By some measures, the controversy surrounding Donald Trump's recent chat with Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is intensifying, not dissipating.

Top House Judiciary Committee Democrat urges Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito to recuse himself from Trump hush money sentencing after a call between Trump and Alito.

On Tuesday, just hours before Donald Trump ’s legal team asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene and pause his sentencing today in the New York case involving hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels, the president-elect and the conservative justice talked on the phone.

The phone call centered on a former law clerk of Justice Alito’s. In the eyes of the Trump team, the clerk still needed to prove his loyalty to the president-elect.

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito said he spoke with President-elect Donald Trump by phone this week in support of a former law clerk who is seeking a job in the incoming administration – but the justice said he did not discuss Trump’s pending effort to delay his sentencing.

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito spoke with President-elect Donald Trump about a former law clerk the day before Trump went to the high court in a push to delay the sentencing in his New York hush-money case.

It makes a mockery of the so-called ethics rules that they put in place, but that there's no mechanism to enforce.

The justice said that the call was a job reference for one of his former clerks and that the request to stay the president-elect’s sentencing did not come up.