SCOTUS Marshal Didn’t Force Justices To Sign Affidavit Over Leak; Employees ‘Admitted’

Investigators questioned the Supreme Court justices as they sought to track down the person who leaked Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization last year, but did not force them to sign affidavits.

Alito said late last year that the leak of the draft in May 2022 made the “majority in support of overruling Roe and Casey targets for assassination because it gave people a rational reason to think they could prevent that from happening by killing one of us.”

Supreme Court Marshal Gail Curley said in a statement on Friday that she “spoke with each of the Justices, several on multiple occasions.”

“The Justices actively cooperated in this iterative process, asking questions and answering mine,” she claimed. “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,” she said.

The statement from Curley comes after the Supreme Court released a statement Thursday saying that investigators could not figure out who leaked the draft to Politico.

A total of 97 individuals were interviewed in the probe, which focused primarily on “Court personnel — temporary (law clerks) and permanent employees — who had or may have had access to the draft opinion during the period from the initial circulation until the publication,” the report said.

Those employees were asked to sign an affidavit “affirming that he or she did not disclose the Dobbs draft opinion to any person not employed by the Supreme Court.” It appears that only the Justices were not asked to sign an affidavit.

“Some individuals admitted to investigators that they told their spouse or partner about the draft Dobbs opinion and the vote count, in violation of the Court’s confidentiality rules,” the report added.