Sam Alito Has Done Nothing to Earn the Benefit Of the Doubt

[In It to Win It]

Balls and Strikes

In a deadly attempt to help Donald Trump hold on to power, several thousand people attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021, parroting the lie that the 2020 election was stolen by the lawful winner, President Joe Biden. Dozens of insurrectionists at the Capitol adopted upside-down American flags, a traditional naval distress signal, as a symbol of this so-called “Stop the Steal” campaign. And across the country, some people—people who I assume had enough sense to refrain from actively participating in a coup, but not enough sense to oppose a violent assault on multiracial democracy—raised their own inverted American flags in solidarity.

One such person is a member of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s household. The New York Times reported last week that an upside-down flag was hoisted high in the Alitos’ front yard just days after the insurrection.

Since then, Alito has not disavowed the lie that the election was stolen, or denied that the upside-down flag signaled support for the violent, election-denying mob. All he’s done is claim that he wasn’t involved, and that it was his “distraught” wife who put up the flag because a neighbor was rude to her.

A sitting Supreme Court justice showing public support for overthrowing the government while deciding cases about whether Trump will face any accountability for overthrowing the government is a colossal failure for the legal system’s promises of equal and impartial justice under law. And even some Republican senators, who are ideologically inclined to accept Alito’s inelegant toss of his wife under the bus, are finding this hard to defend. Lindsey Graham, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said that Alito’s behavior does not show “good judgment,” and Utah Senator Mitt Romney said, “Obviously it looks very unfortunate, and we ought to take a good look at it.”

Yet prominent legal ethics expert Stephen Gillers, a professor at NYU Law School, is giving Alito the benefit of the doubt. In an interview with The Washington Post, Gillers characterized Alito’s justification as “hard to believe,” but he found it “impossible” to believe that Alito “knowingly chose to fly the flag upside down knowing its political message.”

[senseandsensibility]

1. No, and I hope that journalists are investigating his story

about the neighbors' signs and actions because I think there's probably at least a 50% chance the whole thing was made up.

[Solly Mack]

2. Nothing. Ever. Not even on January 31, 2006. (Or any time before)

[Hassler]

3. Scammy Sammy deserves only a boot in the ass.