{"id":164399,"date":"2026-10-05T15:19:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-05T23:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/10\/05\/sam-alito-rings-in-the-new-term-by-telling-fox-news-he-knows-who-leaked-dobbs\/"},"modified":"2026-10-05T15:19:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-05T23:19:09","slug":"sam-alito-rings-in-the-new-term-by-telling-fox-news-he-knows-who-leaked-dobbs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/10\/05\/sam-alito-rings-in-the-new-term-by-telling-fox-news-he-knows-who-leaked-dobbs\/","title":{"rendered":"Sam Alito Rings In The New Term By Telling Fox News He Knows Who Leaked Dobbs"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Sunday, ahead of the new Term, the justice sat down with Shannon Bream on Fox News Sunday<\/a>, and the conversation turned, as it so often does with Alito, to Dobbs v. Jackson Women\u2019s Health Organization<\/em>. Alito said he \u201canticipated\u201d the ruling would \u201canger a great many people who believed and continue to believe\u201d there is a constitutional right to an abortion. What he didn\u2019t anticipate was the leak.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I never dreamed that the draft of the opinion would be leaked\u2026 That was totally unprecedented in the history of the country,\u201d Alito told Bream, adding that the leak was a \u201cgrave breach of the trust that everybody who worked\u201d at the Court had in one another. He also, once again, argued that the leak \u201cvery predictably\u201d made him and the four other justices in the majority \u201ctargets for assassination.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then Bream asked whether he had any ideas about the identity of the leaker.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do have an opinion,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Funny, I have an opinion about that too.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut the evidence available at this time is not strong enough for the court or for me to say this is the person who was responsible.\u201d<\/p>\n

So\u2026 he owns a mirror?<\/p>\n

Since the very beginning, Alito has been one of the loudest voices in the room about the leak, louder about the leak than about the end of 50 years of reproductive freedom his opinion delivered. Back in October 2022, he was at the Heritage Foundation pushing his victim narrative<\/a>, and as we pointed out then, all the leak did was move up the public\u2019s awareness of Dobbs<\/em> by about a month. It\u2019s the decision, not the leak, that made people angry. By May 2023, he was back out with the assassination theory<\/a>, nearly verbatim. Sunday\u2019s interview is the same song, three years later.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the case that the leak came from the right has only gotten stronger. The motive was always obvious: the leak was likely to calcify Alito\u2019s scorched earth draft<\/a> as the opinion of the Court, taking momentum away from John Roberts\u2019s death-by-a-thousand-cuts approach. The Court\u2019s own investigation, run by the Marshal, focused on Court personnel<\/a> \u2014 clerks and permanent employees \u2014 and left nine very obvious stones unturned. The 20-page report<\/a> was then blessed by Michael Chertoff, Alito\u2019s former colleague on the Third Circuit, who turned out to have a multi-year, seven-figure contract<\/a> with the Court that nobody knew about at the time.<\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s the matter of Hobby Lobby<\/em>. Reverend Rob Schenck, a former anti-abortion activist, came forward to say he\u2019d learned the outcome of that 2014 decision in advance, through a network of right-wing activists who regularly dined with Alito. Alito denied it, and the Court cleared him after a cursory 10-second investigation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This is the coworker who keeps loudly asking who\u2019s been eating everyone\u2019s lunch out of the office fridge, with mustard on his tie. <\/p>\n

Which brings us to \u201cat this time.\u201d The FBI announced last year<\/a> that it was reopening the Dobbs<\/em> leak inquiry as part of a slate of investigations inspired by right-wing fever dreams. So does Alito know something about where that\u2019s headed? Or is he laying the groundwork to be aggrieved all over again when it doesn\u2019t name the liberal of his dreams?<\/p>\n

If the FBI really wants to find the leaker this time, I have some thoughts about where they should start.<\/p>\n

Earlier:<\/strong> Samuel Alito\u2019s Self-Serving Dobbs Leak Theory Is Back In The News<\/a>
Samuel Alito Is Back On His Histrionics Over Dobbs Leak<\/a>
Everything You Need To Know About The Supreme Court Leak Report But The Justices Were Afraid To Ask<\/a>
The FBI Decides What We Really Need Right Now Is Another Investigation Into The Dobbs Leak<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of\u00a0The Jabot podcast<\/a>, and co-host of\u00a0Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email\u00a0her<\/a>\u00a0with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter\u00a0@Kathryn1<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky\u00a0@Kathryn1<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The post Sam Alito Rings In The New Term By Telling Fox News He Knows Who Leaked Dobbs<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t(Photo by Alex Wong\/Getty Images)\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On Sunday, ahead of the new Term, the justice sat down with Shannon Bream on Fox News Sunday<\/a>, and the conversation turned, as it so often does with Alito, to Dobbs v. Jackson Women\u2019s Health Organization<\/em>. Alito said he \u201canticipated\u201d the ruling would \u201canger a great many people who believed and continue to believe\u201d there is a constitutional right to an abortion. What he didn\u2019t anticipate was the leak.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I never dreamed that the draft of the opinion would be leaked\u2026 That was totally unprecedented in the history of the country,\u201d Alito told Bream, adding that the leak was a \u201cgrave breach of the trust that everybody who worked\u201d at the Court had in one another. He also, once again, argued that the leak \u201cvery predictably\u201d made him and the four other justices in the majority \u201ctargets for assassination.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then Bream asked whether he had any ideas about the identity of the leaker.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do have an opinion,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Funny, I have an opinion about that too.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut the evidence available at this time is not strong enough for the court or for me to say this is the person who was responsible.\u201d<\/p>\n

So\u2026 he owns a mirror?<\/p>\n

Since the very beginning, Alito has been one of the loudest voices in the room about the leak, louder about the leak than about the end of 50 years of reproductive freedom his opinion delivered. Back in October 2022, he was at the Heritage Foundation pushing his victim narrative<\/a>, and as we pointed out then, all the leak did was move up the public\u2019s awareness of Dobbs<\/em> by about a month. It\u2019s the decision, not the leak, that made people angry. By May 2023, he was back out with the assassination theory<\/a>, nearly verbatim. Sunday\u2019s interview is the same song, three years later.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the case that the leak came from the right has only gotten stronger. The motive was always obvious: the leak was likely to calcify Alito\u2019s scorched earth draft<\/a> as the opinion of the Court, taking momentum away from John Roberts\u2019s death-by-a-thousand-cuts approach. The Court\u2019s own investigation, run by the Marshal, focused on Court personnel<\/a> \u2014 clerks and permanent employees \u2014 and left nine very obvious stones unturned. The 20-page report<\/a> was then blessed by Michael Chertoff, Alito\u2019s former colleague on the Third Circuit, who turned out to have a multi-year, seven-figure contract<\/a> with the Court that nobody knew about at the time.<\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s the matter of Hobby Lobby<\/em>. Reverend Rob Schenck, a former anti-abortion activist, came forward to say he\u2019d learned the outcome of that 2014 decision in advance, through a network of right-wing activists who regularly dined with Alito. Alito denied it, and the Court cleared him after a cursory 10-second investigation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This is the coworker who keeps loudly asking who\u2019s been eating everyone\u2019s lunch out of the office fridge, with mustard on his tie. <\/p>\n

Which brings us to \u201cat this time.\u201d The FBI announced last year<\/a> that it was reopening the Dobbs<\/em> leak inquiry as part of a slate of investigations inspired by right-wing fever dreams. So does Alito know something about where that\u2019s headed? Or is he laying the groundwork to be aggrieved all over again when it doesn\u2019t name the liberal of his dreams?<\/p>\n

If the FBI really wants to find the leaker this time, I have some thoughts about where they should start.<\/p>\n

Earlier:<\/strong> Samuel Alito\u2019s Self-Serving Dobbs Leak Theory Is Back In The News<\/a>
Samuel Alito Is Back On His Histrionics Over Dobbs Leak<\/a>
Everything You Need To Know About The Supreme Court Leak Report But The Justices Were Afraid To Ask<\/a>
The FBI Decides What We Really Need Right Now Is Another Investigation Into The Dobbs Leak<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

\"\"Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of\u00a0The Jabot podcast<\/a>, and co-host of\u00a0Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email\u00a0her<\/a>\u00a0with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter\u00a0@Kathryn1<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky\u00a0@Kathryn1<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Sunday, ahead of the new Term, the justice sat down with Shannon Bream on Fox News Sunday, and the conversation turned, as it so often does with Alito, to Dobbs v. Jackson Women\u2019s Health Organization. Alito said he \u201canticipated\u201d the ruling would \u201canger a great many people who believed and continue to believe\u201d there […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":164360,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-164399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164399\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}