A flag associated with far right groups that was used by January 6 rioters was flown above a government agency headquarters in Washington D.C. last week.
A picture of the “Appeal to Heaven” flag, flying just below the U.S. flag was shared by Kelly Loeffler, the former senator from Georgia and current administrator of the Small Business Administration on June 11.
“Today at SBA’s Flag Day Ceremony, we proudly raised a new AMERICAN MADE flag over our headquarters in Washington,” Loeffler wrote. “It is a privilege to serve under its Stars and Stripes - on behalf of the 34 million small businesses who represent the best of America.”
The “Appeal to Heaven” flag, also known as the “Pine Tree flag”, dates back to the Revolutionary War, and in recent years has become linked to Christian Nationalists. Others use it to show their identification with a patriotic movement that focuses on the founding fathers and the American Revolution.
Sources told WIRED that the “Appeal to Heaven” flag above the SBA building was raised for less than a day. It is unclear who raised it, an unnamed staffer told the outlet.
The Independent has reached out to the SBA for comment.
As of Wednesday the picture remained on Loeffler’s official profile on X.
The flag has been at the center of controversy previously, including last summer when reports emerged that it had been flown multiple times outside the New Jersey vacation home of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito in 2023.
Around the same time The New York Times reported that another flagpole on the judge’s front lawn at a property in Virginia had flown an upside-down American flag in late 2020 and early 2021, in the days after Joe Biden took office.
The “Appeal To Heaven” flag and the inverted US flag were both embraced by supporters of Donald Trump’s “Stop The Steal” campaign, which falsely claimed Biden’s victory was fraudulent.
Last year, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson also displayed the flag outside of his office, though both men said they did not know that the flag was associated with election deniers.
Loeffler has raised eyebrows previously for run-ins with far-right and even white supremacism, though she has denied it was intentional.
Back in January 2021, she posed for a selfie with well-known white supremacist Chester Doles, a self-proclaimed neo-Nazi, who spent decades in the KKK.
“Kelly had no idea who that was, and if she had she would have kicked him out immediately because we condemn in the most vociferous terms everything that he stands for,” a spokesman for Loeffler, told the Journal Constitution at the time.
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