A liberal activist who secretly recorded Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito speaking about the politics of the court is arguing she didn’t bait them into making controversial comments.
“I don’t think that I was baiting him,” the advocacy journalist, Lauren Windsor, said of Alito during an appearance on NewsNation’s “Cuomo.” “I think that it coaxed him into a position that either was already held or that he came to that over the past year.”
Windsor, who has a history of stealthily recording conservatives, this week published audio of the justices and Alito’s wife, Martha-Ann Alito, who vowed revenge on the people who have stirred controversy surrounding her and her husband.
Alito told Windsor that “one side or the other is going to win” in America’s ideological divide. “There can be a way of working, a way of living together peacefully, but it’s difficult, you know, because there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised.”
And when asked about the need to “return our country to a place of godliness,” Alito replied, “I agree with you.”
The comments have riled Democrats, who say it exposes how Alito is bringing a partisan political agenda to the bench.
“I am most concerned about the appearance that Justice Alito has prejudged cases that will come before him. That is one of the biggest sins that a judge or justice can commit, and his willingness to align so publicly in the middle of a hotly contested political battle is deeply worrisome,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) told The Hill this week.
The activist recorded the conversations at the recent Supreme Court Historical Society’s gala under her real name, though she posed as a conservative to elicit comments from the justices, who did not know she was recording them.
In previous interviews, Windsor said recording the justices without their knowledge was necessary to get their candid commentary, given the court’s inclination toward privacy.
“To all the pearl-clutchers out there, when you have a Supreme Court that is shrouded in secrecy and doing its best to avoid any ethics accountability, I think that extreme measures are warranted,” she told Cuomo. “I don’t think the founders ever intended for public servants to just be rogue.”
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