Don’t lose sight of what’s happening in the attacks on Alito and other justices: Political agents invented a scandal from thin air.
Don’t lose sight of what’s happening in the attacks on Alito and other justices: Political agents invented a scandal from thin air.
T o save democracy and restore the soul of a nation, members of the American press are prepared to burn everything down, including the branches of the federal government.
Current target: the conservative-majority United States Supreme Court.
Leading the charge: the New York Times, ProPublica, and Rolling Stone magazine.
On May 29, the Times published an opinion article arguing that the Justice Department should exercise its authority and force Supreme Court justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas to recuse themselves from January 6–related cases.
The Justice Department has no such authority. The article’s author, Democratic representative Jamie Raskin, is talking out of his hat — par for the course.
Raskin’s preposterous argument represents the latest salvo in a broader campaign to paint Alito as a corrupt, illegitimate justice. In fact, Raskin’s op-ed is just one part of a broader effort spearheaded by the Times, which suggests that Alito is sympathetic to the January 6 rioters. The paper’s “evidence” lies in a moment from 2021 when Martha-Ann Alito, in a fit of pique aimed at some particularly childish neighbors, raised an upside-down American flag, which is understood to be a signal of distress. The other bit of “evidence” supporting the Times’ thesis is that the Alitos flew the George Washington–commissioned Appeal to Heaven or Pine Tree flag outside their beach house in New Jersey.
An inverted U.S. flag and the Revolutionary-era Pine Tree flag are infamous symbols of the “stop the steal” January 6 Capitol riot, according to the Times and left-wing activists. Notably, the Times and left-wing activists are virtually the only groups making this claim. In fact, it did not even make an appearance until the Times’ reporting, probably because the claim is not true.
Critics of the Court are simply trying to will “facts” into existence. It’s an insidious bit of gaslighting.
Stories alleging that Alito and his wife are treasonous-adjacent are outright absurd. It’s cock-and-bull nonsense, particularly the bit about the Pine Tree flag, which the Times characterizes as “provocative.” The flag is not “provocative.” It has never been “provocative.” It’s “provocative” only now because critics of the conservative-majority Supreme Court need it to be so.
Moreover, the Pine Tree flag was not widely known for any supposedly insidious “Christian nationalist” undertones prior to the Times’ campaign against Alito — not with the anti-police demonstrators who flew it throughout the unrest of 2020, nor the New Englanders who fly it regularly, nor even the city of San Francisco, which had been flying it in front of City Hall until just last week, when it was removed because the Times and others now claim that it’s problematic.
It’s clear what’s happening: Political agents invented a scandal from thin air, alleging “facts” that didn’t exist until they said so. The record-keepers at the Times and elsewhere then fell into line, revising the historical record to accommodate the new “truth.”
Meanwhile, you, the reader, are made to feel crazy because you remember the before times. You remember well that the Pine Tree flag was not “provocative” until May 16 when the Times told you it was. You know the flag was not “provocative” until partisan operatives decided to leverage it against a conservative Supreme Court justice. Those claiming otherwise are either liars or too stupid to realize they’re being used. Don’t doubt your memory. You’re not nuts.
What’s worse is that the Times’ hit on Alito is in service of a greater effort to tear down one of the three branches of the federal government. Indeed, the Alito smear is just one front in the war on the Court’s legitimacy. The Times hit comes on the heels of ProPublica’s sustained campaign against Clarence Thomas, in which the justice is cast as entirely responsible for the beliefs and remarks of his wife and in which he is characterized as a corrupt, bribe-prone crook. Like the Alito smear, there’s not much of anything to ProPublica’s reporting despite its best efforts to insinuate and suggest otherwise.
Then, there’s Rolling Stone, which published a report this week exposing the fact that Justice Amy Coney Barret’s husband is an attorney with clients.
“Amy Coney Barrett’s Husband Is Representing Fox in a Lawsuit,” reads the scoop’s headline. Its subhead adds, “Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s husband, Jesse Barrett, is defending Fox Corp. in a defamation case.”
There’s no need to read beyond the headline and subhead because there’s nothing newsworthy there.
Prediction: Neil Gorsuch will be the next targeted justice. Left-wing operatives and their subservient boosters in the press are simply working their way down the list.
More seriously, the thing that underscores the absurdity and cynicism of these attacks is the fact that these same newsrooms have had little, if anything, to say all these years about similar “scandals” involving the court’s liberal justices.
The late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, for example, never disclosed when her husband’s law-firm colleagues had business before the Supreme Court. Nor did she ever recuse herself from cases involving those colleagues.
The Times has published 22 opinion and news articles regarding the Alitos and their flags — twenty-two articles, some of which were authored by Pulitzer winners. Yet the Times published exactly zero articles about Marty Ginsburg’s work pals appearing before his wife at the Supreme Court.
The point isn’t to shout, “What about!” Instead, it’s to note the Times and others clearly don’t care about judicial impropriety, “provocative” behavior, conflicts of interest, or the like. They care only that liberals no longer control the Supreme Court.
It’s almost June, and you know what that means: The Supreme Court is nearing the end of its term and will be handing down decisions on a slate of major cases. It’s important to remember the timing here as the Times and others, who claim to care deeply about democracy and our institutions, continue their war of attrition against the branch of the federal government that has slipped, for the foreseeable future, beyond their control.