Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has come under fire, again, for a second problematic flag flying outside one of his homes. On Wednesday, the New York Times revealed that a flag “championed by the far-right Christian nationalist movement,” as MSNBC host Chris Hayes put it, was flown outside Alito’s beach home throughout last summer — something Hayes said is “a signal from Alito about who he thinks he answers to.”
“He knows he’s not supposed to do that,” Hayes said. “He knows any other judge would get in trouble. You can’t do that. But he thinks he answers to no one. We’ll see if he’s right.”
Hayes echoed growing calls for Alito to recuse himself from any cases related to Donald Trump, including the Republican candidate’s claims he should benefit from presidential immunity in relation to the Jan. 6 insurrection. This second flag that it’s been revealed was flown outside one of Alito’s homes was an “Appeal to Heaven” flag, which the Times noted was also carried by the rioters on Jan. 6, 2021 and that it was brought out of obscurity as “a symbol of support for former President Donald J. Trump, for a religious strand of the ‘Stop the Steal’ campaign and for a push to remake American government in Christian terms.”
“It’s harder and harder to think that someone like Sam Alito, whose household flew flags supporting the insurrection over not one but two of his houses, is in any way qualified to be a person who makes judgments on these cases,” Hayes said.
Alito, Hayes continued, had the flags flown to make it clear where his allegiances lie. “Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito didn’t have to fly those flags to be a true conservative friend of the Trumpist agenda. This is what sticks with me, right?Think about this.”
“I mean, Samuel Alito is one of the most powerful reactionaries in the country, arguably the most,” the host explained. “His court opinions, speeches, media appearances, he could just do that. Why do you fly the flags? They had to go an extra step and advertise.”
A growing number of voices have called for Alito to step aside completely in Trump’s case. On Sunday, Jen Psaki told her audience on the same progressive-leaning cable news network MSNBC that the court faces a massive ethical crisis after it was revealed that Alito and his wife had flown an upside-down American flag outside their home.
Alito denied involvement with the hanging of the flag and chose instead to heap blame on his wife, who he referred to as “Mrs. Alito” in a statement. According to the justice, his wife had hung the upside-down flag as part of a political dispute with a neighbor. “Notably, that statement doesn’t denounce what the symbol stood for,” Psaki observed.
Watch the segment with Chris Hayes in the video above.
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