In the latest twist to upside-down US flag controversy, the Washington Post citing its former reporter said that when the reporter asked US Supreme Court judge Samuel Alito what the upside-down flag outside his home meant, his wife, Martha-Ann Alito said it was “an international signal of distress”.
The New York Times reported last week that an inverted American flag was seen at Alito’s home outside Washington less than two weeks after the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.
Two Democratic senators are also requesting a meeting with Chief Justice John Roberts after reports that two separate flags carried by rioters at the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol had flown outside of houses owned by Justice Samuel Alito.
This week the paper reported that an “Appeal to Heaven” flag was flown outside of the justice’s beach home in New Jersey last summer. Both flags were carried by rioters who violently stormed the Capitol in January 2021 echoing Trump’s false claims of election fraud.
The Washington Post said that its former reporter had visited the home of the Alitos in northern Virginia following a tip on the flag but when he got there (on the day of US President Joe Biden’s inauguration) the flag wasn’t flying anymore.
The reporter encountered the Alito couple as they were exiting the house, which is when the US Supreme Court judge’s wife Martha-Ann told him to “get off my property”.
When he asked Martha-Ann about the upside-down flag, she responded by saying: “It’s an international signal of distress!”
The US Supreme Court judge has previously said he had “no involvement” in the flag flying upside-down at his home. The New York Times said that flag was flown in that manner on January 17, 2021.
Alito has said the inverted American flag was flown by his wife amid a dispute with neighbours.
“It was briefly placed by Mrs. Alito in response to a neighbour’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs,” Alito said in an emailed statement to the New York Times.
He and the court declined to respond to requests for comment on how the “Appeal to Heaven” flag came to be flying and what it was intended to express.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin of Illinois said that these incidents reveal ‘a pattern’.
“The first instance of the American flag in distress mode [Alito] dismissed as a chance indiscretion by his wife who was emotional about a confrontation with a neighbour. The second one really shows a pattern,” Durbin was quoted as saying by The Hill.
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