Media’s Latest Alito Conspiracy Theory Is Particularly Ridiculous

Left-wing media breathlessly reported Wednesday that Associate Justice Samuel Alito provided a job reference on behalf of one of his former clerks to President-elect Donald Trump.

“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. I agreed to discuss this matter with President-elect Trump, and he called me yesterday afternoon,” Alito told ABC News, which broke the shocking news that an employer gave a job reference for one of his former employees.

CNN, Politico, CBS News, Rolling Stone, Associated Press, New York Times, NBC News, and a host of other left-wing media outlets amplified the report about Levi’s efforts to secure a job as the Defense Department’s general counsel and suggested it was part of an elaborate conspiracy to change the outcome of a looming case. Levi clerked for Justice Alito in the 2011-2012 term and was former Attorney General Bill Barr’s chief of staff.

Federal judges and Supreme Court justices provide references for former clerks regularly, in the same way that other employers provide references for former employees regularly. Ethics guidelines for federal judges acknowledge this reality and mention how to handle such scenarios in the Published Ethics Advisory Opinions.

These guidelines say judges providing job references should not initiate contact with Congress or the White House, and should not respond to media requests in support or opposition of a nominee, but “there would be no impropriety in a judge answering an inquiry from a screening committee or appointing authority with respect to the judge’s knowledge concerning the qualifications and other relevant factors of a nominee for appointment to any public office.”

You would not know that judicial ethics codes approve of job references if all you read was Adam Liptak’s conspiratorial essay for The New York Times:

Justice Alito said the call was a routine job reference for a former law clerk whom Mr. Trump was considering for a government position.

It was not clear, however, why Mr. Trump would make a call to check references, a task generally left to lower-level aides.

Then Liptak quoted left-wing activist Gabe Roth, the executive director of Fix the Court, which he describes in anodyne terms but is actually a secretly funded left-wing activist group that has lobbied against the three most recent Republican-nominated Supreme Court nominees. It also seeks to pack the court with additional justices in order to change the results of its decisions, term-limit sitting justices, require telecasts of oral arguments, and forbid the justices from holding stocks.

“Typically,” [Roth] added, “Trump and Alito are better at hiding their ethics issues, at least for a few months or sometimes longer. But with the Supreme Court greenlighting near-absolute presidential immunity last year, and with Congress refusing to pass enforceable ethics for the justices, it appears there’s no reason to even try.”

At no point did Liptak mention that Roth was incorrect about whether it was unethical to provide a job reference. Liptak hid the ethics guidelines from his readers. Instead, he — and reporters at other left-wing media outlets — spun an elaborate conspiracy theory that the calls were somehow related to Trump’s efforts to fight Democrat lawfare in the closing days of his transition. New York State Supreme Court judge Juan Merchan flouted a July 2024 Supreme Court decision about presidential immunity to pursue sentencing this week in the show trial of Trump he ran earlier this year.

Merchan, a literal Biden donor with financial conflicts of interest, should have recused himself from the trial or been removed. His daughter works for a firm whose clients include top Democrat opponents of Trump. The case was brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg using provocative and outlandish theories that were critiqued even by left-wing observers. His team included a bevy of Biden-connected attorneys. The prosecution and trial were run without regard for Trump’s due process rights. For example, Democrat donor Merchan allowed highly prejudicial testimony from prosecution witness Stormy Daniels but did not allow the nation’s top campaign finance expert to testify. The case purportedly dealt with campaign finance violations.

Merchan should have vacated the guilty verdict he secured through his mishandling of the troubled trial, or entered a judgement of acquittal after the Supreme Court said official presidential acts cannot be grounds for prosecution of the president. Prosecutors told the jury Trump was guilty based on his alleged communications with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, communications that would clearly be ruled out of consideration by the Supreme Court ruling.

Instead, Marchan has pushed for sentencing of Trump on Friday. After Trump and Alito spoke this week, Trump’s legal team also filed an appeal to the Supreme Court in the Merchan case. The media are presenting an “underpants gnome” theory that the job reference call was somehow tied to this subsequent appeal to the Supreme Court. Perhaps they think that Alito provided a job reference for a clerk in exchange for upholding the Supreme Court’s previous rulings on presidential immunity? Perhaps they think that Trump offered Levi a job in exchange for Alito continuing to issue decisions the same way he has for 19 years? Perhaps they are just consumed with so much hatred that they are inclined toward conspiracy theories any time Trump is mentioned?

“We did not discuss the emergency application he filed today, and indeed, I was not even aware at the time of our conversation that such an application would be filed,” Alito said in his statement.

The left-wing media and other Democrats have been engaged in a years-long information operation to suggest that Alito and other conservative justices are unethical. The effort ramped up as Alito and other justices considered overturning Roe v. Wade, the extremely controversial 1973 decision that claimed a right to end the lives of unborn children was found in the U.S. Constitution. The Court in 2022 handed down the Dobbs decision, which painstakingly noted that the Constitution does not mention such a right, and returned decisions about abortion law to the people and their elected representatives.

Conservative justices have faced threats to their safety and lives as a result of this campaign. Two years ago, a pro-abortion man attempted to assassinate Justice Brett Kavanaugh at the home he shares with his wife and children after a draft of the Dobbs decision was leaked in a likely attempt to change the final outcome.

“Im gonna stop roe v wade from being overturned … I could get at least one, which would change the votes for decades to come, and I am shooting for 3,” would-be assassin Nicholas Roske texted before his arrest.

The media campaign against conservative justices has been relentless and well-funded, and has included attacks on the spouses of some justices. For example, the New York Times ran a never-ending series of articles attempting to get Alito ousted because his wife had flown various flags at her house and beach home. The New York Times was apoplectic with rage over Martha Alito’s flying of a white flag with a large green pine tree placed in the center that was originally designed by George Washington’s secretary and flown during the American Revolution. “Another Provocative Flag Was Flown at Another Alito Home,” read the inadvertently hilarious piece written by Jodi Kantor, Aric Toler, and Julie Tate.

But even by the standards of the left-wing press’s campaign against Alito, this week’s hit is particularly stupid.