How A Legal Loophole Allowed Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito To Rule In Trials That Favored His Wife's Investments, Made Billions For Friend Paul Singer

A new report is putting pressure on Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito over several alleged conflicts of interest, including in a deal with Oklahoma gas company Citizen Energy III and Paul Singer's infamous trial against Argentina.

Alito became enemy No. 1 of American progressives when he authored an opinion that served as the basis for the landmark overturning of Roe v Wade, which eliminated the federal right to abortion one year ago this week.

As reported by The Intercept, while Alito didn't engage in any obviously illegal behavior, his actions offer more than enough for critics to question his ethics.

Alito’s Land Deal Raises Eyebrows: At the center of the report is the leasing of a 160-acre plot of land in Oklahoma owned by Alito and his wife Martha Ann Bomgardner Alito, which was handed over for exploitation to Citizen Energy III, a private Oklahoma oil and gas company owned by private equity fund Warburg Pincus.

While Alito is not involved in any rulings related to Citizen or Warburg Pincus, the report said some of his recent decisions could affect oil and gas prices, and thus make his wife's involvement with Citizen Energy an unethical endeavor.

Jeff Hauser, founder and director of executive officials' watchdog organization Revolving Door Project, told that outlet that Alito's actions are the fruit of a failure by the government’s ethics regime that allows for legal behavior which is "obviously unethical."

Under the current system, Supreme Court justices judge personal conflict of interests by themselves without any oversight.

"Our current ethics regime assumes that a person's financial interests need to be extremely specific in order to influence their behavior, a worldview that ignores the foresight rich people and corporations regularly demonstrate," he said.

A recent decision by Alito in a ruling on Sackett v. EPA violently scaled back the territories protected by the Clean Water Act in a ruling that, in the view of President Joe Biden, "puts our nation's wetlands — and the rivers, streams, lakes and ponds connected to them — at risk of pollution and destruction, jeopardizing the sources of clean water that millions of American families, farmers and businesses rely on.”

Alito’s Private Life, Judicial Decisions Intersect: Alito was nominated for the Supreme Court by former President George W. Bush in 2005 and joined the bench in 2006.

Throughout his years at the Supreme Court, Alito was part of several rulings that affected the oil and gas industry, as well as its ability to turn a profit. In 2015, a ruling by Alito and other judges on Oneok, Inc. v. Learjet, Inc., turned back an attempt to block state antitrust laws from being applied to natural gas companies.

Oneok is the largest supplier of natural gas in Oklahoma and has an active pipeline through land owned by Alito and his wife.

Another ruling, from 2021, protected the right for companies with federal backing to seize property in the construction of gas pipelines.

In 2008, while already serving on the Supreme Court, Alito took a luxury fishing trip to Alaska in the private jet of billionaire Singer, as per ProPublica. 

In 2007, Singer requested the Supreme Court settle a dispute with the country of Argentina over billions in unpaid sovereign debt that Singer's fund Elliott Investment Management Singer had previously purchased at a discount in 2001, as Argentina experienced the worst economic crisis in its history.

A ruling by the Supreme Court in 2014 allowed Singer's fund to receive $2.4 billion from crisis-ridden Argentina for bonds purchased for $117 million, according to The Washington Post.

Alito ruled with the majority in the case.

Public domain image, Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States, Photographer: Steve Petteway.