How the sausage gets made
By 
A legal academic friend pointed out to me last night that William Levi, who convinced Donald Trump to call Sam Alito earlier this week to vouch for him [ETA: commenter JEC points out that Levi convinced Alito take Trump’s call], as they say in the mob, is the grandson of no less an eminence than Edward Levi. Levi was among other things president of the University of Chicago and then Attorney General under Gerald Ford, in which latter role he actually did a lot to clean up the ocean of slime that Richard Nixon & Co. had left behind at the DOJ and in various other federal government offices. He was one of the most accomplished lawyers of his generation, as well as, during his career as a legal academic, the author of the very useful book An Introduction to Legal Reasoning.
The shanda, if I’m using the term correctly, who is his grandson was Bill Barr’s chief of staff at the DOJ, which is a very inconvenient fact for any mouse who aspires to become a rat in MAGA land, especially because:
Levi played a major role in marshalling federal law enforcement to subdue the insurrection on Jan. 6, summoning the FBI for backup after rioters overwhelmed the Capitol Police. Perhaps this action landed him on Trump’s blacklist, and the president-elect wanted confirmation that Levi would serve as a loyal foot soldier in his second administration, with all that Jan. 6 business forgiven and forgotten. As a steadfast champion of the president-elect’s agenda, Alito is well positioned to vouch that his former clerk remains a true believer in the cause despite his regrettable lapse four years ago. The justice, after all, shares Trump’s paranoid loathing for the so-called deep state that is, allegedly, forever plotting to sabotage the past and future president. Alito would surely know if his own former clerk was a Never Trumper in MAGA clothing.
Now Levi the Lesser so desperately wants to become general counsel at the Pentagon that he’s unctuously groveling before the imperial throne, begging Trump to sweet talk his former boss Alito. Levi just turned 40, and like the rest of these ass-kissing sychophants is no doubt fantasizing that he might one day even get the Big Chair that Alito continues to occupy, hence the groveling before Trump.
Trump obviously couldn’t care less about who fills the the specific job Levi is begging for, but he deigned to fulfill his lackey’s request. Dalia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern suggest one very plausible reason why, beyond vetting him for pure MAGA loyalty:
It is also possible that Trump sought to flatter Alito by calling upon him as a character reference, part of his long campaign to butter up the justices whom he wants to retire. The charm offensive worked on Justice Anthony Kennedy, convincing the erstwhile swing vote that his seat would be better off in Trump’s hands. He failed to nudge Justice Clarence Thomas off the bench in his first term, as he’d hoped—but stacking his administration with former Thomas clerks sent the message that, whenever the justice is ready, Trump can be trusted to swap in a suitable replacement. (So, presumably, did his decision to humor Ginni Thomas by opening the West Wing to her clique.) Don’t be surprised if the president-elect appoints a boatload of former Alito clerks to the executive branch and judiciary in the coming months, or makes overtures to Martha-Ann Alito for a private lunch at the White House.
Beyond these reasons, Trump and Alito are signaling to the world that the rules simply don’t apply to them — an ex parte communication between a private party to litigation before the SCOTUS and a SCOTUS justice is wildly improper — which, indeed, is precisely the situation.
For the full sociological picture you may consult William Levi’s New York Times wedding announcement. (This btw is further confirmation of the fundamental soundness of my policy of automatically voting against any faculty candidate who has a wedding announcement in the Times).
Addar Weintraub, a daughter of Michelle Weintraub and Shlomo Weintraub of San Jose, Calif., was married April 1 to William Ranney Levi, a son of Nancy Ranney Levi and David F. Levi of Durham, N.C. Rabbi Miriam Senturia officiated at the Inn at Park Winters in Winters, Calif., with Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. of the United States Supreme Court taking part by offering personal remarks about the couple.
Mrs. Levi, 29, is the associate general counsel for the Obama Foundation in Washington. She graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, and received a law degree from Harvard. Her father, a real estate developer based in San Jose, is a managing partner of Brack Capital Real Estate in Miami.
Mr. Levi, 33, worked until recently in Washington as the chief counsel to the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights. He served as a law clerk to Justice Alito in 2012. He graduated from Stanford with distinction and received a law degree from Yale.
His mother owns and manages the Ranney Ranch, a cattle ranch in Corona, N.M. His father is the dean of the Duke University law school, and the president-elect of the American Law Institute.
The groom is a grandson of the late Edward H. Levi, who served as the United States attorney general from 1975 to 1977.
The couple met in September 2014 through the dating app Hinge.