Conservatives made a huge fuss over the Supreme Court's draft opinion
leak regarding Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health organization.
And of course that leak gave us a preview of the Supreme Court's
decision to reverse Roe v Wade.
In fact, the conservative Justices especially were outraged over that leak.
But a recent report from the New York Times actually claims that
conservative Justice Samuel Alito leaked the Supreme Court decision in
2014 making him a prime suspect for this year's Supreme Court leak.
Here are the details, the Supreme Court heard heard
a case known as Burwell v Hobby Lobby back in 2014.
For those of you who don't remember that case or hadn't heard about that case,
it had to do with Hobby Lobby, which is owned by evangelicals,
not wanting to pay for health insurance that covers birth control or
contraception for their employees.
Right, this was part of the Affordable Care Act,
employers had to provide health insurance to their employees.
And in this case, Hobby Lobby said that they refused due to their sincerely held
religious beliefs to provide health insurance that covers contraceptives.
Now, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in favor of Hobby Lobby, and
the ruling was in fact written by Samuel Alito.
Now, here's the bombshell, in a letter to Chief Justice John Roberts Jr and
in interviews with the New York Times, a reverend by the name of Rob Schenck
said that he was told the outcome of the 2014 case weeks before it was announced.
He used that information to prepare a public relations push, records show,
and he said that at the last minute he tipped off the president of Hobby Lobby,
the craft store chain owned by christian evangelicals that was the winning
party in the case.
Now Schenck who used to lead an evangelical nonprofit in Washington said,
he learned about the Hobby Lobby opinion because he had worked for
years to exploit the court's permeability.
He gained access through favors traded with gatekeepers and
through wealthy donors to his organization,
abortion opponents whom he called stealth missionaries.
So he actually had a couple hit up Supreme Court justices for dinners, for
vacations and their summer home rentals, that kind of stuff.
Doing favors for these justices, which by the way,
there should be laws against that.
But nonetheless, the authors of the New York Times piece write that,
while some of Schenck's evidence does have gaps,
he did provide enough substantive proof to strongly suggest that he and
others knew about the Hobby Lobby ruling ahead of time.
And here's what we know, okay, so in early June of 2014,
two wealthy donors to Schenck's organization, Donald and
Gayle Wright, shared a meal with Alito and his wife.
A day later,
Gayle Wright contacted Schenck according to an email reviewed by the Times.
Rob, if you want some interesting news, please call, no email, she wrote.
Schenck said Wright told him that the decision would be favorable to Hobby Lobby
and that Justice Alito had written the majority opinion.
The Wrights didn't just happen to be friends with the Alitos, okay?
So Schenck spent much of his life as a pretty rabid anti-choice zealot.
He later changed.
We'll get to that in a moment.
But through his organization, Faith and Action,
he launched operation higher court.
Schenck wanted the conservatives on the court to hear from people who would hail
them as heroes if they seized the opportunity to strike down Roe one day.
He wanted to gain access himself, but because he was a controversial figure,
he also recruited couples who were less likely to draw notice.
And so this couple, this wealthy couple, the Wrights were one of the couples that
Schenck had deployed to have these fancy dinners with Supreme Court justices.
And through that he was able to get the inside scoop ahead of time in regard
to the Supreme Court's decision on the Hobby Lobby case.
So Cenk, thoughts on all of this.
Look for me, the whole thing about the leak, I don't care.
Okay, I don't care about the Hobby Lobby leak.
I don't care about the Roe reversal leak either.
The fact that people were trying to make it about that story rather than the fact
that, hey, women are about to have their rights stripped away from them,
drove me nuts.
>> Yeah, I hear you and there's way too much press about
the etiquette of the leak because DC hates to talk about substance,
they love to talk about etiquette, right?
>> Yep, that's true.
>> Right, but the Dobbs leak,
actually the Hobby Lobby leak honestly turned out to be irrelevant, right?
So the anti-abortion groups were better prepared because they knew they were
going to win, but they were gonna win either way.
So it doesn't really matter too much, that preparation barely helped them at all.
But in the Dobbs case,
that leak came before everyone actually voted on that decision.
And it actually cemented it as these six are going to, or
these justices are going to vote this way, right, and this is the decision.
When that leaked, it made it very hard for
the other right wing justices to back away from it because then they would
be perceived as betraying the right wing cause, okay?
>> Can I jump in real quick?
Cuz my understanding was that justice John Roberts, Chief Justice John Roberts was,
I mean, he was gonna go along with the Conservative justices anyway.
He just had a slight tweak to his decision that was pretty inconsequential
to be honest with you.
>> Right, but usually what happens at that stage when it was leaked is that they have
more than slight tweaks, that a lot of them go back and forth.
And we know from reporting that Alito was still trying to convince Kavanaugh and
Roberts, and so it wasn't just one justice.
But when you make it public, it makes it near impossible for
Kavanaugh to back away from it.
Whereas if it was just internal,
there could have been a lot more horse trading that they did.
So maybe in the horse training Alito wouldn't have won the day and
maybe someone else could have formed an opinion that didn't take away the rights.
That's less likely, but possible.
Or they could have really softened the opinion,
instead it came out just as harsh as the leak indicated.
So I tell you all that because number one, in that case,
it was a rare situation where it did make a difference.
Number two, the leak definitively helped the right wing.
There's no question about that at all now.
When it happened it was confusing and
you couldn't tell necessarily who was helped by it.
Now with the benefit of hindsight,
there's no question at all that it helped the right wing not the left at all, okay?
So now when you add in the fact that Alito, and it is a fact.
He says, I deny it.
Yeah, sure you do.
Alito is a giant liar.
No one should ever believe a word Sam Alito says,
I'll get back to why in this case in a second.
But he said, yeah, sure, I didn't do this leak, but
he definitely did in regards to the Hobby Lobby case.
So when you see him lying through his teeth about the Hobby Lobby case with
a guy whose was internal, knows for a fact that Sam Alito leaked that opinion.
And you realize how much the Dobbs leak helped Sam Alito's position in Dobbs,
then it becomes crystal clear.
It's not 100% cuz we don't have internal sources like we
do in the Hobby Lobby case, right?
But all logic indicates it was Sam Alito himself who leaked Dobbs and
he's been lying about it from day one.
And whether he did it through one of his clerks or whoever else or his wife.
I don't know.
>> Or through another couple that he was wined and dined by.
>> Or potentially another couple, exactly.
I don't know how he did it, but
it is overwhelmingly likely that it was a Alito who leaked Dobbs to pressure,
not the left wing, the other right wing justices into making sure they killed Roe.
And but to be fair to him, it was a very effective strategy.
It totally worked.
>> Yeah, I mean, look, we'll never know for sure.
But my guess is these Federalist Society conservative judges who were
put on the Federalist Society nomination list were put there for a reason.
So of course to provide cover for corporate greed.
Bilking US citizens, but also of course for issues like this.
So yeah, I mean, this is who they are.
This is what they've believed, right?
There's a reason why religious zealots make it on that Federalist society list.
>> 100%, and guys look, so
John Roberts I think is driven by corporate greed as well.
I disagree with 95% of his decisions, etc.
And is he generically lying saying he was just gonna call balls and strikes?
Of course,
you want some agreeing with the right wing the overwhelming majority of the time.
Golly Jim, just calling balls and strikes.
No way.
But specifically, he has said many things that he has actually delivered on, okay?
And so I have not seen Roberts lie.
other than the generic lie that he's neutral, right?
I have not seen him lie specifically.
So if Robert says something, I say, okay, well he might be telling the truth,
even though I really disagree with him right?
I have seen Alito and Thomas lie again and again and again in obvious brazen ways.
Including this one where you have emails from the time from Schenck saying,
hey, I found out what the decision is gonna be, and
the decision matches exactly what Schenck said.
You have people from that time that Schenck told, he said, this is what Alito,
and at the time they didn't even know that Alito was gonna write the majority
opinion.
They thought Roberts was gonna write the majority opinion.
Schenck is the only one that knows that Alito wrote it,
Schenck tells people, both documented and in person, his wife, friends, allies.
They all confirmed to the New York Times, yes he said at the time he knew what it
was, and he turned out to be exactly right.
So there's no question that Alito leaked it.
And the other part that Ana was referring to is also just as devastating.
You have these, and Schenck talks about it in great details now that he's turned
on the movement right?
He says, yeah, we get these really rich people and they wine and
dine the Supreme Court justices and we get access to the justices, and we make it
appear that everyone agrees with the most extreme position that we have.
They create a little mini bubble for the Supreme Court.
We talk about these bubbles all the time on the show right?
And they purposely created one and the method that they used,
by the way, was corruption.
So Alito not only got taken out to dinners by these fancy couples, but
he got to go stay at their fancy- >> Vacation rentals.
>> Vacation homes and stuff like that.
So they're literally wining and dining and and giving them goods and
becoming friends with them.
By the way, that couple that that has all that money, that are right wingers,
they know they're part of the plot.
There's emails saying, we're influencing him and
we're pushing him in the right direction.
And Alito says, if that's true, I'm deeply hurt, I thought.
Get out of here. >> Please get out, yeah, exactly.
No, they love it.
The corruption in this country is really incredible.
I mean, probably the most corrupt country in the world, I'm not even exaggerating.
And the reason why it's considered okay is cuz we just legalized it.
It's just it's so gross.