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Watch: Dem Senator’s Viral Video Reveals Scalia Accepted Over 70 Undisclosed Gifts of Vacations Like Clarence Thomas
U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) has revealed the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia also accepted and did not disclose dozens of trips paid for by special interest advocates, in a similar fashion to the decades-worth of undisclosed luxury travel, vacations, and trips Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas took.
In video that has gone viral on social media – over 1.6 million views in less than 24 hours – Senator Whitehouse says Scalia took “more than seven dozen” of these undisclosed vacations.
“The personal hospitality problems I’ve been pursuing began with Justice Scalia, who took more than seven dozen undisclosed hunting vacations. Most people know of two, the one where he was on the Air Force Two manifest with Dick Cheney and the one where he died,” Sen. Whitehouse said in his remarks during Tuesday’s Judiciary Committee hearing on Supreme Court ethics.
Scalia, a hard-core conservative, died in February of 2016 during a quail hunting vacation, reportedly “at an $800-per-night Texas hunting lodge among still-unknown companions,” a lodge owned by the chairman and CEO of a multi-billion dollar manufacturing company.
Calling Scalia’s vacation gifts “systematized,” Whitehouse, who has been focused on judicial reform for years, revealed there had been “seventy-plus,” and explained the process the justice would use to get invited.
“Some intermediary would ask the owner of an expensive resort, often a commercial property, to extend to Scalia a personal invitation to the resort, even where the owner was someone he’d never met. Scalia treated it as ‘personal hospitality’ because of the ‘personal’ invitation, and failed to disclose the vacations,” Whitehouse said. “Gun industry advocates, fossil fuel folks, and Republican political figures often tagged along.”
“No reasonable reading of the term ‘personal hospitality’ (we’ve covered this,) but the Supreme Court let this go on for years,” said Whitehouse.
Legal experts have said that under the law, Supreme Court justices do not have to disclose gifts of vacations, like the ones Thomas and Scalia took, as long as they are gifts from personal friends at their personal homes. But they do have to disclose gifts of travel. Some believe any gift that might suggest the possibility of an appearance of impropriety should be disclosed.
“Private jet travel is not in the personal hospitality exemption,” Whitehouse said, “which is limited to food, lodging and entertainment.”
Whitehouse then revealed – with ten exhibits – how he has investigated these gifts; gifts, in Thomas’ case, which some are now referring to as “graft” and “corruption.”
“When I challenged the court about this practice, (exhibit one,) I got a blow-off letter, (exhibit two.) Basically, ‘nothing to see here.’ So then I asked the circuit courts what they thought about this conduct,” Whitehouse said, stating out of 13 inquiries he received zero responses.
“So I then sent another letter saying I hope their silence didn’t indicate some kind of coordinated obstruction (exhibit four.) I also scheduled a subcommittee hearing. Presto, I was told the Financial Disclosure Committee would examine how the exemption was interpreted,” Whitehouse said. “Almost a year later, two weeks before the recent news about Justice Thomas broke, the Judicial Conference updated its guidance to clarify that this sort of non-disclosure violates the law (exhibit six.)”
He says no judge outside of the Supreme Court has “ever used the personal invitation trick,” because a complaint would be investigated and would become “embarrassing.”
“Only Supreme Court justices refused to allow their conduct to be investigated or reviewed. My bill would fix that,” he says.
Last month a former chief counsel to Sen. Whitehouse, Alex Aronson, writing in Slate, further detailed how Scalia’s scheme worked:
“Retired federal Judge Charles Pickering, Scalia’s frequent hunting facilitator, explained: ‘After it got out that if you took him hunting or fishing that he would come speak, he started getting invitations all over the place.’ For example: hearing that Scalia would ‘do anything if you take him hunting,’ Texas lawyer and Republican mega-donor Mark Lanier chartered a plane to take Scalia boar hunting on a private ranch following a speech he gave at Lanier’s alma mater, Texas Tech. As was typical, Scalia’s financial disclosure revealed only that he had received ‘transportation, food, [and] lodging’ for ‘Lectures,’ with Texas Tech as the sole reimbursing party.”
Whitehouse also spends several minutes in the video discussing Justice Thomas’ scandal, and then, turning back to Scalia, asks: “So what became of the 2011 referral? Did anyone intervene? Is the committee still considering the 2011 referral more than a decade later?”
We apparently do not know.
Watch Sen. Whitehouse below or at this link.
Did you think I’d show up to the hearing on Supreme Court ethics without receipts? pic.twitter.com/QjdF7T0rIl
— Sheldon Whitehouse (@SenWhitehouse) May 2, 2023
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
