“My wife likes to wave flags. Not me”. The phrase is from Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. The peculiar hobby of his wife has unleashed a major scandal in Washington. Among the flags raised in the garden of the house where Alito resides and in the patio of his beach house, there were two associated with the assault on the Capitol and the attempts to baselessly question Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential elections. That claim in which he blames his wife, Martha-Ann Alito, the judge has rejected the request of Democratic congressmen that he withdraw from the cases related to the assault on the Capitol. Democrats believe the shadow of suspicion remains over Alito, one of the most conservative justices on the already very conservative Supreme Court.
He New York Times On May 16, he published a photograph taken in the garden of Alito’s house on the outskirts of Washington, in Fairfax (Virginia), in which that inverted flag was seen hoisted. The image was taken on January 17, 2021, 11 days after the assault on the Capitol and just three days before Joe Biden’s inauguration as the new president. Donald Trump’s staunch supporters, who baselessly accused Biden of having stolen the election, used that upside-down American flag as a symbol of protest. They wore it at demonstrations, in their homes and in their cars. Some of those who stormed the Capitol were wearing it.
Days after the first photograph, the New York newspaper published another image with a controversial flag at Alito’s vacation home in New Jersey. The photograph was taken last summer and in it the “Appeal to Heaven” flag was raised, also known as the flag of the pines, also carried by the insurrectionists in the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. The flag was It dates back to the War of Independence, but has been rescued in recent years as a symbol of support for former President Donald Trump and a religious aspect of the “Stop the Steal” campaign against the admission of Biden’s victory.
The publication of the images has caused a great scandal in the United States for two weeks. The Supreme Court has two major cases on the table related to Trump, the assault on the Capitol and his attempts to prevent the certification of Biden’s victory in 2020. On the one hand, it must rule on the validity of applying the crime of obstruction of an official procedure for the assault on the Capitol and similar actions. Two of the four crimes charged against Trump in the Washington trial for interference in the electoral result have to do with that crime. On the other hand, the judges must also rule in the coming weeks on the criminal immunity that Trump claims, in a ruling that will mark the former president’s judicial future.
A group of congressmen sent a letter on May 21 to Alito demanding that he abstain from these cases because his impartiality was in doubt due to “the appearance of a conflict of interest.” The judge responded this Wednesday to that letter, and to another in similar terms from two senators, and refuses to deviate from those cases. “A reasonable person not motivated by political or ideological considerations or by a desire to affect the outcome of Supreme Court cases would conclude that the facts do not meet the applicable standard for recusal. Therefore, I am forced to reject his request,” he concludes after giving explanations about the two cases.
“I had nothing to do with it”
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It starts with the American flag upside down. “I had nothing to do with the raising of the flag. I didn’t notice the inverted flag until it was brought to my attention. As soon as I saw it, I asked my wife to remove it, but for several days she refused. My wife and I jointly own our home in Virginia. Therefore, she has the legal right to use the property as she sees fit, and I could not have taken any additional steps to remove the flag more quickly,” she maintains.
“My wife’s reasons for flying the flag are not relevant for today’s purposes, but I must point out that she was very distraught at the time due, in large part, to an unpleasant neighborhood dispute in which I had nothing to do with. At a house on the street there was a sign attacking her personally, and a man who lived in the house followed her up and down the street and berated her in my presence using foul language, including what I consider to be the vilest epithet that can be directed at her. to a woman,” he continues.
It has emerged that the dispute Alito refers to was precisely political in nature. A neighbor put up a profane anti-Trump sign at her house. Martha-Ann Alito complained, that raised the tension, the neighbor put up a sign against her and responded with the inverted flag. Given the dates of the incident, its significance was evident. “My wife is a private citizen and she has the same First Amendment rights as any other American,” Alito continues, referring to the constitutional amendment that enshrines freedom of expression. “She makes her own decisions, and I have always respected her right to do so,” she adds.
As for the flag on his vacation home, he says, “I remember my wife flying that flag for a while, but I don’t remember how long. And what is most relevant here, I had no involvement in the decision to raise that flag. My wife likes to wave flags. Not me. “She was solely responsible for flagpoles being placed at our residence and vacation home and she has flown a wide variety of flags over the years,” she notes.
The judge reviews his wife’s hobby. He says that in addition to the American flag, he has raised other patriotic flags, including a veterans’ appreciation flag, college flags, sports team flags, state and local flags, flags of countries where family members’ ancestors come from. , of places they have visited and religious flags.
According to Alito, however, his wife was not enough of an expert to know the meaning that that flag had acquired. “I didn’t know the ‘Appeal to Heaven’ flag when my wife raised it. I may have mentioned that it dates back to the American Revolution, and I assume she waved it to express a patriotic and religious message. I didn’t know any connection between that historic flag and the ‘Stop the Steal’ movement, and neither did my wife. “It was not raised to associate with that group or any other, and the use of an old historic flag by a new group does not necessarily strip that flag of all its other meanings,” he adds, before noting that the New Jersey house is in the name of his wife, who bought it with money inherited from her parents.
A piece of news in the drawer
The publication of the news of the controversial Alito house flags had a surprising journalistic coda. Last Saturday, nine days after the exclusive New York Times, he Washington Post He acknowledged within a piece of information that he found out about the story in January 2021 and decided not to publish it. “He post decided not to report on the episode at the time because the flag-raising appeared to be the work of Martha-Ann Alito, not the judge, and was related to a dispute with her neighbors, a spokeswoman for the Post. “It was not clear then that the discussion had political roots, the spokesperson said,” the newspaper published on Saturday quoting a spokeswoman for the newspaper itself, which in January 2021 was directed by Martin Baron, who has assured that he was not aware. of history.
The current editor, Sally Buzbee, was not at the newspaper at the time and these explanations seem like an acknowledgment of the mistake made three years ago, although it is not expressly stated. The journalist who covered the information even spoke with Alito’s wife and with the judge himself, who also answered the questions sent by the newspaper in terms similar to how he answered the New York Times, but the news never saw the light of day. Cameron Barr, then deputy editor and now out of the newspaper, has assumed responsibility for the decision, according to the publication Semafor. He said he suggested that the newspaper write about the neighborhood dispute, with the flag as one of the elements, but that was not done either.
The decision of post has unleashed criticism from communication experts. “Holy God. He Washington Post he screwed up, choosing not to report on the Alito flag at the time, bringing it up now, masking the error between paragraphs of context. Democracy dies with a terrible, irresponsible, gullible and complicit information criterion. Shame,” tweeted journalist and journalism professor Jeff Jarvis. “Any journalist worth his salt should have recognized the informative value of this news,” he wrote in another message.
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