Justice Samuel Alito, talking about the unprecedented draft opinion leak, said that he has a ‘pretty good idea’ on who was behind it.
In May 2022, Politico published a leaked draft of the majority opinion by Alito when abortion rights were overturned by the Supreme Court.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Alito said that he has a “pretty good idea” who was responsible for the disclosure. He suggested that it was someone who opposed reversing the Roe v. Wade precedent.
“That’s infuriating to me. 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,” Alito said.
The Supreme Court in January issued an investigative report saying that it is yet to determine who leaked a draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade. At least 90 people had access to the document at one point.
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The court said that the team “has to date been unable to identify a person responsible by a preponderance of the evidence.” It ruled the possibility of a computer hack. Investigators said that they conducted 126 formal interviews of 97 employees.
They also conducted a fingerprint analysis and determined that it “looked closely into any connections between employees and reporters,” and “especially scrutinized any contacts with anyone associated with Politico.”
Alito, talking to the Journal, praised the marshal, saying she did a good job with the resources that were available to her.
“The idea has always been that judges are not supposed to respond to criticisms, but if the courts are being unfairly attacked, the organized bar will come to their defense,” he said.
“If anything, they’ve participated to some degree in these attacks.”
