Supreme Court personnel admitted telling their spouses about the draft Dobbs opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, investigation finds
Bryan Metzger,Oma Seddiq
Thu, January 19, 2023
United States Supreme Court justices pose for their official photo on October 7, 2022.Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images
The Supreme Court issued a report on its investigation into the leak of the draft Dobbs opinion.
Some personnel admitted to telling their spouses about the opinion, which overturned Roe v. Wade.
But investigators say they still haven't determined who leaked the opinion.
Some employees at the Supreme Court discussed the draft abortion opinion overturning Roe v. Wade with their spouses or partner, according to a report released by the nation's highest court on Thursday.
The revelation came in a report that concluded the Supreme Court has failed to identify who leaked the draft opinion during its months-long investigation. The probe started the same month that Politico published a copy of the draft opinion on May 2.
Investigators said they were unable to identify the source of the leak, despite conducting 126 interviews of 97 court personnel.
But in the course of those interviews — which required employees to sign an affidavit, under penalty of perjury, stating that they did not leak the draft opinion or otherwise provide information about it to individuals not employed by the Supreme Court — several personnel admitted to telling their spouses or partner about the draft opinion or the vote count.
That constituted a violation of the court's confidentiality rules, the report stated.
"The temptation to discuss interesting pending or decided cases among friends, spouses, or other family members, for example, must be scrupulously resisted," reads the court's Law Clerk Code of Conduct.
The report also noted that some employees had more generally shared confidential details of their work to investigators, and thought it was permissible to do so. It was not clear if those employees were set to face disciplinary measures.
At the conclusion of the report, investigators made a series of findings and recommendations, including reducing the number of people with access to draft opinions, clarifying confidentiality policies, and improving personnel training.
The draft opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, sparked nationwide protests as a majority of the justices appeared ready to overturn the constitutional right to abortion. The justices ultimately did so in the court's June 24 ruling.
The leak also triggered a frenzy of speculation about who might have done it. At the time, while congressional Democrats focused on the substance of the draft opinion, Republicans focused their attention on the unprecedented leak, with some GOP senators claiming without evidence that someone on the political left was responsible in an attempt to sway the outcome.
Chief Justice John Roberts directed the court marshal to launch an investigation into the leak on May 3, calling the incident a "betrayal of the confidences of the Court intended to undermine the integrity of our operations."
The court in a statement on Thursday also condemned the leak, labeling it as "one of the worst breaches of trust in its history."
Investigators plan to continue pursuing any leads to identify the leak's perpetrator, the report read.
Supreme Court has failed to find leaker of abortion opinion
MARK SHERMAN and JESSICA GRESKO
Thu, January 19, 2023
WASHINGTON (AP) — TheSupreme Courtsaid Thursday aneight-month investigationthat included more than 120 interviews and revealed shortcomings in how sensitive documents are secured has failed to findwho leaked a draftof the court's opinion overturning abortion rights.
Ninety-seven employees, including the justices' law clerks, swore under oath that they did not disclosea draft of Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion that overturned Roe v. Wade, the court said.
It was unclear whether the justices themselves were questioned about the leak, which was the first time an entire opinion made its way to the public before the court was ready to announce it.
Politico published its explosive leak detailing the Alito draft in early May. Chief Justice JohnRoberts ordered an investigation the next dayinto what he termed an “egregious breach of trust.”
On Thursday, the court said its investigative team “has to date been unable to identify a person responsible by a preponderance of the evidence.”
The investigation has not come to an end, the court said. A few inquiries and the analysis of come electronic data remain.
The court said it could not rule out that the opinion was inadvertently disclosed, “for example, by being left in a public space either inside or outside the building.”
While not identifying the leaker, the investigation turned up problems in the court's internal practices, some of which were exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic and the shift to working from home.
Too many people have access to sensitive information, the court's policies on information security are outdated and, in some cases, employees acknowledged revealing confidential information to their spouses. It was not clear from the report whether investigators talked to the justices' spouses.
Some employees had to acknowledge in their written statements that they “admitted to telling their spouses about the draft opinion or vote count,” the report said.
Investigators looked closely at connections between court employees and reporters, and they found nothing to substantiate rampant speculation on social media about the identity of the leaker.
The investigation concluded that it “is unlikely that the Court’s information technology (IT) systems were improperly accessed by a person outside the Court,” following an examination of the court’s computers, networks, printers, and available call and text logs.
The “risk of both deliberate and accidental disclosures of Court-sensitive information” grew with the coronavirus pandemic and shift to working from home, the report said. More people working from home, ”as well as gaps in the Court’s security policies, created an environment where it was too easy to remove sensitive information from the building and the Court’s IT networks,” the report said.
Roberts also asked former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, himself a onetime federal judge, to assess the investigation. Chertoff, in a statement issued through the court, described it as thorough.
Politico published the draft decision on May 2. Less than 24 hours later, Roberts confirmed the draft’s authenticity and said he had directed the court’s marshal, former Army Col. Gail Curley, to lead the investigation.
Since then, there had been silence from the court — until Thursday.
The court had declined to say anything about the status of the investigation or whether an outside law firm or the FBI has been called in or whether it had taken steps to try to prevent a repeat. Speaking in Colorado in September, Justice Neil Gorsuch said he hoped a report was coming “soon” but he did not say whether it would be made public.
Gorsuch joined Roberts in condemning the breach of trust the leak engendered. Justice Clarence Thomas spoke in even starker terms about the leak’s effect on the justices.
“When you lose that trust, especially in the institution that I’m in, it changes the institution fundamentally. You begin to look over your shoulder. It’s like kind of an infidelity that you can explain it, but you can’t undo it,” Thomas said while speaking at a conference in Dallas less than two weeks after the leak became public.
The leak itself sparked protests and round-the-clock security at justices’ homes. Alito said it made the conservative justices who were thought to be in favor of overturning Roe v. Wade “targets for assassination” that “gave people a rational reason to think they could prevent that from happening by killing one of us.”
In early June, a man carrying a gun, a knife and zip ties was arrested near Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s house in Maryland after threatening to kill the justice. The man told police he was upset by the leaked draft.
Responding to protests outside the court, officials ringed the building with hard-to-climb fencing, the same barrier that was in place for months following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
When the final decision was released on June 24, it was remarkably similar to the draft that was leaked. Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Justice Amy Coney Barrett voted to overturn Roe.
Speculation has swirled since the draft’s release about who might be the source. Only the justices, a small number of staff and the justices’ law clerks, young lawyers who spend a year at the court helping the justices with their work, would have had access to the document.
Conservatives pointed fingers at the liberal side of the court, speculating that the leaker was someone upset about the outcome. Liberals suggested it could be someone on the conservative side of the court who wanted to ensure a wavering justice didn’t switch sides.
It would have taken just one conservative justice to side with Roberts to alter the decision. Instead of overturning Roe entirely, Roberts favored weakening abortion rights.
The Supreme Court's investigation raises questions about the justices' determination to find the abortion draft leaker
Oma Seddiq
Fri, January 20, 2023
The Supreme Court could not determine who leaked a draft abortion ruling last May.
Yet the 20-page report has raised concerns about the rigor of the court's investigation.
"I'm still disappointed that they didn't find out," one legal expert said.
The Supreme Court on Friday revealed that the justices cooperated in its investigation into a leaked draft ruling of a major abortion case, but weren't asked to speak under oath, following widespread speculation about the scope of the probe.
"During the course of the investigation, I spoke with each of the Justices, several on multiple occasions," Supreme Court Marshal Gail Curley, who conducted the investigation, 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," she added. "On this basis, I did not believe that it was necessary to ask the Justices to sign sworn affidavits."
The 20-page report released by the nation's highest court on Thursday spurred skepticism, given its ambiguity about whether the justices were scrutinized. Investigators perused cell phones and laptops, forensically examined printers, and interviewed 97 of the court's employees, including law clerks, who may have had access to the draft opinion. Yet those individuals went unnamed in the report — and there was no mention that the justices were among them.
Friday's statement appeared to answer that question. Still, the eight-month-long investigation ultimately came up empty, and the leaker's identity remains unknown, raising concerns about the court's determination to finding the leaker. The report also comes amid public discussion that it could have been one of the justices themselves, especially since the court has also come under fire over another alleged breach of a 2014 decision, Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores. A former anti-abortion leader has claimed he had advance knowledge of the ruling, but the author of the opinion, Justice Samuel Alito, has denied the allegations.
"It gives me more assurance than I had yesterday," Carl Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law, told Insider. "I'm still disappointed that they didn't find out. Everybody is. So they should keep digging."
The report's inconclusive findings also showed the constraints of a court investigating itself, as opposed to a third party launching an independent probe, court observers said.
"The court did as much as they could given their resources, but the decision to keep this internal prevented them from doing a full blown, thorough investigation," Josh Blackman, a professor at the South Texas College of Law, told Insider.
Had the court been serious about the investigation, "they would've brought the FBI in," Blackman said.
"I think they were committed, but not enough to involve the FBI to actually, really get to the bottom of it," he added.
An executive-branch investigation may have led to the justices speaking under oath, a line the Supreme Court marshal did not cross, according to her statement. But the delicate and fraught nature of the matter could explain why, according to Tobias.
"They're going to be more forthcoming if they're not under oath," he said of the justices. "It would be an insult to them, I think, they would think. To some extent, they're her boss, right?"
The unprecedented leak last May penetrated the often blocked-off world of the Supreme Court, prompting some of the justices to publicly condemn it at the time. The court did so again in an unsigned statement on Thursday, labeling the breach "a grave assault on the judicial process."
The draft opinion, which showed the court was ready to overturn nearly 50 years of constitutionally protected abortion rights, provoked national outrage at an institution that had already been declining in public trust. The leak further eroded that trust, and shattered it within the institution.
And while the report, along with Friday's clarification, offered at least some transparency into the investigation, it failed to restore trust, according to observers.
"There will continue to be suspicions that have bad effects on all interpersonal relations among justices and between justices and clerks and staff," said Richard Pierce, a professor at George Washington University Law School.
Congressional lawmakers have vented about the court's unsuccessful investigation to find the culprit. House Republicans, now in the majority, previously called for their own probe into the leak. Some GOP senators have sounded the alarm about the possibility of future leaks.
"This is inexcusable," Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri tweeted on Thursday. "And it means brazen attempts like this one to change the Court's decisions - from within - will become more common. Someone ought to resign for this."
But it's uncertain whether new evidence will come to light anytime soon. The Supreme Court's marshal did not note any new leads in her report. While they may be at a dead-end now, some legal experts think that might not be the case forever.
"People like to talk, and so somebody may leak the name of the leaker," Tobias said. "That could happen."
U.S. Supreme Court justices were questioned, cleared in leak probe
By Nate Raymond and John Kruzel
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court's chief security officer on Friday said she spoke with each of the justices in her inquiry into who leaked a draft of its ruling overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that had legalized abortion nationwide, adding that the probe found no information implicating them or their spouses.
Supreme Court Marshal Gail Curley made the statement a day after the court released a 20-page report based on the eight-month investigation she led that failed to identify who leaked the draft to the news organization Politico.
The report said investigators interviewed 97 court employees but was silent on whether the nine justices who sat on the court at the time of the leak were interviewed, prompting calls from Democratic lawmakers and others for clarity.
"During the course of the investigation, I spoke with each of the justices, several on multiple occasions," Curley said in the statement, released by the court. "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," Curley added.
Curley said on that basis she decided it was not necessary to ask the justices to sign sworn affidavits affirming they did not leak the draft, something court employees were required to do.
The court's membership differed last May from today, with now-retired Justice Stephen Breyer still on the bench and current Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, his successor appointed by President Joe Biden, not yet sworn in.
Conservative activists have sought to raise suspicions that one of the liberal justices or a staffer for them was responsible for the leak, just as liberal activists have sought to blame conservative justices or their staffers.
Gabe Roth, executive director of the court reform group Fix the Court, said the fact that the report initially omitted the fact that the justices were interviewed "smells fishy."
"That they were not asked to sign affidavits smells fishier," Roth added.
The leak represented an unprecedented violation of the court's tradition of confidentiality in the behind-the-scenes process of making rulings after hearing oral arguments in cases.
Mark Zaid, a Washington-based lawyer known for representing government whistleblowers, criticized the decision not to require sworn affidavits from the justices or their spouses, saying the court's credibility is on the line with the leak.
"Because the marshal could not even identify the leaker based on a low-level preponderance-of-evidence standard, it raises the question - at least from an appearance standpoint - as to whether a justice played a role in the leak, and that scenario remains unaddressed," Zaid said.
Chief Justice John Roberts directed Curley to investigate after Politico last May published a draft of the opinion authored by Justice Samuel Alito in the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. The ruling was formally issued in June.
Alito found himself in the middle of another leak controversy in November after the New York Times reported a former anti-abortion leader's assertion that he was told in advance about how the court would rule in a major 2014 case involving insurance coverage for women's birth control.
Rob Schenck, an evangelical Christian minister, told the Times and later a congressional panel that weeks before the ruling was issued he was informed about its contents shortly after two conservative allies of his dined at the home of Alito and his wife.
Alito has said that any allegation that he or his wife leaked the 2014 decision was "completely false."
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Will Dunham)
Leak probe highlights U.S. Supreme Court's problems protecting information
Fri, January 20, 2023
By Nate Raymond and John Kruzel
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The investigation into the leak of a draft of last year's Supreme Court ruling overturning the national right to abortion laid bare a persistent problem at the top U.S. judicial body and the broader federal judiciary - creaky tech systems and lax security protocols for handling sensitive documents.
The inquiry, detailed in a 20-page report released on Thursday, failed to uncover who leaked the draft authored by Justice Samuel Alito to the news outlet Politico last May, a month before the ruling was formally issued - in part due to information technology record-keeping deficiencies.
The investigation, ordered by Chief Justice John Roberts and headed by the court's chief security official Gail Curley, found that "technical limitations" made it "impossible" to rule out whether any employees emailed the draft to anyone else and said the court lacked the ability to identify those who printed it out.
Investigators could not search and analyze many event logs maintained by the court's operating system because, the report said, "at the time the system lacked substantial logging and search functions."
The report said 34 court employees - out of the 97 interviewed - acknowledged printing out the draft. The investigators found few confirmed print jobs because several printers at the court had little ability to log print jobs and many were not part of its centralized network.
Cybersecurity expert Mark Lanterman, who has conducted training at the Supreme Court, said it appeared the court could stand to bolster controls to guard against leaks but noted that even highly secure networks can remain vulnerable to bad actors.
"People - we're the weakest link," said Lanterman, chief technology officer at the firm Computer Forensic Services. "They could invest millions of dollars in the federal judiciary's cybersecurity, but all it takes is one person with a motive to leak."
Carrie Severino, a former clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas who now heads the conservative Judicial Crisis Network, said Roberts bears much of the responsibility for creating an environment where "security measures were so inadequate."
"It's never going be possible to perfectly protect against leaking," Severino added. "The justices have to circulate drafts before they're public. But you can see from this report how many gigantic loopholes there were."
The report said the Supreme Court's information security environment was "built fundamentally on trust with limited safeguards to regulate and constrain access to very sensitive information." Severino and some other former clerks said that characterization rang true to their experiences.
"The fact is that the court has always relied upon the integrity of its members and staff," George Washington University Law School professor Jonathan Turley said. "In a city that is a rolling sea of leaks, the court was always an island of integrity. This shattered that tradition. Absent an arrest, it will remain vulnerable."
The report found no evidence hackers were behind the leak of the ruling, which overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that had legalized abortion nationwide. But it called the court's information security policies "outdated" and recommended that it overhaul its platform for handling case-related documents and remedy "inadequate safeguards" for tracking who prints and copies documents.
The Supreme Court's IT systems operate separately from the rest of the federal judiciary. U.S. judiciary officials have said the systems used by federal appellate and district courts also are outdated and need modernization.
Three "hostile foreign actors" breached the judiciary's lower-court document-filing system in 2020, Democratic Representative Jerrold Nadler, who at the time headed the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, told a hearing last year.
The cyberattack prompt the judiciary to change how it handles sensitive documents at the lower-court level.
Congress in December approved $106 million in funding for cybersecurity and information technology modernization projects within the judiciary after officials warned of the need to guard against hackers breaching aging, vulnerable computer systems.
U.S. District Judge Roslynn Mauskopf, director of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, last May told a House committee the courts were a repository "for some of our nation's most sensitive law enforcement and national security information."
"Our systems house draft opinions," Mauskopf said. "That's another category of very sensitive, pre-decisional information that we house within our systems, which is yet another reason why we need to take steps to modernize our systems."
(Reporting by John Kruzel in Washington and Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Will Dunham)
Light illuminates part of the Supreme Court building at dusk on Capitol Hill in Washington, Nov. 16, 2022. The Supreme Court said Thursday, Jan. 19, 2023, that it has not determined who leaked a draft of the court's opinion overturning abortion rights, but that the investigation continues.
MARK SHERMAN and JESSICA GRESKO
Thu, January 19, 2023
WASHINGTON (AP) — TheSupreme Courtsaid Thursday aneight-month investigationthat included more than 120 interviews and revealed shortcomings in how sensitive documents are secured has failed to findwho leaked a draftof the court's opinion overturning abortion rights.
Ninety-seven employees, including the justices' law clerks, swore under oath that they did not disclosea draft of Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion that overturned Roe v. Wade, the court said.
It was unclear whether the justices themselves were questioned about the leak, which was the first time an entire opinion made its way to the public before the court was ready to announce it.
Politico published its explosive leak detailing the Alito draft in early May. Chief Justice JohnRoberts ordered an investigation the next dayinto what he termed an “egregious breach of trust.”
On Thursday, the court said its investigative team “has to date been unable to identify a person responsible by a preponderance of the evidence.”
The investigation has not come to an end, the court said. A few inquiries and the analysis of come electronic data remain.
The court said it could not rule out that the opinion was inadvertently disclosed, “for example, by being left in a public space either inside or outside the building.”
While not identifying the leaker, the investigation turned up problems in the court's internal practices, some of which were exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic and the shift to working from home.
Too many people have access to sensitive information, the court's policies on information security are outdated and, in some cases, employees acknowledged revealing confidential information to their spouses. It was not clear from the report whether investigators talked to the justices' spouses.
Some employees had to acknowledge in their written statements that they “admitted to telling their spouses about the draft opinion or vote count,” the report said.
Investigators looked closely at connections between court employees and reporters, and they found nothing to substantiate rampant speculation on social media about the identity of the leaker.
The investigation concluded that it “is unlikely that the Court’s information technology (IT) systems were improperly accessed by a person outside the Court,” following an examination of the court’s computers, networks, printers, and available call and text logs.
The “risk of both deliberate and accidental disclosures of Court-sensitive information” grew with the coronavirus pandemic and shift to working from home, the report said. More people working from home, ”as well as gaps in the Court’s security policies, created an environment where it was too easy to remove sensitive information from the building and the Court’s IT networks,” the report said.
Roberts also asked former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, himself a onetime federal judge, to assess the investigation. Chertoff, in a statement issued through the court, described it as thorough.
Politico published the draft decision on May 2. Less than 24 hours later, Roberts confirmed the draft’s authenticity and said he had directed the court’s marshal, former Army Col. Gail Curley, to lead the investigation.
Since then, there had been silence from the court — until Thursday.
The court had declined to say anything about the status of the investigation or whether an outside law firm or the FBI has been called in or whether it had taken steps to try to prevent a repeat. Speaking in Colorado in September, Justice Neil Gorsuch said he hoped a report was coming “soon” but he did not say whether it would be made public.
Gorsuch joined Roberts in condemning the breach of trust the leak engendered. Justice Clarence Thomas spoke in even starker terms about the leak’s effect on the justices.
“When you lose that trust, especially in the institution that I’m in, it changes the institution fundamentally. You begin to look over your shoulder. It’s like kind of an infidelity that you can explain it, but you can’t undo it,” Thomas said while speaking at a conference in Dallas less than two weeks after the leak became public.
The leak itself sparked protests and round-the-clock security at justices’ homes. Alito said it made the conservative justices who were thought to be in favor of overturning Roe v. Wade “targets for assassination” that “gave people a rational reason to think they could prevent that from happening by killing one of us.”
In early June, a man carrying a gun, a knife and zip ties was arrested near Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s house in Maryland after threatening to kill the justice. The man told police he was upset by the leaked draft.
Responding to protests outside the court, officials ringed the building with hard-to-climb fencing, the same barrier that was in place for months following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
When the final decision was released on June 24, it was remarkably similar to the draft that was leaked. Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Justice Amy Coney Barrett voted to overturn Roe.
Speculation has swirled since the draft’s release about who might be the source. Only the justices, a small number of staff and the justices’ law clerks, young lawyers who spend a year at the court helping the justices with their work, would have had access to the document.
Conservatives pointed fingers at the liberal side of the court, speculating that the leaker was someone upset about the outcome. Liberals suggested it could be someone on the conservative side of the court who wanted to ensure a wavering justice didn’t switch sides.
It would have taken just one conservative justice to side with Roberts to alter the decision. Instead of overturning Roe entirely, Roberts favored weakening abortion rights.
Oma Seddiq
Fri, January 20, 2023
The Supreme Court could not determine who leaked a draft abortion ruling last May.
Yet the 20-page report has raised concerns about the rigor of the court's investigation.
"I'm still disappointed that they didn't find out," one legal expert said.
The Supreme Court on Friday revealed that the justices cooperated in its investigation into a leaked draft ruling of a major abortion case, but weren't asked to speak under oath, following widespread speculation about the scope of the probe.
"During the course of the investigation, I spoke with each of the Justices, several on multiple occasions," Supreme Court Marshal Gail Curley, who conducted the investigation, 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," she added. "On this basis, I did not believe that it was necessary to ask the Justices to sign sworn affidavits."
The 20-page report released by the nation's highest court on Thursday spurred skepticism, given its ambiguity about whether the justices were scrutinized. Investigators perused cell phones and laptops, forensically examined printers, and interviewed 97 of the court's employees, including law clerks, who may have had access to the draft opinion. Yet those individuals went unnamed in the report — and there was no mention that the justices were among them.
Friday's statement appeared to answer that question. Still, the eight-month-long investigation ultimately came up empty, and the leaker's identity remains unknown, raising concerns about the court's determination to finding the leaker. The report also comes amid public discussion that it could have been one of the justices themselves, especially since the court has also come under fire over another alleged breach of a 2014 decision, Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores. A former anti-abortion leader has claimed he had advance knowledge of the ruling, but the author of the opinion, Justice Samuel Alito, has denied the allegations.
"It gives me more assurance than I had yesterday," Carl Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law, told Insider. "I'm still disappointed that they didn't find out. Everybody is. So they should keep digging."
The report's inconclusive findings also showed the constraints of a court investigating itself, as opposed to a third party launching an independent probe, court observers said.
"The court did as much as they could given their resources, but the decision to keep this internal prevented them from doing a full blown, thorough investigation," Josh Blackman, a professor at the South Texas College of Law, told Insider.
Had the court been serious about the investigation, "they would've brought the FBI in," Blackman said.
"I think they were committed, but not enough to involve the FBI to actually, really get to the bottom of it," he added.
An executive-branch investigation may have led to the justices speaking under oath, a line the Supreme Court marshal did not cross, according to her statement. But the delicate and fraught nature of the matter could explain why, according to Tobias.
"They're going to be more forthcoming if they're not under oath," he said of the justices. "It would be an insult to them, I think, they would think. To some extent, they're her boss, right?"
The unprecedented leak last May penetrated the often blocked-off world of the Supreme Court, prompting some of the justices to publicly condemn it at the time. The court did so again in an unsigned statement on Thursday, labeling the breach "a grave assault on the judicial process."
The draft opinion, which showed the court was ready to overturn nearly 50 years of constitutionally protected abortion rights, provoked national outrage at an institution that had already been declining in public trust. The leak further eroded that trust, and shattered it within the institution.
And while the report, along with Friday's clarification, offered at least some transparency into the investigation, it failed to restore trust, according to observers.
"There will continue to be suspicions that have bad effects on all interpersonal relations among justices and between justices and clerks and staff," said Richard Pierce, a professor at George Washington University Law School.
Congressional lawmakers have vented about the court's unsuccessful investigation to find the culprit. House Republicans, now in the majority, previously called for their own probe into the leak. Some GOP senators have sounded the alarm about the possibility of future leaks.
"This is inexcusable," Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri tweeted on Thursday. "And it means brazen attempts like this one to change the Court's decisions - from within - will become more common. Someone ought to resign for this."
But it's uncertain whether new evidence will come to light anytime soon. The Supreme Court's marshal did not note any new leads in her report. While they may be at a dead-end now, some legal experts think that might not be the case forever.
"People like to talk, and so somebody may leak the name of the leaker," Tobias said. "That could happen."
U.S. Supreme Court justices were questioned, cleared in leak probe
By Nate Raymond and John Kruzel
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court's chief security officer on Friday said she spoke with each of the justices in her inquiry into who leaked a draft of its ruling overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that had legalized abortion nationwide, adding that the probe found no information implicating them or their spouses.
Supreme Court Marshal Gail Curley made the statement a day after the court released a 20-page report based on the eight-month investigation she led that failed to identify who leaked the draft to the news organization Politico.
The report said investigators interviewed 97 court employees but was silent on whether the nine justices who sat on the court at the time of the leak were interviewed, prompting calls from Democratic lawmakers and others for clarity.
"During the course of the investigation, I spoke with each of the justices, several on multiple occasions," Curley said in the statement, released by the court. "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," Curley added.
Curley said on that basis she decided it was not necessary to ask the justices to sign sworn affidavits affirming they did not leak the draft, something court employees were required to do.
The court's membership differed last May from today, with now-retired Justice Stephen Breyer still on the bench and current Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, his successor appointed by President Joe Biden, not yet sworn in.
Conservative activists have sought to raise suspicions that one of the liberal justices or a staffer for them was responsible for the leak, just as liberal activists have sought to blame conservative justices or their staffers.
Gabe Roth, executive director of the court reform group Fix the Court, said the fact that the report initially omitted the fact that the justices were interviewed "smells fishy."
"That they were not asked to sign affidavits smells fishier," Roth added.
The leak represented an unprecedented violation of the court's tradition of confidentiality in the behind-the-scenes process of making rulings after hearing oral arguments in cases.
Mark Zaid, a Washington-based lawyer known for representing government whistleblowers, criticized the decision not to require sworn affidavits from the justices or their spouses, saying the court's credibility is on the line with the leak.
"Because the marshal could not even identify the leaker based on a low-level preponderance-of-evidence standard, it raises the question - at least from an appearance standpoint - as to whether a justice played a role in the leak, and that scenario remains unaddressed," Zaid said.
Chief Justice John Roberts directed Curley to investigate after Politico last May published a draft of the opinion authored by Justice Samuel Alito in the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. The ruling was formally issued in June.
Alito found himself in the middle of another leak controversy in November after the New York Times reported a former anti-abortion leader's assertion that he was told in advance about how the court would rule in a major 2014 case involving insurance coverage for women's birth control.
Rob Schenck, an evangelical Christian minister, told the Times and later a congressional panel that weeks before the ruling was issued he was informed about its contents shortly after two conservative allies of his dined at the home of Alito and his wife.
Alito has said that any allegation that he or his wife leaked the 2014 decision was "completely false."
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Will Dunham)
Leak probe highlights U.S. Supreme Court's problems protecting information
Fri, January 20, 2023
By Nate Raymond and John Kruzel
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The investigation into the leak of a draft of last year's Supreme Court ruling overturning the national right to abortion laid bare a persistent problem at the top U.S. judicial body and the broader federal judiciary - creaky tech systems and lax security protocols for handling sensitive documents.
The inquiry, detailed in a 20-page report released on Thursday, failed to uncover who leaked the draft authored by Justice Samuel Alito to the news outlet Politico last May, a month before the ruling was formally issued - in part due to information technology record-keeping deficiencies.
The investigation, ordered by Chief Justice John Roberts and headed by the court's chief security official Gail Curley, found that "technical limitations" made it "impossible" to rule out whether any employees emailed the draft to anyone else and said the court lacked the ability to identify those who printed it out.
Investigators could not search and analyze many event logs maintained by the court's operating system because, the report said, "at the time the system lacked substantial logging and search functions."
The report said 34 court employees - out of the 97 interviewed - acknowledged printing out the draft. The investigators found few confirmed print jobs because several printers at the court had little ability to log print jobs and many were not part of its centralized network.
Cybersecurity expert Mark Lanterman, who has conducted training at the Supreme Court, said it appeared the court could stand to bolster controls to guard against leaks but noted that even highly secure networks can remain vulnerable to bad actors.
"People - we're the weakest link," said Lanterman, chief technology officer at the firm Computer Forensic Services. "They could invest millions of dollars in the federal judiciary's cybersecurity, but all it takes is one person with a motive to leak."
Carrie Severino, a former clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas who now heads the conservative Judicial Crisis Network, said Roberts bears much of the responsibility for creating an environment where "security measures were so inadequate."
"It's never going be possible to perfectly protect against leaking," Severino added. "The justices have to circulate drafts before they're public. But you can see from this report how many gigantic loopholes there were."
The report said the Supreme Court's information security environment was "built fundamentally on trust with limited safeguards to regulate and constrain access to very sensitive information." Severino and some other former clerks said that characterization rang true to their experiences.
"The fact is that the court has always relied upon the integrity of its members and staff," George Washington University Law School professor Jonathan Turley said. "In a city that is a rolling sea of leaks, the court was always an island of integrity. This shattered that tradition. Absent an arrest, it will remain vulnerable."
The report found no evidence hackers were behind the leak of the ruling, which overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that had legalized abortion nationwide. But it called the court's information security policies "outdated" and recommended that it overhaul its platform for handling case-related documents and remedy "inadequate safeguards" for tracking who prints and copies documents.
The Supreme Court's IT systems operate separately from the rest of the federal judiciary. U.S. judiciary officials have said the systems used by federal appellate and district courts also are outdated and need modernization.
Three "hostile foreign actors" breached the judiciary's lower-court document-filing system in 2020, Democratic Representative Jerrold Nadler, who at the time headed the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, told a hearing last year.
The cyberattack prompt the judiciary to change how it handles sensitive documents at the lower-court level.
Congress in December approved $106 million in funding for cybersecurity and information technology modernization projects within the judiciary after officials warned of the need to guard against hackers breaching aging, vulnerable computer systems.
U.S. District Judge Roslynn Mauskopf, director of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, last May told a House committee the courts were a repository "for some of our nation's most sensitive law enforcement and national security information."
"Our systems house draft opinions," Mauskopf said. "That's another category of very sensitive, pre-decisional information that we house within our systems, which is yet another reason why we need to take steps to modernize our systems."
(Reporting by John Kruzel in Washington and Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Will Dunham)
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