CNN
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The wife of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito previously said that an upside-down American flag that was displayed at the couple’s home in January 2021 was an “international crisis signal,” The Washington Post reported Saturday. At the time, the paper detailed an encounter between Alito and a Post reporter outside the couple’s home.
According to the article, when reporter Robert Burns visited the judge’s home in Alexandria, Virginia, to follow up on the inauguration of President Joe Biden, the flag was no longer flying. When reporter Martha Ann Alito saw the couple leaving the house, she demanded the reporter “get off my property,” according to the Post.
According to the Washington Post, as Judge Burns was seeking information about the case, Justice Martha Ann Alito shouted, “This is an international distress signal!” However, the judge escorted his wife out to his car and denied that the flag had anything to do with political protests, saying it arose from a neighborhood dispute.
According to the Washington Post, Martha Ann Alito then pointed to the Alitos’ neighbors and yelled, “Listen to what they’ve done!”, retrieved an unusual flag from the couple’s home, hoisted it up a flagpole, and shouted, “See! Now it looks good, doesn’t it?”
A Washington Post spokesperson said in the article that the paper did not report on the exchange at the time because “the flag-raising was believed to be the work of Martha Ann Alito, not the judge, and was related to a neighbor dispute” and it was unclear whether it was politically rooted.
The Washington Post report comes as the conservative judge is embroiled in a controversy over displays outside his own property.
From the New York Times
A photo obtained by The New York Times shows the upside-down flag flying at Alito’s residence on Jan. 17, 2021, three days before President Biden’s inauguration.
The New York Times last week published a photo of an upside-down U.S. flag that was displayed in front of Alito’s Virginia home in 2021. Justice Alito said the upside-down U.S. flag was put up by his wife in response to an argument with a neighbor. Justice Alito said the argument began when a neighbor held up a sign that read “F**k Trump” near a school bus stop and then held up another sign attacking his wife. Justice Alito told Fox News that the Alitos had gotten into an argument with a neighbor who once used the word “c**t,” after which his wife put up the upside-down U.S. flag.
The upside-down flag was a symbol of supporters of former President Donald Trump, who falsely claimed there was widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
The Times reported Wednesday that the flag that was flown during the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol was flown outside Alito and his wife’s vacation home in New Jersey last summer. The “Appeal to Heaven” flag, which dates back to the Revolutionary War, has become a symbol of Trump supporters.
The flag revelations have drawn criticism in Washington, with key Republican senators and Democrats urging the judge to recuse himself from cases involving President Trump and the 2021 storming of the Capitol.
Senate Republican Leader John Thune, one of the candidates vying to replace retiring Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, told CNN the flag was a “bad decision.”
“I don’t know how to explain it,” the South Dakota Republican said.
The news rekindled calls from the left for Congress to establish a Supreme Court ethics code that had been stalled for months.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, a frequent critic of conservative judges, told CNN’s Kate Bolduin on Thursday that it “raises serious questions” for a justice on the nation’s highest court to fly such a flag on his own property.
Some Republicans have defended Justice Alito, with Senator Ted Cruz of Texas telling CNN’s Kaitlyn Collins on Wednesday that “the whole thing is overblown” and accusing Senate Democrats of trying to delegitimize the Supreme Court.
CNN’s John Fritz, Holmes Lybrand and Ted Barrett contributed to this report.
