‘The call was merely an excuse’: Alito chat with Trump hours before Supreme Court appeal leads to calls for disqualification in hush-money stay request

President Donald Trump shakes hands with Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito after Mark Esper was sworn in as Secretary of Defense during a ceremony in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, Tuesday, July 23, 2019. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster).

The U.S. Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision refused the Trump administration’s request to halt a federal judge’s order requiring the federal government to payout nearly $2 billion in foreign aid funds for work already completed. Justice Samuel Alito disagreed with the court’s majority, penning a scathing dissent in which he declared that the decision left him “stunned.”

“Does a single district-court judge who likely lacks jurisdiction have the unchecked power to compel the Government of the United States to pay out (and probably lose forever) 2 billion taxpayer dollars?” Alito wrote. “The answer to that question should be an emphatic ‘No,’ but a majority of this Court apparently thinks otherwise. I am stunned.”

Alito was joined in the dissent by Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh, all of whom believed that U.S. District Judge Amir H. Ali exceeded his authority in ordering the administration to “immediately” make the foreign aid distributions.

Chief Justice John Roberts, along with Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Amy Coney Barrett (a Trump appointee) sided with the plaintiffs, a coalition of organizations who had entered into contracts or received grants from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the State Department.

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