The head of security for the US Supreme Court said on Friday the service had no reason to suspect any of the Supreme Court Justices were behind the May 2022 leaking of a draft majority opinion to the press.
“During the course of the investigation, I spoke with each of the justices, several on multiple occasions,” US Supreme Court Marshal Gail Curley said in a statement. “The justices actively cooperated in this iterative process, asking questions and answering mine. I followed up on all credible leads, none of which implicated the justices or their spouses. On this basis, I did not believe that it was necessary to ask the justices to sign sworn affidavits.”
Her statement comes a day after saying all their leads had come up cold.
“It is not possible to determine the identity of any individual who may have disclosed the document or how the draft opinion ended up with Politico,” the marshal said on Thursday. “No one confessed to publicly disclosing the document and none of the available forensic and other evidence provided a basis for identifying any individual as the source of the document.”
The leaked draft of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization revealed the court’s six conservative justices had all voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, a 1973 ruling that established abortion as a protected right nationwide. The justices argued the court had been wrong to rule that way, and that no such right was deep-seated in US political life. The news was somewhat expected, but nonetheless provoked massive protests outside the court, across the country, and even outside the homes of the justices.
The justices characterized the leak as a betrayal of trust, and a probe into the leak, led by Curley, was launched almost immediately.