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Strike three: WaPost sat on the Alito flag story for more than three years

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upaisde down flag

The U.S. flag code states that the flag is not to be flow upside-down “except as a signal of dire distress in instance of extreme danger to life or property.”

When The New York Times broke the story on May 16th that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito had an upside-down American flag flying at his suburban DC home three days before President Joe Biden’s inauguration, my first question was “why now”? In other words, what had happened to trigger this story, three years late?

The timing of Alito’s flag flying was not trivial.

January 6th insurrectionists carried the upsdie-down flag, “a symbol associated with former President Donald Trump’s false claims of election fraud.”

The House of Representatives impeached President Donald Trump on January 13th.

On January 17, 2021, which may not have been the first day the flag flew, “the [Supreme Court] was still contending with whether to hear a 2020 election case, with Justice Alito on the losing end of that decision.”

Often where there’s one example of aberrant behavior, there is more.

Thus the follow up story, eight days later, surprised me not a whit. That was the revelation that the “Appeal to Heaven” flag, which is also a symbol of January 6th insurrectionists, flew over the Alito vacation home in August 2023.

Neither was that timing was not trivial: the court had not announced its case load for 2023-24. Yet a senior member of the Court flaunted a symbol of “the Christian nationalist movement and the false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.” Two cases on the 2023-24 docket deal explicitly with January 6th and Trump’s post-presidential actions.

On April 24, 2024, the Court heard arguments for “presidential immunity from criminal prosecution,” related to charges that he “attempt[ed] to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election.”

The prior week, the Court heard an appeal from a January 6th insurrectionist charged with “corruptly obstructing an official proceeding.”

The third strike came on the Saturday of a three-day holiday weekend, perhaps the deadest time possible for breaking news.

This time, the story wasn’t about Alito. It was about news judgment, or the lack thereof.

The Washington Post sat on the Alito upside-flag story for more than three years. So much for “Democracy dies in darkness,” right?

Its editors knew about the suggestion of sympathy with January 6th insurrectionist in real time. A Post reporter took a photo of the upside-down flag the day after President Biden’s inauguration, showing Alito for a liar with his dissembling assertion that the flag flew “briefly.”

In reporting its mea culpa, The Post also buried the lead:

On Jan. 20, 2021 — the day of Biden’s inauguration, which the Alitos did not attend — [veteran Supreme Court reporter Robert] Barnes went to their home to follow up on the tip about the flag. He encountered the couple coming out of the house. Martha-Ann Alito was visibly upset by his presence, demanding that he “get off my property.”

As he described the information he was seeking, she yelled, “It’s an international signal of distress!”

The Post argues that “the flag-raising appeared to be the work of Martha-Ann Alito, rather than the justice.” However, the policy for federal staff was clear in 2021, even if it did not then apply to justices: “administrative employees of the federal judiciary are forbidden from making campaign donations or otherwise engaging in partisan political activity.”

So how could The Post have brushed this off as “well, it was his wife”?

Perhaps in the same way that The Post has normalized the behavior of Clarence Thomas’ wife, Virginia (Ginni), who “colluded extensively with a top White House adviser about overturning Joe Biden’s victory over then President Donald Trump.”

In any other federal court, Alito and Thomas would, at a minimum, be forced to recuse themselves from cases related to efforts to overturn the election.

[Instead], Thomas and Alito are letting their wives do their blatant partisan activism for them while they use their lifetime appointments to enact their agenda from the bench. Just as Trump is using his surrogates to get around the gag order, these two wingnuts are using their wives to circumvent the rules and the laws they are supposed to be protecting. And since they’re completely shameless, they are daring anyone to do something about it.

Reaction to that poor editorial judgment was quick and harsh:

Post by @ahmed.baba_
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Featured photo modified from Flickr image per CC license.

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