‘The Whole Thing Makes No Sense’: Senator Whitehouse Smells a Rat in Supreme Court’s Report on Leaked Opinion

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) slammed the Supreme Court’s “very weird” report on its investigation into the leak of a draft opinion in a landmark case last year.

In May, Politico obtained a draft of Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which thanks to a 5-4 vote, overturned Roe v. Wade and the constitutional right to abortion.

The incident sparked outrage among conservatives, who speculated the ruling was leaked by a liberal court employee –not necessarily a justice – to put popular pressure on at least one of the justices into changing their vote. Another theory, however, holds the leak originated with a conservative who wanted to prevent any wavering justices in the majority from changing their vote. Doing so in the face of public outrage would make the court look weak and political, thus making a defection less likely.

The Supreme Court conducted an investigation and concluded last week that “it is not possible to determine the identity of any individual who may have disclosed the document or how the draft opinion ended up with Politico.”

The report, which did not say whether justices were questioned or investigated in the way other employees were, described the leak as “no mere misguided attempt at protest,” but “a grave assault on the judicial process.”

The following day, the court’s marshal issued a follow-up statement saying justices were not required to sign affidavits.

Whitehouse told Lawrence O’Donnell on Monday’s installment of The Last Word why he finds the report “very weird”:

I’ve been involved in investigations as my state’s attorney general and United States Attorney, and there’s a lot about this investigative report that is very weird. It starts out weird in the very first sentence, where they describe the crime here, the incident as being “no mere misguided attempt at protest,” which flags the prospect that the Democratic appointees did it, that it was their offices’ attempt to protest the Dobbs decision.

Well, if you can’t solve whodunit, then you’ve got no business trying to flag a motive. And they do that in page one, and it’s only a motive that would apply to the guilty party being a member of the staff of the Democratic justices.

Then you go on to the fact that they couldn’t get anything done and didn’t make it clear whether they interviewed a bunch of prime suspects, which is the justices themselves about their activities, or their spouses, or whether they took the opinion home.

Whitehouse noted the court’s statement released the day after the report, which said the justices participated in an “iterative process.”

“It’s peculiar,” he continued. “It’s an iterative process, not an investigative process?” he said. “The judges were asking questions as well as answering them? The whole thing makes no sense.”

He concluded, “So, it’s a very, very peculiar investigative report, and frankly doesn’t look very investigative.”

Watch above via MSNBC.