Justice Alito Responds Accordingly to Democrat Demands to Recuse Himself From Trump/J6-Related Cases
“A reasonable person who is not motivated by political or ideological considerations or a desire to affect the outcome of Supreme Court cases would conclude this event does not meet the applicable standard for recusal.”
As Legal Insurrection has documented, Democrats, their billionaire-backed special interest allies, and the mainstream media have engaged in an all-hands-on-deck coordinated attack to delegitimize the Supreme Court and distract from Joe Biden’s numerous failures ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
In the latest instance, conservative Justice Samuel Alito has been the target of hit pieces from the NY Times and the Washington Post related to flag-flying at his Virginia home and New Jersey beach house. The pieces claim without evidence that the flags are “symbols of January 6th” and “Christian nationalism” and cite purported experts who say they represent clear conflicts of interest for Alito.
In turn, fauxfended Democrat “leaders” in the House and Senate including Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) have used the information to write angrygrams to Chief Justice John Roberts demanding he urge Alito to recuse himself from Trump/J6-related cases.
On Wednesday, Alito responded in two letters – one addressed to Durbin and Whitehouse and the other addressed to the Democrat House members who had expressed similar concerns. Both letters contained the same message, stating that in both flag instances, one involving an inverted flag flown for a short time in 2021 at his home and the “Appeal to Heaven” flag that flew at his beach house in 2023, they were flown by his wife, Martha-Ann.
Mrs. Alito, the Justice wrote, was a flag-flying aficionado, but he said he was not. He said he had no knowledge of any correlation between the “Appeal to Heaven” flag and the “Stop the Steal” movement and noted that he assumed when his wife flew it that she did so in order “to express a religious and patriotic message”:
Alito told lawmakers the incidents were not in any way his doing. He revealed that in the case of the upside-down American flag — which he said was raised by his wife Martha-Ann Alito during a “nasty neighborhood dispute” — he actually told his wife to take it down and that she refused for several days.
“My wife is fond of flying flags. I am not,” he wrote. “My wife was solely responsible for having flagpoles put up at our residence and our vacation home and has flown a wide variety of flags over the years.”
Alito said his wife is an “independently minded private citizen” who possesses First Amendment rights like “every other American.”
“She makes her own decisions, and I have always respected her right to do so,” he wrote. “She has made many sacrifices to accommodate my service on the Supreme Court, including the insult of having to endure numerous, loud, obscene, and personally insulting protests in front of our home that continue to this day and now threaten to escalate.”
Alito pointed out that the beach home, in particular, is in Mrs. Alito’s name and that she did not fly the “Appeal to Heaven” flag there “to associate herself with [Stop the Steal] or any other group.” He also correctly observed that the “use of an old historic flag by a new group does not necessarily drain that flag of all other meanings.”
Neither instance, Alito wrote, constituted grounds for “disqualifying” himself under the relevant Supreme Court Code of Conduct provision, and accordingly, he announced that he would not be recusing himself:
“A reasonable person who is not motivated by political or ideological considerations or a desire to affect the outcome of Supreme Court cases would conclude this event does not meet the applicable standard for recusal. I am therefore duty-bound to reject your recusal request.”
BREAKING- YOUR REACTION: In two letters to Congress, Justice Alito firmly rejects calls to recuse himself from cases involving Trump before the Supreme Court. pic.twitter.com/uvIFxprl3a
— Simon Ateba (@simonateba) May 29, 2024
Full letter below:
Justice Alito responds to lawmakers calling for his recusal from key cases: pic.twitter.com/UCNXU0GxgS
— Shannon Bream (@ShannonBream) May 29, 2024
As many of us hoped, Chief Justice John Roberts has declined the request for a meeting with Democratic senators on recusal demands for Justice Alito. The Chief apparently had a subsequent engagement. https://t.co/5SZxHkMNZC
— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) May 30, 2024
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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Comments
All that verbage when a simple “GFY” would have sufficed!
In this instance the Strong Letter preceded and in effect encompassed it.
Like Milhouse, our friends in the legal profession find it hard to use a few words, when many paragraphs will suffice.
Some among the populace veer toward a tendency to verbosity and loquacious use of the language when, in fact, far less grandiose verbiage would prove to be more than adequate.
And stuff.
Brevity is the soul of wit.
No. “GFY” implies “Everything you say may be true, but what are you going to do about it?”, which creates the appearance of impropriety, and he must avoid that. So he had to explain why the senators’ complaint was invalid and made in bad faith.
Where on Earth did you come up with that analysis?
How is it not blindingly obvious? How could a simple GFY not create the appearance of impropriety?
How about “Bugger off. I’m in a separate and independent branch of government, and your interference with it is unwelcome and borders on a violation of the separation of powers”?
Which is as much as saying “Your claims are true, and there’s nothing you can do about it”, which inherently creates the appearance of impropriety.
And there is something they could do about it, if there were any substance to their complaint. They could demand his appearance at an impeachment inquiry. So it was important to refute their complaint rather than just dismiss them.
Agreed, but it worked for Kangaroo Marchan, didn’t it?
Merchan has full backing of the deep state, Alito does not.
GFY
But printed out in big, bold block letters.
Justice Alito rationally defended himself. He was more civil than the vile Dhimmi-crat apparatchiks deserve.
True, but my preference would have seen him not put the blame on his wife. The look is off-putting.
There is no “blame” here – there was no wrong-doing. There is only responsibility – having been the motive force that flew the flags, Mrs. Alito is responsible for their flying. She is not to “blame.”
I’m not surprised Ali to had the An Appeal to Heaven flag at his beach house. It was the personal flag of Pres Washington’s fleet on the Chesapeake Bay and is still the official maritime flag of Massachusetts. Beach House is the perfect location.
This is such an outrageously and offensively contrived “controversy.” It’s utterly ridiculous. It would have sufficed for Justice Alito to have simply stated that his wife decided of her own volition to fly the flags, and, that he fully supports her right to do so, as an American citizen who enjoys First Amendment-protected freedom of expression that the vile Dhimmi-crats — despite their persistent and stubborn efforts — haven’t managed to fully eviscerate and destroy. That’s it.
He could have said that. Or he could have said that he decided to fly the flags, and they have nothing to do with Stop the Steal. Not only that he was unaware of any connection, but that he still doesn’t believe there is any connection. These are both long-standing generic symbols of protest, so it’s completely unsurprising that J6 protesters would both have used them. But since both things are true he said them both, thus utterly demolishing the accusation.
Oops. That should have been ” so it’s completely unsurprising that J6 protesters and BLM protesters would both have used them”.
And it flew as one of several flags in front of the San Francisco Civic Center from Flag Day, 1964, until earlier this week when SF city council decided it was associated with Jan 6 and took it down. The decision absolutely had nothing to do with trying to discredit Alito, really.
Yeah, sure, whatever. It’s a really bad habit not to simply ascribe evil to evil people.
$ insult 5
You poignant bladder of sullied whistler ptyalism
You loathsome clothesbasket of teeming Yorkshire flatulence
You gargoylish bindle of besmirched West Highland barf
You unendurable lota of allergic greyhound eccrisis
You dolorific pod of toxicant dipper piddle
Is “tiny brained wiper of other people’s bottoms” off the list?
Even if Alito had been the one who raised the flags – so what? That is not “proof” of “bias” on his part.
My initial thought is that by passing the incident off on his wife, he’s tacitly conceding the stupid smear of the Leftists.
No, the answer had two parts:
1. The flags have nothing to do with Stop the Steal; flying them gives you no clue of my opinion on that topic.
2. In any case this has nothing to do with me. Flags aren’t even my thing. My wife is the flag enthusiast, and you have no clue what she thinks about Stop the Steal either.
She would have been a fan of “Sheldon’s (and Amy’s) fun with flags.”
Alito is an honorable man. He must be polite when dealing with idiots. I would not be so polite, most probably ending with “…and the horse you rode in on.” However, there is an appropriate response that aligns with the law and judicial matters that he could have used if he had been feeling a bit less kind.
“We refer you to the reply given in the case of Arkell v. Pressdram.”
https://lettersofnote.com/2013/08/07/arkell-v-pressdram/
It’s a pretty good response, although I think go pound sand retards would be much better
Has a Progressive (Liberal, Leftist, Democrat) Justice ever recused himself or herself for any reason on any matter?
I seem to remember one doing so recently, solely because the case in question was argued before she was installed onto the court.
Yes. It happens often enough, and has never been an issue.
answering to the woke when you dont need to
is dangerous
PROPER ALITO RESPONSE:
the flag was not upside down
YOU BELIEVE ITS UPSIDE DOWN
BUT IT IS NOT
kentaji still cant figure out the difference between a male and a female
BUT WE ALLLLOW THISSSSS TO BE THE NARRATIVE!!!
So he needs to recuse himself because of his wife’s flag but Merchan does not?
No, he doesn’t have to recuse himself. That’s the whole point.
However, had he expressed an opinion about Stop the Steal, then he absolutely would have had to recuse himself from any case on that topic. Nobody disputes that.
The accusation was that by flying these flags he had expressed such an opinion, and his answer was that (1) the flags had nothing to do with StS, and (2) in any case his wife flew them, not him. We still don’t know whether he even has an opinion on StS, let alone what it might be, so he doesn’t have to recuse.
Likewise had Merchan publicly expressed an opinion about Trump’s guilt or innocence on these charges, he would have had to recuse himself. But he never did express such an opinion, so he didn’t have to. That’s plain and obvious.
He checked with the judicial ethics authority about his political donations and his daughter’s business, and they confirmed that neither one was an issue. The donations were de minimis, and his daughter doesn’t provide services to any party to the case, and her income is not be affected in any way by the case’s outcome, so there’s no reason for him to recuse himself.
Bullshit.
It’s the plain truth, but you’ve already made it clear that you don’t care about the truth, you spit on the truth, you care only about what is useful to you at any given moment, and you imagine other people operate the same way.
So, justices must pretend they’re not biased or have not personal opinions on important matters? That they are completely blank slates until they’re written upon by attorneys’ motions and pleadings?
Yes, more or less. If they’ve publicly expressed an opinion on a topic then they must recuse themselves if that topic ever becomes relevant to a case before them.
Alito should have remained silent. Although it was a reasoned classy response, it set the tone that he can be made to answer future spurious accusations.
Avoiding the appearance of impropriety means he must address such accusations.
I propose a new word for such made up, faux outrage events: ‘contriversy’. As in this is just another Democrat-led contriversy, designed to shift attention from the mostbtecent regime failures.
Contrivercy; good word.
Is “mostbtecent” a new word too?
Mr. Justice Alito, I respect you and your positions–but don’t throw your wife under the bus. I’m sure you’re old enough to remember the Silly ‘Sixties and Sillier ‘Seventies, so you should’ve ooked your critics square in the eye and told them your family learned to use the upside down flag as a protest symbol from some very good teachers of that art–the Left itself.
I’ve written to the Shameful Rascal who represents me in the Kangaroo Congress and who got all hot under the collar about the Justice’s protest, and told him that people who live in glass houses (folks who admired those who first put up upside down flags and spelled the country’s name Amerikkka) should not throw stones.
What scares me most is that the blatantly political prosecution of Trump (who is not a man I’d like my sister to marry) is that it will cause total erosion of trust in our judicial system–and this will have been brought on by judges and lawyers, all of whom doubtlessly see themseves as good people and on the side of progress and real justice. Roughly three millennia ago, Kong Zi told his disciple Zi Gong that if the people don’t believe in it, the state cannot stand. He was right.