Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito rejected calls for his recusal in upcoming cases involving the January 6 Capitol riot due to recent hit pieces calling out the flying of certain flags at his primary residence and vacation home.
As Katie reported Wednesday, Alito said his wife is fond of flying many types of flags and neither of them were aware that the “Appeal to Heaven” flag, which dates back to the Revolutionary War, was in any way associated with the “Stop the Steal Movement.” Furthermore, one group’s use of it does not “drain that flag of all other meanings.” Previously, Alito told The New York Times an upside down American flag flown at his primary residence by his wife was in response to “a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs.”
In his letter, Alito stood his ground, refusing to recuse himself.
"A reasonable person who is not motivated by political or ideological considerations or a desire to affect the outcome of Supreme Court cases would conclude that this event does not meet the applicable standard for recusal,” he wrote. “I am therefore duty-bound to reject your recusal request.”
But Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) believes Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas, whose wife was allegedly supportive of the movement, can be forced to recuse themselves.
“Everyone assumes that nothing can be done about the recusal situation because the highest court in the land has the lowest ethical standards — no binding ethics code or process outside of personal reflection,” he wrote in an opinion piece in The New York Times. “Each justice decides for him- or herself whether he or she can be impartial.”
Raskin argued there’s a “far more effective course of action” than pressuring the two to recuse themselves.
“The U.S. Department of Justice — including the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, an appointed U.S. special counsel and the solicitor general, all of whom were involved in different ways in the criminal prosecutions underlying these cases and are opposing Mr. Trump’s constitutional and statutory claims — can petition the other seven justices to require Justices Alito and Thomas to recuse themselves not as a matter of grace but as a matter of law,” Raskin continued.
“The Justice Department and Attorney General Merrick Garland can invoke two powerful textual authorities for this motion: the Constitution of the United States, specifically the due process clause, and the federal statute mandating judicial disqualification for questionable impartiality, 28 U.S.C. Section 455,” Raskin noted.
Reminder that Jamie Raskin protested the certification of the 2016 election. He's now the go to source for the New York Times regarding January 6th. https://t.co/GE3MY7ZNKt
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) May 29, 2024