The Supreme Court said Thursday it has not determined who leaked a draft of the court’s opinion overturning abortion rights.
Last May, according to the Associated Press, Politico published a leaked document labeled a “1st Draft” of the “Opinion of the Court” in a case challenging Mississippi’s ban on abortion after 15 weeks, a case known as Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
“Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” the draft opinion stated. It was signed by Justice Samuel Alito, a member of the court’s 6-3 conservative majority who was appointed by former President George W. Bush.
In a statement soon after, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. confirmed the authenticity of the draft opinion but said it did not represent the final version and announced an investigation.
The Supreme Court, as it released Marshal Gail A. Curley’s 20-page report on the probe Thursday, said, “In following up on all available leads … the Marshal’s team performed additional forensic analysis and conducted multiple follow-up interviews of certain employees,”
Curley noted that “the investigation has determined that it is highly unlikely that the Court’s information technology (IT) systems were improperly accessed by a person outside the court,” reports CNBC News.
She also said that investigators had conducted 126 formal interviews with 97 employees, all of whom had denied being the source of the leak. But several employees had to change their written statements after they acknowledged that they had told their spouses or partners about the draft opinion and the vote count in violation of the court’s confidentiality rules, the report said.
The report said the marshal’s office would investigate any new information that arose, and it made several recommendations for improving security practices. But it conveyed the distinct impression that there were enough holes in the system that the mystery of who leaked the opinion may never be solved.
“If a court employee disclosed the draft opinion, that person brazenly violated a system that was built fundamentally on trust with limited safeguards to regulate and constrain access to very sensitive information,” the report said, reports the New York Times.
