OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo believes the identity of the Supreme Court leaker will be revealed in “short order.”
During a segment on “Sunday Morning Futures,” Bartiromo spoke about the Supreme Court reportedly voting in favor of striking down the controversial Roe v. Wade decision.
A draft majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito was leaked to Politico last week it set off a firestorm on social media. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts called the leak of a draft opinion “absolutely appalling” and announced an investigation to find the leaker.
Bartiromo didn’t waste time speaking about who may or may not have been the leaker but said she believes the leaker will be identified sooner rather than later.
“We are going to know who leaked that draft opinion in short order,” Bartiromo said.
“I’ve got [Sen.] Ted Cruz on the show today, and he basically walked me through it yesterday when we were talking about today’s appearance — that there is — it’s really a small group, 12 people,” Bartiromo added. “Because it’s three liberal justices that have four law clerks each, a pool of 12 people that people are looking at right now. There is an investigation underway.”
WATCH:
Soon after Alito’s draft majority opinion leaked, it’s assumed there were at least 5 votes in favor of overturning Roe v Wade, leaving state legislators to weigh their own abortion policies.
More bluntly, if the Supreme Court does announce that Roe v Wade is overturned, each state will have to pass abortion laws and it’s likely many will enact very strict measures against the practice.
“The draft opinion is a full-throated, unflinching repudiation of the 1973 decision which guaranteed federal constitutional protections of abortion rights and a subsequent 1992 decision – Planned Parenthood v. Casey – that largely maintained the right,” Politico reported.
“Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” Alito writes.
“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” he writes in the document, labeled as the “Opinion of the Court.”
Alito adds: “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”
“We, therefore, hold the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion. Roe and Casey must be overruled, and the authority to regulate abortion must be returned to the people and their elected representatives,” Alito writes in the document, labeled the “Opinion of the Court.”
Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz also offered his opinion of who he believes the culprit may be.
“I had several reporters ask today ‘what if it was a justice that did this?’ I gotta tell you, I just don’t believe that,” Cruz said. “It is such a grotesque violation of trust, to me, it is beyond imagination that a justice would do this.”
“To use the nuclear code example, it’s like the president handing the nuclear codes to Putin, it’s just…I cannot believe that even the most left-wing justice would do this,” he added.
“I think it is very, very likely a law clerk,” he said. “And it is very, very likely a law clerk for one of the three liberal justices, that means there are twelve human beings who are your likely suspect pool, that’s not a big likely suspect pool.”
“It is likely to be someone who is a hard partisan, and who was willing to burn the place down because he or she was so upset about what happens,” Cruz continued, “If I were to guess, the most likely justice for whom the law clerk is clerking is Sonia Sotomayor.”
“Why do you say that?” Knowles asked in response.
“Because she’s the most partisan of the justices, and so, she’s the most likely to hire wild-eyed partisans as clerks,” he answered, adding that “I have no evidence of that. I’m just making an inference.”
Cruz then went on to address the gravity of the leak itself, which he and many other Republicans have called extremely serious.
“It is difficult to overstate how destructive it is to the Supreme Court, to the independence of the judiciary, to the integrity of the court, to have a draft opinion leaked during the process of deciding the case,” Cruz said.
“In over 200 years of our nation’s history, that has never happened, and there was one woke, little left-wing twit who decided to hell with his or her obligations to the justice they work for, to hell with their obligations to the court, to hell with their obligations to the rule of law, that they would instead try to sneak it out in order to put political pressure on the justices and intimidate them into changing their votes,” he added.
