Justice Samuel Alito (via Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images); Alito neighbor Emily Baden speaks on CNN on June 5, 2024 (CNN/screengrab)
The woman at the center of the Alito home upside-down American flag controversy said Wednesday night on CNN that the Supreme Court justice either made a mistake or lied when he told Congress that a neighborhood spat was the reason his wife was “greatly distressed,” leading critics to call for a “false statements” probe.
Emily Baden joined “Erin Burnett OutFront” and said the timeline, documented by a 911 call and police report in February 2021, shows that Martha-Ann Alito was flying the upside-down flag weeks before the neighborhood blow-up and 11 days after Jan. 6, a dispute that Justice Samuel Alito declined to recuse himself over in a late May letter.
“At best, he’s mistaken, but at worst he’s just outright lying,” Baden said, referring to the justice’s letter to Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., and telling the CNN host that it was “absolutely 100 percent” accurate that Martha-Ann’s flying of the upside-down flag preceded the kerfuffle.
“That’s what I really want to drive home to people is that this happened on February 15th, and we know that because they had been harassing us so long that we were like ‘we need a paper trail of this, we need to call the cops right now,”” she said. “Like I said, these are federally protected people, they have security detail, they represent the judicial system, they are the law, and I am just a regular person.”
“Yeah, we called the cops that day, it was February 15th, and I think the photo of the flag was January 17th,” Baden continued.
Burnett interjected: “The timing doesn’t add up.”
Last month, Alito rejected Democratic senators’ calls for his recusal by supporting his wife’s “right” to make “her own decisions” and stating that she flew the flag upside-down because she was “greatly distressed at the time due, in large part, to a very nasty neighborhood dispute in which I had no involvement.”
But Baden said another neighbor witnessed the incident and that the justice was present when his wife screamed at her over political signs, signs like “Trump Is a Fascist” and “You Are Complicit.”
Acknowledging that she called Martha-Ann Alito the C-word, pushing back on the justice’s statement that Baden’s husband used the “vilest epithet,” Baden said the justice “didn’t say anything” at the time.
“I find that very telling because I feel like in any other situation, someone would step in if they see somebody accosting someone like that and they would say ‘Hey, you know, ease up a little bit, lets go lets walk down the street,’” she said. “He didn’t do anything. He just kept walking and basically disappeared.”
While Martha-Ann defended the raising of the flag as an “international sign of distress,” as opposed to a signal of solidarity with the “Stop the Steal” movement, the justice told Congress he “was not even aware of the upside-down flag until it was called to my attention.”
“As soon as I saw it, I asked my wife to take it down, but for several days, she refused,” Alito wrote.
Harvard law professor emeritus Laurence Tribe, for one, reacted to the Baden interview by accusing Alito of committing a “federal crime,” saying that he should be prosecuted by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and/or impeached.
“So Alito was flat-out lying to Congress about a highly material matter, a federal crime that DOJ should prosecute and for which a law-respecting Congress would impeach and remove him,” Tribe posted on X.
So Alito was flat-out lying to Congress about a highly material matter, a federal crime that DOJ should prosecute and for which a law-respecting Congress would impeach and remove him.
— Laurence Tribe 🇺🇦 ⚖️ (@tribelaw) June 6, 2024
Tribe was piggy-backing off of a post from former U.S. Attorney and Los Angeles Times legal affairs columnist Harry Litman’s take that a “hearing” on this issue is necessary.
“Oh man, Alito says his wife flew the flag in response to altercation w neighbor & only briefly. Neighbor says actually the flag was already flying for four weeks — from 1/17 to 2/15 when the altercation occurred (which also wd mean that’s not why she put it up),” Litman said. “We need hearing.”
NYU law professor Ryan Goodman, sharing a clip of the Baden interview, additionally commented that Alito’s refuse-to-recuse letter “may include false statements,” writing that Baden “contradicts his account and cites a police report and witness.”
Justice Alito’s letter explaining his refusal to recuse in Jan 6th cases may include false statements to Congress (18 USC §1001)
Watch how credible Alito’s neighbor is in her first TV interview @OutFrontCNN⤵️
She contradicts his account and cites a police report and witness. pic.twitter.com/DrCJpe3ISU
— Ryan Goodman (@rgoodlaw) June 6, 2024
The false statement statute this collection of Alito critics refers to is located at 18 U.S. Code § 1001. It states that “whoever, in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States, knowingly and willfully […] makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation […] shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 5 years[.]”
Have a tip we should know? [email protected]
