Fabricated Controversies Target Justice Alito, Undermining SCOTUS

Far-left activists are so desperate to knock another conservative Supreme Court justice off cases central to their campaign playbook this year that they’ve manufactured another pair of twin scandals to hit a new target: Justice Samuel Alito.

On Sunday, the Daily Beast reported Alito apparently engaged in a scandal when the justice participated in the open stock market.

“U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito sold off a chunk of stock in Anheuser-Busch Inbev in August 2023, just as a vicious right-wing boycott campaign of the company was reaching full swing, according to financial disclosure reports first spotted by the Substack page Law Dork,” the paper wrote. “The boycott was ostensibly in reaction to a limited social media partnership between trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney and Bud Light, one of AB-Inbev’s best-selling brands.”

According to the Daily Beast, the August transaction was completed with “suspicious timing.” But the Mulvaney boycott hit the Belgian beer company in the spring of last year shortly after the influencer’s Bud Light partnership for March Madness went viral in April, long before Alito’s “suspicious” trade. The immediate boycott over Mulvaney’s sponsorship tanked Anheuser-Busch’s value by $5 billion with the consumer backlash lasting through the spring. The hit on the company’s stock, however, peaked in late May and had begun to plateau in August before eventually recovering. In other words, Alito sold a couple thousand dollars’ worth of stock months after the height of consumers’ rejection of the popular beer company, but the transaction is still drawing headlines in The New Republic and The Independent.

Even if Justice Alito had sold off stock in the spring of 2023 as the backlash against Anheuser-Busch peaked, the trade based on publicly available information is far from scandal. There are no rules prohibiting federal judges from engaging in whatever conduct leftists simply find offensive. It’s probably no coincidence the non-story about Alito’s open stock transaction dropped on the heels of the New York Times raising controversy about an upside-down flag on the justice’s front lawn.

On Thursday, the New York Times documented the manipulated flag at Alito’s home which flew in the turbulent month of President Joe Biden’s inauguration three years ago. The paper quoted supposed ethics experts to depict the banner of distress as a “‘Stop the Steal’ Symbol on Display” at the home of the conservative justice now deciding on cases related to former President Donald Trump’s objections to electoral certification.

“While the flag was up, the court was still contending with whether to hear a 2020 election case, with Justice Alito on the losing end of that decision,” the Times reported. “In coming weeks, the justices will rule on two climactic cases involving the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, including whether Mr. Trump has immunity for his actions.”

Alito said the flag was put up by his wife over a confrontation with a neighbor who put up a disparaging anti-Trump sign.

The paper has at least seven stories on Alito’s flag, including one in Spanish, wherein the Times is repeatedly questioning Alito’s ability to serve on the court impartially. Federalist Senior Legal Correspondent Margot Cleveland explained why the demands for Justice Alito to recuse himself from Jan. 6-related cases over the incident hold no ground.

“For simplicity’s sake, let’s assume Mrs. Alito placed a ‘Stop the Steal’ sign in the front yard of the home she shares with her husband. Such a sign would qualify as political activity within the meaning of the various ethical codes governing judicial conduct,” Cleveland wrote. The sign, she added, “would clearly fit in the ‘should not engage in other political activity’ prohibition” outlined in legal ethics rules. “But it wasn’t Justice Alito who hung the upside-down flag we are hypothesizing was instead a ‘Stop the Steal’ placard — it was Mrs. Alito. And the Code of Conduct does not govern a spouse’s actions.”

Similar demands for recusal were made against Justice Clarence Thomas whose wife, Ginni, personally petitioned public officials in the Trump White House to protest the results of the 2020 election. Ginni became the target of media smear campaigns and was even investigated by the Democrats’ Select Committee on January 6. Two years ago, former Thomas Law Clerk Wendy Long outlined for The Federalist why calls for Justice Thomas to refrain from ruling on election-related cases over spousal activism were inappropriate.

“Leftists in Congress and the media hyperventilate over every tidbit showing that Justice Thomas’s wife, Ginni, is involved in national conservative politics — most recently, that she pushed for integrity in the 2020 election,” Long wrote. “This isn’t news, and it has nothing to do with Justice Thomas’s ability to be a fair and impartial jurist.”

Recusal, Long explained, is determined primarily by the “financial, legal, personal, or professional interests of the Justice or a family member,” not personal politics or the politics of a spouse.