Speaker 1: Well, as we increasingly suspected, the leak of the Supreme Court Roe v Wade decision
increasingly appears to have been leaked by right wingers in order to ensure that Roe v
Wade was overturned. We have a new report from Rolling Stone. It is absolutely fascinating and
we are going to talk about it. But let me kind of reset the story for you. When that decision
leaked, there was the immediate reaction from the right that this was a left winger
who leaked the decision to pressure justices to vote to preserve Roe v Wade in order to
intimidate them. And much of the reason for that was that left wingers were rightly outraged that
the Supreme Court planned to overturn Roe v Wade. So the right said it was a left winger who did the
leaking. We've got to investigate it. We've got to figure out who it is. People should be fired,
disbarred, if they're lawyers, whatever. Now, I took the approach of if we're just speculating,
could have been a left winger, could have been a right winger. There were two scenarios.
One potential scenario would be the leaker was on the left, knew that the draft would overturn Roe v
Wade, and thought that by leaking it, it might generate a pressure campaign to get a Supreme
Court justice or two to change their minds and vote to preserve Roe v Wade. Just as plausibly,
the leaker could have been a right winger who was aware that while this draft would have
overturned Roe v Wade, the February draft that was leaked in, you know, a few months after that,
they may have known that within the court there may have been justices changing their minds. And
the idea was to leak the draft, to publicize who, as of February, planned to overturn Roe v Wade,
to make it difficult for them to change their minds. These were the two speculative scenarios.
And over time, as Republicans stop talking about investigating the leaker,
as we heard from longtime Supreme Court reporters, that within the Supreme Court,
the belief was actually that the leaker was a right winger. I started to be of the mindset
that the leaker was probably a right winger. Well, we now know from a new report that that appears to
be correct. John Roberts was lobbying Kavanaugh to save Roe. Then the draft opinion leaked. A new
report says the leak, which conservatives insist was the work of a rogue liberal, actually helped
get Roe overturned. This was exactly the opinion that I told you months ago was the most likely
immediately after the draft Supreme Court decision was released. Conservatives began bleeding about
how the leak was the work of a nefarious liberal cleric who wanted to put the opinion out to
pressure the court's conservatives to change their minds. It's possible that that's what happened,
but if so, publicizing the draft had the opposite effect, according to a new report from CNN. Per
the report, the leak of the draft decision foiled that Chief Justice Roberts attempts to persuade
Brett Kavanaugh to act as Roe's saving vote. Sources told CNN Roberts continued to try and
sway the junior justices even after the leak of the opinion, despite public and private pressure
from conservatives for the court to solidify its decision. Roberts overtures this spring,
particularly to Kavanaugh, raised fears among conservatives and hopes among liberals that the
chief would change the outcome in the most closely watched case in decades. Now, you might remember,
Roberts ultimately voted to uphold the Mississippi law. That was disputed, but he did a separate
concurrence disagreeing with the decision to strike down Roe. So I know a lot of you might be
saying, but, David, the math doesn't work because Roberts did vote to uphold Dobbs. And the belief
is based on what he wrote and based on everything that's being reported. Roberts wanted to uphold
Dobbs, but still maintain Roe v Wade and was working on Kavanaugh to do the same.
This is exactly what it increasingly seemed like within about eight or ten days of the leaked
decision. And this thinking provides support for the belief that the leaker was a right wing
staffer. They wanted to prevent Brett Kavanaugh from defecting. That's fundamentally what it is,
and this is probably why we never heard it. How is the search going for the real killer? O.J.,
what do we know? Right. It's the same type of thing. We're going to investigate it. Oh, wait. It
was one of ours. Yeah, let's just never mention that investigation again. And it's
very funny and also kind of disturbing how in the days immediately following the leak,
everybody was saying the right wing operatives were saying, what a travesty,
what a miscarriage of justice. This is criminal. People need to be charged. People need to be
disbarred. These left wingers leaking this stuff and then we never hear about it again. And to be
perfectly frank, the dead giveaway was that the right and conservative media went silent
about the investigation and the leaker. About a week or ten. Days after the leak took place.
Somebody maybe tipped them off and said, don't even talk about this. The leaker was
one of ours or not even just don't talk about this. Don't say more about the investigation.
And that's what the report is. And it's exactly what we and many of you believed at the time.