In a letter to Democratic leaders in the House and Senate, Justice Alito said the flag and another religiously themed flag were flown by his wife without his knowledge and that the case did not meet the requirements for recusal set out in the Supreme Court’s Code of Conduct.
Alito revealed for the first time that he was unaware the upside-down flag until it was pointed out to him, and that his wife initially resisted taking it down.
“As soon as I saw it, I asked my wife to take it down, but she refused for several days,” Alito wrote in a letter to Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Iowa) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), adding that “my wife has a legal right to use the property as she pleases, and there was no additional step I could have taken to have the flag taken down sooner.”
The upside-down flag has long been used as a signal of distress, particularly by the U.S. military, and has become a symbol of the “Stop the Steal” movement, which falsely claims the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump.
Another flag carried by the rioters on January 6th: This one The bill, supported by Christian nationalists who want a greater place for religion in public life, was posted outside Gov. Alito’s New Jersey vacation home last summer.
In his letter, Alito said he was unfamiliar with the “Appeal to Heaven” flag and that his wife may have been referring to its history dating back to the American Revolutionary War. “Neither I nor my wife were aware of the connection between this historic flag and the ‘Stop the Steal’ movement,” he said.
Martha Ann Alito “did not fly the flag to associate herself with that organization or any other organization,” the judge wrote, adding that “the fact that a new organization uses an older, historic flag does not necessarily erase all of the flag’s other meanings.”
Following the reports about the flag, Democrats called on Alito to recuse himself from taking part in the decision. The Supreme Court is expected to decide two key cases in the coming weeks: whether Trump can be criminally prosecuted; About his efforts to remain in office after losing the 2020 election, and whether the Justice Department can indict more than 300 people on obstruction charges. The rioters.
Alito previously said his wife put up the flag because she was upset about a fight in their neighborhood over an anti-Trump yard sign and a sign that read “You’re Complicit.”
He told lawmakers on Wednesday that his wife has made many sacrifices to accommodate his work on the Supreme Court, including a “very nasty neighborhood dispute” that embroiled her, as well as being the subject of “loud, obscene and personally offensive protests in front of our home” that began after Alito wrote the majority opinion that overturned the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling. Roe v. Wade Abolish abortion rights nationwide.
“My wife is a private citizen and, like every other American, has First Amendment rights,” Justice Alito wrote. “She makes her own decisions, and I have always respected her rights to do so.”
Last fall, in response to other controversies over Supreme Court ethics, the Supreme Court for the first time adopted a code of conduct that applies specifically to its nine justices. The code says a justice should be disqualified from a case “whose impartiality may reasonably be called into question” if an impartial person familiar with all the facts and circumstances would “raise doubts as to whether the justice can fairly discharge his or her duties.”
Alito rejected the senators’ requests to recuse himself from litigation related to the 2020 election, writing that he believed a “reasonable person not motivated by political or ideological considerations or a desire to influence the outcome of a Supreme Court case” would conclude that flying the flag at his home did not require him to resign.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
