The reason we don't yet know who leaked Alito's draft opinion might speak volumes!

[skip fox]

The leaked draft by Alito's striking down Roe v. Wade occurred on the second of May. John Roberts ordered the Marshal of the Court to begin an internal investigation of the leak the next day, which is 18 days ago.

Why have we heard nothing? The pool of possible leakers is relatively small. Are the investigators inept? Or do they know or highly suspect who the leaker is and refuse to announce it?

What person would they hesitate to name? One of the Justices? The spouse of a Justice?

My guess is Ginni Thomas and I don't think she'll be named until next Feb., after Clarence resigns from the SC which is the only thing he can do when we discover his wife was the leaker. (He'll wait until next Feb. hoping the Republicans will win the majority of the Senate, realizing McConnell will refuse a Senate vote on a Biden nominee.)

[Lovie777]

1. RWers stopped yelling about the leak . . .

hummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

[intheflow]

5. Yeah, that was rather sudden, wasn'tit?

For a week it was all "The integrity of the court is compromised!" and now they're mute on the entire matter. The switch from leak to baby formula was fast enough to cause whiplash.

[Effete Snob]

2. When did Roberts say they would announce the result?

If they found out, why would we even know?

Personnel matters in ordinary federal agencies are not usually public information, so what I the basis for expecting this one would be?

[Irish_Dem]

3. If the leaker was a Dem, the name and address would be make public immediately.

[2naSalit]

4. +1

A tattletale sign.

[exboyfil]

6. Time for Congress to get involved?

Especially if the Dems have a heads up that it is someone from the conservative side. I don't see why you don't take advantage of it now.

[Hoyt]

7. Sorry, duplicate.

[Hoyt]

8. Doesn't really matter who leaked it, it's not a crime and was a good thing to get it out when

there is some chance -- if small -- that the final ruling will not completely overturn Roe.

If the leaker thought it would hold the 5 justices to Alito's medieval opinion, I'm not sure it worked. We'll know within a month, though.

[Novara]

9. Tell me how Ginni Thomas got her hands on the text of the draft, please

Is it common practices for spouses of justices to be issued copies of the SCOTUS' work products, including draft decisions? I think not.

Lots of people throwing around potential leakers but there isn't much substance there.

And who cares, anyway?

[Xoan]

10. Thomas brings stuff HOME.

[Novara]

11. Do you know this for a fact?

[PurgedVoter]

17. Really?

Have you been following the this story, or do you have a good reason to trust Thomas family?

If you have faith that Clarence Thomas follows protocol, probably a bit more reading would be a good thing to do, but as you said, you don't really care about this.
Most of the rest of us in this discussion do care about this. That is why this discussion has replies.

The job of a Supreme Court justice, I suspect requires a lot of reading. Not all of that would be inside his work office and I don't think there are any laws that would keep Clarence from taking home what he wanted to take home.
I doubt he was able to keep Ginni out of his papers while he was in the hospital and I don't think he has real strong control over his wife. If he does, then he is an even worse activist, radical, conservative monster than I think he is.

If you don't think Ginni isn't the type to do this sort of thing, I would also like to know why. We are speculating here and using our best logic to guess. But if you have inside information on the family dynamic of the Thomas household, I can understand your wanting to keep that connection on the down low. Still we would love to have some clue as to why they can be trusted so thoroughly.

[Novara]

21. Proof?

It's awfully far-fetched to assume that spouses of justices routinely get their hands on the SCOTUS' written draft opinions, especially draft opinions written by other justices.

I know people have it in for Ginni Thomas, and justifiably so, but I doubt that she somehow got a copy of the draft opinion (that Clarence was not even writing) and decided to leak it to the public for shits and grins. Alito was writing the draft opinion, not her husband.

Tell me this: how does it benefit HER or her husband to leak Alito's draft, even supposing she somehow had a copy of Alito's draft?

[gldstwmn]

23. Yes. It was mentioned in the article about his hospitalization.

[skip fox]

13. Who cares? We should all care about people destroying norms and laws.

If it was Ginni, we need to further discredit her.

If it was a liberal justice's clerk, we should also care.

If we don't, it will be an invitation for more, and if there is one thing we don't need it is more of the same, the same lawlessness, the same replacement of election officials, the same denials of climate change, etc.

[Patterson]

19. Clarence was in the hospital.

[dawg]

12. Ginni Thomas could not be the leaker.

She isn't employed by the court and therefore had no legitimate access to the document.

If she obtained and passed on the draft opinion, someone on the inside must have provided it to her. And that person is the responsible party. They should probably be removed from their position.

[skip fox]

14. Justices take work home.

At least that was reported more than once.

[dawg]

16. Then the justice who took the work home is the leaker.

If he or she failed to maintain adequate security over the doucments, then he or she is responsible for the leak.

[marieo1]

15. Laws need to change

I don't understand why there aren't laws expelling someone from the Supreme Court when they have done something against our democracy - automatically, they should not be allowed to serve in any part of our government.

[Hoyt]

18. In this case, the leak is not against Democracy. The draft decision sucks, but knowing it ahead of

final ruling at least gives people a chance to voice their opposition to Alito's medieval approach. Might not change anything, but who knows.

[msfiddlestix]

20. Right? Any leak of any justices draft opinion on a ruling which effects the lives of millions

of Americans, should be regarded as a positive in support of demoracy, imo.


The only thing this particular leak "undermined" was the timing of the ruling to made public.

well, I for one, am very happy to have learned this prior to the public announcement later in June.

If it turned out to be Clarence via Ginney, then that's a comical error I'm grateful to learn abou.

ymmv...

[Hoyt]

25. Exactly.

[Takket]

22. could Alito have leaked it?

The best place to hide something is in plain sight.

What if Alito leaked it himself? What if he is having some crisis of conscience about this? What if he wanted to see how the public would react to this atrocity? Could he be worried about his own legacy, and the judgement of history, for voting to take a fundamental right away from US citizens? Was this a trial balloon to see if he should switch his vote?

Or am I just grasping at straws hoping somehow, some way, this ruling will be changed before it comes out..........

[kentuck]

24. Republicans and their media operatives were very vocal about it for a couple of days?

They must have found out who leaked it?

[Danascot]

26. Seems likely that a repub leaked it

The.house should hold hearings on the leak for them since they were so upset about it initially. We'll get to the bottom of this travesty you assholes!