Prominent Republicans and right-wing media figures have spent the last week accusing clerks for the three Democratic-appointed Supreme Court justices for the unprecedented leak of a draft opinion overruling two landmark reproductive rights cases. But a legendary chronicler of the high court has suggested they’re barking up the wrong tree.
National Public Radio legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg, who has covered the court since the 1970s, said the most likely culprit is a clerk for one of the more conservative justices, motivated by a desire to keep one of the four justices who voted to join Justice Samuel Alito’s February draft opinion — Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett — from defecting.
