Supreme Court Fishy Business: Follow The Money
Hedge Fund Billionaire takes Supreme Court Justice on luxury fishing trip who later rules for billionaire getting him $2.4 billion.
Who paid for the luxury fishing trip? What was the case that led to the billionaire’s fund getting $2.4 billion? What other favors have billionaires done for Supreme Court Justices? How did billionaires stack the Supreme Court with right wing partisan justices?
Follow the money and favors with this relationship map using information from the excellent ProPublica article on Supreme Court corruption and other sources. Click on any image or connection between people in the map for more details.
Follow the money
Fishy business
Sam Alito makes $285,400 a year. Republican megadonor Paul Singer gave Alito a lift to Alaska on a private jet that, ProPublica reports, could have cost more than $100,000 each way if Alito had paid for the charter himself. But he didn’t. Instead, he accepted the favor and later participated in deciding the cases. Singer, a hedge fund billionaire, has had cases in front of the Supreme Court and been involved in filing amicus briefs since the fishing trip in 2008. Justice Alito later ruled in favor of Singer whose fund made $2.4 billion from the ruling.
Leonard Leo, the founder of the conservative Federalist Society, organized the trip and arranged for Alito’s flight on Singer’s plane. There was a web of interconnection among the men: Leo had recently played a role in Alito’s confirmation, by a 58–42 vote, in January 2006; both Singer and Arkley were contributors to Leo’s political groups. – Summarized from Civil Discourse by Joyce Vance
Luxury fishing vacation
“Justice Samuel Alito Took Luxury Fishing Vacation With GOP Billionaire Who Later Had Cases Before the Court. 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, according to ethics law experts.
Experts said they could not identify an instance of a justice ruling on a case after receiving an expensive gift paid for by one of the parties. “If you were good friends, what were you doing ruling on his case?” said Charles Geyh, an Indiana University law professor and leading expert on recusals. “And if you weren’t good friends, what were you doing accepting this?” referring to the flight on the private jet.” – ProPublica
What is a Relationship Map?
A relationship map helps untangle a complex web of relationships. They show the connections between people. Money and favors being exchanged. Faces and images make the map easier to use. the size of a face represents the relative importance of that person. Relationships are shown as line with the line width reflecting the strength of the relationship. I’ve used GREEN lines to show activities with a financial angle and RED lines for Supreme Court stacking.
This map was designed with the free Kumu app and can be freely shared with this link “https://embed.kumu.io/10da71d0ad4ad0c18a6c652c553bbe65” or embedded in a website with this code < iframe src=”https://embed.kumu.io/10da71d0ad4ad0c18a6c652c553bbe65″ width=”940″ height=”600″ frameborder=”0″></iframe>
TakeAway: Call your Senator to demand they vote to enforce a code of ethics for the Supreme Court Justices.
Deepak
DemLabs
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Reposted from Democracy Labs with permisison.
