The Department of Justice is pursuing a criminal investigation into the individual(s) responsible for leaking the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, according to a new report.
The New York Times first reported on the probe’s existence on Thursday, with Fox News later reporting similar findings. Unnamed sources told the Times that the inquiry is being spearheaded by U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro’s office and “has ramped up in recent weeks as prosecutors have sent grand jury subpoenas for testimony and sought information from people who worked at the court at the time of the leaks.”
The infamous leak became known in early May 2022 after left-wing Politico published a draft of the Dobbs majority opinion. That draft, which was very similar to the court’s final opinion, overturned Roe v. Wade (1973), which held that the Constitution guaranteed a made-up “right” to abortion.
Chief Justice John Roberts subsequently ordered Supreme Court Marshal Gail Curley to conduct an internal investigation into the leak. That inquiry proved unsuccessful in identifying the individual(s) responsible, with the final 2023 report concluding, “At this time, by a preponderance of the evidence standard, it is not possible to determine the identity of any individual who may have disclosed the document or how the draft opinion ended up with Politico.”
The leak ultimately produced damaging consequences for the high court.
Federalist Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway reported in Alito how it “destroyed the intimacy and trust that enable the Court to operate effectively.” More to the point, it also endangered the lives of the conservative justices in the Dobbs majority.
Left-wing anarchists descended on the conservative justices’ private homes in an attempt to intimidate them into changing their votes in the case. Despite the apparent violation of federal law, the Biden administration declined to prosecute the alleged lawbreakers and encouraged them to continue their demonstrations.
Hemingway also reported on how justices endured a wave of threats against their lives following the leak. While Justice Samuel Alito and his family “were moved to a secure location,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett “had to put on a bulletproof vest in front of her children, most of whom still lived at home.”
The fallout from the leak culminated in a man attempting to assassinate Justice Brett Kavanaugh at his home, where he lived with his family. The would-be killer has since received a light sentence from a Biden-appointed federal judge.
Despite these threats against the conservative justices’ lives, Hemingway revealed in Alito how the liberal justices rejected requests from their colleagues to quickly finish their Dobbs dissent so that the decision could be released and the threats would subside. In fact, the court’s Democrat appointees did the opposite by slow-walking their dissent while their colleagues’ lives were under siege.
Leftist threats against the high court’s conservative justices have only continued in the years since the leak.
The Supreme Court’s inability to identify the individual(s) responsible for slipping the Dobbs opinion to Politico has seemingly prompted additional leaks at the high court. The New York Times obtained and published a series of internal 2016 memos from the justices earlier this year.
Thursday’s report comes a month after Alito told Fox News’ Shannon Bream that he has “an opinion” on who leaked the Dobbs draft, but that “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 justice issued similar remarks during a 2023 interview.
