The wife of Supreme Court Justice
Samuel Alito said she wants to get back at people who raised a controversy after she and the justice were criticized last month for flying politically affiliated flags at their homes.
“You come after me, I’m gonna give it back to you,”
Martha-Ann Alito said in the recording of a private conversation at the Supreme Court Historical Society’s
annual dinner June 3.
“There will be a way. It doesn’t have to be now, but there will be a way. They know,” she added. “Don’t worry about it.”
The remarks were recorded by progressive filmmaker Lauren Windsor, who attended the event as a member of the society under her real name, though she posed as a conservative to elicit answers from Alito and others.
The recordings were
published by MSNBC and Windsor’s activist site The Undercurrent — the second set released Monday, after she
earlier provided recordings of Chief Justice
John Roberts and Justice Alito to Rolling Stone.
Alito’s flag controversy began last month when it was discovered that an “Appeal to Heaven” flag and an upside-down American flag were
flown at the couple’s homes. The symbols have been associated with far-right politics, Christian nationalism and those who participated in the Jan. 6 Capitol riots.
Alito said the flags were not political statements but merely responses from his wife to personal attacks made by a neighbor, though the neighbor has
publicly disputed key aspects of the justice’s story. The controversy has sparked widespread criticism from Democrats in Congress, including multiple high-profile members demanding
he recuse himself from Jan. 6-related cases.
In the recording, Martha-Ann Alito also committed to flying a “Sacred Heart of Jesus” flag at her homes this month to protest the display of an LGBTQ pride flag nearby. The Sacred Heart of Jesus flag is a symbol associated with the Christian right wing, specifically used to protest Pride.
She said her husband, the justice, has asked her not to put up flags at their properties.
“I won’t do that because I’m deferring to you,” Alito said she told her husband. “But when you are free of this nonsense, I’m putting it up, and I’m gonna send them a message every day, maybe every week. I’ll be changing the flags.”
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