All nine Supreme Court justices were interviewed as part of a probe into last year’s leak of the draft opinion overturning federal abortion protections, but none were implicated, court marshal Gail Curley said on Friday.
Curley has led the court’s investigation since Politico published the draft Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization majority opinion in May, but she indicated on Thursday that investigators have not found the leaker.
“During the course of the investigation, I spoke with each of the Justices, several on multiple occasions,” Curley said in Friday’s 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.”
Curley’s public report on Thursday detailed extensive efforts to identify the leak’s source, including interviews with 97 people described as court “personnel” or “employees.”
That raised eyebrows as to whether the list included the justices, with rumors circulating that they or their spouses could have leaked the draft opinion.
Curley noted that her team has not substantiated any of the allegations on social media.
Progressives, including advocacy group Demand Justice, in the wake of the extraordinary leak emphasized how Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife, Ginni Thomas, worked to overturn the 2020 presidential election in speculating a potential source of the leak.
Scrutiny of Justice Samuel Alito, who authored the Dobbs majority opinion, has also grown after The New York Times reported in November that an anti-abortion activist alleged he and his wife had disclosed the then-pending decision in a separate landmark case at a 2014 dinner.
Alito has publicly denied the claim, and The Hill has not independently verified the allegation.
Both Thomas and Alito have previously condemned the leak.
“In May 2022, this Court suffered one of the worst breaches of trust in its history: the leak of a draft opinion. The leak was no mere misguided attempt at protest. It was a grave assault on the judicial process,” the court said in unsigned statement on Thursday accompanying Curley’s report.