As everyone knows, a nearly word-for-word copy of the Dodds case, overruling Roe leaked out to the public about two months prior to the official release. (The one in which Alito began by stating that Roe was “egregiously decided from the start,” aren’t we lucky to have a justice that is so much smarter than every justice since then?) Weirdly, of course – it must be a coincidence Alito has been accused of leaking the Hobby Lobby decision (though not the actual copy of the case). I know where my investigation would start.
But we don’t know and will likely never know because of the entire inept “self-investigation” by the SCOTUS. Interestingly, every employee with access to the opinion (Which excludes most people who work in the building) were asked to sign an oath that they did not leak the ruling. Every employee did. The key word is “employee,” because the only people who were not asked to sign an oath were the justices themselves. A justice would go to jail… perhaps threatening a super majority, if one wants to be conspiratorial.
But the Atlantic has an article on the investigation that demonstrates all the things wrong with the investigation, written by someone who has investigated a lot of leaks, someone at DOJ and DoD. According to Glenn Fine:
The first problem in the Court’s leak investigation was whom the Court asked to conduct it. The marshal of the Court, Gail A. Curley, is responsible for overseeing the Supreme Court building’s operations, providing security for the justices and the building, disbursing payrolls, and managing the courtroom, including calling it to order. Curley is a former Army lawyer who does not have experience or expertise in conducting this type of complex investigation.
Even more problematic, the marshal did not have the necessary independence to conduct the investigation. In essence, she was asked to investigate her bosses, the justices, who are in the universe of potential leakers. They supervise her and can fire her. She was conflicted from the start. That is no reflection on Curley or her integrity. Any marshal would have been placed in the same position.
This is exactly why the Inspector General’s office for every department is outside the Department. It is cut off from fraternizing with people inside DOJ or DoD, just like “internal affairs in a major city police department. Their offices are not even in the same building.
The second problem was how the investigation was conducted. According to the report itself, the probe focused on Court personnel—law clerks and permanent employees, who were intensively interrogated. They were required to sign notarized affidavits. Their personal cellphones were scrutinized. They were questioned as to whether they had talked about Court decisions with anyone, including their spouses, in the Dobbs case or other cases, prior to public release. According to the report, follow-up was pursued on leads relating to the clerks and employees.
The investigation did not treat the justices in the same way. When the report was issued, whether they had even been interviewed was not clear. It makes no mention of investigating the justices at all.
How fascinating? We are supposed to believe that the most likely candidates to leak the case were young lawyers starting out the most promising life imaginable (SCOTUS clerks can write their own ticket. And they’d put it ALL at risk to get an opinion out two months early? While at the same time, the people “above reproach,” the justices themselves, who won’t lose their job without a massive, massive fight, are left completely uninvestigated.
The very first people that ANY law firm or accounting firm asked to investigate (A normal request when big issues are at stake) would request were the cell phones of all justices. They looked at everyone else’s cell phones and came up with nothing, which leaves nine possibilities – because that opinion got into Politico’s hands somehow, and they didn’t just happen to pass each other by chance.
If you gave me an offer of a bet, “Justice Alito versus the field, meaning anyone else in the SCOTUS building,” I’d take Alito in a heartbeat.
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[email protected], @JasonMiciak, SUBSTACK: MUCH LEFT ADO
If they didn’t have hypocrisy, they’d have no moral values at all.
As I have pointed out in numerous phone interactions with the DOJ, at both the state and federal level, it isn’t pot smokers undermining respect for the law, although, as political prisoners in the ‘land of the free’, they have reason to shoot the middle finger to the hypocrisy of the law; nope, it’s YOU folks in power who are responsible. When you back hypocrisy with guns, not truth, you are now the problem. Then you expect the rest of us to respect your evil. All I can say is fuck you and the horse you rode in on. I never expected they would be investigated after watching the belligerent drunk/rapist commit perjury and then be placed in a lifetime appointment to MAKE THE GODDAMN LAWS FOR THE REST OF US! Again I raise my middle finger.
Alito and/or Thomas.
IF this current congress wants to actually accomplish anything, and it is a toss-up whether the republicans wish to do so or not, the one thing that would get bi-partisan support would be an ethics law for the damned s.c. What we have now is utter bullshit.
I have held from the beginning that the either the leak came directly from Alito himself or at his direction from an anonymous staff member. Either way, I have no doubt he was behind the whole thing. He is that arrogant.