After finding out that colors associated with far-right causes flung over his properties in Virginia and New Jersey, US Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito announced to lawmakers that he would not recuse himself from instances involving Donald Trump and the January 6 Capitol riot.
In response to Democrat demands that he preclude himself, Alito claimed in two words that his family, Martha Ann Alito, was in charge of flying the colors.
” My family is an independently minded personal citizen”, he wrote. ” She makes her own judgments, and I respect her right to perform so”.
By the end of June, the court will be able to determine whether Trump is ineligible from legal claims that he allegedly attempted to reverse the effects of the 2020 vote. The judges are also considering an appeal by a man accused of being a part of the Capitol abuse in a second event that might have implications for the Trump trial.
An upside-down National flag was displayed at Alito’s Virginia home, according to The New York Times, shortly before President Joe Biden’s opening. More recently, an” Appeal to Heaven” symbol flew at Alito’s beach house in New Jersey, the Times said. Identical colors were carried by January 6 protesters.
” My wife is fond of flying banners. Senators from Illinois and Georgia, as well as Representative Hank Johnson and I, wrote to Alito in a letter to them. She flew a wide variety of colors over the years and was primarily responsible for having flagpoles installed at our house and our vacation home.
Alito claimed that his wife flew the upside-down flag during a “very dirty town debate” in which a man allegedly yelled horrible epithets at her and a house displayed a sign physically attacking her. He claimed that Martha- Ann Alito, who he claimed he had asked to remove the emblem as soon as he saw it,” but for a number of times she refrained.”
He claimed that neither Alito nor his wife were aware of any relationship to the” Stop the Steal Movement,” and that he assumed her to be conveying a nationalist and religious text with the” Appeal to Heaven” symbol.
Johnson, the leading Democrat on the House Judiciary committee that regulates national authorities, said Alito’s answer underscored the need for Congress to establish a legally binding code of conduct on the Supreme Court. There is no protection mechanism in the code that the Supreme Court adopted in November.
” Any unbiased and reasonable person would find laughable Justice Alito’s ‘ the dog ate my homework, and I did n’t even know I had homework’ defense”, Johnson said in an emailed statement.
Alito, 74, serves as one of the Supreme Court’s controllable liberal wing members. He wrote the court’s judgment two years ago that overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade decision and ended the country’s legal right to an abortion.
