The Supreme Court admitted that, nearly nine months later, it has been unable to find out who leaked the early draft of the Dobbs opinion that would overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade decision. The failure to uncover the unprecedented leak comes despite a wide-ranging investigation that included interviews with nearly a hundred employees of the court.

However, neither the justices themselves or their spouses were interviewed under oath. Straight Arrow News contributor Ben Weingarten says that decision undermines the credibility of the probe, and warns that the failure to find the Dobbs leaker is a stain on the Supreme Court.

Justices should absolutely be treated with due respect, but what is this oddly deferential iterative process? 

A justice obviously could be a suspect. Yet the marshal concluded that “credible leads” did not “implicate the Justices or their spouses. On this basis, I did not believe that it was necessary to ask the Justices to sign sworn affidavits.”

Even the Washington Post asked basic glaring questions, like: Did investigators subject justices to the same “formal interviews” as the 126 given to some 97 court employees who did sign sworn affidavits?

Did investigators look at available legal research history of the justices – as they did other employees – to see if the justices had looked into the legality of leaking?

Did investigators collect justices’ court-issued laptops and phones, and look into related records to deduce whether they might’ve been involved with the leak, as they did other employees? If the answer to all of these was “No,” again, how could anyone believe this was a legitimate investigation?

How can you have a legitimate investigation when you have a double standard in how you treat the suspects?

For the cherry on top, the court got a former DHS secretary who had intimated that the Hunter Biden laptop was likely Russian disinformation to rubber stamp the probe.

So confidence-inspiring.

Here’s the bottom line: Absent a hack, which investigators also claim likely didn’t occur here but they couldn’t definitively say so, there’s a limited universe of people who had access to the opinion and motive to leak it. Whoever the leaker was may have done irrevocable damage to the Court. A justice could’ve gotten killed. 

The only way you could possibly get close to restoring order, restoring sanctity of the court, is to go to the end of the Earth using every available means find the leaker, bring him or her to swift and overwhelming justice, and do so publicly as a deterrent to any such future behavior…on top of implementing the strictest protocols going forward and making such leaks illegal with massive penalties to stop would-be leakers from daring to do so again.