Your own personal billionaire
By 
Responding to massively corrupt reactionary Sam Alito’s claim that it was no big deal to accept an undisclosed luxury vacation from a billionaire with business before the Court because the seat he took on the billionaire’s jet had not previously been booked, Josh Marshall notes that Leonard Leo seems to have a program of pairing every justice with a plutocratic benefactor:
Alito seems to suggest that he was flying to Alaska and it turned out Singer happened to be flying to Alaska too. And he happened to have a spare seat on his private jet. So what sense would there be in having the seat go to waste? In the spirit of the Alaskan wilderness, taking the seat was sort of a resource-conservation effort in which Alito was lending a hand.
But of course Singer didn’t just happen to going to Alaska. He was going to Alaska specifically to spend quality time with Sam Alito. The whole thing had been arranged by The Federalist Society’s Leonard Leo, who asked Singer if he and Alito could fly up with him on his private jet.
And here’s where the whole picture starts to come into focus — both the Alito story and the Thomas ones. Needless to say, none of these billionaires are just old friends in the sense you or I might recognize. But they didn’t just glom on to their justice on their own. Everyone here is part of Leo’s network. Harlan Crow is a big Republican donor but also a big Federalist Society donor. So is Paul Singer. So is the owner of the fishing lodge. In fact, Leo’s network is so vast and deep-pocketed that eventually he decided he was too big for the Federalist Society and struck out on his own. Indeed last year he secured a record-breaking $1.6 billion donation as a kind of judicial corruption grubstake to fund all his future endeavors.
As I said, the full picture starts to come into focus. Somewhat like some colleges or the service academies match a sponsor family with first-year students or cadets, Leo seemed to do that with incoming Supreme Court justices. You know … a place to stay over the holidays, watch a movie, get emotional support, a place to take a nap on an off day. It’s basically that: a sponsor family for each new justice.
Leonard Leo doesn’t like losses, sport. Nothing ruins his day more than losses. But if you do good, you get perks. Lots and lots of perks.