Justice Alito’s Wife Vows Revenge for Flag Controversy in Secret Recording

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s wife said she wants revenge on people who raised controversy after she and the justice were criticized last month for flying politically affiliated flags at their homes.

“If you come after me, I’ll give it back to you,” Martha-Ann Alito said in a recording of a private conversation at the Supreme Court Historical Society. annual dinner on June 3rd.

“There will be a way, it doesn’t have to be now, but there will be a way that they know,” she added. “Don’t worry about that.”

The comments were recorded by progressive filmmaker Lauren Windsor, who attended the event as a member of the society under her real name, although she posed as a conservative to elicit responses from Alito and others.

The recordings were published by MSNBC and Windsor-based activist site The Undercurrent — the second set released Monday, following earlier recordings of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Alito in Rolling Stone.

The controversy over Alito’s flag began last month when it was discovered that an “Appeal to Heaven” flag and an inverted American flag were flying at the couples’ homes. The symbols have been associated with far-right politics, Christian nationalism and those who participated in the Jan. 6 riots at the Capitol.

Alito said the flags were not political statements but merely responses to personal attacks by his wife against a neighbor, although the neighbor publicly doubted the judge’s story. The controversy has drawn widespread criticism from Democrats in Congress, including several prominent members demanding that he withdraw from cases related to January 6th.

In the recording, Martha-Ann Alito also pledged to fly a “Sacred Heart of Jesus” flag in her home 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, used specifically to protest Pride.

She said her husband, the judge, asked her not to place flags on their property.

“I won’t do this because I’m giving in to you,” Alito told her husband, “but when you’re free of this nonsense, I’ll put this up and I’ll text them every day, maybe every week, I’ll be changing the flags.”

Alito added that he has drawn his own flag in his head, which he wants to be made and flown. It features the Italian word “vergogna”, which means shame.

“Shame, shame, shame on you, you know?” Alito said, apparently referring to the raising of the Pride flag.

Windsor’s conversation with Justice Alito included him agreeing with her assertion that the U.S. should strive to be a Christian nation and her admission that many of the court’s issues boil down to political ideology. Roberts fought her ideas in the pair’s recorded conversation.

Windsor told The Hill that she felt “justified” to record those present at the meeting surreptitiously because the court is “shrouded in secrecy and they are refusing to submit to any accountability in the face of overwhelming evidence of serious ethical violations.”

This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story