News/Commentary

Liberal Twitter goes full Scooby Doo, torches Alito as suspected SCOTUS leaker; justice denies ‘false’ claim

November 20, 2022 | | Print Article

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is getting skewered on Twitter by liberals who are convinced he is the one who leaked the explosive draft opinion of the Dobbs decision, which signaled the end of the unconstitutional 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling.

The allegations stem from a Saturday New York Times article citing a June 2022 letter from Rev. Robert L. Schenck to Chief Justice John Roberts, in which the former anti-abortion leader claimed that, in 2014, “a donor to the Capitol Hill-based non-profit organization” he led was told the outcome of Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, a case involving the Christian-owned craft store chain, weeks before it was officially announced.

The inside information was allegedly shared with the donor and her husband during a dinner party “at the home of Justice and Mrs. Alito.”

Schenck claimed he kept “this sensitive information” to himself, but “a day or two before the opinion was released,” he called Hobby Lobby CEO Steve Green “and reported what I knew of the Court’s finding.”

The Times, while admitting that “Mr. Schenck’s account of the breach has gaps,” drew ominous conclusions anyway.

“Both court decisions were triumphs for conservatives and the religious right,” reported Jodi Kantor and Jo Becker. “Both majority opinions were written by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.”

Kanto and Becker claim The Times spent months investigating the claim and “found a trail of contemporaneous emails and conversations that strongly suggested he knew the outcome and the author of the Hobby Lobby decision before it was made public.”

The Times reports:

In early June 2014, an Ohio couple who were Mr. Schenck’s star donors shared a meal with Justice Alito and his wife, Martha-Ann. A day later, Gayle Wright, one of the pair, contacted Mr. Schenck, according to an email reviewed by The Times. “Rob, if you want some interesting news please call. No emails,” she wrote.

Mr. Schenck said Mrs. Wright told him that the decision would be favorable to Hobby Lobby, and that Justice Alito had written the majority opinion. Three weeks later, that’s exactly what happened. The court ruled, in a 5-4 vote, that requiring family-owned corporations to pay for insurance covering contraception violated their religious freedoms.

And that was enough for the liberal loons on Twitter to reach for their virtuous pitchforks.

“The Supreme Court Leaker – for Dobbs and Hobby Lobby – was Samuel Alito,” declared Keith Olbermann, who is always good for an over-the-top reaction to anything that suits his pre-determined views. “Alito is a disgrace to this nation and as dangerous as any terrorist. He must be forced off the Court.”

“This story is stunning,” gasped Matthew Chapman. “In short: Alito himself leaked the Dobbs decision, and not only that, he’s leaked his own opinions before, to right-wing litigants, so they could wine and dine other justices, and donate to their causes, to secure their vote.”

“How anyone could read this exposé of Sam Alito’s leak of the Hobby Lobby ruling in 2014 and not (1) yell out ‘This is crazy!’ (2) conclude that Alito likely leaked the Dobbs opinion last spring, and (3) call for Congress to investigate this is beyond me,” exclaimed Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.).

Buried in The Times story, of course, is the fact that Justice Alito has categorically denied leaking the opinion.

In a statement issued through the court’s spokeswoman, Alito admitted that he and his wife shared a “casual and purely social relationship” with the Wrights.

The maligned justice did not deny that the dinner in question occurred but stated that the “allegation that the Wrights were told the outcome of the decision in the Hobby Lobby case, or the authorship of the opinion of the Court, by me or my wife, is completely false.”

Even Mrs. Wright denied the allegation.

“Mrs. Wright, in a phone interview, denied obtaining or passing along any such information,” The Times concedes.

But for brainiacs like Star Trek’s George Takai, the denial is only evidence of Alito’s guilt.

“We don’t know who leaked the Supreme Court opinions to conservative groups,” he quipped, “but one justice certainly doth protest his own innocence Alito too loudly.”

 

Melissa Fine
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