Alito vacationed with a billionaire who later had cases before the court
NEW: Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. went on a luxury fishing trip with Paul Singer, a hedge fund billionaire who has repeatedly asked the Supreme Court to rule in his favor in high-stakes business disputes, ProPublica’s Justin Elliott, Joshua Kaplan and Alex Mierjeski report.
- On July 8, 2008, Singer flew Alito to Alaska on a private jet where they stayed at the King Salmon Lodge, a luxury fishing resort that charged more than $1,000 a day. “If the justice chartered the plane himself, the cost could have exceeded $100,000 one way.”
- Conservative activist Leonard Leo attended and helped organize the trip, while conservative donor Robin Arkley II provided the trip to the justice free of charge.
“In the years that followed, Singer’s hedge fund came before the court at least 10 times in cases where his role was often covered by the legal press and mainstream media.”
- “In 2014, the court agreed to resolve a key issue in a decade-long battle between Singer’s hedge fund and the nation of Argentina. Alito did not recuse himself from the case and voted with the 7-1 majority in Singer’s favor. The hedge fund was ultimately paid $2.4 billion.”
- “Alito did not report the 2008 fishing trip on his annual financial disclosures. By failing to disclose the private jet flight Singer provided, Alito appears to have violated a federal law that requires justices to disclose most gifts,” ethics law experts told Elliot, Kaplan and Mierjeski.
Alito did not respond to ProPublica’s questions about the trip directly. He responded in a Wall Street Journal op-ed published Tuesday — hours before ProPublica published its story:
- Alito said in the op-ed that he wasn’t aware that Singer was connected to the cases when the cases went before the court, recalled speaking with him on “no more than a handful of occasions,” and wrote that they never “talked about any case or issue before the Court.”
- Alito said his seat on Singer’s plane “would have otherwise been vacant” and argued that justices “commonly interpreted” the provision of “accommodations and transportation for social events” to not be required under disclosure rules.
What Hunter Biden’s plea deal could mean for 2024
When Joe Biden ran for president in 2020, Donald Trump and his allies in Congress repeatedly attacked Biden over work that his son, Hunter Biden, did for a Ukrainian energy company.
Now, as President Biden runs for reelection, Hunter Biden’s tentative agreement with federal prosecutors on Tuesday to plead guilty to tax crimes and admit to the facts of a gun charge almost ensure Trump will try to make the younger Biden a liability for his father again heading into 2024.
- But it didn’t help Trump win the presidency in 2020 and this time it might be a harder case to make.
Trump, who remains the GOP front-runner, is facing serious legal jeopardy following his indictment earlier this month on federal charges of mishandling classified documents and obstructing justice. He was also indicted in New York in March on state charges of falsifying business records.
Hunter Biden is making his plea deal long before the presidential campaign kicks into high gear — will voters still care next year? — and some Democrats are arguing the fact that he’s copping to tax crimes shows he is not being let off the hook because he’s the president’s son.
But Trump is trying to use the disparity in the seriousness of the charges against him and those to which Hunter Biden is set to plead guilty as a way to build the argument that he is being unfairly treated by federal law enforcement officials for political reasons.
“Today proves there is a clear two-tiered system of justice — one for Democrats and one against President Trump,” Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesman, said in a statement to The Early.
- Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and other House Republicans echoed those criticisms on Tuesday.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.), who’s been investigating Hunter Biden’s work abroad and whether President Biden had any connections to it, vowed to press on. He plans to investigate the two tax charges and the gun count by compelling bank records and depositions and potentially holding hearings, he said.
“This is still an investigation of Joe Biden,” Comer said. “The president’s son obviously is a person of interest in the investigation.”
The view from the White House
Biden allies view Hunter Biden’s plea deal “as part of a rehabilitation, of his life and of his public image,” our colleague Matt Viser reports.
- “He has often been a third rail for the White House, with staffers uneasy about talking with the president about Hunter. Some of those close to Hunter view this as the next step in a process where he can be more of a public presence in his father’s presidency and reelection effort, returning him to a role he had long played as something of an informal adviser in his father’s political career.”
Biden’s campaign declined to comment. Ian Sams, a White House spokesman, said in a statement on Tuesday that President Biden and first lady Jill Biden “love their son and support him as he continues to rebuild his life.”
Hunter Biden has been under investigation since 2018, and it’s possible that Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss, the lead prosecutor in the case who was nominated by Trump, or House Republicans will uncover more potential wrongdoing. While Hunter Biden’s lawyer said the plea deal means the Justice Department’s investigation “is resolved,” our colleagues Devlin Barrett and Perry Stein report, Weiss “said the investigation ‘is ongoing,’ suggesting that matters beyond the tax and gun issues are still under scrutiny.”
- But Democrats are skeptical Trump’s focus on Hunter Biden will damage his father’s reelection campaign.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, called Hunter Biden’s guilty plea and the gun charge “serious,” but said he didn’t think it would hurt President Biden politically.
“There isn’t a family in the country that hasn’t been touched by drug and alcohol addiction and substance abuse, and people know that people do very stupid things when they’re addicted to drugs or alcohol,” Raskin said. (Hunter Biden has spoken openly and wrote in his 2021 memoir about his drinking and crack cocaine use.)
‘Where is the outrage?’
While Trump is the first major presidential candidate to run while under indictment, efforts to tie presidents to the criminal charges against their family members and former aides are nothing new.
In the final weeks of the 1996 election, Sen. Bob Dole (Kan.), the Republican nominee, who was trailing badly in the polls, attacked President Bill Clinton for refusing to rule out pardons for associates convicted in the Whitewater investigation.
“Where is the outrage in America?” Dole asked at one campaign rally. “Where is the outrage?”
- Any outrage didn’t prevent Clinton from winning reelection with 379 electoral votes.
Scott Reed, Dole’s campaign manager, said Biden might be more vulnerable to attacks on Hunter Biden because he told MSNBC last month that his son had “done nothing wrong.”
“Who can believe him now?” Reed, who is advising a super PAC backing former vice president Mike Pence’s campaign, wrote in a text message to The Early.
How the public views Hunter Biden
There’s been little polling on how Americans feel about the investigation into Hunter Biden.
- A Fox News poll in April found that 44 percent of Americans believe Hunter Biden “did something illegal” in his business dealings with China and Ukraine, while 35 percent said he “did something unethical but not illegal” and 14 percent said he hadn’t done anything seriously wrong. The poll didn’t ask about the tax and gun charges against Hunter Biden.
But Joel Benenson, a Democratic pollster who worked on Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns, said Republican attacks on Hunter would be irrelevant in the campaign, especially in comparison to Trump’s indictments.
“Hunter Biden’s not on the ballot,” he said.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) will unveil his framework for addressing artificial intelligence today at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.
In excerpts of his speech, Schumer will lay out how Congress should think about legislating around AI.
- “One: what is the proper balance between collaboration and competition among the entities developing AI?”
- “Two: how much federal intervention, on the tax and spending side, must there be? Is federal intervention to encourage innovation necessary at all, or should we let the private sector develop on its own?”
- “Three: what is the proper balance between private AI systems and open AI systems?”
- “And finally: how do we ensure innovation and competition is open to everyone, not just the few big powerful companies? The government must play a role ensuring open, free, and fair competition.”
Congress has generally done a poor job of regulating technological advances. But Schumer remains optimistic. “So don’t count Congress out!” he will say.
Schumer launched a working group with Sens. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), Todd Young (R-Ind.) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) to focus on the issue in the Senate.
Biden weighs India’s strategic importance with concerns over human rights
When the president and the first lady welcome Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the White House today, the tension between Washington’s strategic interests and its human rights agenda — which Biden has called the “fundamental challenge of our time” — will once again be in the spotlight.
Since its announcement in May, Modi’s White House visit has been overshadowed by widespread concerns about India’s human rights record, democratic erosion and its refusal to condemn Russia over its war in Ukraine.
- Those concerns came to a head Tuesday when more than 70 congressional Democrats, led by Rep. Pramila Jayapal (Wash.) and Sen. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), urged Biden to raise human rights issues with Modi during the visit. In their letter, the lawmakers expressed concerns about religious intolerance, press freedom and internet access.
Still, the Biden administration sees India as an “increasingly vital player in a region the U.S. has prioritized in its foreign policy — a potential bulwark against China and an increasingly powerful actor in sectors including technology, defense and the arts,” per our colleagues Toluse Olorunnipa, Ellen Nakashima, Gerry Shih and Abigail Hauslohner.
“There’s really no other country in Asia that has the combination of size, economic heft and location to be able to serve as a counterweight to China,” said Joshua White, former senior adviser and National Security Council director for South Asian affairs under President Barack Obama.
Following Biden’s face-to-face meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of November’s Group of 20 summit in Bali, Biden told reporters that the world’s largest economies would learn how to “manage” each other’s differences to avoid additional conflict.
It’s a theory the Biden administration has put into practice, despite criticism from both the left and right at times that he isn’t taking a tough enough stand on issues such as human rights or military provocations.
- Biden “been clear that in that larger effort, we need constructive relationships with countries of all different traditions and backgrounds,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in a Tuesday interview with a small group of reporters.
Modi’s White House visit is the clearest signal yet that the Biden administration is prepared to manage its differences with India, including over human rights, to “work together in service of their respective interests,” our colleagues write.
Manjari Chatterjee Miller, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the administration’s desire to maintain a good relationship with India makes it more difficult to call it out on human rights issues, whereas doing so with China is politically easier since it is a rival, not an ally.
“The Biden administration clearly believes that in the long run, it cannot afford to lose India,” Miller said.
Impeach Biden: The House will be forced to vote as early as today on a resolution to impeach Biden for “high crimes and misdemeanors” over his handling of the southern border. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) has introduced a privileged resolution that will force the House to vote on impeachment, our colleague Marianna Sotomayor reports. But this is not something that the 18 Republicans who represent districts Biden won in 2020 want to vote on.
Censuring Schiff: The House will also vote on a resolution to censure Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) over his role in the investigation into Trump when Trump was president. Changes were made to the resolution, including dropping a $16 million fine, to address some Republicans’ concerns.
The measure is now expected to pass. (In Tuesday’s newsletter, we had an unfortunate typo that said the measure would not pass when it was supposed to say the measure would now pass. Please accept our apologies.)
Durham testimony: Special counsel John Durham will testify today before the House Judiciary Committee on his recently released report investigating the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
On Tuesday, we dug deep into Durham’s appearances on the Hill this week, noting that with Trump under federal indictment for his alleged mishandling of classified documents — and with more indictments possibly still to come — Republicans have sought to use Durham’s report as evidence the former president is a victim of an FBI and a Justice Department out to get him.
- Effects of Dobbs on maternal health care overwhelmingly negative, survey shows. By Kim Bellware.
- In missing submersible and migrant disaster, a tale of two Pakistans. By Ishaan Tharoor.
- Pentagon accounting error provides extra $6.2 billion for Ukraine military aid. By the Associated Press’s Lolita C. Baldor and Tara Copp.
On a boat called the “Happy Hooker IV,” no less
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