Washington – As a Justice Department lawyer, Samuel Alito quarreled with the head of the government ethics office over proposed requirements on personal financial disclosures, according to documents released Monday.
Alito’s 1987 letter was issued around the time the ethics office said that his boss, Attorney General Edwin Meese, had violated financial disclosure requirements over a $60,000 investment with a businessman who was tied to Wedtech, a Bronx, N.Y., defense contractor that was caught up in a wide-ranging federal investigation.
There was no suggestion that Alito, now nominated to be a Supreme Court justice, was aware of the ethics office’s issues with Meese’s disclosure.
Alito’s letter to David Martin, director of the Office of Government Ethics, was among 120 documents from Alito’s service as the deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel from 1985 to 1987 that were released by the Justice Department in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from The Associated Press and other news organizations.
Alito became the U.S. attorney for New Jersey after leaving Justice headquarters and then was appointed to the federal bench.
President Bush has nominated him to replace Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.
Some of the material in the newly released documents was blacked out for privacy reasons and an additional 60 documents were withheld because they contained classified information or confidential exchanges between government lawyers and their clients or for other reasons, said Paul Colborn, special counsel in the office where Alito worked.
In his February 1987 letter, Alito faulted Martin for failing to consult with the Justice Department before publishing proposed regulations on financial disclosures that upper-level government officials must submit.
“In this case, the need for such consultation was acute, since we made it abundantly clear to your office … that we had serious legal objections,” Alito wrote.
The proposal increased the number of federal employees required to disclose their finances.
In the same period, the office was reviewing Meese’s own report for 1985, which obscured how Franklyn Chinn invested the $60,000 Meese gave him, the ethics office said. Chinn, Meese’s former financial adviser, later was convicted in the Wedtech scandal. Meese never faced criminal charges.
