Justice Samuel Alito defended himself and the United States Supreme Court amid an onslaught of political pressure following recent reports of ethically questionable activity by various justices.

“I marvel at all the nonsense that has been written about me in the last year,” Alito told the Wall Street Journal in an interview published Thursday, adding it’s common practice that justices stay silent on certain matters and allow others to defend them. “But that’s just not happening. And so at a certain point, I’ve said to myself, nobody else is going to do this, so I have to defend myself.”

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Alito said he opposes the notion of imposing ethics rules on the Supreme Court, saying that Congress does not have the power to control the court. The court has faced months of attacks over the lack of an ethics code.

“I know this is a controversial view, but I’m willing to say it,” Alito said. “No provision in the Constitution gives them the authority to regulate the Supreme Court — period.”

When asked if his fellow justices agreed with his viewpoint, Alito said that while he does not know of any members who've publicly spoken on the matter, “I think it is something we have all thought about.”

Last week the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to move Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse’s (D-RI) Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act forward. The bill would give the court 180 days to adopt and publish a code of conduct and create a process so the public can file ethics complaints against the justices.

The bill needs at least nine Republican votes in the Senate and to pass through the GOP-led House, so the legislation is unlikely to pass either chamber.

Last month, ProPublica published a story describing Alito’s luxury fishing trip with Paul Singer, a billionaire GOP donor, in 2008, and the justice's failure to disclose the trip on financial records.

The Wall Street Journal published a preemptive essay from Alito last month, in which he defended his lack of disclosure about the fishing trip with Singer, claiming until recently, justices were told personal hospitality does not have to be reported. Alito published the essay before the ProPublica story went live after learning about the piece after reporters reached out for comment.

Justices have been under a microscope following a ProPublica report from earlier this year about Justice Clarence Thomas and his failure to disclose luxury gifts and trips from billionaire Republican donor Harlan Crow.

Nominated by former President George W. Bush, Alito was confirmed to the Supreme Court in 2006. He is currently the second most senior justice among the nine, behind Thomas. Alito said, “There are very serious differences” in how the conservatives on the 6-3 majority court tackle cases.

“I don’t see that there’s a difference in interpretive method,” Alito said, adding the justices “don’t always line up 6-3, 5-4, the way some people tend to think. If you look at all the cases, there are cases where the lineup is unusual.”

David Rivkin, one of the two authors of the Wall Street Journal piece, is an attorney whose tax case, Moore v. U.S., will be presented to the Supreme Court next term. The case challenges a tax cut and jobs act provision from 2017 called the Mandatory Repatriation Tax.

“The lawyer who “wrote” this is also the lawyer blocking our investigation into Leonard Leo’s Supreme Court freebies,” Whitehouse said in response to the story, referring to Leo helping choose judicial nominees for former President Donald Trump.

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The Washington Post reported in 2019 that Leo, an attorney and former vice president of the Federalist Society, raised millions from undisclosed donors, with some funds going toward support for judicial confirmations.

“Shows how small and shallow the pool of operatives is around this captured Court — same folks keep popping up wearing new hats,” Whitehouse said.