Fox News contributor Leo Terrell warned on “The Faulkner Focus” Friday that the country’s “integrity” is in jeopardy as Democrats try to get their “tentacles” around the conservative Supreme Court. The attorney’s comments came in response to Justice Samuel Alito defending ethics allegations made by ProPublica surrounding a past fishing trip.
WALL STREET JOURNAL HELPS SAM ALITO PREEMPT ETHICS STORY BY PROPUBLICA
LEO TERRELL: We’ve already seen the politicization of the Department of Justice. I want the American people and Fox viewers to know if the Democrats get their tentacles on the Supreme Court, everything about this country is gone. You might recall a couple of years ago they wanted to pack the court. Well, now they’re doing the end round, Harris, and they’re basically challenging the ethics of Supreme Court conservative justice. And I’m telling you right now, this is the next battleground, protecting the integrity of the Supreme Court. Why? Because it keeps a check on the left-wing radicals.
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s Wall Street Journal op-ed responding to a forthcoming story from a left-wing outlet left liberal journalists fuming this week.
Alito published a piece Tuesday in advance of a story from left-leaning nonprofit ProPublica that discussed a 2008 fishing trip he took that included Republican billionaire Paul Singer, going on to report he had not recused himself from future cases involving Singer’s hedge fund or disclosed the trip. While a Supreme Court spokesperson had told ProPublica Alito wouldn’t respond, he took to the WSJ to call the charges invalid, explaining why he felt he had no need to recuse the relevant cases and why his trip didn’t meet the definition of a disclosable gift.
Many were affronted to see the name of a Supreme Court justice in the opinion pages of a newspaper.
“We were surprised to see Justice Alito’s answers appear to our questions in an opinion essay in The Wall Street Journal, but we’re happy to get a response in any form,” ProPublica editor Stephen Engelberg said in a statement to the New York Times. “We’re curious to know whether The Journal fact-checked the essay before publication. We strongly reject the headline’s assertion that ‘ProPublica Misleads Its Readers,’ which the piece declared without anyone having read the article and without asking for our comment.”
The media response to Alito’s op-ed was swift, even from mainstream outlets. The New York Times called it “highly unusual,” and ex-Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou took a shot at his former employer, saying it was a “terrible look.”
Fox News’ David Rutz contributed to this report.
