The New York Times is reporting that in the summer of 2023, another provocative flag was flown outside a home belonging to Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.
The revelation came after an earlier report by the newspaper that an an upside-down American flag was flown outside the Virginia home after the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The Times wrote:
This time, it was the “Appeal to Heaven” flag, which, like the inverted U.S. flag, was carried by rioters at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Also known as the Pine Tree flag, it dates back to the Revolutionary War, but largely fell into obscurity until recent years and is now 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.
Three photographs obtained by The New York Times, along with accounts from a half-dozen neighbors and passers-by, show that the Appeal to Heaven flag was aloft at the Alito home on Long Beach Island in July and September of 2023. A Google street view image from late August also shows the flag.
The photographs, each taken independently, are from four different dates. It is not clear whether the flag was displayed continuously during those months or how long it was flown overall.
The Times said that Alito declined to respond to questions about the beach house flag.
Alito said the upside-down American flag at his Virginia home had been raised by his wife, Martha-Ann Alito, during a dispute with a neighbor who had put up profane anti-Trump sign.
That revelation led to calls from dozens of Democratic lawmakers that Alito recuse himself from cases related to Jan. 6.
The Supreme Court is considering Trump’s claim that a former president is entitled to sweeping immunity from criminal prosecution for allegedly official acts taken while in the White House. This has resulted in a delay of the federal case brought by special counsel Jack Smith in which Trump faces criminal charges for his alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
The Times wrote that during the period the Appeal to Heaven flag was seen flying at the justice’s beach house, a key Jan. 6 case arrived at the Supreme Court, challenging whether those who stormed the Capitol could be prosecuted for obstruction.
The justices are expected to rule on both cases before their term concludes at the end of June.
The outcome of the obstruction case could affect Jan. 6 defendants who have already been convicted of the obstruction offense or pleaded guilty, leading to new trials or lighter sentences. The ruling could also impact Smith’s D.C. prosecution of Trump because two of the four charges against Trump relate to obstructing an official proceeding and conspiring to obstruct the proceeding.
As a professional journalist, I was subject to a strict code of ethics that barred me from openly expressing any political opinion, even on Facebook. At the minimum any such conflict of interest would have resulted in my being barred from reporting or editing stories where there might be a conflict of interest. At worst, it would have been grounds for dismissal.
Unfortunately, Supreme Court justices are not subject to any meaningful ethics code unlike the rest of the federal judiciary.
The latest Alito flag revelation led to renewed calls for the justice to recuse himself from Jan. 6 cases. Noah Bookbinder, president and CEO of the advocacy group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), wrote:
Federal judges must recuse themselves if their impartiality can reasonably be questioned. At this point it is difficult to make any reasonable case for Alito’s impartiality. He must not sit on cases about the 2020 election or the insurrection.
The Times wrote this about the significance of the Appeal to Heaven flag:
Until about a decade ago, the Appeal to Heaven flag was mostly a historical relic. But since then it has been revived to represent “a theological vision of what the United States should be and how it should be governed,” said Matthew Taylor, a religion scholar at the Institute of Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies. He is also the author of a forthcoming book tracing how a right-wing Christian author and speaker who repopularized the flag helped propel Mr. Trump’s attempt to overturn the election.
That figure, Dutch Sheets, has led a yearslong campaign to present the flag to political figures, including
Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and vice-presidential pick, and an Indiana gubernatorial
candidate whom Mr. Sheets wrapped in the flag at a recent rally. Republican
members of Congress and
state officials have displayed the flag as well, among them Doug Mastriano, a Pennsylvania state senator and a
leader of the “Stop the Steal” campaign. The highest-ranking elected official known to show the flag is Representative Mike Johnson, who hung it at his office last fall shortly after becoming speaker of the House. …
In 2013, Mr. Sheets, a prominent figure in a far-right evangelical movement that scholars have called the
New Apostolic Reformation, discovered the nearly forgotten flag and made it the symbol of his ambitions to steep the country and the government in Christianity, he wrote in a 2015 book also titled “An Appeal to Heaven.”
The Times story included a photograph of several “Appeal to Heaven” flags carried by protesters outside the Capitol on Jan. 6.