The Untold Link Between Justice Alito and Trump's Election-Denying Efforts

On the evening of January 6, 2021, retired North Carolina Supreme Court Chief Justice Mark Martin had a nine-minute conversation with former President Donald Trump. This call followed weeks of efforts by Martin to find any legal means tokeep Trump in power, during which he peddledfringe theories of election fraudand constitutional lawto state officials and the SupremeCourt.

Just 20 days after the insurrection, Martin had another intimate audience with another powerful right-winger: He taught a three-day seminar on constitutionallawwith U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel AlitoforRegent University Law School in Virginia, where Martin was the dean at the time.

This link between a Supreme Court justice and such a close legal adviser toTrump'sBig Lie efforts has not been reported previously, and it adds to mounting questions about Alito's sympathy for Trump heading into the election.

Despite evidenceat the timethat Martin was part of the Trump campaign's legal brain trustand fed Trump radicalideasaboutthe Constitution,Alitotaught the three-day seminar with himagain in2022.

Martinand Alito did not respond to The Intercept's questions for this story.

It was and continues to be a shock to the system knowing that the upper echelons of the legal community used their legal talents to subvert the will of the people," said Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court, and that Supreme Court justices of all people are friends with these individuals."

Martin's continued access to Alito even after January 6 also illustrates just how little scrutiny Martin ever faced.While other prominent Trump legal advisers like John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani have facedsanctionsfortheir effortsto overturn the 2020 election results, Martin has never publicly accounted for his role. He's still a law school dean, now at High Point University, a private university in North Carolina, which also did not respond to The Intercept's questions about Martin's relationship with Alito.

Martin remains active inprestigious legal organizations, including the AmericanLawInstitute and American Bar Association committees, where he recently sat on ajudicialethics panel and moderated another about election law. He was at the Republican National Convention in July, and a far-right grouprecently floated Martin as a potential Supreme Court nominee.

Crossing Paths

In 2019, after more than 20 years on the North Carolina Supreme Court andfouras its chief justice, Martin stepped down and moved into legal education. He took over as dean of Regent Law, which is part of the Christian university founded by televangelist Pat Robertson.In a blog postannouncing a new constitutional law center - named after Robertson - Martinwrotethatitspurpose was topromote originalism and otherfirst principles in constitutional law," while educating and cultivating the next generation of Christian lawyers."

During Martin's first year, Regent added Alito as a Senior Lecturing Fellow," along with 11 other prominent conservatives such as Ken Starr. Some of these new Regent lecturers had clear connections to Martin, including two fellow retired North Carolina judges and the general counsel of the North Carolina Chamber of Commerce, who clerked for Martin after law school.

Arch-conservative Alito was a natural fit to teach at Regent, whereanother Trump attorney, Jay Sekulow, was already on the faculty.

Intheyearsbefore starting at Regent, Alitowrotedecisions thatchipped away atthe Obamacare contraception mandate andweakenedpublic-sector unions. During the Trump administration, Alito joined decisions that favored presidential authority, likethe 5-4 rulingaffirming the Muslim ban" despite Trump's many statements about its discriminatory aims.

More recently, Alito faced calls to recuse from casesrelatedto the January 6 insurrection after it came outthat anupside-downAmericanflag- a common Stop the Steal" symbol -wasflying outside his housein January 2021. Alitodeclinedto recuse, largelyblaming his wifeand a dispute with neighbors for the flagincident. My wife is fond of flying flags," hewrotein May 2024to members of Congress. I am not."

Alitoalsohad some history with Regent Law, where he keynoted the school's 25th anniversary banquetin 2011. But he and Martin had few clear ties before teachingtogether, beside an advisory board theyjoined togetherat Duke Law School in January 2019.

By his own account, teaching with Alito is one of the pinnacles of Martin's career.

Asked recently about the biggest challenges and rewards in moving from the judiciary into legal education, Martinhighlightedthat he even was able to co-teach a law course with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sam Alito for three years in a row." (In the same softball interview, Martin dodged questions about January 6, citing confidentiality.")

Martin'sonline biographyfor the Federalist Society lists his seminars with Alito among many other achievements and honors. Martin recently added the Alito seminars tohis bioon the High Point University website, where he has been law school dean since leaving Regent in 2022.

Alito and Martin taught the first iteration of their joint seminar - titled Select Issues in Constitutional Interpretation" - in January 2020 in Washington, D.C. In aphoto releasedby Regent, Alito and Martin stand side by side in a room at the National Center for State Courts.

The Regent law students huddled around Alito and Martin had to apply to take the course, according to thecourse schedule.

Nathan Hernandez, a RegentLawalum who was in the 2020 seminar, told The Interceptitwaslikemany law schoolcourses: alongreading listandSocraticquestioning. He saidAlito and Martin split the teaching along theirrespectivejudicialcareers, with Alito focusing on the U.S. Constitution and Martin on state constitutional issues.

Anotherformer Regent studentselectedforthe 2020seminar, Ryan Heath, who includes it in hisonline bio,was more effusive.

It was a huge blessing to have that opportunity to learn from Justice Alito,"saidHeath,whodescribes himself as a constitutional expert and talented legal strategist."

Since graduating with a Regent degree, Heathfounded an anti-woke" nonprofit to fightmask mandates and otherCovidrestrictionsthrough whathiswebsitecallsRosa Parks style civil disobedience."He's also filedand lostmultiple lawsuits to overturn election resultsin Arizona.

Earlier this year,Heathwassanctionedby one judgefor filing groundless" litigationthat sought todecertifycertain elections in 2022. Heath and his clients are appealing thatruling, which ordered them to pay more than $200,000 in fees.

I use what I learned every day," Heath told The Intercept, explaining thattheseminar withAlitoand Martin improved his constitutional arguments.

Martin's Busy Year

In betweentheirfirst and second seminars, Alito and Martin bothhadpacked schedules. In the summer of 2020, Alito dissented loudlyagainst the court'srulingthat it was illegal for employers to discriminate against gay and trans workers.Days after theelection, he gave apolitically tinged speechto the Federalist Societybemoaningthat the tolerance for opposing views is now in very shortsupply inmanylaw schools."

Martin wasparticularlybusybetween Trump's defeat in November 2020 and the insurrection on January 6, The Intercept found.

Records from the January 6 committee and other sources showMartin helped float a radical theory: that state legislatures had plenary," or absolute, authority over the selection of presidential electors, regardless of what their respective state laws or courts might say. This theory is often credited to Eastman. But records show Martin spread it to an influential state legislator, Mark Finchem of Arizona, who is an unindicted co-conspirator in the Arizona fake electors" caseand who repeatedly based his own actions on hisplenary" authority as a state legislator.

Related The Law School Dean Who Quietly Worked to Overturn the Election

Martin helped pitch a lawsuit grounded in theplenarytheory tothe Supreme Court,which one of the attorneys involved called Martin's brainchild."In coordination with the Trump campaign, Martin and otherattorneys recruited Texas Attorney GeneralKen Paxtonto filethelawsuit directly to theSupreme Court inearly December 2020, ina case called Texas v. Pennsylvania.

The Supreme Court quickly dismissed Paxton'schallengefor lack of standing. And last year, by a 6-3 margin, the Supreme Court rejected an even milder version of the plenary" theory. (Alito dissented on the grounds that the court should not have ruled on the case at all.)

Paxton, Eastman, and other Trump-aligned attorneys are currently fighting disciplinary charges over unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud in their briefs in theTexas v. Pennsylvaniacase. No misconduct charges have ever been lodged against Martin, however, who had a central role in orchestratingthe case but never signed any of the filingsand thus is not subject to ethics rules governinglawyers' conduct in judicial proceedings.

The Intercept found that Trump so valued Martin's views that other advisers invoked Martin to boost their ownpitches. Trump and his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, another North Carolinian who reportedly introduced Martin into Trump's circle of advisers, tried to pressuretheJustice Department to file another baseless lawsuit to the Supreme Court modeled on the failedTexas case.In doing so, they pointed to Martin's endorsement of the strategy, accordingto testimony fromtwoDOJ officials to the January 6 committee.

Days aftertheinsurrection,more than 150law schooldeanssigned a statementcriticizingsomelawyers"- whom the statement did not name -whochallenged the outcome of the election with claims thatthey did not support with facts or evidence."

This betrayed the values of our profession," read the deans' statement, whichMartin and Regent Law did not sign.

Alito and Martin,BackinClass

By thetime their second seminarstarted on January 26, 2021- after the infamous upside-down flag wasspotted flyingoutside Alito's home - the first details about Martin's contributions to the Big Lie effort were just starting to trickle out.

A few days after the Capitol attack, the New York Timesreportedthat, in the days leading up to the insurrection, Trumptold Mike Pence that, in Martin's view, the vice presidenthad the constitutional authority to derail the election count.The Times did not cite its source for that claim, which the January 6 committee credited in its final report.Even many of Trump's other legal advisers rejected thisfringe theory.

Martin has repeatedly declined to say what he and Trump discussed over the phone on January 6,citing confidentiality" despitealso claiming Trump and his campaign never retained him as an attorney.

Regent'spress releaseabout the2021 seminardoes not mention Martin.But a spokesperson for Regent confirmed that Alito and Martin taught the seminar together, withAlito teaching remotely from D.C., and Martin and the students at Regent's campus in Virginia Beach.Regent did notrespond toquestions about why this press releaseomitted Martin's role in the seminar, when the prior year's announcement featured him prominently.

Alito likely did not violate any formal ethical rules by teaching with Martin, Fix the Court's Roth said, since these do not cover every possible ethical quandary and could not have foreseen a situation where some leading members of the bar tried to topple our democracy."

Justice Alito co-teaching with an election denier doesn't pass" the smell test.

But to me, there's also the smell test," Roth said. Justice Alito co-teaching with an election denier doesn't pass it, and I hope the justice is more thoughtful about who he shares a lectern with in the future."

Shortly after the 2021 seminar, another detail about Martin's involvement in the Big Lie came out: The New York Times reported that hewas part of the group thatdevelopedthe ludicrous Supreme Court briefs that Paxton filed weeks earlier.A small flurry of press coverage focused on Martin,includingpointed editorialsin North Carolina outlets, but both Martin and Regent refused to answer questions.

A year later, aftermore reportscame out aboutMartin's role, he and Alito taught theirthree-day seminar again. Martin andhisstudents traveled down to Washington, D.C., according to a Regent spokesperson, where the class was again held at the National Center for State Courts.

ButRegent'spress releaseabout theJanuary 2022seminar does not mention Martin, and he does not appear in a photo published online.

Justice Samuel Alito, in the red tie, with Regent Law students for a 2022 seminar in Washington, D.C. Not pictured: Mark Martin. Photo: Regent University

In early June 2022, a month after commencement - at which theprogramboasted both Alito and Martin among the Christian scholars, political figures, and international heads of state" in residence -Regentannouncedthat Martin was leaving.

The next day, High Point Universityannouncedthat Martin was returning to North Carolina to be the founding dean of its new law school. The American Law Institute, one of the country's most influential legal organizationsand whichfirstelectedMartinto membershipin 2009, issued its ownpress releaseabout Martin's move to High Point.Berkeley LawSchool's dean,Erwin Chemerinsky,who had signed thelaw school deans'statement after January 6, gave Martin aglowing blurbin hiscapacityas president of the American Association of Law Schools.

Martin's appointment atHigh Point kicked off another media cycle about unanswered questions surroundinghisroleadvising Trumpafter the 2020 election. Progressives in North Carolina mounted a brief campaign opposing Martin's appointment, whichfeatured a billboardthat blared MARK MARTIN BETRAYED OUR CONSTITUTION."

Like Regent, High Point has consistently deflected questions about Martin's role advising Trump after the 2020 election.

Chief Justice Martin assured HPU that he never has, nor ever will, support a betrayal of the Constitution or an insurrection of any kind," a university spokesperson said in a statementrespondingtoThe Intercept's findings. This wasidentical toastatementHigh Pointgave last yearafterthe January 6 committee issued its final report, which mentions Martinonlybriefly.

A few months after Martin moved to High Point, Alito's bio disappeared from the Regent website. According to Alito'sfinancial disclosures, the school paid Alito $9,000 each year to teach the seminar with Martin.

More than three years after January 6, Martin playsa prominent role in the legal community, bothnationally andin North Carolina.

He has appeared onthe coverof legal magazinesand written for an American Bar Associationnewsletter for judges.Inthe past year, the ABA hosted him as apaneliston judicial ethics and asked him to moderatea panelaboutthe recentSupreme Court decision that rejected hisunhingedplenary" theory of state legislatures' power.Martin'srole promoting that theoryafter the 2020 electiondidn't come up.

Alito, meanwhile,has continued tolurchrightward.

In summer 2022,monthsafter his final seminar with Martin,he wrote theDobbsdecisionthat overturned Roe v. Wade.This year,after the flags scandalbrokeand Alitorefused to recusehimselffromcases related to January 6,hejoined the conservative majority inhanding Trump extraordinary immunity for his ownrole in the insurrection.

As November approaches, itlookslikely that the Supreme Court willplay a significant role in deciding whether Trump returns to the White House.And out of nine people on the country's highest bench,one of them decided toteachalongsidealawyerwho helped orchestrate the Big Lie'slegal strategy.

The post The Untold Link Between Justice Alito and Trump's Election-Denying Efforts appeared first on The Intercept.