An ally ofDonald Trumpslapped a federal judge in Massachusetts with a misconduct complaint for his op-ed last week badmouthing Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.
District Judge Michael Ponsor ripped into Alito over the flag controversy and accused the justice of being “foolish” in a New York Times piece published last Friday.
Mike Davis, the founder of the Article III Project, a group that advocates for the nomination of conservative judges, decried the op-ed as “a curiously timed and unprecedented political screed” against a Supreme Court justice.
“Facts, logic, ethics, and good judgment did not dissuade Judge Ponsor a week later when he decided to moonlight as a New York Times guest columnist on Mrs. Alito’s flag-flying past. Judge Ponsor’s essay goes well beyond the bounds of appropriate judicial speech,” Davis wrote in a complaint shared exclusively with The Post.
5
“… It is reasonable for one to conclude that Judge Ponsor’s purported concerns regarding Justice Alito are in fact an excuse to attack someone with a political and ideological philosophy opposite of Judge Ponsor’s.”
Davis filed the judicial misconduct complaint with the Judicial Council of the First Circuit, which is where appeals from Ponsor’s court are typically brought.
He requested the panel “take all appropriate steps to remedy this unfortunate situation caused by Judge Ponsor’s profoundly poor judgment.”
Davis cited provisions in the Code of Conduct for United States Judges stipulating that judges should promote the impartiality of the judiciary and should “not make public comment on the merits of a matter, pending or impending in any court.”
Alito has taken heat from progressives following revelations that the American flag was flown upside down outside his Alexandria, Virginia, home around Jan. 17, 2021.
And reports emerged that last summer, an “Appeal to Heaven” flag — a key symbol during the Revolutionary War — was aloft at his vacation home in New Jersey.
5
Progressives, including members of Congress, pummeled him over the revelations, accusing him of making political speech.
Alito told Fox News that his wife hung the flag upside down “for a short time” after a tense confrontation with one of their neighbors amid concerns about an “F–– Trump” sign not far from where schoolchildren would catch the bus.
That neighbor had put up a sign addressing his wife and used vulgar language, “including the c-word,” according to Alito’s version of events.
Although Alito did not name her in his version of events, the New York Times later identified the neighbor as Emily Baden. But Baden told the Times that she never saw the flag flying upside-down, and used “the c-word” in an unrelated argument after the flag was photographed.
In his op-ed rebuking Alito, Ponsor stressed that he “can offer no opinion” about whether the flag display was “unlawful” and claimed that he “won’t even opine” on whether it constituted an ethics violation.
5
“Regardless of its legality, displaying the flag in that way, at that time, shouldn’t have happened. To put it bluntly, any judge with reasonable ethical instincts would have realized immediately that flying the flag then and in that way was improper. And dumb,” Ponsor wrote.
Ponsor, who was nominated to the bench in 1993 by President Bill Clinton, contended that the flag incidents were interpreted by some as a “banner of allegiance on partisan issues that are or could be before the court.”
Without explicitly calling on Alito to recuse himself in cases related to Jan. 6, Ponsor gave a hypothetical in which he personally would have.
“If my wife had felt strongly that she needed to espouse her viewpoint publicly, I would have had to recuse myself from presiding over the case, based on the appearance of partiality,” he wrote.
5
Some Democrats, including Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), have called on Alito to recuse himself from cases pertaining to the Capitol riot — all because “An Appeal to Heaven” and upside-down American flags were waved by Trump supporters on Jan. 6.
Notably, other symbols such as the American flag flown upright were used during the storming of the Capitol as well.
At the moment, there are cases related to the Capitol riot pending before the high court — Trump’s immunity case and Fischer v. United States, which evaluates the use of a key criminal charge that has been deployed against scores of rioters by federal prosecutors.
Taking note of Ponsor’s insistence that he was not opining on the legal or ethical issues related to Alito, Davis accused the US district judge of engaging in political speech.
“As Judge Ponsor made no argument grounded in the law, the undisputed facts, or his ethical duties, it is reasonable for one to conclude that he was making a political argument,” he wrote in his complaint.
“There is zero evidence Mrs. Alito flew these flags related in any way to January 6,” he stressed. “Judge Ponsor’s essay goes well beyond the bounds of appropriate judicial speech.”
5
Davis said Ponsor’s essay in the New York Times provides “political ammunition” for critics of Alito in the Senate and that detractors will cite his op-ed to back calls for the justice to recuse himself, despite the piece being “devoid of any legal analysis, as support.”
“Justice Alito made no partisan comments; the supposed controversy pertains to symbolic speech that could have many interpretations,” Davis added.
“Judge Ponsor was quick to write an essay to bash Justice Alito; yet, my research found no similar writing concerning Justice Ginsburg’s partisan behavior.”
The late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg previously called Trump a “faker” back in 2016.
Davis previously lashed out at US District Judge Reggie Walton in an ethics complaint back in April after he went on CNN and panned Trump’s rhetoric toward judges.
