Dave Goldiner | New York Daily News
A neighbor of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito says secret tapes prove the judge lied about controversial right-wing flags that his wife hoisted at their homes.
Emily Baden said caught-on-tape remarks leave no room for doubt that Martha-Ann Alito intentionally wanted to send political messages by flying an upside-down American flag at their Virginia home after Jan. 6 and a flag often used to support Christian nationalism at their Jersey Shore summer home.
“To hear her speak about the flags that way just solidifies what we already know, which is they are meant to display a particular political message,” Baden said on MSNBC late Wednesday. “It makes it clear what she’s doing with the flags.”
Baden, who got into a suburban shouting match in 2021 with the Alitos over her own anti-Trump yard sign, said Mary-Ann Alito’s off-the-cuff remarks prove her powerful husband wasn’t being honest when he claimed his wife had no particular political ax to grind by hoisting the flags.
“That just proves us all right that… he’s lying when he said: ‘We don’t have any reason behind it (and) we don’t know what it means,’” the neighbor said.
Mary-Ann Alito was caught on tape in blunt remarks captured by a liberal advocate posing as a conservative judicial activist.
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The jurist’s wife is captured admitting that she uses provocative public flags to send what she hopes are powerful right-wing messages to anyone who cares to look.
“I had to look across the lagoon at a pride flag (so) I’m going to send them a message every day. Maybe every week i’ll be changing the flag,” Martha-Ann Alito said, apparently referring to the so-called Appeal to Heaven flag she erected at their vacation home.
Her explanation is hard to square with Samuel Alito’s claim in a letter to Congress that his wife did not even know the flags’ political significance and was not trying to make any political statement by hoisting them.
Justice Alito asserted that he demanded his wife take down the upside-down flag in the weeks after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol but did not explain why he did that if the couple didn’t know its meaning.
Critics say the upside-down flag at the Alitos’ home shows his support for former President Donald Trump and raises questions about his impartiality as a jurist. They say Alito should recuse himself from hearing Jan. 6-related cases.
Alito has rejected those calls, saying in a letter to lawmakers that no reasonable person would think the flags raise legitimate concerns.
Fellow right-wing Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has also refused to step aside from Trump election cases even though his own wife, Ginni Thomas, is a well-known conservative activist who pushed the former president to fight to stay in power after he lost the 2020 election to President Joe Biden.
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