Samuel Alito Has Exposed Himself to Felony Bribery Charges Under New Jersey Law. I’m Filing for His Disbarment and Submitting a Criminal Referral.
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Samuel Alito Has Exposed Himself to Felony Bribery Charges Under New Jersey Law. I’m Filing for His Disbarment and Submitting a Criminal Referral.<br>A billionaire gave him a gift, then won billions in his courtroom. The federal system that should have stopped it has refused. Three state offices still can.
Christopher Armitage<br>May 20, 2026
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Note from the author: This article consists first of an executive summary that walks through the entire case in about ten minutes of reading, covering the recusal mechanism, what Alito did, what is being filed, and what you can do this week. If you want the bottom line, the executive summary contains all of it.<br>The second part is a deep dive for readers who want to see the case in the depth the receiving offices will expect, walking through each count with its strongest defense and rebuttal, the criminal referral doctrine, the federal-judge contrast, and the full call to action.<br>Read the summary if you want the case. Read the deep dive if you want to defend the case in a conversation with someone who disagrees with you, or if you work for Snopes.<br>THE CASE IN BRIEF
In October 2026, the Supreme Court will hear a case called Suncor Energy v. County Commissioners of Boulder County, and Justice Samuel Alito is on track to vote in it. The lead petitioner is a company in which Paul Singer’s hedge fund holds a stake worth roughly 1.97 billion dollars. Singer is the same billionaire who flew Alito to Alaska on a private jet in 2008, in a gift Alito never reported, before Singer’s fund won a case in front of Alito that delivered it 2.4 billion dollars. The Court heard an earlier version of this same Suncor case in 2023, and Alito recused. The case has come back on the same question with the same parties, and this time he has not stepped aside.<br>That recusal in 2023 and the refusal to recuse now turn on a rule most folks intuitively understand. Recusal is the rule that keeps a gift from becoming a bribe. A judge who takes something of value from a person and then rules on that person’s case has turned the gift into something that looks like payment for the ruling. Recusal is how a judge prevents that: they step aside and never vote, and the gift stays a gift.<br>Samuel Alito has refused to step aside at least three times in cases tied to the people who gave him things of substantial value, or to the operative who arranged the giving.<br>Here is the first, and it is the one that built the relationship. In July 2008, Alito flew to a fishing lodge in Alaska on Paul Singer’s private jet, a seat that would have cost more than 100,000 dollars to charter. Leonard Leo arranged the trip. Leo is the operative who ran the campaign to confirm Alito to the Court and who has spent his career connecting wealthy conservative donors to conservative judges. Alito did not report the trip on his 2008 financial disclosure form or on any form afterward, until ProPublica exposed it in 2023. Six years after the trip, Singer’s hedge fund had a case before the Court, Republic of Argentina v. NML Capital. Justice Sotomayor recused. Alito did not. He voted with the majority for Singer’s side, and within two years Singer’s fund collected approximately 2.4 billion dollars from Argentina.<br>Here is the second. In 2023, Alito sat for two long private interviews with attorney David Rivkin inside his chambers at the Court. At the time, Rivkin was the lawyer of record for the petitioners in a case called Moore v. United States, which the Court agreed to hear in the weeks between the two interviews. Rivkin was also Leonard Leo’s personal lawyer, defending Leo against the Senate subpoenas that grew out of the Alaska trip investigation. Alito refused to step aside from Moore, calling Rivkin a journalist rather than a litigant during those chambers visits. The Court ruled for Rivkin’s clients in June 2024, with Alito in the majority.<br>The third is Suncor, the vote that is still ahead. Alito owns shares in seven energy companies and a fund that holds ExxonMobil, which is one of the petitioners in the case. He recused from the identical case in 2023 and has not recused now, and Singer’s 1.97 billion dollar position in the lead petitioner ties this vote back to the man who paid for the 2008 trip. One episode looks like a lapse. Three, with the same operative and the same donor running through them, look like a practice.<br>The thread connecting all three is Leonard Leo. He ran the confirmation, arranged the trip, served as the lawyer in the second episode, and built the donor relationships that reach the third. The case is not that one billionaire bought one vote in a back room. The case is that a single operative built a standing relationship between a justice and the donors whose interests keep arriving at...