The Phantom Hunt for the Supreme Court Leaker

On the menu today, a smorgasbord: Hey, how’s that hunt for the Supreme Court leaker going? Progressive Democrats fume that even with two months’ warning of the Dobbs decision, the Biden administration still seems blindsided and slow-footed. Meanwhile, congressional Democrats’ idea of putting abortion clinics on federal lands in red states faces a slew of financial and logistical hurdles. The latest evidence for a wild GOP midterm tsunami comes from a state that hasn’t elected a Republican to the U.S. House of Representatives since 1992. The New York State Supreme Court strikes down the New York City law that would have permitted noncitizens to cast legal ballots. And once again, the Communists are proposing five-year plans.

Hey, How’s That Hunt for the Supreme Court Leaker Going?

Almost two months ago, Chief Justice John Roberts declared the leak of Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization “a singular and egregious breach” of trust and an “affront to the Court and the community of public servants who work here,” announcing that he had “directed the Marshal of the Court to launch an investigation into the source of the leak.”

You notice that the leaker has not yet been identified. The Supreme Court has only a few hundred employees, and the list of clerks and employees who had access to the draft cannot be that long. It has been about a month since Supreme Court officials asked clerks to sign affidavits and turn over their cellphone data. Members of the public started to dig into past social connections between the Politico reporter who broke the leaked draft and particular clerks. From early on, some suspicious minds speculated that one of the justices abdicated his or her duties to colleagues and the institution and committed this breach. The longer the investigation goes on without any conclusion, the more people will suspect that identifying the leaker would compound the damage already done to the Court’s reputation.