On Wednesday, I wrote about the ABC News Story on Trump's phone call with Justice Alito. On Thursday, the New York Times offered a far more in-depth, and frankly confounding story. No, not confounding for the reasons you might think. I was confounded that multiple people in Trump's orbit are leaking information to the New York Times to sabotage an Alito clerk from a position in the administration, and in the process creating problems for the Justice.
The story begins:
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. received a call on his cellphone Tuesday. It was President-elect Donald J. Trump, calling from Florida. . . .
Justice Alito said in a statement on Wednesday that the pending filing never came up in his conversation with Mr. Trump and that he was not aware, at the time of the call, that the Trump team planned to file it. People familiar with the call confirmed his account. . . .
The circumstances were extraordinary for another reason: Justice Alito was being drawn into a highly personalized effort by some Trump aides to blackball Republicans deemed insufficiently loyal to Mr. Trump from entering the administration, according to six people with knowledge of the situation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.
