Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed by Justice Samuel Alito titled Justice Samuel Alito: ProPublica Misleads Its Readers. Justice Alito was responding to an innuendo-filled screed that appeared in ProPublica called Justice Samuel Alito Took Luxury Fishing Vacation With GOP Billionaire Who Later Had Cases Before the Court (sorry, no links given to slander mongers). What made the story and op-ed so interesting was that it was not a conservative jurist responding to another stupid “gotcha” story. Justice Alito’s response to ProPublica was published five hours before ProPublica ran the story containing its contrived allegations.
This is the Editor’s Note from the Wall Street Journal:
Editor’s note: Justin Elliott and Josh Kaplan of ProPublica, which styles itself “an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism with moral force,” emailed Justice Alito Friday with a series of questions and asked him to respond by noon EDT Tuesday. They informed the justice that “we do serious, fair, accurate reporting in the public interest and have won six Pulitzer Prizes.” Here is Justice Alito’s response:
In best Alito style, he eviscerates the scurrilous string of faux facts that ProPublica had strung together in a hit piece in a way that only ProPublica can do.
Washington Post reporters Paul Farhi and Robert Barnes got their knickers all in a twist as they saw a scoop, like the nothingburger ProPublica ran on Clarence Thomas (Pro Publica Seems Put out That Clarence Thomas Looks Like a Champ After Their ‘Ethics Scandal’ Hit Job ), strangled in its crib…sorry, we’re not supposed to use violent metaphors these days…made irrelevant.
Alito’s Journal column, bluntly headlined “ProPublica Misleads Its Readers,” was an unusual public venture by a Supreme Court justice into the highly opinionated realm of a newspaper editorial page. And it drew criticism late Tuesday for effectively leaking elements of ProPublica’s still-in-progress journalism — with the assistance of the Journal’s editorial page editors.
“Drew criticism” from who you have every reason to ask. We don’t know. Farhi and Barnes make this bald-faced assertion and never bother to offer a shred of evidence that anyone, anywhere, cared.
Rather than playing ball with these journalistic terrorists, Alito turned the table on them. He served up in-depth answers that would never have seen the light of day in ProPublica’s reporting (when a reporter calls you for your response, all that means is that they have a story ready to run and need to say that they gave you a chance to respond, it doesn’t mean your response is going to get anything but a bum’s rush in the story) and took the initiative instead of being on the defensive.
ProPublica is a rather disreputable outfit specializing in smears and character assassination. They were part of the lynch mob that tried to eliminate Justice Kavanaugh from the court, but the best they could do was analyze his baseball seat purchases (ProPublica is Getting Desperate for Dirt on Kavanaugh). Their opposition is not principled; they are funded by the same people bankrolling the broader effort by progressive groups to force Justice Thomas from the bench.
“ProPublica seems to be taking marching orders from the same extreme left-wing donors who are also funding other left-wing activist groups making similar attacks on Justices,” Mark Paoletta, a Schaerr Jaffe law firm partner who worked on the confirmations of Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, told the DCNF. “It’s all coordinated. ProPublica is just another left-wing attack dog and their motivations are clear.”
They have an open vendetta against conservative justices on the Supreme Court (The Left Is Trying to Destroy the Supreme Court Because They Can’t Control It). So far, they’ve targeted Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, but you know other sleazy hit pieces can’t be far behind.