Tag Archives: leaked draft

Another Story The Mainstream Media Is Hoping We Will Forget

Posted on by

On Tuesday, Townhall posted an article with the following headline, “Will America Ever Find Out Who the Supreme Court Leaker Is?” That is a very good question. Each Justice is allowed four law clerks, and there is a support staff. However, the number of people who would have had access to a draft of a brief would be very limited. We really should know by now who leaked, and the person who leaked should be facing severe consequences. It is odd that we don’t know.

The article reports:

Last Thursday, the Supreme Court officially ended its term after releasing final opinions on a number of cases. 

But the Supreme Court still hasn’t revealed who leaked the draft opinion of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization at the beginning of May. 

…The leak not only rocked the Supreme Court, where trust and confidentiality are crucial, but prompted violent pro-abortion activists to launch a number of attacks on crisis pregnancy centers and illegally converge on the homes of conservative justices. Democrats have called for court-packing and even the elimination of the Supreme Court. Last week, President Joe Biden attacked justices on foreign soil.

…On June 24, the Court released the final opinion on Dobbs. It was largely unchanged and was nearly identical to the leaked draft opinion. The Department of Justice has expressed little interest in exploring potential criminal consequences for the leaker. 

I can only assume that the leak came from the political left–the Justice Department does not seem to have prioritized the case (as I believe they would have if the leak came from the right). I suspect the media (and the Biden administration) are simply hoping that we will forget about the entire matter by the end of summer and it will never be brought up again. I really think that if the Republicans take Congress in the mid-terms, they have some serious investigating to do in a lot of areas.

The Impact Of The Leak

Posted on by

On Saturday, NewsMax posted an article featuring Justice Clarence Thomas’ comments about the leak of the Supreme Court draft of the abortion decision. Notice that somehow the leaker has not yet been identified.

The article reports:

Justice Clarence Thomas says the Supreme Court has been changed by the shocking leak of a draft opinion earlier this month. The opinion suggests the court is poised to overturn the right to an abortion recognized nearly 50 years ago in Roe v. Wade.

The conservative Thomas, who joined the court in 1991 and has long called for Roe v. Wade to be overturned, described the leak as an unthinkable breach of trust.

“When you lose that trust, especially in the institution that I’m in, it changes the institution fundamentally. You begin to look over your shoulder. It’s like kind of an infidelity that you can explain it, but you can’t undo it,” he said while speaking at a conference Friday evening in Dallas.

…Thomas, a nominee of President George H.W. Bush, said it was beyond “anyone’s imagination” before the May 2 leak of the opinion to Politico that even a line of a draft opinion would be released in advance, much less an entire draft that runs nearly 100 pages. Politico has also reported that in addition to Thomas, conservative justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett had voted with the draft opinion’s author, Samuel Alito, to overrule Roe v. Wade and a 1992 decision, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, that affirmed Roe’s finding of a constitutional right to abortion.

Thomas said that previously, “if someone said that one line of one opinion” would be leaked, the response would have been: “Oh, that’s impossible. No one would ever do that.”

“Now that trust or that belief is gone forever,” Thomas said at the Old Parkland Conference, which describes itself as a conference “to discuss alternative proven approaches to tackling the challenges facing Black Americans today.”

There is a need for confidentiality in Supreme Court negotiations and drafts. Justices need to be free to offer opinions, popular or unpopular, to reach a consensus on a decision. Knowing that drafts or notes from these deliberations are subject to being leaked could seriously impact the debates needed to rule on an issue. It bothers me that no one has yet been held responsible for the leak (only a small number of people had access to the draft), and the news reports do not see to be interested in finding out who the leaker is. This leak needs to be dealt with quickly and strongly in order to prevent future leaks.