![]() At issue: whether BuzzFeed’s decision to publish the Trump dossier without first verifying its contents was justified because of government actions related to the information contained in it. The clash is playing out via a defamation lawsuit filed by a Russian businessman who says his reputation was savaged when BuzzFeed published a portion of the dossier accusing him and his companies of being involved in the hacking of Democratic emails in 2016. Now, more than 17 months later, BuzzFeed is a defendant in a Miami federal court case that is testing the scope of press freedoms at a time of acute public distrust of the media. The dossier has since become a lightning rod for countless conspiracy theories and allegations on both the right and the left involving President Trump, the Russians, Hillary Clinton, and the so-called Deep State. In early January 2017, the web-based media organization BuzzFeed decided to publish a series of confidential memos that have come to be known as the “Trump dossier.” Compiled by a former British intelligence officer and paid for by the Clinton campaign, the memos contained damaging and unverified information about Donald Trump and others. It is simply common sense,” said the watchdog group Project on Government Oversight earlier this month. Justice Sonia Sotomayor has not recused herself from court cases involving publisher Penguin Random House, which has paid her millions in book royalties.“A demand for ethical constraints is not an attack on the Court or any single justice. ![]() That should change, say some experts, given the allegations against Justice Alito and recent revelations about gifts to Justice Clarence Thomas from billionaire Harlan Crow.This isn’t about attacking the court’s conservative majority, some insist. Singer had any interest in the cases before the court, he insisted.There’s been a code of conduct for federal court judges since 1973, but the Supreme Court isn’t bound by it. Singer’s hedge fund in a lawsuit that ultimately netted it $2.4 billion.Justice Alito has denied that he did anything wrong. In a prebuttal in The Wall Street Journal published prior to ProPublica’s release of the story – an unusual step – he said that the trip was personal hospitality, and thus he didn’t need to report it. In 2014, justices voted 7-1 in favor of Mr. That may have violated a federal law that requires justices to disclose most such gifts, according to the ProPublica story.Nor did Justice Alito recuse himself when cases involving businesses of the billionaire, Paul Singer, came before the court. Is it time for the Supreme Court to have a detailed, binding code of ethics?That’s a question sparked by the recent report from ProPublica that in 2008, Justice Samuel Alito took a luxury fishing trip to Alaska on a billionaire’s private jet.Justice Alito did not report the trip on his financial disclosure.
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