A judicial ethics expert who previously was willing to give Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito a pass on the extremist symbol on his property, is now convinced he did in fact act unethically, according to The Washington Post.
The analysis came as part of a report that Senate Democrats are putting new pressure on Chief Justice John Roberts to call for Alito's recusal from the two upcoming Trump cases, involving whether he has presidential immunity from prosecution and whether people involved in January 6 can be charged with obstruction of Congress.
Alito, one of the most far-right members of the bench who is responsible for eliminating national abortion rights and severely weakening constitutional protections against racial gerrymandering, was discovered earlier this month to have had a "distressed" upside-down flag at his house at the same time as the January 6 attack — a symbol that was adopted heavily by the "Stop the Steal" election conspiracy theorists. He blamed his wife at the time — but then it was also discovered that an "Appeal to Heaven" pine flag flew at his beach house, a symbol frequently used by Christian nationalists which was also heavily present at January 6.
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"Stephen Gillers, an expert in judicial ethics at New York University, said he initially gave Alito the benefit of the doubt that the upside-down flag was not tied to the 'Stop the Steal' effort. The second flag, he said, makes that theory no longer plausible," reported Ann E. Marimow and Justin Jouvenal. "[Chief Justice John] Roberts must encourage Alito to recuse himself from the Trump cases and give him a deadline to do so, Gillers said Friday. He said the chief justice should separately address the circumstances surrounding the flying of the flags, even if Alito does not recuse, because of the intense public interest in the upcoming court decisions, which are expected to be announced by the end of June."
"Gillers noted the consequences of the rulings in those cases for the November presidential election, in which Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee," noted the report. "He also cited 'Alito’s failure’s to allay public suspicion with a full explanation for each flag, and the need to reverse the public’s eroding confidence in the court,'" adding, “This is a rare instance when collegiality must yield to protecting the court.”
Notably, even some of the justices themselves, who normally stay out of public criticism of their colleagues, appear to be jabbing at Alito's scandals, with Justice Elena Kagan writing in her dissent to Alito's recent gerrymandering opinion that he has his logic "upside-down."
