On Wednesday, The New York Times reported on the display of a notably coup-adjacent flag outside a home owned by Justice Samuel Alito. For at least several months last year, the “Appeal to Heaven” flag, a symbol popular among right-wing religious activists and/or January 6 insurrectionists, flew above the Alito family beach house in New Jersey. It appeared just above flags for Long Beach Island, where Alito’s home is located, and his beloved Philadelphia Phillies, a mostly-fun franchise that frankly should not have to deal with this bullshit.
NEW: Last summer, the Alito beach home in New Jersey flew the “Appeal to Heaven” flag, which like the upside down US flag, is linked to Jan. 6. We have photos from July, August and September as well as eyewitnesses. https://t.co/uOjZcaUvk9 pic.twitter.com/yUCqbvdT2A
— Jodi Kantor (@jodikantor) May 22, 2024
This revelation should not be confused with the Times’s reporting last week on a different coup-adjacent flag, which flew outside a different Alito family home for a period of time in 2021. If there is a flagpole on the premises, this man is apparently incapable of not using it to align himself with people who have a more-than-passing interest in violently overthrowing the government.
As the Times points out, this timeline means the flag—the “Appeal to Heaven” flag, not the other one—was in front of the Alitos’ home as the Supreme Court was taking up legal challenges to criminal prosecutions of January 6 rioters, which the justices will decide sometime in the next few months. As any legal ethics expert will attest, if you are a sitting federal judge, nothing demonstrates your commitment to impartiality quite like using tacky seasonal home decor to signal your deepest sympathies for one of the parties before you.
When the Times asked Alito about the last “Stop the Steal” flag incident, the justice blamed his wife, Martha-Ann, explaining that she’d elected to fly the upside-down American flag during the course of a neighborhood squabble over the 2020 election, and that he had “no involvement whatsoever” in deciding to do so. In the week since, Alito has apparently concluded that it is better to say nothing at all than to tell the least believable story imaginable, because this time, he declined to respond to questions altogether.
The Times did, however, note that it confirmed the story with six other residents, who asked not to be identified “because they didn’t want to antagonize a longtime neighbor.” Presumably, this is especially true when said longtime neighbor is a reactionary creep who thinks the MyPillow guy has some pretty good ideas, if you think about it.
