In early July 2008, Samuel Alito stood on a riverbank in a remote corner of Alaska. The Supreme Court justice was on vacation at a luxury fishing lodge that charged more than $1,000 a day, and after catching a king salmon nearly the size of his leg, Alito posed for a picture. To his left, a man stood beaming: Paul Singer, a hedge fund billionaire who has repeatedly asked the Supreme Court to rule in his favor in high-stakes business disputes.
Singer was more than a fellow angler. He flew Alito to Alaska on a private jet. If the justice chartered the plane himself, the cost could have exceeded $100,000 one way.
https://www.propublica.org/article/samuel-alito-luxury-fishing-trip-paul-singer-scotus-supreme-court
Alito did put out his own statement. Unfortunately it’s on WSJ and thoroughly paywalled: https://www.wsj.com/articles/propublica-misleads-its-readers-alito-gifts-disclosure-alaska-singer-23b51eda
TLDR: “Nothing to see here, move along. And who is ProPublica to question me anyways? -Alito”
He didn’t just “put out his own statement”. Propublica reached out to him for comment on this article, he didn’t respond and then he scrambled to have an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal hours later (always worth saying that that is a Rupert Murdoch owned company). It was a poor attempt at damage control by a weasel trying to get ahead on spinning the narrative.