You’ve likely seen that TPM Alum Justin Elliott and the team at ProPublica is back with another big exclusive about the Supreme Court. This time, for once, Clarence Thomas is in the clear. Now we’re talking about the intemperate and peevish Sam Alito who took an all expenses paid fishing trip to Alaska back in 2008, courtesy of hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer. In a characteristic move, Alito refused to respond to the reporters’ questions and then published his answers as an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal in a kind of prebuttal and attack. Because yes, he’s that guy.

The bulk of the story is a detailed run-down of what Alito did, what a justice needs to disclose and what kind of high-powered gifts should dictate a recusal in cases where Singer had some direct stake — there’ve been a number. But the gem in Alito’s prebuttle op-ed is the explanation of the private jet flight.

Even being a Trump appointee won’t shield you from the wrath of a House Republican majority foaming at the mouth to prove just how weaponized!!! the justice system is (but only when it serves their talking-point purposes).

United States Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee Henry C. Leventis today announced charges against Joshua Hensley, aka Josh Echo, 25, of Hoisington, Kansas for Facebook comments threatening a violent attack on a Nashville Pride event scheduled to take place on June 24 and June 25. In one post he threatened to “make shrapnel pressure cooker bombs for this event” and in another to “commit a mass shooting.” The threats were made on April 26, 2023.

TPM Reader EK notes that a “Joshua Hensley” was booked in Hoisington Municipal Court for domestic battery on March 18 of this year. Of course maybe the town is just lousy with a surfeit of Joshua Hensleys. Or maybe these guys follow a pattern.

As you’d expect, news that the long-running Hunter Biden investigation is ending with pleas to a few relatively low level infractions that are unlikely to result in jail time has been met with gnashing of teeth and donning of sack cloth, in “Where’s Hunter?”/”Biden Crime Family” land. But they are holding on to one faint glimmer of hope. Is the investigation really, really, really over? As in super double over?

Let’s take a look.

It probably goes without saying. But it’s worth remembering and noting this. Joe Biden took the fairly extraordinary step of leaving the Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney in Delaware in place for more than two years into his own term for the sole purpose of not even appearing to interfere or change anything about the management of the investigation into his own son. (For what it’s worth, my recollection is that the man in question, David C. Weiss, has a good reputation — not just another Trump-adjacent hack.) Now it appears to have ended with Biden pleading to two relatively low level tax misdemeanors and a weapons violation which will be set aside if he completes a diversion program. There’s few better examples of the difference between the mores and standards that apply in both parties.