Source: CNN
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito reported receiving concert tickets from a member of Germany’s nobility in an annual financial report made public Friday but reported no travel reimbursements, which have been controversial for some of his colleagues on the bench.
Alito reported receiving concert tickets valued at $900 from Germany’s Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis, also known as “Princess TNT.” He also reported securing a small loan – valued at less than $15,000 – but did not include details about either entry. His report comes months after other justices posted their own disclosures.
Princess Gloria has become known in recent years as a conservative Catholic and staunch critic of Pope Francis. The Supreme Court did not immediately respond to a request for more information about the gift.
Unlike last year, when Alito reported travel to Rome to attend a religious summit, the conservative justice noted no such trips for 2023.
Alito’s report lands at a moment when proposed ethics reforms at the Supreme Court are receiving renewed attention, even though they have gained little traction in Congress. President Joe Biden called for a binding code of ethics for the justices this summer, and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson became the second member of the court to publicly indicate an openness to the idea.
Though the high court adopted its own code of conduct last year, the measure was criticized by ethics experts because it relies on the justices to police themselves.
Alito’s eight colleagues filed their annual disclosure reports in mid-May, and those reports were made public in early June. Alito regularly receives an extension.
In his own report earlier this year, Thomas formally disclosed a 2019 trip to Indonesia paid for by GOP megadonor Harlan Crow, a gift that was at the center of the controversy over his travel. Jackson reported receiving four concert tickets from Beyoncé to a concert, and Jackson and several of her colleagues reported payments from publishers as part of book deals.
The annual disclosures, required by law, provide a rough sketch of the finances of the justices and lower court judges. The reports have drawn additional scrutiny in recent years amid a series of ethics scandals involving private jet travel and luxury vacations accepted by some of the justices.
Alito acknowledged attending a luxury fishing trip on the private jet of a conservative hedge fund manager, Paul Singer, in 2008 – a trip he did not disclose on his annual form. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed last year, Alito downplayed his relationship with Singer and said that a ProPublica story documenting the trip was not “valid.”