Samuel Alito’s explanation for the insurrectionist symbol outside his Virginia home in 2021 already strained credulity. Then a New York Times report published Tuesday torpedoed it even more, revealing that the neighborhood spat the justice says inspired his wife to unfurl an upside-down American flag seemed to have occurred well after it had been raised and taken down. The flag was seen outside the Alito residence in a photograph dated January 17, 2021, and was displayed for several days, according to neighbors, Jodi Kantor reported. But the argument the Supreme Court conservative said prompted his wife, Martha-Ann Alito, to hoist the flag didn’t happen until February 15 of that year, according to a call the liberal couple involved in the dispute made to police.
The report undercuts Alito’s tortured justification for the pro-Donald Trump symbol—one of two he has apparently displayed outside his homes—and sheds additional light on a neighborhood clash that raises further concerns about the Supreme Court justice’s partisanship. According to the Times, the dispute between Martha-Ann Alitio and her neighbors began just after the 2020 election, when then-35-year-old Emily Baden and her boyfriend lived in her mother’s Alexandria, Virginia home. The couple had displayed yard signs Martha-Ann Alito apparently found offensive, including one that read “Fuck Trump” and another that they said condemned the complicity of Republicans in the January 6 attack on the Capitol. The conflict escalated on Inauguration Day, the couple said, when they drove past the justice’s home and Alito’s wife, they claimed, ran toward their car, yelled something, and spit.
A few weeks later, on February 15, Alito and his wife walked by the Badens’ home as they were taking in trash bins, and Martha-Ann Alito allegedly called the couple “fascists.” Baden said she “snapped,” accused her of harassment, and then responded with the C-word—the vulgar insult Justice Alito said this month led his wife to put up the inverted flag. Alito told Fox News that his neighbors were “very political,” and the flag his wife put up in response flew only “for a short time.” But that explanation never quite got at why, exactly, Mrs. Alito’s grievance led her to display a pro-insurrection symbol—nor did it explain why a different pro-January 6 symbol, the Appeal to Heaven flag, was flown outside the couple’s New Jersey home a couple years later.
Of course, Alito’s flimsy story no longer holds up, underscoring the need for a full investigation of the highest court. This is especially true as Alito and his fellow justices—including the ethically compromised Clarence Thomas, whose wife actively encouraged Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss—prepare to issue key rulings in January 6 cases. One of those is the former president’s claim to “immunity” from prosecution in Jack Smith’s election subversion case, which Alito seemed disturbingly open to during oral arguments last month. Will these be the rulings of a fair, deliberative body or a political entity operating under a veneer of judicial independence as thin as Alito’s justifications concocted for the flag scandal? The conservative majority—with its partisan rulings and its justices’ personal conduct—has given the public little reason to trust it.
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