AOC rips Supreme Court for ‘putting rulings up for sale’
Eden Villalovas
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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) criticized Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito for voting to strike down President Joe Biden’s student loan debt cancellation plan while having ties to a billionaire who lobbied in favor of the challengers.
“Justice Alito accepted tens of thousands of dollars in lavish vacation gifts from a billionaire who lobbied to cancel the student loan forgiveness,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted following the ruling Friday morning.
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Alito was recently tied to billionaire Paul Singer for reportedly accepting a luxury fishing trip from the GOP megadonor and failing to disclose it as a gift on his 2008 financial filings.
Singer is the chairman of the Manhattan Institute, which filed an amicus brief alongside the Cato Institute supporting the challengers in both student loan cases.
“After the gifts, Alito voted to overturn. This SCOTUS’ corruption undercuts its own legitimacy by putting its rulings up for sale,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
Alito did not write the majority opinion or a concurrence in the 6-3 decision determining that Biden’s executive order — which would have canceled $10,000 in student loan debt for borrowers earning less than $125,000 a year and $20,000 for recipients of Pell grants — was unconstitutional and an unlawful exercise of presidential power.
This month, ProPublica published a story about Alito taking a luxury fishing trip with Singer, a billionaire GOP donor, in 2008 and not disclosing the trip on financial records, months after writing a story about Justice Clarence Thomas not disclosing financial filings for luxury gifts and trips from billionaire Republican donor Harlan Crow.
Alito took to the Wall Street Journal to publish a response to the attack by ProPublica before the report went live.
Alito argued that, until a few months ago, Justices were told personal hospitality does not have to be reported. The ProPublica report detailed how Singer’s hedge fund, NML Capital, came before the Supreme Court multiple times, but Alito said in the op-ed he had “no obligation to recuse,” claiming Singer was not listed as a party in the cases.
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Ocasio-Cortez called for a different path to pursue student loan debt relief, with Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) issuing a similar statement on Twitter.
“The Biden Admin can use the HEA (Higher Ed Act) — our position from the start — to continue loan forgiveness before payments resume,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. “They should do so ASAP.”