Why Alito’s response to inverted flag controversy is as troubling as symbol itself: analysis

21 May 2024

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito continues to draw widespread criticism following a bombshell report by the New York Times Jodi Kantor that on January 17, 2021 — only 11 days after the attack on the U.S. Capitol Building — an upside-down flag was hanging outside his home in Alexandria, Virginia. At the time, an inverted flag was a symbol of the "Stop the Steal" movement and then-President Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.

Alito told the Times that he wasn't the one who hung the flag in January 2021 — his wife did it following an argument with an anti-Trump neighbor. But The Atlantic's Adam Serwer, during an appearance on The Daily Beast's podcast "The New Abnormal," argued that Alito's response to the controversy is as troubling as the symbol itself.

Alito, Serwer told "The New Abnormal's" hosts, has yet to truly "disavow" the "Stop the Steal" movement or the symbolism of an inverted flag after the 2020 election.

Serwer argued, "Alito has since had two bites at the apple, so to speak, to say, 'This didn't have anything to do with the insurrection, this is not what it meant. We thought that was a terrible incident…. Obviously, the 2020 election was completely legitimate.' He could have said all those things."

The Atlantic staff writer continued, "He spoke to the media twice — once to the New York Times, once to his very sympathetic Fox News host. And in neither of those incidents did he disavow the implied meaning of the upside-down flag, which is that Joe Biden had stolen the election…. It is very hard to believe, at this point, that that flag was not intended in the worst possible way, which has essentially been a goofy but violent attempt to overturn the 2020 election."

Serwer noted that Supreme Court justices "are not supposed to make partisan remarks," adding that Alito doesn't follow that "norm" and often makes speeches saying that "liberals are a threat to everything that conservatives hold dear."

During his "New Abnormal" appearance, Serwer criticized Alito for being a hardcore ideologue — which is also a view that the New York Times' Jamelle Bouie expresses in his May 21 column.

"Whether or not Justice Alito was part of the decision to fly the inverted flag," Bouie argues, "there is no question that he is a genuine Republican partisan who is more than willing to share views that echo narratives aired throughout conservative media. In 2020, for example, he warned that liberals were the real threat to freedom of speech. During oral argument in Trump v. United States, he wondered aloud if a president like Trump needed criminal immunity so that he would leave office at the end of his term — a troubling question that took for granted the idea that the prosecutions the former president faces are politically motivated."

Bouie continues, "It is not that far-fetched to think that a Supreme Court justice might have internalized the extreme views of the insurrectionist right…. There is every reason, and then some, to think that Alito believes many of the same things that any other Republican of his age and ideological disposition might also believe, especially when his social world seems to consist of similarly like-minded, goal-oriented partisans."

Find Adam Serwer's appearance on The Daily Beast's "The New Abnormal" at this link (subscription required) or here, and Jamelle Bouie's full New York Times column here (subscription required).

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