US Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito had a phone call with Donald Trump the day before the president-elect asked the Supreme Court to delay sentencing in the hush money criminal case against him in New York.
Alito said he was giving a former law clerk a recommendation for a role in the new administration.
“William Levi, one of my former law clerks, asked me to take a call from President-elect Trump regarding his qualifications to serve in a government position,” Alito said in a statement Wednesday. “I agreed to discuss this matter with President-elect Trump, and he called me yesterday afternoon.”
The call, first reported earlier by ABC News, came before Trump’s lawyers asked the court to stay further proceedings in New York in the emergency application submitted to Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
Trump was found guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to conceal a payment he made to adult film star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
Alito said he didn’t talk about that request with Trump.
“We did not discuss the emergency application he filed today, and indeed, I was not even aware at the time of our conversation that such an application would be filed,” Alito said. “We also did not discuss any other matter that is pending or might in the future come before the Supreme Court or any past Supreme Court decisions involving the President-elect.”
In a statement, Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court, a nonprofit that advocates for changes in how the court functions, said Alito, Levi, and Trump should have known better.
“The call was merely an excuse for Trump to speak with one of the nine people determining the fate of his hush money sentencing in the coming days and who will review many more Trump-related issues over the next four years,” he said.
Levi, a partner at Sidley Austin in Washington, served as chief of staff and senior counselor to Attorney General William Barr in Trump’s first term and was previously chief counsel to Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah).
His grandfather Edward Levi was attorney general in the Gerald Ford administration in the post-Watergate period, becoming known for establishing the Justice Department’s independence from the White House.
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