None of the Supreme Court justices nor their spouses were implicated in the investigation of the leaked draft opinion that overturned Roe v. Wade— but unlike court employees who were questioned, they were not asked to sign affidavits. https://t.co/CJKxjhtF6v
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) January 20, 2023
If one of the remaining LIBERAL (honest) judges or their clerks had been responsible, the Mystery Leak would’ve been solved within twelve hours of the big reveal. So, the real question: Which one of the Far Right Wing’s hand-picked mouthpieces got ahead of themselves, and how long will it be until the truth leaks out when they can’t resist taking credit?
In the marshal’s defense putting a member of this Supreme Court under oath does not historically stop them from lying https://t.co/m3Eloc4Xvd
— Aaron (@BobbyBigWheel) January 20, 2023
The statement doesn't say what sorts of questions Curley asked the justices or say anything about their computers or phones.
— Greg Stohr (@GregStohr) January 20, 2023
Anyone notice the irony of obsessing over who broke the compact of privacy about a decision that itself broke a 50-year compact with all the women of America? Or the oddity of pretending the Justices aren’t protecting the leaker by not calling in the FBI?https://t.co/bxLKRXHOv5
— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) January 19, 2023
… In a 20-page report, the court’s marshal, Gail A. Curley, who oversaw the inquiry, said that investigators had conducted 126 formal interviews of 97 employees, all of whom had denied being the source of the leak. But several employees 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 investigation did not determine that any of those discussions led to a copy of the draft opinion becoming public, however. Investigators also found no forensic evidence of who may have leaked the opinion in examining the court’s “computer devices, networks, printers and available call and text logs,” the report said.
The findings raised the possibility that no one will be held to account for one of the most stunning breaches of secrecy in the Supreme Court’s history. The leak left the court in a state of mutual suspicion about whether a clerk or even a justice betrayed its code of silence about rulings before they are announced.
The inconclusive report comes as opinion polls have shown weakened trust that the court is motivated by the law rather than by politics, with a conservative supermajority that has steadily moved to the right in the most consequential cases…
Supreme Court's inability to find the leaker adds to its credibility problems via @JoanBiskupic https://t.co/ZscMbl2NJu
— Ryan Struyk (@ryanstruyk) January 20, 2023
A timeless quote from American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson…
… which I first ran across while reading another renowned American philosopher, writing during the previous Gilded Age.
rikyrah
Mystery, my Black azz.
They couldn’t find a way to plausibly blame a clerk of one of the left-wing judges….
So, we get this bullshyt😠
We all know that it was Alito😒😒🙄🙄
J R in WV
The unbelievable lack of honor of several “justices” of the Supreme Court is so obvious… They all declared under oath in their Senate confirmation hearings that they believed in precedent. They believed that Roe V Wade was settled law. They lied — end of story.
They should be indicted for perjury and tried in a DC court of law. Let them participate in court hearings from a jail cell.
And Kavanaugh should be investigated to see where all that money magically appeared from. Bought and paid for long ago!
Citizen Alan
@rikyrah: Disagree. It was Traitor Ginny.
Kent
The newspaper should help them out.
Hey, scoop! It was Alito who leaked to us!!
Or Ginnie Thomas!
p.a.
So what’s stopping the liberal judges from publicly saying they’ll testify under oath/sign sworn affidavits. Fuck comity. Look what’s at stake.
lgerard
Anyone who
Leaked such important
Information should be
Totally and completely
Ostracized
Damien
Sounds like we need to get Marshall’s Moe and Larry on this case.
twbrandt (formerly Tom)
You’d think there would be Alito hint, but they had to Ginni some excuse.
Omnes Omnibus
@Citizen Alan:
You are wrong.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@lgerard: Nice….
Sure Lurkalot
I agree with Rikyrah that if it was a liberal, it would be *BREAKING NEWS* and not on a Friday. So, something that rhymes with burrito. Yes, I’m hungry.
Ivan X
I firmly maintain that, specifically or vaguely anticipating the shock and blowback, the purpose of the leak was on the right, to diffuse the final ruling’s effect. Why else would the draft and the final be so similar? Let the outrage energy from the draft ferment into resignation, so that when the punch lands, you’re already tired out. (I mean, worked for me, these ops are good.)
Kent
Since this is an open thread, I gotta ask WTF has happened to the new Twitter?
I keep getting tweets in my feed to the effect of:
“You might like…”
Followed by a tweet from Ron DeSantis or Greg Abbott.
Umm no. I can guaran-damn-tee that I am NOT gonna to like., I don’t even have to read it to know I’m NOT gonna to like.
Is this some new Twitter algorithm designed to push up the numbers of Republican uber-douches like DeSantis and Abbott? Can Matt Tabbi get on that?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Sure Lurkalot:
HumboldtBlue
Finishing the first episode of Women at War, a French production that follows the lives of four women at the outbreak of WW1.
The four women come from widely varied backgrounds. There is the whore who is most assuredly a spy gathering intelligence in the brothel. The wife of the business owner and manufacturer who gets called up to serve. The Abbess of a hospital about to be overrun by the Germans in the Vosges, and a nurse on the run from Paris, accused of being a murderess and who is being chased by her own personal Inspector Javert.
En avant!
Mai Naem mobile
John Roberts is just such a worthless POS. That he couldn’t get Thomas to recuse from the TFG stuff after 2020 when Thomas was obviously on the losing end shows you the influence he has. And, ofcourse it was Scalito. Jackson, Sotomayor and Kagan need to at least test the comity stuff when they are losing on the cases that really matter.
Danielx
Why do I suspect the only reason they haven’t uncovered the dastardly leaker is because they don’t want to know?
bbleh
Aw the notion of an “investigation” into a leak from the Supreme Court, of all places, was abso-fkin-lutely GUARANTEED to end up with zero results. The whole thing — like so much else managed by Republicans — was pure performance.
And at this point it doesn’t matter much anyway. Almost nobody would change their opinion of Alito if a report pointed the finger at him, and HE certainly wouldn’t care. And more importantly, Dobbs has proven to be a pretty major disaster for the Republicans. (Not to mention a lot of women too!) Politically, this is such a nothingburger that I’m not sure there’s anything at all in the wrapper.
sdhays
@rikyrah: I get the feeling that John Roberts really thought it was a liberal clerk or Justice when the leak first came to light, but a few days later he realized that it was actually Alito, and he had already set the wheels in motion by having that hissy fit.
I really don’t understand how this is “one of the most stunning breaches of secrecy in the Supreme Court’s history” when it’s now known that Alito has been leaking shit for years. Is just because this time it was leaked to the public? To me, it’s less serious than the previous leaks since at least no one would be privileged with that secret information.
Except, of course, that John Roberts had hissy fit in public trying to distract from the reality of what the Court was preparing to do.
Wag
When will the truth leak out? Probably in just over two years when Bob Woodward’s SC book comes out.
And after the next election.
Sure Lurkalot
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Bunch of lying liars who lied to get their jobs, who believes anything they say much less opine? I hope some bulldog in the media follows up on this fake fail.
Steve in the ATL
Maybe Benoit Blanc can get to the bottom of it
sdhays
@bbleh: No one outside the Beltway (and even most people inside the Beltway) gives a shit about Supreme Court leaking. But having made stink about it and then failing to actually do anything about it will have an effect, at least on the margins, continuing to erode confidence in the Supreme Court.
bbleh
@Mai Naem mobile: Roberts imo is and always was a Made Man, and he has done some serious work advancing the agenda of the plutocratic/corporate class. That he is ambiguous about the culture-war stuff is playing to type, and that he has had the wheel grabbed increasingly often by the Crazies is the story of today’s Republican Party.
bbleh
@sdhays: I guess so, but given everything else the Supremes (or some of them) are doing to erode their own public legitimacy, I would guess this whole episode will end up mattering very little.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve in the ATL: For once, you are making sense.
UncleEbeneezer
I just can’t get worked up about this. It’s the DECISION that is the real problem. I don’t particularly care if SCOTUS leaks decisions before they are announced.
Steve in the ATL
@Omnes Omnibus: great—there goes my reputation
ColoradoGuy
Outright crooks (lying under oath to Congress) and theocratic cranks running the highest court in the land, from which there is no appeal. The public is quite aware of this, and the Court wonders why they get no respect.
Roger Moore
@Danielx:
Because you’ve been paying attention.
mrmoshpotato
@Wag: You sure Mags won’t beat him to the punch?
mrmoshpotato
@Steve in the ATL: You’ll be better off without it.
Steeplejack
I have one thing to say: C’mon, man!
Aaron Blake has a piece in the Post today, “The most intriguing line in the Supreme Court leak report” (gift link). He starts off in a milquetoast manner that made me think he was going to whitewash it, but then he zeroes in on this:
He does some hand-waving and backing and forthing and then has an “A-ha!” moment:
Bingo!
The doughty readers of the Post drag him over the coals in the comments for belatedly seeing the obvious misdirection, further pointing out that he ignores the elephant in the room: that the justices themselves were not interviewed or asked to sign an affidavit. They point out that the marshal of the court is basically in charge of the building and operational stuff and that the current marshal, Gail Curley, has little or no “investigative” experience.
Finally, I have to say that Curley’s statement today that “Yeah-huh, I did too talk to the justices” reeks of clumsy ass-covering, probably instigated by John Roberts.
The Post readers almost unanimously agree with the jackaltariat that the decision was leaked by Samuel Alito, Ginni Thomas or someone they leaked it to.
Baud
@ColoradoGuy:
Justice Dangerfield understands.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@bbleh: Roberts is one of the main villains of Ari Berman’s work, and he gutted the VRA long before trump made his pact with McConnell and Leonard Leo (edited)
different-church-lady
Thank you for coming. I’m glad all nine of you could be here. I am going to call out your names one by one. Please answer as to whether you are responsible for the leak. Roberts.”
“No”
“Kavanaugh”
“No”
“Jackson”
“No”
“Gorsuch”
“No”
“Alito”
“ABSOLUTELY NOT, AND I AM OUTRAGED THAT YOU WOULD EVEN CONSIDER ME GUILTY OF SUCH A HEINOUS CRIMES, SO STOP SAYING THAT!!!”
“Kagan”
“No…”
Jackie
@Danielx: They DO KNOW. They don’t want US to know who it is/they are.
randy khan)
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
They get to be called to testify in Jim Jordan’s hearings on who the leaker could be. The clerks for the Furious Five get to watch from home.
bbleh
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: See also Citizens United etc. etc.
MomSense
It was Alito in the cloak room with the thumb drive.
West of the Rockies
The grotesque Alito and Thomas are sure taking up a lot of space with their — what’s it called? — wide stance man splaying. They exude creepiness.
prostratedragon
Don’t recall whether I proposed “The Stripper” as Alito’s walk-in tune.
Kay
Ugh – embarrassing whitewash.
Its like they’re eroding their own credibility deliberately. They really deserve to be the laughingstock they are becoming.
Why would they give this job to someone with no experience with investigations? It’s moronic. Is there any kind of real discussion or debate? This dumb plan survived a review?
I’d bet Alito. He’s a full time political operative at this point. Not that he’ll ever be held accountable.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
Why did they even bother to issue this report? All it does is remind everyone of the fact that when the leak happened, public opinion was equally divided between Alito & Ginny Thomas, and now that everyone except the justices & their spouses have signed affidavits, public opinion has been proven correct. Let sleeping dog lie.
Kay
After ignoring the loss of womens right to bodily autonomy for 6 months the NYTimes finally paid someone to write an abortion news story – as opposed to having female volunteers provide free content with their pregnancy stories, where they plead for mercy from lawmakers.
So what’s it about? It’s a glowing portrait of anti choice activists spiking the football and celebrating pushing women back 50 years.
just a garbage media corporation
Kay
@Chacal Charles Calthrop:
Because they were hoping they would nab a liberal employee.
David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
Cui bono
Kay
I love how the justices are too good to sign a sworn statement
Dear God. Put a 15 year term in asap – these people think they’re super special
15 and done. See ya. Good luck in all your future endeavors!
different-church-lady
@Kay:
It used to be that burning in Hell wasn’t on the list of post-court destinations.
Ivan X
@Steve in the ATL: I liked Benoit Blanc until this second movie. It was atrocious. Probably the worst movie I’ve seen (that wasn’t trying to be) in the last decade.
Kay
@different-church-lady:
Really don’t understand not at least hiring a real investigator. Maybe they’re all afraid of the unhinged rage-man, Justice Alito.
Anyway – I’m glad they didn’t frame some poor (liberal) underling.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
As usual the Onion is our finest news source:https://www.theonion.com/alito-thomas-share-laugh-after-discovering-they-both-l-1850012714
Craig
@Ivan X: to each his own I guess. I really didn’t care much for Blanc in Knives Out, but enjoyed the character much more in Glass Onion.
mvr
Why choose? The problem is that the court has made it their practice to adopt right wing political positions by choosing whatever legal theory supports them, with individual justices lying about what they plan to do once on the court in pursuing that political agenda. That’s about interpreting the law to fit with an objectionable Republican set of policy goals.
Steeplejack
@Kay:
OMG, the wretched Marc A. Thiessen had a piece in the Post yesterday called “As the March for Life returns, we owe Brett Kavanaugh a debt of gratitude.” (No gift link!) He begins:
It goes downhill—steeply—from there. Ugh.
mvr
@p.a.: Well, the leak is the least of the court’s problems. So I’d sacrifice comity over something else. And only if I thought it would do something positive.
James E Powell
Seeing you happy, John Cole, makes us all feel good. Enjoy every sandwich.
mvr
So if the evidence made it 45% Ginni and 45% Alito they would not meet the preponderance standard for identifying a malefactor. In other words, there was no way they were ever going to get there given the facts and given where they were willing to go to find out.
Kay
@Steeplejack:
The conservative persecution hysteria is a mental illness. There is no group of people who spend more time huffily offended and certain that they’re powerless victims of A Woke Mob.
It really disgusts me that supposedly modern US media won’t pay female reporters to cover abortion. I don’t think women should submit those pleading “why I deserve health care”op Eds anymore – all they’re doing is supplying free content to male news executives who are using them and their intensely personal stories.
it’s a gross, sexist business that is rigidly conventional and backward. Women shouldn’t feed the beast. Fuck that. If the NYTimes wants stories about women suffering they can damn well pay women to write them.
Kay
@mvr:
I don’t think it’s Ginni. She’s not dangerous. She’s pathetic. They’re all humoring her because they live in this fucked up world of pretend like cloistered members of a religious order.
Ginni Thomas needs treatment. That’s been apparent since her bizarre phone call to the woman her husband sexually harassed. She’s off her rocker.
Another Scott
@different-church-lady:
(via nycsouthpaw)
Cheers,
Scott.
Kent
MUCH more likely scenario is that they know DAMN WELL who it was and have always known and all of this was a charade to pretend that they don’t.
bbleh
@Kay: I sorta feel the same way (shouldn’t diagnose at a distance notwithstanding) — there’s something pathetic there. But there’s an awful lot of Republican activists like that, just sayin’
bbleh
@Craig: But the CAST in Knives Out, OMG — that was what made the movie. The Blanc character was fine, and Craig was great, but it wasn’t as central. Glass Onion had some good people but alas not AS good.
mvr
@Kay: She is. And I don’t really mean to say it is 45% Ginni, though if Clarence gave it to her she might well have done it. It is just the hypothetical point. They won’t get to preponderance of the evidence unless they get about 50 percent for one particular person — a pretty high standard given the numbers. They could have 49% probability it was Alito and 2% for 24 other people and they would not reach it.
Kay
@bbleh:
I think most Republican activists behave like political operatives. Ginni Thomas is just nuts – her Right wingerness could be any other obsession, like having 37 cats or thinking cell phones are impacting her brain waves.
I listened to a long interview with Anita Hill a couple of years ago. The contrast between her calm recitation of her story and the insane Clarence and Ginni Thomas is just jarring.
one of those three people is credible and it is not Clarence or Ginni Thomas. Anita Hill should have gotten the job. She has the advantage of not being nuts.
piratedan
@Kay: imho they’re just a bunch of infantile babies who keep looking for affirmation.
Sure some of them lied in the Senate hearings to get the job… wasn’t that clever? My goodness, you took us at face value? You didn’t believe the bullshit decision that they pulled outta their collective asses dressed as legal opinion? How dare you disrespect this court, this institution that we lied our way into controlling with these hack opinions!
these stiffs still want to be POPULAR! They want to be RESPECTED!
but they are unwilling to allow that being respected means doing deeds and exhibiting behavior that is worthy of respect… being popular means going along with the majority and agreeing with what most people believe…
Comes part and parcel with imposing their beliefs on others with some hypocritical ethos and a complete lack of morals and wanting to be called… good.
Another Scott
@Kent: Yup.
Liz Dye at Wonkette:
Roberts almost certainly knew who the leaker was before he started this charade.
Cheers,
Scott.
mrmoshpotato
@Ivan X:
Weird way to say you liked the character in the first movie, but not the second.
mrmoshpotato
@Kay:
And going on undiagnosed for 40+ years in some people.
TriassicSands
Does it really matter at this point who leaked the Dobbs draft? I don’t think any of us know any of the justices well enough (except Thomas — thoroughly corrupt — and Alito — a nasty, power-hungry, religious fanatic) to know for certain who would want the draft leaked.
There is certainly adequate reason to believe it was Alito, but on the other hand, what about Sotomayor. Of the the non-fascists, she seems like the most outspoken, most offended (with good reason) by the right wingers, and probably the one most likely to want the content of the Dobbs draft made public before the final decision was issued so that sane Americans could publicly show their outrage. Although there was no plausible chance that a radical like Alito would be influenced by protests, there could have been a faint hope for something less than total destruction of Roe. Given his odious extremism, and nasty disposition, Alito probably enjoys left-wing outrage, since he knows it is impotent concerning the Court’s decisions. Still, Alito knew he was going to get what he wanted, so there was no compelling reason for him to do anything but wait for the time when he could shove his decision down the throats of the majority of Americans. I don’t doubt he could and would do it if it suited his purposes.
This court is so far beyond the pale that it doesn’t surprise me at all if justices are abandoning the norms of the old days. The fascists have already dynamited the foundations of the court — using the utterly phony pretense of originalism to justify their decisions, abandoned any and all respect for stare decisis, destroyed the separation of Church and State in their drive to create a Christian Nationalist country, and succumbed to the temptation to use their power to impose their own personal preferences on the entire country regardless of the content of the Constitution. The three non-fascist justices have no real power and no effective way to fight back. Issuing scathing disagreements with the extremists’ decisions is important, but that importance is more for the future than for the present. When one side of the SCOTUS has become utterly corrupt, I can imagine Sotomayor, whose outspoken disgust with the extremists is something I respect, leaking the draft to try to create pressure on Alito and his fellow theocrats. Not that there would be any likelihood of getting Alito to temper his views or decision.
In the end, the leaking of the Dobb’s draft changed nothing. The Court’s norms are constantly being trashed by the radicals and they know they are impervious to criticism or disagreement. If Sotomayor was the person who leaked the draft, I can understand why she did it and I have no criticism of her at all.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Me too. I have no real memory of him in Knives Out, that was Christopher Plummer’s movie IMHO and the rest of the cast were… in it.
I thought Glass Onion was a much better movie, Craig was better, and Janelle Monae pretty much walked away with it. Though Kate Hudson and Katherine Hahn were good too.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Steve in the ATL: Honestly, I’d feel better if Leverage Consulting & Associates were on the case.
Barry
@Kent: “Since this is an open thread, I gotta ask WTF has happened to the new Twitter?”
musk turned Twitter into a fascist sewage swamp.
Another Scott
@TriassicSands: My (possibly faulty) recollection of the time was that the decision draft was leaked to prevent the supposedly wobbly moderate traditional stare decisis and settled law Roberts from changing his vote on Dobbs before it was actually announced. The actual sensible liberals had no power to affect anything in the decision.
But, you (and everyone) are right that what matters is that they took away an important right, not who talked to whom and gave them a stack of paper.
Eyes on the prizes.
Grr…,
Scott.
Princess
@Kay: I agree. It’s not Ginni. (And if it were, it still would not be Ginni. It would be Thomas. He’s the one on the court, not her, and telling her would be the leak). The Never-Trumpers all insist it’s her because they want to protect Alito, who did it. It’s a tell.
oldster
The “spoons” line — Ralph Waldo Emerson was riffing on Dr. Johnson from Boswell’s Life of Johnson.
14 July, 1762
I [Boswell] added, that the same person maintained that there was no distinction between virtue and vice. JOHNSON. ‘Why, Sir, if the fellow does not think as he speaks, he is lying; and I see not what honour he can propose to himself from having the character of a liar. But if he does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why, Sir, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons.’
Emerson did not intend to plagiarize, he simply assumed his audience would recognize the well-known source.
Denali5
@Kent,
I left Twitter when Elon was pushing his agenda. I miss the format and some of the posters, but I won’t go back. I could have blocked Musk, but it was unsettling so know that a new owner could have such an effect. I am having the same disappointments at the NYT and the Washington Post. Living in an oligarchy has its costs.
Tony G
@Damien: Shemp is the man for the job.
Chief Oshkosh
@bbleh: I disagree that none of this matters. This is another significant marker that there are no consequences for the elite, and especially the rightwing elite. The existence of that dynamic may not surprise anyone here, but it just adds to the general erosion of the social contract. This trajectory leads to extrajudicial solutions, often violence. None of that is good.
Miss Bianca
@Damien: I wondered whether I was the only one who was going to make a Three Stooges joke!
Ella in New Mexico
Everyone who thinks it was a single Justice (Alito!!) is on the wrong track.
It was a conspiracy of more than one (and likely at least one of their spouses or close personal confidants) to pressure Chief Roberts and any possible wobblers like Gorsuch. “See what we’re willing to do, you Impotent Apostate?” And out it went through the hands of someone in one of their affiliated charismatic cults/organizations supporting the extreme Catholic takeover of SCOTUS.
Based on that, Alito, Thomas, and Barrett (she is a Handmaiden so do we count her as a Justice in this conspiracy or a dutiful wife? Both?) are my picks.
Tenar Arha
@Kent: did you ever add to your mute list a bunch of terms like “suggest_activity_tweet” “suggest_who_to_follow”
etc? I’ll try to round up a link to the rest. It made my TL a lot easier to read when I added them.
here’s link I hope it helps.No way to solve the auto re-set between tabs of “For you” from “following” though, ugh
WaterGirl
@Wag: That would be funny if it wasn’t so very sad.
The Lodger
Consider that the Supreme Court is ultimately the highest level of QA for the results of every criminal investigation in the US. And they let themselves get away with this bullshit.