‘A Giant Double Middle-Fingered F-You to the American Public’: MSNBC Legal Analyst Rips Alito’s ‘Trolling’ Letter
MSNBC legal analyst Melissa Murray ripped Justice Samuel Alito’s refusal to recuse himself from cases related to Jan. 6 after it was reported that flags used by the rioters flew at his houses.
The New York Times reported that three days before Joe Biden’s inauguration, an upside-down American flag was flown at Alito’s home in Alexandria, Virginia. Another flag co-opted by the 2020 election denier movement was flown outside his beach home in New Jersey. The justice claims his wife Martha-Ann Alito was responsible for the displays and flew the upside-down flag as a sign of distress after a dispute with a neighbor. However, a Times report published on Tuesday featuring a text and a phone call from the neighbor in question contradicts that claim.
The Supreme Court is expected to rule on two cases related to Jan 6. One centers on former President Donald Trump and his claim that a president is immune from prosecution for acts he took while in office. Another case pertains to whether Trump and the Capitol rioters can be charged under a law criminalizing “corruptly” obstructing an official proceeding.
In a letter sent to members of Congress on Wednesday, Alito rebuffed calls from liberals who demanded he recuse himself from the cases, stating in part, “My wife is fond of flying flags. I am not.”
“There’s a lot here,” Murray said on Wednesday’s edition of The ReidOut. “First of all, this letter is nominally addressed to Congress. It is a giant double-fingered f-you to the American public. This man is not simply saying he’s not fond of flying flags but his wife is, he’s basically trolling Americans who know that he is the author of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization – the decision that withdrew the constitutional right to an abortion. That right [that] Roe v. Wade established.”
Murray went on to note that Alito’s letter emphasized his wife’s ability to make choices.
“He wrote that decision [in Dobbs] and he says not once, not twice, but three times, he refers to his wife as a private citizen who is in possession of rights, rights that allow her to ‘make decisions that he has always honored and respects her choices to do so,'” she continued. “Again, this is the same man who withdrew from millions of American women the right to make decisions about their own body. This is a trolling, trolling letter, a giant f-you to the American public.”
Murray then noted that like Alito, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas has also garnered her husband some negative media coverage.
“What is going on among these conservative justices where they cannot seem to control their own wives?” Murray asked. “Clarence Thomas can’t stop Ginni Thomas from texting Mark Meadows in the middle of an insurrection. Justice Alito can’t seem to stop Martha-Ann from flying the American flag upside down at their home. But nonetheless, they have decided that they are going to write opinions that seek to control every other American woman. Like, what is going on here?”
Murray concluded that Alito is “pro-choice for flags, but not other choices.”
Watch above via MSNBC.
