The story filled the airwaves, news pages and online comment sections. There were calls for impeachment if a justice was involved. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said the leak was a pressure campaign to “sway” the outcome and he suggested the “lawless action should be investigated and punished to the fullest extent possible.”had been irrevocably harmed
The court finished its work for the summer on June 30, after which the justices' law clerks began leaving for their next jobs. That means roughly three dozen people who likely had access to the draft opinion, out of about 70 in all, are no longer within easy reach of investigators.Roberts should close the investigation, said Gabe Roth, leader of the court transparency group Fix the Court.
The courthouse has been closed to the public since March 2020, a combination of the coronavirus pandemic and threats to the court and the justices that led, shortly after the leak, to the installation of 8-foot-high, hard-to-climb fencing."This was a singular and egregious breach of that trust that is an affront to the Court and the community of public servants who work here,” Roberts said when announced the investigation.
If the leak of the Alito draft was deliberate, it might have been from someone who was so upset by the prospect of overturning Roe that informing the public at the earliest possible moment was of paramount importance.