A 'Stop The Steal' Symbol Was Displayed At Alito's House In 2021
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A symbol affiliated with former President Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” fallacy was on display at Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s house in 2021, a New York Times investigation found Thursday.
The symbol in question was an upside-down American flag, which supporters of Trump’s stolen election conspiracy theory began displaying after he lost to President Joe Biden in 2020. Neighbors who saw and photographed the flag confirmed to the Times that it flew on Jan. 17, 2021. The conservative justice admitted it but said it was his wife’s doing.
“I had no involvement whatsoever in the flying of the flag,” he said in a statement to the paper. “It was briefly placed by Mrs. Alito in response to a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs.”
The Times found in interviews with neighbors that Alito’s wife, Martha-Ann Alito, was having an ongoing argument with neighbors who’d put up an anti-Trump sign with an expletive on their front lawn.
You can see a photo of the flag in question in the Times’ story.
Jan. 17 was a little over a week after Trump supporters violently stormed the U.S. Capitol in an effort to stop the ceremonial counting of electoral votes that gave Biden the presidency. More than a thousand people involved in the riot have been charged with crimes associated with that day.
While the flag was up, the Supreme Court was deciding whether to hear several cases about the integrity of the 2020 election. Alito was in favor of hearing the arguments but was ultimately on the losing side. Currently, the court is set to rule on two cases related to the Capitol riot, including one that could give Trump presidential immunity from some of the dozens of charges he’s facing.
The Supreme Court’s code of ethics calls for the justices to avoid making political statements or sharing opinions on matters that might come before the court.
Take Back the Court, a group opposed to the conservative swing the court has taken in recent years, said this incident is proof Alito doesn’t belong on the court.
“Sam Alito has disqualified himself from legitimate service on the Supreme Court. It’s hard to imagine a more blatant f-you to the American public than proudly displaying a vestige of a failed coup attempt on the country you’re supposed to serve, right on your front lawn,” the group’s president, Sarah Lipton-Lubet, said in a statement.
Alito’s wife isn’t the only Supreme Court spouse to get caught up in an election conspiracy scandal. Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife, Ginni Thomas, promoted and attended Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally near the White House that preceded the Capitol insurrection. Her husband has refused to recuse himself from cases related to the attack on the Capitol.
“If the wife of one sitting Supreme Court justice helping incite an insurrection wasn’t enough for Congress to issue subpoenas to these extremists, perhaps another sitting justice proudly displaying memorabilia from that insurrection will be,” Lipton-Lubet said.
