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| https://x.com/briansbrown/status/1189213352167428096 |
For today's story linking to the X image, Guardian.
Quoting -
In 2018, Gloria von Thurn und Taxis, told the New York Times about attending a dinner hosted in Rome by James Harvey, an American cardinal and hardliner, and sponsored by the Napa Institute, a group founded by Timothy R Busch, a conservative Catholic businessman and political activist.
[Leonard] Leo, 59, is an activist and fundraiser who worked on the confirmations of all six rightwing justices who now dominate the supreme court, Alito among them. Now controlling billions of dollars in funding for rightwing groups, Leo is a director of the Napa Institute Legal Foundation, also known as Napa Legal Institute, and the Napa Institute Support Foundation.
Also among Napa Legal Institute directors is Alan Sears, founder of the Alliance Defending Freedom. The ADF was the principal driver of Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, [...]
In 2017, the Napa Institute hosted a two-day symposium at the Trump hotel in Washington, during which Alito attended a dinner.
[...] Alito is not the only supreme court justice with links to the Napa Institute. In September 2021, as part of a series sponsored by the group, Justice Clarence Thomas spoke [at the University of Notre Dame's Center for Citizenship & Constitutional Government, which is partly funded by the conservative Napa Institute].
[...] Thomas and Alito, however, have been the subject of numerous reports about undeclared gifts from rightwing donors, fueling an ethics crisis now stoked by news of Alito’s acceptance of concert tickets valued at $900 from von Thurn und Taxis.
Von Thurn und Taxis, 64, is a former punk turned billionaire, also known as Princess TNT, with close links to the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party. News of her gift to Alito was accompanied by reporting of further links between the two, including a picture of Alito and another rightwing justice, Brett Kavanaugh, posing at the supreme court in 2019 with the German socialite; Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, a German hardliner; and Brian Brown, a prominent US anti-LGBTQ+ campaigner. [at top of post]
Von Thurn und Taxis told German media that Alito and his wife, Martha-Ann, attended a concert at her castle in Bavaria last year as “private friends”. In emails to the Guardian, the aristocrat clarified: “We never speak about politics nor religion at the table, because we believe it limits the possibility to make friends.”
The socialite, who rejects the label “networker of the far right”, also said it would “never occur” to her to speak about “touchy subjects” like abortion with someone she knew socially, and claimed not to know that “the Dobbs decision” referred to the supreme court abortion rights ruling written by Alito.
Smoke, no provable fire, but the folks Alito networks with are unwholesome. Leave that as the thrust of the Guardian item.