The donation, to the Mitch McConnell-aligned Senate Management Fund, is Singer’s largest ever.
Paul Singer, the billionaire hedge fund supervisor who’s underneath scrutiny for gifting conservative Supreme Court docket Justice Samuel Alito an undisclosed non-public flight, donated $10 million in June to the Senate Republicans’ high tremendous PAC, based on a brand new Federal Election Fee submitting. The donation was by far his largest federal political contribution ever.
The donation was given to Senate Management Fund (SLF), an excellent PAC with shut ties to Senate Minority Chief Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) that backs Republican candidates in U.S. Senate races. Singer had donated $2 million to SLF earlier this election cycle, throughout two donations given in June and December of final yr.
Based on ProPublica, Singer in 2008 flew Alito to Alaska on a personal jet for an opulent fishing journey. ProPublica says that the flight would have price Alito not less than $100,000 if he had chartered it himself. Alito didn’t report the gifted flight on his annual monetary disclosures, an omission that some ethics consultants argue was a violation of ethics legal guidelines. Beneath the federal Ethics in Authorities Act, Supreme Court docket justices are free to make use of a disclosure exception often known as the “private hospitality clause” for presents “acquired as private hospitality of a person” value an infinite greenback quantity, based on the Brennan Middle for Justice.
Within the years after gifting Alito with the flight, Singer’s hedge fund, Elliott Administration, got here earlier than the Supreme Court docket not less than 10 occasions, based on ProPublica. Alito didn’t recuse himself from the instances.
Previous to his $10 million donation to SLF, the most important donation Singer had ever given was $5 million final yr to a pro-Nikki Haley PAC.
On June 12, Senate Republicans rejected a movement by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) to move his Supreme Court docket Ethics, Recusal and Transparency Act by unanimous consent. The invoice would undertake a code of conduct for Supreme Court docket justices, set up procedures to analyze complaints of misconduct, and set guidelines governing the disclosure of presents, amongst different issues.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-In poor health.) and Whitehouse, the chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Federal Courts, Oversight, Company Motion, and Federal Rights, despatched Singer a letter final July asking him to reveal an entire checklist of the presents, journey, and lodging that he or the businesses he controls have supplied to Supreme Court docket justices or their households over time. It’s not identified if Singer responded to the senators, however one other billionaire megadonor who acquired an identical letter, Leonard Leo, rejected the Democrats’ request for data, along with his lawyer writing in a letter that it was “a type of political retaliation in violation of the First Modification.”
“Given the Senate Judiciary Committee’s welcome scrutiny of Paul Singer and the opposite billionaire benefactors of Supreme Court docket Justices Thomas and Alito, it is no shock that Mr. Singer is utilizing political donations to alter the steadiness of energy within the Senate, and help the Justices’ enablers in Congress,” stated Donald Sherman, government vp and chief counsel for Residents for Duty and Ethics in Washington (CREW).
A number of outstanding Republican senators pushed again towards Democrats who had been probing the subject of Supreme Court docket ethics following ProPublica’s reporting on Singer’s reward to Alito. Judiciary Committee member John Cornyn (R-Texas) stated the efforts had been “a part of an assault on the conservatives as a result of the left doesn’t like their choices.” McConnell stated that “Congress ought to keep out of it, as a result of we don’t, I feel, have the jurisdiction to inform the Supreme Court docket deal with the problem.”
SLF spends greater than 100 million {dollars} every election cycle on advertisements and different objects to help the election of Senate Republicans. Along with different billionaire donors together with Ken Griffin, Miriam Adelson, and Stephen Schwarzman, SLF pulls in multi-million greenback donations ceaselessly from oil and gasoline corporations like Occidental Petroleum and Chevron. The group’s largest funding supply, nonetheless, is its nonprofit affiliate One Nation, a “social welfare” group that doesn’t disclose its funders. SLF and One Nation are each led by Steve Legislation, a former McConnell staffer.
Elliott Administration holds greater than $16.1 billion in property, based on its most up-to-date 13-F submitting with the Securities and Trade Fee in Could, with its high holding in oil exploration firm Suncor. In November, the agency invested $1 billion in oil refiner Phillips 66, and likewise has stakes in Marathon Petroleum Company, Valero Power, and energy utility NRG Power, amongst different fossil gasoline trade investments. When power costs tumbled within the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Singer’s agency reached out to grease and gasoline traders, providing to snap up oil property like U.S. shale basins.
Singer has lengthy served as chair of the board of the Manhattan Institute, a right-leaning New York Metropolis-based assume tank that covers a variety of coverage matters, together with power. Singer’s basis has donated thousands and thousands of {dollars} to the institute. A 2022 report from the institute slammed what it calls the “harmful delusion” of basing insurance policies on the concept that transitioning away from fossil fuels is feasible and known as to “radically” improve fossil gasoline manufacturing.
