Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. says he likely knows who leaked his draft opinion overturning abortion rights, and ridiculed the suggestion it could have been a conservative clerk — saying it made the justices targets for assassination.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal published Friday, Justice Alito said the leak “created an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust. We worked through it, and last year we got our work done. This year, I think, we’re trying to get back to normal operations as much as we can. … But it was damaging.”
Last May the court had an unprecedented leak of a draft opinion in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned the landmark 1973 ruling Roe v. Wade that had given women a national right to abortion.
The leak caused protests outside the Court and at the conservative justices’ homes.
It also led to an assassination attempt on Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh.
When the final opinion was issued in June, the leak proved parallel to the final ruling, which Justice Alito authored.
Despite Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. ordering a probe into who leaked the draft opinion, no perpetrator has been identified.
“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,” Justice Alito said. “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.”
He pushed back on the suggestion from liberals that the leaker may have been a conservative clerk or court ally.
“That’s infuriating to me,” Justice Alito said. “Look, this made us targets of assassination. Would I do that to myself? Would the five of us have done that to ourselves? It’s quite implausible.”
The high court announced in January it was unable to prove who leaked the opinion.
An eight-month investigation produced leads but no clear culprit, the Court’s marshal said. The probe couldn’t rule out an inadvertent leak or a hack, though the report said there was no evidence of such a breach.
“The team has to date been unable to identify a person responsible by a preponderance of the evidence,” wrote Marshal Gail Curley, whom Justice Roberts ordered to lead the investigation.
Her report concluded that there were too many lapses and too few controls on possession of opinions that raised the risk of a leak — intentional or otherwise.
Court watchers said the early leak was unprecedented and damaged perceptions of the court.
The investigation was hobbled by limitations of the Court’s systems, which didn’t allow for complete tracking of who shared or printed copies of the draft and by work-from-home policies.
The marshal said some employees did admit to telling their spouses about the draft and the way the Court was leaning. Some of those employees said they thought that was allowed under the Court’s rules.
Other employees violated document handling rules, the marshal said.
Still, none of them was linked to the leak.
• Stephen Dinan contributed to this story.
• Alex Swoyer can be reached at aswoyer@washingtontimes.com.
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