Flag display controversy is much ado about nothing.
The New York Times published two articles recently claiming to have proof that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito supported the “Stop the Steal” believers’ contention that Donald Trump was the legitimate winner of the 2020 presidential election. The New York Times reported that two flag symbols used at the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot were also displayed at various times at Justice Alito’s homes. The upshot of the articles was that the conservative justice is too biased to take part in cases before the Supreme Court this term that involve the January 6th riot and Donald Trump.
The articles consist of innuendos based on pure speculation. Nevertheless, the newspaper, whose laughable motto is “All the News That’s Fit to Print,” achieved its purpose. The articles sparked outrage on the Left and demands that Justice Alito recuse himself from any January 6th and Trump-related cases. Left-wing progressives at the New York Times and elsewhere are still furious at Justice Alito for authoring the Supreme Court decision two years ago that overturned Roe v. Wade’s establishment of a constitutional right to abortion.
The first New York Times article that threw the Left into fits of rage reported that an upside-down American flag was displayed outside Justice Alito’s Virginia house shortly after the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot. As if that were not enough, the New York Times followed up with a second article revealing that an “Appeal to Heaven” flag was displayed outside the Alito beach home in New Jersey during the summer of 2023.
Some January 6th rioters who believed Mr. Trump’s claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen carried upside-down American flags and “Appeal to Heaven” flags at the Capitol on January 6th. The New York Times’ vacuous reporters concluded that these same flag symbols displayed at Justice Alito’s homes can only mean one thing. Justice Alito must share the same “Stop the Steal” sentiment as the rioters and therefore cannot be trusted to be impartial in cases involving the January 6th riot and Mr. Trump.
But such a fallacious premise inevitably leads to a fallacious conclusion. The “Stop the Steal” protesters do not have a monopoly on the public use of an upside-down American flag or the “Appeal to Heaven” flag. Justice Alito’s detractors have no way of knowing for sure what was behind the flag displays at either of the justice’s homes. Nor should it matter.
The upside-down display of the American flag was originally used as a distress signal calling for help. It has been used since as a symbol of protest for many causes, including to oppose slavery in the 1850’s and the Vietnam War in the 1960s and ’70s. Pro-abortion demonstrators marched with American flags upside down in protest of the Supreme Court opinion written by none other than Justice Alito, which returned decisions about abortion to the states. When the upside-down American flag was used during the protests following the death of George Floyd, it was described then as “the universal signal of distress.”
Justice Alito explained that his wife decided herself to briefly fly the American flag upside down “in response to a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs.” The New York Times and Justice Alito’s other detractors have produced no evidence to refute Justice Alito’s explanation. --->READ MORE HERE
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| Illustration by Dean MacAdam for the Washington Examiner |
Calls from Democratic lawmakers and left-wing groups for Justice Samuel Alito to recuse himself from key cases over alleged ethics violations are a “coordinated effort” to delegitimize the Supreme Court, according to experts who say the drumbeat of attacks on conservative justices gets steadier with each passing year.
The “Appeal to Heaven” flag, one of the foremost flags used by Patriot forces, including George Washington, during the Revolutionary War, was flown at Alito’s house last year, according to a New York Times report. This drew outrage from Democrats who claim it was also a key symbol during the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol. It marked the second time in two weeks that the justice’s flagpoles became a topic of controversy, and the report prompted calls from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-IL) for Alito to recuse himself from cases involving former President Donald Trump and the 2020 election, all because a handful of protesters carried the Revolutionary War-era flag on Jan. 6, 2021.
Congressional Democrats and activist groups are turning up the pressure on Alito in the wake of the flag controversy. Despite pushback from legal experts and voices on the Right, Democrats and left-wing groups have sought throughout Joe Biden’s presidency to raise questions about key Republican-appointed justices on the Supreme Court and have done so by relying on the strategy of attacking their ethics.
“The Left has been constantly attacking the court since at least March 2020 when Sen. [Chuck] Schumer stood in front of the court during an oral argument on an abortion case and directly threatened Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh on their vote,” said Mark Paoletta, ex-general counsel for Trump’s Office of Management and Budget and a close friend of Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife, Ginni.
Paoletta specifically recalled that the last three years have shown a pattern of leaks or reports that elevate Supreme Court scrutiny “in the springtime as the court nears the end of the term and big decisions will be handed down.”
In May 2022, there was the leak of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision that signaled the imminent overturning of Roe v. Wade, a leak that has remained unsolved despite its damaging impact on the institution. Last year, ProPublica launched a dedicated series in the spring questioning Thomas’s ethics, specifically over gifts of vacations that billionaire Harlan Crow gave to Thomas, just before the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action.
“And now there’s the Trump cases in 2024,” Paoletta said, adding that the reporting about flags flown months ago in front of Alito’s home arrived near the end of the current term “like clockwork.” --->READ MORE HERE
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