The leak rocked the federal judiciary, the American political scene, and led to an ugly campaign to intimidate Supreme Court justices, inspiring one assassination plot that thankfully went nowhere. Chief Justice John Roberts promised an investigation to identify the leaker, and the pool of suspects seemed relatively small — the justices themselves and their clerks. Almost three months later, though, the leaker has seemingly escaped detection and punishment.
Are they even still investigating the leak? The Associated Press can’t even get an answer to that question from the court:
Less than 24 hours after the unprecedented leak of the draft opinion that overturned Roe v. Wade, Chief Justice John Roberts ordered an investigation into the “egregious breach. ”
Since then? Silence.
The Supreme Court won’t say whether it’s still investigating.
The court also won’t say whether the leaker has been identified or whether anyone has been disciplined.
Or whether an outside law firm or the FBI has been called in.
Or whether the court will ever offer an accounting of what transpired.
Or whether it has taken steps to try to prevent a repeat.
To these and other emailed questions, Supreme Court spokeswoman Patricia McCabe said by email: “The Court has no comment.”
Give credit to the AP for asking, even if they ran the non-answer in the media dead zone of a Saturday release. The last significant media interest in The Case of the Purloined Draft appears to have been almost a month ago, when Fox News noted on June 30 that the mystery continues as the Supreme Court ended its term:
The Supreme Court ended its term Thursday until October, and the identity of the individual who leaked the high court’s Roe v. Wade draft opinion still remains a mystery.
Chief Justice John Roberts on Thursday announced that the court has “acted upon all cases submitted to the Court for decision this Term,” and will be in recess from Thursday until the first Monday in October. …
At this point, there has been no update or disclosure from the Supreme Court on the identity of the individual who leaked the draft opinion.
