Former White House communications director Alyssa Farah Griffin said on Sunday that Republicans would be demanding resignations from liberal justices if they were reported to have displayed upside-down flags on their lawns after former President Trump was elected in 2016.
New reporting from the New York Times revealed an upside-down flag had been on display outside Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s house briefly on Jan. 17, 2021, days before President Biden’s inauguration and less than two weeks after the deadly attack on the Capitol.
The upside-down flag had largely been associated at the time with the “Stop the Steal” movement and efforts to stop the transfer of power based on false claims of election fraud. Alito has said his wife was responsible for the flag.
In a panel discussion on CNN’s “State of the Union,” the former Trump aide turned CNN pundit criticized the Republican response to the reporting, which she called “deeply disturbing.”
“If after Donald Trump won in 2016, Justice [Sonya] Sotomayor hung a flag upside down on her front lawn, we, Republicans, would be calling for her resignation,” Farah Griffin said on Sunday.
“I find it deeply disturbing, and I don‘t think we can gloss over it,” she added.
The reporting has been met with widespread criticism from Democrats, many of whom have also called on Alito to recuse himself from all Jan. 6-related cases before the Supreme Court.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) on Friday called on Alito to apologize for “disrespecting the American flag and sympathizing with right-wing violent insurrectionists.”
“He must recuse himself from cases involving the 2020 election and [former President Trump,]” Jeffries continued, referring to Alito. He added that Congress should consider new ethics reform legislation for the high court.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) also called on Alito to recuse himself from cases related to Jan. 6, 2021, and the 2020 election, saying, “Flying an upside-down American flag — a symbol of the so-called ‘Stop the Steal’ movement — clearly creates the appearance of bias.”
In a statement to the Times, Alito said, “I had no involvement whatsoever in the flying of the flag,” adding, “It was briefly placed by Mrs. Alito in response to a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs.”
