Follow up Washington Post Opinion: Was leaking the Dobbs opinion the perfect crime? It sure looks that way.

Follow up to today’s post – SCOTUS Statement Concerning the Leak Investigation Jan 19, 2023 – via Alternet: “Legal experts and media pundits have had a lot to say about the investigation results. And many of them find it “ridiculous” that the U.S. Supreme Court — after months of complaining about how egregious the leak was — said it couldn’t determine where the leak came from. Reporting for Above the Law, attorney Kathryn Rubino explains, “Let me cut directly to the chase — it’s basically a giant shrug emoji…. You’ll recall, shortly after the leaked draft decision, getting to the heart of the leak seemed to be the focus for many in the legal industry — even in the face of a curtailment of rights that has had disastrous ramifications across the nation…”

See also via The Nation: “The Supreme Court’s Big Investigation Into the Dobbs Leak Is a Big Bust. The institution whose members claim to have the power to see into the minds of dead people couldn’t figure out who leaked the Dobbs draft….Time and again, the court insists on its ability to police itself. It resists adopting a code of ethics and scoffs at attempts to hold its justices accountable. Now, this joke of an investigation is yet further proof that the court is ill-equipped to regulate itself. The justices have perhaps gotten so used to bullying people weaker than themselves (their clerks, the lawyers who genuflect to them during every argument, and lower-court judges who want to be on the Supreme Court someday) that they have apparently forgotten what it looks like to be held accountable by an equal. In the end, the investigators found no breach of the Supreme Court’s IT protocols. That means that whoever leaked it didn’t use their official e-mail account. Since the leaker was smart enough not to use work e-mail, and didn’t spontaneously confess, the investigation came to nothing. For his part, Chertoff suggested that the court update some of its rules regarding the distribution of documents, whether hard copy or over e-mail. Which is all to say that none of this matters in the least. No state secrets were shared or stolen. No laws were broken. And, frankly, nobody even needed the leak to know that Alito and his conservative buddies were going to overturn Roe v. Wade: Simply paying attention to what these conservatives said publicly and wrote in the past was enough information for everybody except Susan Collins to know what was coming next. Next time the Supreme Court claims to be seriously investigating a leak of their deliberations, I hope they save us the faux-outrage and skip right to the part where the man in the hot dog costume says, “We’re all trying to find the guy who did this.” At least that will bring the farce to its inevitable conclusion more quickly…”