Samuel Alito Tries Pathetic Excuse for That “Stop the Steal” Flag

All rise for the honorable wife blamer: In cowardly fashion, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is blaming his wife for an upside-down American flag that flew outside the couple’s home in January 2021 ahead of Biden’s inauguration, a prominent symbol among the anti-government far-right and which experts say is a clear violation of ethics rules against bias.

In a story first reported by The New York Times on Thursday, the Alitos flew the inverted flag outside their home for “several days” in January 2021, with neighbors photographing it on January 17 and discussing its enduring presence on January 18. While the exact dates it was flown are unknown, the flag flew between the January 6 Capitol riot—where pro-Trump conspiracy theorists and far-right extremists waved that same flag—and the January 20 presidential inauguration of Joe Biden.

Long used as a naval distress symbol, the inverted flag has occasionally been used in anti-war and anti-fascist protests. Now, it most commonly appears among the anti-government far-right—a somewhat ironic choice for the home of a Supreme Court justice, whose work directly influences how the government operates. In January 2021, it was a prominent symbol during the “Stop the Steal” protests against the certification of the presidential election as Trump supporters violently stormed the Capitol.

Justice Alito said the flag was part of a passive-aggressive dispute between his wife, in dire need of a hobby, and their neighbors, who had placed an “anti-Trump sign with an expletive” on their lawn. But that fails to justify what judicial experts say is a clear violation of SCOTUS’s ethics rules, which prohibit even a whiff of bias.

“It might be his spouse or someone else living in his home, but he shouldn’t have it in his yard as his message to the world,” said Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia, in an interview with the Times.

The conservative justice previously took an undisclosed luxury fishing trip in 2008 with a Republican billionaire donor who later presented cases to the Supreme Court, apparently in violation of federal law. The corruption-inclined Clarence Thomas and his election denialist wife must be so proud of their little protégés.

In the three years since the flag flew, the Alitos had plenty of time to come up with a better excuse. Claiming it was placed there by an outside agitator would be an easy fan favorite with conservatives. Or they could have claimed they just didn’t realize they put it upside-down because when they were affixing it to the pole a rabid squirrel jumped out of a bush and started attacking them and they were so they just put it up and ran away and were too afraid of the squirrel to leave their house for several days. Sky’s the limit when you’re a judge on the highest court in the land accountable to practically no one with a wife far too invested in wackadoo conspiracy theories.

Donald Trump basically did the prosecution’s work for them while ad libbing outside the courthouse of his New York hush-money trial, admitting that he did, actually, have an NDA with porn actress Stormy Daniels.

“Andrew McCarthy: NDAs are legal and common. Yet, Bragg alleges Trump’s was illegal,” Trump read off a sheet of paper Thursday, quoting Andrew McCarthy in the National Review before facetiously inserting a telling line: “I have the only illegal NDA.”

Trump then continued to react to lines from McCarthy’s online blog post.

“‘It seems that Trump’s crime by blue state lights was winning the election.’ That was my crime. I won an election that I wasn’t supposed to win against Hillary Clinton. And that’s not a crime,” Trump said.

Trump’s attorneys have attempted to argue that the funds to pay off Daniels came exclusively from his fixer, Michael Cohen, and that Trump had zero awareness of the actual payments. Cohen, for his part, has repeatedly outed Trump as a “micromanager” who was aware of his every move, telling the court on Monday that the pair spoke “every single day, and multiple times a day.” And, if they weren’t able to communicate one-on-one, Cohen said he would often communicate with Trump via one of his other close confidants, including his former assistant Rhona Graff, Trump Organization employee turned director of Oval Office operations Keith Schiller, Trump’s children, or Hope Hicks.

Other witnesses in the criminal trial have also pointed to Trump as the obvious and understood originator of the hush-money payments, even if it wasn’t explicitly mentioned to them at the time.

The Republican presidential nominee faces 34 felony charges in this case for allegedly falsifying business records with the intent to further an underlying crime. Trump has pleaded not guilty on all counts.

Joe Biden’s support for Israel’s brutal war on Gaza has drawn protests across the country, from college campuses to public streets, and has even led to the president minimizing events that could potentially be interrupted by protesters.

To his top donors, though, Biden’s stance has largely been music to their ears, according to a new report from the Quincy Institute’s Responsible Statecraft. The publication reviewed campaign contributions, philanthropy, and public statements from people who gave more than $900,000 to the Biden Victory Fund, and found heavy sympathy for Israel sometimes coupled with bigotry against Muslims and Palestinians.

For example, longtime Democratic donor Haim Saban, who contributed $929,599 to the Victory Fund, also serves on the board of Friends of the Israel Defense Forces. The billionaire has also donated $1 million to the United Democracy Project, an independent arm of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. After Biden briefly paused a weapons shipment to Israel last week, Saban sent an email to Biden aides saying, “Let’s not forget there are more Jewish voters who care about Israel than Muslim voters who care about Hamas.”

Compare that to a recent New York Times poll that found that 13 percent of 2020 Biden voters who planned to defect from him in 2024 cited his foreign policy and stance on Israel’s war in Gaza as the reason. But Biden isn’t likely to hear about those concerns at his big fundraising events.

The article names several other top Biden donors who support Israel’s military actions, described by many as war crimes, and attack Palestinians and the protesters who support them. These include pundit George Conway, mobile gaming magnate Mark Pincus, and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman.

Another separate report Thursday revealed the extent to which billionaires are affecting U.S. policy on Israel. The Washington Post exposed a WhatsApp chat group set up in late April by business titans and wealthy individuals who pressured New York City Mayor Eric Adams to use police force to shut down Columbia University’s Gaza Solidarity Encampment. These billionaires included Kind snack company founder Daniel Lubetzky, hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb, billionaire Len Blavatnik and real estate investor Joseph Sitt. Other prominent billionaires were also in the group chat advising on Israel policy, including former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, Dell founder and CEO Michael Dell, and hedge fund manager Bill Ackman.

The fact that wealthy donors seem to have more influence than public opinion over a city mayor, let alone a sitting president, is a travesty. Israel’s war on Gaza has killed over 35,000 people, including more than 15,000 children, much of it thanks to U.S. military aid and weapons. Calls for the Biden administration to end its support for the war and halt weapons shipments to Israel seem to fall on deaf ears. While this might make his donors happy, perhaps Biden should be more concerned about voters and a growing humanitarian crisis.

Michael Cohen’s latest testimony just added another dent to Donald Trump’s crumbling legal defense in his hush-money case.

While on the stand Thursday, Cohen revealed that he didn’t do anything without Trump’s knowledge and his send-off, even if the excessive measures infuriated his campaign. That extra insurance was largely out of fear of any repercussions for doing or saying something on Trump’s behalf that the testy former reality TV star might not approve of.

During a string of questions probing Cohen’s relationship with the press, Trump attorney Todd Blanche asked if Cohen had ever answered a question without first checking in with Trump.

“It was my routine to ask him,” Cohen said, noting that Trump would “blow up” at him if Cohen got something incorrect, potentially costing him his job.

“So over the course of nine and a half years, you never commented on a story on your own?” continued Blanche.

Cohen testified that, for an initial comment on the story, he would “always get a comment to something” from Trump. But after that, he would effectively copy and paste the response to subsequent outlets running similar stories.

It’s just another instance in which Cohen has undercut Trump’s legal defense, which has attempted to frame Trump as a boss totally unaware of the hush-money payments and that the funds for the payments came from Cohen alone. Instead, Cohen has repeatedly outed Trump as a “micromanager” who was aware of his every move, telling the court on Monday that the pair spoke “every single day, and multiple times a day.” And, if they weren’t able to communicate one-on-one, Cohen said he would often communicate with Trump via one of his other close confidants, including his former assistant Rhona Graff, Trump Organization employee turned director of Oval Office operations Keith Schiller, Trump’s children, or Hope Hicks.

Other witnesses in the criminal trial have also testified that Trump was the originator of the hush-money payments, including Daniels’s former attorney Keith Davidson, who said that he understood at the time the agreement was drawn up that the ultimate source of the money was Trump.

The Republican presidential nominee faces 34 felony charges in this case for allegedly falsifying business records with the intent to further an underlying crime. Trump has pleaded not guilty on all counts.

On Thursday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott approved a full pardon for Daniel Perry, an Uber driver who shot and killed anti–police brutality protester Garrett Foster in 2020. Perry was sentenced to 25 years in prison by a Texas state district court judge in May 2023.

But that’s not all that came with the pardon. In a disturbing move, Abbott also restored Perry’s firearm rights.

“Texas has one of the strongest ‘Stand Your Ground’ laws of self-defense that cannot be nullified by a jury or a progressive District Attorney,” Abbott said in a statement announcing the pardon.

Abbott, a far-right governor who has openly feuded with the federal government about migrants and LGBTQ+ rights—and sent swarms of state troopers to violently clear college Gaza solidarity encampments—has sought to pardon Perry since he was convicted.

Stand Your Ground laws were popularized and brought into law by conservative legislators following the vigilante murder of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in 2012. The laws serve to negate “duty to retreat,” which are contrasting sets of laws prohibiting the use of deadly force in situations where a person could reasonably flee to safety.

In 2020, at the height of the Black Lives Matter protests that year, Perry encountered a protest while driving for Uber in Austin, Texas. According to Austin police, Perry stopped his car, honking at the protesters, before driving his car into the march. Perry then shot Garrett Foster, who was legally open-carrying an AK-47 while pushing his fiancée’s wheelchair. Perry’s attorneys argued Foster raised his rifle at Perry and he acted in self-defense, but witness testimony and video from the march disputed these claims. After his murder conviction, messages and posts by Perry self-identifying as “a racist” and wanting to “go to Dallas to shoot looters” were released to the public.

Abbott pushed to secure a pardon for Perry immediately after he was sentenced, directing the parole board to review the case the day after the 2023 verdict. Abbott’s pardon was announced almost immediately after the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles recommended it, The Texas Tribune reported Thursday.