Former Alito neighbor says Supreme Court justice is ‘at worst outright lying’ in his account of upside-down flag fracas

A former neighbor of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito said the judge is “at worst outright lying” about his account of a neighborhood spat that led to hoisting an upside-down US flag on his property in Virginia.

“At best, he’s mistaken, but at worst, he’s just outright lying,” Emily Baden told CNN’s Erin Burnett. “Even if it were a valid excuse that they were having a dispute with a neighbor and that made them put the flag up, that timeline just disproves it. It just doesn’t make sense.”

Earlier this month,TheNew York Times revealed that an upside-down American flag was flown at Justice Alito’s Virginia home in January 2021 following the 2020 presidential election – a symbol used by the “Stop the Steal” movement supporting Donald Trump’s false claims of election fraud.

It was subsequently revealed that an “Appeal to Heaven” flag was flown at Alito’s New Jersey vacation home, a symbol carried by rioters on January 6.

Following the revelations, Justice Alito blamed his wife,Martha-Ann Alito, for the incident, saying she put up the upside-down flag in response to a “very nasty neighborhood dispute”, which apparently involved Baden using the term “c***” in an exchange with his wife.

But Baden has disputed Alito’s account, claiming that the exchange didn’t happen until mid-February – one month after the photo of the upside-down flag on the Supreme Court Justice’s property, published in The New York Times, was allegedly taken.

Records obtained by CNN show that Baden’s then-boyfriend called the police on 15 February 2021, to complain about Martha-Ann Alito, accusing her of “unprompted” harassment.

The records added that the caller told police they believed the confrontations were based on yard signs they had put up that