Inside Politico’s historic, controversial Supreme Court scoop
Politico’s top editors and executives spent Sunday morning sipping Bloody Marys and nibbling bite-size waffles and Wiener schnitzel as they chatted with top Washington officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, at an annual brunch hosted at the opulent Georgetown home of Robert Allbritton, a Politico founder.
What wasn’t discussed: Politico was onto a giant scoop, one that would rattle the country fewer than 36 hours later.
By the time of the brunch, Politico was working on a story about a leaked draft opinion from the Supreme Court that would strike down Roe v. Wade, according to two people with knowledge of the process inside the newsroom. Awareness of the document and the article about it was contained to a very small group.
The article, published Monday night, immediately put Roe v. Wade and the direction of the court front and center in the nation’s political debate. But it also put a spotlight on Politico, an organization that has reshaped coverage of Washington with its blanket reporting on all things politics since it was founded 15 years ago.
The news organization is now at the center of a debate about who leaked the document and why, including rampant speculation about the motives of Politico’s sources. It is extremely rare for an important draft opinion inside the Supreme Court to leak to the press.
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court confirmed that the draft opinion was authentic. Chief Justice John Roberts said in a statement that he had directed the marshal of the court to investigate the leak, which he described as “a singular and egregious breach” of trust.
Politico has said little about the reporting behind the article, written by reporters Josh Gerstein and Alexander Ward, or deliberations before publication. Its spokesperson declined to comment for this article. Politico’s editor-inchief, Matthew Kaminski, has said that he would let the article speak for itself. The article said that the document was provided by “a person familiar with the court’s proceedings,” and that the person had provided additional details that helped authenticate the document, but it didn’t say what those details were.
In the hours before publishing the article, Kaminski and Politico’s executive editor, Dafna Linzer, called senior editors to let them know the article was coming and that a memo about it would go out to the newsroom, according to one of the people with knowledge of the process.
Moments after publishing the article, Kaminski and Linzer alerted the newsroom in an email, defending their decisions.
“After an extensive review process, we are confident of the authenticity of the draft,” they wrote. “This unprecedented view into the justices’ deliberations is plainly news of great public interest.”
News organizations around the world, including The New York Times and The Associated
Press, quickly followed Politico’s reporting. In an interview with Gerstein on “The Rachel Maddow Show” Monday evening, Maddow told Gerstein that he would “always in your entire life be the reporter that broke this story.”
Although the views of individual justices have occasionally been disclosed publicly before the Supreme Court has announced a decision, the leak of an important draft opinion is unusual, said Lucas Powe, a professor of law at the University of Texas at Austin, and a former Supreme Court law clerk who has been studying the high court for more than 50 years.