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Supreme Court leaker mystery deepens in 24-hours since Roe v. Wade draft came out: analysis
May 3, 2022 9:47PM ET
Official White House photo by Andrea Hanks.
The source for Politico's bombshell report on a draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade is drawing increased scrutiny after Chief Justice John Roberts announced an investigation.
On Monday evening, Politico reporters Josh Gerstein and Alexander Ward published their bombshell report under the headline, "Supreme Court has voted to overturn abortion rights, draft opinion shows."
On Tuesday, MSNBC anchor Chris Hayes noted that he initially assumed that the leak came from a clerk for a liberal justice.
Hayes noted a theory laid out by Yale Law School Prof. Amy Kapczynski, who clerked Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Stephen G. Breyer.
"I clerked at the Supreme Court. Last night, I assumed a liberal clerk leaked the draft opinion overturning Roe. Now I think MUCH more likely it was leaked by a conservative fanatically committed to every word of Alito’s monstrous opinion," Kapczynski wrote in a Twitter thread.
"Timing: This draft was circulated in Feb. If a liberal was mad about it, why wait until April to send it to Politico? The op will be out in June. What are the benefits of releasing it early? And a BIG downside – the focus on the leak itself instead of the opinion," she explained. "If you work inside the Court, you know that the most concrete impact of the leak is to lock in this opinion essentially as is. Any edits at this point reveal jockeying between Justices, undermine the majority, and Court itself. Embarassing to the majority."
"Liberals have lived for years trying to eke out a sentence here or there in SCOTUS opinions to make these conservative decisions less terrible. Why leak something and undermine that whole strategy?" she asked. "Far and away most likely impact of the leaked draft is that it locks in 5 votes for this opinion, essentially without edits. Who would want that?"
"Leaking is much more of the style of conservatives right now. Think about what Justice Thomas is doing as a model for a clerk here – making a mockery of the Court’s recusal rules re. his wife’s role in the Jan 6 coup attempts.," she explained. "Occam's razor. It just makes sense."
Hayes offered his analysis.
"If this opinion is issued as it's currently written, it would jeopardize all sorts of other issues — or point to the opening of those up. Whoever leaked this opinion, whether in opposition or support of it, wanted the world to see just how extreme it is," he concluded.
Watch the segment below or at this link:
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