After the leak of the SCOTUS draft opinion concerning Roe v. Wade came out Monday night, there was some speculation as to whether it was real, although the weight of the evidence was there that it was.

We wrote after it happened on Monday night about how Chief Justice John Roberts was going to respond to this and how reportedly he would be calling for an investigation.

Now, the Court has just confirmed it is indeed a draft opinion. But they cautioned — as we have been saying — that it’s not a final opinion and that things can change between this draft and the final decision. Chief Justice Roberts is also up in arms about the leak and says they are going to do all they can to go after the leaker, noting that the purpose of this was to upset the work of the Court, and “it will not succeed.”

BREAKING: Chief Justice John Roberts has directed the marshal of the Supreme Court to launch an investigation into the source of the leaked draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, which Roberts verified as an authentic document pic.twitter.com/vcq4lTY7bk

— John Kruzel (@johnkruzel) May 3, 2022

From ABC:

“To the extent this betrayal of the confidences of the Court was intended to undermine the integrity of our operations, it will not succeed. The work of the Court will not be affected in any way,” Roberts said.

“We at the Court are blessed to have a workforce – permanent employees and law clerks alike – intensely loyal to the institution and dedicated to the rule of law. Court employees have an exemplary and important tradition of respecting the confidentiality of the judicial process and upholding the trust of the Court,” he said. “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 he had directed the Marshal of the Court — its chief operations and security officer — to investigate.

Unless there was a hack or other unauthorized access to the email, there are only a limited number of people who would have been given the opinion so they should be able to track down the person involved. This needs to be dealt with, with all due speed, as this threatens the very integrity of the Court.