Obama hagiographer Jodi Kantor effectively undermined her own narrative two weeks after attempting to attack the character of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito in The New York Times, stoking a raft of worrying spinoffs.
Tuesday, Kanter
offered Cantor provided additional details about the neighbors and encounters with Justice Martha Ann Alito that were central to his original report, and in the process strongly suggested that Justice Alito and his wife of 70 years were likely the victims of a years-long harassment campaign by Biden supporters at their Fairfax County, Virginia, home.
Moreover, according to Cantor’s latest reporting in the Times, Mrs. Alito’s flag-flipping allegations appear to have nothing to do with the Jan. 6 protests and everything to do with the hostility meted out to her by a 30-something aspiring actress who lived across the street with her mother.
background
Democrats and their allies in the liberal media have worked tirelessly in recent weeks to pressure Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas to recuse themselves from cases that could affect the next election.
This attack on Alito, a public-private attack,
May 16th article A New York Times article was published by Washington Post reporter Robert Burns about allegations that an upside-down American flag was flown at Alito’s residence on January 17, 2021. Reportedly At the time, I didn’t care because it was clear that Justice Alito wasn’t involved.
Justice Alito recently reiterated to The Times that he was not involved, saying the flag was “temporarily displayed by Mrs. Alito in response to a neighbor’s use of offensive and personally offensive language on her yard sign.”
Despite the obvious interpersonal nature of the dispute, Cantor managed to create a narrative that the American flag was somehow a “stop the steal” symbol and that Alito was somehow connected to the January 6 protests, based on an unnamed neighbor’s interpretation of the upside-down flag as “a political statement by the couple.”
To flesh out this narrative, Cantor turned to left-leaning “experts” in his first and subsequent articles. Then Democrats stepped in and did their part.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) both asked that Justice Alito be removed from the case regarding cases related to the 2020 election and the January 6 protests, as well as the issue of immunity for former President Donald Trump.
United States vs. Donald Trump.
Jeffries went further than his colleagues.
Demanding Justice Alito should “immediately apologize for his disrespect for the American flag and his sympathy for violent right-wing insurrectionists.”
“At the very least, he must recuse himself from anything that has to do with January 6th, Donald Trump and election security.”
Democrats doubled down on their attack after Cantor, in a subsequent article, stoked concerns about Justice Alito’s alleged flying of the beloved “Appeal to Heaven” flag, a flag commissioned by George Washington and flown by the Massachusetts Navy for centuries.
The Blaze News previously reported that House Democratic Leader Katherine Clark (Massachusetts), whose son was arrested and indicted in January 2023 for assaulting a Boston police officer while cross-dressing, claimed that “Justice Alito has flown a flag in his home that supports insurrection against the government, promotes religious nationalism and attacks free and fair elections.”
Clarke appeared concerned about the threat to the rule of law, adding: “At the very least, he must recuse himself from any incident involving January 6th, Donald Trump and election security. Anything less would be a stain on our justice system and our democracy.”
Street militants
In Tuesday’s sequel, Cantor revealed that Emily Burden is one of the neighbors at the center of her first installment.
Baden is
Inexperienced actress Emily Burden is the “proud liberal” daughter of former Public Broadcasting Service vice president Barbara Burden. Burden moved in with her retired mother on Alito’s block in 2020.
In a follow-up interview, Cantor sought to contrast the account offered by Baden and her unnamed husband with one Alito had previously given to Fox News.
Arito
Said “Fox News Sunday” host Shannon Bream testified that a neighbor had a “F*** Trump” sign hanging within 50 feet of children waiting for the school bus. When Bream’s wife expressed concern about the sign, the neighbor allegedly “used vulgar language, including the C-word.”
After that exchange, Mr. Alito suggested that Mrs. Alito had been flying the flag upside down for a “brief period.”
Burden disputed the timeline, claiming he called his 70-year-old neighbor the C-word weeks after the flag was removed and months after he first put up the crude placard.
“When I got home [to Barbara Baden’s house]They held up political signs made from torn Amazon boxes that said “BYE DON” on one side and “F*** Trump” on the other.
“The couple attended Black Lives Matter protests in Washington, held up Biden-Harris signs and cheered and danced in the streets of the nation’s capital on Saturday when the results of November’s election were announced,” the Times reported. [to Barbara Baden’s house]They held political signs made from torn up Amazon boxes that said ‘BYE DON’ on one side and ‘F*** Trump’ on the other.”
According to Baden, she met Mrs. Alito just after Christmas of 2020, when she reportedly thanked Mrs. Alito for removing a vulgar sign that had supposedly fallen over a few weeks after being placed on Barbara Baden’s lawn. In expressing her gratitude, Mrs. Alito reportedly indicated that she found the sign offensive.
Emily Burden appeared to respond hostilely to Mrs. Alito’s words of thanks, suggesting she planned to leave the shoddy cardboard sign up.
On January 6, Emily Burden put up new signs that read, “Trump is a Fascist” and “You’re Complicit.” The leftist, who by this point knew very well who lived in the neighborhood, claimed the signs were aimed not at the Alito family but at Republicans in general.
Despite the apparent attempt to portray Mr. Baden as the victim of Mrs. Alito’s glares, inaudible remarks and yelling, the New York Times article included photos of Mr. Baden and her unnamed husband harassing Mr. and Mrs. Alito, holding signs outside the justice’s home that read, “Stop Supreme Court,” “Alito Jan. 6” and “Fascist Alito.”
The couple reportedly held at least one protest at Alitos’ home, even though they had moved out of Barbara Baden’s house.
The evidence that Emily Burden was not only a radical leftist but had been an enemy of the Alitos for months and years provides a larger context for why the justice’s elderly wife might have felt the need to make her distress known in a traditional way. At the very least, the Cantor report seems to justify why Robert Burns initially ignored the story: the dispute was personal and did not directly involve Justice Alito.
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