- The Supreme Court issued a report on its investigation into the leak of the draft Dobbs opinion.
- Some personnel admitted to telling their spouses about the opinion, which overturned Roe v. Wade.
Some employees at the Supreme Court discussed the draft abortion opinion overturning Roe v. Wade with their spouses or partner, according to a report released by the nation's highest court on Thursday.
The revelation came in a report that concluded the Supreme Court has failed to identify who leaked the draft opinion during its months-long investigation. The probe started the same month that Politico published a copy of the draft opinion on May 2.
Investigators said they were unable to identify the source of the leak, despite conducting 126 interviews of 97 court personnel.
But in the course of those interviews — which required employees to sign an affidavit, under penalty of perjury, stating that they did not leak the draft opinion or otherwise provide information about it to individuals not employed by the Supreme Court — several personnel admitted to telling their spouses or partner about the draft opinion or the vote count.
That constituted a violation of the court's confidentiality rules, the report stated.
"The temptation to discuss interesting pending or decided cases among friends, spouses, or other family members, for example, must be scrupulously resisted," reads the court's Law Clerk Code of Conduct.
The report also noted that some employees had more generally shared confidential details of their work to investigators, and thought it was permissible to do so. It was not clear if those employees were set to face disciplinary measures.
At the conclusion of the report, investigators made a series of findings and recommendations, including reducing the number of people with access to draft opinions, clarifying confidentiality policies, and improving personnel training.
The draft opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, sparked nationwide protests as a majority of the justices appeared ready to overturn the constitutional right to abortion. The justices ultimately did so in the court's June 24 ruling.
The leak also triggered a frenzy of speculation about who might have done it. At the time, while congressional Democrats focused on the substance of the draft opinion, Republicans focused their attention on the unprecedented leak, with some GOP senators claiming without evidence that someone on the political left was responsible in an attempt to sway the outcome.
Chief Justice John Roberts directed the court marshal to launch an investigation into the leak on May 3, calling the incident a "betrayal of the confidences of the Court intended to undermine the integrity of our operations."
The court in a statement on Thursday also condemned the leak, labeling it as "one of the worst
breaches of trust in its history."
Investigators plan to continue pursuing any leads to identify the leak's perpetrator, the report read.