Justice Department conducting criminal probe into leak of Dobbs abortion decision
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department is conducting a criminal probe into the leaking of the Supreme Court’s landmark 2022 decision that ended the national right to abortion, The Post has confirmed.
About two months before the Supreme Court dropped its decision to overturn the controversial precedents first set in Roe v. Wade, a draft of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization opinion leaked to Politico.
The leak was unprecedented in modern Supreme Court history and led to death threats against conservative justices in the majority on that decision. Historically, the Supreme Court has been largely resistant to oversight from other branches of government.
Chief Justice John Roberts ordered an investigation into the debacle, calling it an “egregious breach of trust.” But the inquiry ended in January 2023 without a culprit identified.
The DOJ has been investigating the leak since last year. The fact that it is now a criminal probe was first reported by the New York Times.
That criminal probe is being overseen by US Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro and other prosecutors, The Post has been told.
The Post contacted Pirro’s office for comment. A DOJ spokesperson said the department doesn’t comment on “the existence of ongoing investigations or lack thereof.”
Prosecutors have been issuing subpoenas to those who worked on the Supreme Court around the time of the Dobbs leak.
It’s not fully clear what charges the leaker would face.
“That person should be found,” President Trump said of the leaker over the summer.
Republican-appointed Justice Samuel Alito, who authored the Dobbs decision, told Fox News several weeks ago that he has an idea who the leaker was.
“But the evidence available at this time is not strong enough for the court or for me to say this is the person who was responsible,” he added.
Given the controversy over the Dobbs decision, the leak led to death threats against some of the justices who had to wait weeks before the high court released it.
“That was totally unprecedented in the history of the country,” Alito told “Fox News Sunday” of the premature release. “It was a grave breach of the trust that everybody who worked in this building had before that point.”
“And it very predictably made the five of us in the majority targets for assassination and nearly resulted in the assassination of my colleague Brett Kavanaugh.”
Deranged Californian Nicholas Roske went to Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home late at night in June 2022 armed to the teeth in an apparent assassination plot that was thwarted.
Republican-appointed Justice Amy Coney Barrett later recalled having to explain to her children why she was wearing a bulletproof vest after the leak.
Ultimately, the Dobbs decision ripped apart the precedents that began under Roe, concluding the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed a right to privacy that ensured women could obtain an abortion nationally.
As Alito stressed in his opinion, the text of the Constitution made no mention of abortion or even a right to privacy. Dobbs sent the issue of abortion back to Congress and the states.
