Judge Samuel Alito, member of the Supreme Court of the United States, sent this Wednesday (29) letters to representatives and senators of the Democratic Party in which he refused to declare himself unable to judge two cases in court relating to the invasion of the Capitol, headquarters of the American Legislature, in January 2021.
This month, The New York Times reported that an upside-down American flag was flown in front of Alito’s home in Alexandria, Virginia, just days after the attack on the Capitol, and that another flag, with the message “Appeal to Heaven” was placed in front of the judge’s New Jersey beach house last year.
The two flags are symbols of supporters of former Republican President Donald Trump (2017-2021), who held them in the invasion of the American Legislative building in 2021.
In the coming months, the Supreme Court will judge two important cases related to the attack: an appeal by those convicted of invading the Capitol and a request by Trump to be considered immune in a process in which he was accused of being responsible for the episode.
Therefore, Democratic congressmen sent letters to Alito asking that the judge declare himself unable to vote in these trials.
According to the Associated Press, Alito said in the letters that his wife raised the flags and that he only saw them later. “As soon as I saw it, I asked my wife to remove it, but for several days she refused,” said the judge, who claimed that, therefore, he cannot be accused of bias in the aforementioned trials. “I therefore have a duty to reject her request for recusal,” he wrote.
Alito has served on the conservative wing of the United States Supreme Court since 2006, when he was nominated to the court by then-Republican President George W. Bush.
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