Samuel Alito Won’t Take Himself Off Case Involving Lawyer Who Interviewed Him For Flattering Articles

Justice Samuel Alito, part of the U.S. Supreme Court’s six-judge conservative majority, said Friday he had no intention of stepping back from considering a case involving a lawyer with whom he had spent several hours in interviews earlier this year and who had written two articles in defense and praise of Alito.

“There is no valid reason for my recusal in this case,” Alito wrote in a statement released Friday with the court’s periodic listing of cases it will take up or reject considering.

The lawyer, David Rivkin, works for Baker Hostetler LLP, a major law firm with more than 1,000 attorneys and offices in 17 cities in the U.S. He is one of the members of a team of lawyers representing the plaintiff in the case, Moore v. United States, which involves a challenge to the 2017 tax cut law pushed through Congress by Republicans.