A leading theory has emerged on the source of the Roe leak, it is a humiliation for Republicans who claimed that it could not have come from a conservative clerk.
Video of NPR’s Nina Totenberg on ABC’s This Week:
Nina Totenberg on source of SCOTUS leak: “The leading theory is a conservative clerk who was afraid that one of the conservatives might be persuaded by Chief Justice Roberts to join a much more moderate opinion.” pic.twitter.com/TWzQmA1Uqm
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 8, 2022
Transcript via ABC’s This Week:
NINA TOTENBERG, NPR LEGAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, the way it’s viewed it’s an earthquake and I think within the court itself it’s an earthquake. There has never been a leak like this, there have been minor, little springs that have emerged from the court, reports of a tentative vote or misbehavior by one justice back in the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s.
There were those kinds of leaks but never an entire draft of a majority opinion, that has never, ever occurred before. And it can only, in all likelihood, have come from a justice, that I think is less likely, perhaps one of the clerks and the leading theory is a conservative clerk who was afraid that one of the conservatives might be persuaded by Chief Justice Roberts to join a much more moderate opinion, and then there’s another theory that it was an outraged liberal clerk.
But I think the only one that makes sense is that it came from somebody who was afraid that this majority might not hold, that Chief Justice Roberts might persuade one of the conservatives to come over to him in a much more moderate opinion.
The theory has been that the opinion was leaked to keep Chief Justice Roberts from being able to flip a vote to a more moderate ruling that does not completely overturn Roe.
Ted Cruz has stated that only a moron would believe that a conservative clerk would leak the opinion and that he knows that the leak came from a liberal because “I am not a moron.”
It looks like all of that nonsense was wrong, and the most likely reason that the opinion was leaked was that conservatives are scared of Roberts keeping Roe.
Mr. Easley is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
