Justice Samuel Alito rejected Trump’s call to dismiss the lawsuits amid controversy

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has rejected calls to remove himself from key election-year cases following controversy over flags outside his home.

Justice Alito, a conservative, said in a letter to Democratic senators that the flags in question were flown by his wife.

An upside-down American flag and a pine tree, also known as the ‘Call to Heaven’ flag, were photographed outside his home in suburban Virginia and a motel in New Jersey.

Both were carried during the riot at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, when Donald Trump supporters stormed Congress.

Judge Alito said the flag issue did not affect his impartiality in cases involving Trump and the Capitol rioters.

“My wife likes to fly the flag,” he wrote in a letter to two senators asking him to recuse himself from important cases. “I’m not.”

Judge Alito said the upside-down American flag, sometimes used to indicate suffering, was raised by his wife, Martha-Ann Alito, after a dispute with neighbors in January 2021 – immediately following the riots at the US Capitol.

“As I have publicly stated, I had nothing to do with the flying of that flag,” Justice Alito wrote.

“I didn’t even know about the upside down flag until I noticed it. As soon as I saw it, I asked my wife to take it down, but for the past few days she has refused.”

The New York Times, which first reported the upside-down flag, published a detailed account of the neighbor dispute on Tuesday.

According to the newspaper, a local couple placed signs outside their home with messages including “Trump is a fascist” and “You are an accomplice” and another sign about Mr. That contains obscene language.

The couple and Alitos communicated several times. Judge Alito told Fox News that he and his wife were walking in the neighborhood when a man outside the house with a Trump sign directed an expletive at them.

The newspaper said at one point police were contacted but no crime was recorded and no arrests were made.

Judge Alito said in Wednesday’s letter that his wife “was very distressed at the time, largely due to a bitter neighborhood dispute in which I was not involved.”

The ‘Call to Heaven’ flag is seen outside the Alito motel more than two years later, in 2023. The Supreme Court judge said it was one of many historical, themed and sporting flags sport that his wife hung outside the house.

Ted Kaye, secretary of the North American Vexillological Society, said the pine flag dates back to the American Revolutionary War and was flown on ships outfitted by George Washington.

“It is a revered Revolutionary War flag,” the flag expert said. And the pine tree itself has long been considered a symbol of New England.

But since around 2015, the Call to Heaven flag has been “repurposed to represent Christian nationalism,” Mr. Kaye said. He is referring to one right-wing Christian movement it is often defined as the belief that America’s values ​​and identity must be rooted in Christianity.

House Speaker Mike Johnson flies a pine tree flag outside his office. The banner also flew as part of a flag display on a square in San Francisco until city officials took it down over the weekend, local media reported.

According to the United States Flag Code, a set of rules advising on the display of the national flag, the American flag should only be turned upside down in cases of “extreme danger to life or property.”

After the flag stories appeared, Senators Richard Durbin and Sheldon Whitehouse, both Democrats, wrote to Justice Alito asking him to remove himself from important cases facing the Court. The Supreme Court will issue a decision.

The cases include key rulings on whether Mr. Trump enjoys immunity from prosecution and whether criminal obstruction of official proceedings charges are valid in the Capitol riots. Capitol or not.

The senators said the justice had “created reasonable doubt about his impartiality” and that “his recusal on these matters was necessary and mandatory”.

But in his response, Justice Alito – who was appointed by Republican President George W Bush in 2006 – said the two cases “do not meet the applicable standard for recusal”.

A provision in the United States Constitution states that a judge “shall be excluded from any proceedings in which his impartiality may reasonably be questioned.” This decision is up to the Supreme Court judges themselves to make.