Top House Democrat asks Alito to recuse himself from Trump case after phone call

The top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Jamie Raskin, on Thursday urged Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito to recuse himself from any consideration of President-elect Donald Trump's efforts to block his sentencing for his conviction in his hush money case in New York following ABC News' reporting of a Tuesday phone call between Trump and Alito.

"Yesterday, we learned that President-elect Trump spoke to Justice Alito just hours before Trump asked the Supreme Court to halt his criminal sentencing in New York. Justice Alito brushed off this startling ex parte private phone call and breach of judicial ethics by asserting that this perfectly timed conversation actually regarded his recommendation of a former clerk for an administration job," Raskin said in a statement.

"Especially when paired with his troubling past partisan ideological activity in favor of Trump, Justice Alito's decision to have a personal phone call with President Trump—who obviously has an active and deeply personal matter before the court—makes clear that he fundamentally misunderstands the basic requirements of judicial ethics or, more likely, believes himself to be above judicial ethics altogether."

ABC News reported that the call came just hours before before Trump's lawyers on Wednesday morning filed an emergency request with the justices asking them to block a New York judge from moving forward with sentencing Trump in his criminal hush money case on Friday.

In his statement, Raskin said, "Justice Alito has made his political leanings and support for the president-elect clear, whether it be his display of flags in apparent support of the January 6th insurrectionists and the 'Stop the Steal' movement, or his self-proclaimed ideological battle with 'the Left.'"

"In our democracy, Americans expect their cases to be heard by impartial judges," he said.

Alito told ABC News the call concerned a job recommendation for one of his former clerks 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," the justice said Wednesday. "I agreed to discuss this matter with President-elect Trump, and he called me yesterday afternoon."

Alito said that he and Trump did not discuss his hush money case.

"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."

It is not unusual for a sitting justice to offer a job recommendation for a former clerk, but it is rare, court analysts said, for a justice to have such a conversation directly with a sitting president or president-elect, especially one with an active stake in business pending before the court.

The court is expected to weigh in on Trump's request by Friday morning.

The hush money case is not the only one before the Supreme Court that Trump has an interest in. On Friday, the court will hear a last-ditch challenge to a law that would ban the video-sharing app TikTok on Jan. 19 unless its Chinese-based parent company sells its stake.

Trump asked the court in a filing late last month to pause the divestiture deadline in order to give him a chance to reach a "negotiated resolution" to save the app once he takes office on Jan. 20.