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Raskin Says Alito Must Recuse After Private Call With Trump
"Alito claims it was to help a former clerk get a job," wrote one legal commentator. "Doesn't matter. Federal law requires Alito now be DISQUALIFIED from the Trump stay petition."
Jan 09, 2025
Following the revelation that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito had a private phone call with Trump the day before Trump's legal team petitioned the Supreme Court to halt his sentencing in his New York "hush money" case, Congressman Jamie Raskin was among those Thursday who called for Alito's recusal from the high profile case.
ABC News first reported the call between Trump and Alito, which took place Tuesday, and that Alito subsequently claimed concerned one of Alito's former law clerks, who is seeking a job in the new administration. "William Levi, one of my former law clerks, asked me to take a call from President-elect Trump regarding his qualifications to serve in a government position," Alito explained to ABC News in a statement.
On Wednesday morning, Trump's legal team filed an emergency request with the Supreme Court to pause his sentencing in New York court on on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection to hush-money payment to porn actress Stormy Daniels.
Alito said that he and Trump did not discuss Trump's emergency request.
Raskin, ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, denounced the call as a "breach of judicial ethics" in a statement Thursday, adding "especially when paired with his troubling past partisan ideological activity in favor of Trump, Justice Alito's decision to have a personal phone call with President Trump—who obviously has an active and deeply personal matter before the court—makes clear that he fundamentally misunderstands the basic requirements of judicial ethics or, more likely, believes himself to be above judicial ethics altogether."
Trump's legal team also appealed to the New York Court of Appeals to postpone the sentencing, which was rejected Thursday, a day after a state appeals court in New York also rejected the request. The sentencing is slated to take place on Friday.
Other court watchers also blasted Alito for the phone call.
President of the watchdog Accountable.US Caroline Ciccone urged Alito to recuse himself from all upcoming cases in which Trump is a named party. "In addition, Congress should investigate Alito's—and other justices'—lapses in judicial ethics in order to strengthen the Court's lax code of conduct. Anything less would confirm what so many already fear: that the Court has become overtly political and a playground for the powerful," she wrote.
"Alito claims it was to help a former clerk get a job. Doesn't matter. Federal law requires Alito now be DISQUALIFIED from the Trump stay petition," wrote Tristan Snell, a lawyer and legal commentator, on Wednesday.
This is not the first time that Alito has engendered this type of scrutiny. Last year, following revelations that flags carried by Trump supporters who took part in the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol were seen flying outside Alito's homes, Alito faced calls to recuse himself from a case two cases: one dealing with Trump's claims of presidential immunity and another on the question of whether defendants who participated in the January 6, 2021 attempted insurrection should be charged with obstructing an official proceeding. Alito rejected the calls to step aside.
"Every federal judge and justice knows he or she must avoid situations such as this. Yet Justice Alito did not," said Raskin.
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ABC News Shows What It Looks Like When Corporate Media Bows to Trump
We are beginning to see this all over the U.S. political-economic system — giant corporations and hugely wealthy people going out of their way to appease King Trump even in advance of his coronation.
Dec 17, 2024
ABC shouldn’t have agreed to settle the defamation case Trump brought against it — handing him $15 million for his presidential “library” (whatever monument that turns out to be) and another million for his legal fees, along with an apology.
It shouldn’t have, first, because the standard for defamation of a public figure requires that a plaintiff prove that the defendant acted with “actual malice” — that is, knew their statement was false or acted with reckless disregard for the truth.
But when on March 10, ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos asserted that Trump had been found civilly liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll, there’s zero evidence that Stephanopoulos knew it to be false or was acting with reckless disregard for the truth.
At Trump’s civil trial for defaming Carroll, she testified that he pushed her against a dressing room wall, forced his mouth onto hers, yanked down her tights, and shoved his hand and then his penis inside her while she struggled against him. She said she finally kneed him off her and fled.
A very big corporation that worries about all the ways the upcoming Trump administration might hurt its bottom line.
In upholding the civil judgment for Carroll and against Trump, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote that the unanimous jury verdict was almost entirely in favor of Carroll, except that the jury concluded she had failed to prove that Trump raped her “within the narrow, technical meaning of a particular section of the New York Penal Law,” which requires vaginal penetration by a penis.
The judge said that jury verdict did not mean that Carroll “failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’ Indeed ... the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”
After a federal judge says that the jury under his purview found that Trump “exactly” raped her, as rape is commonly understood, isn’t it understandable that Stephanopoulos concluded that Trump had been found civilly liable for raping her?
By caving into Trump with this $15 million settlement, ABC didn’t just signal that Trump was correct and Stephanopoulos wrong about whether Trump had in fact raped Carroll.
ABC also signaled that Trump might be correct about a lot of other things he has accused ABC and the rest of the mainstream media of reporting falsely about him — that he lied when he said the 2020 election was stolen from him, for example, or that he lied when he claimed he did not provoke the rioters on January 6, 2021, or when he characterized it as a “peaceful” protest, or said President Biden was behind his prosecutions for trying to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election and making off with classified documents.
ABC’s cave to Trump has even larger implications.
Trump has already used legal threats to intimidate the media and anyone brazen enough to criticize or question him — saying he’ll prosecute journalists and their sources, eliminate funding for public radio and television, subpoena news organizations, revoke networks’ broadcast licenses, and use libel lawsuits.
In the wake of ABC’s surrender, Trump is already expanding his threats of legal action against the news media, stating he wants to “straighten out the press.”
On Monday, Trump said that “today or tomorrow” he would sue the Des-Moines Register newspaper over its final poll of Iowa voters that showed him losing the November election to Vice President Kamala Harris, because he believed the poll “was fraud and it was election interference.”
The Register’sfinal poll before Election Day, conducted by legendary pollster J. Ann Selzer, showed Harris leading Trump 47-44 percent among likely voters in the state. The poll was a bombshell that suggested Harris might pull an upset in a state Trump won in 2016 and 2020.
Trump went on to win the state by a 13-point margin.
“She’s a very good pollster,” Trump said of Selzer. “She knows what she was doing.”
Selzer said she was “mystified” by allegations she was politically motivated or had engaged in election interference. “To suggest without a single shred of evidence that I was in cahoots with somebody, that I was being paid by somebody, it’s hard to pay too much attention to it except that they are accusing me of a crime.”
Trump’s comments about the Register were in response to a reporter’s question about whether Trump planned to file more lawsuits following the settlement with ABC, including against social media influencers and other independent figures. Trump responded, “I think you have to do it because they’re very dishonest. We need a great media. We need a fair media.”
Some news organizations are already warning their reporters to prepare: Axiosrecently told its staff to expect an increased number of lawsuits from the Trump administration, Semafor reported.
At one point, Trump suggested that the U.S. government should be taking up these lawsuits against the news media. “I feel I have to do this. I shouldn’t really be the one to do it. It should have been the Justice Department or somebody else. But I have to do it. It costs a lot of money to do it, but we have to straighten out the press.”
So, why didn’t ABC stand by Stephanopoulos and stand up to Trump?
Media lawyers say it’s rare to see a settlement at this stage of a legal dispute.
After Trump filed the lawsuit accusing Stephanopoulos of “actual malice,” ABC filed a motion to dismiss the case, claiming Trump could not prove actual malice. In July, the judge assigned to the case rejected ABC’s motion and allowed the case to move forward. This subjected the network to the pretrial discovery process, meaning that Stephanopoulos would have his emails and other work materials scrutinized.
The curious thing here is that when media defendants are unsuccessful at the dismissal stage of a trial, they typically move on to preparing for summary judgment and challenge the legal sufficiency of a plaintiff’s claim. Four media lawyers I checked with told me they didn’t understand why ABC would settle before trying for summary judgment, especially when it had such a strong case.
Conservative radio host Erick Erickson, who used to practice law, says ABC and Stephanopoulos wanted to avoid discovery. The “$15 million settlement is not the cost of doing business. It is avoiding discovery.”
I don’t think it’s a cover-up. I know George Stephanopoulos well (we worked together in the Clinton administration), and I have utter confidence in his integrity.
But I don’t have nearly as much confidence in the Walt Disney Company — which, along with its ownership of ABC, owns the Disney Channel, ESPN Wide World of Sports, Freeform, FX, Hulu, Hotstar, and National Geographic. It also owns the properties Disneyland Resort, Walt Disney World Resort, and Disneyland Paris. It owns the studios Pixar Animation, Marvel Studios, Lucasfilm, and 20th Century Studios. It owns the brands Star Wars, The Muppets, Disney Princesses, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Winnie the Pooh. It owns a publishing company, a cruise line, a venture capital firm, and a host of international media networks.
In other words: A very big corporation with its hands in all sorts of places. A very big corporation that worries about all the ways the upcoming Trump administration might hurt its bottom line.
No large American corporation wants to be actively litigating against a sitting president, especially one as vindictive as Trump. A $15 million settlement is chickenfeed compared to the myriad ways Trump could penalize Disney, a $205.25 billion corporation.
We are beginning to see this all over the American political-economic system — giant corporations and hugely wealthy people going out of their way to appease King Trump even in advance of his coronation. They are paying him off to maintain or enlarge their profits.
Which is why Disney’s control over ABC — like Jeff Bezos’s control over The Washington Post, Elon Musk’s control over what we used to call Twitter, and Patrick Soon-Shiong’s control over the Los Angeles Times — and every other wealthy individual’s or big corporation’s control over the news we get, poses such a challenge to American democracy in the age of Trump.
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Will Helene Force Vance to Face Climate Crisis on the Debate Stage?
In a time when we face unprecedented disaster, we need our media institutions to be a source of truth and honesty and to be ready to hold those in power accountable.
Oct 01, 2024
Tonight is the vice presidential debate and it’s likely the final debate of the election and the last opportunity for voters to see both tickets side-by-side. The backdrop will be the once-in-a-generation devastation of Hurricane Helene.
When Walz and Vance take the stage, tens of thousands of people won’t know if their loved ones are alive or if they have a home to go back to. Many more will just be beginning a recovery effort that will take years and cost an estimated $90 billion or more. And Helene is just one sign of the catastrophic destruction that climate change could bring.
We deserve some answers from these men who are running to be second in line to the presidency. CBS debate moderator Norah O'Donnell must ask both JD Vance and Tim Walz what their administrations would do to stop disasters like Helene from becoming the new normal. And, in particular, she needs to be ready to hold JD Vance accountable to actually delivering a response.
With the backdrop of Helene, O'Donnell has an opportunity to show a different path tonight. She can ask strong questions and be ready with facts to hold Vance accountable.
The reality is that our politicians are not confronting the climate crisis at the scale and speed that science and justice demand. Our Vice President is boasting about record oil and gas production in a time when scientists have warned we must be decarbonizing as fast as possible. And her opponent, Donald Trump, is a climate denier who has promised oil and gas billionaires to do their bidding in exchange for a billion dollars. When the candidates were asked about climate change in the last debate, Trump entirely dodged the question, instead pivoting to an irrelevant tangent about auto-plants and tariffs, despite the fact that Biden’s landmark Inflation Reduction Act actually created manufacturing jobs. ABC news moderators didn’t follow up or press the question.
In the year 2024 that doesn’t cut it. Scientists say we have just a handful of years left to stop catastrophic climate change. Helene’s apocalyptic nature is only a sign of the years to come. That makes the next four years of American politics an absolutely critical time for bold climate policy. We could be investing in resilient renewable electricity grids, updating our bridges and our roads, and making sure our homes and infrastructure are ready for disaster. We could be restoring wetlands, mangroves, and forests; expanding FEMA; and building a workforce that is ready to respond to disasters. And above all, we need to decarbonize our economy as fast as humanly possible.
But looking at media coverage, you’d hardly know the urgency of the climate crisis. The vast majority of media coverage of disasters like Helene doesn’t identify climate change as a factor. Even when broadcast news does talk about climate change, only 12% of the time do they mention burning fossil fuels as the problem. And in a bizarre attempt at neutrality, climate deniers in the Republican Party are regularly platformed without being fact-checked or held accountable for their lies.
With the backdrop of Helene, O'Donnell has an opportunity to show a different path tonight. She can ask strong questions and be ready with facts to hold Vance accountable. She should have on hand statements from JD Vance outlining his denial of human-caused climate change—a sharp reversal from his status as a green tech investor just a few years ago. She should be ready to cite opposition to the Inflation Reduction Act, a landmark green energy bill that invests $12 billion in Ohio’s green energy economy and has created good, union jobs.
In a time when we face unprecedented disaster, we need our media institutions to be a source of truth and honesty and to be ready to hold those in power accountable. The tens of thousands of people who have lost their homes to Helene, the people who have had to evacuate from wildfires, the elderly and young people who have died from heat waves, the young people who are scared for their future—we are owed answers.
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