Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito Accused of Flying Upside-Down Flag in Protest of Stolen 2020 Presidential Election
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito reportedly flew an upside-down American flag at his Alexandria, Virginia home in protest of the fraudulent 2020 presidential election.
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Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito reportedly flew an upside-down American flag at his Alexandria, Virginia home in protest of the fraudulent 2020 presidential election.
According to detailed reports by far-left The New York Times, photographs and eyewitness accounts from neighbors confirm that Justice Alito’s home displayed the inverted flag on January 17, 2021—just days after the January 6 Capitol event and shortly before Joe Biden’s inauguration.
Justice Alito, in a statement to The New York Times, denied any personal involvement with the flying of the flag, attributing it to his wife, Martha-Ann Alito.
According to Alito, the flag was a reaction to provocative and insulting yard signs posted by neighbors, rather than a political statement.
“I had no involvement whatsoever in the flying of the flag,” Alito told the Times. “It was briefly placed by Mrs. Alito in response to a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs.”
Flying a flag upside down is traditionally recognized as a distress signal “in instances of extreme danger to life or property.” It is not inherently a political statement.
Far-left New York Times reported:
Judicial experts said in interviews that the flag was a clear violation of ethics rules, which seek to avoid even the appearance of bias, and could sow doubt about Alito’s impartiality in cases related to the election and the Capitol riot.
The mere impression of political opinion can be a problem, the ethics experts said. “It might be his spouse or someone else living in his home, but he shouldn’t have it in his yard as his message to the world,” said Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia.
This is “the equivalent of putting a ‘Stop the Steal’ sign in your yard, which is a problem if you’re deciding election-related cases,” she said.
Interviews show that the justice’s wife, Martha-Ann Alito, had been in a dispute with another family on the block over an anti-Trump sign on their lawn, but given the timing and the starkness of the symbol, neighbors interpreted the inverted flag as a political statement by the couple.
The long-standing ethics code for the lower courts, as well as the recent one adopted by the Supreme Court, stresses the need for judges to remain independent and avoid political statements or opinions on matters that could come before them.
“You always want to be proactive about the appearance of impartiality,” Jeremy Fogel, a former federal judge and the director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute, said in an interview. “The best practice would be to make sure that nothing like that is in front of your house.”
The court has also repeatedly warned its own employees against public displays of partisan views, according to guidelines circulated to the staff and reviewed by the Times. Displaying signs or bumper stickers is not permitted, according to the court’s internal rule book and a 2022 memo reiterating the ban on political activity.
When did the Democrats become patriotic?
The account by far-left The New York Times and the subsequent portrayal by some judicial experts might be critiqued for demonstrating a bias against conservative figures. The focus should be on questioning why similar scrutiny or interpretation of law is not always applied uniformly across political spectrums, particularly when actions or expressions by liberal justices or public figures come into play.
It can be recalled that Justice Alito issued a harsh rebuke last year against leftist lawmakers in Congress trying to implement an ethics code for the Court.
The behavior of Supreme Court justices has been in the spotlight recently as the left has been trying to take down conservative judges Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas for alleged ethics violations.
Now, liberals in Congress are trying to mandate a SCOTUS ethics code, probably in the hope that one of the conservative justices will be caught violating it and be impeached.
Unfortunately for the left, Alito has just told them that that is just not going to happen.
“I know this is a controversial view, but I’m willing to say it,” Alito said. “No provision in the Constitution gives [Congress] the authority to regulate the Supreme Court — period.”
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