Unlike Ginny Thomas, who is well-known for her activism to bring back the Confederacy and even encouraged a violent overthrow of the United States, Martha Ann Alito avoids the spotlight like the plague. However, some limited news that connects the dots to the George W. Bush-appointed Supreme Court Justice has been reported, and her activism is private with Samuel. As far as we know, her death cultish beliefs are similar to Ginny's.
Drill Baby Drill
From the intercept: SAMUEL ALITO’S WIFE LEASED LAND TO AN OIL AND GAS FIRM WHILE THE JUSTICE FOUGHT THE EPA (June 26, 2023)
A YEAR AGO this month, Martha Ann Bomgardner Alito decided to see if a 160-acre plot of land in Grady County, Oklahoma, would produce. In a lease filed with the Grady County clerk, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito entered into an agreement with Citizen Energy III for revenue generated from oil and gas obtained from a plot of hard scrabble she inherited from her late father. It is one of thousands of oil and gas leases across Oklahoma, one of the top producers of fossil fuels in the United States.
Last year, before the lease was activated, a line in Alito’s financial disclosures labeled “mineral interests” was valued between $100,001 and $250,000. If extraction on the plot proves fruitful, the lease dictates that Citizen Energy will pay Alito’s wife 3/16ths of all the money it makes from oil and gas sales.
In the past, Alito has often recused himself from cases that pose potential conflicts of interest with his vast investment portfolio. Many of these recusals were born from an inheritance of stocks after the death of Alito’s father-in-law, Bobby Gene Bomgardner. Because Citizen Energy III isn’t implicated in any cases before the Supreme Court, Alito’s holding in Oklahoma doesn’t appear to pose any direct conflicts of interest. But it does add context to a political outlook that has alarmed environmentalists since Alito’s confirmation hearing in 2006 — and cast recent decisions that embolden the oil and gas industry in a damning light.
“There need not be a specific case involving the drilling rights associated with a specific plot of land for Alito to understand what outcomes in environmental cases would buttress his family’s net wealth,” Jeff Hauser, founder and director of the Revolving Door Project, told The Intercept. “Alito does not have to come across like a drunken Paul Thomas Anderson character gleefully confessing to drinking our collective milkshakes in order to be a real life, run-of-the-mill political villain.”
In Slate Magazine, Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern wrote about raising the Stop the Steal upside-down flag after the failed violent coup against the United States.
The Smallest Justice Who Ever Lived
None of the Alitos’ explanations so far even attempt to explain why Martha-Ann landed on this gesture, out of all the possibilities, to further upset and provoke her progressive neighbors. Readers are also left to guess at the true origin of the conflict; are we really supposed to think that the neighbors picked this fight unprovoked, and the Alitos are completely blameless? The justice’s defenders are scrambling to muddy the waters with some alternate explanation, but the truth is crystal clear, and unrefuted by the Alitos themselves: That flag was hung upside down to piss off some libs. At best, Martha-Ann Alito was trolling her neighbor by professing a militant belief that Biden stole the election; at worst, she held that belief sincerely.
Let’s be clear that everything these neighbors stand accused of doing is obviously protected speech under the First Amendment. There is no allegation of genuine harassment or true threats; these people just wanted to express displeasure toward a very public figure and his somewhat public wife. And though Alito seems to believe that he and his wife were within their rights to fight back against an irritating neighbor, the staff who work under Alito at SCOTUS would have no such luxury. The Times piece lays out the strictures on court employees that ban political signs and bumper stickers, “partisan political activity,” and even “nonpartisan political activity” that “could reflect adversely on the dignity or impartiality of the court.”
The court would not say whether the rules that censor its staff also apply to the justices. But Alito must know how terrible it looks for his own household to breach the decorum requirements imposed on the people who work for him. The very idea that the neighbors’ unkind words forced the Alitos to violate the network of rules that prevent shows of bias is just a variation on last year’s defense that a comped seat on a private jet is not subject to disclosure rules because it would have been vacant otherwise.
So when Alito throws his wife under the bus—the flag was “briefly placed by Mrs. Alito in response to a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs”—he’s issuing another justification: He gets to break the rules because she was in a fight with the neighbors. He gets to break the rules because the seat on the plane was otherwise unoccupied. He gets to break the rules because the rules are always trying to trip him up and catch him out
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The justice’s perpetual victimhood mentality, which shines through in his opinions and interviews and myriad grievance-laden speeches, has now literally reached his own front yard. The Alitos are not here fighting some vitally important civic-minded battle about the nature of freedom or democracy. No. This is, as Alito concedes, just payback because of a lawn sign and a bad word. Presumably, fourth-period detention and a note home to the neighbors’ parents were not an option.
Justice Alito denies allegation of a leak in 2014 case about access to birth control
Justice Samuel Alito denied allegations Saturday from a former anti-abortion activist that his wife, Martha-Ann Alito, played a role in revealing the outcome of a pending Supreme Court case in 2014. An Ohio woman friendly with the Alitos who was a donor to a Supreme Court-connected nonprofit group and allegedly served as a conduit for the sensitive information has also denied the claim.
The allegation comes six months after a stunning breach of Supreme Court secrecy — POLITICO’s publication of the draft ruling authored by Alito that overturned the landmark, 49-year-old precedent guaranteeing a federal constitutional right to abortion.
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In July, POLITICO published an account of Schenck’s efforts to encourage more strictly conservative decisions by the Supreme Court. Part of the multi-faceted plan — dubbed “Operation Higher Court” — involved trying to gain access to the justices through various means, including by having religious couples from across the U.S. gain entrée with the justices and seeking opportunities to socialize with them at fundraising events and even in their homes.
Schenck claims he was told about the outcome of the Hobby Lobby case by Gayle Wright, the wife of a wealthy real estate developer and founder of a successful furniture business, Don Wright. As POLITICO previously reported, the Wrights were part of “Operation Higher Court.”
Schenck, who was once an anti-abortion activist but broke with the religious right in the last decade over its aggressive tactics and support for gun rights, said the couples were instructed before the dinners to use certain phrases to influence the justices while steering clear of the specifics of cases pending before the court — for example, to “talk about the importance of a child having a father and a mother,” rather than engage in the particulars of a gay-rights case.Mat Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, said, “I don’t know a lot about what Rob Schenck has done in the past . . . When he says he invited couples to wine and dine justices, I know of nothing like that that happened.”
Schenck pointed to one prominent evangelical couple — Don and Gayle Wright of Dayton, Ohio — as major funders of his group, which established an office directly behind the Supreme Court building. Don Wright became wealthy through his furniture business and real estate firm, owning homes in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and Siesta Key, Florida.
Schenck said that, in addition to making regular donations to Faith and Action, the Wrights financed numerous expensive dinners with Thomas, Alito, Scalia and their wives at Washington, D.C., hotspots including the Capital Grille. Don Wright died in 2020.
There is *nothing* you care about that survives a 6-3 Republican court for a generation. Nothing. I don’t know how many times the Court has to prove that to people before liberals unify and act. Elie Mystal.He said the Wrights had strongly conservative views on abortion, homosexuality and gun rights, and dedicated themselves to reinforcing the Supreme Court justices’ own conservative views on the issues. They were the most active of the roughly 20 couples involved in the program Faith and Action called “Operation Higher Court,” Schenck said.
All the couples “knew they were being coached” and adhered to a “casual reporting procedure” in which they offered feedback on their dinners with the justices and their wives, Schenck said.