Investigating the SCOTUS leak

[jon-nyc]

@Horace said in Investigating the SCOTUS leak:

@jon-nyc said in Investigating the SCOTUS leak:

Well you should at least take comfort in the fact that they’re making the same assumption you are about the leak.

I’m willing to lay my opinion on the table. How about you?

I did weeks ago

[Horace]

@jon-nyc said in Investigating the SCOTUS leak:

@Horace said in Investigating the SCOTUS leak:

@jon-nyc said in Investigating the SCOTUS leak:

Well you should at least take comfort in the fact that they’re making the same assumption you are about the leak.

I’m willing to lay my opinion on the table. How about you?

I did weeks ago

I recall you claiming that confirmations of the leak were leaks themselves, and that those confirmations came from clerks of right-leaning justices. I don't recall you making any concrete guess about who the original leaker was, or their motivation. You listed possibilities, but not probabilities. But maybe I missed something.

[jon-nyc]

This is interesting and I can imagine it being true in the 2014 case. But verbally signaling to a friend at dinner how a case will come out is one thing, leaking a draft document is another, so I’ll file this under “interesting but circumstantial”.

[Horace]

It’s funny watching your mind seize on any morsel of evidence that maybe just maybe a conservative judges’ chambers were responsible for this. Say Jon if you actually had to make a bet about whether it was a pro abort or anti abort agent who leaked the draft, what would be your bet?

[Jolly]

So, five years or more after the fact, this "concerned citizen" pens a letter about shit they probably barely remember and the NYT puts any credence at all in this stack of horse apples? And then the fool sticks it on social media?

Oh. My. Giddy. Aunt...

Lowering IQ? Hell, that just took the whole room down five points, at least.

[Horace]

The minister’s account comes at a time of rising concerns about the court’s legitimacy. A majority of Americans are losing confidence in the institution, polls show, and its approval ratings are at a historic low. Critics charge that the court has become increasingly politicized, especially as a new conservative supermajority holds sway.

The left being concerned about the politicization of the court truly is rich. What they object to, if they had self-awareness, is the presence of non-politicized judges. Biden's most recent nominee was explicitly political, but in lefty-land, that means she is non-political, while those before her were political. It's all relative, you see.

[Horace]

@Jolly said in Investigating the SCOTUS leak:

So, five years or more after the fact, this "concerned citizen" pens a letter about shit they probably barely remember and the NYT puts any credence at all in this stack of horse apples? And then the fool sticks it on social media?

Oh. My. Giddy. Aunt...

Lowering IQ? Hell, that just took the whole room down five points, at least.

The story is really meant in the spirit of whataboutism, under the assumption that a leftist virtue-bot leaked the draft. (What choice would a virtue-bot have, when watching history unfold in the direction of evil?) Only in certain fringy leftist conspiratorial minds does it constitute circumstantial evidence that Alito's camp leaked it.

[jon-nyc]

@Horace said in Investigating the SCOTUS leak:

It’s funny watching your mind seize on any morsel of evidence that maybe just maybe a conservative judges’ chambers were responsible for this. Say Jon if you actually had to make a bet about whether it was a pro abort or anti abort agent who leaked the draft, what would be your bet?

You need to remove your tribal lens now and then. I’ve always said that a liberal clerk or justice is the most likely source, and still believe it. What I have also been able to do, is discuss a not-unreasonable motive that a right wing justice or clerk could have to release it. That’s not ‘seizing any morsel’, it’s simply evaluating the whole situation.

[jon-nyc]

@Horace said in Investigating the SCOTUS leak:

@Jolly said in Investigating the SCOTUS leak:

So, five years or more after the fact, this "concerned citizen" pens a letter about shit they probably barely remember and the NYT puts any credence at all in this stack of horse apples? And then the fool sticks it on social media?

Oh. My. Giddy. Aunt...

Lowering IQ? Hell, that just took the whole room down five points, at least.

The story is really meant in the spirit of whataboutism, under the assumption that a leftist virtue-bot leaked the draft. (What choice would a virtue-bot have, when watching history unfold in the direction of evil?) Only in certain fringy leftist conspiratorial minds does it constitute circumstantial evidence that Alito's camp leaked it.

Again with the lens.

My comment of ‘circumstantial evidence’ is as regards the 2014 event, not the 22 event. In fact in my OP I went out of my way to note the major difference between whispering to a trusted friend and leaking a draft document.

[Horace]

@jon-nyc said in Investigating the SCOTUS leak:

@Horace said in Investigating the SCOTUS leak:

@Jolly said in Investigating the SCOTUS leak:

So, five years or more after the fact, this "concerned citizen" pens a letter about shit they probably barely remember and the NYT puts any credence at all in this stack of horse apples? And then the fool sticks it on social media?

Oh. My. Giddy. Aunt...

Lowering IQ? Hell, that just took the whole room down five points, at least.

The story is really meant in the spirit of whataboutism, under the assumption that a leftist virtue-bot leaked the draft. (What choice would a virtue-bot have, when watching history unfold in the direction of evil?) Only in certain fringy leftist conspiratorial minds does it constitute circumstantial evidence that Alito's camp leaked it.

Again with the lens.

My comment of ‘circumstantial evidence’ is as regards the 2014 event, not the 22 event. In fact in my OP I went out of my way to note the major difference between whispering to a trusted friend and leaking a draft document.

The only reason this is an interesting story is in how it reflects on the Hobbs leak. In that context it is a whataboutism misdirect. I have no trouble believing it is true, but irrelevant to the current subject people actually care about.

[jon-nyc]

@Horace said in Investigating the SCOTUS leak:

I have no trouble believing it is true, but irrelevant to the current subject people actually care about.

That was more or less my conclusion.

[Horace]

@jon-nyc said in Investigating the SCOTUS leak:

@Horace said in Investigating the SCOTUS leak:

I have no trouble believing it is true, but irrelevant to the current subject people actually care about.

That was more or less my conclusion.

Irrelevancy to the Hobbs leak is at odds with the New York times story and your posting of a link to it in this thread.

[jon-nyc]

Well it could be that the NYT put the story in play so it'll be in the news for a couple days whether we like it or not, and I came here to comment on it, and communicate my skepticism that even credible evidence of an earlier leak by Alito didn't really point to him being the culprit given that vast differences in the scenarios.

Or it could be that I secretly looked at this as the smoking gun implicating Alito, and my version of 4D chess is to say the opposite of that when I post about it.

I'll report, you decide.

[Horace]

@jon-nyc said in Investigating the SCOTUS leak:

Well it could be that the NYT put the story in play so it'll be in the news for a couple days whether we like it or not, and I came here to comment on it, and communicate my skepticism that even credible evidence of an earlier leak by Alito didn't really point to him being the culprit given that vast differences in the scenarios.

Or it could be that I secretly looked at this as the smoking gun implicating Alito, and my version of 4D chess is to say the opposite of that when I post about it.

You enjoyed the political valence of the transparently tribal “news” story. It’s not complicated. But yes duly noted that you respectfully disagree with the absurd connection with the Hobbs leak.

[jon-nyc]

You’re going to figure large in the things I’m grateful for this thanksgiving, Lucy Horace. Without you, how would I know what I think and why?

[Horace]

@jon-nyc said in Investigating the SCOTUS leak:

You’re going to figure large in the things I’m grateful for this thanksgiving, Lucy Horace. Without you, how would I know what I think and why?

You’ve been calling people tribally motivated for years and years here. Meanwhile in your dotage you’ve become maybe the most emotionally invested tribalist on this board. Even if your tribe is more based on hate for the right than it is on respect for the left.

[George K]

Investigation fail:

An investigation into the leak of a bombshell Supreme Court ruling overturning the federal right to abortion — weeks before it was officially released — failed to identify the culprit, the court said Thursday.

The inconclusive end to the probe was another embarrassment for the Supreme Court, which called the leak “one of the worst betrayals of trust in its history” and “a grave assault on the judicial process.”

Investigators interviewed nearly 100 court employees in the probe, 82 of whom had access to electronic or hard copies of the draft majority opinion by conservative Justice Samuel Alito.

But neither Alito nor the court’s other eight justices were eyed in the investigation, according to an official report.

Wouldn't it have been a kick if one of the justices leaked it?

[Copper]

@George-K said in Investigating the SCOTUS leak:

Wouldn't it have been a kick if one of the justices leaked it?

“When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

[Jolly]

Wonder if OPSEC has improved after this fiasco?

[George K]

Justice Alito says he has ‘pretty good idea’ who was behind leak

Justice Samuel Alito said that he has a “pretty good idea” who was responsible for the unprecedented disclosure of a draft opinion of a Supreme Court ruling last year, suggesting it was someone who opposed reversing the Roe v. Wade precedent that protected abortion rights nationwide.

In an interview published Friday by The Wall Street Journal in its opinion section, Alito dismissed the idea that the draft was leaked by one of the five conservative justices who were in the majority of the ruling.

“That’s infuriating to me,” Alito said of the speculation. “Look, this made us targets of assassination. Would I do that to myself? Would the five of us have done that to ourselves? It’s quite implausible.”

He acknowledged in the interview, which took place in mid-April, that he didn’t have the level of proof about who was behind the leak that would make it appropriate to name the person he thinks was responsible. The final opinion overturning Roe in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization largely tracked with the draft.

“It was a part of an effort to prevent the Dobbs draft … from becoming the decision of the court,” Alito said. “And that’s how it was used for those six weeks by people on the outside – as part of the campaign to try to intimidate the court.”

Alito has previously condemned the leak, as have other justices. The Supreme Court in a January statement called the disclosure a “grave assault on the judicial process.”

The statement was issued with a public version of a report summarizing the investigation into the leak conducted by the marshal of the court, Gail Curley. The release said that the investigative team had “to date been unable to identify a person responsible by a preponderance of the evidence.”

Politico obtained and published the draft in early May, several weeks before the court released the final opinion at the end of its term.

In his latest comments to the Journal, Alito said the marshal “did a good job with the resources that were available to her” and agreed with her decision not to publicly identify a culprit. He condemned the threats and hostility facing the court, including an alleged assassination attempt against Justice Brett Kavanaugh last summer.

Alito took swipes in the interview at those he said have criticized the court “unfairly,” and he griped about how some pockets of the legal profession were playing a role in the criticism rather than defending the high court.

“The idea has always been that judges are not supposed to respond to criticisms, but if the courts are being unfairly attacked, the organized bar will come to their defense,” he said, adding, “If anything, they’ve participated to some degree in these attacks.”