Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito says he knows who leaked the Dobbs draft to Politico last year.
A draft of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade was leaked to Politico’s senior legal reporter Josh Gerstein last May.
Via Politico: “The Supreme Court has voted to strike down the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, according to an initial draft majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito circulated inside the court and obtained by POLITICO.”
Justice Alito’s opinion is a “full-throated, unflinching repudiation” according to Politico.
“Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” Alito wrote. “We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled. It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”
“This made us targets of assassination,” Alito said of the draft leak to Politico.
Earlier this year the Supreme Court issued a report on the Dobbs draft leak.
The report says the leaker could not be found and that new protocols for drafts have been put in place.
97 Supreme Court staffers were interviewed and signed sworn affidavits under penalty of perjury denying being the Dobbs draft leaker.
Justice Alito said despite this report, he likely knows who the leaker is.
Alito said the leaker’s motive was to stop the Supreme Court from overturning Roe v Wade.
The Wall Street Journal reported:
Justice Alito says the marshal “did a good job with the resources that were available to her” and agrees that the evidence was insufficient for a public accusation. “I personally have a pretty good idea who is responsible, but that’s different from the level of proof that is needed to name somebody,” he says. He’s certain about the motive: “It was a part of an effort to prevent the Dobbs draft . . . from becoming the decision of the court. And that’s how it was used for those six weeks by people on the outside—as part of the campaign to try to intimidate the court.”
That campaign included unlawful assemblies outside justices’ homes, and that wasn’t the worst of it. “Those of us who were thought to be in the majority, thought to have approved my draft opinion, were really targets of assassination,” Justice Alito says. “It was rational for people to believe that they might be able to stop the decision in Dobbs by killing one of us.” On June 8, an armed man was arrested outside the home of Justice Brett Kavanaugh; the suspect was later charged with attempted assassination and has pleaded not guilty.