Flag outside Alito’s vacation home 'literally carried by insurrectionists': J6 investigator

22 May 2024

Supreme Court associate justice Samuel Alito reportedly flew another flag associated with the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol outside of his vacation home in New Jersey. One expert on the symbols associated with the insurrection said this new flag was an even more direct gesture of solidarity with their cause.

The New York Times reported Wednesday on photos that show a flagpole outside the justice's home in Long Beach Township, NJ flying a flag with the Appeal to Heaven logo (also known as the Pine Tree Flag), which rioters were seen carrying during their siege of the U.S. Capitol on January 6. That flag was flown in summer of 2023, which was two years after the incident in which neighbors documented an upside-down American flag being flown outside of the conservative jurist's home in Alexandria, Virginia the week of President Joe Biden's inauguration.

Displaying an inverted American flag is traditionally meant to be interpreted as a sign of distress, though the symbol was co-opted by election deniers in the wake of former President Donald Trump's election loss in 2020. Alito maintained that displaying the upside-down American flag was his wife's idea, provoked by neighbors who displayed an anti-Trump sign.

As of Wednesday evening, Alito had not responded to the Times' report about the Pine Tree Flag flown at his New Jersey home in July and September of last year. The outlet noted that while the flag "fell into obscurity" following its inception in the Revolutionary War, it has since come back largely due to its embrace by the extreme right fringe of the GOP and the "Stop the Steal" movement to overturn the 2020 election.

According to Tim Heaphy — the lead investigator for the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack — the meaning of the Appeal to Heaven flag is much more difficult to misinterpret. Heaphy simply characterized the symbol displayed outside of Justice Alito's New Jersey beach home as "a protest flag carried by insurrectionists."

"There were a lot of icons, flag, symbols on these flags that were literally carried by the insurrectionists at the Capitol. This was one of those flags that was carried as people were fighting with Capitol police officers," Heaphy told MSNBC's Niccole Wallace. "It's a pine tree, but the Appeal to Heaven is essentially return to Christian principles."

"There's a strong strain of Christian nationalism that was present at the Capitol that's emergent in sort of far-right circles. It sort of advocates this return to Biblical principles, completely different from the separation from church and state that's enshrined in our Constitution," he added.

Experts interviewed by the Times confirmed also confirmed the flag's association with Christian nationalist elements within the GOP. Far-right evangelical figure Dutch Sheets said in 2013 that the flag symbolized the struggle to restructure the American government to be explicitly pro-Christian.

"God has resurrected it for such a time as this," Sheets said of the Pine Tree Flag. "Wave it outwardly: wear it inwardly. Appeal to heaven daily for a spiritual revolution that will knock out the Goliaths of our day."

Watch Heaphy's segment below, or by clicking this link.

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