The leaker behind a massive breach of Supreme Court secrets may have been a justice aligned with the left side of the bench, according to the Daily Caller.
Conservative legal experts told the outlet that a recent New York Times report bears the imprint of a leftist conspiracy to discredit and undermine the high court.
The Times piece paints Chief Justice John Roberts as steering three major January 6th-related cases in Donald Trump's favor. The article cites a confidential February memo from Roberts that criticized what he saw as the careless reasoning of a lower court in Trump's historic immunity case.
The Supreme Court ultimately reversed 6-3, clarifying that presidents have broad immunity from prosecution.
The article draws from "details from the justices’ private memos, documentation of the proceedings and interviews with court insiders, both conservative and liberal."
As the left sees it, the Times exposed further evidence of a right-wing takeover that threatens the court's very legitimacy. Many conservatives are more concerned by the leak itself and what it points to: a partisan war on the court by Democrats, liberal media, and the court's own left-wing staff.
“This is another disturbing leak from the Court, and Congress should look into it because clearly a member of the minority is conspiring with the Left to destroy the Court,” Judicial Crisis Network President Carrie Severino told the Daily Caller.
South Texas College of Law Houston professor Josh Blackman went further in an article at Reason and named Justice Elena Kagan as a possible culprit, citing her absence from the Times report and the article's consistency with Kagan's point of view.
Notably, Kagan echoed Democratic demands for an enforceable ethics code at a judicial conference of the Ninth Circuit.
“If Kagan is willing to publicly undermine her colleagues in a speech at the Ninth Circuit, why would she do any less off-the-record?” Blackman wrote.
“Moreover, this entire story is consistent with Kagan’s MO, and describing the Court as bending over backward for Trump.”
In what was then an unprecedented breach, the Supreme Court's 2022 opinion overturning Roe v. Wade was leaked to the public before the court released it. The leaker was never identified.
Blackman called the Times leaks "far worse than the Dobbs leak” because they are so extensive and would have required the complicity of multiple sources.
President Biden has called for a sweeping overhaul of the court, including term limits. Republicans have blasted the proposed changes as a smokescreen for a partisan power grab that threatens the separation of powers.
An Alaska man who supports Democrats was arrested Wednesday for threatening to kill six of the Supreme Court justices. A California man is currently facing trial for attempting to kill conservative Brett Kavanaugh.
