OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Some Democrats are calling for Congress to take action against conservative Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, which could include impeachment.
Reports surfaced that an upside-down American flag and a “Stop The Steal” flag were flying outside of his home on January 17, 2021, days before the inauguration of President Joe Biden, The New York Times reported.
Speaking to Fox News, the justice explained why the flags were outside his home and said he was not involved in flying them.
The justice said it began around January 6 when a neighbor displayed a sign near a kid’s bus stop that said “F— Trump.”
“He said his wife, Martha-Ann, then spoke with those neighbors about the sign, and the conversation was not well received,” Fox News reported.
He said those same neighbors then displayed a sign blaming Mrs. Alito for the events of January 6.
The justice said that the neighbors got into an argument with her, using profane language, when she was walking by.
He said her response was to display an upside-down American flag and a “Stop The Steal” flag in retaliation, but it was only on the property for a short time.
But that has not quelled the response from Democrats who are demanding action against the justice.
During an appearance on MSNBC, Sen. Richard Blumenthal was irate with the Justice and said that the Chief Justice and Congress need to act.
“I think all of these displays, the Ginni Thomas case, going to the Federalist Society, the hanging of the flag upside down, you might be able to, in some world, dismiss all of it as outside the court action, if it weren’t for the fact, the thing you just said, which is the most crucial thing. There is nothing more important than the notion that a president who has been indicted for having been a participant in and having led an insurrection against the United States government, that that case be heard before this election so that the former president, Donald Trump, would have legal and political accountability so voters would know whether this man was guilty of having committed a crime of that nature. And there is no conceivable world in which we are really going to say, whether you’re conservative or liberal, that the president of the United States is beyond the reach of the law, is immune from any prosecution, for anything he does when he is in office,” the senator said.
“And yet, the U.S. Supreme Court in a wholly predictable, partisan way, decided to say — as you said, slow walk — and I’d say an outrageous decision not to take, to just pass on this case. Given what the appeals court had done, there was only one right answer, which was, there is no issue here. There is no issues here other than the partisan issue. And now they’re going to almost certainly guarantee we will not have a verdict in that case before voters go to the polls in November. It is a shocking, substantive — not a symbolic thing. I’m not downplaying the hanging of the flag upside down. That is the leading indicator. That is what is reflective of this total casting aside of any attempt or pretense of being nonpartisan. It is just, ‘We are doing what our, in this case, conservative ideology tells us to do, and we’re working for Donald Trump,’” he said.
And he was not alone.
“This stuff’s not normal,” Minnesota Democrat Gov. Tim Walz said to CNN on Friday. “I’m just stunned that we would ever have had to have a Supreme Court justice explain why his wife was flying a flag upside down in response to an … insurrection.”
“Flying an upside-down American flag — a symbol of the so-called ‘Stop the Steal’ movement — clearly creates the appearance of bias,” Sen. Dick Durbin said. “Justice Alito should recuse himself immediately from cases related to the 2020 election and the January 6th insurrection, including the question of the former president’s immunity.”
“If a judge on any other federal court had done this, the allegation would be investigated because it calls into question a person’s ability to fairly decide a case,” Democrat Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse added.
