Former president Trump argued Thursday that the reporters who disclosed the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision in a story should be jailed if they refuse to reveal the identify of the primary leaker of the document.
In May 2022, Politico journalists Josh Gerstein and Alexander Ward published a draft copy of the Dobbs ruling, which overturned Roe v. Wade.
On Thursday, the Supreme Court released its report on the Dobbs leak investigation, which failed to yield a culprit after eight months of interviews and extensive forensic analysis.
“They’ll never find out, & it’s important that they do,” Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social, on Thursday. “So, go to the reporter & ask him/her who it was. If not given the answer, put whoever in jail until the answer is given. You might add the editor and publisher to the list.”
The leak probe was launched by the Marshal of the Supreme Court Gail Curley, at Chief Justice John Robert’s direction, a few days after Politico first reported on the document. Almost 100 employees of the Court, 82 of whom had access to electronic or hard copies of the draft opinion, were questioned as part of the inquiry, according to the report.
A few weeks after the unauthorized disclosure, Trump had urged the Supreme Court to go to the reporters to identify the source of the document.
“The U.S. Supreme Court must find reveal and punish the leaker,” Trump wrote on Truth in June 2022, the Hill reported. “Go to the reporter who received the leak.” He noted that “this is a tremendously serious matter that has never happened, to anywhere near this extent, before.”
In October, Justice Alito warned that the leak endangered his life and the lives of his conservative colleagues on the bench. The Chief Justice lamented at the time that it was an unprecedented assault on the integrity of the institution.
“This was a singular and egregious breach of that trust that is an affront to the Court and the community of public servants who work here,” Roberts said. “To the extent this betrayal of the confidences of the Court was intended to undermine the integrity of our operations, it will not succeed.”