News

Conservative Supreme Court justice Samuel Alito’s goofy excuse for flying an inverted U.S. flag outside his Virginia home—that his wife did it because she was upset about a neighbor’s sign—has deteriorated more swiftly than civil rights under the high court.

In an interview with The New York Times, Alito neighbor Emily Baden detailed a series of disputes she had with Alito’s wife, Martha-Ann, roundly debunking every part of the Alitos’ fascist flag-loving story. Baden also revealed that Alito’s wife is a bit of a nightmare neighbor—yelling incoherently at her, spitting toward her vehicle, accosting her, and sending a coded Christmas card to the family home.

According to receipts provided to the Times, the core dispute that Alito claims instigated his wife’s decision to fly an inverted flag outside their home actually occurred nearly a month after the flag was spotted outside their home.

On February 15, 2021, Baden’s then boyfriend called the police over harassment they were experiencing from Martha-Ann Alito, telling Fairfax County police, “Somebody in a position of authority needs to talk to her and make her stop.”

According to an interview Samuel Alito gave to a sympathetic Fox News face, the Alitos were inexplicably harassed by a male neighbor, who placed a sign outside directly accusing Martha-Ann Alito of inciting the January 6 Capitol riot. But as Baden tells it, Martha-Ann Alito regularly harassed her and her partner, including glaring creepily from her car at their home the day after the Capitol riot, where they had placed signs declaring, “Trump is a fascist” and broadly criticizing Republicans who refused to condemn the riot with a sign that read, “You are complicit.”

Alito, via Fox News, also claimed a man hurled a vulgarity at his innocent wife. In reality, as confirmed by both Baden and a neighbor who witnessed the dispute, Baden is the one who shouted at Martha-Ann after she criticized a “Fuck Trump” sign placed in their yard. Baden responded along the lines of, “How dare you behave this way. You’ve been harassing us—over signs. You represent the highest court in the land. Shame on you,” according to the Times.

In a statement to the Times, Alito claimed the flag was placed “in response to a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs.” Baden, however, says she never saw the inverted flag, and it’s not viewable from her mother’s home.

Baden further detailed instances of Martha-Ann lingering outside their home, glaring at them for their yard signs the day after the Capitol riot. Last Christmas, Baden’s mother, Barbara, received a Christmas card from the Alitos that included a handwritten note reading, “May you have PEACE.”

None of the Alitos’ thin story explains why they also flew a Christian nationalist flag outside their vacation home in New Jersey in 2023.