Justice Alito told Democrats to pound sand. Now, Raskin wants the Biden DOJ to pressure the court.

The New York Times kicked off a smear campaign earlier this month over a neighborly dispute and an American flag at Justice Samuel Alito's house. The attempted character assassination spawned several others, all ostensibly penned with the aim of undermining the credibility of the Supreme Court and shaming Alito into recusing himself from cases in which Democrats and their fellow leftists are politically and emotionally invested.

Democratic lawmakers used the false flag reports to great effect, demanding that Alito not only step aside from cases related to former President Donald Trump and the Jan. 6 protests, but that he apologize for supposedly "disrespecting the American flag and sympathizing with right-wing violent insurrectionists."

All their chest-beating, hyperbole, and unfounded allegations were for nought — just as their similar efforts were last year — for Justice Alito told Democratic Sens. Richard Durbin (Ill.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.) very politely in a Wednesday letter to pound sand.

"A reasonable person who is not motivated by political or ideological considerations or a desire to affect the outcome of Supreme Court cases would conclude that this event does not meet the applicable standard for recusal," wrote Alito. Having previously referenced the disqualification provision in the court's code of conduct, the justice added, "I am therefore duty-bound to reject your recusal request."

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), certainly motivated by political considerations and keen to affect upcoming SCOTUS decisions, returned to the liberal newspaper where the latest smear campaign against Alito began, writing an Wednesday op-ed entitled, "How to Force Justices Alito and Thomas to Recuse Themselves in the Jan. 6 Cases."

Raskin suggested that the Biden Department of Justice can lean on the high court to help Democrats get their way.

After recycling the Times' insinuations and characterizing his and other partisans' demands as a "groundswell of appeals," Raskin wrote, "The U.S. Department of Justice — including the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, an appointed U.S. special counsel and the solicitor general, all of whom were involved in different ways in the criminal prosecutions underlying these cases and are opposing Mr. Trump's constitutional and statutory claims — can petition the other seven justices to require Justices Alito and Thomas to recuse themselves not as a matter of grace but as a matter of law."

Raskin suggested that the Biden DOJ and Attorney General Merrick Garland can invoke the due process clause of the U.S. Constitution and the "federal statute mandating judicial disqualification for questionable impartiality, 28 U.S.C. Section 455," which requires possibly prejudiced judges to recuse themselves at the start of proceedings.

According to Raskin, who was silent in April on the matter of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson's partiality in the Idaho case related to gender, "When the arguments are properly before the court, Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh and Sonia Sotomayor will have both a constitutional obligation and a statutory obligation to enforcerecusal standards."

The Democrat further insinuated that the concerns previously manufactured in the pages of the Times amounted to reasonable doubts about Alito's impartiality, which in lesser courts might ordinarily warrant recusal.

He then wrapped up his op-ed by likening Supreme Court justices to umpires, noting that an umpire would not be "allowed to call balls and strikes in a World Series game after the umpire’s wife tried to get the official score of a prior game in the series overthrown and canceled out to benefit the losing team" — ostensibly another smear against at least one justice's wife.

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