Report: Supreme Court Investigators Have Narrowed List of Suspects in Roe v. Wade Leak

In early May of 2022, a Supreme Court draft opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito was leaked to journalists at Politico, revealing that the high court had voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, a 1973 precedent which established access to abortion as a constitutional right.

Investigators with the US Supreme Court have reportedly managed to narrow down their list of suspects involved in the May 2022 leak of the high court's draft opinion on overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.

US media has reported that after nine months of investigations, officials have pulled together a "small number" of potential suspects.

The investigation started just a day after the draft opinion was published by Politico on May 3, with Chief Justice Roberts—who was nominated by former President George W. Bush—appointing the Supreme Court’s marshal, Gail Curley, to head the investigation.

Although Curley, who is a lawyer and former Army officer, oversees 189 officers in her SCOTUS police force, the court also brought in assistance from outside government investigators to help handle the complex issue.

While the leak isn’t necessarily illegal, Roberts described the leak as “a singular and egregious breach of trust that is an affront to the Court.”

Texas Senator Ted Cruz (R) also alleged in a Fox News interview on the day the draft was leaked that the person responsible for leaking the draft must be “some left-wing law clerk,” adding they should be “fired instantly,” “prosecuted” and “serve real jail time for violating the confidences of the Supreme Court.”

At the time, Alito also alleged that the leak put him and other justices at risk for “assassination.”

"The leak also made those of us who were thought to be in the majority in support of overruling Roe and Casey targets for assassination because it gave people a rational reason to think they could prevent that from happening by killing one of us," Alito said in October of 2022.

As SCOTUS has yet to reveal the identities of any of their “suspects,” congressional Republicans are growing angry for being left in the dark.

“For some reason this individual has certainly been sheltered and there is absolutely evidence that there are specific people who know who this person is,” Rep. Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI) said at a House Judiciary Committee hearing in December.

Although the court underscored after the 2022 leak that the initial opinion was just a draft, the bench ultimately overturned the landmark 1973 ruling the following month. Alito, who noted in the draft that "Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” went on to state in the court majority that the abortion ruling was "an abuse of judicial authority."