BS BULLETIN:
- Justice Samuel Alito says he has an opinion about who leaked his draft Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade.
- But Alito says the evidence isn’t strong enough to publicly identify the person he suspects.
- The Supreme Court’s investigation interviewed 97 employees and examined electronic evidence but never determined who gave the draft to Politico.
Four years after somebody committed one of the most extraordinary breaches of confidentiality in Supreme Court history, Justice Samuel Alito still isn’t saying who did it.
But he apparently has someone in mind.
Fox News Sunday host Shannon Bream asked Alito directly whether he has an opinion about who leaked his draft majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization before the Court officially handed down its decision in 2022.
“I do have an opinion,” Alito said.
And then came the important qualification.
“But the evidence available at this time is not strong enough for the Court, or for me, to say this is the person who was responsible.”
The answer leaves America’s most notorious Supreme Court whodunit exactly where it has been for years: officially unsolved.
Politico published Alito’s draft opinion on May 2, 2022, weeks before the Court formally issued Dobbs and overturned Roe v. Wade.
Chief Justice John Roberts ordered the Supreme Court marshal to investigate.
Investigators conducted 126 formal interviews involving 97 Court employees, examined computer equipment and networks, reviewed available phone and text records and looked for forensic evidence showing how the draft escaped the building.
They came up empty.
The Court’s January 2023 report concluded that investigators could not identify the person responsible even under the “preponderance of the evidence” standard.
The investigation also found no forensic evidence suggesting that an outsider had improperly penetrated the Court’s computer systems.
Alito has never hidden his anger about what happened.
He told Bream that the disclosure was a “grave breach” of the trust among people working inside the Court.
He also connected the leak and the resulting political fury to threats against the justices.
“It very predictably made the five of us in the majority targets for assassination,” Alito said, adding that it “nearly resulted in the assassination of my colleague Brett Kavanaugh.”
A California man was arrested near Kavanaugh’s Maryland home in June 2022 carrying a gun, ammunition, knife, zip ties and other equipment. He later pleaded guilty to attempting to assassinate a Supreme Court justice.
This isn’t actually the first time Alito has hinted that he believes he knows the leaker.
In 2023, he said he had a “pretty good idea” who was responsible but similarly acknowledged that suspicion is not the same thing as evidence sufficient to accuse someone publicly.
Three years later, his position appears essentially unchanged.
He has an opinion.
He isn’t naming the person.
And unless new evidence emerges, one of the biggest institutional breaches in Supreme Court history remains officially unresolved.
DBS WIRE SOURCES:
- Mediaite — Justice Alito says he has a hunch who leaked the Dobbs report
- Fox News — Alito says he has an opinion about who leaked the Dobbs draft
- Supreme Court of the United States — Marshal’s report on the Dobbs leak investigation
- CBS News — Justice Samuel Alito discusses Dobbs and the leak
- Washington Post — Alito previously said he had a “pretty good idea” who leaked the draft
