The Supreme Court announced Thursday that its eight-month investigation into the leak of the draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization has not yielded a culprit.
“In following up on all available leads, however, the Marshal’s team performed additional forensic analysis and conducted multiple follow-up interviews of certain employees,” the report read. “But the team has to date been unable to identify a person responsible by a preponderance of the evidence.”
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On May 5, 2022, a few days after Politico published a draft copy of the Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade, the Marshal of the Supreme Court Gail Curley launched a probe at Chief Justice John Robert’s direction. Almost 100 employees of the Court, 82 of whom had access to electronic or hard copies of the draft opinion, were interviewed, according to the report.
The marshall determined that it was unlikely that someone outside the Court sabotaged its information technology systems. All 97 employees who spoke to investigators denied leaking the document.
The report noted that the pandemic and remote-work transition created a precarious environment for potential security breaches, “increasing the risk of both deliberate and accidental disclosures of Court-sensitive information.”
The investigative team, composed of seasoned attorneys and trained federal investigators, also analyzed forensic evidence and conducted follow-up interviews, none of which pointed to a clear guilty party.
After the initial inquiry failed to prouce a suspect, the Court consulted Michael Chertoff, a judge, U.S. Attorney, and assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice, to assess the marshal’s investigation. Chertoff concluded that the investigation was thorough and could not recommend any extra steps not already undertaken or underway.
“In May 2022, this Court suffered one of the worst breaches of trust in its history,” the report added. “The leak was no mere misguided attempt at protest. It was a grave assault on the judicial process.”
In October, Justice Alito warned that the leak endangered his life and the lives of his conservative colleagues on the bench, arguing that it made them “targets for assassination.” In addition to undermining confidence in the institution, the leak put justices who were thought to be in the majority in support of overturning Roe at risk because “it gave people a rational reason to think they could prevent that from happening by killing one of us,” he said.
Justice Kavanaugh faced a threat against his life in June, when a 26-year-old California man traveled to his home intent on killing him, but was deterred by federal marshals patrolling the premises.
The accused, Nicholas Roske, said he was motivated at least partly by the premature news that the Court would reverse the federal right to abortion. At the scene in front of Kavanaugh’s house, authorities found a Glock 17 handgun with two magazines and ammunition, a tactical knife, pepper spray, zip ties, a hammer, a screwdriver, and other gear in his backpack.