Former Alito employee ‘stunned’ after seeing the flag at home on January 6

A former law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito said Wednesday that she was shocked after learning that two flags linked to rioters during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection were flown outside his homes, and said she thought he should withdraw from various cases before the court. .

Susan Sullivan, who worked as a law clerk while Alito was a judge on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, spoke with MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell amid the controversy surrounding the flags.

“I was stunned when I saw those photos because I have never known Judge Alito as anything other than an honorable man, a man of integrity,” Sullivan, now a professor at Temple University, told O’Donnell. “It doesn’t matter whether Mrs. Alito flew it or not. The fact is that that flag was there.”

“This is not an insignificant symbol,” she continued. “Regardless of why it’s there, who put it there, it shouldn’t have been there. The problem is that the flag is inflammatory and can do nothing other than advance a reasonable inference of bias.”

Alito has drawn fierce criticism from Democrats after The New York Times first reported an inverted American flag affiliated with the “Stop the Steal” movement was put on display outside his home in Alexandria, Virginia, shortly after the attack on the Capitol. The judge has since said the flag was hung by his wife, Martha-Ann Alito, during a dispute with neighbors.

The Times published another report a week later after finding that a second flag linked to insurgents was flown outside Alito’s beach house in New Jersey in mid-2023. That symbol, an “Appeal to Heaven” flag, is tied to the Christian nationalist movement and false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

The two reports prompted many Democrats in Congress to call on Alito to recuse himself from several cases, including former President Donald Trump’s claims of absolute presidential immunity that would likely free him of two of his criminal charges.

Alito has rejected those calls.

“I am satisfied that a reasonable person not motivated by political or ideological considerations or by a desire to influence the outcome of cases before the Supreme Court would conclude that the events … do not meet the applicable standard for denial ” he wrote in a letter to lawmakers last month. “I am therefore forced to deny your request.”

Sullivan has rejected that claim in Wednesday’s interview and an earlier op-ed in The Philadelphia Inquirer, which said denial was justified, especially because of the court decision.

“[It is] the symbol of these people who attacked the capital. They support Trump unconditionally,” she said. “So when you have cases before the court that are not only directly related to the former president, but also criminal cases involving that election process….”

“The stakes have never been higher and recusal, to me, defies logic that someone would not apologize for a case like this,” Sullivan added. “The stakes are too high.”