Supreme Court fails to find leaker of abortion opinion
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court said Thursday an eight-month investigation that included more than 120 interviews and revealed shortcomings in how sensitive documents are secured has failed to find who leaked a draft of the court’s opinion overturning abortion rights.
Ninety-seven employees, including the justices’ law clerks, swore under oath they did not disclose a draft of Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion that overturned Roe v. Wade, the court said.
It was unclear whether the justices themselves were questioned about the leak, which was the first time an entire opinion made its way to the public before the court was ready to announce it.
Politico published its explosive leak detailing the Alito draft in early May. Chief Justice John Roberts ordered an investigation the next day into what he termed an “egregious breach of trust.”
On Thursday, the court said its investigative team “has to date been unable to identify a person responsible by a preponderance of the evidence.”
The investigation has not come to an end, the court said. A few inquiries and the analysis of come electronic data remain.
The court said it could not rule out the opinion was inadvertently disclosed, “for example, by being left in a public space either inside or outside the building.”
While not identifying the leaker, the investigation turned up problems in the court’s internal practices, some of which were exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic and the shift to working from home.
Too many people have access to sensitive information, the court’s policies on information security are outdated and, in some cases, employees acknowledged revealing confidential information to their spouses. It was not clear from the report whether investigators talked to the justices’ spouses.
Some employees had to acknowledge in their written statements they “admitted to telling their spouses about the draft opinion or vote count,” the report said.
Investigators looked closely at connections between court employees and reporters, and they found nothing to substantiate rampant speculation on social media about the identity of the leaker.
The investigation concluded that it “is unlikely that the Court’s information technology (IT) systems were improperly accessed by a person outside the Court,” following an examination of the court’s computers, networks, printers, and available call and text logs.
The “risk of both deliberate and accidental disclosures of Court-sensitive information” grew with the coronavirus pandemic and shift to working from home, the report said. More people working from home, “as well as gaps in the Court’s security policies, created an environment where it was too easy to remove sensitive information from the building and the Court’s IT networks,” the report said.
Roberts also asked former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, himself a onetime federal judge, to assess the investigation. Chertoff, in a statement issued through the court, described it as thorough.