German princess gave Justice Alito $900 in concert tickets

US Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito reported accepting $900 (€811) in "concert tickets" from a German princess, according to a new financial disclosure released Friday.

The required annual filing, for which Alito has often asked for an extension, doesn't include details about what event the tickets were for but does say they came from German socialite Gloria von Thurn und Taxis.

The financial disclosures filed by the Supreme Court justices come against a backdrop of heightened focus on ethics at the US high court amid criticism over undisclosed travel and gifts from wealthy benefactors to some justices.

The annual disclosures paint a partial picture of the justices' finances because they are not required to report the value of their homes or, for those who are married, their spouses' salaries.

For their day jobs, the justices are paid $298,500 annually, except for Chief Justice John Roberts, who earns $312,200.

 

Who is Gloria von Thurn und Taxis?

The Weimar Constitution of August 14, 1919, abolished the legal privileges and titles of German nobility. Therefore, officially, there are no German princes and princesses. Still, Gloria Princess von Thurn und Taxis had been considered a rebel as far as German "royalty" is concerned. She once caused a sensation with her punk hairstyles, but now she is known better for her deeply conservative Catholic views.

She has been accused of being close to right-wing extremists and homophobic. The 64-year-old entrepreneur denied this in interviews.

In other interviews and television appearances, she has denied human-caused climate change, condemned same-sex marriage and blamed the devil for "everything that is bad in the world," including the coronavirus pandemic. She has also met Stephen Bannon, a former adviser and campaign manager for ex-US President Donald Trump, on several occasions. Bannon even suggested her palatial home could be used as a school to educate right-wing Catholics. 

She is also a traditional hostess of the Thurn und Taxis Castle Festival in Regensburg. The opera "Carmen" by Georges Bizet was on the program this year.

As in the previous year, there were protests against von Thurn und Taxis at this year's festival.

The background of the criticism is a meeting between the extremely conservative Werte-Union wing of the center-right Christian Democratic Union, and the former president of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Hans-Georg Maassen, in July 2023 in the Princely Palace, which became known through research by t-online.de, the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung and German public broadcasters NDR and WDR.

dh/sms (AP, dpa)