The Supreme Court still hasn’t determined who leaked the draft opinion of the impeding decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. The high court annonced the embarassing preliminary results of its internal investigation today eight months after someone sent the draft opinion to Politico.
A day after the draft opinion was published last year by Politico, Chief Justice John Roberts assigned the Supreme Court’s marshal, Gail Curley, to investigate the leak. But eight months after the leak and an internal Supreme Court investigation, there is still no word on who gave a draft of the Dobbs decision to the news outlet, which enraged Republicans and helped fire up liberals against the expected decision.
The court said its investigative team “has to date been unable to identify a person responsible by a preponderance of the evidence.” Investigators “conducted 126 formal interviews of 97 employees, all of whom denied disclosing the opinion,” the court said.
The investigation concluded that it “is unlikely that the Court’s information technology (IT) systems were improperly accessed by a person outside the Court,” despite condcuting what it claimed was a thorough probe of its own computer and phone systems.
The Supreme Court blamed COVID for the possuible breach — saying the “risk of both deliberate and accidental disclosures of Court-sensitive information” grew with more people working at home “as well as gaps in the Court’s security policies, created an environment where it was too easy to remove sensitive information from the building and the Court’s IT networks.”
Investigators are continuing to “review and process some electronic data that has been collected and a few other inquiries remain pending,” so the probe has not formally concluded but it remains doubtful anyone will be caught.
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“In time, continued investigation and analysis may produce additional leads that could identify the source of the disclosure,” the marshal of the court, Gail Curley, states. “Whether or not any individual is ever identified as the source of the disclosure, the Court should take action to create and implement better policies to govern the handling of Court-sensitive information and determine the best IT systems for security and collaboration.”
Yet one conservative writer wonders why the justices themselves were not questioned — saying he thinks it was one of the Supreme Court’s liberal jurists.
“The big tell in this pathetic “report” — the obvious sign they all know who did it and that it was a liberal Justice, not a staffer — is the weird refusal to ever mention if or when any justices were questioned. Not even a sentence explaining why they were or weren’t questioned,” said Sean Davis of The Federalist.
Now that Republicans have taken back the House, they promise a committee investigation of the situation.
Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, a pro-life Republican has become chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said in December he planned to investigate both the leak and the subsequent violence against churches, pregnancy centers and pro-life groups.
“Dozens and dozens of churches were attacked, dozens and dozens of pro-life crisis pregnancy centers were attacked, protests occurred at Supreme Court justices’ homes, and there was an assassination attempt on Justice Kavanaugh. But to date, in this Congress, not one hearing in the House Judiciary Committee about that leak. Not one hearing,” Jordan said.
As LifeNews reported, the Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade, with a 6-3 majority ruling in the Dobbs case that “The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion” — allowing states to ban abortions and protect unborn babies. The high court also ruled 6-3 uphold the Mississippi 15-week abortion ban so states can further limit abortions and to get rid of the false viability standard.
Chief Justice John Roberts technically voted for the judgment but, in his concurring opinion, disagreed with the reasoning and said he wanted to keep abortions legal but with a new standard.
Texas and Oklahoma had banned abortions before Roe was overturned and Missouri became the first state after Roe to protect babies from abortions and South Dakota became the 2nd. Then Arkansas became the third state protecting babies from abortions and Kentucky became the 4th and Louisiana became the 5th and Ohio became the 6th and Utah became the 7th and Oklahoma became the 8th and Alabama became the 9th. This week, Mississippi became the 10th and South Carolina became the 11th,Texas became the 12th with its pre-Roe law and Tennessee became the 13th.
“Abortion presents a profound moral question. The Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each State from regulating or prohibiting abortion. Roe and Casey arrogated that authority. We now overrule those decisions and return that authority to the people and their elected representatives,” Alito wrote.
“Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences,” Alito wrote. “And far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, Roe and Casey have enflamed debate and deepened division.”
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Stephen Breyer authored a joint dissent condemning the decision as enabling states to enact “draconian” restrictions on women.
Polls show Americans are pro-life on abortion and a new national poll shows 75% of Americans essentially agree with the Supreme Court overturning Roe.
Despite false reports that abortion bans would prevent doctors from treating pregnant women for miscarriages or ectopic pregnancies, pro-life doctors confirm that is not the case. Some 35 states have laws making it clear that miscarriage is not abortion and every state with an abortion ban allows treatment for both.
