After drawing a great deal of criticism for holding up special counsel Jack Smith's election interference case, the U.S. Supreme Court is experiencing yet another election-related controversy: the New York Times Jodi Kantor recently reported that on January 17, 2021 — only 11 days after the U.S. Capitol Building was violently attacked by Donald Trump supporters — an upside-down flag was hanging outside of Justice Samuel Alito's home in Alexandria, Virginia. The inverted flag, at the time, was being used a symbol of the "Stop the Steal" movement and Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.
In a scathing article published on May 21, Salon's Amanda Marcotte argues that the U.S. Supreme Court — especially Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas — has, in effect, become an apologist for the January 6, 2021 "insurrection."
"(Alito) has half-heartedly tried to deflect blame onto his wife with some convoluted tale involving her bickering with the neighbors," Marcotte explains, "but in the end, there's no real evading the conclusion: The Alitos publicly hat-tipped the fascist effort to overthrow democracy because they backed Donald Trump's attempted coup. Now, there's a growing chorus of people, including Senate Democrats, calling on Alito to recuse himself from all coup-related cases, including one involving Trump's claims to be 'immune' from prosecution for his attempts to steal the 2020 election."
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The Salon journalist continues, "Like Justice Clarence Thomas, whose own wife was intimately involved in the attempted coup plot, Alito is almost certainly going to blow off all the criticism. Chief Justice John Roberts, for his part, will likely allow it. This is for one simple reason: The entire GOP majority on the Court is complicit with Trump's designs to end democracy."
Marcotte goes on to say that the High Court's 6-3 Republican-appointed majority is "cooperating fully these days with Trump's seditious plans."
"We know this for two reasons," Marcotte writes. "First, the supposedly 'originalist' conservative justices ignored the plain text of the Constitution — which explicitly forbids politicians who have 'engaged in insurrection or rebellion' from holding future office — to rule that Trump can still run for president. Second, they are currently blocking Trump from being tried for his efforts to steal the 2020 election, using transparently disingenuous methods."
In December 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court threw out Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's lawsuit challenging the election results in four states that Biden won: Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin and Michigan.
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But Marcotte warns that since then, the High Court has grown more overtly sympathetic to election deniers.
"When he was actually in the process of attempting to steal the 2020 election," Marcotte observes, "the Court was less accommodating of Trump's fascist impulses than they are now. They rejected his lawsuits attempting to throw out the Electoral College votes of states that backed President Joe Biden. So it's understandable that the punditry is surprised to see the justices grow more protective of Trump's aspirations to be a dictator."
Marcotte continues, "But the justices are part of this larger Republican drift away from being opposed or even just ambivalent to January 6. Nowadays, most Republicans openly embrace Trump's Big Lie and any crimes committed to seize control of government illegally. Alito has revealed he was one of the hardcore fascists who was with the insurrectionists from Day One."
READ MORE:Why the 'inversion of the flag remains a problem' despite Alito’s 'explanation': columnist
Amanda Marcotte's full Salon article is available at this link.