Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito displayed a” Stop the Steal” sign outside his home, according to the New York Times ‘ dream story!
However, the Times and reporter Jodi Kantor only get a helping slug of BlueAnon fever-sugar paranoia in the form of a useful heap of it.
Kantor, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her reporting on Harvey Weinstein, opens her part (emphasis me ),” After the 2020 presidential election, many of them falsely claimed that President Joe Biden had stolen the business.
She continues:” One of the houses flying an tilted flag during that period was the home of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, in Alexandria, Virginia”.
What Kantor’s opening omits — and did n’t notice until , 16 sections later , — is that an benefit- down symbol is not exclusively associated with the most extreme parts of the January 6 rebellion. It is simply” a symbol of grief and crisis, first used as a martial SOS.” In the past decade, activists have inverted the symbol for a variety of reasons:
-The Vietnam War
-The AIDs epidemic
-The Persian Gulf War
-The repatriation of Elian Gonzalez
-The opening of George W. Bush
-The Iraq War
–Immigration regulations
– Hurricane Katrina
-The Occupy action
–Black Life Matter
-The election of Donald Trump
-The Dakota Access Pipeline
-The opening of Donald Trump
-The Supreme Court defending Donald Trump’s travel restrictions for despair- risk countries
-Donald Trump visiting the United Kingdom
–Global warming
-The primary Donald Trump impeachment acquittal
–Black Lives Matter once
-The Foreign coronavirus crisis
-The documentation of Joe Biden’s election victory on January 6, 2021
Again, Kantor does not acknowledge this fact until article 18 — trying along the way to color the symbol in Alito’s garden as an obvious and significant nod to the” Cease the Steal” protests, with help from some “experts”.
The tilted flag, according to a law professor at the University of Virginia, is” the equivalent of putting a” Cease the Steal” sign in your yard,” according to a researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder, and it is “really established as a symbol of the’Stop the Steal ‘ campaign… an obvious sign that you are part of this society that believes America has been taken and needs to be taken back.”
So, in their telling, this flag was supposed to accomplish … what? To overthrow the election? Who was it supposed to activate? For more than three years, no one but his well-to-do neighbors were aware of it. Even the most fundamental inquiries into this narrative would have invalidated the story at the Times ‘ assignment desk.
Jodi Kantor, from left, Zoe Kazan, Megan Twohey and Carey Mulligan attend the premiere of” She Said” during the 60th New York Film Festival on Oct. 13, 2022, in New York. ( Charles Sykes/Invision/AP )
And , all Kantor can confirm is that the flag flew outside the Alitos ‘ house , after , the January 6 riot. The , Times ‘ lead photo, taken by a neighbor, is dated January 17. A neighbor informed a relative that the flag had been upside down for several days in an email from January 18th. Days, not weeks. There is n’t a compelling plan of action that Alito’s alleged” Stop the Steal” dog whistle fits into because of razor-wire fencing surrounding D.C. and myriad reports of security being on high alert before the Biden inauguration ( which Alito skipped anyway ).
The justice personally denied any political messages and claimed that his wife had flipped over the flag as a result of a personal argument with their neighbors.
In an email to the Times, he wrote,” I had no involvement in the flying of the flag.” Mrs. Alito placed the phrase “in response to a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally offensive language on yard signs” for a brief period of time.
Kantor’s interviews with the Alitos ‘ neighbors corroborate this statement:” the justice’s wife, Martha- Ann Alito, had been in a dispute with another family on the block” who “displayed an anti- Trump sign with an expletive”.
However, she continues to cast suspicion on Alito and other conservative justices, insinuating they will not be impartial in their decisions on cases arising from January 6, such as Trump’s claim of presidential immunity , as he challenged the 2020 election results. Alito should recuse himself, according to former federal judge Jeremy Fogel ( a California leftist appointed by Democrat Bill Clinton ), and the upside-down flag outside his home would” trigger some sort of review” if he were serving in a lower court.
Only two things about this story are undisputed:
- An upside- down flag flew outside Samuel Alito’s house after January 6 and before Biden’s inauguration.
- One of the Alitos ‘ neighbors had installed a hateful political sign.
Beyond those two points, everything else is either speculative or uncorroborated. According to Alito, his wife was reacting to the neighbors ‘ vulgar warning. Khan ignores that in the middle of the conversation, heavily implying that Alito was sending a bat signal — kept secret for more than three years — to the most extreme, most violent rioters, including the January 6 rioters. Unsurprisingly,  , Democrats and news outlets around the world are running wild with Kantor’s conspiratorial, BlueAnon- inspired take.
And that’s because this story is purely in service of a predetermined narrative: the Supreme Court, as long as it has a conservative majority, must be neutralized by any means possible. “Ethics” complaints against Clarence Thomas ( where former judge Fogel is always ready to provide a concerned comment  , to corporate media ). Continuous protests ( and an alleged assassination attempt ) at their homes. Re- airing of meritless criminal accusations. Packing the Court. Lawfare against justices ‘ friends. The left will do anything they can to stop their quest for unlimited state power, including fabricating a tale that a sitting justice somehow contributed to their biggest boogeyman ever, The Insurrection.
