a minute. Uh, if it involved uh Judge or justice who was appointed by a democrat? Um, uh, and in fact, uh, we welcome tips um about uh all judges uh and justices and gifts that they may be receiving or Anything that they um, you know their financial arrangements that are undisclosed Um, uh, whether they're whether it's about uh a pointy uh from a democratic Um, uh president or republican Um, that's absolutely our Our contact info is at the bottom of the story if anyone out there has ideas for us Absolutely, and um and the tips have been great on this series. No, haven't they? Um, uh, yeah Well, you know this particular story. Uh, as you know, jesse we um We we we're working on originally earlier earlier this year and we had to put it on the back burner for a while because uh After the first story on uh, justice thomas and harlin crow came out We got so many tips. We had to spend a month writing follow-up stories about uh, you know We learned about harlin crow Doing a real estate deal with clarence thomas harlin crow being the landlord Of clarence thomas's mother, but apparently not charging her rent uh harlin crow paying the private school tuition for uh Clarence thomas is relative who he was raising as a son. Um, so those were those stores Second and third stores as we've said came because people out there, uh, you know, if you if you see something say something principle uh Heard something and picked up the phone or shot us an email and it's usually they don't come fully kind of gift wrapped and it's just kind of a Uh one piece of a puzzle, but that's that really helps a lot for us Absolutely. Okay. So um in all of the reporting, uh, do you have a particularly favorite detail? um of uh Anything that you've you've dug up either because it was uh difficult to dig up or it was entertaining to dig up Or you just like it? Yeah, well in this recent story. I think the uh, probably our favorite detail was we Found these pictures that we published from the scalia papers Where on this this fishing junket, uh, where again, uh another undisclosed Free apparently free fishing vacation for justice scalia Transport by private jet by this other businessman and federal side donor Um, they went on a chartered boat as part of this trip to see the hubbard glacier up in alaska and uh, the the boats captain, um You know went up to in iceberg and and Chiseled off some glacier ice and then we have a picture of scalia mixing glacier ice martinis Um, and actually after the story was published somebody sent us another picture Uh, I've probably taken a few minutes after the one we did publish in which Scalia and the businessman are are actually drinking the martinis, which uh, if you want to see it's on uh, Josh Kaplan's twitter So I I feel like there's there's some kind of metaphor or or symbolism here But I'll I'll let somebody more poetic than me figure out what it is and precisely Well, these are uh men who uh, enjoy the great outdoors and the uh, um The unspoiled wilderness, um, and whether that comports with their Uh, jurisprudence is a question that we can leave for the uh, the viewers But um, I guess the last thing that I'd ask you then is What cocktail would you make with glacier ice? Oh, man, uh, I think I would probably do it, you know, this is a boring a boring choice, but maybe jim tonic Excellent So basic. Oh, yeah I I go with the gimlet. Okay. You know, um, i'm a gimlet guy um All right, justin. Thank you. I think it's thanks everyone. Thank you very much to everybody who's uh, listening attended asked Questions and comments. We really appreciate it. Um, we appreciate the tips um, and uh, we run on donations. So, um, we particularly Appreciate small dollar donations from uh, regular readers. So thank you very much for the support. Bye bro