MTG Gives the Thumbs-Up to Alito’s Upside-Down Flag

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) thinks every American flag should be flipped upside-down, actually.

The Georgia congresswoman claimed as much in a social media rant she posted on Wednesday in which she defended Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, but only after simultaneously excoriating Democrats, praising Donald Trump, and falsely accusing the FBI of trying to kill the former president.

With all those plates spinning, Greene punctuated her indignant screed by accusing Democratic lawmakers of “going after Justice Alito for an upside down flag being flown at his house.”

She added, “WE SHOULD ALL BE FLYING THE FLAG UPSIDE DOWN.”

Alito has attracted scrutiny in the wake of a recent New York Times report showing that an upside-down flag was flown outside his Virginia home in 2021. The justice has said his wife briefly flew the flag outside their house as part of a neighborhood dispute over political yard signs.

Greene reminded her followers on Wednesday that she is no stranger to the symbol, which is strongly associated with the pro-Trump “Stop the Steal” movement. Her rant was accompanied by a screenshot of an Aug. 8, 2022 tweet of hers in which she wordlessly posted the inverted flag.

“I posted this on the day the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago,” she explained in her post, “after Merrick Garland ordered it and gave the green light to kill anyone that stood in the way.”

The claim about the U.S. attorney general was a rehash of a conspiracy theory that has surfaced in right-wing circles since the recent unsealing of an FBI operations order related to the Mar-a-Lago search in which the phrase “deadly force” is used. The language, standard for the agency, was seized on by Trump and his allies.

On Truth Social, the former president posted that “Crooked Joe Biden’s DOJ, in their illegal and UnConstitutional Raid of Mar-a-Lago, AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE.” A campaign fundraising email subsequently sent to his supporters was subject-lined “They were authorized to shoot me!” and claimed that Trump had “nearly escaped death.”

“Joe Biden was locked & loaded ready to take me out & put my family in danger,” the email added, according to the Associated Press.

Greene eagerly jumped in, tweeting soon after that “the Biden DOJ and FBI were planning to assassinate Pres Trump and gave the green light.”

On Wednesday, Greene added that federal agents had also stolen Trump’s passport, financial records, and medical records. (A source told CBS News the week after the raid that passports belonging to Trump had been confiscated, but had quickly been returned to the former president.) She also falsely claimed that the FBI had “staged the scene” for special counsel Jack Smith, whose office is prosecuting Trump on charges of mishandling classified material and obstructing the government’s attempts to retrieve it.

“Democrats declared war on us and weaponized the full power of the justice system the minute they took power,” Greene insisted.

Top Democrats and even a few leading Republicans have criticized Alito for the flag incident, with calls for him to recuse himself from cases related to the Capitol attacks of Jan. 6, 2021 only intensifying after a second report linking him to another far-right flag was published by the Times.

“What we are seeing here is an extraordinary breach of not just the trust and the stature of the Supreme Court, but we are seeing a fundamental challenge to our democracy,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said on MSNBC this week. She called for Senate Democrats to launch an investigation into the matter.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Get the Daily Beast's biggest scoops and scandals delivered right to your inbox. Sign up now.

Stay informed and gain unlimited access to the Daily Beast's unmatched reporting. Subscribe now.