(Video: Fox News)
Speaking from first-hand experience, Fox News host Laura Ingraham railed against the reported leak of a SCOTUS opinion that could overturn Roe v. Wade as, no matter your position on the case, it represents a “naked attempt to try to change the outcome.”
Establishing the details of the leak, Ingraham explained that Politico released what they claimed to be a draft majority opinion from Justice Samuel Alito in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that, if accurate and reflective of the final decision, would reverse the 1973 ruling of Roe v. Wade. As a result, the final decision on abortion laws would be up to each individual state as they had been prior to the nearly 50-year-old case.
“No matter what you think about this outcome, the leak itself represents a shocking and unprecedented breach of the court’s confidentiality, which is sacrosanct,” the host of “The Ingraham Angle” argued of what had always appeared to be the bipartisan position on the matter. “And it’s key to the court’s ability, on any issue, to engage in the give-and-take and all the decision-making that’s required to reach these decisions based on legal principles, based on the Constitution, not because of political pressure. That’s what the legislature does, not the court.”
“It is not up to a law clerk to decide when the decision of the court will be announced,” Ingraham fumed, “and it is not up to a law clerk or any employee of the court to leak a decision in what is a naked attempt to try to change the outcome before the final opinion is issued.”
“Now why am I so passionate about this tonight? I actually know what I’m talking about,” she went on after earlier laying out the “inviolable deal” of confidentiality inherent in clerkship that affords them “tremendous privilege” to garner knowledge from the justices. “A lot of people on television tonight don’t know what they’re talking about. I was a Supreme Court law clerk and I know, because I saw it, opinions go back and forth. Drafts of opinions go back and forth. Language changes. Sometimes, sometimes, even votes might change.”
4. Justices review the draft opinions and sometimes change their votes. Here the draft opinion is quite sweeping. I could see a justice trying to uphold the MS law in a narrower fashion.
5. The Court is (was) basically the only DC institution that doesn't leak. A shattered norm.
— Joe Bishop-Henchman 🗽💸⚖️🚆 (@jbhenchman) May 3, 2022
Chief Justice William Rehnquist, she reported, had told the nearly 40 clerks who worked alongside her for the nine members of the court, “If you leak anything from this court, you can kiss your legal career bye-bye.”
However, in today’s atmosphere, that is likely not to be the case. In fact, as the Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro suggested, the potential leaker has a better chance of gaining fame and fortune.
When it turns out that it was a Sotomayor clerk or something similar, the media will immediately turn that person into a Hero Of Democracy™ for attempting to undermine the Court. After all, abortion is sacred to the media.
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) May 3, 2022
This isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. The undermining of the institutions is the objective and there are no sacred cows here.
They’re not satisfied with abusing FISA, editing FBI emails, surveilling private citizens, but they want to destroy SCOTUS, too.
— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) May 3, 2022
Oh my Lord ⬇️ https://t.co/wjKWWRPP4P
— Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) May 3, 2022
The leak of the Supreme Court draft opinion on Roe is a dangerous obstruction of justice. And it could very well lead to intimidation and violence directed at Supreme Court justices. Which, I suspect, is the point of the criminal leak.
— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) May 3, 2022
This is reflective of the state of our culture, Ingraham concluded.
“It is a sad commentary that someone in that building took it upon himself or herself to totally usurp the role of the justices and hijack the court’s deliberative process. This was a bald-faced attempt to tip the balance of the vote one way or another. We know which way. The leaker undoubtedly hopes, right, that this leaked opinion will drive activists to the court doors,” she said.
What a nightmare.
— Katie Pavlich (@KatiePavlich) May 3, 2022
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