SAMUEL ALITO’S WIFE LEASED LAND TO AN OIL AND GAS FIRM WHILE THE JUSTICE FOUGHT THE EPA – By Daniel Boguslaw (The Intercept) / June 26, 2023
A deal made by Alito’s wife with an energy company paints recent Supreme Court decisions on the environment in a damning light.
A YEAR AGO this month, Martha Ann Bomgardner Alito decided to see if a 160-acre plot of land in Grady County, Oklahoma, would produce. In a lease filed with the Grady County clerk, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito entered into an agreement with Citizen Energy III for revenue generated from oil and gas obtained from a plot of hard scrabble she inherited from her late father. It is one of thousands of oil and gas leases across Oklahoma, one of the top producers of fossil fuels in the United States.
Last year, before the lease was activated, a line in Alito’s financial disclosures labeled “mineral interests” was valued between $100,001 and $250,000. If extraction on the plot proves fruitful, the lease dictates that Citizen Energy will pay Alito’s wife 3/16ths of all the money it makes from oil and gas sales.
In the past, Alito has often recused himself from cases that pose potential conflicts of interest with his vast investment portfolio. Many of these recusals were born from an inheritance of stocks after the death of Alito’s father-in-law, Bobby Gene Bomgardner. Because Citizen Energy III isn’t implicated in any cases before the Supreme Court, Alito’s holding in Oklahoma doesn’t appear to pose any direct conflicts of interest. But it does add context to a political outlook that has alarmed environmentalists since Alito’s confirmation hearing in 2006 — and cast recent decisions that embolden the oil and gas industry in a damning light.
CONTINUE > https://theintercept.com/2023/06/26/samuel-alito-oil-gas-supreme-court-environment/
