The leak that rocked the Supreme Court in 2022 never got solved.
Pro-lifers spent years waiting for somebody to answer for it. The justices mostly kept their mouths shut.
But Justice Samuel Alito finally let slip one suspicion that should keep somebody in Washington, DC awake at night.
Alito Sat Down With Shannon Bream and Didn’t Duck
Alito joined Fox News host Shannon Bream for an interview on Fox News Sunday, according to Mediaite.
Bream didn’t waste the opportunity. She asked him point-blank about the worst breach of trust in the modern history of the Court.
And Alito gave an answer nobody else in that building has offered in public.
“You have an opinion about who you think the leaker was?” Bream asked.
“I do have an opinion. But the evidence available at this time is not strong enough for the court, or for me, to say,” Alito replied.
That’s it. No name. No wink. Just a sitting justice confirming on national television that he has somebody in mind.
Maybe Alito knows more than he’s letting on. Maybe he doesn’t. Then again, a man who spent his whole career weighing evidence doesn’t toss out “I do have an opinion” on Fox by accident.
The Draft That Put Five Justices in the Crosshairs
Some backstory helps here. Alito wrote the majority opinion in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the 2022 ruling that overturned Roe v Wade and handed the abortion question back to the states and the voters.
For nearly half a century, Roe had treated the taking of an unborn child’s life as a right hiding somewhere in the Constitution. Alito took that claim apart with plain history.
“I know this is very controversial but I thought it was perfectly clear, that the reference to liberty in the 14th Amendment adopted in 1868 did not mean that there is a constitutional right to abortion,” Alito told Bream.
He pointed to the laws the states actually had on their books when they ratified that amendment.
“In 1868, abortion was illegal in most of the states. And so it is unthinkable those states would ratify an amendment that rendered their own laws unconstitutional, and then continue to have those laws on the books for decades after that,” Alito said.
That isn’t some exotic legal theory. It’s a simple question about what the people who wrote and ratified the 14th Amendment believed. And the pro-life movement made exactly that point for decades while the legal establishment rolled its eyes and called it backward.
Alito admitted he saw the fury coming. “I anticipated that it would anger a great many people who believed and continue to believe strongly that there should be a constitutional right to abortion. So I understood that,” he said.
But somebody inside the Court refused to wait for the final ruling. Somebody handed the draft to the outside world before the justices finished their work.
Alito didn’t soften what that did. “I never dreamed the draft of the opinion would be leaked. That was totally unprecedented in the history of the country. It was a grave breach of the trust that everybody who worked in this building had before that point,” he said.
Then he went further. “It very predictably made the five of us in the majority targets for assassination. And nearly resulted in the assassination of my colleague Brett Kavanaugh.”
What Happened Outside Kavanaugh’s Home
That last line isn’t hyperbole. Not even a little.
Just after 1 am on June 8, 2022, Nicholas Roske, who now goes by Sophie Roske, arrived outside Kavanaugh’s Maryland home armed with a gun, a knife, zip ties, and burglary tools, according to KUTV.
After the arrest, Roske told investigators that anger over the leaked draft opinion fueled the plot, according to an FBI affidavit. The affidavit also said Roske believed Kavanaugh would vote to loosen gun control laws.
Roske pleaded guilty to attempting to assassinate a Supreme Court justice. Department of Justice prosecutors asked for 30 years, the low end of the sentencing guidelines. Roske’s defense team asked for eight.
US District Judge Deborah Boardman, a Joe Biden appointee, gave the defense almost exactly what it wanted: eight years and one month.
Eight years. For showing up armed in the dark outside a justice’s house with zip ties in hand.
Let that one sink in for a minute.
Alito’s Restraint Is the Whole Point
Here’s the angle the corporate press will skip right past. Alito has a suspect. He said so. And he still won’t name anybody, because the evidence isn’t there yet.
Compare that to how the political class treats conservatives. Accusations fly first, facts trickle in later, and the retraction (if one ever comes) lands on page 19. Alito did the opposite. He told the country he has a hunch and then kept his mouth shut until the proof catches up.
That’s what a judge is supposed to do. It’s also a quiet rebuke to every activist who spent 2022 screaming that the conservative majority had no respect for the rule of law.
But don’t miss the other half of what he said. Alito described the leak as a betrayal of “everybody who worked in this building.” His own words point inward. Whoever did this had access, had trust, and threw both away for a political shot at the five justices who refused to bend.
The leaker didn’t just embarrass the Court. The leaker lit a fuse. The draft gave the public a list of five names months before the final opinion came down, and one armed person acted on it, by Roske’s own account to investigators.
And that fits a pattern conservatives know far too well. Political violence aimed at the Right rarely gets the round-the-clock, wall-to-wall treatment the same outlets would give the reverse scenario. The Kavanaugh plot barely registered as a national emergency in much of the media, and the lenient sentence drew far less outrage than it deserved.
Where This Goes Next
The pro-life side won the legal argument in Dobbs. The fight over protecting unborn life moved to the states, where voters and legislatures now decide it, just as the founders of the 14th Amendment would have expected.
But the leak still hangs over the Court like an unpaid bill.
If the evidence Alito mentioned ever firms up, the next question writes itself. Will anybody actually face consequences for a betrayal that nearly got a justice killed? Or will Washington do what Washington usually does and let the whole thing fade into a footnote?
Alito didn’t answer that. He didn’t have to.
He simply let the country know that at least one person on the Court hasn’t forgotten, and hasn’t stopped paying attention.
Sources:
“Justice Alito Says He Has a Hunch Who Leaked the Dobbs Report,” Mediaite
“Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s attempted killer sentenced to 8 years in prison,” KUTV