Rather than calling out justices for failing to disclose important financial information and their potential conflicts of interest in cases before the Supreme Court, right-wing media are pointing fingers at journalists for exposing their bad behavior. 

Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Clarence Thomas have come under fire for their involvement with wealthy individuals who have had business before the court. In all three cases, the justices omitted information from federal financial disclosure forms and declined to recuse themselves from cases in which they may have had a conflict of interest. 

Thomas has been accused of accepting luxury gifts and travel from billionaire GOP megadonor Harlan Crow for more than two decades. ProPublica reported, “Through his largesse, Crow has gained a unique form of access, spending days in private with one of the most powerful people in the country. By accepting the trips, Thomas has broken long-standing norms for judges’ conduct, ethics experts and four current or retired federal judges said.”

ProPublica reports that Alito took a luxury fishing trip to Alaska in July 2008, paid for by hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer. Singer’s hedge fund has appeared before the Supreme Court at least 10 times, but Alito has never recused himself from any of the cases. He also did not report the trip on his annual financial disclosures, which could be a violation of a federal law requiring justices to disclose gifts. Notably, The Wall Street Journal had allowed Alito to preempt ProPublica’s reporting with his own “pre-buttal” column, in an unprecedented move to defend the conservative justice.

According to a report from Politico, Gorsuch sold property he co-owned with several other individuals to Brian Duffy, the chief executive of Greenberg Traurig, “one of the nation’s biggest law firms with a robust practice before the high court.” On his federal disclosure forms, Gorsuch left blank the box in which he was supposed to identify the buyer. Since then, Greenberg Traurig has been involved in at least 22 cases before the Supreme Court. 

These incidents have drawn attention to the fact that the Supreme Court has neither an ethics code nor an ethics office. The court laid out its ethics practices in a statement signed by all of the justices, but critics assert that an enforceable code is necessary. Right-wing media are insisting that calls for reform are merely part of a leftist campaign to delegitimize the Supreme Court or its conservative-leaning justices, rather than legitimate concerns about the conduct of powerful individuals in the U.S. government. 

Right-wing media are shielding the justices from accountability by claiming that conservatives are being targeted: 

• The Washington Examiner claimed that ProPublica published a “hit piece” against Alito. The article claimed that ProPublica's reporting is part of a “well-financed campaign that it and other Left-wing organizations are waging, with the help of Democratic politicians, to discredit members of the Supreme Court’s 6-3 conservative majority.” [Washington Examiner, 6/21/23]
• Fox News anchor Shannon Bream claimed that the left is “going after” justices in order to “change the court.” She told co-anchor Bill Hemmer: “The left has not been happy with decisions from the court, including overturning Roe v. Wade and other conservative-leaning decisions. So they say it is time to change the court.” [Fox News, America’s Newsroom, 6/22/23]
• RedState published an article titled “Justice Alito Leaves Progressive Smear Merchants Crying as He Scoops Them on Their Own Story.” The piece claims that in his Wall Street Journal response to the accusations, Alito “eviscerates the scurrilous string of faux facts that ProPublica had strung together in a hit piece in a way that only ProPublica can do.” [RedState, 6/21/23]
• On his radio show, Fox host Mark Levin claimed that ProPublica put out a “hit job” against Alito. He then went on a rant about Democrats, saying, “They hate Sam Alito because of the Dobbs decision. … There's no end to this. You think you get over, move along. There is no getting over. They're not gonna stop screwing around with your life. They're not gonna stop screwing around with your freedom, and they're not gonna stop screwing around with your gas stoves, your automobiles, your air conditioning — they're not gonna stop.” [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 6/20/23]
• TheBlaze referred to a Politico article on Gorsuch’s property sale as “BS on stilts.” The article called the reporting “the media's latest attempt to tarnish one of the Supreme Court's conservative-leaning justices.” [TheBlaze, 4/26/23]

Right-wing media are claiming that the left is trying to discredit the Supreme Court:

• Fox News host Laura Ingraham dismissed criticism of Alito’s failure to disclose his trip with Singer as “another day, another attempt by the left, the Democrats, to delegitimize the Supreme Court.” Guest Mark Paoletta, a former Trump White House lawyer, added, “These attacks are all coordinated, as you said, and it's because the left is furious that the Supreme Court has finally become a court that is committed to the Constitution. It’s no longer a left-wing sort of super-legislator.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 6/21/23]
• The Federalist’s Ben Domenech told Fox News’ Harris Faulkner that criticism of Alito is “a political smear campaign” that is “being funded by those who wish they had control of the court and lost it.” He then turned to attacking Hunter Biden, saying, “We are supposed to believe that millions of dollars flowing through the LLCs of Hunter Biden from China were not influential and yet, a lifetime appointee to the Supreme Court can be influenced by a fishing trip?” [Fox News, The Faulkner Focus, 6/22/23]
• Wall Street Journal editorial board member Kimberley Strassel tweeted, “Take a look at this dissection of the latest hit on Supremes, this time Gorsuch." Strassel added, “Key word comes at the end: ‘nonsense.’” [Twitter, 4/25/23]
• Bream claimed that criticism of the justices “feels almost like a very coordinated effort at the same time the Capitol Hill folks say they want more control over the court.” She then erroneously claimed that “especially with the reporting that's had to deal with Justice Thomas and also what I talked about with Justice Gorsuch last week – these people didn't have cases that came before the court." [Fox News, America’s Newsroom, 5/5/23]
• Ingraham said that exposing Gorsuch’s failure to disclose the buyer of his property is the left’s “new tactic to try to delegitimize the court.” Chris Landau, an attorney who previously clerked for Thomas, added, “They are seizing on these kinds of attacks to try to delegitimize the court and demonize justices with these bogus ethics charges that really don't pass the straight-face test when you look at them.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 5/1/23]
• The Federalist published an article titled “Politico’s Hit On Neil Gorsuch Is Another Transparent Attempt To Delegitimize SCOTUS.” The article claims that “Gorsuch broke no law and did nothing that a good-faith observer could deem unethical. So the piece, much like the coverage of Thomas’s friendship with Harlan Crow, tries to cover up its lack of substantiation with a veneer of vaguely journalistic-sounding verbiage.” [The Federalist, 4/25/23]
• The Washington Examiner referred to criticism of the justices’ actions as “an attack on the Supreme Court's legitimacy.” According to the publication, “Democrats and the Left have engaged in a cynical ploy to gain power by delegitimizing a constitutionally mandated branch of government that they no longer control. This has been going on since three staunch originalist and textualist justices were confirmed during the last administration, creating a 6-3 conservative majority.” [Washington Examiner, 5/3/23]
• Ingraham compared the “total bull” accusations against Thomas to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s indictment of Trump. She complained, “It seems like a real run up by the media to push for either more members of the court — more court packing — or just changing the subject from the absolutely desperate shape the U.S. economy is in and the desperate numbers, definitely bad numbers for Joe Biden. … This is total bull, OK? And I put this in the same category as Alvin Bragg's indictment against President Trump.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 4/6/23]
• Manhattan Institute fellow Ilya Shapiro claimed on One America News that accusations against Thomas are part of “an attempt to besmirch the court’s reputation even further until maybe eventually there is, you know, enough popular opinion to seriously transform the institution.” He also claimed that “the technical legal term for the ProPublica report is that it’s a big, breathless nothingburger.” [One America News, One America News, 4/11/23]
• Fox News quoted The Heritage Foundation’s Roger Severino: “This is just grasping at straws by the left that is desperate to tear down Justice Thomas because he now has a working originalist majority on the court.” Severino continued, “There is no 'there' there because the justices have received gifts of hospitality from friends forever.” [FoxNews.com, 4/9/23]
• Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon claimed that the left is trying to “run [Thomas] out of town” because he’s the “moral center of gravity of the right.” Article III Project President Mike Davis added, “Democrats know that they need to destroy the legitimacy of the Supreme Court and try to chase conservative justices off the Supreme Court so they can get total control.” Davis claimed, “They have hated Clarence Thomas for 31 years because he escaped the Democrats’ plantation and they will never forgive him for that. … Again, this is just the Democrats’ way of trying to punish Thomas because he escaped their plantation, and this is Biden-driven.” [Real America’s Voice, War Room, 4/10/23]
• National Review reported: “This latest effort by the Left is not about ethics, but about destroying the Supreme Court now that there is an originalist majority.” [National Review, 4/27/23]