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‘Liar’: Critics Question Alito’s Integrity After His Insurrection Flag Story Disintegrates
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s defense for why an upside down American flag, associated with the January 6, 2021 insurrection and the “Stop the Steal” conspiracy, was flying outside his Virginia home quickly fell apart barely days after he shared it with Fox News, but that story has now further disintegrated after The New York Times published a report that includes interviews with neighbors and a review of text messages.
Critics responding to The Times’ report are now calling the 74-year old jurist’s credibility into question over the divergent details.
Two weeks ago The New York Times reported on Alito’s insurrectionist “upside down” American flag – one of two flags associated with the insurrection flown at Alito’s two homes. The Supreme Court justice then talked to Fox News host Shanon Bream, who reported, “he told me a neighbor on their street had a ‘F— Trump’ sign that was within 50 feet of where children await the school bus in Jan 21.”
“According to Justice Alito, things escalated and the neighbor put up a sign personally addressing Mrs. Alito and blaming her for the Jan 6th attacks,” Bream also stated, referring to Martha-Ann Alito.
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“Justice Alito says he and his wife were walking in the neighborhood and there were words between Mrs. Alito and a male at the home with the sign. Alito says the man engaged in vulgar language, ‘including the c-word’,” according to Bream. “Following that exchange, Mrs. Alito was distraught and hung the flag upside down ‘for a short time’.”
Some quickly pointed out that school bus children aspect didn’t hold water as it was during the COVID pandemic and schools in the Alitos” county had gone to virtual sessions.
Also, according to the New York Times report Tuesday evening, the argument was with Emily Baden, not her then-boyfriend and now-husband.
The couple had called Fairfax County police “after a series of encounters with Martha-Ann Alito,” The Times reported, “that had gone from uneasy to ugly.”
“‘Somebody in a position of authority needs to talk to her and make her stop,’ said the 36-year-old man making the complaint, according to a recording of the call reviewed by The New York Times. The officer on the line responded that there was little the police could do: Yelling was not a crime.”
Noting there are “some differences” between the Alitos’ story and the Badens’s, The Times importantly reports, “the justice told Fox News that his wife hoisted the flag in response to Ms. Baden’s vulgar insult. A text message and the police call — corroborated by Fairfax County authorities — indicate, however, that the name-calling took place on Feb. 15, weeks after the inverted flag was taken down.”
Also importantly, The Times reports, on the day President Joe Biden was inaugurated, “Mrs. Alito happened to be standing outside” the Alitos’ home.
“According to interviews with Ms. Baden and her husband, as well as messages they sent to friends at the time, Mrs. Alito ran toward their car and yelled something they did not understand. The couple continued driving, they said, and as they passed the Alito home again to exit the cul-de-sac, Mrs. Alito appeared to spit toward the vehicle.”
READ MORE: Supreme Court ‘Puppetmaster’ Slammed Over Report He’s Flying Alito’s ‘Theocratic’ Flag Again
The Washington Post last week reported Mrs. Alito shouted at neighbors.
“Martha-Ann Alito … got out of the car and shouted in apparent reference to the neighbors: ‘Ask them what they did!’ She said yard signs about the couple had been placed in the neighborhood. After getting back in the car, she exited again and then brought out from their residence a novelty flag, the type that would typically decorate a garden. She hoisted it up the flagpole. ‘There! Is that better?’ she yelled.”
The Times also reported, “on Feb. 15, the couple were pulling in trash bins when the Alitos, who seemed to be on a stroll, appeared. Mrs. Alito addressed the pair by name, used an expletive and called them ‘fascists,’ the couple told The Times and said in texts at the time. Justice Alito remained silent, they added. The Alitos began to walk away.”
“That was when Emily Baden snapped, she said. She does not remember her precise words, but recalls something like this: How dare you behave this way. You’ve been harassing us, over signs. You represent the highest court in the land. Shame on you.”
Some legal and political experts say Justice Alito’s tale exposes him as a “liar,” others call the Alitos “liars,” and some suggest the nation’s highest court’s impartiality is now in question.
Many responded to this excerpt, posted by the Times’ Jodi Kantor, who wrote Tuesday’s report.
Just published: Mrs. Alito’s conflict with her neighbors in Virginia escalated so much that the neighbors called the police. But that final incident, which Justice Alito said helped spur his wife to raise the upside-down flag, happened a month after the flag was up.… pic.twitter.com/3xoILuVdpN
— Jodi Kantor (@jodikantor) May 29, 2024
The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols, a retired U.S. Naval War College professor and expert on Russia, nuclear weapons, and national security affairs, offered this sarcastic take: “I’m starting to think Justice and Mrs. Alito are not entirely trustworthy in their explanations.”
The Nation’s justice correspondent, Elie Mystal, wrote simply, “Oh look, the Alitos are also liars.”
“The entire Alito fiasco is so far from normal decorum-let alone judicial decorum or any ethical standard of objectivity or propriety,” observed Janai Nelson, President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund (LDF). “The legal community—esp the Supreme Court bar—should be actively outraged & demand action from Congress and the Chief Judge for sake of the Court.”
The Atlantic’s Norman Ornstein, an Emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), succinctly declared, “Liar. Sam Alito is an insurrectionist supporting liar.”
National security attorney Mark S. Zaid said, “Quite a different set of facts than we were first led to believe per Justice Alito,” and warned: “There are good reasons to be concerned about true legal impartiality of this Court.”
Former official in both the Obama and Biden White Houses, Jesse Lee, remarked: “The reason the conservative justices change their principles from case to case based on what serves Republican and corporate interests is that they have no integrity whatsoever. Remember ‘judicial restraint’? They are on a partisan rampage through a century of jurisprudence.”
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
