A new report alleges someone leaked Justice Samuel Alito's draft opinion in Dobbs to kill Chief Justice John Roberts' effort to convince one or more conservative justices to refrain from fully dismantling Roe v. Wade. (RELATED: Leftist Extremists Tweet About Paying Bounties for Sightings of Conservative Supreme Court Justices)
The account, from CNN legal analyst & Supreme Court biographer Joan Biskupic, states that Roberts' main target, Justice Brett Kavanaugh never appeared overly receptive to the chief justice's entreaties.
Nonetheless, justices and their staff on both sides watched intensely — conservatives especially so.
Biskupic notes, “Multiple sources told CNN that Roberts' overtures this spring, particularly to Kavanaugh, raised fears among conservatives and hope among liberals that the chief could change the outcome in the most closely watched case in decades. Once the draft was published by Politico, conservatives pressed their colleagues to try to hasten release of the final decision, lest anything suddenly threaten their majority. Roberts' persuasive efforts, difficult even from the start, were thwarted by the sudden public nature of the state of play. He can usually work in private, seeking and offering concessions, without anyone beyond the Court knowing how he or other individual justices have voted or what they may be writing. Kavanaugh had indicated, during December oral arguments, that he wanted to overturn Roe, and CNN learned that he voted that way in a private justices' conference session soon afterward. But the 2018 appointee of former President Donald Trump, who had been confirmed by the Senate only after expressing respect for Roe, has wavered in the past and been open to Roberts' persuasion.”
Everything changed after Politico published Alito's draft opinion on May 2. Roberts' odds of success plummeted from unlikely to almost hopeless, as no one wanted to be seen as succumbing to public pressure. (RELATED: Why is the Biden Justice Department Silent as Liberals Threaten to Kill Supreme Court Justices? Ted Cruz Wants Answers)
Rather than persuade conservatives to change their minds, the leak had the opposite effect.
Today's report raises new questions about the identity and motivations of the leaker, as Hot Air's Allahpundit notes:
It's possible that CNN is being fed a line of bull by self-interested sources, of course. For instance, maybe people sympathetic to Roberts want it known for legacy purposes that he fought like a champ for precedent and might have succeeded if not for the rascally leaker who foiled his efforts with foul play.
Or, more deviously, maybe this was leaked by pro-choicers — possibly the leaker themselves — to throw investigators off the scent. It was just yesterday that the AP checked in with the Court to see how the probe was going, renewing public attention to the matter. Maybe the leaker is in fact a liberal and had no idea that Roberts was still lobbying Kavanaugh to switch his vote when he or she opted to share the draft opinion with Politico out of pure “burn it all down” rage. In fact, maybe the leak investigation is starting to get close to them, risking exposure. In which case they'd have an incentive to offer Biskupic some nonsense about how the leak thwarted Roberts's effort to flip Kavanaugh, creating a phony conservative motive to have shared the opinion with Politico and obscuring the actual liberal one.
Still, there's that small matter of the WSJ editorial on April 27. The Journal editorial board is conservative and it was conservatives inside the Court who had a reason to expose Roberts's machinations to upset the anti-Roe majority, not liberals. That lines up with Biskupic's report today.
Here she is this morning on CNN relaying what her sources have told her. She says Court employees are increasingly skeptical that the leaker will ever be found.
As noted above, the Associated Press recently chronicled all that's known about the investigation ordered by Roberts into the unprecedented violation of the court's secretive deliberation process.
Less than 24 hours after the news broke, Roberts ordered an investigation. Since then, we've heard precisely nothing. It's not even clear if an investigation is still ongoing.
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Roberts is a corrupt fraud. He’s Epstein Island regular. He is suppressing list.
Then WHO made leak?? Or was there 1??
This ‘report’ hasn’t convinced me that this is anything more than gossip or an intentionally made up story. The fact that they haven’t caught and charged the person who leaked the draft decision trumps all of this. With a relatively small defined list of people who had access to that draft and today’s technology, it really shouldn’t have taken this long to identify who released the draft. Once that person is identified, who or what motivated them to do this would come out quickly.
Exactly!
I was going to write something similar but sure glad that I eyeballed your spot-on comment beforehand.
It depends on how clever the leaker was. An unknown person (who I suspect was a college official) once leaked a confidential personnel document to me by leaving it on the floor under a computer terminal where I would find it – and I held that document quietly for 2 months and then made good use of that document once the next semester started. Something similar could have happened here. What if that draft printout was “inadvertently” left somewhere where someone would find it?
The justice’s voted just like they were suppose to vote. Roberts hasn’t shown much as a leader since he’s been on the court. What needs to be done now is to kill off those stupid left wing polls calling for the impeachment of justice Thomas. If any of the justices need removed it’s those two left wing radicals that the America hating obama managed to get approved. They represent a real danger to our republic.
He’s NOT a leader unless you want to go in the WRONG direction. “Rewriting” Obamacare so it could go into effect said it all!
And look how nothing happened with the phony FISA applications, as Roberts is in charge of those justices. Why have there been no repercussions for lying on the forms?
If this is true — roberts should have his treasonous a** kicked off the supreme court. He seems to be a bought and paid for leftist/libtard/communist/ dirtbag. He certainly doesn’t belong in the position he is in.
You just need to look at the difference two political parties and how they each view the U.S. Constitution as well as the laws that are derived from the same document. The Democrats think and believe that the Constitution is but a guideline that should be interpreted in the context of public opinion that they can sway. Basically a form of “mob rule”. Now if one of their agenda items in under threat, how quickly to they use parts of the Constitution to defend the attacks by stretching its words way past what their actual meaning was. The Republican Party treats the Constitution as a work of art and fairness written by our Founding Fathers over 236 years ago. In doing this, they allowed for change but only if the super majority of the populations in each state voted to ratify the changes. The Republicans also called Conservatives revers the Constitution as well as all of the laws that are derived from it. It must be followed word for word and must be interpreted by the exact meaning of each word. This Constitution is revered by the entire world as one of the best documents ever written.These are the rules and laws that everybody in the United States of America must follow to the letter. The Bill of Rights gives the people protection from the government from tyrannical decisions and actions. The Democrat Party continuously tries to limit or deny these rights and protections as they seek dictatorial power over the people as demonstrated by their recent behaviors based on corruption, propaganda, as well as deception. They even violated the Constitution’s definition of “ELECTION DAY” by surreptitiously adding 980,000 forged and counterfeit Biden ballots to the count for the full week after the election was over at Midnight of “ELECTION DAY”, when the election was over and all counting ceased. The Democrat Party violated the Constitutional law and 522 U.S. to fraudulently elect their candidate over the real legal winner PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP. They are now running a conspiratorial cover-up of massive proportions to keep this truth from the public.