This is not rocket science in the ethical world

I guess Neil Gorsuch doesn’t have a very fine-tuned sense of ethics.

Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, President Trump’s Supreme Court appointee, is scheduled to address a conservative group at the Trump International Hotel in Washington next month, less than two weeks before the court is set to hear arguments on Mr. Trump’s travel ban.

Stephen Gillers, an expert on legal ethics at New York University, questioned the justice’s decision to speak at the hotel, which is at issue in lower-court cases challenging the constitutionality of payments to Mr. Trump’s companies.

“At this highly divisive political moment, especially as many Trump decisions are likely soon to reach the court’s docket, one just days later, a healthy respect for public confidence in the court should have led Justice Gorsuch to demur,” he said.

You’d think he would say no for a lot of reasons. He shouldn’t be snuggling up to Trump that way, and he shouldn’t be helping Trump violate ethical standards by profiting from his hotel almost next door to his official residence. It’s tawdry any way you look at it.

The Times found a lawyer to say it’s ok.

Deborah L. Rhode, a law professor at Stanford, disagreed.

“This is not rocket science in the ethical world,” she said. “It doesn’t get much more basic than this.”

“It’s a terrible signal for this group to be holding their meeting at the Trump International Hotel and for a Supreme Court justice to legitimate it by attending,” she said. “It just violates basic ethical principles about conflicts of interest.”

And it looks skeevy as hell.

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