BREAKING: Whitehouse Calls For Alito Recusal From Trump & Jan.6-Related Cases After Flag Controversy

4 months ago

On "Forbes Newsroom," Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and longtime champion of Supreme Court ethics reforms, called for Justice Samuel Alito to recuse himself from any cases relating to former President Trump and January 6 following the right-wing Justice's shocking flag controversies.

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Transcript

00:00Hi, everybody. I'm Brittany Lewis with Forbes Breaking News. Joining me now is Senator Sheldon

00:07Whitehouse. Senator, thank you so much for joining me.

00:10Thank you for having me on, Brittany.

00:12The New York Times reported that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito flew two flags that have

00:17been associated with the Stop the Steal movement at two of his different homes since the presidential

00:23election in 2020. What's your response to this news?

00:27Well, my initial response was that I didn't think it was real. I thought somebody had

00:32photoshopped and doctored the flag of the upside down U.S. flag at the Alito house.

00:39That's a measure of how bizarre this is. I never in my life thought I would have to speak

00:47the phrase Supreme Court Justice flies MAGA battle flags from his houses. And yet here

00:57we are.

00:58And I want to note that you did say flags. There were two flags. I want to break down

01:02the time frame of these flags and when they happened. So the first one was an upside down

01:07flag and this was flying outside of his Virginia home in 2021 when the Supreme Court was considering

01:12a 2020 election case. And the Appeal to Heaven flag was reportedly seen on at least four

01:18different occasions between July and September 2023 at their New Jersey vacation home. And

01:23this was when a case deciding of January 6 rioters can be charged with felony obstruction

01:27over their actions at the Capitol arrived at the Supreme Court. So what do you make

01:31of the time frame here?

01:33Well, the time frame is that this wasn't just an episode of horribly bad judgment by a chief

01:40justice. It actually bears on the discharge of his duties as a justice and raises the

01:48question of whether he should recuse from those cases. There's a reason that the Supreme

01:56Court has a rule for its employees that you cannot exhibit partisan flags, bumper stickers

02:03and other symbols. And when you have a justice who's in flagrant violation of that rule that

02:11applies to all the rest of the Supreme Court, that signals that recusal needs to be considered.

02:18You brought up the recusal question. So I'll ask you point blank. Do you think he does

02:22need to recuse himself from any case related to January 6th or Donald Trump at large?

02:28I think at this point, his credibility in cases like that is completely shot. And I

02:33do think he needs to recuse himself. But I go back just one step because I'm making a

02:39bit of a leap when I say that. The leap that I'm making is that nobody has asked any questions

02:46about what actually took place. And this is just like nobody asking any questions about

02:52whether Thomas paid his taxes on the big forgiven loan for the motor coach or what was going

03:00on with the failure to disclose gifts from billionaires. There's a persistent problem

03:05at the Supreme Court that they won't subject themselves to having questions answered about

03:12their conduct, which is the most basic thing. So there may be some explanation for all of

03:19this. His neighbors may be pranking him. I don't know. But I think he's lost the benefit

03:24of the doubt. And I think we're entitled to a real explanation with official questions

03:29being officially asked and answered. This is an unofficial question being officially

03:35asked and answered. But he did tell Fox News that he had no involvement in flying the inverted

03:40flag, that that was his wife and that happened after a dispute with the neighbors. Haven't

03:44seen anything on the pine tree flag. What do you make of his excuse there? First of

03:51all, as a married person, let me say pretty lame to put his spouse under the bus. But

03:58more to the point, if your argument is that you are having a fight with your neighbor,

04:06that's not an explanation for why you fly a flag associated with the insurrection in

04:12front of your house. That may be you might want to toilet paper their bushes or send

04:18an angry letter or I don't know. There are all sorts of things you can do with an angry

04:23neighbor. But flying a MAGA battle flag at your house, that's not responsive. And then,

04:31of course, the fact that he's also flying a different MAGA battle flag at his summer

04:37house throws that whole theory into the trash can. That second flag is the appeal to heaven

04:44flag, also known as the pine tree flag. And House Speaker Mike Johnson said this about

04:49that flag. It's George Washington's flag. It goes back to the founders era. I've always

04:54flown that flag. He said that's a CNN. What do you make of that? Well, I think he's overlooking

05:01some highly relevant facts, which is that both of these flags, the U.S. flag flown upside

05:08down and the pine tree appeal to heaven flag, have been adopted by the MAGA movement, have

05:15been adopted by the insurrectionists, and were flown by the attackers who ransacked

05:22the Capitol and tried to interrupt the election process on January 6th. So, yes, it's nice

05:28that George Washington had flags, but that's not the point. The point is that in the modern era,

05:34these old symbols have been adopted by this movement. And the idea that they didn't know

05:40that, particularly a justice of the Supreme Court, presumably up on current events,

05:45doesn't know that just doesn't pass the laugh test. You're in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

05:51Is the Senate Judiciary Committee planning any action on this or can they?

05:56Yes, a letter from me as the chairman of the courts subcommittee and Chairman Durbin as the

06:02chairman of the full committee went out today to Chief Justice Roberts asking for action and

06:10explanation. And obviously, he's entitled to a chance to respond. But I don't think this is going

06:19away. I think this is also of interest to the judicial conference, which is the body of judges

06:26that oversees the American judiciary administratively, which includes ethics issues,

06:32which are administrative issues. So between the chief justice and his powers to administer his

06:39own court and the judicial conference and its powers, there's going to be more to come.

06:46Ethical concerns surrounding Supreme Court justices, whether it be about receiving gifts,

06:51potential conflicts of interest, have been swirling now for recent months.

06:55And in November, they released an ethics code. It was 15 pages long.

07:00Do you think that goes far enough or do you think more needs to be done?

07:04To go back, Brittany, to my original point about there's no investigation,

07:08nobody finds out what actually happened. They're just allowed to make it up on their own.

07:14That's the real flaw here. And if you have an ethics code, even if it's a very good ethics code,

07:23but nobody ever decides what happened, no neutral body ever compares the conduct to the rules,

07:31there's actually no process of evaluation, of enforcement, then you really don't have

07:37much of an ethics code. It's like saying you're going to follow the rules of baseball,

07:41except for that part about umpires. So you get to call yourself safe on base,

07:46and you get to call your own balls and strikes. And that's just not the way it's supposed to work,

07:51particularly not at the Supreme Court, for Pete's sake.

07:55Senator, you've been raising the alarm on this issue for a while. I believe you have

07:59upwards of 31 installments of your speeches called the scheme, where you detail different

08:05ethical concerns of the Supreme Court. Knowing this, being someone who's well-versed in this

08:10situation, what do you think is missing from the conversation?

08:15Well, I think the thing that's missing from the conversation right now is the voice of the chief

08:21justice, not just as one of nine, not just as a justice of the Supreme Court, but as the chief

08:28justice with the overall administrative and supervisory responsibility of the Supreme Court,

08:33and also missing are the voices of the very distinguished judges who serve on the judicial

08:41conference. Now, quietly, the judicial conference has done some very good things to help clean up

08:46the mess, but there's a lot more that needs to be done, and I think it would be helpful if the

08:51judicial conference spoke out more and picked up the pace of its remedial decision-making.

08:57And what do you think is that number one thing that needs to be done today or first?

09:04Having an ethics code that actually has the key components of every other ethics code

09:10everywhere in the country, which is that if there's a complaint, somebody investigates it,

09:16somebody neutral decides it, and there's a decision at the end of the day. You don't

09:21just rely on the subject of the investigation to say, oh, that's not so, but never have to

09:27answer even a question. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, I appreciate the conversation.

09:32You're welcome back anytime. Thank you very much. Lovely to be on with you.

BREAKING: Whitehouse Calls For Alito Recusal From Trump & Jan.6-Related Cases After Flag Controversy

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