The Supreme Court is facing an enormous ethical crisis, MSNBC host and former Joe Biden White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on her show Sunday. After citing recent reports that Justice Samuel Alito kept an upside-down American flag outside his home following the 2020 election — a symbol commonly used at the time to indicate not accepting that Donald Trump had lost the presidency — Psaki explained that Alito has “the gall to reprimand those who question his and the court’s integrity,” while conservatives on the Court are “simultaneously choosing to ignore, excuse, and at worst flaunt their own partisanship.”
The result, she added, is an undermining of “the very institution that they are serving.”
Alito denied involvement with the hanging of the flag and chose to heap blame on his wife, who he referred to as “Mrs. Alito” in a statement. According to the justice, his wife had hung the upside-down flag as part of a political dispute with a neighbor. “Notably, that statement doesn’t denounce what the symbol stood for,” Psaki observed.
At the top of the segment, Psaki noted that confidence in SCOTUS has fallen since conservatives gained a 6-3 majority. Things went from bad to worse after it was revealed that Ginny Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, “was involved in a range of efforts to keep Donald Trump in power” — oh, and the court overturned the federal right to an abortion in 2022.
In the same year, Psaki continued, Alito called into question the idea that confidence in the court might have wavered, or that the integrity of the court may have been compromised. That faith is something Psaki agreed was important — but “the court’s legitimacy isn’t a given, it’s earned.”
“I mean, the court needs to consistently show that it deserves the credibility that Samuel Alito demands,” she continued. “And in recent years, it’s really done itself zero favors.”
One of the problems, she said, is that the justices essentially have the responsibility to police themselves without strong outside enforcement. That’s why Alito was able to do something like hang an upside-down American flag outside of his home in the first place.
“Historically, that’s been a symbol of distress and has been used as a sign of protest across the political spectrum,” Psaki said. “But in the context of that specific period of time, it was used by Trump supporters to express their belief that Joe Biden’s election was illegitimate.”
“The symbol was even seen carried by some of the individuals who attacked the Capitol on January 6th,” Psaki noted.
The revelation has inspired serious conversation about whether or not Alito should recuse himself from cases related to the events of Jan. 6 and Donald Trump’s involvement. Alito has not indicated he has any plans to do so.
Watch Jen Psaki delivering her takedown of Alito in the video above.
