Liberal filmmaker Lauren Windsor, who secretly recorded Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and John Roberts, said Wednesday that the "lies" she told the justices elicited "truths" that were valuable to the public.
"I wish that they were more shocked about the ethics breaches at the Supreme Court than some lies that I told them in order to elicit truths that serve the greater public good," Windsor told CNN's Jim Acosta while responding to Republican criticism of her work.
Windsor posed as a conservative admirer of the justices at a Supreme Court Historical Society dinner on June 3 and posted the secret recordings to social media.
Acosta revealed that Windsor paid $500 for a ticket, under her own name, to attend the event and speak to the justices.
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Windsor argued that Democrats haven't pressured the Supreme Court enough on ethics reform.
"I do not think that Sen. [Dick] Durbin [D-Ill.] has done enough. I know that there are many arcane rules to Senate procedure. I think that there should be something done by Democrats if the Republicans are going to refuse to pass any ethics reform whatsoever," she said.
She criticized Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., for saying he would block ethics reform. "That's a great message to run on: ‘I’m anti ethics,'" she said.
Justice Alito and his wife, Martha-Ann Alito, recently came under fire for flying an upside-down flag in the weeks following Jan. 6, 2021, as well as an "Appeal to Heaven" flag at their beach house. Windsor argued that the justice was "enabling" his wife's behavior.
Asked if Alito's wife was allowed to have her own views, the liberal activist said "certainly."
"But when your spouse is one of the most powerful men in the country, you know, with his fingers on the scale, literally, of justice, I mean, are we going to say that we are going to do away with impartiality, the bedrock principle of our democracy, of our jurisprudence? Is it okay? He's admitting that he cannot be impartial. He's saying there are things that cannot be compromised," Windsor said.
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The liberal co-hosts of "The View" criticized Windsor on Tuesday for how she obtained the recordings, with co-host Sunny Hostin describing it as a "hit job."
"I am extremely disappointed at what I heard, but I also am not comfortable with snippets of tape recordings without consent being taken out of context," Hostin said.
Fellow co-host Joy Behar also said she was uncomfortable with it because the clips could have been altered.
However, the co-hosts agreed that somebody had to expose the justices.
"The Supreme Court at the moment is so biased and so pro-theocracy in what you saw that we just watched that somebody has to expose them because they are running around arrogant, and they have the whole GOP on their side, and we’re losing the Supreme Court’s objectivity and somebody needs to expose them," Behar said.
In one exchange, Windsor told Alito that people should fight "to return our country to a place of godliness."
Alito responded, "I agree with you, I agree with you," according to the recordings.
