The year after that, in 2010, Alito delivered the keynote speech at a dinner for donors to the Manhattan Institute. Once again, Singer delivered a flattering introduction. He and his small band of like-minded justices are a critical and much-appreciated bulwark of our freedom, Singer told the crowd. Samuel Alito is a model Supreme Court justice.
Alito did not disclose the flight or the stay at the fishing lodge in his annual financial disclosures. A federal law passed after Watergate requires federal officials including Supreme Court justices to publicly report most gifts. (The year before, Alito reported getting $500 of Italian food and wine from a friend, noting that his friend was unlikely to appear before this Court.)
The law has a personal hospitality exemption: If someone hosts a justice on their own property, free food, lodging, or entertainment dont always have to be disclosed. But the law clearly requires disclosure for gifts of private jet flights, according to seven ethics law experts, and Alito appears to have violated it. The typical interpretation of the law required disclosure for his stay at the lodge too, experts said, since it was a commercial property rather than a vacation home. The judiciarys regulations did not make that explicit until they were updated earlier this year.
In his op-ed, Alito said that justices commonly interpreted the laws exception for hospitality to mean that accommodations and transportation for social events were not reportable gifts.