A MAGA-linked flag that got Justice Samuel Alito and his wife into trouble was flown over a government agency this month.
The flag bearing the words “An Appeal to Heaven” was raised over the Small Business Administration along with the American flag in Washington, D.C., according to a social media post on X from SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler.
“Today at SBA’s Flag Day Ceremony, we proudly raised a new AMERICAN MADE flag over our headquarters in Washington,” Loeffler wrote on June 11. “It is a privilege to serve under its Stars and Stripes – on behalf of the 34 million small businesses who represent the best of America.”
Her post included photos of the Appeal to Heaven flag—a green pine tree on a white field—flying under the U.S. flag, and showed ceremony attendees looking up at the two flags.
The flag began as a Revolutionary War symbol, but has since become associated with hard-right politics. It’s popular with Christian nationalists and was co-opted by Trump-supporting rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in an attempt to overturn former President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.
It’s not clear who at the SBA authorized the flag, according to Wired magazine, which first reported on the post. Sources told the outlet that the flag was raised for “less than a day.” The Daily Beast has reached out to the SBA for comment.
While briefly serving as a Republican U.S. senator representing Georgia, Loeffler was among those trying to cast doubt on Biden’s decisive 2020 victory. That November, she refused to say whether President Donald Trump had lost the election, and she demanded that Georgia’s Republican secretary of state—who certified Biden’s victory in the state—resign.
SBA employees told Wired it was “jarring” to leave work and see the flag.
“It’s frustrating because it makes it seem like the agency as a whole supports what it has come to stand for, when that’s just not true,” one employee said, adding that the flag appeared to have been taken down by the next morning.
Other prominent Republicans have also been criticized for displaying the Appeal to Heaven flag, which was flown outside Justice Alito’s vacation home in summer 2023.
Facing calls from members of Congress to recuse himself from cases involving Trump and the Capitol riot, Alito wrote in a letter to lawmakers last year that it was his wife who had flown the flag.
“I recall that my wife did fly that flag for some period of time, but I do not remember how long it flew. And what is most relevant here, I had no involvement in the decision to fly that flag,” he wrote at the time. “My wife is fond of flying flags. I am not.”
Neither of them knew about the “Stop the Steal” association, Alito’s letter said, and he refused to sit out the cases.
House Speaker Mike Johnson has also displayed the flag outside his Washington, D.C., office. He too defended the flag as part of U.S. history and told the Associated Press he didn’t know about its modern connotations.
Johnson led one of Trump’s legal challenges to the 2020 election.
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