Supreme Court probe fails to find abortion ruling leaker

An investigation into who leaked a bombshell Supreme Court ruling overturning the federal constitutional right to abortion weeks before it was officially released failed to identify the culprit, the court said Thursday.

Politico in May reported that a leaked draft opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito showed that the Supreme Court was poised to overturn its five-decade-old ruling in the case known as Roe v. Wade, which found there was a constitutional right to abortion. The leak was seen by members of the court, and others, as a striking betrayal of the

In June, just as the leak report suggested, the Supreme Court with a majority opinion penned by Alito said there was no federal right to abortion.

On the heels of the leak, Chief Justice John Roberts directed Gail Curley, the marshal of the Supreme Court, to investigate who released the draft opinion to Politico

“In following up on all available leads … the Marshal’s team performed additional forensic analysis and conducted multiple follow-up interviews of certain employees,” the Supreme Court said in a statement Thursday, which was accompanied by the release of Curley’s report on the probe.

“But the team has to date been unable to identify a person responsible by a preponderance of the evidence,” the court said.

The statement said that after the investigation was completed, the court invited Michael Chertoff, a former federal judge and prosecutor, and one-time secretary of Homeland Security, to assess Curley’s probe.

Chertoff “has advised that the Marshal ‘undertook a thorough investigation’ and, ‘[a]t this time, I cannot identify any additional useful investigative measures’ not already undertaken or underway,” the court said.

The statement said that investigators will continue to review some electronic data that has been collected for the probe, “and a few other inquiries remain pending.”

Curley, in her report, said, “To the extent that additional investigation yields new evidence or leads, the investigators will pursue them.”