Scalia’s final junket linked to aristocratic hunting society

wsws.org

While the media continues to eulogize the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia as a “towering legal figure and a “brilliant intellectual,” it has emerged that his death on February 13 occurred during a junket with an exclusive aristocratic hunting society.

The International Order of St. Hubertus, a European knightly order dating from 17th century Bohemia, is dedicated to preserving hunting as a ritual pastime of the nobility...

On February 24, the Washington Post reported that John Poindexter, the owner of the exclusive Cibolo Creek Ranch in Texas, where Scalia was visiting at the time of his death, is a leading member of the order. Scalia traveled to the ranch on a private plane with C. Allen Foster, a prominent Washington lawyer who is a secretary and “knight grand officer” of the order. Other high-ranking members of the order took private flights around the same time. Scalia declined the protection of the US Marshals Service, which would otherwise provide his security, for his trip to the ranch.

In 2006, the Washington Post reported that Scalia’s friend Foster marked his 65th birthday with a six-day celebration in the Czech Republic. “He flew his family and 40 Washington friends there to stay in Moravia’s Zidlochovice, a baroque castle and hunting park,” the newspaper explained. “The birthday bash included tours of the Czech countryside, wine tasting, wild boar and mouflon (wild sheep) hunts, classic dance instruction and a masked costume ball.”

Foster’s list of former clients includes the Republican Party, tobacco advertisers, the director of the failed Washington National Bank, companies accused of civil rights violations, the mercenary company Blackwater Security Consulting and the right-wing Cato Institute.