(Washington) The Supreme Court of the United States announced Thursday that it has not identified the author of the leak of its historic judgment on abortion, after more than eight months of meticulous investigation.
On May 2, 2022, the newspaper Politico had announced that the high court was preparing to blast the right to abortion and had published the draft of its decision.
This unprecedented leak had the effect of a bombshell in Washington and sparked major demonstrations by defenders of the right to abortion.
It also shook legal circles as the High Court is known to jealously protect the secrecy of its deliberations. Denouncing “treason”, its leader John Roberts immediately ordered an internal investigation to find the origin of the leak.
“After months of careful analysis of the evidence and the questioning of nearly 100 employees”, the investigators concluded that “there was no need for further investigation concerning the majority of the 82 employees who had had access to the preliminary draft judgment,” the Court wrote in a press release.
“Some employees” were questioned again, “but the team is unable to date to identify the person responsible with sufficient evidence”, she adds.
The Court specifies that it has requested the federal judge and former Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, for an opinion, but the latter did not identify any “additional” elements of investigation likely to advance the investigations.
The investigation report, made public on Thursday, adds that it is “unlikely that anyone outside the Court could have gained access to its computer systems”.
The development of teleworking during the pandemic has “created an environment in which it is too easy to take sensitive information outside the building and the Court’s servers”, underline its authors, recommending to tighten the procedures.
On June 24, in accordance with what had been announced Politico, the Supreme Court overturned its judgment in Roe v. Wade which, since 1973, guaranteed the right of women to terminate their pregnancy. Since then, around fifteen states have completely banned abortions on their soil.