Though the report stated it couldn’t determine who leaked the draft opinion that overturned Roe, it seemed to arrive at another, pretty significant conclusion without providing evidence.
The report states that “it is not possible to determine the identity of any individual who may have disclosed the document or how the draft opinion ended up with Politico.” The investigation will continue in some measure, but the fact that the court chose to release such an inconclusive report is telling about its lack of optimism about ever finding the culprit.
That said, even as the report laid out its lack of a broader conclusion, it seemed to arrive at a pretty significant, if narrower, one — however well considered. And indeed, its brief “statement of the court” leads with that apparent conclusion.
“The leak was no mere misguided attempt at protest,” the statement from the court reads in its second sentence. “It was a grave assault on the judicial process.”
The key word there is “protest.”
The most prevalent (and to our mind most plausible) theory about the leak is that it was the result of someone on the left who was unhappy with what the court was about to do. Congressional Republicans and Fox News hosts have gone as far as to state this possibility as more or less a fact.
Longtime NPR Supreme Court reporter Nina Totenberg at one point last spring labeled this the “leading theory” and “I think the only one that makes sense.” And recently a former antiabortion activist said he received details of an impending 2014 decision in advance from a conservative donor who had dined with Justice Samuel A.
