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Whatever you do, don’t ask conservative legal activist Leonard Leo for more information about how he helped organize a luxury fishing vacation in 2008 quietly attended by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. Two Democratic Senators recently did just that, and received a scorching rebuke on Tuesday from Leo’s lawyer accusing them of everything from retaliation to First Amendment violations. The letter, written by attorney David B. Rivkin Jr. and obtained by CNN, alleges that a “one-sided” congressional inquiry by the Senate Judiciary Committee “exceeds the limits placed by the Constitution on the Committee’s investigative authority.” It comes in response to a July 11 letter from Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) requesting more information from Leo, the longtime leader of the Federalist Society, about the trip. “By selectively targeting Mr. Leo for investigation on a politically charged basis… your inquiry appears to be political retaliation against a private citizen in violation of the First Amendment,” Rivkin wrote.
